The Scandalous Marriage (The Dukes and Desires Series Book 7)

by M C Beaton

  First the bed was stripped, and then she had to brush the mattress. Once the bed was made, she had to shake the bedcurtains, lay them smoothly on the bed, pinning up the bottom valances so that she could dust underneath. Then she unlooped the window curtains, shook them, and pinned them up out of the way. Next the room had to be cleared of all ornaments, which were carried down to the kitchen to be washed. Returning to the bedroom, she spread a dust sheet on the bed. The toilet covers were then shaken and placed on the bed. Next came the work of cleaning the carpet. This was first sprinkled with squeezed tea leaves and cut grass and then swept thoroughly. After the grate was polished, she then washed the toilet table, water jugs, water bottles, and tumblers with a mixture of soap and hot water and soda.

  The boards of the floor left bare by the carpet then were scrubbed white with soda and water. Then everything else was polished and dusted, and the ornaments washed and put back before the curtains could be unpinned and the toilet cloths replaced.

  While she worked, Mary talked. “You’ll have to be careful of the master,” she said. “Sure, he’s a devil with the girls. He got poor Betty in the family way.”

  “Did he rape her?” asked Lucy.

  “No, just turned the silly girl’s head with flattery and presents. Pity. I liked Betty. You’ll be after wanting to know who’s here. Well, there meself, and then there’s the footman, James, and there’s Mrs. Foxe, the butler, Mr. Jones, the scullery maid, Jenny, the odd man, Binks, and a betweenstairs maid, Josie. The page, Jem, does the pots and knives and helps the outdoor staff when he’s not running errands. And of course, the cook, Mrs. Greenaway. We’re a pretty happy lot. If you start at six in the morning, you can get through enough work to have an hour off in the afternoon. You work hard and you look clean, but where did you get hands like that?”

  Mary looked down in amazement at the soft white skin of Lucy’s small hands.

  “My last employer let me wear gloves the whole time,” said Lucy.

  “Well, that’s London for you, I s’pose.”

  Lucy worked diligently all that day. There seemed to be no end to the tasks she had to do, from trimming the lamps and cleaning the candlesticks to dusting all the books in the library with a goose feather.

  Then the evening finally arrived. The bedroom windows had to be opened before sunset and then firmly closed two hours later. Nightclothes to be laid out, beds to be turned down, fires to be made up, and back to the kitchen to use the crumb brush on the dinner napkins and then fold them into their proper rings along with a myriad of other jobs. Lucy volunteered the knowledge that in some households, meaning her own, napkins were washed every time they became dirty, and the other servants looked at her in amazement, for nothing in the Clapham household was washed until laundry day. Even the tablecloth was simply put into the linen press each evening and then returned to the table the following day.

  When Lucy eventually climbed into the bed she was to share with Mary and the betweenstairs maid, she felt exhausted. The satanic face of the Duke of Wardshire danced before her eyes before she plunged down into a dreamless sleep.

  The Duke of Wardshire was a very angry man. He had checked at every livery stable and coaching office, but no one answering the description of Lucy Bliss had appeared at any of them. He had ridden out along the roads leading from the town in case she had been mad enough to go on foot, his servants searched high and low, but there was no sign of Lucy Bliss.

  One day passed, and then another. He was about to go to the authorities and start a full-scale search of the town and countryside with all the help he could muster when he was told by one of his footmen that he had two callers.

  “Who the devil are they?” snapped the duke, who was preparing to go out again on another search.

  “A Sir George and Lady Clapham.”

  “Never heard of them. Send them to the rightabout. How did they know I was here anyway?”

  “There is a paragraph in this morning’s local paper,” said the footman. “Sir George is a local worthy.”

  “I don’t care if he’s the king of England.”

  “Beg pardon, Your Grace,” said the footman, “but this Sir George will know the town and country. Perhaps a few discreet inquiries about Miss Bliss…?”

  “You’re right. Show them up.”

