The Accidental Duchess (22 page)

Until that day Lydia had not been aware that some of London’s prostitutes were children.

She began to take her leave. “I do not know when I will be back, Mrs. Beattie. It could be that someone else will bring anything I have for you in the future.”

“That might be wise, although Mrs. Kerry will be heartbroken she was not here to see you one last time. Still, with your marriage and new position, it would probably not be appropriate being seen at our door.”

Lydia collected Sarah and left the house, thinking how no one had noticed her at the door in the past. It should not matter in the future, but of course it did.

As soon as she stepped outside, the evidence of that greeted her. The last person who should see her here stood beside his horse.

 • • • 

“W
hat a surprise,” Lydia said, walking toward him. “It is unfortunate you did not follow me in a carriage.”

Penthurst gave Sarah a direct look that had her peeling away at once. When he and Lydia were alone, he spoke. “What is this place?”

“A school.”

He peered at the façade. “For girls? I keep seeing their faces at the windows.”

“You would attract attention. I doubt they have ever seen such a fine horse before either.”

“Let us walk, then, so my presence does not interfere with their lessons.”

They paced slowly down the lane. The area was residential, and not far from Hanover Square. No doubt some widow had formed a small school in her home, as happened with some frequency.

“Why are you visiting a girls’ school, Lydia?”

She chewed over her answer so long he began doubting there would be one.

“It is not your typical school,” she said.

“I am not surprised. If you visited it, I just assumed it was unusual.”

“The girls in there are young. The youngest is eleven and the oldest fifteen. The women who own this house and run this school found all of them in brothels. They buy the girls’ freedom and bring them here and educate them for another life.” She said it in one long, agitated sentence.

“That is very good of them.”

“Aren’t you shocked in the least? They are
little girls
. I refused to believe it. Then I learned it was true, to my horror. And no one calls out the gentlemen who misuse them. Those men go back to their clubs and estates and lands with no punishment.” Her anger rose with each word.

It was the kind of depravity men hoped their mothers, wives, and sisters never learned about. “You do not know they are all gentlemen, Lydia.”

“Don’t I? I was told by the owner of one of those places that the young ones are very, very expensive.”

He took her hand in his. He lifted it to a kiss, then held it. “If I had my way, they would be hanged. Right now, however, I am wondering how you came to speak to the proprietor of a brothel. No, no—do not tell me. I expect you made the most extraordinary morning call that any gentleman’s daughter has ever made.”

“I had to know if it was true, didn’t I?”

“I suppose
you
did.” He turned them to retrace their steps. “I have a confession to make. I saw you and Sarah in the park. I thought you had only gone there so she could watch the militia. Imagine my surprise when you did not return home afterward, but walked to a pawn shop on the Strand. I hope whatever you gave the man was not of great or sentimental value.”

“No.” She gave him a very sharp glance. “You followed me.”

“I did. Do not ask me how I dared such a thing. A husband is bound to be curious when his wife walks all over town when there are carriages and horses available.”

“It does not anger me that you dared such things. It angers me that I am in a situation where someone has the right to dare such things.”

That was a subject best side-stepped, although he guessed they would discuss it plenty in the years to come.

He gestured to the school. “Did you give them the money from the pawnbroker? Was this the thing you wanted your own money for?”

“One of the things. Please do not tell me that a duchess should not dirty herself with such charity. They are only children, and not responsible for their sordid pasts.”

“I will not tell you that.”

They arrived back at his horse. Sarah stayed two houses down, so she would not overhear. “I should have asked you what you did with your gambling profits. I never even wondered, Lydia. I just assumed you spent it as woman do.”

“At first, I put some aside for a tour of the continent after the war ended. Since it looks like the war will never end, I found other ways to use it.”

“Generous ways. I misjudged you. Forgive me. But—why did you never tell anyone? It is a good thing you do, and nothing to hide.”

“I was not hiding it as such, only keeping it to myself. For myself. It was the one thing I did without any help, and I liked the feeling it gave me.”

“Rather like mounting and riding a horse on your own the first time.”

“Yes, much like that. You do understand!”

Not entirely. And of course most women never mounted horses on their own.

“You speak in the past tense, Lydia. You do not have to stop. You can do much more for them now if you like.”

“If you are offering to fund a larger contribution, I must accept. However, a part of my joy in this is over. I knew it was when I came here today. Even if you allowed me to return to the tables, this can never be how it was.”

“I never thought I would feel guilty making a woman a duchess, but you come close to evoking that reaction, Lydia.”

She tilted back her head and looked at him thoughtfully. “How guilty do you feel?”

“What do you mean?”

