Christmas with the Duchess (2 page)

Lady Susan was taken aback.

“The duchess is here?” she snarled. “That shameless hussy! That—that Jezebel!”

“Where?” cried the general.

Lady Susan ignored him as he barked at his own little joke. “How could you let this happen, Harriet? You should have sent the hounds after her.”

“She has dower rights, Susan,” Lady Harriet calmly replied.

“To be sure, she has dower rights,” replied Lady Susan. “But that doesn’t give her the right to descend upon us any time she pleases!”

“Of course it does, you half-wit,” Lady Harriet said impatiently.

“You should have informed me, Sister,” Lady Susan insisted. “I would have put a stop to her insolence. I would have sent the strumpet on her way.”

Lady Harriet looked innocent. “You mean you didn’t get my letter? How strange!”

Lady Susan glared at her, recognizing that her own favorite ploy had been used against her. “Very strange indeed, Sister!”

“You women and your letters!” scoffed General Bellamy. “Will you never learn to address them properly? The postman is not a mind reader, you know.”

“Carstairs will show you to your apartment,” Lady Harriet said smoothly, beckoning for the butler. “I’ve put you in Poland.”

Lady Susan was incensed. “Poland? Poland! You will not put
me
in Poland, I promise you! Do you hear me, Harriet?” she roared, bustling after her sister as the latter quietly withdrew up the stairs. “I will not be treated like this.”

Left to his own devices, General Bellamy scurried off to meet a certain wide-hipped brunette for a quick tryst in the linen cupboard.

“If you won’t listen to my advice, Emma, there’s nothing I can do,” Otto was saying at that moment in Emma’s sitting room. “You refuse to make the slightest effort at civility?”

“I do,” Emma said mulishly. “If I had milk for blood, I might do as you ask.”

“So be it,” Otto said, climbing to his feet. “Well, I certainly don’t intend to sit here all day listening to you complain!” he added. “Send for me the instant Lord Hugh arrives.”

“Why?” Emma said crossly. “I’m perfectly capable of dealing with him.”

“You will do nothing of the sort,” he said sharply. “I will deal with him. Cecily, will you come and get me when Lord Hugh arrives? He is expected this afternoon by four o’clock.”

“Don’t you trust me, Otto?” Emma taunted him.

“No. Cecily?”

“Yes, Otto,” Cecily said obediently. “I will come and get you directly he arrives.”

When he had gone, Cecily tidied up his newspapers. “Poor Otto!” she said. “You must forgive him, Emma, if he seems a little impatient. He has not been to my bed since Amelia was born. I fear the deprivation has made him…irritable.”

“Let him be irritable.”

Cecily sank into her chair. “But, Emma! I feel so guilty.”

“Cecily, it would be a great danger to your health to get pregnant again so soon. You must heed the physician’s advice.”

“I’m afraid the Duke of Chilton does not care about my health,” Cecily said, her voice beginning to tremble.

“My father is an ass,” Emma said stoutly.

“If I don’t give him a grandson soon, he will force Otto to divorce me and marry someone else. Your father hates me,” she added, shivering.

“But my brother loves you,” Emma told her firmly. “The days of my father forcing Otto to do anything are long gone, I can assure you.”

“That is what Otto says,” Cecily answered, chewing nervously at her bottom lip. “Oh, why can I not have a boy? It’s not as though I
mean
to have daughters instead of sons. I don’t do it on purpose, as your father seems to think.”

“My dear Cecily! You mustn’t let my stupid, antiquated father and his stupid, antiquated notions make you so anxious. The surgeons are all agreed that you must have a nice long rest before you try again.”

Cecily’s round brown eyes filled with tears and the tip of her snub nose turned pink. “Otto has been so kind and patient with me. But, Emma, I fear he will seek the affection of other women.”

“No, indeed,” Emma scoffed. “Otto is not like other men. He prides himself on being faithful to you. And he has steely self-control. Frightening amounts of self-control. You worry for nothing.”

