Lady Sybilla wanted to point out that had Ellen, Duchess of Cleveley been alive it would be impossible for the Lady Henrietta to marry the Duke of Cleveley. She was of the opinion that poor Mimi’s fate was infinitely preferable to wedding such a cold fish as the great man. These sympathetic musings were cut short, not by the Countess Russell, but by the rasping voice of poor dead Mimi’s mamma. Lady Sybilla found herself clutching at Lady Russell’s hand for moral support and realized the Countess was just as terrified of the old woman as she was herself and had caught up her hand first.
“I know why you’ve come calling, sister,” Lady Rutherglen hissed, annoyed the two women were sharing confidences out of her earshot. She leaned sideways on the arm of the chair, the loose flesh about her neck folding into the hollow of her shoulder. “I know all about your expected brat, Sybilla. D’you think the Admiral don’t write letters to his own dear sister? He may be your husband but he’s a most dutiful brother. Give him another son. He don’t need daughters. Waste of time and expense, daughters. Daughters cause trouble. Daughters disappoint. Daughters cause mischief.” She fell back against the upholstery in a fit of coughing, for the final word was spat out with such venomous wrath that it dried her throat. Her watery eyes remained fixed on her open-mouthed sister-in-law.
Lady Sybilla did not know what to say. She had never been so insulted and yet she could not bring herself to make even the mildest of protests. She hated herself for being so ineffectual. She was grateful her mother and Alec Halsey had not witnessed her cowardice. Fortunately, she was spared further anxiety.
The Lady Henrietta was suddenly on her feet and swaying, a gloved hand clutching at the folds of her silk petticoats and her brown eyes swimming with tears. She was staring at the occupants of the next box. To her amazement and that of every powdered head in attendance, the Duke of Cleveley and Lord Russell, the bitterest of political rivals, were bowing to one another with a flourish of lace worthy of any stage-managed performance. All semblance of interest in the baritone’s performance evaporated amongst the silk clad audience. A hushed whisper of expectation of an even greater entertainment gathered momentum until it became a babble of noise that drowned out the recital on stage and set heads turning in the pit with vulgar shouts of complaint to the audience above.
The Duke and Lord Russell exchanged pleasantries. They smiled on one another. They shared a private joke! More than one jaw swung open at that. An astute journalist took out his pad and scribbled away, aware that he was witness to an historic moment that would be the talk in every drawing room by supper.
What this very public display of friendship meant for the government could only be wondered at. Those in opposition were not so speculative. Padded shoulders slumped amongst their number as it was realized that an alliance between the Duke of Cleveley and the Earl Russell posed an unbeatable force, with no expectation of a future factional split in the cabinet’s ranks to topple the government and force an early election.
But the uppermost thought occupying the nobles was what could have happened to bring about this unlikely alliance. The answer was soon apparent. The two noblemen raised their glasses in a toast to the adjoining box. Quizzing glasses and false eyelashes flashed wildly in that direction, to see to whom the toast honored. The answer brought a collective smile and sigh. Of course! Why had no one predicted such an outcome earlier?
With a jab of her fan, Lady Russell urged her daughter to curtsey prettily in response. After all, it was not every day a girl was so honored in such a public and demonstrative way with an engagement announcement to the most eligible widower in the kingdom.
“Oh, Papa… Not that one…” Lady Henrietta muttered on a shattering sob and promptly fainted at her mother’s satin-heeled feet in a billow of ballooning petticoats.
“Given the choice I suspect Cleveley would have preferred the life of gentleman-squire,” the Duchess of Romney-St. Neots was saying as she sipped claret from a crystal glass. “But of course he was never given the choice. His mother had his life chartered before he was out of leading strings. Great things are expected of an only son of a Lord High Chancellor. Spending one’s life counting sheep and tilling soil don’t figure in the equation. Of course Cleveley was brought up to believe he had a divine right to a place in the great scheme of things and acted accordingly. He was, stillis, an immensely proud man. When his father died and he inherited the illustrious title and grand pile of stone, he set about making his mark in politics. As for his marriage… What can I tell you? He accepted an arranged marriage with Ellen because the Conqueror’s blood ran in her veins too. Oh, I thought that would impress you,” she quipped when Alec rolled his eyes. “Ellen was pregnant to the old Duke of Stanton when she married Cleveley, a mere boy of eighteen. A messy business.”