“Do you feel a thousand pounds guilty? Two thousand? They would be secure if they had a trust and a regular income.”

“I expect we can do that. It does not change that you have lost a spirit of independence that mattered to you.”

“I have to grow up and accept a woman’s lot eventually. Since mine is a luxurious one, it would be sinful to complain. Before I don all of a woman’s shackles, however, there is something I need to know. For myself alone. It does not concern you at all. I will have to make a journey, however, because I do not think the answers that I seek are here.”

How had they gotten from her charity to her leaving him? “Where are they?”

“Hampshire, I think.”

He experienced untold relief. He had half expected her to say America or Russia. Then a bit of concern colored his reaction. The questions may not concern him at all, but that did not mean the answers would not.

This was about Lakewood. He just knew it. Felt it. He cursed that he had waited to request the list in his pocket. He should have never allowed his sentimental concern for Lakewood’s reputation to compromise his explanation of that duel, or his ferreting out the whole truth.

“I think not, Lydia. Maybe next summer.”

“Please reconsider. I want to go there, to my aunt’s cottage. I need to think about something, and that will be the best place to do so honestly.” She managed to appear helpless and begging and sultry and promising all at the same time. If he did not care about her, it would have no effect, but he did, so he started wavering.

Still, he did not like it. Lydia alone in a cottage half a country away did not suit him at all. His own thought caught him up short. Suit him. He should think what would suit her.

He calculated the journey there and back and the days she might be gone. A fortnight at least. It seemed a long time.

“I may as well give my permission. If I do not, you will find a way to do it anyway. You must take Sarah, however, and the coachman must stay nearby.”

Her pleased expression captivated him. He bent to kiss her, thinking that having a husband’s right to tell a woman what to do was not worth much in reality.

A muffled, squeaky cheer leaked out of the house. He looked to the building. Ghostly faces showed behind the wavy panes of the windows. A few opened and little hands appeared, clapping.

Lydia looked behind, toward the cheer, and laughed. “We were indiscreet. Now, should Sarah and I ride home and you walk, or do you think we can hire a carriage near here?”

L
ydia stared at the cottage while the coachman carried in the trunks. Sarah had already entered, to assess their lodgings.

She wondered if she had erred in coming. Even now, without so much as seeing one chamber or walking one lane, nostalgia drenched her. Worse, it fell from a cloud that she knew too well and whose power she thought she had finally escaped.

The coachman approached her. “I’ve carried in some wood and water. I’ll take a chamber at that inn we passed in the village a few miles back, Madam. I’ll come every morning to see if you’ll be wanting the carriage brought to you that day.”

“I will not need it tomorrow.”

“I’ll be coming anyway, Madam. The duke instructed me to do so.”

He returned to the carriage. Sarah appeared at the door.

“I always thought this was a charming cottage, milady. I like how the kitchen is built on in the back, so I’ll not have to be carrying food from an outbuilding.”

Lydia stepped inside, and waited for the cloud to fall.

It didn’t. Relieved and emboldened, she wandered through the chambers that she had shared with Aunt Amelia those months. She had come on a mission of sympathy, to be a companion to a new widow still deep in grief, but she had also known that her aunt would be too self-absorbed to pay much attention to her. And she had hoped as hard as any girl ever did that the young man who had stolen her heart might appear at the door.

He had hinted he might. Lakewood had a bit of property somewhere near here. A stamp of land, he had called it, referring to its very small size. He had inherited a title, but not much of an estate. She had always thought he handled that with impressive grace. He never expressed envy of her brother, or resentment of his own lack of fortune.

Sarah skipped to the back of the house. Soon the sounds of pots and pans rang through the cottage. Lydia followed to find her rearranging the place to her liking.

“I will put it all back before we leave,” Sarah explained. “It doesn’t make sense to me to have the pots over there.”

Lydia gazed out the window to the garden. She saw herself out there, strolling with Lakewood, laughing.

An arm came around her. Sarah rested her head against her own and looked out too. “I hope you did not come here to be sad again, Deea.”

“That was not my intention.”

“You hardly spoke of it, but I knew you had hopes. Who wouldn’t? All those walks together. He visited often enough to raise your expectations.”

He had visited too often if he did not plan to fulfill those expectations. Perhaps he had. If not for the duel, maybe she would have eloped with a different man, two springs ago. It wasn’t as if Southwaite would have reacted well to an offer for her hand from Lakewood. Aside from his poor fortune, Emma said he had been claiming undying love for Cassandra back then.

She pulled herself out of the memories. “I will help you put away the food we bought, then you can make a pie.”

