Playing the Duke's Fiancée--A Victorian Historical Romance

by Amanda McCabe

Lily clutched the baby closer. ‘Bad news, darling?’

  ‘Not at all. Quite the opposite.’ He held up a letter, close-written, copperplate lines on thick, creamy paper, edged in dark red with a gold crest. ‘A letter from the private secretary at Buckingham Palace. We’re requested to be among the party accompanying Prince Alfred to St Petersburg for his marriage to Grand Duchess Maria in January.’

  ‘St Petersburg!’ Lily gasped. She handed the baby to Aidan and took the letter, scanning its message. ‘Oh, I have longed to see it. The golden domes and frozen rivers, the ballrooms! And a royal wedding? But whatever shall I wear? There’s barely time to order new clothes!’

  Aidan laughed. ‘I take it you consent, then, Lily?’

  ‘Of course! One must take advantage of some of the perks of being a duchess, you know.’

  ‘How exciting for you, Lily darling,’ Violet said, feeling joy and envy strangely mingled.

  ‘And you, Vi,’ Aidan said.

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Oh, yes. The invitation includes you, since you are to be presented soon, and Lily will need a suitable companion.’

  ‘Vi, just imagine!’ Lily cried. ‘Us together in St Petersburg. Skating on the Neva, dancing at balls with princes...meeting the Tsar. The Wilkins sisters! What will Mother say? Oh, I must send for the dressmakers and milliners at once. You can wear your presentation gown at the wedding, I think, but I must have something new.’

  She rushed out of the conservatory, leaving Aidan with the now fussing baby and making him and Violet laugh. Violet still felt dizzy with the grand news. She’d read all about the wedding plans, of course, the highest-ranking royal bride in generations, the lavish plans in Russia, the buzz over it all. She’d never imagined she would see it for herself.

  ‘Am I really to go with you?’ she whispered.

  Aidan grinned. ‘Of course. It will be a very busy time, I’m afraid, lots of protocol to remember. They’re even stricter about such things at the Winter Palace than here. I will need your help and so will Lily. It should be lots of fun, too, though.’ His smile widened. ‘I know you’ll like the fun parts.’

  Violet laughed. Oh, yes, she did enjoy fun. As Lily said, there would be balls and skating, no doubt sleigh rides and banquets and fascinating people and lovely clothes. But she feared there would be so much boring etiquette, enough to make her Court presentation pale. She dreaded embarrassing her sister. Still, at least it would not be boring. It would be something to remember always. ‘When do we leave?’

  ‘Very soon, so get your wardrobes together! We’ll go to Berlin for a few days with the Prince and Princess of Wales to meet his sister Crown Princess Vicky, and then on to Russia. It will be deep winter there, I’m afraid.’

  Violet thought of the sables and the silver fox stole in her wardrobe, sent by her father last Christmas. They were probably nothing compared to what Grand Duchess Maria would have, but warm and cosy nonetheless. ‘I’m sure we will be just fine. More than fine! It will be a great lark indeed.’

  ‘I knew you and Lily would think so. Life is never dull with the Wilkins sisters. There is just one thing...’ Aidan said this as Lily came back to join them.

  ‘What?’ his wife whispered. They both glanced at the baby and her eyes widened. ‘We’ll have to leave him!’

  ‘Not for long,’ Aidan hurried to assure her. ‘Only for a very few weeks. I have arranged to come home directly after the wedding, when the couple leaves for their honeymoon. If you like, he can stay with my mother while we’re gone. I know she’s a tartar...’

  ‘But she does love him,’ Lily said sadly. She nodded and smoothed the baby’s wispy hair. ‘I know we must do our duty, and Russia in winter is no place for him.’

  Aidan kissed her and gave her a reassuring smile. ‘Not for long.’

  As Aidan left to take the baby to his nurse, Violet took her plates and hurried outside to her darkroom. She had learned her art via instructions in photographic pamphlets, on the old-fashioned, very complicated collodion wet plate process. She had somehow persuaded her father to buy her a bulky, heavy camera and she suspected he was probably quite sorry for that now; she knew he’d only bought it in the hope that it would distract her from mischief. But once the newfangled dry plate technique became available, she had jumped on it and found someone at an art gallery to show her how it all worked.

