A Duke Deceived

by Cheryl Bolen

  Radcliff cocked an eyebrow and glanced at his wife. She shrugged. “I fear Twigs has a notion he’d look good in a red coat.”

  “Fancy that the duchess is right,” Twigs said, panting.

  “You are most determined to deprive us—permanently—of your company,” Radcliff said, one of his arms circling his friend.

  “Like a cat, I am. Got a few more lives to use up yet.”

  They reached the door and turned to go back to the bed. Beads of perspiration bubbled on Twigs’s forehead.

  Bonny wanted to take his mind off his suffering. “Tell me, Twigs, what is your favorite thing to eat? I must have Cook make it up for you.”

  He took a breath, then spoke. “Most anything suits me. Put it in front of me, and I’ll eat it.”

  Her eyes scanned his thin body. “But surely there’s something you’ve been craving.”

  “To tell the truth, been fancying plum cake.”

  “You shall have it tonight,” Bonny said as the three of them reached the bed.

  After Bonny dressed for dinner in one of her new gowns, she gently rubbed perfume behind her ears. She kept expecting her husband to come into her room as he often did while she dressed, kissing a trail along her shoulders as he clasped on her necklace. But this night he did not make an appearance. Was he really angry because she had kissed Twigs? Surely her handsome husband could never be jealous of his bumbling friend, but that was the only explanation she could think of that would explain Richard’s aloofness that afternoon.

  She met her husband in Twigs’s room, where they had decided to take dinner, and was disappointed Richard still had not noticed her new gowns. Refusing to accept his inattention, Bonny twirled in front of him. Though black, the elegant gown swooped down in front to the lowest-cut neckline Bonny had ever worn. She knew her full breasts, like her creamy skin, were an asset, and tonight, especially, she wanted to look beautiful for Richard. A train of black illusion fell from the back of the gown. A pair of black satin slippers barely showed below the front hem. Bonny felt confident she looked good. Marie had used curl papers to achieve the Grecian goddess effect with her hair.

  “Does your grace, by chance, notice anything different?” Bonny smiled into her husband’s stern face.

  His pensive eyes studied her almost gravely. “I must say, Madame Deveraux has never had so lovely a lady on which to display her artistry.”

  Her hands cocked on her hips, Bonny gave her husband an insolent gaze. “And how, may I ask, are you such an authority on women whom Madame has clothed? I believe I may get very jealous.”

  The corners of his mouth turned up ever so slightly. “I’m sure I have no firsthand knowledge of the women, Barbara.”

  If only he had called her “my dear” or “my love,” as he often did. Those words, though he had said them without passion, were so much more intimate than the formal-sounding Barbara.

  Bonny sat in a Louis XV chair and scooted it up to the table beside Twigs’s bed. “I do wish you wouldn’t act so grim, Richard.” She inhaled the hardy beef au jus. The table was set with all manner of dishes, and two footmen served. “After all, you should be in good humor, since you beat Twigs and me so soundly at loo this afternoon.”

  Sitting opposite her, Radcliff did not lift his eyes from his plate. “You went to Madame Deveraux’s today?”

  “Yes.”

  One of the footmen uncovered the salvers and the other served from the steaming dishes. What a waste to have so magnificent a round of beef for just the three of them, Bonny thought, but she took consolation knowing the servants would feast, as well as the inhabitants of Carlton House.

  “You left rather early,” Radcliff continued. “Did you go elsewhere?”

  “To Cavendish Square. Emily accompanied me to Madame Deveraux’s.”

  Radcliff spread a napkin on his lap. “You went nowhere else?”

  Her heart raced. Had one of the footmen or the coachman told him about her using the messenger boy? Had any of them followed her to the house on Kepple Street? She hated to lie, but she had given Emily her word she would never tell anyone about the baby. She swallowed. “No.”

  She felt Richard’s eyes on her and avoided them, turning to Twigs. “You may be sure, Twigs, Cook has prepared plum cake for dessert.”

  “Much obliged, your grace.”

  “Now that the duchess has kissed you, you may call her Barbara, or Bonny Barbara—as she’s always urged you to do. You’re practically one of the family. You don’t call me “your grace,” man.”

