Desperate Duchesses (5 page)

“Wel , I have them,” Roberta said cautiously. Adding: “I suppose.” In truth, she couldn’t claim a great knowledge of moral strictures, given her father’s propensity for lively companionship.

“Wel , I have only a few.” The duchess smiled at Roberta with an odd, crooked little smile. “If you are going to live with me, I simply won’t be able to bear it if you are constantly peering at me in a disappointed kind of way. And if you criticize me, I’m afraid that we would quarrel directly. Among my many faults is a quite simple inability to accept that I’m wrong. Do you see how awful I am to live with?”

Roberta laughed. “I could not be disappointed, not unless you metamorphosed into Mrs. Grope, who has been my constant companion these two years. In truth, Your Grace, I can’t imagine reprimanding you for anything!”

“Oh, you’l think of something. But we’d better go on intimate terms, don’t you think? My name is Jemma, which is short for the worthy name of Jemima. May I address you as Roberta?”

“I’d be delighted!”

“Wel , Roberta, I shal just enumerate my faults, shal I? And let me be quite clear that if you feel unable to stay with me, I have any number of relatives who wil bring you out with al the appropriate rites and ceremonies. In fact, it’s quite possible that you
should
do that. I’m not at al certain that young, unmarried girls are supposed to be living in houses featuring centerpieces akin to what Caro designs.”

“Perhaps not the completely naked ones,” Roberta admitted. “But there is a certain educational value, as your brother noted.”

Jemma gave a delightful chortle of laughter. “Who knew that it would take so much gold paint to cover one chest?”

“Exactly!”

“I am just realizing that you managed Caro as beautiful y as you deflected my annoyance over my husband’s dictates. I suppose you are used to people of artistic temperament?”

“Life with my father was—has been—”

Very kindly Jemma cut in. “I can guess,” she said. “Living in France for years, I was often behind the times with English gossip, but your father’s escapades are always in circulation.” Her smile was so cheerful y nonjudgmental that Roberta found herself smiling back. “So, do tel me, did you feel faint when you saw my centerpiece?”

“Not in the slightest,” Roberta assured her. She added, unable to resist, “But perhaps I shal once you enumerate al your faults.”

“It’s hard to know where to begin,” Jemma said.

Roberta raised an eyebrow.

“Wel , let’s see. For one thing, I’m a duchess.”

“A
duchess
!” Whatever Roberta had been expecting in the way of Jemma’s faults, this wasn’t one of them. “What’s wrong with that? I have always believed it is a—a
consummation devoutly to be wished
.” And given that she herself had every intention of being Duchess of Vil iers, come hel or high water, she real y meant it.

The door opened and the stout butler, his face returned to a normal hue, entered with a silver tea tray. “Oh thank you, Fowle,” Jemma said. “That is so kind of you.” After a moment of fiddling with the tray, he left. Jemma poured tea very careful y into fragile tea cups and asked, “Were you quoting poetry just now?”

“Yes, although I couldn’t tel you who wrote it. My father says the phrase frequently and it stuck in my head.”

“Have you had much to do with duchesses?” Jemma didn’t seem to mean that question unkindly; she was fussing with the sugar bowl.

Roberta glanced down at her badly sewn skirt. “No, I have not.”

“Wel , I assure you that we are an abominable sort. The very title gives us license to make the worst of ourselves, and we so frequently do.”

“Real y?” Roberta accepted a steaming cup of hot tea.

“I have several duchesses among my acquaintances; in fact, we have formed something of a friendship based on the title itself. You see, to be a duchess means that every person you meet wil fawn, if he does not positively grovel.”

“Ah,” Roberta said, wondering if this was a veiled way of pointing out that she had not groveled appropriately.

“It is beyond tedious. It makes one stupid.”

“I believe,” Roberta said, “I would hazard the loss of my intel igence. And I am fairly certain,” she said, putting down her cup, “that a smal amount of fawning would be a pleasant antidote to Mrs. Grope’s opinions.”

“Dear me, Mrs. Grope does seem to enter your conversation with some regularity,” Jemma said. “Who is she?”

Roberta hesitated and then prevaricated. “I have had a limited circle of acquaintances in the past few years, and I would love to excise her from my mind.”

“And I am dithering on about duchesses. Therein another of my faults: I am incurably shal ow. Truthful y, Roberta, my duchess friends are quite like myself.”