  There was much less messing about with chemicals, much less ruination of images. The camera itself was far less cumbersome, more portable, and the exposures were easier to control. It was all so much easier. But Violet still enjoyed the quiet moments developing the images in her small darkroom, watching magic happen right in front of her. Magic that she created herself.

  As she watched Lily’s pale, oval face come to life, it suddenly struck her that a series of royal portraits would surely be just the thing to catch the attention of the Photographic Society! The Grand Duchess and Prince Alfred, the Prince and Princess of Wales, maybe even the Tsar and the bride’s many Grand Duke brothers, in all their wedding finery. It would be perfect. And they did say the Prince had inherited an interest in photography from his late father, the Prince Consort. If she could meet with him...

  She would have to find a way to persuade them. She just had to!

  Chapter Two

  ‘William! Dearest brother. You’re home at last. How very brown you have become under the Egyptian sun. It does suit you.’

  ‘Hello, Honoria. That does tend to happen under the hot sun. But I went there to work, not to go sightseeing.’ William, Duke of Charteris, kissed his sister’s cheek and gazed behind her at the rows of servants, waiting to greet his return to Bourne Abbey.

  He tilted back his head to study the house, so placid and steady under the grey English sky, unchanging, perfect, sheltering, just as it always had been. The Palladian mansion his grandfather had created hid the ancient walls of the old abbey behind its facade, pale stone juxtaposed against crumbling brown brick and cloister walkways, a double set of steps soaring up to symmetrical windows draped in green brocade, chimneys spilling welcoming silvery smoke.

  He’d thought of it all so often on his travels. It had seemed like a dream, unreal even though it had been his world since birth, had always been his birthright, his responsibility. His whole reason for being. The house, the vast gardens, the farms, the hundreds of people under its shelter. All his great task in life.

  For a while, under that sun, with sights older even than Bourne, he had felt—different. Lighter. Out of himself. He’d laughed and danced, climbed the pyramids under the sunset light to watch the moon rise, to drink champagne at their pinnacle, no longer the ‘Duke of Bore’ that he knew some called him at home. There had been work, of course, hard work, laying the groundwork for the political career his late parents had always wanted for him, but there had been fun, too. He wasn’t quite sure he’d ever grasped the meaning of fun before.

  Now that was all over, Bourne was before him again, always waiting for him, always needing him. He could almost hear the ornate iron gates at the foot of the winding, white gravel drive clanging shut.

  But there was love, too. A deep, great swelling of it for his home, which had been there all his life, never changing. He belonged to it far more than it could ever belong to him.

  Honoria took his arm and walked with him up the marble steps towards the open front doors and the waiting, wide-eyed staff, a great black-and-white double line of them.

  ‘Glad to be home, Will darling?’ she said.

  ‘Very. You’ve kept it up very well, I see.’

  Honoria laughed. She’d been widowed now for a few years and visited Bourne whenever she could. It was her home, too, and he always knew he could count on her. ‘I did my best. You’ll find one or two tiny little redecorating schemes inside, nothing too extreme. Just because Bourne has been here for centuries, that doesn’t mean we must always put up with milde
w!’

  He glanced down at her, startled. Honoria was ultra-fashionable, one of the leaders of style in London. Her dark hair, so like his own, was twisted on top of her head in elaborate braids and curls fastened with pearl combs, and her lilac silk-and-cream-lace gown was straight out of Les Modes. He could only wonder what she and her town decorators might have wrought in Bourne’s corridors and darkened staterooms. Even his mother, the sainted late Duchess, still venerated in the neighbourhood, hadn’t dared touch one brocade curtain or soot-stained painting.

  ‘I said don’t worry,’ she said with a laugh. ‘Nothing too modern, I promise.’

  ‘Your Grace,’ Higgins, the ancient butler, said, stepping forward with a low bow. ‘Welcome home.’

  ‘Thank you, Higgins. I’m very glad to be here. I’ve missed you all.’ They greeted the line of servants, from the housekeeper to the tweenies and the old man who wound the hundreds of clocks, which took a great deal of time, but at last William was alone with his sister in the drawing room with a tray of sherry.

