American Duchess

by Karen Harper

  It was perhaps the one hundredth time I glanced out toward the lane when I saw a small, black roadster pull in. Yes. Yes!

  I ran outside, trembling, fighting tears. Jacques leaped out so fast he did not close the motorcar door. We came together hard, and he picked me off my feet and spun me.

  “Thank God, thank God you are safe and here!” I cried.

  “My love. I want this dance for the rest of our lives.” He put me down and kissed me so hard I could not breathe. I clung to him, kissing him back. I was dizzy with joy, dizzy with love as we finally stepped apart and studied each other.

  He looked thinner, and his hairline had receded a bit. Crow’s-feet perched in the corners of his eyes, and little shadows etched them deeper. He had a single slash of a white scar on his forehead that had not been there before. But nothing mattered except that we were together.

  He picked me up again, slammed the motorcar door with his foot and carried me over the threshold as if we were newlyweds. This was real. This was real!

  IN A GOLDEN splash of sun through the big oriel window, we talked for hours, holding hands, kissing, perhaps unbelieving we were really together and no one had to rush away.

  “Yes, my love, I admit I was in great danger more than once,” he answered my repeated question he had shrugged off at first. “I flew over German troop movements when night was falling on the evening before the Battle of the Marne. I was able to give French and British troops information about German general Alexander von Kluck’s advance, and that helped us give the Huns a devastating defeat.”

  We clinked our wine goblets to that.

  “I was promoted to colonel after that and oversaw a group of scout aeroplanes,” he went on, his eyes so intense that I thought he must be seeing scenes in his mind. “It was when I received that command that I sent you the short letter, about my past, my marriage. I wanted you to know everything, to understand—even if I did not come back.”

  “And my father said you did more than all that. He told me he had wanted the Americans to get into the war even when the president and Congress were dragging their feet. He said when some American aviators wanted to help out and were rebuffed at first by France, you said they should be able to contribute.”

  “True,” he said, putting his goblet down and tightening his grip on my hand. “But he perhaps left out two things. One, I only convinced my superiors to let the American pilots in when we French lost so many men and aeroplanes. And second, your father donated $20,000 to the support of what we called your Yank flyers, the Lafayette Escadrille. I honor your father as someone who may have inherited his fortune, but who uses it for the good of mankind—as well as for the good of his sons and his beautiful daughter. And the fact you are an heiress has nothing to do with my devotion to and passion for you. I must soon become the chairman of the Balsan family business and will need to serve as director of other companies.”

  “I never thought you were after Vanderbilt money, unlike a certain duke I could name. I know your family is wealthy, too. I vow, I never even considered that.”

  “I like that—I vow. Let’s work on that, now that I have lived through that damned war and you a difficult marriage and lonely, long separation. And you understand about my earlier marriage and dissolution, then?”

  “I am hardly one to criticize anyone for a forced marriage.”

  “Yes, that, but yours was not your fault, so your father tells me. But now we must decide how to proceed about us, if you are willing.”

  “More than willing!”

  “I will remember those words, too! I am hungry for our time together, for you.”

  “Oh, the food!” I cried, shifting forward on the sofa to jump up. “What if it is all burned or dried? I must rewarm things and feed you, for you have lost a bit of weight!”

  “Rewarming things—everything you say, my sweetheart—has me thinking of other things,” he teased and patted my bum as I rose to go to the kitchen. I wanted to feed him well, but I could hardly wait until the meal was over.

  AFTER OUR SIMPLE, yet somehow sumptuous meal—how wonderfully normal to share food together—Jacques built a fire, and we sat on the sofa, looking at the leaping flames and each other.

  “I should bring in my satchel from the motorcar,” he said. “I even brought you a gift I almost forgot about.”

  “Hm, something wool from your family’s textile business for this chilly weather?”

  “You will not be cold, I promise. No, a piece of jewelry I should have brought in with me, an antique piece that was my paternal grandmother’s. An overture to an engagement ring, someday, yes?”

  “Yes!”

