by Joan Wolf
“Tracy.” Her voice was urgent. “Think. The Duke would not want you to travel in your condition.”
That was the crux of the matter. In fact, Miss Alden herself did not think a drive up to London would harm Tracy, but the Duke would be very angry if she went. Miss Alden was quite sure that some of that anger would be directed at herself for not stopping his wife from making what he would regard as a foolish and dangerous journey. She could not bear it if he were displeased or disappointed with her.
Miss Alden had been aware for many months of the power of a pair of dark blue eyes, of the fascination of a face that resembled to her mind an engraving on a fine old coin. She wanted, very much, for him to think well of her. “His Grace will not like it,” she repeated desperately.
“Then it’s too bad about him,” retorted his wife, and the door opened behind Miss Alden.
“Really, ma mie,” an easy voice said in soft complaint, “that is hardly respectful of you.”
“Adrian!” cried Tracy with intense relief. “I was going to come up to London to find you.”
“Yes, well, that is hardly necessary, now that I am here,” he replied reasonably.
“Is there going to be a war?” She was rigid, her eyes still glitteringly green.
He looked profoundly surprised. “War? Of course there is not going to be a war. Good heavens, ma mie, you don’t believe the papers, do you?” He walked across the room to take his wife in his arms as Miss Alden backed slowly out the door.
She went downstairs to cancel Tracy’s order for the carriage, only to find that the Duke had already done so. He had left London at the unheard-of hour of six in the morning in order to reach Steyning Castle by ten. He must have known how his wife would react to the newspapers. Miss Alden sighed with relief that the responsibility for Tracy was now off her shoulders.
It had taken all the Duke’s skill to soothe and reassure his wife. It had taken a great deal of patience and forbearance as well. According to Tracy, Arbuthnot and Ambrister were scoundrels who had been stirring up the Indians along the American border. They deserved, in her vigorously voiced opinion, everything they had gotten.
The Duke thought otherwise, and in a frank conversation with Richard Rush, he had gathered that the American government was not happy either, but felt it had no choice but to stand behind its General.
This was not an opinion he could advance to Tracy. She was always slightly defensive about her country, always quick to detect smugness and condescension in the English attitude toward America, and on this issue she would admit no wrong. General Jackson was a hero, and Arbuthnot and Ambrister were scoundrels and skunks. Period.
Her unreasonableness grated on the Duke’s nerves, on his finer sensibility, but he displayed only infinite tact. He got Richard Rush to come down to Steyning Castle. He put in heroically long hours with the Cabinet in order to insure that the situation would not come to war, a possibility that was not as remote as he had implied to Tracy. In fact, months later, Lord Castlereagh would say to Richard Rush that such was the temper of Parliament and such the feeling of the country that he believed war might have been produced by holding up a finger. That the finger was not held up, according to Castlereagh, was largely due to the Duke of Hastings.
It was a trying time for Adrian. On one hand, he had his own countrymen, whose tempers were running very high over the “murders” of Arbuthnot and Ambrister. And on the other hand, he had his wife, who kept telling him the English should see what it was like to try and live along a border where alien malcontents were stirring up Indian atrocities. It was all very wearing and made him realize for perhaps the first time that having an American wife was not all roses.
* * * *
The crisis passed, however, and March arrived. International politics faded from Tracy’s concern and approaching childbirth took their place. She made Dr. Brixton sit down and describe to her the whole process. He had been reluctant at first, afraid to frighten her, but she was adamant. “I can face anything if I know what it is,” she said. “The unknown is far more frightening, I promise you.” So he described the process of birth in detail, and she listened attentively. She thought she was prepared.
Her imaginings, however, did not come close to the actual pain of the reality. The pain was terrible, so terrible that it swallowed her up, consumed her, so that she was not Tracy any more, but just pain. She moaned with it, writhed with it, all the time bearing down, trying to push the child out so that it would be over and the pain would stop.
Her labor began at five in the morning and the doctor arrived at six. As soon as Dr. Brixton arrived, with a woman to assist him, the Duke was banished. Mary had been sent to stay with Lady Bridgewater two weeks earlier because it was not considered suitable for a young girl to be in the house while a birth was in progress. Miss Alden had accompanied Mary and Harry was at school, so he was alone.
For the Duke it was an interminably long day. He breakfasted and then wrote letters in the library all morning. He walked around the garden for a while in the early afternoon, and returned to the house and the library where he sat at his desk with estate work in front of him. He had been staring at the same paper for over an hour when there came a knock on the door and Dr. Brixton appeared. It was the second time the doctor had come to make a report.
“Yes?” the Duke asked sharply.
“It will be a while yet, Your Grace. It’s a breech birth, I’m afraid.”
“Breech birth? What is that?”
“The baby is coming out buttocks first instead of head first, Your Grace.”
“Is that dangerous?”
“Not necessarily,” the doctor said soothingly. “But it takes longer. The Duchess is being extremely cooperative. There is no cause for you to worry.”
Tea was brought into the library at four and the Duke, his face expressionless, poured himself a cup, which he drank slowly, standing by the window. At five o’clock the door opened to reveal Dr. Brixton. “I am happy to tell you that you have a son,” he said with a smile.
