The Accidental Duchess (21 page)

“A sad business,” Amelia said, shaking her head.

“I think you should tell the duke to lecture me on gratitude and humility, Rosalyn, although he may not understand why my gratitude should be toward
you
.”

Rosalyn decided to ignore her challenge in favor of Amelia’s agreement. “I trust you have not been too embarrassed by those rumors coming out of Buxton, Amelia, dear.”

Amelia hung her head. “Not too much. Although there were a few cruel things said in my hearing the first few days, the duke’s threats have moved that from drawing rooms to boudoirs. I suppose after what happened with the Baron Lakewood, everyone believes he will duel if there is gossip. So sad that was too. I always thought the baron was a nice man, and very kind.”

Rosalyn glared at Amelia. It took poor Amelia a good ten count to realize her terrible faux pas. Her face fell in dismay. “Not that I in any way question the rightness of it. Honor is honor, of course.” She looked desperately from Rosalyn to Lydia, close to tears. “I am not such a good judge of character. I am sure he was wicked just as Mr. Trilby seems to be.”

“There is nothing wrong with liking a man who showed you considerable kindness,” Lydia said.

“He did, didn’t he? Especially that spring after my dear Harold passed away. You remember, Lydia? You were with me for part of my time at the cottage. He would come to call when he came down from town, and sometimes even brought friends, to draw me out of myself.”

“I do remember.” Although he brought no friends during her visit, because after he attended to Aunt Amelia, he would spend the afternoon with her niece. “You are not obligated to condemn him just because you are drinking tea with relatives of the man who shot him. Isn’t that right, Rosalyn?”

Rosalyn’s ire faded. “Of course. Although, Amelia, you are correct about your inability to judge character.”

Amelia was quick to agree. In fact she spent the rest of the visit agreeing with everything Rosalyn said, even when Rosalyn opined that Lydia would be wise to place herself totally and unconditionally in Rosalyn’s hands while she learned her duties.

Rendered an object of discussion rather than being a discussant herself, Lydia waited out the hour. At its conclusion she saw Rosalyn into the carriage, but did not enter herself.

“Forgive me, but I left a glove. I will return in a thrice,” she said.

“Send the footman—”

But Lydia had already reached the door.

She went back to her aunt. “I need to ask you something. Has there been any trouble at your cottage in Hampshire? Evidence of trespassing, or of theft?”

“Theft! Goodness, why would you think that? All appears in order when I go down. I have not noticed anything missing.”

“Has the caretaker ever written of”—Of what?—“anything out of the ordinary?”

Aunt Amelia gave it some thought, shaking her head even as she did. “If he ever did, it was not notable enough for me to recall it now.”

Lydia did not know if that was good news or not. How much easier if she learned the house had been ransacked last winter.

After returning Rosalyn to Grosvenor Square, she had the carriage take her to Aunt Hortense.

She heard little of what Hortense said while they sat in her private sitting room. Her aunt never needed strict attention to hold a conversation, since her own voice interested her more than anyone else’s. While Hortense pontificated on everything from politics to fashion, Lydia laid some plans.

Perhaps it was time to learn if Lakewood had been Aunt Amelia’s nice, kind man, or Cassandra’s scoundrel. In the least, it might be time to find out which he had been with Lydia Alfreton. Unfortunately, the answer lay in memories that she had worked hard to shut away.

They would never come to her here in London. Too many other people here had opinions about him, and each one influenced her. Penthurst’s criticisms in particular had shaken her faith badly.

She wished she could claim that she had woken after their night together secure in her own view of the great love she had thrown in his face. Instead she had met the dawn enclosed in his embrace, and spent an hour pretending to sleep so she might remain in that warmth while she doubted herself. Had she been so infatuated with Lakewood that she never really knew him?

It was time to find out about that too. If she really wanted to know the truth, she needed to go where the truth could be found. It lay in her own mind, and in her own heart. And in Hampshire.

 • • • 

T
wo nights later Lydia jumped out of Penthurst’s carriage and strode to the door of the house. She breezed past the servant who opened it, then quickly walked to the library. Empty. She retraced her steps.