  “Then just one moment,” he added and popped up to go out into the darkness and back in with a battered-looking satchel he dug inside of.

  To my amazement, he went down on one knee. “How could I forget I meant to give you this? Sacre bleu, it is your fault for being the ultimate distraction.”

  I knew Frenchmen were skilled at lovely words and at love, but I was so certain this man meant everything from his heart. The pin was stunning, oval-shaped, all graceful golden filigree scrollwork with two emeralds in the center. And then I saw the scrollwork was of two clasped hands. Tears blinded me before I blinked.

  “It is just beautiful!”

  “Perfect then. We will face a common future, get the path cleared so that we may be together for whatever days the good Lord gives us for the rest of our lives.”

  I nodded wildly as he pressed the pin into my hands and pulled me to my feet. His arms went around me. I embraced him and held hard. He lifted and carried me up the stairs to my room and slowly, sweetly undressed me as if we had world enough and time, as if we were starting all over again, young and in love, dancing, spinning around . . .

  As he made delicate yet deliberate love to me, I realized I had never been really physically loved before. Taken but not loved and adored. Slow, sweet but with leashed passion. So intimate that it seemed to me we became one in more than two bodies uniting. Time stopped, though I wanted to remember and cherish each moment.

  After, exhausted, we slept naked together under the covers, huddled close on our sides, as if I sat in his lap. I felt so safe, so alive. And so loved. It was what my wedding night and marriage had never been, a mutual giving of pleasure and trust.

  But when I turned to him to tell him so, he kissed me again and ravished my senses.

  WE COULD NOT bear to part, so I left my motorcar at Crowhurst, and we drove back into London together, laying plans.

  “I know who I will try to get for a divorce attorney,” I told him. “Sir Edward Carson was H. H. Asquith’s attorney general and knows Winston, too, as they have both served in admiralty offices. I have met him at several parties, and he is most impressive.”

  “But is Winston to be trusted since he is the duke’s cousin?”

  “Absolutely. He has stuck with me and will be your friend, too. After my father and you, I would trust Winston Churchill anytime, anyplace. Sir Edward has a fine reputation and, I hear, is sharp-witted and sharp-tongued. A terror in the courtroom, Winston told me once.”

  “Which will make the duke back off?”

  “Encourage him to cooperate at least. I think he would have given me the heave-ho, as we Americans say, long ago but for Vanderbilt money. He has carried on an affair with a woman who had been a friend to me for nearly ten years. Since her goal in life is to be the Duchess of Marlborough, and she holds some sway over him, she will be on my side.”

  “But can he afford to lose Vanderbilt money for that huge place?”

  “Our financial marriage agreement states that he will still receive some funds. But everyone says property and death taxes are going up and up, and the duke is land poor, but I shall leave that up to Sir Edward and my father. Perhaps Blenheim should have paying guests to see its grandeur—ha.”

  “Now that is who I would trust with anything—your father.”

  I turned to him on the slick leather sea
t. A bit of rain was starting to spatter on the windscreen. “And I am betting, my dear Jacques, that Papa would trust you with anything, too—including me. He is greatly to be thanked for keeping us in touch through hard times, isn’t he?”

  He nodded but kept his eyes on the wet pavement. “And I suppose, since you say you are getting on better with your mother lately, we shall thank her, too, for bringing you to that debutante ball years ago, or I never would have seen you, we never would have danced—and declared we must fight to be together. Consuelo, my love, that fight is not over, for I still do not trust the duke, and I hear a woman seeking a divorce can be shunned and banned.”

  “Yes, but times for women here are changing. Besides, I did not closely observe my clever steamroller of a mother for nothing all these years,” I assured him. “Sunny wants my permission for our heir Bert, dear Blandford, to wed a girl not yet twenty and needs my permission for that and for us to present a united front when we attend the wedding. Also, I have kept up a correspondence with the dowager queen Alexandra, and I am sure I can talk her into attending their wedding, hopefully to bring King George and Queen Mary with her, and that would mean the world to the duke. Oh, he owes me in so many ways.”