  ‘You see,’ Honoria said, gesturing around the large, cube-like room with its old, soaring plastered ceiling, its two marble fireplaces crowned with the gilded ducal arms and held aloft by carved gods and goddesses, the clusters of sofas and chairs and small alabaster tables scattered about the faded carpets. ‘I haven’t changed much. Just some new upholstery, new glazing at the windows to keep out those infernal draughts. I brought those paintings down from the attic and had them reframed. I thought they were much more cheerful than Papa’s old dead pheasant pictures, so dreadfully depressing.’

  ‘Indeed.’ He had to admit he did like the changes, the paler colours in the new satin cushions, the smiling portraits and green landscapes on the striped green silk walls. He glimpsed a gleaming new grand piano set near the newly glazed windows, along with a gold harp. ‘Those are new, too, I think. Where is Mama’s old pianoforte?’

  ‘Oh, these are Pauline’s. You remember her, I’m sure. Cousin Rannock’s girl. I’ve been looking after her while he’s out in India. She’s ready to be presented at Court.’ Honoria poured out two drinks in the cut-crystal sherry glasses and handed him the larger one. ‘So sad, her mother dying so young, and me with no daughters of my own...’

  William smiled at her and sat down on one of the newly covered sofas by the fireplace. He had to admit that they were quite comfortable, where once he had sunk down on the old springs. He was happy for his sister; he knew her lack of children had been a sorrow. ‘I’m sure you’re having a thoroughly awful time, organising clothes and parties and such.’

  Honoria laughed. ‘I do so enjoy organising. Speaking of which...’

  He froze with his glass half-raised. He knew that tone of hers. ‘Oh, no, Honoria.’

  ‘Oh, yes, Will. Pauline is going to be presented at the next Drawing Room, and it would be so lovely for her if you came with us. Your connections to the royal family would be very useful to her, and it would do you good to show your face at Court again—if you really do want a political career. And there will be eligible ladies there, you know. I did leave most of the redecorating here for the next Duchess.’

  William swallowed a large gulp of the sherry, wishing it was something stronger. He imagined the crowds of a Drawing Room, the stuffy air, the giggling young ladies and their beady-eyed mothers, the long, dull hours of waiting about at a formal presentation. He still hadn’t quite recovered from Honoria’s, years ago. ‘I don’t really see how such an afternoon would do me good. Or Pauline.’

  ‘Of course it would, silly! I saw dear Bertie at dinner at Lady Riverby’s a few weeks ago and he was so full of compliments about your work in Egypt. He’ll want to hear all about it, after you show your face and remind him that you’re home. And half the Court will be gone soon, off to the snowy wilds of St Petersburg for Affie’s wedding.’

  ‘Oh, yes. The Grand Duchess. I had forgotten about that.’

  ‘So the sooner you see Bertie the better. And besides...’

  He didn’t quite trust the gleam in her eyes. ‘Besides?’

  ‘Well, what I said about a suitable duchess. You don’t want the best debs of the Season to escape, do you? The prettiest and smartest will be snapped up right away.’

  He stared down into the dregs in his glass, swirling the amber liquid. ‘I am in no great hurry to marry, Honoria.’

  ‘You should be! Darling, you are over thirty now. I know you’ve been terribly busy, but tick-tock. Bourne needs a mistress, an heir, and you need the help that the right wife could give you. She could look after the estate when you’re busy at Westminster, be a good hostess for you. It’s so very important.’

  ‘You can be my hostess.’

  Honoria gave a little snort. ‘I have my own home, in case you’ve forgotten! My own duties. I am very happy to help out for now, but I haven’t infinite time. Besides, don’t you want a companion? A partner?’

  He thought of their parents, seldom speaking, seldom smiling at each other. Bourne had been their lives, not each other. ‘Of course, I know all that. But it must be the right person.’ Once, long ago, when he was young and foolish, he’d thought he had found her. The Honourable Daisy Dennison. So pretty, so flighty, so full of laughter and gaiety.

  But he had been wrong. Terribly wrong. And he had realised that duty was everything, his whole life. Even one moment of frivolity in Cairo couldn’t change that. He was the Duke of Charteris and he could never forget that.