“And that is so terrible?” Roberta was happily conscious that Jemma seemed almost a friend already—which surely implied that she, Roberta, was natural duchess material.

“Shal ow. Fickle when it comes to men—and you should take that in the worst possible light. This is not a household in which I can imagine a gently reared vicar’s daughter being comfortable. We are desperate in our affections and even more so in our general dislike for our husbands. Wel , those of us who
have
husbands.”

“What happened to the dukes?”

“Oh, the usual sort of things,” Jemma said with a shrug. “Beaumont and I separated years ago, as you must know. My friend Harriet wil pay me a visit today; her husband died two years ago, so she’s a widow. I have one friend, Poppy, who is so new to the duchess-business that she is barely wet behind the ears; she’s married to the Duke of Fletcher. Of al of us, I’d say Poppy is our only hope for a happy marital relationship, but she’s going about that al the wrong way. And then final y there’s my friend Isidore. She doesn’t quite count as a duchess, since she hasn’t married her duke yet. They’ve been engaged since birth, and she lives with his mother so if he ever returns from the Orient, or wherever he is, she’l take the title along with the man.”

“Since I am not a duchess,” Roberta offered, “are you quite certain that you wish my company at al ? Your acquaintances sound rarefied in the extreme.”

Jemma opened up her mouth to reply but the door opened and Fowle appeared. “Your Grace,” he said, “His Grace begs the kindness of a moment of your—”

Belying the courtesy of the butler’s request, the duke’s voice rose in the near distance, his words muffled but his fury clear.

Jemma put down her teacup. “I always forget how much I loathe living with a man,” she told Roberta. “Please do stay here comfortably with your cup of tea, while I reacquaint myself with the pleasures of marital strife.”

“Oh dear!” Roberta exclaimed, coming to her feet.

Jemma paused for a moment, obviously taking in the details of Roberta’s costume for the first time. “Tel me that your Mrs. Grope is a seamstress and you have my everlasting sympathy.”

Roberta felt herself turning pink. “No.”

“We shal clothe you,” Jemma said severely. “Though it pains me to say it, I would believe half the eccentricities ascribed to your father merely by examining your gown.” She was at the door before Roberta could answer. But what could she say? She too thought that Mrs. Parthnel had made a mistake by pairing a bodice of melon-colored stuff with a burgundy silk skirt.

A gently bred young lady would stay in the sitting room and ignore the fracas. Roberta headed directly after the duchess.

The duke was standing in the marble entry, looking remarkably like the il ustrations depicting his impassioned speeches to the House of Lords.

“He should go to the country,” the duke roared. “Where he can be apprenticed to learn a decent trade.”

“The child certainly wil not go to the country,” Jemma announced. “That is, unless Damon wishes him to do so.”

Roberta blinked. Who could the child in question be? Given that Jemma explicitly announced her mandate to produce an heir, it could hardly be hers.

“Wel , he isn’t coming into
my
house!” the duke snapped.

“My brother is coming to stay with me for a time,” Jemma retorted. “And his child, my nephew, natural y comes with him.”

“For Christ’s sake, send him to the care of a farmer!” Beaumont said. “You can’t bring him up to your own feckless ways, Gryffyn.”

Lord Gryffyn was lounging against the door to the drawing room with a muscled grace that bespoke a lighthearted demeanor rather than sober industry. “Teddy wil never be a farmer,” he said, apparently not turning a hair at Beaumont’s fury.

“You haven’t yet met him, or you’d realize there’s nothing of the farmer in his veins.”

“What is in his veins, then?” Beaumont snapped. “Don’t tel us you’re final y going to reveal the name of his mother?”

“Attila the Hun,” Lord Gryffyn said without blinking an eye.

“Not known for his maternal instincts,” Beaumont said scathingly.

“Nevertheless, Teddy has Attila’s blood in his veins,” Gryffyn said. “I can’t send him to the country because I have to keep him under my eye.”

“May I respectful y request that you keep him under your eye in your own house, rather than mine?”

Jemma intervened. “I asked Damon to live here, Beaumont, at least for a time, because I have missed him while I lived in Paris. And I have a nephew whom I have never met.”

“Did it occur to you that the presence of an il egitimate child in my house is not precisely helpful to my career?”

Roberta could sympathize with the duke. The London papers were bound to find the presence of Lord Gryffyn’s il egitimate child interesting, especial y in combination with the naked centerpiece and the return of the duchess.

