My Dear Duchess (11 page)

He made a half turn to leave. “I find this conversation distasteful,” he said coldly. “Also, it is insulting to my wife.”

“I know I am behaving badly,” breathed Clarissa. “But I am so jealous of her.” This indeed held all the ring of truth. “I feel that I should settle for a conventional marriage. There, you see! I have decided to be sensible. I shall accept Mr. Ferrand perhaps.”

“Really, Clarissa,” protested the Duke. “What is it you want of me?”

“Just one kiss of farewell,” she said sadly. “Is it so much to ask?”

He looked at her doubtfully. “I suppose not. Now, if I kiss you, will you go back to the ballroom and try to forget all this nonsense.”

“Oh yes,” she sighed, winding her arms around his neck.

“See how closely they cling together,” whispered Jack Ferrand in Frederica’s ear. He had drawn the curtain a little way to reveal the Duke with Clarissa in his arms. He had waltzed her away from Mrs. Cholmley and across the dance floor after Clarissa and the Duke, praying that his timing would be right.

He was almost disappointed when Frederica neither went out on the terrace to make a scene or fled from the ballroom. With two burning spots of color on her cheeks, she returned to her guests and chatted and laughed in a high brittle voice until the evening finally came to an end and she could put her aching heart to bed and relieve her feelings in a bout of tears. Only Emily noticed that something was wrong and, had Frederica confided in her, then her troubles would have been at an end. For Emily was a forthright girl and would have challenged her brother on the spot. But Frederica wearily remembered that she had embarked on a marriage of convenience. She had no right to storm or rage at her husband.

She gave a shudder as she saw Jack Ferrand approaching with his usual charming smile. “My dear Duchess,” he whispered. “I am much distressed. It was surely a fleeting moment of weakness on the Duke’s part. After all.…”

“We do not discuss our private affairs,” said Frederica icily. “Be so good as to take your hand from our arm.”

Jack Ferrand raged inwardly. Damn her for her sneering ways. She should be heartbroken. He swallowed his venom and went on smoothly as if she had not spoken. “London is of course a whirl of delights at this time of year,” he said smoothly. “You must miss it.”

Frederica presented him with one black lace shoulder and began to talk to Mrs. Cholmley who called on her butler Stafford for translation. But the idea of London was already burning into Frederica’s brain. In London, she could make friends of her own, and be constantly absent from home, attending everything from Venetian breakfasts to turtle dinners. London should swallow her up, complete with her broken heart.

She smiled and curtsied to the departing guests, never once looking in her husband’s direction. She escaped nimbly to her room as soon as the last guest’s carriage had rumbled down the drive.

She stood as stiff as a wax doll while Benson undressed her, and then tumbled headlong into bed and buried her aching head beneath the pillows. She heard her husband’s light step in the corridor outside and then she heard him enter her sitting room. With a gasp, she flung herself from the bed and locked her door. A minute later, she heard him try the lock. If he had called to her, pleaded with her or said he loved her, she would have swallowed her pride and unlocked the door. But he only remained for a second outside and then she heard him slowly going away to his rooms on the other side of the corridor.

Well, she would declare her intention of returning to London in the morning. And… and… he could stay here with all these horrid servants for all she cared. She would be happy and popular and… and… be all the crack and have lots of beaux. And she would show her handsome husband that she did not care a jot.

And with that comforting thought, she put her head down on the pillow and cried herself to sleep.

The Westerland home in Grosvenor Square—if such a modest word as home could apply to the palatial town house—soon saw the Duke and Duchess back in residence.

The Duke had complied with his wife’s request because he had business in town and hoped that the social air would revive his young bride’s moping spirits. Yet he now found himself left alone too much with Clarissa for comfort as Frederica seemed to have a genius at absenting herself at all times of the day.