“Odd that there was not the required period of mourning,” Alec commented dryly, thinking of his own predicament; that Selina was intent on waiting out the requisite twelve months. “Especially when she was pregnant to Stanton. Wouldn’t marriage to Cleveley before she gave birth transfer her unborn child’s legitimacy to her new husband?”
“Ellen was Stanton’s second wife; he had three grown sons by his first Duchess. But you are quite right. It was a highly unusual circumstance. As it was she had only been married to Stanton four months when he up and died of heart failure. Too much romping in bed with a much younger wife was said to be the cause of that! Then, within two months, she was married off to Cleveley, she six months pregnant. In vulgar haste, if you ask me. A clause in the Cleveley marriage contract stated that if Ellen did not give Cleveley children, that if he had no legitimate children, sons, in his lifetime, should Ellen predecease him, then the child she was carrying and which would be born after marriage to Cleveley, would become the Duke’s nominated heir.”
Alec frowned into his glass of claret. “Doesn’t that strike you as rather remarkable, given the bride was patently fertile and Cleveley a young man? Such an arrangement would suggest the parties who drew up the marriage contract were not in expectation of the newly married couple producing offspring of their own.”
“You are very astute. It does, doesn’t it?”
“And?” prompted Alec.
“And what, dear boy?”
“Why would such a clause be considered necessary unless… unless it was thought Cleveley was incapable of fathering children? Or have I pressed on too far? Don’t tell me: The great man is impotent?”
“He is a fully functioning male, as many a bordello beauty can attest,” the Duchess answered with an abruptness that told Alec she was not pleased with his levity. “But around the time of his marriage to Ellen there was a very real concern he was impotent. Their marriage remained unconsummated for over two years. Then a physician performed a simple and effective, but quite painful, procedure that corrected the difficulty. I am told the Jews barbarize all their sons in this way when they come of age.”
“Circumcision? Cleveley was circumcised to correct an erectile problem? But that doesn’t explain why their marriage remained childless.”
“No, it doesn’t. And as Ellen gave birth to George, then one must suppose the fault lies with Cleveley.” The Duchess sighed. “I know one should not speak ill of the dead, but I could never embrace Ellen. She wasn’t suited to being a Duke’s wife, though she loved the trappings of title and wealth. She certainly was no helpmate to Cleveley’s career.”
Alec refilled their glasses. The singing below intruded on his thoughts and he glanced toward the stage in annoyance. On this particular occasion he was inclined to agree with the Duchess’s assessment of Opera. He did not much care for Gluck’s work. “I assumed the Duchess of Cleveley was universally liked.”
“Yes, she was. My feelings are tainted by the fact she had a brief affair with Romney.”
“Surely a momentary lapse on his part,” Alec replied politely.
The Duchess gave a hollow laugh, amusement in her pale eyes. “One of many, my dear boy. But one doesn’t expect the g
irl one presented at court to sleep with one’s husband. It’s in such bad taste, and what’s worse, she had the bad manners to get herself pregnant by him.”
“By Romney?” Alec was surprised. “Are you certain?”
“My dear boy, Romney only had to put a foot across the threshold of my bedchamber and I was with child. I was pregnant more times than I care to remember and had sixteen lying-ins. The man was a modern-day Ramses. Too fertile for any female’s good. I was only too pleased he went a’roamin.”
Alec stifled a laugh on a mouthful of claret.
“But what I did not appreciate was being told.”
“She told you?” Alec was surprised. “To what purpose? I assumed she would rid herself of such ill-gotten offspring, or at the very least hide the fruits of her adultery, if only to spare Cleveley the indignity of his glaring inadequacy?”