An hour later, while Lydia cut apples and Sarah mixed pastry, Sarah spoke into the silent peace of their camaraderie. “His name is Jonathan Peace. My citizen soldier. Peace with an
ea
.”

“That is a nice name.”

“He grew up in Kent, like me, but not near the coast.”

“It sounds like the two of you have spoken to each other.”

Sarah blushed. “He helps with the horses at the White Swan, and comes around a bit. I’ve not neglected my duties or—”

“I did not think you had, Sarah. Is the man as nice as his smile?”

“I think so. He wants to court me properly. I told him I would ask you for permission.”

“You do not need anyone’s permission to accept a man’s attentions, Sarah. I will tell the housekeeper that she is to allow him to wait for you down in the servants’ sitting room, and not object if you walk out with him.”

Sarah pressed the pastry into its pan. “You need to cut those apples thicker or they will turn to mush.”

Lydia tried to make the slices thicker. “I am glad a decent man whom you find attractive wants to court you, Sarah. I am happy for you.”

Sarah set to grating sugar off the small cone they had brought. “And I am happy for you too. I can say that to Deea, but it would not be my place to say it to milady the duchess.”

“You are? Why?”

“Because of the duke, of course. He likes you more than such men have to like their wives. I see it in him when he watches you.”

Did he like her? Was their growing comfort more than just two people accommodating the inevitable, or the result of the physical intimacies of marriage?

She set down the knife and wiped her hands. Sarah started heaping the apples into the pastry.

Lydia went to the sitting room and took her spencer from a peg. “I am going to take some air in the garden, Sarah. I will return soon.”

She stepped through the garden door and looked at the familiar plantings. Her aunt had not been here in several months, but the caretaker maintained the property well. She spied the stone bench at the far end of the center path. In summer the shrubbery obscured it more from the house, but those leaves now skimmed along the ground, yellow and dry.

She could do this. She was not that infatuated girl anymore. She would conquer the fear and sadness. She would not hide in the cloud again, not ever. One can’t see much from within a cloud, for one thing. Perhaps that had been its appeal.

She strode toward the bench, and toward the past.

 • • • 

F
airbourne’s auction house had become known for its grand previews. A crush of notables filled this one. Penthurst attended without his duchess. After drinking good wine with the prime minister and pawing through the books alongside the prince, he turned critical eyes on the paintings.

The event distracted him from the thoughts racing through his mind these days. He had spent the last week seeking out the men whose names were on the list he had received from the War Office. They were all suspected of having bought the influence that garnered them a commission. Five of them had admitted to him that they paid Lakewood for arranging the recommendation of an earl or duke. Lakewood had not limited himself to their circle, it seemed.

Other than those confirmations that the scheme had been larger than guessed, little information had come to him. There had been a few other sightings of some woman, but she had possibly been Lakewood’s current mistress. He might have sworn unrequited love for Cassandra, but he had never stopped pursuing other women.

So the threatening scandal would have been bigger than Penthurst had known the morning of the duel. Big enough to cause the despair that would make a man arrange to die?

Southwaite and Emma found him while he peered at a landscape as his mind went over it all again.

“You appeared so interested in that van Ruisdael that Emma felt obliged to come and urge you to bid on it,” Southwaite said.

“I do not intend to urge at all,” she said. “That is Mr. Fairbourne’s duty, not mine.” She glanced to where her brother enjoyed the party rather too much, and neglected the duty she described.

“You look beautiful and happy, Lady Southwaite.” It was the honest truth. Emma was not the most beautiful of women, but she had always had something compelling about her, and being in the family way enhanced that indescribable quality.

“That is because I am relieved this preview is such a success. Will you attend the auction tomorrow?”

“I expect so. It will occupy me for a few hours now that I am a bachelor again.”

Southwaite laughed. Emma did not. She looked to the other side of the large exhibition hall, where Cassandra chatted with Kendale and his wife, Marielle. “Please tell me the truth. Did Lydia leave town so she could avoid us tonight without being bluntly rude? Cassandra and I will be heartbroken if it is true, and if we offended her, we need to make amends.”

“I do not know what was said among you, but I do not think she was offended. Her absence from town is not to avoid this invitation, or you, I am sure.”

“More likely it is to avoid him,” Southwaite quipped, jabbing his thumb in Penthurst’s direction.

“I am sure that is not true,” Emma said.

He was not sure of much anymore, where Lydia was concerned. She had written twice—brief, empty letters that could have been sent by a passing acquaintance.

Kendale, Ambury, and their wives came over. The ladies peeled away to examine the jewelry.

“Are you enjoying the monk’s life?” Ambury asked.

“There are unexpected benefits. I am being reacquainted with my aunt, for one thing. She seeks me out no matter where I hide, to fill my ears with gossip.”