Unlike Chartsay, the town house had remained fairly untouched since the eighteenth century, boasting pastel tinted walls in the vast reception rooms and flock wallpaper in the private apartments. The carved staircase was a miracle of Grinling Gibbons art and, despite the fact that Mr. Walpole may have damned the classical fireplace as “little miscarriages into total Ionic,” Frederica felt more at home than in the splendor of Chartsay. Her bedroom reflected the Chinese vogue of the middle of the eighteenth century, having a splendid gold and black lacquered bed with a canopy of writhing scarlet dragons.

The old Duke had kept a completely separate staff at the Grosvenor Square residence, and the difference between it and the one in the country seemed to Frederica incredible. Under the iron rule of a well-trained butler, they were quick, deferential and polite. At the beginning, she had determined to assert herself by making changes on the daily menus presented to her. But these were received by the housekeeper with such smiling goodwill that she eventually left the army of servants to run things themselves since they seemed able to cope efficiently whether she interfered or not. Emily had helped her with a quick survey of the housekeeping accounts and, though the bills seemed horrifying to the as-yet unsophisticated Frederica, Emily assured her that they were quite the thing. She was not being taken advantage of in any way.

The new dashing Emily also suggested that she might modernize the house in the Duke’s absence, but to Frederica modern meant Mrs. Sayers’ passion for noisy and vulgar stripes. She preferred to retain the faded eighteenth-century elegance of her home.

The downstairs salon, mostly used for visitors, was the only modern room, being decorated in the current Egyptian mode with black and gold borders of sphinxes on the walls and sphinxes’ heads staring from the pilasters of the fireplace.

Frederica had plunged into an orgy of spending, buying greens and golds and crimsons for her wardrobe since she did not have to wear the unflattering pastels considered suitable for a debutante. Her circle of acquaintances grew and she became a familiar figure at the opera or in the park.

The Duke planned an expedition to Scotland to view his estates in the north. He naturally expected Frederica to go with him and was surprised when she announced her intention to remain in London. Where, he wondered grimly, was the shy miss who once took every opportunity to be alone with him? He was confronted instead by a dashing young matron who traced patterns in the carpet with the ivory tip of her parasol and refused to meet his eyes when she reminded him that theirs was a marriage of convenience. He felt hurt and angry but had to agree with her since he had clearly set the terms himself. He accordingly departed on his lonely journey for the north, unaware that as soon as his carriage had disappeared from view, his young bride cried as if her heart would break.

Frederica finally dried her eyes and could only be glad that her husband was far removed from Clarissa. Her step-sister had become a constant visitor and Frederica could not refuse her company. And every time Frederica took precedence far above her at a ball or assembly, Clarissa became more determined than ever to carry out Jack Ferrand’s wishes despite the hold he had over her.

Never by word or look had he referred to the dreadful night of the masquerade but his calm assumption that she should be ready to receive him at all hours of the day told of his power enough.

After the Duke had been absent for a month, Jack Ferrand made one of his abrupt calls on Clarissa. She came down the stairs tranquilly enough to meet him. There was little he could expect her to do with the Duke gone from town. And she had already set up some very promising flirtations which she wished to see mature undisturbed. Her heart sank as she entered the drawing room to find him pacing restlessly up and down. He whirled around as she came in and began without preamble. “Something must be done before Westerland returns,” he snapped. “Your dear sister has snubbed me on occasion after occasion and last night was enough! I solicited her hand for a dance at the Jennington’s ball and she said meekly that she had the headache and did not care to dance and the next minute I saw her waltzing off in the arms of that superannuated old fool, Giles Bellamy.”

“You have only yourself to blame,” remarked Clarissa spitefully. “You could not help gloating over her when she saw me and Henry together.”

He stopped his angry pacing. “I thought that would have been enough to break the marriage. But now I have another weapon for us to use.”

“Us?” questioned Clarissa faintly.

“You, rather, since your dear sister will not let me near her. There is a French
emigré
I know, of devastating charm and looks. He is low both in funds and in moral fibre—just what we need. He is plain Monsieur Duchesne but we shall rename him Le Comte Duchesne and furnish him with the necessary funds to keep up his appearance.”

“I don’t understand.…” began Clarissa but he interrupted her rudely.