The Duchess gave a shrug of indifference, but Alec detected a wisp of emotion in her reply. “I imagine she wanted to confide her predicament in someone, and who better than the wife of her lover; the one person who was unlikely to bleat it about drawing rooms. But I did have some sympathy for Ellen…”
“Your forgiveness is boundless, my dear Olivia.”
“Stop funning! Her marriage was barren. And she was desperate to have a child and here she was pregnant with my husband’s bastard and couldn’t tell a living soul. And then she miscarried, which was a far better outcome than had she brought a bastard to term, not that I told her that, because she had made me her confidant! Me.”
Alec looked down at his long fingers. “A difficult time for you both.”
“Difficult? That doesn’t begin to describe it. Not three months after her miscarriage she came to me with the most astounding news. She was in love. Can you believe it? In love, and by all accounts for the first time, too! Silly goose of a woman. And at her age.”
“Age is no barrier to falling in love, Olivia.”
The Duchess shrugged, as if made uncomfortable by this simple truth and said flatly, “Well, age was no barrier to Ellen falling with child either! Again, Ellen found herself pregnant, and again not by her husband, and again I found myself not only her confidant but colluding with her to hide the fruits of her adultery from Cleveley.”
“She never thought of passing the child off as Cleveley’s?”
“Couldn’t. He would know. The timing was all wrong.”
“So she did think about duping her husband.”
The Duchess eyed him resentfully. “We both thought about it.”
Alec kept his opinion of such conniving and betrayal to himself and said calmly, “I presume then that she managed to keep this pregnancy a secret from him. How did she manage it?”
The Duchess smoothed out an imaginary crease in her petticoats. “Ellen’s unwanted pregnancy isn’t the first to ever make it to term without anyone, including a husband, being any the wiser. Women go into the country to visit relatives; come down with all sorts of imaginary illnesses that require complete bed rest and solitary recuperation. The fact is she had the brat, farmed it out in the depths of the country, to God knows what impoverished couple only too willing to take on an extra mouth to feed, in return for a guaranteed annual income, and returned to London, Society, and Cleveley oblivious.”
“Except to you.”
“Yes. Except to me.” The Duchess sighed. “I don’t think Ellen ever recovered from giving up that child. Her loss was made worse by the fact her sister the serpent had just given birth to a daughter. Ellen wasn’t able to sufficiently harden her heart. Her marriage remained barren. The myth is she was devoted to Cleveley, and yet she got herself pregnant twice and one of her lovers was my husband.” She tapped Alec’s silken sleeve with her fan. “Do you know, I really think he was devoted to her for the first half of their marriage. Sad. She spent her final three years bedridden and bitter, goading him at every opportunity about his inability to beget a child, even out of wedlock. I witnessed several of her outbursts. Is it any wonder he was not at her bedside when she died?”
Alec pulled a face. “Dear me. Pride poked and prodded but surely not deflated?”
The Duchess’s face tightened. “You have no idea.”
“Forgive me. That was uncalled for.”
“Their barren marriage was a living hell for a proud man like Cleveley, particularly when he has a genuine fondness for children. He was a very caring uncle to Mimi, Frances Rutherglen’s only child. A surprisingly beautiful girl, no astonishingly is a better word given her lineage, and with such poise for one so young. I saw her only the once. It was not many months before her tragic death. She was brought down from the schoolroom to play at the pianoforte at one of Frances’s excruciatingly dull afternoon teas. Cleveley turned the sheets of music for her while she played. The child’s death was a great blow to him. I will always remember Cleveley’s expression when he told me that, at the Rutherglens’ request, he identified Mimi’s body. He looked so ill I thought he’d stop breathing…” The Duchess mentally shook herself and squeezed Alec’s silken sleeve. “I knew that sliver of Cleveley’s humanity would surprise you. Makes him less the uncaring brute, doesn’t it? And any man who is willing to own that drunken buffoon George Stanton as his son must have a strong paternal instinct.”
“Strong enough to want to protect Stanton from the folly of a youthful indiscretion?”
“What is a youthful indiscretion in the scheme of things? And what father wouldn’t protect his child? The Duke will not allow anything or anyone to stand in the way of George inheriting the Cleveley dukedom.”