  Not that Honoria was wrong. His first duty was indeed to secure the future of Bourne, to see to his family’s security and honour. A wife was necessary for that and one day soon he would have to find a lady of good sense and breeding, of good family, who knew how the ducal world worked and who would not expect too much from him. A lady who would be his partner in the business of the estate, be a good mother to his heirs. He couldn’t imagine finding such a rational being in the crowds of giggling, romance-minded debs at the Drawing Room.

  He went to pour another drink. ‘I will start looking next year, perhaps, when things have settled down after the royal wedding.’

  ‘You cannot keep putting it off, Will. It was very sad, what happened with Daisy all those years ago. Bourne has been without a duchess too long. You are more concerned with duty than anyone I know. I’ve been giving it a great deal of thought...’

  William laughed. ‘I am sure you have. Do you have lists?’

  ‘You know I do. Lists are the best tool of any organised mind.’ Honoria pulled out a sheaf of papers from her sewing box, spilling pieces of half-finished embroidery on to the faded carpet. ‘I also have many friends in London and I’ve been looking over their sisters and cousins. No one is quite perfect, I fear, but there are some good possibilities. The Marquess of Wolverton’s daughter is making her debut, for instance, and Miss Mayne. She only has the teeniest bit of a squint...’

  ‘And you once said Lady Marienne has the worst dress sense in all of London.’

  Honoria rustled her papers. ‘Well, such things can easily be taken in hand, you know, with a few visits to my dressmaker. And her father will soon be head of the Foreign Office, they say. So very useful.’ She narrowed her eyes as she looked up at William. ‘Even Aidan is married now, you know. And has a child and heir.’

  ‘Aidan,’ he said with a laugh, taking another sip of his drink. ‘It is quite hard to believe.’

  ‘You know it’s no jest. It was quite a lovely wedding. I forgot you’ve been gone so very long. Even though the new Duchess is American, she is very beautiful and well mannered, and so rich. His castle roof has been saved. They do seem terribly fond of each other, so sweet.’ She fanned herself with her lists.

  ‘Honoria. Bourne is not in need of American dollars.’

  ‘No, but maybe you would like a bit of American spirit in your life. It’s become all the rage, you know, American girls. There’s Jennie Jerome, who they say
will marry Randolph Churchill, and I have heard Lord Mandeville is courting some wild girl from a Louisiana plantation. And you don’t seem interested in anyone on my lists.’

  William couldn’t think of anything worse than wild American ‘spirits’ around Bourne. ‘An American would scarcely know where to begin when it comes to a place like Bourne or Charteris House. The way things have been done here for centuries, the ins and outs of political life...’

  ‘Oh, well, have it your own way. But do say you’ll come with Pauline and me to London. She could so use your support, and I will enjoy your company.’

  ‘I’ll think about it, Honoria. And now I think I’ll go upstairs and change, have a quick ride to inspect the home farm before dinner.’

  Honoria knew when to leave him alone with his thoughts. She nodded and picked up her embroidery. ‘Of course, darling. We can go over the estate books after dinner. I think you’ll be quite pleased.’

  William knew he would be, he thought as he made his way upstairs to the Duke’s chamber just beyond the old Elizabethan Gallery. Honoria was a sensible, smart manager and really, if he was going to let someone find him a wife, she would be fine for the job. Her social circle was wide, and she knew well the demands of running Bourne. He knew it had to be his task alone, though, to find someone quiet and dutiful, who knew what was expected of such a title and responsibility.

  In his chamber, his valet had already been unpacking, and riding clothes were laid out for him. As he shrugged out of his travel suit, he glanced in the dressing table mirror. He looked the same as ever, the same as the portrait of his father that hung in the long line of dukes in the gallery: dark, almost black hair, high cheekbones, green eyes. He didn’t look too bad, he thought with a laugh. Surely there was some sensible lady somewhere in England who wouldn’t mind taking him on.

  His gaze caught on a midnight blue gleam amid the brushes arranged across the table, a jewelled scarab he had found in a Cairo marketplace. He picked it up, turning it on his palm, and for an instant he was back there, in the shimmering heat, the warm, spice-scented air. A moment of heady freedom. That was behind him now. The reality was England and Bourne, searching for brides, duty.