“I don’t know how you put up with Warwick’s philandering all those years,” said Cecily. “It would have destroyed me.”

“Ah, but I didn’t put up with it,” Emma said, with a faint laugh. “I retaliated by taking lovers of my own. When he died, we had not slept in the same bed in years. We had become almost strangers. We had quite a typical Society marriage, in fact—until he fell out of Mary Bellingham’s window.
That
was singular, I admit. Can you imagine Otto falling out of a window? Believe me, Cecily, you have nothing to worry about. Otto Grey is a man without fault. I think he must have refused them all at birth, which explains, perhaps, why Colin and I have so many. All the seven deadlies, and a few of our own invention besides.”

“He
is
without fault. Oh, I must sound so ungrateful,” Cecily fretted. “I know I am fortunate in my husband. If I could just have a
son
—! Then everything would be perfect.”

“My dear Cecily—”

“No more,” said Cecily, with a resolute smile. “I am done whining. Enough!”

She picked up her knitting. Her needles clicked. The fire crackled. After a moment, Emma took up a book and settled back into the window seat. The cloisonné clock on the mantel began to strike ten, startling the two ladies. At almost the same time, there was a scratching at the door.

“Enter,” Emma called out.

“I nearly forgot,” said Cecily, setting aside her knitting. “I told Aleta she could play for you after her German lesson. That must be her now.” She froze suddenly. “Of, course, if you’d rather not—” she stammered. “If it will remind you too much of Harry and Grey—”

“Nonsense,” said Emma. “Harry and Grey are not musical in the least. I should love to hear Aleta play.” Climbing to her feet, she closed her book as an austerely clad governess came into the room leading a tall, slender child with a mop of black hair and enormous, dark eyes.

At a nod from her governess, Lady Aleta Grey curtsied. “
Guten Morgen,
Mama.
Guten Morgen, Tante
Emma.”

Emma smiled at her warmly.
“Guten Morgen, liebchen.”

The child stared in agonized ignorance as Emma began to question her in German. Her governess sighed in disgust.

“You have not been studying,” Emma gently chided Aleta.

“No,” Aleta admitted, “but I
have
learned a German song for you,” she quickly added, brandishing her sheet music. “A Christmas song.
Die Tannenbaum.
”

“Ah,” said Emma, touching the girl’s cheek. “Herr Franck’s arrangement, I see. One of my favorites. I will open the instrument for you,” she added, hurrying over to the pianoforte that stood in one corner of the room.

“I can do it, Aunt Emma,” the child said. “Don’t fuss over me.”

“Aleta!” Cecily protested. “You must not address your aunt in that tone.”

“It’s all right,” said Emma, retreating. “I shall wait over here with your Mama until you are ready. Thank you for bringing her,” she told Cecily quietly as they watched the child make her preparations at the pianoforte. “I do not get to see her as much as I would like. She’s growing up so fast. Do you think Otto would allow me to take her with me to Paris?” She sighed. “He will probably say it is not wise.”

Cecily looked at her, wide-eyed. “You mean to go back to Paris? When?”

“After Christmas, of course,” Emma answered. “January. Once the boys are back in school, there is nothing to keep me in England. And now that the Corsican tyrant is safely exiled to Elba, there is nothing to keep me out of France. I have many friends at the French court. And I have bought a splendid little house in the Faubourg de St. Honore.”

“Exile!” Cecily said unhappily.

“I’ll take Paris over the sanctimonious hypocrisy of London any day,” Emma replied. “In Paris I can be at liberty. No one judges me. Why, by Parisian standards, I am a model of virtue!”

“Aunt Emma! Mama!” Aleta called from the pianoforte. “I am ready now.”

Cecily and Emma hurried to take their seats as the child began to sing haltingly in German as her fingers limped over the keys. Cecily did not know the words, but Emma gamely joined in singing the old German folk tune.

The musician stayed afterward for twenty minutes—quite twenty times the length of the little song—shyly accepting the praise of her grateful audience. Then her governess whisked her away for her watercolor lesson.