“I’m sure you have had a lot of time to read at night too. It is always good to exercise one’s mind,” Ambury said.

“A respite from the other kind of night exercise in which you have been indulging recently can be reinvigorating too,” Southwaite said. “Or so I have been told.”

“A bit early for that, I would think,” Kendale said. “Early for a separation too, no matter how brief. Did she wear you out as Southwaite says, Penthurst? Or was there a row?”

Southwaite hung his head and shook it slowly in amazement. Ambury grasped Kendale’s shoulder with tight fingers and leaned into him. “Southwaite was joking. And we don’t ask each other about the other thing.”

“You mean the rows with wives?”

“Yes, I mean the rows.”

Kendale cleared his throat. “Sorry.”

“There was no row,” Penthurst said.

“Of course there wasn’t,” Ambury said. “No one except Kendale ever wondered.”

“No one,” Southwaite echoed.

“She knows she must start a long round of calls and receptions, and has gone to the country to rest before embarking on those duties.” It spilled out, sounding almost reasonable.

When he had agreed for Lydia to go to Hampshire, he had never thought how odd it would look for her to leave so soon after the wedding. If his own friends found it peculiar, the rest of the people in this hall must be spinning all kinds of unflattering suppositions.

“That was probably wise of her,” Ambury said. “Resting, that is.”

“So, she did not wear you out. You wore
her
out,” Kendale said.

Ambury threw up his hands. “Zeus, will you think—”

“I am the one joking now. Penthurst sees the humor even if you do not.”

He did see the joke, but not the one Kendale intended. He had been very careful not to wear her out, as Kendale put it. Lydia was a passionate woman, but it had not been a love match, after all.
He
had not been the great love of her life.

Yet, the nights since she had left had been torture. Normally he did not find periods of abstinence hard to bear. This one was driving him mad. He did not just want relief either. He wanted her.

Cassandra gestured for Ambury to join her at the jewelry.

“Uh, oh,” he muttered. “This is going to be expensive. Come with me, Southwaite, and pull away your wife so she does not convince Cassandra to bid on half the case.”

They walked away, which left him drinking wine with only Kendale.

“Do you miss her?” Kendale asked.

It was another question that men did not ask each other, unless they were the closest of friends, which he and Kendale were not. But then Kendale had even less finesse in talking about women than he had in other areas of conversation.

Kendale’s gaze settled on the ladies bent to the jewelry case, and in particular on the willowy, elegant one who was his wife. The look in his eyes said he knew what his own answer to the question would be.

“Yes, Kendale. I miss her.”

 • • • 

T
he preview was nearing its end when Penthurst saw Ambury standing alone. He walked over. “I have another small way you can help me with my investigation of Lakewood’s activities.”

“Whom do you want me to find?”

“No one. I only need some information.”

“Tell me what it is. If it can be found, I will find it.”

“It can best be obtained from one person. You.”

Ambury looked at him. “Damn.”

“You knew him best, Ambury.”

“The hell I did.”

“The longest at least.”

“Damn.”

“If you would rather not—”

“No. Better it be me.”

He might as well have said
,
Let us not alert anyone else to how much he was a scoundrel. Perhaps something of his good name can still be saved.

They went out to the garden to have some privacy. The night had chilled enough that their breath showed.

“What do you want to know?”

“Did he ever have a mistress with red hair?”

“You want to know about his lovers?”

“Only the red-haired ones.”

Ambury thought about it. “He did not have mistresses as such. Not the sort he would introduce to friends. There were women, of course. I’d see him with one sometimes. About five years ago I saw him in town with a woman with hair more chestnut than red. She was striking, so I looked twice. No way to know if that is what she was to him, though.”

It was not much. It might not even be the same woman Greenly and the others saw. A lot of women had red hair.

“Tell me about his estate.”

Ambury laughed. “You know he inherited very little.”

“So little he never spoke of it. That is why I am asking you.”

“He chafed at his lack of fortune. It had to be hard on him, especially with you and Southwaite as friends. I at least had my father keeping me poor for a while.”

“Perhaps that is how he justified using us. We had so much, he had so little, surely we would not mind his helping himself to a few pounds with our unknowing aid.”

“More likely he counted on our never finding out, and was prepared to lose the friendships if we did.”

Ambury sounded more bitter than Penthurst felt, but then the disillusionment was fresh still with Ambury.

“He always hoped to make a good marriage, of course,” Ambury said. “After that business with Cassandra, that became less likely.”

“Was he in debt?”

“Less than you would think. No expectations mean not much credit.”

“He had some property, however. I recall once when he spoke of it in passing.”