The Desirable Duchess

by M C Beaton

  The rose garden was walled and screened from the lawns at the front of the house, where the villagers and tenants were celebrating.

  She ran down the mossy steps, feeling herself enclosed by the warmth of the sun and the scent of the tumbling cascades of red and white roses.

  And there, by a sundial in the center of the garden, stood Gerald. He was dressed in a suit of black velvet. His face was tanned. He looked older, grimmer.

  “Gerald,” whispered Alice.

  He caught her in his arms and held her close. “Why did you leave me?” pleaded Alice.

  “Your parents forced me,” he said huskily. “They called on me that day I got your last letter. They said they would never allow me to marry you. They said I had to write a letter to you breaking off our relationship. Your mother cried. I thought I was doing the right thing. But when I heard you were getting married, I thought my heart would break.”

  “Oh, Gerald,” said Alice, her voice breaking on a sob, “let us run away together. The duke will have the marriage annulled and then we can be happy.”

  He pressed her face against his chest so that she should not see the sudden calculation in his eyes. Mr. Lacey had paid him a vast sum to take himself off, but he had run through it, traveling and gambling and wenching to his heart’s content. If he took Alice away, they would surely pay to have her back.

  Children, bored with the festivities, had been feeding Oracle grapes soaked in brandy. In front and below the bird sat the Duke of Ferrant, who was watching the entrance to the long dining room, wondering whether he should send someone to find out what had happened to his bride.

  “Howd’ye do?” squawked the mynah suddenly.

  “It speaks! It speaks!” cried the children.

  The guests fell silent, all looking at the bird and waiting for it to say something again. Oracle let out a raucous cry.

  “Perhaps that’s all it can say,” said the duke, getting to his feet.

  “Make it say something else,” pleaded one of Lucy Farringdon’s little sisters.

  The duke smiled. “Speak, Oracle. I command you.”

  The bird put its head to one side. “Gerald,” it rasped. “Squawk. Say good-bye to Gerald. Good-bye to Gerald. Squawk. Never love any man more. Gerald,” and the bird finished its repertoire with a deafening whistle.

  The duke noticed that Mrs. Lacey had turned a muddy color, that Lucy was looking frightened, and that after a shocked silence the guests had all begun to talk again in loud voices.

  He went quickly from the room. Two footmen were on duty in the hall.

  “My wife?” he demanded.

  “Her Grace went through that way,” said one of the footmen and pointed down through the chain of saloons. The duke walked quickly along. All the doors were open. He came to the little morning room and noticed the French windows standing open. He stepped out onto the terrace.

  His wife, his new bride, was being held in the arms of a man… and the man was bending his head, about to kiss her.

  The duke strode down to the garden and seized Gerald by the collar, then punched him with all his force on the chin; Gerald dropped like a stone and lay among the roses.

  “You’ve killed him!” screamed Alice.

  “Not yet, but I will,” he said, ice-cold with anger. “Who is your lover?”

  The enormity of what she had done to him, to this husband of hers, flooded over Alice.

  “We were friends,” she said. “We were to be married, but my parents forced him to go away, to write me a letter that it was all over. He came to say good-bye,” she lied, for she now felt if she told the truth—that she had been on the point of running away with Gerald—he would kill him.

  “And you have been pining for him, and sighing for him, and driveling over him this age. Yes, your damn bird decided to talk in front of the wedding guests. You had only to tell me… to give some sign… We will talk of this later. You will come back to the wedding breakfast—and you will smile and smile and say not a word of this. Do you understand? We will talk of this when we are in private.”

  “But Sir Gerald…”

  “He will recover and take himself off. Come, you wanton baggage.”

  He took her arm and marched her back indoors. Before they reached the hall, he released her. “Now find somewhere in your selfish heart a thought for everyone at this wedding and play the part of a happy bride—or I will shame you in front of your friends and parents.”

  Numbly Alice entered at his side. “I thought she had escaped me,” cried the duke. He seized Alice in his arms and kissed her warmly on the mouth to cheers from the guests. He led her back to her seat. He flicked a glance at the mynah. “Remove the bird,” he ordered a footman. “It has become too noisy.”