Emma spent the rest of the morning writing letters. After luncheon, she went out for a long walk, returning to the house for tea. To her surprise, Lord Hugh had not yet arrived. The man was usually punctual. He certainly never missed a meal, if he could help it.

As evening dragged into night, Emma became worried, not about Lord Hugh, of course. She could not have cared less about him. Her fears were for Harry and Grey; she could only assume that they were with their great-uncle and guardian. Using her widowhood as an excuse to avoid company, she dined alone in her room, hardly touching her food, much to the dismay of her French chef. Otto and Cecily, Colin and Monty dined with the other guests, but they could discover nothing about Lord Hugh. If he had sent any word to Warwick about a change in his travel plans, Emma was not to be privy to the information.

At ten o’clock, the gates to Warwick were closed, and the guards released the mastiffs to patrol the grounds. Emma lay in bed for hours, restless and uneasy, before drifting off to sleep.

Sunday, December 11, 1814

Nicholas St. Austell sat in the swaying carriage, squeezed between Lord Hugh and Lady Anne Fitzroy, while five young ladies, daughters of Lord Hugh and Lady Anne, sat packed together on the opposite seat. Wearing a brown George wig and a greatcoat with half a dozen capes, Lord Hugh looked the prosperous, well-fed gentleman. His wife, by comparison, was a thin, faded lady with frightened, watery blue eyes. More often than not, she seemed bewildered by the world around her. They were as unlikely a couple, Nicholas supposed, as the brilliantly colored peacock and his lackluster peahen.

Until very recently, the young naval officer had not been aware of the existence of the Fitzroys at all, but now he was to understand that Lord Hugh and Lady Anne were his uncle and aunt—the lady being the elder sister of Nicholas’s dead father—and the five young ladies, whom he could scarcely tell apart, were his cousins. Together, they comprised all the family he had in the world, or so they claimed.

All seven of these Fitzroys had been waiting for him on the dock at Plymouth on the day his ship arrived in the harbor. They had been searching the world over for him, they said, and they seemed genuinely delighted to have found him, safe and sound, aboard the H.M.S.
Gorgon
. Before Nicholas quite knew what was happening, his aunt and uncle had claimed him, and he was in a carriage on his way to someplace called Warwick Palace.

It felt like he was being kidnapped.
They are my family,
he often had to remind himself.
They are not kidnaping me. They simply are taking me home with them for Christmas.

Their delight in him continued unabated, but two days of travel had been more than enough to weary Nicholas of his companions. Lord Hugh—or Uncle Hugh, as he demanded to be called—had quickly revealed himself as a blustering bully. He shouted and snarled at his wife and daughters continuously, while Nicholas never received anything but smiles and platitudes from the man. As for the young ladies, they seemed to do little more than preen and giggle. Nicholas did his best to ignore them, but he was sure that their inane giggling would haunt his dreams for years to come. Lady Anne—Aunt Anne—was the only one among them for whom Nicholas had any feelings, and her he merely pitied.

As darkness fell around them on the third day, the carriage fell silent. Lord Hugh’s head fell onto Nicholas’s shoulder, and he began to snore, eliciting sleepy giggles from some one or other of his daughters. Suddenly, the carriage ground to a halt. Lord Hugh was pitched forward, his wig falling into Nicholas’s lap. Cursing, Lord Hugh let down the window and barked at the driver.

“We are at the gates,” Lord Hugh announced presently, closing the window against the cold night air. “Thank you, Nephew,” he added gruffly as Nicholas passed him his wig. “We will be at the house in two shakes,” he went on, clapping the hairpiece to his skull. “I’ve sent word ahead to my sister, and the keepers are holding the dogs.”

“If we had not stopped to help those stranded people, we would be there now,” one of the girls said resentfully. “I’ve missed my dinner!”

“We have all missed dinner,” one of the older girls told her sharply.

