Proud Mary

by Lucinda Brant

  So Michelle changed tack and concluded mildly, “—for the many hours she spent on a very long walk.”

  “Then the Lady Mary will welcome a bath and a change of clothes while we visit with Lady Paget.” She addressed her tirewomen. “Finding the Lady Mary clothing will not be a worry, we are very similar, except for this baby, though you will apologize that I cannot offer her a corset. Her maid will bring one in her trunk. Lady Mary’s maid she is on her way, yes?” she asked Michelle as she picked up a fan from the dressing table and slipped the silken cord over her wrist.

  “A servant was sent at first light with your instructions, Mme la Duchesse. I am told Abbeywood is not far from here, so the Lady Mary’s trunks and her maid should arrive by suppertime.”

  “Bon. Tomorrow we must return to Hampshire. But now we go visiting. Oh, and, Michelle,” Antonia added quietly as one of her tirewomen draped a silk shawl across her shoulders, “as always you are deaf to what you hear.”

  Michelle curtsied. “As always, Mme la Duchesse.”

  She followed Antonia out of the bedchamber and across the landing to where a servant waited to escort them to a wing of the house so secluded that it had only ever been visited by one guest in ten years, that guest being the neighbor’s daughter, Teddy.

  HER LADYSHIP’S companion greeted Antonia in the small withdrawing room she kept for her personal use. It was divided from her mistress’s large bedchamber, which also served as a sitting room, by a brocade portière. This heavy curtain partition used instead of a door enabled Fran to better hear the tinkle of her ladyship’s little handbell. When not needed, this small room served as her sanctuary, crammed as it was with all manner of personal objects collected during a lifetime, and mostly from time spent in the Italian States with her mistress. Her two most precious possessions were a singing bird in an ornamental cage, and a ginger cat, curled up in the sun on the daybed, both gifts from the master, Squire Bryce.

  Fran bobbed a shaky curtsy and nervously held her hands in front of her. She had never been in the presence of a duchess before, and the imperious little beauty dressed all in velvet and heavy silk was everything she imagined a duchess to be, though the noblewoman’s advanced stage of pregnancy was still a shock that was writ large on her long face and had her forgetting her rehearsed speech of welcome.

  Antonia instantly put the woman at her ease by leaning in and saying with a smile, and in English, “It was a great surprise to me too.”

  Fran gave an involuntary nervous titter then became serious and said confidentially, “Your Grace is aware of her ladyship’s—difficulty?”

  “Yes.”

  “I hope you will not think it an impertinence, Your Grace, for me to ask you to try to understand that there are times when my lady becomes frustrated by her limitations and is not herself. Nothing is meant by these outbursts, but if one is not used to them, they can be confronting. I apologize in advance if Your Grace is in any way offended—”

  “I will not be offended in the least.”

  Fran nodded, curtsied again, and had Antonia, with Michelle close at her back, follow her under the portière into a large, long room that had most of its curtains pulled across the windows to keep out the daylight.

  “Her ladyship prefers to sit in the dark,” Fran apologized. “Her sight—”

  “Don’t tell fibs, Fran! It has nothing to do with my blindness,” Kate retorted. “Women of a certain age look best in shadow. Now run along and fetch the tea—”

  “Coffee for me,” Antonia interrupted gently.

  “Tea for me and coffee for the Duchess,” Kate corrected, remaining in deep shadow by a window seat. “Do come closer, Your Grace. I am still able to see parts of you, y’know, just not your face. But I don’t need to see that because your delicate features are permanently etched in my mind’s eye. But forgive me. I did not curtsy to rank when you entered the room. I am out of the habit, but one should always accord a duchess the respect she deserves.”

  She made an overt display of dropping into a deep curtsy, in acknowledgment of her visitor’s privileged status, but before she was halfway up out of the formal greeting Antonia had the older woman by the elbow and would not let her go.