  Bonny watched her husband’s face as the candlelight flickered in his bright eyes. He didn’t really seem jealous. “Yes, Twigs, you must talk to me like I’m your sister.”

  “Quite stout, my sister, not at all like you.”

  “How a man can be so skilled at gaming and horseflesh and so lacking in all other sensibilities,” the duke said to Twigs, “is beyond me, my dear friend.”

  “You know, Twigs,” Bonny said, “I used to think you and Richard an unlikely pair to be such great friends—for I am sure you know how dissimilar you are—but Richard tells me you are extremely amusing and given to setting the bloods into hysterics with your entertaining ways. I long to see that side of you.”

  Twigs sniffed. “Not fit for a lady’s ears or eyes, I regret to say.”

  Radcliff scooped peas into his spoon and gave his wife a playful glance. “He’s right, my dear.”

  At least he had called her “my dear,” she mused.

  Her hopes for additional intimacy from her husband went unreahzed, though. At bedtime, she climbed into her featherbed and listened to her husband’s indistinguishable words to Evans in the ducal chamber. When the conversation ceased, she propped herself on a mound of lace-edged pillows and waited for Radcliff, reading until her candle melted down. Her eyes stung and she told herself that it was from the new wood burning in her hearth, not from her husband’s absence.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Marie curled one of her mistress’s black ringlets around her finger. “I’ve come to a good station ‘ere, except for Mr. Nose-in-the-Air. You’d think ’e was the duke ‘imself. Too good to eat with us other servants, ’e is. I’d say the man ’ated women.”

  “Men have a hard time accepting change,” Bonny said to her abigail’s reflection in the looking glass. “It’s just been Mr. Evans and the duke for many years. Evans may resent that women have entered into their all-male domain, but he’ll come around.”

  “Ye are much too kind, yer grace.” Marie stood back, head to the side, studying Bonny’s hair. “The hair, even if I says so meself, looks quite good, but I can’t do nothing for them dark circles under yer eyes. ‘Is grace won’t like ’em.”

  Then his grace shouldn’t neglect his wife, Bonny thought. She had lain in her bed hours last night, hoping her husband would join her, speculating on possible sources for his anger. Was he upset because she kissed Twigs? Had she behaved totally unlike a duchess? Was he sorry he had impulsively married her? Had he renewed old liaisons with other women? At the last thought, her stomach plummeted.

  While Bonny renewed her troubling thoughts, Mrs. Henson brought coffee and the morning’s post. Bonny thumbed through a stack of communications from various tradesmen. Half the tradesmen in London courted the patronage of the new Duchess of Radcliff. Near the bottom of the stack, she found a letter penned to her in a feminine hand on scented stationery.

  Bonny eagerly tore it open and read the letter written in elegant, flourishing penmanship from the hand of Cressida Carlisle. She informed Bonny she was staying in London with her eldest sister, Mrs. Athena Miller, and would be calling on the duke and duchess. Athena? Cressida? The Carlisles must have been enamored of Greek mythology, Bonny thought with surprise. None of the Carlisles had struck her as particularly literary, save for the novels Cressida read about waifs marrying counts and living happily ever after. Of course, the waifs turned out to be noble-born and switched at birth.

  That very afternoon, C
ressida and her sister paid a call. The duke was not at home, but Bonny presided over tea and cakes in the green salon. She was genuinely glad to see Cressida.

  Like the first time Bonny had met her, Cressida wore pink, a color that very much suited her delicate beauty. Squire Carlisle spared no expense in dressing his only offspring remaining at home.

  Mrs. Athena Miller, unlike her much younger sister, presented a matronly appearance in her cap and somber brown gown of good quality. Frizzled locks of gray curls poked from the cap, and the woman’s figure resembled a bulging sack of flour. She did resemble Cressida when she related her animated accounts of the ton, many of whom she did not know personally.

  “I used to see your husband at many functions,” Mrs. Miller said, stuffing a piece of cake into her mouth. “He was always in the company of beautiful women, but now I see he waited to marry the most beautiful of all.”

  Bonny hated to acknowledge the woman’s compliment. She hated to be reminded that Richard may have married her for no other reason than that she was a beauty. A trophy for his collection, she thought bitterly. She inhaled the herbal aroma of the specially blended Radcliff tea and mumbled her thanks.