“A broken axle on a lonely road is no joke,” Nicholas said, nettled by the girls’ lack of charity. “It was our Christian duty to help the vicar and his wife.”

“Oh, someone else would have come along to help them,” said Lord Hugh. “I suppose at sea one is obliged to help all sorts of people clinging to shipwreck and all that sort of thing, but it’s really not necessary in a civilized country. You’re not in the Royal Navy anymore, you know.”

“But, sir, the lady was with child!” Nicholas protested.

“Shameless the way these clergyman breed,” said Lord Hugh, shaking his head. “Ah, well! What’s done is done. We’ll be in our beds soon enough.”

“I’m so tired! I’m cold! I’m hungry!” the girls complained.

“Then you should have eaten the sandwiches that were offered you,” Nicholas told them curtly. “And I can’t imagine why you’d be tired,” he went on angrily. “You’ve done nothing but sleep and giggle for three days. If there’s any work to be done, you fob it off on your mama.”

Lady Anne’s hand crept to touch his arm. “Do forgive them, Nicholas,” she pleaded. “They’re just tired and cross, that’s all. They don’t mean to complain. There’s no complaining in the Royal Navy, I’m sure,” she added.

Nicholas instantly felt ashamed. In the navy, malcontents routinely were flogged, but, he realized, young ladies ought not to be treated so harshly. “It is I who am cross, Aunt Anne,” he said contritely. “Forgive me, ladies. I am not used to traveling in a closed carriage. I am used to the open seas. I am used to dealing with men. I’m afraid my temper got the better of me. I apologize.”

“We forgive you, Cousin Nicholas,” they said in unison, reminding him, rather horribly of the verse from the Gospel of Mark: “My name is Legion, for we are many.”

“You see, Nicholas?” said Lady Anne. “They are good girls.”

“I hope we are not inconveniencing your sister too much, Lord Hugh,” said Nicholas, after a short pause. “It is very late. Why, it must be past midnight.”

“But Harriet is a spinster,” Lord Hugh said, dismissing Nicholas’s concerns.

The drive from the gate to the house was surprisingly long. From time to time, Nicholas caught glimpses of shadowy figures outside, men with broken guns moving in the torchlight, men holding back huge, vicious-looking mastiffs. Their breath hanging in visible clouds around their muzzles.

At last the carriage came to a stop.

A sleepy footman opened the door and let down the steps. Lord Hugh climbed out first. “This is not how I wanted to show Warwick to you,” he told Nicholas, as the young ladies left the carriage. “But you can get an idea of the size and the grandeur of the place. I will give you the grand tour tomorrow personally.”

Nicholas did not reply. Lady Anne remained in the carriage, and he was shocked to see how little her family respected her. Her daughters seemed to think no more of her than the carriage rug they had left lying on the seat. When he was not bullying her, her husband ignored her completely. Nicholas’s protective instincts were aroused. Climbing out of the carriage, he offered Lady Anne his arm.

The door was opened briefly to admit them. Nicholas guided his aunt into the hall. Two footmen were lighting candles, but the room still seemed vast and dark. The sharp, fresh scent of balsam hung in the cool air.

“There was no one outside to greet us, Sister,” Lord Hugh was complaining to a tall, elderly lady in a nightgown and lace cap.

“Everyone is asleep, Hugh,” Lady Harriet told her younger brother. “
I
was asleep.”

“A poor excuse!” said Hugh, sneezing. “What is that smell?” he demanded, sneezing again. “It stinks of the outdoors.”

“It’s balsam,” Nicholas said happily, “and holly. It’s all over the room. It smells like a forest. It smells like Christmas.”

Holding aloft a branch of candles, Lady Harriet looked at Nicholas curiously. He was a good-looking young man with brown skin and bright blue eyes. His features were strong and clear-cut. His sun-bleached hair grew in a good line. He wore it long, but tied back neatly in a queue.

