Lady Adventuress 01 - His Wayward Duchess

by Daphne du Bois

  Woodley Court had recently been let, Holly remembered. Not long after she had come to Pontridge. The vicar’s wife had been all aflutter about no less than two new arrivals in the space of as many weeks.

  But she had never imagined it could have been taken by anyone this interesting.

  “Certainly,” said Holly, with her friendliest smile. “If you prefer, I should be glad to show you it myself – it is not very far out of my way.”

  “I should be most grateful. But are you not on your way to the village?”

  “It’s nothing, I assure you. I was merely walking.”

  “Then you are a brave and hardy soul. I am Lady Louisa Somerville.” The lady paused to give Holly a considering look.

  The name was oddly familiar.

  Then it dawned on her. Even an isolated country squire’s daughter like herself had heard of the scandalous and scandalously wealthy Lady Louisa. The infamous woman was the daughter of an earl and his beautiful, shocking wife, who had formerly been a fine London actress.

  Even now that she was well off the marriage mart, Lady Louisa was known for her rebellious streak and her absolute refusal to play by the rules – a liberty she was allowed because of her astonishing wealth.

  Holly knew that Lady Louisa had been a member of the Devonshire Set in her youth and there was a popular rumour that she was one of the illustrious former amours of Prince George. Holly remembered reading that Lady Louisa had even presented him with a miniature of herself draped in lace and wearing nothing more than carmine rouge. The miniature was apparently much treasured by the Prince.

  Holly was not at all sure she credited the story with much truth, for no lady of blood and breeding could ever be so fast as that, but she still knew that Lady Louisa was not a suitable connection for a young duchess of good repute.

  Which was why she would be the perfect connection to cultivate. There could be no one more removed from the tiresome circle of gentlewomen to be found at Pontridge Brook.

  Holly wondered how the lady had managed to keep her beauty so very well. No one was entirely certain of the exact date of Lady Louisa’s birth for not a single one of her confidantes or paramours had ever been privy to this great secret.

  The other woman was watching Holly with obvious amusement, clearly waiting for some polite excuse with which the duchess would take her leave.

  She had to have seen the recognition on Holly’s face.

  Holly believed that she had done rather well in regard to propriety up to then. She had followed every tenant of respectable behaviour and she had done her best to be an exemplary wife.

  Out on the Season, she had avoided the scandal of mésalliance and married well – though that last had been incidental. But all that had left her with was a ramshackle manor and a husband who had chosen London over her.

  She felt bored and abandoned, and she did not think she could bear another visit to the village.

  Being good seemed to get one nowhere.

  Lady Louisa then was just the antidote she needed, she decided rebelliously.

  And the devil take proper connections.

  “It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Lady Louisa. Though it be in all this dreadful mud. I am new to Gloucestershire also, and I would be delighted if you were to call on me some time at your convenience. It could be much better if we endure the endless grey together.”

  Fumbling in her reticule, she produced one of her newly-printed calling cards. It felt strange to see her title, which was printed in tasteful dark ink.

  Holly handed the card to her new acquaintance.

  Lady Louisa was visibly surprised. She appeared to reassess Holly a moment. Holly wondered if she too had written her off as a dull, uninspiring mouse. Lady Louisa glanced at the card, and raised an elegantly arched eyebrow.

  “Why, I should be delighted…Ah. Lady Strathavon,” she said. “I own I am not at all familiar with the environs – I am here for my health, you see. My physician has insisted that I take the fresh air, else he will wash his hands of me. He insisted on the country also, over Bath or Brighton, or some other civilised place, which seems to me rather excessive. A very ratchety man. I must say, I do not see the least benefit of stumbling about in the mud and rain. And missing the end of the Season, too.”

  Holly could empathise with that. She had also been forced to miss the end of the Season, on account of her hasty matrimony.

  She remembered how the journals had chalked the haste down to the ardour of the groom.

  Ardour, indeed! If she had then supposed him simply to be a person of private affections – well, she had no explanations for the fact that he had deposited her at Strathavon and left her to the dust with nothing but a hasty note.

  It would be impossible to imagine a man who felt less ardour for his new bride.

  Alas, her sheltered upbringing and over-active imagination had played her false.

  “Since you are the new Lady Strathavon, I must offer my felicitations on your recent nuptials,” said Holly’s new acquaintance, thankfully cutting into her bitter speculation.

  “Thank you, that is very kind,” Holly replied automatically.

  “Is it? If you say so, my dear.” Lady Louisa did not look convinced, and Holly remembered that she had always refused any offer of marriage, no matter how worthwhile.

  If only Holly had had that much sense! But she had walked merrily to her own doom.

  She could still remember the exact moment she had promised to love Strathavon forever: she had been so nervous that she had stumbled terribly over her vows. It was a wonder that she had not tripped over her gown on her way back to the carriage.

  She came out of her musings to find her new acquaintance still regarding her curiously. Holly felt her cheeks warm at having trailed off like a silly schoolgirl.

  “I am sorry, Lady Louisa – I was just thinking of how right you are about missing the rest of the Season – it’s a great shame. But perhaps the country really is good for one’s health.”