  “I suppose since you’re in mourning, you haven’t made the acquaintance of the duke’s crowd,” Mrs. Miller said.

  “The only one I’ve met,” Bonny admitted, “is Tw—James Twickingham, who recuperates here from a serious injury.”

  Mrs. Miller threw her head back and laughed. “Twigs Twickingham is said to be one of the most entertaining men in London. Quite a character, I’m told. Of course, I’ve never met him, nor the others in the duke’s set. Most of them are still unwed, except for William Clyde. Pretty little wife he’s got. She’s confined, awaiting their third child. Not that that’s settled him down any, I hear. The second child was his heir, and the boy being born, Mr. Clyde, who’s enormously wealthy, is free to resume his alliances with light skirts.”

  “Surely he wouldn’t do anything of the kind while his wife is confined having his babe,” Bonny protested.

  The matronly Athena waved her pudgy, bejeweled hands in the air. “My dear, you have a lot to learn about the ways of the ton. Their marriages aren’t like my parents’ or yours. Those in the ton marry to beget an heir, and their lives are chiefly a pursuit of pleasure.”

  Bonny watched as Mrs. Miller’s eyes lifted to the soaring, gilded ceiling, taking in the opulent surroundings.

  Cressida, who had been silent heretofore, leaned forward and whispered, “Pleasures of the flesh, if you know what I mean.”

  That a maiden like Cressida Carlisle knew of pleasures of the flesh surprised Bonny considerably. What was in those Minerva Press novels? “Yes,” Bonny lamented, “I’ve heard that men can be very immoral.”

  Mrs. Miller set down her teacup. “Not just men, your grace. Many married women are unfaithful wives, though I fail to understand how a well-brought-up lady could welcome such intimacy with a man she’s not wed to. I vow I’d be most happy myself to never have any man climb in my bed.” She lifted her eyes heavenward, and Bonny felt herself most uncharitable for thinking no man would wish to climb into Athena Miller’s bed.

  Cressida leaned forward again and whispered, “They say Lady Jersey herself had an affair with the Regent.”

  Bonny put down the cake she had not touched. She had lost her appetite, sickened by the people who comprised her husband’s crowd. Sickened by those who broke sacred vows. But most of all she was sickened that her husband could be of like mind with the others. Did marriage mean nothing to him? Did he hunger after other women? Is that why he did not sleep with her?

  “It’s very glad I am that my only daughter is wed and living quietly in Hampshire,” Mrs. Miller said.

  Bonny nodded. “After what you’ve told me, I strongly wish to return to Hedley Hall.”

  “Pooh!” Cressida said. “Richard’s not like those others, I’ll vow. I’ve known him all my life, and I’d say he’ll make a wonderful husband—and father.”

  Going into the marriage, Bonny believed Richard to be sensitive to the ties of family. She and Radcliff had been drawn together by their loneliness. Their shared loss of loved ones was one of the foundations upon which they were building their lives together. And he had shared with her his desire to have a child. If only she could make Richard a father, Bonny thought, her heart heavy. God help her if she were barren.

  She watched her guests, who by now had finished their tea. “I’ve had a sudden idea. With Mr. Twickingham, there would be four of us—enough for a rubber of whist. I would be ever so obliged if I could persuade you to play one game. The poor man is quite bored to death in his sickbed.”

  Mrs. Miller’s face brightened. “A most agreeable idea, to be sure.” She hoisted her round body off the satin settee.

  “But, Athena,” Cressida protested to her sister’s back, “I am very poor at whist. I’m always getting admonished for not following suit.”

  The woman patted her sister, threw a glance across the broad hallway toward Twigs’s room, and whispered, “You’ll do fine, Cressy. Men don’t want women to be too clever.”

  Twigs’s pallid face brightened when the ladies entered his room. One would never know he was mending, since he was fully dressed in the latest fashion, including the rather loose-fitting pantaloons.

  After she made the introductions, Bonny proposed that Cressida be partners with the skillful Twigs, and she would take Mrs. Miller for her partner.

