My Dear Duchess (15 page)

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Authors: M.C. Beaton

BOOK: My Dear Duchess
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His agonies were not over. Before he could beat a retreat, the elderly Earl of Durr who was playing piquet at the table in front of Chuffy turned round abruptly and barked, “Damme, man! Don’t you know you’re on fire?” And seizing his glass of madeira, the noble Earl threw the contents straight onto Chuffy’s massive bosom.

Gathering the rags of his dignity and his waistcoat about his large form, Chuffy teetered off to change again for the ball.

Too late to secure Frederica for a dance, he contented himself by rocking back and forth on his preposterously high heels at the edge of the ballroom floor and mourning his lost waistcoat.

His lugubrious face brightened at the arrival of the Duke of Westerland. It was not often that members of the Corinthian set favored him with their friendship, and he had sensed in the tall Duke a kindness of spirit not often to be found in the members of his own set.

He titupped forward eagerly, missed his footing on the polished floor, and prostrated himself at the feet of one of the patronesses, Sally, Lady Jersey.

“There is no need to go to such extremes, Mr. Pellington-James,” trilled Lady Jersey. “A simple bow would be quite enough, I can assure you.” Then she ran away, flitting from group to group, her high voice carrying back to Chuffy’s red ears, “And,
my dear
. Isn’t it
killing
. I said, ‘A simple bow will be enough…’”

Poor Chuffy, He longed to pour his troubles into some sympathetic ear and looked for Frederica, but she was now dancing with her husband. Both were waltzing beautifully, both were looking at each other with hard, glittering smiles and both were obviously furious. It says a lot for Chuffy’s large and generous heart that this sight distressed him more than any of the humiliations of the evening.

“Well, madame,” the Duke was saying. “And did you not consider it important to wait at home for my arrival?”

“You did not ever care to write and tell me of your arrival,” snapped Frederica. “You expect too much, sir.”

“And what about this Comte you have been parading round with?” he demanded, doubly angry now that she had made him feel guilty.

“Oh, the Comte,” said Frederica faintly. She had a sudden vision of the Comte lying unconscious in the inn yard and the awful reality that she had a dangerous enemy—probably her husband—who would strike again.

She turned deathly white and swayed on her feet. “I have the headache,” she gasped. “Please take me home.”

The Duke bit back the angry remarks on his lips. What was there about this Comte which should make her so upset? But she looked indeed ill and he led her silently from the ballroom.

Silently they swayed side by side in their carriage through the dark London streets.

Silently they separated and went off to their respective rooms.

They could not have been further apart had Jack Ferrand’s plot to compromise her with the Comte succeeded.

Chapter Nine

The long summer passed, the Little Season began, and four people were absent from the social scene.

The Duke of Westerland, it was rumored, had thrown himself into modern agriculture in a way unheard of since the days of “Turnip” Townshend.

The Honorable Jack Ferrand had ridden to Barnet on the night of the ball at Almack’s to find the Comte nursing a bandaged head in the parlor of the posting house where Frederica had hired her chaise. He had ordered him to return immediately to France which the Comte promised to do… only after he had forced Mr. Ferrand to pay him a considerable sum to keep his mouth shut.

There was nothing left for Jack Ferrand to do but retire to his estates, increase the tenant’s taxes—to compensate for the sum paid to the Comte—and plan his next move.

Clarissa kept him informed by post of the cheering coldness in the ducal marriage.

And Frederica, Duchess of Westerland, had discovered the joys of reading.

Her youthful education had been scant. She had been allowed to benefit from the crumbs of wisdom left over from Clarissa’s tutoring—the fundamentals of reading and writing, some little use of the globes, needlework, water-color painting, and a little tutoring on the pianoforte. Once she discovered the little-used library at the back of the Grosvenor Square house she had plunged into an orgy of reading.

Now instead of boxes from the dressmaker, boxes of books appeared from Hatchard’s in Piccadilly. The other world held between the book covers removed her temporarily from the bitter reality of her own.

But time had passed and the nightmare of the Comte’s perfidy had begun to recede. The little she saw of her husband was at least enough to convince her that he certainly did not seem to hate her. In fact, he hardly seemed to notice her at all.