  The lady scoffed. “For me, possibly, my dear – for I am grown decrepit, you know. I come from a time, if you’ll believe it, when a gentleman was known simply by the lace he wore, and the jewels. So some may say it is only right that I should be sent out of the glamour of modern society like a relic or some old vase at the British Museum. But for yourself, surely, this confinement is neither necessary nor beneficial. Your life is only just unfolding, but you won’t get to live much of it here. I had meant, in my retirement from society, to write the book of my life,” the lady said wryly. “But now that I am here, I find that I am not done with living it yet.”

  Holly wasn’t entirely sure what to say. How had Lady Louisa known so exactly? She felt tears gather it her eyes and blinked furiously. Fancy, being so entirely ill-bred as to cry about her marital woes in front of a complete stranger. Especially such an elegant, important stranger. It was shockingly vulgar to air private matters in public.

  “It… It is nothing. I do not mind it all that much. The house is in need of some repairs, you see, and I must oversee that it is fixed before the weather turns towards winter. My husband has been called away to London and so I must supervise.”

  “Ah. I see.” The older woman nodded. “I fear that I have unintentionally upset you, Lady Strathavon. Forgive me such brash directness, but you are not yet settled into your new life, are you?”

  Holly looked up with surprise.

  Lady Louisa chuckled. “Your cards are newly printed, you hesitated when you said your name, and you seem a little agitated. It was really just common sense on my part.”

  “Oh.”

  “I have never had occasion to try out the state of matrimony for myself – I never saw the need. But I have lived long enough to be able to assure you with every confidence, that there are very few broken things that cannot be fixed. Hearts, included. Now, that is my drive just past the trees. If you still wish me to call, I shall do so tomorrow.”

  “Of course!”

&nbs
p; The woman sparkled at her, and it was easy to see how it was that she had conquered dukes, kings and counts at every turn with her merciless splendour.

  “It is such a relief to find a lively lady with whom one might have sensible conversation out here in the wilderness.”

  “I feel the same. The local ladies – oh, but I shouldn’t. They have been most kind…” Holly felt dreadfully gauche.

  “Not at all. I think I take your meaning. What an angel you are, to have led me back to the house, Lady Strathavon.”

  Woodley Court stood tall and lovely, with a drape of ivy over one wall and majestic gardens laid out on the far side of the lawn. Holly could smell the roses from where she stood.

  “You are very welcome, Lady Louisa. It is a lovely house.”

  “Certainly – if one is to languish in the country, one may as well reside in as much comfort as such a setting will permit. But I rather think that I am not long for my present abode. I shall surprise myself extremely if I make it through to next spring without fleeing back to London”

  Holly nodded knowingly at that. Having lived almost her whole life in the country, she knew that she did not feel the isolation half so keenly as Lady Louisa, but even so she was beginning to wilt more and more in the absence of friends and siblings.

  Having said goodbye to her new acquaintance, Holly proceeded home. It was fortunate that she had decided to wear her sturdy country boots. The lovely slippers she had had made in London, in anticipation of her new life, would have been instantly ruined.

  But she felt cheerful, as she had not felt since coming to Gloucestershire.

  Meeting Lady Louisa felt pivotal, like the beginning of something grand – she no longer felt so forsaken now that she had the hope of a friend. She had a caller to look forward to – one that would not be prim and dull. Someone who would converse on more interesting subjects than the work she had done on the house, or the importance of fruit preserves.

  Holly arrived home just as rain started to fall again, but even that did not ruin her strangely buoyant mood.

  How wonderful it would be to have company! Rose would have loved Lady Louisa, if she had been near enough to meet her. Holly missed her sisters – so much so that her younger self, who had quarrelled with her numerous siblings a good deal, would have been astonished.

  She wondered if she ought to write home of her new acquaintance. Her mama would not approve of such company – but her sisters would be delighted. In the end, she wrote Rose, knowing that there she would find the enthusiasm and understanding she hoped for.

  It was definitely better than writing home of how happy she was and how tolerably well she and the duke got on together in the country. She had never been very good at lying to them.

  Holly was only glad that, having removed on a visit to her aunt in Yorkshire, her mama and papa had no way of knowing that His Grace had long since returned to London.

  She only hoped that her new friend would not find her hopelessly gauche and dull.

  Lady Louisa Somerville was well-travelled, fashionable, fast and connected to some of the highest members of the ton. Holly, on the other hand, had never been anywhere except London, Bath, and the village in which she had grown up.

  She had no prestigious lofty acquaintance. She had hardly even experienced the Season before she’d been married.

  She supposed that she was relatively well schooled, because of her parents’ eccentric ideas about the education of young ladies, but she doubted very much that the knowledge gleaned from books alone was enough to make her interesting to the other lady.

  If Holly were honest, she was not even very good at being bookish. Her geography and history had always been rather poor, and her governess had often been displeased with her efforts. She enjoyed novels, the more chilling the better, which her father felt was a great detriment to her education.

  Surely, even the quiet of the country would not distract Lady Louisa from finding Holly an absolute bore. And there were very few things worse than being deemed a bore.