“Where is he?”

“The duke is in his study,” the butler said.

That meant he dealt with estate business. Normally she would not interrupt, but this was not a normal night. She marched up the stairs, and to the door of the study that sat at the end of his apartment. She did not request entry, but walked right in.

He sat on a chair with an oil lamp on a nearby table. His hounds lulled at his feet. A stack of papers and parchments covered his lap. He concentrated on them so much that it took him a few moments to become aware of her presence.

“Lydia.” His gaze swept over her. “You look lovely tonight. Where did you go? The theater?”

“No, I went to Mrs. Burton’s for a while. A very brief while. Of course you know what I discovered.”

“Unless you went only to observe, I do indeed.” He appeared vaguely amused.

She could not believe his calm, but then he had not been the one embarrassed in front of a salon full of people. “Mrs. B said I could no longer game there. She said you had written to inform her of this. How dare you!”

“How
dare I
?” Any amusement disappeared. “Remember that you are talking to your husband, Lydia. I have the right to dare whatever I choose.”

“I do not accept that you have the right to do this just because you choose to. Worse, you did not even tell me. I think you wanted me to be turned away. I think you wanted the whole world to see that you controlled me now.”

“Only a woman who has never known control would think you now suffered it. Do not try my patience or I will follow my better judgment and make sure you behave exactly as I believe you should.”

She collected herself so her anger would not push this into a huge row. She would be calm too, and rational. He was not an unreasonable man.

“You said I could still visit the tables.”

“I said until you lost one hundred a year. You have already lost more than that this year. To me alone. So you are done until January.”

“That was one wager. I am well ahead for the year. I was even ahead that night.”

“With me, you were down. A holiday from the tables is in order, anyway.”

“That is not fair. It is how I earn money. The only way I can. I have expenses.”

“You have no need to earn money. If you need money, I will give it to you.”

“Then it is
your
money. There are things I want
my
money for. So I can do what I like with it, without permission from anyone.” He was not looking reasonable at all. Quite the opposite. “Not for anything bad or dangerous or even stupid. Certainly not for jewels or silks. You are welcome to spend your money on those things for me.”

“Not dangerous or bad. Not luxuries. Then, what?”

How to explain it? Could any man even understand? Rich or poor, they always had their own money of some amount, to use according to their own judgment. They never had to ask brothers or husbands or trustees, or explain what they intended to do. They did not have settlements that decreed allowances or pin money to be used with their own discretion, but clearly delineated and arranged by lawyers to come from their husbands.

“I should be able to have or do things that are just mine. That begin and end with me. Nothing is like that unless I obtain money on my own. If I use yours, or my brother’s, it isn’t the same. It is not fully mine. Is that so hard to understand?”

“Nigh impossible to understand. Your objections are only the dying embers of your girlish rebellions. I informed the gaming halls not to accept you, for your own good. If you do not like it, I am sorry. I am responsible for you now, and I have decided that you need a long break from gambling. It does nothing but get you into trouble. Hell, it was what got you stuck in this marriage you did not want.”

“My wagers with you did not stick me here!”

“Your visit to Buxton did. Why else would you go there, except to gamble far from the eyes of those who might tell Southwaite?”

Why else indeed? How had his high-handed behavior ended up with her at a loss for words?

She found some anyway. “I do not accept this. I will not have it. As for a marriage I did not want, I was beginning to think I did not mind that so much anymore, but you have convinced me otherwise yet again.”

She walked out on him, and ran to her bedchamber. What a pigheaded man. He had no idea how he interfered with matters of importance to her. Nor did he care. His Grace had made a decision, and he expected her to accept it. She should let Trilby do his worst, and let His Grace face the scandal and disgrace that Trilby would cook up.

That notion sobered her. Her indignation cooled in a snap. Any scandal would be horrible for her, but much worse for him. Humiliation could be as bad as a noose for a man.