She began to wish she had confided in him. But she had since learned that ladies of the ton did not casually accept invitations to drive out unescorted unless they were setting up a new flirt. The more she reviewed her behavior, the crazier it seemed… and the crazier the Comte seemed. Perhaps there had been no plot against her at all and the Comte had simply been deranged. In a tranquil world composed of eating, sleeping, and reading, Frederica barely saw a soul, although sometimes Mr. Pellington-James dropped by to take tea, patently sad that the dashing Duchess showed no signs of dash any more.

He had decided to court Clarissa who was once again the reigning belle of the London scene, but she had laughed at him so cruelly that he quickly retired from the lists.

One wintry afternoon, when Frederica was happily esconced in front of a blazing fire in the library, Mr. Pellington-James positively burst into the room, triumphantly waving two tickets.

“Now you have got to come out of seclusion,” he cried. “I have purchased—at great expense, mind you—two tickets to see Romeo Coates.”

“Who on earth is Romeo Coates?” asked Frederica, putting down her book with a reluctant sigh. “A prize fighter?”

Chuffy raised his eyebrows and his hands in horror. “You have been out of the world too long. Romeo Coates. Diamond Coates. Curricle Coates. The Gifted Amateur.”

“What a lot of titles the gentleman seems to have amassed,” interrupted Frederica. “Who is he?”

“He is the newest rage,” cried Chuffy. “He is playing Romeo at the Haymarket tonight.” He went on to explain that Romeo Coates was in fact a Mr. Robert Coates of the West Indies who had achieved such fame in the part of Romeo that he had become known as Romeo Coates. He was one of the most famous sights of Long Acre as he flashed past in his scallop-shaped chariot, bedecked in furs and diamonds. Chuffy had gone through extraordinary machinations to procure the tickets. She just had to come.

Frederica hesitated. She had never seen Shakespeare performed on the stage although she had read almost all his plays during the last few months. But with a new-found awareness of the necessary proprieties attached to the title of Duchess, she said tentatively, “I do not know whether I should accept. My husband is at home and…”

“Oh, that’s all right,” said Chuffy. “Met Henry on the way in and told him about it. He lets me call him Henry, you know. And he said he had no objections to me squiring you.”

“Really? I have indeed a sweet and understanding husband,” said Frederica acidly.

But Chuffy was impervious to sarcasm. “Good! That’s settled. I have bought a whole new outfit for the occasion. You won’t be able to believe your eyes.”

He was right—Frederica could
not
believe her eyes when Chuffy proudly presented himself in the drawing room that evening.

He was dressed from head to foot in white silk. He wore a white silk jacket, white silk waistcoat and white silk knee breeches. Diamond brooches and buckles were pinned indiscriminately over his large form, and he wore a heavy powdered wig. He looked like a heavenly footman.

Frederica, who had been untroubled by eccentricity when she had been cutting a dash in town, now felt unaccountably shy. She had not wanted to be so noticeable on her first evening back in society. But Chuffy looked so radiantly pleased with his appearance, she had not the heart to disappoint him. With an innate sense of style she realized that if she dressed as extravagantly as Chuffy, he would somehow appear less ridiculous.

Chuffy had arrived early so she urged him to wait while she changed.

The Westerland family diamonds, reset and cleaned, had been presented to her by the Duke—that is, thought Frederica wryly, if one could consider handing them to the butler with a curt note, presenting them.

She chose an as-yet unworn ballgown of white silk with a silver gauze overdress and allowed her maid to clasp the heavy diamond collar round her neck. Her hairdresser redressed her hair in a suitable style to set off the little fairy-tale diamond tiara.

Chuffy’s eyes misted over with tears when he saw her. “Oh, wait till Lord Sackett sees us,” he gasped. “We shall be the cynosure, my dear Duchess.”

But startling as their appearance was, London Society was not far behind. The little theater was ablaze with jewels sparkling on men and women alike. It was packed to capacity and Frederica noticed with surprise that the rowdier of the Corinthian set had turned out in full force. She was puzzled. They would surely have been more at home in the cock-pit than at the performance of a Shakespeare play. Yet after Mr. Coates’ first entrance which was greeted with tumultuous cheers and cat calls, she began to understand why.

