Sins of an Intoxicating Duchess: A Steamy Historical Regency Romance Novel

by Violet Hamers

  Lavinia was dreaming of her walk now, of the bracing autumnal air filling her lungs, the crunch of grass underfoot, as she dotted a full stop at the end of her sentence. She was just about to lay her quill down when her father threw open the door to the study.

  “Tell me the most effective cure for animal poison of any kind!” he shouted as he strode into the room.

  Robert Bell was a tall, lean man of five-and-fifty with a thick grey hair, spectacles, and a carefully tended-to mustache that Lavinia suspected he loved a little more than he loved her. This did not bother her. She would much rather he dote on his facial hair than on her person. Fathers who doted on their daughters also tended to treat them like china dolls, whereas Robert Bell treated his daughter like any other physician in his field.

  Though Lavinia was female, and therefore unable to become a professional physician, she had been brought up in her father’s image. As physician to the Duke of Kingwood and his household, her father was constantly attending to the aristocracy, but he also operated a practice out of their home, offering services to the poorest of London neighborhoods at no cost.

  Lavinia and he traded off going to visit these neighborhoods. Lavinia had, in the past seven months, delivered six babies, treated three cases of influenza, two of consumption, and had created her own emollient for a particularly vicious case of chicken pox. Though not formally trained, textbooks and frequent lessons by her father meant she had nearly the same level of medical knowledge as he, and therefore was eminently able to act in his stead.

  Of course, in order to ensure that she maintained this level of professionalism, her father made her read all the textbooks he could get his hands on, and then tested her on them. It was tedious and, often, extremely jarring, considering the tests often started as they did now, with a door thrown open and a shout emitted across the room, but Lavinia was used to this. Her father was a strange man, and she had long ago grown used to his eccentricities.

  “The most effective way to cure animal poison,” she said, setting down her quill and removing her glasses. “Is to cut away the infected site. All other forms of care are palliative, but cannot be guaranteed to completely remove risk of infection.”

  “Excellent. And what is the efficacy of sea bathing on animal poison?” he continued, taking the seat across from Lavinia’s desk and reaching for the cup of tea that Margaret had placed on the desk not ten minutes ago. Mr. Bell liked his tea cold, and therefore Margaret was constantly placing steaming hot cups of tea around the house in areas he might eventually go to, so that the physician would have his cold tea waiting for him.

  “There is little evidence that sea bathing has any positive effects on poisonous wounds inflicted by animals,” Lavinia replied, watching as her father gulped down his tea in three swallows. Droplets of it remained on his mustache when he put the cup down, but before she could remark on this, her father was already reaching up and smoothing his mustache down with his hand, removing the droplets from the grey and black hair that festooned his upper lip.

  Lavinia had always found it odd how different she and her father looked. While he had black hair, dark brown eyes, and skin that immediately darkened when it came into contact with the sun, she was fair, with white-blonde hair, honey brown eyes, and freckles everywhere.

  Lavinia assumed she must have gotten her fairness from her mother, who had deep auburn hair, green eyes, and similarly pale and freckled skin. However, her knowledge of hereditary traits, learned from the medieval Spanish physician Judah Halevi, made her think that perhaps the situation was more complicated.

  Since reading Halevi’s The Kuzari after being gifted it on her sixteenth birthday, Lavinia had wondered whether her father, the man who had raised her, clothed her, and taught her everything he knew, might not be the man whose relationship with her mother had resulted in her birth.

  Lavinia had even wondered whether his gifting her The Kuzari was in fact meant to lead her to this conclusion, thereby avoiding what would have been an extremely awkward conversation about her origins.

  However, in truth, it didn’t matter. Lavinia was her father’s, if not by blood, then certainly by brain. Their way of thinking was so similar that sometimes they both voiced the same thought at the same time. It was a frightening phenomenon that had agitated Margaret more than once, who often suggested after its occurrence that, “Perhaps you two spend too much time together.”

  Lavinia could not dispute this, of course. Other than Margaret, she had no friends. She spent all her time either with her father, or with patients. It was a solitary life, hers, and she did not mind it, not one bit. Yet another way she was like her father. After her mother died giving birth to her, Robert Bell had thrown himself into his work, ceasing to attend any social engagements excepting lectures at the Royal College of Physicians or other academic lectures that pertained to his fields of interest.

  They were two peas in a pod, and while Lavinia knew that hers was not the usual life of a woman of reasonable means in England in the year of 1812, she could not help feeling extremely lucky because her father did not treat her like a woman. He treated her like a person. Like someone with opinions, and thoughts, and intelligence.

  She just wished such treatment didn’t include quite so many spur-of-the-moment quizzes.

  Her father cleared his throat now, signalling that a relaying of the afternoon’s schedule was imminent. Sitting up straight and preparing herself to listen closely, for her father never repeated things twice, Lavinia folded her hands and waited.

  “I have to go visit Mrs. Thompson and her new baby in East London, and then the Murrays need my assistance in Jacob’s Island. Mr. Murray’s wife has still not recovered from her cough. I will therefore need you to attend to Miss Garcia and Mr. Hammadi in Bethnal Green. Both are suffering from consumption, by the sounds of it.”