  Lady Clapham, roused from her “sickbed” by the prospect of meeting a duke, gushed in, followed by her husband. The duke immediately found them uncongenial and tiresome. They were not the sort of people he could ask about Lucy Bliss. He completed his toilet with his back to them, barely hearing Lady Clapham’s voice because she was babbling on about the servant problem.

  “But we have just engaged a very superior girl.

  She was formerly with Lady Fortescue’s household. Do you know Lady Fortescue?”

  “I beg your pardon.” The duke swung round and gave an irritated tug at his cuff.

  “I was just saying, Your Grace, that we have lately engaged a very superior sort of girl who used to be in Lady Fortescue’s household. Are you acquainted with her?”

  “Your servant?”

  Sir George gave a beefy laugh. “How could you know our Lucy? No, my wife meant Lady Fortescue.”

  “Yes, I do know her,” said the duke slowly. “Did you say Lucy?”

  “Our new housemaid, yes.”

  She wouldn’t, he thought. She couldn’t… Aloud he said, “There was some talk about a servant of Lady Fortescue. Describe this girl.”

  Lady Clapham leaned forward. “Lucy Tibbs? Small, slight girl.”

  “Large gray eyes?” asked the duke impatiently. “Good clothes?”

  “She arrived in good clothes, yes. She said Lady Fortescue had given them to her.”

  The duke smiled slowly. “I regret to inform you, Lady Clapham, that your new maid was dismissed from Lady Fortescue’s household for theft.”

  “I’ll send her to the constable,” growled Sir George.

  “Do not do that,” said the duke, “as a favor to me. Lady Fortescue told me the girl was of a fairly good family but fallen on hard times. It will be punishment enough if you dismiss her. Now, if you will excuse me…?”

  He then spent the next five minutes in slowly propelling them to the door of his room while he declined all the invitations that were being showered down on him, from turtle dinners to musicales.

  Having finally got rid of them, he rang the bell and ordered his carriage to be made ready. Now for Miss Lucy Bliss!

  Chapter Nine

  Despite her fatigue, Lucy was beginning to enjoy herself. The hard work kept thought at bay. She felt secure. The duke would have long since given her up and gone back to Sarsey. She had a nagging fear, certainly, that he might decide to revenge himself on the Bliss family by marrying Belinda, but a voice in her head told her he would never hurt his vicar, or Belinda for that matter, and it showed the extent of her tiredness in that she did not consider this perception of a new and kinder duke at all strange.

  While Sir George and his lady were visiting the duke, although the servants did not know where they had gone, only that they had gone to pay a call on someone in the town, the staff decided to relax and take a break. It was not often that both the Claphams were absent, Lady Clapham preferring to lie at her ease surrounded by patent medicines and act the invalid.

  The cook produced a batch of hot scones and an enormous pot of tea. There was a lot of chatter and banter around the table in the servants’ hall. One could never be lonely as a servant, thought Lucy. They were all bound together against their employers, a small army of slaves taking their comfort where and when they could.

  “Demme, that was short,” groaned the butler as the sound of carriage wheels coming up the drive reached their ears through the open window of the servants’ hall. He pulled on his coat, as did the footman, and both then ran through to the hall.

  Stretching and complaining, the other servants rose from the table to go about their duties. But the butler was soon back. “M
rs. Foxe,” he said, “they are in a rare taking. Lady Clapham wants to see you immediately.”

  Mrs. Foxe waddled to the door. “Now what’s the matter?” she grumbled. “Everything’s clean downstairs.”

  Lucy collected her box of black lead and brushes and prepared to follow Mary up to the bedchambers to start cleaning the fireplaces. Mary was searching for her favorite feather duster while Lucy stood waiting for her when Mrs. Foxe came back.

  “Lucy Tibbs,” said the housekeeper, “pack your things this minute and get out of this house. We don’t want no thieves here.”

  “What is this?” demanded Lucy. “I am no thief!”

  “Don’t dare argify. Get out!” shouted Mrs. Foxe.