He was a most ridiculous, if magnificently dressed, figure.

He wore a species of silk, woven so as to give it the appearance of silver, and he was plastered with diamonds. He appeared inordinately fond of his legs which were encased in pink silk stockings. He kept holding up the action of the play by walking to the front of the stage to present his legs to their best advantage.

Such of the lines as she was able to hear above the noise were new to Frederica. “I do not recognize it,” she whispered to Chuffy. “Is it not Shakespeare then?”

Chuffy whispered back that Mr. Coates had said that he knew the Shakespeare play by heart but had been reported to have remarked airily, “I think I have improved on it.”

He had a most peculiar accent. Perfect was pronounced “purfet”, burden “barden”, and memory “memmary”.

He was mercilessly heckled by the boxes and would select the noisiest of his tormentors by pointing straight at their box and delivering himself of David Garrick’s famous lines:


Ye bucks of the boxes who roar and reel,
Too drunk to listen and too proud to feel
.”

Frederica was beginning to wish she had not come. The noise became deafening as a chorus of cockcrows arose from the pit. The unfortunate actor had chosen as his crest a cock with outspread wings and the motto, “While I live, I’ll crow.”

At the interval, Frederica saw Emily and her fiance Archie Hefford in one of the boxes opposite. She would have gone to visit them but Mr. Pellington-James advised her to stay. It was getting very rowdy, he told Frederica, and he wished he had not brought her. He, for one, could not understand the rude behaviour of the audience. Romeo Coates was the finest actor he had ever seen. Why… there was the Duke!

A moment later, poor Chuffy could have bitten off his tongue. He began to say that he had been mistaken but Frederica had already spied her husband in one of the lower boxes along with the fair charmer at his side. The girl was as young as Frederica but as blonde and beautiful as Clarissa.

The curtain mercifully arose again and she turned a rigid face to the stage. Her nightmare had just begun. Mr. Coates, it seemed, approved of the diamond-covered spectacle presented by Chuffy and Frederica, and played all his lines to their box. As Chuffy had promised, they were indeed the cynosure, but not in the way he expected.

The play survived into the fifth act when the sight of Romeo trying to break into Juliet’s tomb with a crowbar proved too much for the audience. Some women laughed so much they became hysterical and had to be carried out.

At long last, Romeo decided to die. He carefully dusted the stage with his handkerchief, spread the handkerchief out carefully, placed his expensive hat on it, and deigned finally to lie down on the stage.

This was greeted with a great ironic burst of applause whereupon Romeo solemnly rose to life, advanced towards the orchestra with a smug smile, and carefully arranged his legs in what he considered was their best position. Then he returned to die again, this time over the body of the unfortunate Juliet who was crying gustily with humiliation despite the fact that she was being paid double to endure the ordeal.

The curtain at last swung down and the house lights were lit. Of the Duke and his fair partner, there was no sign.

The couple made their way back to Grosvenor Square in silence. Chuffy felt terribly guilty. Lord Sackett had told him that Romeo Coates was the best actor in the world and now he felt he had been made a fool of, though, for his part, he could see nothing wrong with the fellow.

He stole a cautious look at his young companion. What on earth had made the Duke turn up at the play with that lightskirt? And he knew that Frederica was to be there—Chuffy himself had told him.

Frederica was terribly angry. When she considered the incredible effort it had taken her to go about as if nothing had happened after the Comte’s abduction in order to protect the name of Westerland, and when she considered the long restless nights of nightmares where the Comte’s green eyes had come to haunt her, and all to be suffered alone, she felt like strangling the handsome Duke.

Giving poor Chuffy an abrupt goodnight, she swept into the mansion only to find that her husband had not yet returned. “When His Grace returns,” she told the startled butler, “please inform him that I am in the library.”

Still dressed in her finery, she ordered the fire in the library to be made up and prepared to wait.

It was three o’clock in the morning before the Duke fumbled his way into the hallway of his home. Worthing, the butler, informed him in hushed tones that Her Grace was waiting for him in the library and watched with anxious eyes as His Grace tacked across the hall in that direction.

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