“You never do, my hen-witted friend. The Comte is to lay seige to Frederica’s heart. She cannot love the Duke. You are sure there was no scene following the masquerade?”

“For the hundredth time NO,” snapped Clarissa. “She was very quiet, of course, but nothing out of the way.”

She looked up at him suddenly. “What have
I
to do with this so-called Comte? My part is simply to flirt with Henry which I can’t do at the moment.”

“You dull-witted jade,” he roared. “Frederica will not let me near her and would be suspicious of any friend of mine. The Comte shall escort you to the opera tonight and you will take him to your sister’s box. He will take things from there. But be careful! Archie Hefford is back in town and I don’t want him putting a spoke in our wheel.”

When he took his leave after some final instructions, Clarissa moved to the window and watched him crossing the square. She had a sudden longing to tell everything to the Duke on his return, but the thought of the consequences made her shudder.

Unaware of the dark plans that were circling around her head, Frederica wearily prepared for the opera that evening.

She found herself sometimes day-dreaming of Chartsay—a Chartsay without the Lawtons, a Chartsay filled with friends like the rector and his wife, friends one could be comfortable with for an evening instead of the constant straining conversation to be endured nightly with a host of new acquaintances. There would not be much consolation in the music tonight, she reflected. The opera was a place to see and be seen. The constant shuffling movement from box to box went on even during the performance. The top ten thousand were not happy unless they were all crushed shoulder to shoulder in some small suffocating place. With an expertise beyond her years, Frederica had learned to avoid the over-familiar overtures of some of her determined gallants.

Clarissa would no doubt be there, fluttering her eyelashes and telling the world how she doted on her little sister, and Mrs. Sayers would be waving her plump and mottled arms as she described the glories of Chartsay to her twittering circle of toadies. And Mrs. Byles-Bondish would be stage-managing in the background attired in some costly gown, the bill for which would be somewhere in Frederica’s desk.

Shortly after her return to town, Frederica had received a call from Mrs. Byles-Bondish. That stately if withered lady had announced to the startled Duchess that she had bespoke a new wardrobe and had requested that the bills be sent to Frederica. “For you know, my dear Duchess, as I am one of your family so to speak, you would not wish me to continue to appear as a dowd.” This effrontery was delivered in such a calm, well-bred manner that she had gone from the house before Frederica had even begun to think how she should cope with the situation.

She shuddered to think what her normally open-handed husband would say about it on his return, but her thoughts quickly returned to the present when the arrival of her escort for the evening was announced. With a little sigh she picked up her fan and prepared to descend the stairs.

Her escort for the evening had been carefully chosen. A young and languid Dandy by the name of Peregrine Pellington-James, he professed a passion for Frederica which was as false as his head of golden curls. Frederica had become the fashion in a small way and Mr. Pellington-James was merely following the fashion.

Though he flirted boldly in public, he was almost inarticulately shy in private and patently grateful to Frederica for allowing him to cut a dash in front of his friends.

He was a sturdy plump young man with a broad, rosy, countrified face which he hid behind a mask of white lead. He was as corsetted and beribboned and scented as Mrs. Sayers but managed to achieve the air of a bluff country squire unwillingly performing in a masquerade.

He swept Frederica a magnificent leg as she entered the room but the intricate whalebone in his corsets locked and he slowly keeled over on the carpet in front of her. Unabashed and trying not to giggle, Frederica rang the bell and summoned the aid of two burly footmen to straighten the distressed young man out, retiring tactfully to the corner of the room while they wrestled under his waistcoat and finally freed the interlocked stays with a snap like a pistol shot.

“And how do you do this evening?” asked Frederica politely when he had been stood upright again.

“Very well, I thankee,” said Mr. Pellington-James, waving a gossamer wisp of handkerchief and releasing a little yellow cloud of scent, strong enough to stun a cockroach at forty paces. “Is there any news of your husband?”

“I believe he is shortly to return,” lied Frederica. She did not want him to know how feverishly she searched the mail every morning, crying with disappointment each time not so much as a line arrived from the north.