  Lavinia was already calculating the best route to Bethnal Green when a thought came to her.

  “And what of the Duke of Kingwood? You have not been to his house as of late,” Lavinia said.

  Officially, her father was the duke’s physician, though the duke rarely called upon Mr. Bell. He was a stubborn gentleman and hated medical attention, though Lavinia had heard through gossip from Margaret, whose sister worked in the duke’s household, that the duke had been seen by no less than ten physicians in the last month and a half.

  Lavinia couldn’t help feeling angry at the gentleman for calling on what sounded like charlatans and barbers masquerading as physicians, when her father was clearly the best man for the job. Her father had been the duke’s physician for the entirety of his professional life. Who was this duke to refuse her father’s skills?

  “He is still refusing to see me. If you recall, when I visited four weeks ago, the gunshot wound was recovering well, but I have heard since then that he cannot move either leg. I do not understand why the unaffected leg is immobile, but if the muscles are not exercised properly, they will atrophy, and then, of course, that is an altogether more serious medical matter,” her father said, looking down and brushing a bit of lint off his trousers.

  “I have heard that he has been seen by other physicians, none of whom have been able to properly diagnose the complaint. I should like to see him again and conduct a deeper investigation of the ailments, but he, like so many of his ilk, is stubborn. No doubt he is feeling sorry for himself, and does not realize he is doing himself more damage as a result.”

  Her father nodded his head as he finished speaking, a sign that he was finished with this discussion, and that now they should both begin preparing for the day’s work.

  But though Lavinia was much occupied for the rest of the afternoon—Linda Garcia was not consumptive, but rather she had pneumonia, and a frightening case of it too—she could not stop her mind from drifting back to the duke. Why was his other leg immobile if there was no wound? And why was he allowing these other physicians into his home, but not her father, who was clearly the best man for the job?

  Lav
inia’s only conclusion, which she came to as she trudged home on horseback at ten o’clock that night, was that Τhe Duke of Kingwood was as obstinate and unintelligent as an ass.

  “Get out! Do not make me repeat myself!” Peter yelled at the maid who had entered his room.

  She had been sent up by Stevens with a tray of biscuits and tea. They were Peter’s favorite kind of biscuits—shortbread with a thumbprint of jam in the middle.

  Stevens had stopped trying to ply Peter with food over a week ago, and instead was resorted to sending the most innocent-looking, fresh-faced maids in the house to him, assuming, incorrectly, that Peter would not have the heart to send such women away.

  However, Stevens had underestimated him. After an afternoon with yet another of Magdalene’s physician, the one recommended by Hatty Featherington’s brother’s wife or some such nonsense, Peter was in the foulest of moods. Though it was yet another annoyingly sunny day outside—odd for autumn in England—in Peter’s head, the storm of a century was brewing, the clouds growing darker and more menacing with every passing minute.

  The physician in question, a small, white-haired man from Switzerland, had taken one look at Peter’s legs and declared his ailments to be entirely self-inflicted.

  “You are insecure in your relationship, I sink,” the man said, his Swiss-German accent extremely pronounced. “You hurt your leg up because you need love,” he said, pronouncing love with an f, rather than a v. Peter was tempted to respond to the man with the meanest of all the German curses his governess, a wicked woman from Vienna, had taught him, but he refrained, wanting to hear the rest of the man’s proclamations.

  He was not disappointed. Over the next twenty minutes, the physician spun a rather detailed story that involved Peter’s mother’s death, and the hole in his heart that resulted from it. Peter had proposed to Lady Magdalene to help fill this hole, but he was not satisfied with her love, and so when he went to war, he thought it the perfect opportunity to play on her sympathies.

  “You shoot yourself in ze calf muscle, und go home to your love, expecting her to dote on you. But even zis does not make you happy. You are unhappy at your core. Nothing any physician can do will cure you. I am afraid only you can do that for yourself,” he said, adding a reverent “Your Grace” when he looked up and noticed Peter’s glare.

  The man had retreated from the room not long after, having been prompted to exit by Peter’s shouting, which he littered with those German expletives he had been sitting on.

  The maid was sent in not long after, no doubt in an attempt to assuage his anger with sweets. Instead, the poor woman was a victim of his continued shouting, growing so scared she eventually dropped the tray and ran out of the room, sobbing.

  Peter had thought that yelling would make him feel better, would release some of the tension and anger that had been building inside him while the small physician had insulted his person, but it didn’t help. If anything, it made him feel worse.

  Not only am I lame, but I am a monster.

  He spent the rest of the afternoon staring at the wet spot on the carpet where the tea had spilled, wishing he could melt into liquid and settle himself between the fibers of the Persian rug. Maybe in liquid form, he wouldn’t be quite so miserable.

  Chapter Three

  “I have to go help Mrs. Kuan in Limehouse. The midwife is already there, but she sent word that the labor is a difficult one. They will need by assistance, possibly for the rest of the night,” Lavinia’s father told her as he packed his bag.