  The rest of the meal was a nightmare for Alice. Speech followed speech, toast followed toast.

  Edward Vere sat studying the duke’s face with worried eyes. He had asked Lucy about this Gerald the bird had been talking about, and Lucy had told him about Sir Gerald Warby. Edward had been shocked and had said roundly that the morals of young girls these days was disgraceful. Lucy, near to tears, now sat silently next to him.

  At last the duke led his bride out. More rose petals, more cheers. The carriage moved off, children running alongside, a glimpse of Mrs. Lacey’s face, white and tense. The couple smiled and waved all the way to Clarendon. The shadow of the great pile seemed to swallow them up. All the duke’s servants were still at the festivities.

  He led her into the library. “Sit down,” he said. “We have been married in the sight of God and must make the best of this farce. Are you still a virgin?”

  “Your Grace!”

  “Enough of your missish airs. I repeat: Are you a virgin?”

  “Of course,” said Alice, white to the lips. He stared at her coldly. “I believe you. You may remain so until you are twenty-one, by which time I shall expect you to present me with an heir. You will not take lovers. I do not want my inheritance to go to a bastard. If I take mistresses, then you have only yourself to blame. You will not confide in anyone. You will be my duchess and will run my household. You have already been shown your rooms. Go to them and try to keep out of my sight as much as possible.”

  “Release me from this marriage,” begged Alice.

  “You have not even begun to suffer enough to repay me for the humiliation and hurt inflicted on me this day,” said the duke. “Get you hence.”

  “What of Oracle? Have you killed the bird?”

  “Why? Why take my spite out on a bird that was merely repeating the maudlin sighings of its mistress? Ah, but come with me; there is something I wish to get rid of.”

  They walked up the grand staircase, a stately couple in their wedding finery. “These, as you know, are your apartments,” said the duke. “Ah… here we are.”

  He walked to a table and picked up the music box he had given her and flicked up the lid. The tinny, sentimental music filled the room. He walked to the open window and hurled it out.

  “I do not care what you do with your life as long as you remain chaste,” he said, swinging round. “Oh, God, to think I have wedded a silly, heartless, empty-headed, vulgar little slut!”

  Alice sat down slowly after he had left, staring around the ornate magnificence of her new quarters, hearing the distant sounds of merriment. She tried to think about Gerald, to worry about Gerald, but the shame of what she had done to the duke finally engulfed all other thoughts.

  Chapter Three

  London. Almost a year had passed since Alice’s wedding to the duke. They had taken up residence in the duke’s town house, a massive building where she could as easily lose herself from the duke’s sight as she could in the country.

  One consolation for Alice was that Lucy, recently married to Edward Vere, was also in London and a constant caller. Alice felt she had shamed the duke enough over her behavior at the wedding and so had confided in no one about the miserable state of her marriage. The servants must have known
something was badly wrong, that silent army who came and went during the day, ever courteous, ever watchful. She had been able to take up the reins of control easily. Before her marriage, she had been highly respected by the duke’s servants because of her charitable work, and so there was no autocratic housekeeper or pompous butler to cope with. Her commands were always obeyed. She sometimes wondered if she could have made a life for herself on the stage, she acted the part of happy wife so well. Apart from Lucy, she had a small circle of friends among the other young society matrons, and, as their husbands were often absent at their clubs or at the House of Lords, they saw nothing odd in Alice’s solitary existence. The duke and Alice often appeared together at balls and parties in the evening, and because society considered it very odd for a man to dance with his own wife, it was not considered strange that the couple should barely exchange a word, and only the duke’s servants knew that the duchess often returned alone when the evening was over, the duke going off to either his club or some other place.

  But even that little show of intimacy disappeared when the duke informed Alice, through his secretary, that he considered it a better idea if they shared out the many invitations: he would accept some and she the other. And that was when the cracks in the marriage began to show in public.