  How awful if she were to lose an acquaintance, potentially a friendship, merely because she was not the least bit interesting.

  Well, she told herself firmly, it is too late to change your mind now – and being a coward is not to be tolerated.

  *

  The following morning, Holly could barely focus on the household accounts. She was both excited and nervous about the upcoming visit. At last, she gave up and set the ledgers aside, choosing instead to go and explore the house.

  With every new room reclaimed from decay, she was beginning to feel more and more proprietary over the old manor. It was as though she were reclaiming it not just from cobwebs, but from time and oblivion.

  She liked looking at the rooms, and seeing the potential for making them as elegant and cosy as possible. And the maids and footmen had been excellent in carrying out her instructions. Her easy friendliness and fair expectations, as well as the wonders which she had worked on the house, had earned her the respect of her staff, which made her all the more proud of the work that she had done.

  Wandering aimlessly through the house, Holly found herself in the long Gallery. Portraits of Strathavon ancestors hung on the walls, each with the proud Strathavon disposition and unmistakably strong nose.

  Their spouses also wore the same matching dignity, if not always the nose. Holly felt terribly out of place as she walked along the gallery, her slippers soundless on the marble floor.

  Her own portrait would never hang here, surely, she thought sadly. One would have to be a real wife for that, and she wasn’t a real wife.

  Pushing away these awful thoughts, she admired the rich costumes of past eras and the beautiful sparking jewels. She halted when she reached the two most recent portraits.

  Her husband stared back at her, proud and handsome, yet with a strange softness of features and a youthful look in his eyes that she had never had the privilege of seeing. Then, Holly looked at his brother, Maximillian, who had not lived long enough to return home and enjoy his lands and title.

  There was a strong resemblance between the brothers, both of whom favoured their father for the most part.

  Her husband had loved his brother very much. Yet, Holly knew little of the late duke. Strathavon hardly spoke of him, as though he could not bear the pain of it. With a burning sense of urgency, she wanted to know more about this brother, who had mattered so much to the man she loved.

  She wondered if she would ever be privy to this precious information. He was important, this lost brother. She felt as though her life were intertwined with his, despite the fact that he was no longer among the living.

  She stood there a long time, looking into the good-humoured countenance, as though she could learn something important from the painted likeness. She felt excessively sorry that she could never meet him in person.

  *

  When Lady Louisa arrived at last, at precisely one o’clock, Holly was delighted to see her. She had changed into a nice lavender gown for the occasion, and had Nancy make a go of curling her stubborn hair. Maybe it would go some way towards alleviating the lady’s impression of Holly as a sheer social disaster.

  She received Lady Louisa in the best withdrawing room on the second floor and served lemonade and fresh scones.

  The lady wore a white cap that became her exceedingly. It gave her a comfortably relaxed appearance which on Holly would simply have looked frumpy and spinsterish. Lady Louisa had nothing if not panache.

  “I know it is not the right time for scones,” Holly told her guest apologetically, “but Cook makes such delightful ones.”

  “Excellent, I adore scones,” Lady Louisa said. “And I see that you have already begun to take the house in hand, Lady Strathavon. I have heard tell from my housekeeper that the manor has been left in a state of disrepair for some number of years. I understand the local people are delighted to see some life return to it at last. But how are you finding it? I have always thought it dreadfully diffi
cult for a young lady to go from her wedding breakfast to running her own establishment.”

  “Then it is good that my strength lies in the latter and not the former. You see, Strathavon had urgent estate matters to attend to and so we did not have a very elaborate wedding breakfast,” Holly said.

  She hadn’t made much of it at the time, but now she wondered sadly if that had been yet another hint of his indifference, which she had entirely failed to spot.

  “Then it seems to me you have taken to it all very well.”

  Holly felt a warm glow of delight at the compliment, and offered the lady a tour of the rooms she had already fixed.

  Lady Louisa proved an excellent audience. As they made their way through the house, she took such an interest in the colours and fabrics that Holly began to suspect she was partly being kind. As they talked, she caught more than one contemplative look directed her way.

  “Whatever did you do in the country all these years, Lady Strathavon?” asked Lady Louisa gently once they had returned to the withdrawing room.

  “A great many things. It was nothing like here. We had lessons. We swam in the summer and played in the park. There were a number of dramatic quarrels to keep us occupied, and we put on a great many theatricals when the weather turned ghastly. My sister, Rose, wrote charades, too,” Holly said. “So you see, I had my brothers and sisters then: but here I do not.”

  “I never had brothers and sisters, growing up. My sister was born when I was already grown…” mused Lady Louisa. “It seems a great shame. Though I had the other girls when I was sent away to school, but then one does tend to lose touch after one leaves to enter the world and marry.”

  Holly had never been to school, because her mama had gone to a boarding establishment and hated every moment she’d spent there. “But you must have travelled, at least. Only children get to travel a lot more than one does when one has siblings.”

  “Why, yes. My mama was very fond of Paris. And Germany. I even went to Greece once, as a girl.”

  “To Greece!” Holly was delighted to hear of such a sunny, distant place, full of mystery and adventure.