  If Mrs. Miller had expected to be entertained by Twigs, she must be sadly disappointed, Bonny thought, noting the young man’s stiff demeanor and formal address. He scarcely said two words to the three women seated around his bed.

  True to her word, Cressida was an extremely poor player. Her sister, while not outstanding, made up for skill with a fierce competitiveness. She was quick to notice that Cressida did not play her trump. “I declare, Cressy, if I didn’t know you better, I’d say you were cheating. Just put that three of diamonds back in your hand and throw out your jack of clubs.”

  Cressida gave her sister an incredulous stare. “You must be positively clairvoyant. It quite reminds me of Rosemary in The Lost Bridegroom of Ravensport.”

  “More likely she drew out everybody else’s clubs when she led with the ace,” Twigs said.

  Cressida turned her delicate face to Twigs and fluttered her eyelashes. “If only I had your skill, Mr. Twickingham. Do you think if I played often with you, it would rub off on me? I do so want to be good at whist.”

  “Daresay you’d be good as gold in no—no time,” Twigs said, stammering. “Not that you play badly now, Miss Carlisle. Don’t see why women need to be skillful at whist.”

  “My sister wants only to be well rounded, Mr. Twickingham,” Mrs. Miller said sweetly. “She’s quite accomplished on the piano, and you should see her watercolors.”

  “Regret to say I wouldn’t know good from bad,” Twigs mumbled.

  Cressida sent a pert smile toward Twigs. “I don’t for a minute believe that, Mr. Twickingham. I am sure you’re a fine judge of talent.”

  “Well, when it comes to pugilism or riding...”

  “I imagine you’re a whip of the first order,” Cressida said, tossing out a card and smiling sweetly into Twigs’s s face.

  Bonny was only too happy to get the hand going again, but the remainder of the game continued with Cressida praising Twigs’s playing, admiring his pearl-encrusted snuffbox, complimenting him on the fabric of his coat and the tie of his cravat, all of which left Twigs quieter than normal. Bonny remembered Twigs telling the duke he didn’t know how to act around females, and now she realized it was time he learned.

  Simple little Cressida Carlisle had completely flustered this buffoon who so entertained the bloods of the ton.

  That night Bonny was to meet the young bucks when they came to call on Twigs. She even met William Clyde. She had not known they would be coming because she had neither seen nor spoken to her husband all day. She had take
n dinner with Twigs at his bedside. Just the two of them. She had been silent, only picking at the veal cutlet and French beans. Her husband’s absence made her morose.

  Twigs tried heartily to cheer her. “Mark my words, Richard’s just been delayed at White’s.”

  “Were he that close, I’m sure he would have sent a note round to tell us not to wait dinner,” Bonny said, her potatoes sticking in her throat.

  “Believe you’re worried about the man.”

  She worried far more that her husband was with another woman.

  “Why don’t you send a man round to see if his phaeton’s at White’s?”

  “I could never do that. It would appear I was spying on him, that I didn’t trust him.”

  After dinner, she did not feel like playing games with Twigs and retired to her room, where she paced its cream-colored carpet. She was still wearing the gown she had on for dinner, its train skimming over the gold fleurde-lis pattern of the carpet. Her activity and the blazing fire in her hearth spread a heated flush over her body.

  Her worry mounted. Had her husband already grown tired of her? Had he found a woman of greater beauty?

  While in the midst of her gloomy thoughts, she heard noises from the first floor. She ran to inspect her face in the mirror and was displeased with her hot cheeks. A little powder should cover them, she decided. Before she went downstairs she dabbed perfume behind her ears and inside her wrists.

  As one servant came out of Twigs’s room bearing a tray with two empty bottles of Madeira, another walked into the room carrying a tray with three unopened bottles.

  Bonny followed the fellow into the room in time to see her husband lift his glass in a toast. “To Twigs’s total recovery.”

  Twigs, his face alight, lifted his glass in agreement, while three other fashionably dressed young men also toasted the return of Twigs’s good health.

  Radcliff briefly met his wife’s gaze before he brought the glass to his lips and drank the whole at once.

  Something about his eyes disturbed her. A certain glassiness. And his speech, too. His pronunciation was not as crisp or as thoughtful as normal.