  “No! No! This is most unnecessary between us,” Antonia said in a rush of French. “Did not your housekeeper tell you that Antonia wished to speak with you? And so it is as Antonia I am here. We have known each other for far too many years to stand on ceremony. I have never forgotten the great kindness you showed me when I first came to this country, alone and desolate, and to live with a relative who did not want me. If not for you, me I would have been sadder still. Come let us sit and be comfortable,” she continued in the same buoyant tone, though she was aware her hostess was shaking and biting her lip as if under considerable duress to keep her emotions tightly bottled. “Michelle! Arrange the cushions, and these curtains open them all. I know you cannot see me as well as you should,” she said gently to Kate, “but I wish very much to see you, my lady—”

  “It’s Kate. It’s always been Kate,” she burst out, unaware she was clinging to Antonia’s arm as if to a life raft in rough seas.

  “How long has it been since we were in each other’s company?” Antonia asked conversationally, though she knew the answer.

  “Twelve years. We last saw each other in Rome.”

  “Ah yes, Monseigneur and I were on our way home to Paris from Constantinople—”

  “—where your eldest son had been living. He was with you, and so too was your youngest boy.”

  “Henri-Antoine,” Antonia told her. “He had his fifth birthday in Rome.”

  With Kate settled and the curtains pulled back from the window to let in light, Antonia spread out her petticoats and sat in the window seat. Michelle fussed with the placement of a couple of cushions to make her mistress comfortable, then retreated to a chair on the other side of the large Turkey rug and there perched, close enough to be of assistance if required, but far enough to not appear to be eavesdropping.

  Aware that their time alone would be limited now the Squire had returned, and so, too, had Mary, Antonia was even less inclined to waste time in light discourse. But she was sensitive to the fact that the woman sitting beside her was now a recluse and did not receive visitors. So she took a moment to engage her in conversation she hoped would make her feel at ease, particularly when the last time they had seen each other, harsh words had been uttered.

  “You look well, Kate,” she said truthfully. “The silver in your hair suits. And I see you have lost none of your—how do you say it in English—sens de l’esthétisme vestimentaire.”

  Kate smiled for the first time since Antonia came into the room. “Dress sense…? Thank-you. Yes, I still strive to look my best, even if I do not receive company.”

  “You do not think of coming to London occasionally, to see friends, to attend the Opera perhaps? You do not need your sight to listen to beautiful singing…”

  “Ha! And this from a woman who locked herself away with her grief for three years. I hardly think you are best qualified to offer me advice, do you, my dear?”

  “No? But me I do have a firsthand experience of self-centered misery, and what a burden that is on our loved ones, particularly a concerned son.”

  Kate’s fingers flinched in her lap, tightening about the heavy silk damask of her petticoats.

  “Why are you here, Antonia? Why come to me now, after all these years? I kept a respectful distance from your married life with M’sieur le Duc d’Roxton. He and I corresponded, but I am very sure you knew all about it, and accepted it, or he would not have done so. One word from you and he’d never have inked another word to me! He was that devoted, that in love with you. God, to have the singular devotion of such a man is the stuff of dreams for most females. You had that from him and much more, but even you, the great beauty of our age, dared to doubt him the one and only time I ever asked for his help. And how did you respond to my request? You stupidly thought the worst
of us both?! Shame on you.”

  “Yes. Me I was very stupid,” Antonia admitted in a small voice. “But it is you who are wrong if you think I ever questioned his fidelity or his love. When we married, I knew he had given up his past life, his lovers—you. But his past it was very black. So when you traveled to Rome specifically to see him while we were there, when you sought his help to locate your son, when you were so distressed to think your son he might be lost to you forever and because of your failing sight you might never see him again—naturellement I was left to wonder if the two of you were keeping a big secret from me.”

  “Little fool! You know as well as I Monseigneur never admitted to fathering any bastards, whether it be true or not. So the notion that we shared a secret son and that M’sieur le Duc was keeping this boy’s existence from you was ludicrous.”