  “Ah, I am dealing with a Machiavelli!”

  “Best remember that, my man. I hope to get what I want against stiff odds, and get you, too.”

  “I surrender.”

  I started to laugh but screamed, too, when a bolt of lightning and a huge crack of thunder came close as if in fierce punctuation. Jacques stomped on the brake pedal as a tree crashed down before us on the road and we swerved sideways.

  “Are you all right, sweetheart?” he asked, after bringing the roadster to a skidding stop. “We shall get around that obstacle, too. And the fact it missed us—that is a sign we are on the right road, yes?”

  We were both shaking, but I managed, “Together, yes!”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Huge postwar events swirled around us. The Treaty of Versailles formally ending the war was signed in June of 1919, five years to the day after Duke Ferdinand and his duchess were shot to death. During the war, British women who were landowners and over thirty years of age had been given the vote, which still left out most Englishwomen, so that struggle went on with protest marches, hunger strikes, forced feedings, imprisonment, and worse.

  Jacques came and went to Crowhurst, though he was knee deep in family and business matters in France. Amid all this came my momentous attempt to attain a divorce from the Duke of Marlborough after a ten-year marriage and thirteen-year separation.

  I’d spent time with my lawyer Sir Edward, planning how best to deal with the duke, and now the divorce drama had begun. It was to be played out in carefully orchestrated acts. There were nine steps for obtaining a divorce in England, and each must be documented, observed, or recorded. The duke and I had both agreed to play our parts, and I could only hope the British and American press would not broadcast every one of them in detail.

  First, as if we were reading a hidebound script, the duke had written me a note requesting to see me to discuss an issue. Dear Consuelo, it began and ended, Yours ever, Sunny, per Sir Edward’s specific directions. I had then replied to him in writing, citing a specific date and time and signed it Faithfully, Consuelo. What a farce these laws were but as the Charles Dickens character Mr. Bumble said in Oliver Twist, “The law is an ass.”

  Second, we must cohabit for a time. The duke, pretending to try for a reconciliation, had come to “live” at Crowhurst, bringing his sister Lilian, who I was still friendly with, so that it seemed we were living together, for I refused to go back to Blenheim for this part of the sham. Gladys had quite taken the place over and the duke had ordered her face—I heard from Lilian that Gladys’s paraffin wax had shifted even lower to her chin—to be carved on some sort of statue there to assure her she was still beautiful.

  For the third step, pretending to have tried to save our marriage, the duke had departed Crowhurst—he had never been there before and, I vowed, would not darken my lovely haven again. The note he had left me, again dictated by Sir Edward, read in part, We have grown too far apart to live happily together again.

  Continuing the scripted drama, I had written a note to the effect that it was sad that he believed our marriage was over. I told him I was bereft and going away to rest for a while, to see my mother. Indeed, that was not skirting the truth, for I was exhausted through all this. I saw a doctor who recommended a rest away from England, and I went to my mother who had recently bought a villa in the hills above the village of Eze on the French Riviera. But I intended to be back in London soon, to carry on the fight and for our son Bert’s wedding, in the middle of this grueling charade.

  “MY DEAREST GIRL,” Mother murmured as she embraced me in the sunny doorway of her charming new pied-à-terre called the Villa Isola, which she was decorating to the hilt. So exhausted from events and from my travel here, I held hard to her. This time it was her turn to comfort me, and she did. Papa had always been so good at that, but I saw now Alva Smith Vanderbilt Belmont had that in her, too.

  “Come in and rest, here on the patio with the view of the sea,” she insisted, pulling me by the hand as if I were four again. “It is restless in the winter, but always so beautiful.”

  She rang for tea and little cakes, and we sat out of the wind but in the sun.

  “Has it been terrible?” she asked, scooting her chair closer and wrapping her hand firmly around my wrist. “At least you do not have the entire Vanderbilt clan against you as I did.”

  “No, the duke’s mother and sisters and the Churchills have been supporting us both. Well, they have all seen our train wreck coming from way back.”