The Duke was standing in front of the fire. “And my wife?”
“The Duchess is very tired, Your Grace. It was not an easy birth, I can tell you that now. But there is no reason for her not to make a full recovery.”
For the first time all day there was a flicker of expression in the Duke’s eyes. He crossed the room to the doctor. “May I see her?”
Dr. Brixton nodded. “For a few minutes. She needs to sleep, Your Grace.”
The Duke nodded. “I understand.” He hesitated, as a thought struck him. “And what do you need, my dear man? A glass of wine? A brandy?”
The doctor laughed. “A glass of wine wouldn’t come amiss, Your Grace. It was a long afternoon.”
“Yes,” said the Duke quietly as he pulled the bell. “It was.” When a footman appeared he ordered a bottle of wine for the doctor and two glasses. “I’ll join you shortly,” he said with a faint smile, and Dr. Brixton looked enormously pleased.
He walked with measured tread up the stairs and along the corridor to Tracy’s room. He stood for a minute in the doorway, watching her. She looked so slight in the big bed.
“Adrian.”
Her voice sounded low and thin. He crossed the floor to her side and picked up her hand. She looked gray. Her beautiful tawny hair was dark with sweat.
He was holding her hand so tightly that Tracy felt the bones ache. “It was a long day, ma mie,” he said.
She smiled a little. “Go look at your son.”
He walked over to the cradle and stood for several minutes looking down. He thought of the months Tracy had toiled around, uncomfortable and unaccustomedly awkward. He thought of the long, long labor and the tiredness of her face. And out of it all—miraculously—had come this perfect baby. A son. Another Deincourt to carry on his name and his heritage. Without saying anything, he walked back to the bed.
Tracy felt exhausted and she knew she looked dreadful. Yet Adrian, when he returned to her side, stood looking at he
r as if he were regarding a miracle. After all she had been through, it helped enormously to have him look at her like that. “Isn’t he beautiful?” she murmured. “He came out the wrong way.”
“He is beautiful and so are you. And now you are going to go to sleep.”
She nodded a little and the nurse came into the room behind them. “Thank you, my love,” he said softly and, bending, kissed her on the mouth.
As he reached the bottom of the stairs on his way to rejoin the doctor in the library, he was surprised to see a large number of people assembled in the hall. It seemed as if half the servants in the house must be there the Duke thought. He smiled a little. “Her Grace has had a son,” he said, telling them what he supposed they wanted to hear.
There was little change in the expressions before him. Then Wilton said, “And Her Grace is well, I hope?” The Duke suddenly realized that all these people were worried about his wife. He was surprised and deeply touched.
“Her Grace is well,” he said. “Tired, but well.” And the faces before him split into smiles. He thought, with wonder, as he proceeded toward the library, that he had not been the only one keeping vigil through that day.
Chapter 20
Is love a tender thing? It is too rough,
Too rude, too boist’rous, and it pricks like thorn.
—Shakespeare
It took Tracy a long time to recover from childbirth. Physically, she was exhausted. She had had a difficult delivery and she found nursing the baby painful and draining. But she fought her fatigue, refused to admit it to either her doctor or her husband. She had always been so splendidly healthy that she had had no experience with physical weakness; she tended to regard it as a moral flaw in herself that she should be so constantly tired.
Her mental state was even more seriously depressed than her physical one. She found herself missing her father dreadfully. There was a great pit of loss inside her whenever she realized that he would never see this little grandson, would never play with him on the floor or take him sailing off Beachy Head.
She was homesick. Tears came to her eyes whenever she heard someone call her baby his ‘little lordship’ or ‘Lord Hythe’. It seemed a measure of her foreignness that she should be the only one to call her son Billy. Even Adrian called him by the more formal William.
She hid her grief and her homesickness as well as her fatigue. The outward face she presented to the world did not at all reflect her inner state. But the toll of concealment was severe; dammed up inside, all her feelings—perfectly normal feelings of post-childbirth depression and fatigue, grief for a lost parent and homesickness—created a pressure of terrible tension. Denied any outlet, they festered instead of healed.
One of the results for this inward turmoil was that she began to doubt herself. She became convinced of her own inferiority and inadequacy as a wife. The Duke had returned to his governmental duties and was once more traveling back and forth to London. Tracy felt horribly guilty that she was making him live the kind of life that involved constant travel and a part-time wife. She was an inadequate wife in other ways too. Sexually, she just could not respond to him, and after one or two times he had ceased to approach her. He was being infinitely patient, and that made her feel guilty too.
She was mired in the depths of depression and feelings of inferiority for months. Adrian knew there was something wrong; she saw him looking at her, concern and puzzlement in his eyes, but she could not speak to him of her troubles. His own traditions, she knew, were stoic; if he felt weariness or grief or fear he would deal with it privately and carry on. She could not cry on his shoulder that she missed her father and her country. She could not say that she loved her son but he tired her unendurably. She could not tell him that she felt a failure as a wife. He would be all sympathy and reassurance, she knew, but she was horribly afraid that he would secretly think her a failure.