  It had been three weeks since the afternoon of animal poison quiz and the trip to Bethnal Green, and Lavinia had spent much of that time taking diligent notes on George Cheyne’s The English Malady. She still saw to her patients and assisted her father when necessary, but every spare moment was spent with Cheyne and his interesting theories on the prevalence of melancholy and low spirits in the upper classes.

  The Duke of Kingwood and his affliction had of course sparked her interest, spurring her to pick up Cheyne’s tome, which had been sitting on a shelf in the library she and her father shared for years.

  Though Lavinia did not agree entirely with Cheyne on his theory, there was something to the idea that the upper classes were more subject to nervous distempers because of their lifestyles. What she disagreed with was that gentlemen of the ton were more able to talk about these complaints, because masculine emotionality was acceptable. From what Lavinia knew of the ton, the exact opposite was true. It was easier to convince a duke to a twice-daily regiment of leeching then to get him to share his feelings on personal matters.

  However, Lavinia was certain that the latter was exactly what was needed for the Duke of Kingwood to heal from his wounds. For these wounds were largely emotional, not physical. As her father pointed out, the duke’s gunshot wound had healed well, and his other leg was unaffected by injury. That he was immobile was not result of his wounds, but rather a symptom of them. There was something in his mind that was keeping him from moving, from taking steps. And she was determined to find out exactly what that was.

  She had thus far kept her theories to herself, knowing better than to share them with her father until they were fully formed. Her father was not a man who appreciated conjecture. He appreciated facts and evidence, and therefore Lavinia would need to see the patient and talk to him before she could involve her father in the investigation and hopeful cure of the Duke of Kingwood.

  The opportunity to see the duke came rather a lot sooner than she was expecting, however, for as her father snapped his bag shut and buttoned his coat, he turned to her and said, “As I will be away for the evening, I need you to attend to the duke. His butler has just sent word that he is with fever. As you know, normally I would go to him myself, but out of the two of us, I am the more experienced at difficult births. I am better suited to attending to Mrs. Huan, and you to the duke. Make sure you take a look at his legs, if his thrashing is not too great,” her father added as an aside, and with that, he quit the room.

  Lavinia packed her own bag quickly, and was on her foot, heading toward the duke’s residence, in a matter of minutes. He lived only a short walk down the street on the corner, but Lavinia braced herself for a difficult trip. Margaret had informed her at that the residence directly next to the duke’s, where a Lord Horatio Hodge lived, a ball was being held, and that the street would therefore be clogged with carriages, making travel of any sort, even on foot, difficult.

  When she rounded the corner onto Albemarle Street, she found that it was indeed packed full of carriages and curricles. She had to dodge around quite a few drivers leaning against their vehicles, smoking cheroots and staring at her with open interest.

  Lavinia knew she was strange looking with her brown hat pulled low over her eyes, large leather bag, and unfashionable dress. She was most certainly not the picture of a genteel lady, and hardly bore any resemblance to the well-dressed ladies alighting from carriages only feet away from her.

  Her frock was a grey cotton wool that did not easily absorb stains, which were, after all, a hazard of her trade. She was aware it was possibly the least-flattering garment that a woman of her complexion could wear, but flattery was not a major factor of importance in her line of work.

  Still, she knew that the gown made her look pale and sullen, dulling the vibrancy of her hair and eyes, but this was only to her benefit. It made it that much less likely that men on the street would get it in their minds to talk to her. Even in the very worst slums of East London, she was generally able to avoid the attentions of the men who staggered about the streets there, half-crazed with drink and even more potent forms of intoxication.

  This time was no different. Though the drivers and footmen gazed at her, they did not actually speak to her. No words, insulting or otherwise, prevented her from taking the path down the side of the Kingwood residence toward the servants’ entrance her father had told her was at the very back of the house.

  Though her father was well-known enough in t
he Cadden family to enter through the front of the house, he had always preferred the back entrance. This was for the simple reason that it allowed him to interact with the house staff, who often told a much more factual account of the duke’s ailment than the man himself.

  “Always ask the footmen and the younger maids for information. Footmen are notorious gossips, and young maids will be inexperienced and not yet schooled in keeping private information to themselves,” her father had told her years ago after a visit to the duke’s residence. Lavinia had filed the information away in her mind, knowing that some day it would be useful. Today was such a day, and so after being let in through the door, she immediately approached the maid who had opened it.

  She was a young girl, no older than fourteen, with pretty, wide blue eyes and hair the exact color of wheat. Lavinia found her extremely easy to extract information from.

  The girl told her that the duke had taken nothing more than bread and broth for weeks. He had shrunken greatly, no longer the broad, brawny, muscular gentleman he once was. The day before, he had spent the afternoon in the sun with his betrothed, something they did together frequently, but he had complained of a headache. An hour later, he was laid up in bed with chills, and during the ensuing hours, the chills had transformed into a fever that had him thrashing about in bed.

  “He’s shoutin’ as well,” the girl said in a strong East London accent. “Goin’ on about some battle. Called the butler Brock, he did, an’ asked the footmen to ‘and him a match for lightin’ a cannon. It’s like he’s escaped from Bedlam, miss.”