  “And the boys?”

  “They see it as inevitable, I think. Ivor certainly understands. And since Bert is really in love for the first time—well, I never quite know about him. Sometimes he is Bert and sometimes he is Blandford, the next duke, so he, like his father, is caught between the devil and the deep blue sea of drowning debts at Blenheim and the heavy weight of heritage.”

  “So now to happier news. Your Frenchman has tracked me down and written. He would like to meet me and see you.”

  “Oh, when? Here?”

  “He thinks not here at the villa, in case the duke’s lawyers—or even yours—would not like that. And when have we ever been able to hide from the snooping press, who seem to hide up in trees? So I told him you and I would be taking a picnic along the shore tomorrow, and should he wish to join us exactly where. After all, my dearest, you no doubt need a good watchdog chaperone since he is obviously such a charming and determined Frenchman.”

  She laughed. Though I was ready to cry from exhaustion and emotion, I laughed too. My mother with a sense of humor. My mother on my side. My mother protecting my interests and wanting to meet the man I adored when she had caused my sad, bad marriage in the first place. But she was taking steps to make up for that now.

  I hugged her so hard that I spilled my tea.

  FEBRUARY 17, 1920, I was back in England for a Marlborough family affair: Bert’s wedding to the lovely Mary Cadogan, daughter of Henry Cadogan, Viscount Chelsea. King George and Queen Mary were in attendance. Neither Gladys nor, of course, Jacques were there, but what a coup that the royals were.

  That meant that the Duke of Marlborough was beaming. It was a feather in my cap, too, for it was through the Queen Mother Alexandra’s friendship to me that she had convinced the king and queen to attend. I felt, since the duke was cooperating so far with the difficult steps of divorce, it was my final gift to him.

  My mother had not come to the wedding because she heard Papa and his wife would be here. Yet what a blessing on this day that both my parents were on my side in the divorce.

  My thoughts skipped back to the windy picnic she, Jacques, and I had shared on the deserted beach, getting behind some rocks to break the wind and to hide from possible prying eyes. They both had to shout over the wind
so I could hear. I should have known she would ask him about his intentions, but she also encouraged us and urged us to move nearby when we were able to marry.

  And, I daresay, Monsieur Jacques Balsan charmed her to the extent she left us alone for an hour to plan while she sat like a guardian on a rock a bit away from us, watching, she said, for some prying newspaperman or the duke’s lawyers. I believed she was doing penance for making me marry someone I hardly knew and did not love.

  Each time Jacques kissed me, his lips tasted of wind-blown salt water, and it was the most delicious delight. We both tried hard not to laugh at my mother since she looked like Lot’s wife turned to a pillar of salt after her vigil.

  “Who gives this woman to be wedded with this man?” The bishop’s words brought me back to the present scene.

  “The viscount and I.”

  Bert and Mary said their vows in this traditional venue for aristocratic weddings, St. Margaret’s Church in Westminster. I glared at the back of the duke’s head as he sat in the row before me. In contrast to this mutually agreed upon marriage, ours had been so wrought with tension and tears. At least, I thought, he dare not change his mind about the divorce, though a rather embarrassing step was yet in his control.

  I shifted on the hard pew next to Winston, with Clemmie on his other side. Drat, there was one thing that still worried me. I knew the duke was angry over the information someone had given him that Papa had recently settled fifteen million dollars on me and a million on each of my brothers. Surely the duke would not insist we stay married to try to get his hands on that, though Gladys might have stayed with him at Blenheim anyway.

  In the reception line after the ceremony, Queen Alexandra came up to me and took my gloved hand in hers. “My dear friend,” she said, “I so hope that you are happy, at least as happy as I was with my own Bertie.”

  She was stone deaf and nearly shouting, but I knew she was too set in her ways to use the hearing devices I kept updating and hidden in my hair and hat. Had no one told her I was seeking a divorce? Or was she assuming I loved someone else? And how happy had she been with her roué Bertie, really?