She pulled out her purse and counted what money she had. Her brother’s two fifty would take care of Trilby for a few months at least. She would send it to him tomorrow. As for the other demands on her purse, the one she had intended to cover with tonight’s winnings, she could either put them off until the first of her pin money arrived, ask the duke for it, or raise it another way.

She went to her dressing room. Sarah sat, bent to a lamp’s light, mending the nightdress Lydia had worn the night she helped Penthurst wash. In the throes of their passion it had ripped at one seam.

“Sarah, we need to take one of our walks tomorrow morning.”

“To the park?”

“We can go there first if you like, but I need to visit a shop on the Strand after that.”

“All the way from the park to the Strand?” Sarah groaned. “Not far along the Strand, I hope.”

“It is not so far that you will faint. The memory of your citizen soldier’s smiles should keep your steps light all the way.”

Sarah returned to plying her needle. “What will we be doing, that you don’t want to use the duke’s carriages or servants?”

Fanning the embers of my girlish rebellions
. “Never you mind what. Just be sure to have me awake and dressed before nine o’clock.”

 • • • 

T
he next morning Penthurst dressed early. He expected a full day, and not one to anticipate with joy. While his valet buffed his boots, he reread a letter he had received late the day before. It mostly consisted of a list of names and had been sent to him from the War Office.

He thought about Lydia, sleeping on the other side of the wall. If his queries into Lakewood’s activities bore the rotten fruit he feared, she would not thank him. Cassandra’s comments on Lakewood’s character might have prompted the start of disillusionment, but Lydia was fighting its completion.

The chance existed that nothing more would be found. His instincts did not believe that, but he hoped that would be the case for her sake. While he would not mind ending her memories of her girlish infatuation, he also did not want to see how that would hurt her.

He slid the letter into his coat pocket. When he began this investigation, he had hoped to silence questions that whispered in his head and kept that duel from receding into the past. Now he debated whether his own need to know outweighed her need to believe.

Polished and preened, he walked toward the door to her chamber, to see if she had woken yet. Considering his mission today, he would like to smooth the troubled waters stirred by last night’s argument.

“The duchess is not there,” his valet said while he replaced his brushes in their drawer. “I saw her and her woman walking out when I was opening the window a few minutes ago.”

It was barely nine o’clock. Where could they be going at this hour?

Lydia’s penchant for unusual behavior prodded at him as he went down and waited for his horse to be brought around. After last night, she might be deliberately doing something extraordinary, just to prove she could.

He sat in the saddle for a long count, debating. Although still of two minds, and weighing the demands of that list in his pocket, he turned his horse toward Hyde Park.

 • • • 

“T
hank you,” Mrs. Beattie said. “Your continued patronage will be a great relief to Mrs. Kerry. She feared your change in circumstances might lead to changes in this as well.”

“I hope that does not happen.” But Lydia could not promise it would not. “I am sorry it is not more.”

“As it is, it will feed everyone for months, and allow us to admit a few more guests.”

Mrs. Beattie and Mrs. Kerry always called the inmates of this house guests. While they were not family, and were free to come and go, Lydia still thought the appellation charming.

Reformers of the best kind, the two woman served as mothers, teachers, confessors, and guardians to the thirty girls who slept in the beds lining the chambers and attics.

“Two of the girls were taken into service by a family in Essex,” Mrs. Beattie reported. “Another has apprenticed with a dressmaker.” She fingered the banknotes that lay on the table between their chairs. “Your last act of kindness allowed her fee to be paid.”

Lydia asked after a few other girls who had left in the last year. Mrs. Beattie described their success, and in two cases, their failures. “They went back,” she said sadly. “It always breaks Mrs. Kerry’s heart when that happens, but I tell her to remember the triumphs, not the defeats.”

“Back” was to the brothels of the City. Lydia had learned of this house from Aunt Hortense. Buried in one of her soliloquies a year ago had been her outrage that a place such as this was permitted in the decent, solid neighborhood near Hanover Square, where one of her friends lived. It appalled her that Mrs. Kerry, the widow of a merchant, had turned her home into a school for whores.