  Lucy looked wildly around at the other servants for support, but they all avoided her gaze. There was no way she could demand to be taken to Lady Clapham and plead her innocence. There was no way she could protest she was a liar and forger but not a thief. The fatigue that had been so comfortable in a way now left her shaken and trembling and hardly capable of coping with this new shock.

  She went sadly up to the maids’ room to collect her things, humiliated by the fact that Mary followed her up—“to make sure you don’t pinch anything o’ mine.”

  Her few things put away quickly in the bandbox she held out her hand to Mary. “I am not a thief,” said Lucy quietly. “Please believe me.” But Mary ignored her hand and turned away.

  Blinking away tears, Lucy went down, through the servants’ hall and the kitchen and so out through the side door. Her bandbox banging against her legs, she trudged wearily down the drive.

  At the lodge gates she stopped abruptly. The duke’s carriage stood there, with the duke himself beside it. Lucy was too tired to even think of escaping. He held open the carriage door. She climbed in. He got in after her. His footman put up the steps and then the carriage dipped and swayed as he jumped on the backstrap.

  Mary stood behind a slim oak tree and watched openmouthed. It had suddenly struck her that this Lucy Tibbs could not be a thief and she wasn’t going to believe it, no matter what anyone said, and so she had run after Lucy to tell her so and to wish her luck. She watched in amazement until the carriage had disappeared and then ran back to the house and dashed into the servants’ hall, crying out that Lucy had been taken up by a lord and swept off in his carriage. It was a grand lord, for she had seen a crest on the carriage and there were outriders and everything. For a long time to come, the servants were to mull over the strangeness of Lucy Tibbs, most coming to the conclusion that she had been this lord’s mistress and had run away from him. Mary volunteered that she thought Lucy was a real lady after all, and the grand lord had probably been a member of her family, but she was howled down. Who had ever heard of a lady working as hard as Lucy Tibbs?

  “Go to sleep,” ordered the Duke of Wardshire. “You look exhausted. We will talk later.”

  Too shaken and tired to argue and not wanting to talk to him, Lucy obediently closed her eyes. She did not expect to fall asleep, but fall asleep she did.

  The duke watched her as she slept. The game was no longer amusing him. He could have coped with a raging and furious Lucy, not this exhausted little girl with the wide, hurt eyes and violet shadows under them. He would have to marry her now, whether she wanted him or not. And he had begun to think she really wanted him. But that was before she had run away to become a servant. He could not keep the elopement quiet. Mrs. Bliss would have told too many people about it by now. He should have brought some respectable female along as chaperone. That way he could have given her the freedom she now so obviously craved.

  Lucy slept heavily. There was a smear of black lead on her face. She must really loathe and fear him to have stooped to become a servant. And he had thought it all a game and that, yes, she would come to love him. When had he first begun to love Lucy Bliss? Perhaps on the very first day when he had seen her with that dreadful mother of hers.

  He became hungry, but he did not want to disturb her and so the carriage sped on, stopping only to change the horses.

  At last at four in the afternoon, Lucy murmured something and stirred and then her eyes flew open. “Do not be alarmed,” he said quietly. “I am not going to berate you. We will talk after we have dined.”

  Lucy nodded dumbly. The coach stopped at a posting house somewhere on the outskirts of Carlisle. Despite her misery, Lucy felt comforted by the sight of the large, well-appointed bedchamber and by the quiet deftness of the housemaids who had been sent up to unpack her clothes. She was told that the duke had ordered dinner to be served in a private parlor at six o’clock and so asked for a bath to be carried up and scrubbed herself in front of the fire until she had removed all the traces of black lead from under her fingernails and everywhere else it had managed to stick. Black lead was dreadful stuff, mused Lucy. It got everywhere. She tried to think of her fellow servants, but their faces were now small and distant in her mind.

  She felt much more like her courageous and battling self when she eventually presented herself in the parlor with freshly washed hair and wearing one of her prettiest muslin gowns. She realized she was very hungry indeed and concentrated on eating, ignoring the duke, wondering what he would say.