  “Yes. It was,” Antonia replied sadly, letting her shoulders sag. She sighed. “I should never have doubted him, or you.”

  “Even if you believed it true—and let us for a moment delve into the realms of the fairy folk and say it was—how could you believe I would keep such monumental news from you?” Kate continued, tempering her tone because Antonia’s candid admission did much to soothe her animosity. “I know you better than you think. Despite your tender years when you married, you were strong enough to have accepted that truth, had I confided in you that Roxton and I shared a son. I think you would’ve coped with the news much better than he. Just as you did his nefarious past, as a matter of course and with good grace, confident in the knowledge you were the great love of his life and nothing and no one would ever come between you.”

  Kate turned her head away and swallowed hard, and Antonia sensed she was not finished scolding her for her poor judgment upon an occasion that had occurred over a decade ago. So she stayed silent and still, the only sign of her unease the way in which her fingers plucked at the closed pleats of her fan. Her intuition served her well. A handful of seconds later Kate turned back to face her, cheeks stained with tears. It took all Antonia’s self-control not to offer her lace-bordered handkerchief and to fuss over her.

  “I don’t care what you think, or if your sensibilities are offended, but I miss him,” she stated belligerently. “I miss M’sieur le Duc d’Roxton every day. We were lovers for a short time, but more than that, we were the best of friends for years before you twirled into his life. And we continued as correspondents until his death. He truly understood me, and his letters always had me laughing out loud. I don’t know how he did it, but he knew all the best gossip about all the best people! But he was expert at knowing the difference between gossip and keeping a secret. He never betrayed me or my son to anyone—except to you. And he would never have done that had you not demanded it of him. He broke his promise to me because of you, and you humiliated me. I never knew him to have a weakness, but when he had me recount the most painful episode of my life to you—that I’d been forced to give up my only child, a child fathered by a lover—I knew then that you were his greatest weakness of all!”

  “What you say—all of it—is true, and I am truly sorry for having caused you distress. It is an episode of which I am not proud. But you must know I would never give you or your son away, to anyone. I have not. And I do not want you to hate me anymore—”

  “I don’t hate you, you foolish girl! And there is truth in what you say,” Kate admitted grudgingly. “I have no right to be miserable. I am alive and in the best of care, and I have the most devoted son.”

  “I am looking forward to meeting him.”

  “You will think it a mother’s boast, but he is quite out of the ordinary way,” Kate said with a warm smile. “You will see what I mean as soon as you see him. He is as far removed from the conventional Cotswold squire that he might as well reside on the moon as be considered one of them! I may not go out into society anymore but I do remember my visits here when I was much younger, vividly. My sister’s husband, while a good soul and an excellent man of his type, who was also a good father to Christopher, was a rather dull, plodding fellow who could no more shuffle around a ballroom as fly. Whereas my son has a noble bearing, with a natural grace—”

  “He is like you,” Antonia stated simply.

  “Oh, that is lovely of you to say, my dear. Perhaps he did inherit that from me; his true father had two left feet as I recall…” Kate stopped and sighed, then mentally shook herself free of the past and said flatly, “Christopher, for all his talents, is determined and quite content, it seems, to spend the rest of his days here in this agrarian void, as Squire Bryce. And so I must find it within me to be content here, too.”

  “Est-ce si mauvais? Kate, this place it is a very pretty part of the kingdom with all the houses made of buttery stone and a landscape that goes up and down like a bed sheet flapping in the wind, so different from what I am used to. Of course, the roads they are atrocious, and here it is remote from life closer to London. And I admit I do not understand a word the rustics say, if they say anything at all because I am told very few of them speak, and when they do it is one or two words only. But if your son he is happy here, and he enjoys being squire of a not inconsiderable estate, what more from life do you want for him?”