“And count no cost?”
The Duchess of Romney-St Neots did not hesitate. “And count no cost.”
Such petty details, and the vicar kept waiting…
Alec had never set a buckled shoe inside the Hanover Square mansion Selina shared with her loathsome husband. He hoped never to do so and wondered why she continued to reside in a house that held so many painful memories of an abusive marriage. Alec wanted her to sell it, not merely lease it out, so there would be no lingering ties, material or otherwise, with her deceased madman of a husband. His townhouse in St. James’s Place was more than adequate for their needs. It at least was a comfortable warm place to call home, unlike this monolith of cold marble and opulence that resembled its dead master: a façade of wealth and privilege that lacked a heart and soul.
He glanced at the pearl face of his gold pocket watch a second time, reading the numerals at half an arm’s length. The footman who showed him to the anteroom off the library said the mistress had visitors but that it would not be many minutes before she would be free, as the Duke’s travelling coach was waiting in the street. Alec had already been kept waiting fifteen minutes.
When the butler emerged from the library with a footman in tow they left wide the door giving Alec a clear view into a long book-lined room with its central massive mahogany desk. Here sat two men of business surrounded by parchments and papers. Selina, hair brushed up off the nape of her neck and dressed in her customary black velvet, was pacing the space between the desk and the warmth of the fireplace with her slender arms folded behind her back. She was listening intently to the conversation between the two men of business and the Duke. His Grace of Cleveley appeared at home, propped on an edge of the desk. He was swinging a stockinged leg with his ever-present gold snuffbox at the ready.
It was to the Duke Selina spoke and it was he to whom she listened. When she stopped and faced him, clearly agitated by a comment made by one of the men of business, Cleveley pulled her to him and lightly held her by the upper arms as he spoke. When she finally dropped her chin and nodded, he kissed her forehead and slowly let her go, hands running down the length of her arms to briefly squeeze her hands. At that familiar action, Alec retreated to stare out of the window, annoyed that a simple light kiss and caress given by a man old enough to be her father should arouse feelings of unease. But in spite of a pleasurable week spent together in Paris, matters with Selina had not gone to
plan and he did not know why and so he felt he had every right to his apprehension.
When there was movement at his back he pretended an interest in the Duke’s magnificent travelling coach standing idle in the square below, the Cleveley coat of arms emblazoned in gold leaf on the black door. Two pompous-looking footmen in livery stood up on the box, another waited patiently between the horses’ heads while the driver sat back in his duffle coat holding the reigns in his gloved hands. Four armed outriders remained mounted, walking their horses up and down the street and circling their master’s coach, impatient to be off. By the mountain of luggage strapped to the roof, it was to be a considerable journey. When he finally turned into the room he found the Duke watching him.
“I wonder who has disturbed whom?” quipped Cleveley as he drew on his kid gloves. “Unfortunately, I can’t stay to find out. So, you will excuse me—”
“Do you make a habit of disturbing this widow, your Grace?”
The Duke raised his graying black brows. “May one ask what prompts such an unexpected question?”
The muscles about Alec’s mouth set hard at the smirk that accompanied the Duke’s remark. “Mrs. Jamison-Lewis and I are betrothed.”
“Indeed?” said the Duke with no hint of surprise. “I received the strongest impression from Mrs. Jamison-Lewis that she was in two minds. Now, you must excuse me. The horses…”
In a rash move prompted by a moment of intense jealousy, Alec thrust the silver button belonging to the Cleveley livery at the Duke. “This, I believe, is yours, Duke.”
His Grace held the small button between gloved thumb and forefinger to the light of a branch of candles on the mantelshelf. “It is?”
“That button is part of your livery, is it not?”
The Duke blinked. “I beg your pardon?”
“I thought perhaps you could tell me how two of your liveried servants came to be involved in a scuffle in a laneway beside the Stock and Buckle Coffeehouse.”
The Duke remained blank-faced.
Deadly Affair: A Georgian Historical Mystery (Alec Halsey Crimance) Page 10