  When the cover was cleared and fruit and nuts and decanters were put on the polished surface of the table, he began to talk. “I am not going to blame you for running away,” he said in a level voice.

  Lucy sat very still, startled by the gravity of his voice.

  “It all started out so badly.” He sighed. “It seemed a joke. You see, my dear, it could not until now occur to me that anyone would not want to marry me. Arrogant? Despite the evil reputation I built up for myself, I have been pursued quite dreadfully. I therefore thought that your protests were of little account. I am used to my own way in everything.” He paused and refilled her glass and then his own. “So,” he went on in a measured voice, “it took your running away to become a servant to bring me to my senses.

  “But we are trapped, you and I. To return unwed would mean ruin for you. So we must go through with it. But I will repay you. After we are married and returned to Sarsey, we will make all the necessary arrangements. You may live your own life, my wife in name only. You may live where you please and consider yourself free. I would only beg of you that if you decide to take a lover, be discreet about it. I will settle a handsome income on you. You will want for nothing.”

  Lucy sat looking at him in amazement. “I surprise you?” he mocked with something of his old manner. “The wicked duke shocks you? Perhaps you think it is another trick, but I assure you I speak the truth. We will continue to Gretna and go through with this farce of a marriage. Do you agree?”

  Her thoughts were in a whirl. She had longed for a means of escape from her mother, and now he was handing such an escape to her on a plate. But then one thought as clear as a bell chimed through the rest—he does not love me. If he loved me, he would want me, not as a wife in name only. But why should that matter so very much?

  “I await your answer,” he said gently.

  She put a hand to her head. “I am still tired. I cannot think clearly. Was it you who told Sir George and Lady Clapham that I was a thief?”

  “I am afraid so. They came to call on me, and Lady Clapham in the manner of that type of woman started talking about her servants and mentioned a Lucy.”

  “I was a good servant,” said Lucy quietly. “I found the work dreadfully hard, but it gave me a feeling of courage and independence to be earning my bread. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, I think I can.”

  She rubbed her nose in distress. “As you say, we are both trapped and you have given me a generous offer. May I give you my reply in the morning?”

  “By all means.” He stood up and went to draw her chair back for her as she rose as well. He kissed her lightly on the check, a peck of a kiss, and said good night, a goodnight that Lucy echoed in a sad little voice.

  She did not go to bed but sa
t by the fire, staring into the flames, a bit of her mind appreciating the luxury of a fire at a time of year when more common inns would have ceased to light them. She tried to sort out her jumbled thoughts, to be honest with herself. What had piqued her about the duke, she realized with a sigh, was that he had never professed to love her, and that was what had hurt her pride. Somewhere in the back of her mind when she had run away to be a servant had been the romantic thought that he would find her at last and say he loved her. She could not be married to such a man without his love. He had mentioned she might take a lover. How would she feel if he took a mistress? A sudden stab of sick jealousy supplied that answer. And so she had probably been in love with him all along but had stubbornly refused to acknowledge it.

  And yet what could she do? And then slowly she began to think she had hit on the answer, on a possible solution. If she managed to stay away for a few weeks, then Belinda would be safely married. She had enough money left to buy herself a seat on the outside of a stagecoach. All she had to do was to find another position as a servant. She still had those forged references. She would need all her courage to go out into this strange northern town and find work. Then after a few weeks she would travel south and seek refuge with Belinda. She could never marry now. Belinda would not turn her out. Now that she knew the duke a little better, she did not anticipate any trouble from him. He had looked so… sad. He would be relieved to be shot of her.

  She set the clock in her mind for five in the morning. But first she must leave a letter for the duke.

  It took almost an hour for her to complete the short letter. In it she told him she was as much to blame as he, that she had in her way goaded him into this action. He must not marry someone he did not love. That, she had realized, would be a dreadful tragedy, wrote Lucy. She herself could not live with someone who did not love her. She begged him to forgive her and not to try to find her.