“Your career, Beaumont, wil have to survive the presence of your family. May I remind you that we
are
that family?”

Jemma said with acid indifference. “Teddy is your nephew.” Her smile, a marvel of kindness, was met by Beaumont’s glowering fury. She waved toward Roberta. “You mistook my relative, Lady Roberta, for a charity worker, Beaumont. I shal be bringing her into society.”

Beaumont bowed frigidly in Roberta’s general direction. “And precisely how wil
you
do that?” he asked. “I can hardly believe that my notorious wife is going to curb her activities to suit the sensibilities of matchmaking mamas.”

“I shal consider it if it would stop you from bleating about your career,” Jemma said, turning away.

A look of such rage went across Beaumont’s face that Roberta blinked. Then he bowed to his duchess’s back, and once to Roberta, and was gone.

When Jemma turned around again, her cheeks had gone red and she was breathing quickly. “How shal I ever live with him?” she said, looking at her brother. “You see why I want you to move in, Damon? I can’t do it, I real y can’t.”

Her brother straightened. “I wil come for a visit if you truly wish me to, Jemma, but I think it would be easier for both of you if I didn’t.”

“I shan’t survive here otherwise, Damon. I can’t live with him.” Her fists were clenched. “You must stay with me so that I can have a greater acquaintance with my nephew. And—And I need you.” She smiled a little tearily at Roberta. “I’m so sorry about the scenes we’re played you today. We’re as good as a farce. Or perhaps I should say a tragedy.” Her voice wobbled a little.

Lord Gryffyn put his arm around his sister and bent his head close to hers, murmuring something.

Roberta felt an odd twinge in her chest. She’d never had a brother or sister. Since her mother died, her closest companion had been her father, and whichever of his consorts happened to be living with them.

She backed into the sitting room and sat down. A moment later Jemma fol owed with Lord Gryffyn.

“You must think us hopelessly il -mannered. I do apologize. Don’t take al those cakes,” she said, snatching the plate away from her brother. “My guest hasn’t even had one yet. Roberta, you must have one. Beaumont has an excel ent cook, and his ratafia cakes are delicious.”

“I haven’t even met Lady Roberta properly,” Lord Gryffyn pointed out.

“This is Damon Reeve, the Earl of Gryffyn,” Jemma said. “If I tel you that his best friends cal him Demon, you’l know precisely how unworthy he is. Beaumont was absolutely right about his laziness: he never does a worthy action al day.”

“A charming introduction,” Lord Gryffyn said. “Please cal me Damon. After al , we’re family members, as I understand.”

He took another cake.

The duchess took the plate away and put it on the floor between herself and Roberta. “Eat as many as you like,” she said to Roberta. “I know him of old, and if I don’t act quickly, there’l be none left for us.”

Gryffyn threw her an affectionate grin. “Beaumont had a point about his career, Jemma. Both of our reputations in the same smal space may wel damage it, not to mention Lady Roberta’s marital aspirations.”

“I missed you al these years,” Jemma said. “I’m not giving you up so soon, and I want to meet Teddy properly.” She turned to Roberta. “Damon’s son Teddy is just five years old.”

“He turned six last week, you unnatural aunt,” Gryffyn said. “I missed you too, Jemma. But I hardly want to cause the fraying of your marriage.”

Jemma snorted inelegantly.

“Beaumont doesn’t mean to be such an ass,” Gryffyn added.

“He just acts that way?” his sister said. “But enough airing our linen, dirty and otherwise, in front of Roberta. You must bring Teddy and his nanny this very afternoon.”

“Unfortunately, he has no nanny at the moment. Teddy has an annoying habit of escaping and the latest nanny stomped away in a temper yesterday.”

“Escaping? Where does he go?”

“Anywhere but the nursery. General y he goes to the stables during the day. And he wanders the house at night until he finds my chamber, and then he climbs in my bed. Last night he couldn’t find it, so he slept in the vestibule until I came home.

Marble floor. Cold, I should think.”

“My father had a dog like that,” Roberta said. And then clapped a hand over her mouth. “I didn’t mean to compare your son to a dog, my lord!”

“Please, you real y must cal me Damon,” he said, looking absolutely unmoved by the slur to his offspring. “Children are slightly doggish, don’t you think? They need so much training, and they have a dislikable habit of urinating in public places.”