The image of the Comtesse d’Aubigny rose to haunt her. She could never imagine that elegant woman of the world allowing herself to get into such a miserable emotional knot. She could not imagine the Comtesse ever failing, as she was failing, in the important business of social representation. The Comtesse would always be by her husband’s side, would entertain for him with efficiency and brilliance, would always uphold in the social world the same high standard he himself did in the political world.
As May progressed, and the beautiful English countryside was at its glorious best, Tracy became more and more convinced that she must go up to London with Adrian. He had been given a Cabinet post and was busier than ever now that the Congress of Aix La Chapelle was over and some basic decisions had been made about foreign policy. He was an extremely important personage, and it was time his wife came out of hiding and assumed her appointed, her expected, her imposed, character.
Adrian had never once suggested that he wanted her to go up to London with him. She thought, somewhat hollowly, that he probably thought she was incapable of assuming the duties and responsibilities of her station. He probably thought that all she was good for was to stay at home, pickling and gardening.
She was dreadfully afraid that that was all she was good for. The London world was so tremendously fixed and ordered. It demanded things be done on a grand scale. All the great people of the land, such as Lady Bridgewater, would be watching her with merciless attention, waiting for her to fail. She felt sick at the very thought of having to face that world again, and compete in it.
But as the weeks went by she became more and more convinced that she would have to face it. She owed it to Adrian. If his wife constantly failed to do what by rights he would expect of her, then she could not complain if he looked elsewhere for what she did not give. She thought again, with hatred, of the Comtesse d’Aubigny.
Her mind was made up on a cool spring evening late in the month. The Duke had been in London for almost a week and he seemed, to Tracy, more absent than ever before. Too absent. She could not go on like this, she thought, as she stared into the fire. She was dressed for dinner and waiting for Mary and Miss Alden to join her, and when the door opened behind her she turned, expecting to see them. Instead she saw her husband.
“Adrian.”
She had hoped to see him earlier, but when he had not arrived she had resigned herself to another endless day’s absence. He stood before her for a moment as though revealed, so perfect in his beauty that she felt again the stab of inferiority. How could she ever hope to be worthy of him?
He came across the room and held her close and long. “How are you, ma mie?” he murmured, scanning her face.
“Fine, now that you are here.”
They spoke for perhaps three minutes, then he said, “Am I too late for dinner?”
“Certainly not. Do you want to dine right away, or do you want to change?”
“Change,” he said firmly. “If you don’t mind waiting?”
“Of course not.” She watched him walk through the door, but, even in his absence, the room seemed filled with his presence.
She would go up to London with him, she determined. She would conquer all her private demons and do for him and be to him all that he would wish for in a wife.
Mary came in and said, “I see Adrian has arrived.”
Tracy smiled peacefully. “Yes.” She felt better now that her decision had been made.
The Duke was not completely pleased with her announced intention. “Come to London with me! But you’re still nursing the baby, Tracy.”
“He can come with us. He is sleeping through the night now. There is no reason for me to be as tied down as I have been.”
“It will be too tiring for you,” he protested. “The country is quieter, less demanding. I’m afraid London will wear you out.”
“Nonsense, Adrian,” Tracy retorted rather sharply. She had been touched on a sore point. “I am perfectly fine.” There was doubt in the Duke’s dark blue eyes. “Unless, of course, you don’t want me to come,” she added stiffly.
“Of course I want y
ou, ma mie,” he said quietly.
“Good. Then that’s settled.” She turned to address a remark to Miss Alden.
They sat together in intimate silence after dinner and listened to Mary play the piano. The beautiful music, beautifully played, lifted Tracy out of herself. For the first time in too long she felt high above the pits of despair and inadequacy in which she had been mired. All her stumbling blocks were below her. For the first time in months she felt she would be able to do what she desired.
When Adrian took her hands in his as they stood together over their sleeping baby, she felt herself melting as she had not done since before Billy’s birth. He put an arm about her and, held close to his side, she slowly walked with him into her bedroom.
* * * *
Adrian was deeply worried about Tracy. Over the months he had watched her closely, thinking, waiting, fearing. At first he had told himself that her strained look and unaccustomed silences were caused by fatigue. But as time went by, and he caught her several times with tearstains on her face, he began to fear it was something more serious. He began to fear she was regretting her marriage.
For the Duke, his wife had come to be, quite simply, the most important thing in his life. He had loved many other women, but his interest had always waned with his possession. With his wife, the reverse was true. The more she surrendered to him, the more her power over him increased. It had become the focal point of his life: to know she was there, was his, was his wife. It shook him to the very core of his being, the fear that she was withdrawing from him, the fear that he was losing her.
He had only one way of expressing himself to a woman, but Tracy did not want him to make love to her. With a restraint he had not known he possessed, he contained himself and did not ask her for what she could not freely give. And, throughout all the long days and nights of the long months, he remained faithful to her.
It was not because he was not tempted. London was filled with beautiful, willing women, and the months of abstinence were very long. He was tempted. But he had always believed in his luck; and he had always felt he deserved his luck. He stayed faithful to Tracy mainly due to this obscure superstition. If he betrayed her—his dearest love, his golden girl—he was putting all of his happiness into jeopardy.