  Lucy, attending a ball at the home of Lord and Lady Baxham, a ball to which she had not intended to go, only changing her mind at the last minute, was surprised to see the duke arriving with a mature beauty on his arm. She asked questions and found that the beauty was a certain Lady Macdonald. Lord Macdonald had died some time ago. Lady Macdonald was a voluptuous redhead with wide blue eyes and a style of dress that just bordered on the indecent.

  “Does Alice know of this?” Lucy asked fretfully on the road home.

  “No need for her to know,” said Edward awkwardly. “I mean, such things go on. Vulgar to talk about ’em.”

  Lucy’s eyes were wide and dark with anxiety. “But Edward, surely you have not… would not…?”

  He laughed and gave her a quick kiss. “Don’t be silly, puss. Of course not.”

  “Then why…?”

  “Leave it alone, my precious.”

  “But it is all so odd. I was visiting Lucy t’other day and the duke came into the drawing room. He bowed, Alice curtsied, and then he went out again. They never exchanged a word. It’s something to do with that wretched bird of hers, I know it! When it started talking at the wedding, I could have screamed.”

  “Yes, I thought he would have shot that bird. I wish I’d never brought it. Has it said anything since?”

  “Only things like ‘Good day, ladies’ and ‘Grapes, please.’ He is a great favorite with children. Alice adores Oracle.”

  “Humph. Well, I would not worry, Lucy. Alice is a duchess and lives in such vast palaces of places that she can live a separate life in comfort.”

  “But she must be so unhappy. I should be devastated if you never spoke to me, Edward. Do try to find out from Ferrant what is going on with this Lady Macdonald.”

  “Hey, I can’t go about asking a fellow about his mistress!”

  “Then she is… Oh, Edward.”

  “Now, then, why don’t you have a word with Alice? Probably find she knows all about it and turns a blind eye.”

  But Lucy, calling on Alice the next day while her husband went off to a prizefight in the country, found Alice entertaining a group of matrons and had no opportunity to ask her anything.

  One of Alice’s guests, however, was different from the usual society lady, being an Irish colonel’s wife, a Mrs. Duggan. She was plainly dressed and plain-spoken, and Lucy had found herself gravitating to her matronly warmth. Feeling in need of an ally, she shyly suggested that Mrs. Duggan might care to return to her home with her for tea, and the Irishwoman placidly accepted.

  After Lucy had chattered nervously over the teacups of this and that, Mrs. Duggan at last interrupted her by saying, “Why not tell me what is on your mind, m’dear?”

  Lucy started nervously and then gave a shamefaced laugh. “Is it so obvious? I am concerned about Alice, Duchess of Ferrant.”

  Mrs. Duggan nodded her head so that the huge plumes on her hat bobbed and shook. Her round apple face, with its small periwinkle eyes, creased in folds of sympathy. “Lady Macdonald,” she said.

  “Ah, yes.” Lucy leaned forward. “Why does Ferrant squire her so openly?”

  “Sure, she’s his mistress—or so folks are saying.”

  “Oh, Mrs. Duggan! Surely not.”

  “Can’t blame the duke, now can you?”

  “Of course I blame him,” said Lucy, amazed. “Who would not?”

  “Well, now, I’m an old gossip, but there is a nasty little story running about—about how our duchess was secretly in love with one Sir Gerald Warby, so much so that she confided her feelings to that clever talking bird and the bird talked right at the couple’s wedding.”

  “I’ll strangle that bird,” said Lucy miserably.

  “And what good would that be doing? The damage is done. Although I sometimes wonder if Ferrant knows what he is doing. Lady Macdonald may look like a trollop, but she’s a member of society… and it is my belief she has ambitions to become a duchess.”

  “He would never get a divorce!”

  “Such things have been known. It could be he could get an annulment. Our duchess has a virginal and untouched look, and there’s no sign of an heir.”

  Lucy covered her face with her hands. “If only I could help her.”

  “There now,” said Mrs. Duggan. “You musn’t distress yourself. Bad for the baby.”

  “How did you know?”

  “I can tell. Now I am going to Mrs. Fairchild’s musicale tonight. I’ll see what I can do.”