  “What you mean is: Squire in a picturesque backwater is more than a bastard progeny of an adulterous union between a minor baron and an admiral’s wife can expect from life—”

  “I meant nothing of the sort! I meant—”

  “Antonia, you may be affronted by my bluntness but it does not change the truth in what I say. As a bastard, my son has few if any rights. He is a social pariah. He cannot join our social class, yet he is not of the gentry either. And his neighbors, were they to learn of his true parentage, they would most certainly shun him thereafter. And I am forever relegated to being his Aunt Kate!”

  Antonia unfurled her fan with a flick, her agitation showing itself in the way she fluttered it.

  “Now it is my turn to be blunt with you, because although I have yet to meet him, what you say about your son’s social position and his birth seems to me to trouble you more than it does him. How old is he—thirty-five, forty?”

  “He will turn forty in the new year. I remember the day as if it were only yesterday.”

  “I do not doubt that, Kate. Mothers never forget the birth days of their children. So your son, he is now almost forty, and here he is a prosperous squire. Which would seem to be the life he wants for himself, yes? And from what my son tells me, your son is not only a successful farmer, but he owns cloth mills, too. And Jonathon he tells me your son has an excellent business brain, which is high praise indeed, because he was a merchant before he became a duke—”

  “Jonathon—?”

  “M’sieur le Duc d’Kinross, my husband. He was an East India merchant before the coronet it unexpectedly fell on his head. He tells me that it is no small feat your son performed to turn around the fortunes of Abbeywood Farm, and in so short a time, too. M’sieur le Duc also says your son he is a financial genius, and he intends to seek him out for advice on his plans for his estates in Scotland. Là c’est alors! You have even more reason to be proud. Yes?”

  “I am proud of him,” Kate replied with emphasis and a trembling smile, gratified to hear such praise. “More than anything I want him to be happy. Isn’t that what any mother wants for her child? To be happy? And I do not mean the sort of happiness to be gained from his achievements and his choice to live his life here. I know he is satisfied, even if I am merely reconciled to it. It is his personal happiness that worries me most. I’m afraid his illegitimacy is an impediment that cannot be overcome in this instance, because he can never marry the only woman that matters to him, has ever mattered to him. He has not asked her, and that is probably for the best because she will have no choice but to reject him.”

  “Why? If he loves her, and she loves him, what is to stop them? Why should she reject him just because of his birth. Has he told her?”

  “No.”

  “If
she loves him, his illegitimacy should not matter in the least!”

  “Ah. But to her family it will matter a great deal. They set great store on pedigree, particularly her mother.”

  “So she is much younger than he?”

  Kate’s lips twitched hearing Antonia’s note of concern. “Would it matter if she were? It didn’t to you…”

  Antonia shut her fan with a snap and leaned in to Kate, intrigued more than ever. “But I did not have parents to stop me.”

  Kate gave a snort. “As if a parent’s objections would have had an ounce of influence in stopping you marrying Monseigneur!”

  Antonia’s green eyes were alight with mischief. “You are right.”

  “She is ten years his junior and was married, but is now a widow—”

  “A widow?” Antonia grabbed onto the word. “So she is free to marry whom she pleases. Her parents they cannot stop her, whatever their objections.”

  “If only it were that simple,” Kate said on a sigh of regret.

  Yet, she was secretly pleased by Antonia’s response. Confiding in her about Christopher’s love for Mary was a calculated move. She knew Antonia would be affronted to think true love could be hampered by any barrier. The Duchess was an unashamed romantic who had overcome all opposition, even from the nobleman himself, to marry the Duke of Roxton, who had been almost two decades her senior.

  Kate had also wanted to discover if Antonia knew that it was her cousin Mary with whom Christopher was in love. And from her responses it would seem not. Which meant either the Lady Mary had no idea Christopher was in love with her, or that she was not in love with him. Or, the third possibility was that the couple, though in love, knew their cause to be a hopeless one. An earl’s daughter did not marry down; a squire did not marry up. No one broke that rule. If they did they were socially persecuted and ostracized. That was the last thing Kate wanted for the couple.