  Alice was walking through the vast echoing tiled hall of her husband’s town house that evening followed by her maid. She was dressed to go out to the musicale. Before she reached the front door, held open for her by two footmen, the library door opened and her husband stood there looking at her She curtsied formally. He studied her for a moment as if taking in all the glory of embroidered white silk and the sparkle of the Ferrant diamonds—and then he retreated into the library and quietly closed the door.

  She felt a lump rise in her throat and blinked away threatening tears.

  A vision of Lady Macdonald, that cool, amused redhead, rose before her eyes to haunt her. Mrs. Harry Simms, a gossipy rattle of a matron, had pointed her out to Alice in the Park and had said, “You must feel like killing her.” Pressed by the astonished Alice for reasons why she would want to kill a lady she did not even know, Mrs. Simms, after a great pretense of reluctance, gleefully divulged that Lady Macdonald and the Duke of Ferrant had been seen out together on many occasions.

  Sometimes Alice had thought of begging her husband for a divorce to free her from the weight of guilt. The fact that she had shamed him at the wedding burned deeper into her soul each day. The mynah never mentioned Gerald’s name these days. It had done so a few times but had quickly found that Gerald’s name meant no fresh fruit. Alice did not know of the gossip about her disastrous wedding that was beginning to circulate. One disappointed mother of a hopeful daughter had told her best friend “in confidence,” and the little ripples of gossip had spread out from this stone and had finally washed up in London. Now her husband was reportedly in love with another woman and must long to be free.

  As soon as Alice walked into that musicale, she sensed something in the overheated air. Eyes glanced at her covertly, voices were lowered, people whispered. She was glad to see the bulk of Mrs. Duggan heaving up in her direction.

  “You must be the most beautiful woman in London,” said Mrs. Duggan in a bracing way. “We shall sit together and you shall tell me all the gossip.”

  Mrs. Duggan piloted Alice to a couple of chairs at the side of the music room. “I do not know any gossip,” said Alice, “or rather, I hear a lot of it, but it goes in one ear and out of the other.”

  “W
ould to God that the rest of society was the same,” said the Irishwoman piously.

  Alice looked around. Society was chattering away: men were waving lace handkerchiefs and snapping open and shut snuffboxes; women were waving fans, the older ones flirting automatically, although their days of attracting any man were considered by the cruel to be long over. She leaned forward. “Tell me about Lady Macdonald.”

  Mrs. Duggan let out a little sigh. “So you know about that. It was bound to happen.”

  “Why?”

  “The gossips have it that you humiliated your husband on your wedding day. The Oracle gave forth and named Sir Gerald Warby as your love.”

  “I shall never live that down. Never!” said Alice bitterly. “I barely see my husband now. We never talk. And it is the waiting and waiting. We cannot go on like this. Why does he not divorce me?”

  “Divorce is extremely rare and a scandalous process. The print shops would have a high old time. Perhaps your husband loves you.”

  Alice gave a shudder. “He loathes me. There is worse, you see. Sir Gerald sent me a note on the day of my wedding, asking me to meet him in the rose garden of my home. He told me he had spurned me because my parents had told him to do so. I—I wanted to run away with him. Then Ferrant came on the scene and knocked poor Gerald out cold.”

  “Is that all? Sure, ’tis a mercy he did not kill him.”

  Alice said in a low voice, “I sometimes feel the weight of guilt too hard to bear.”

  “Do you love your husband?”

  “No, but I bitterly regret my behavior. We are married in the sight of God.”

  “Tish! How grim and serious. If you want your husband to care for you enough to cease seeing this Lady Macdonald, then I suggest you begin to cast off your guilt and enjoy yourself. Your very fear and cringing must make him loathe you the more. He is not crawling about, head bowed with shame, because of his liaison with Lady Macdonald, now, is he, m’ dear? You are young, and the young are allowed to make mistakes. Lady Macdonald is a full-blown beauty. But you are young and fresh.”

  Alice took a slow breath. “I have deliberately avoided going to the same functions as my husband, first because it was his idea and then because I did not want to see him enter the room with Lady Macdonald on his arm.”