Lord Hugh, meanwhile, glared around him, squinting into the dimly lit corners of the great hall. The beautiful wreaths and garlands ornamented with gilded fruits and velvet ribbon that had been hung about the room did not meet with his approval. “By God, you’re right! It
does
smell like a bloody forest in here. What is the meaning of this, Harriet?” he demanded, pulling a handkerchief from his pocket to block another sneeze. “Have you run mad in your old age? Are the servants conducting pagan rites in the small hours? Have all this damned shrubbery cleared off at once!”

“It was the duchess’s doing, not mine,” Lady Harriet replied evenly. “It is the custom in her mother’s native Germany. You will have to bring your complaint to her, I’m afraid.”

Lord Hugh grunted. “She’s here, is she? Good. I will deal with her tomorrow. In the meantime, clear this rubbish away. ’Tis pagan nonsense, and ’twas confined to the nursery when her husband was alive. I’m sorry you had to see this, Nicholas.”

“But I think it’s charming,” Nicholas protested.

Lord Hugh blinked at him. “You do?”

“Yes. It reminds me of the Christmases I had in Portsmouth when I was a child, when my parents were still alive. But, of course,” Nicholas added sheepishly, “our little cottage was nothing at all compared to this place, and we only had bits of holly and mistletoe. No balsam.”

“I suppose, if it does not offend you, it can stay,” Lord Hugh said reluctantly. Covering his nose and mouth with his handkerchief, he hurried upstairs.

Lady Harriet smiled at Nicholas. “I am Lady Harriet Fitzroy. You must be Lord Camford,” she said pleasantly, “the very fortunate young man who recently inherited the title and estates of Lady Anne’s brother.”

Nicholas blushed. “That is what everyone keeps telling me, ma’am,” he said. “I have yet to believe it.”

Lady Harriet’s eyebrows went up. “Indeed? But I read all about it in the London
Times
.”

Nicholas smiled. “In that case, it must be true.”

“I think we must accept that it is.”

Lord Hugh stopped at the top of the stairs to bellow at Lady Anne. “Madam wife! Take the girls up to their rooms at once. Octavia looks a fright, and Augusta is jumping up and down as though her bladder is fit to burst.”

“Oh!” cried Lady Anne. “But Nicholas—”

“Harriet will look after my nephew,” he told her. “Step lively, woman! How will you ever find husbands for these wretched girls if you let them go about looking like a pack of wet hens? What kind of mother are you?”

Lady Anne jumped. “Come, girls,” she cried breathlessly, hurrying her daughters from the room.

“Now, then,” said Lady Harriet, holding her candlestick up to get a better look at the young man in front of her. “Let’s have a look at you. My goodness! You
are
a beauty, aren’t you?”

Nicholas gaped at the old lady in astonishment.

“You must take after your mother,” she stated. “As a rule, the St. Austells are small, ugly, tedious creatures. But you’re like a big, bronzed Nordic god, aren’t you?”

“I—I don’t think so,” he said, blushing. “But thank you, ma’am.”

Her dark eyes twinkled at him. “Come, my lord, I will show you to your room.”

“I wish you would call me Nicholas,” he said. “I don’t feel like a lord. Any moment now, I feel like I’m going to wake up from a dream and find myself back in the navy,” he confessed.

Lady Harriet glanced back at him in surprise. “Since I am old enough to be your grandmother, I don’t see why not. And you may call me Aunt Harriet, if you like. That’s what the young people call me.”

Nicholas followed her through a maze of corridors to a large, beautifully appointed chamber. A cheerful fire crackled in the fireplace.

“Well, Nicholas! I hope you will be comfortable here in Westphalia,” Lady Harriet said. “It is not one of our best rooms, I’m sorry to say, but that is what happens when you are late. All the good rooms are taken.”

The young man looked at the huge, four-poster bed in amusement. “I was put to sea, ma’am, when I was but nine years old,” he told her.

“That explains it, then,” said Lady Harriet.

“Explains what, ma’am?”

“Why you seem to have absolutely no idea just how attractive you are,” said the old lady. “But, if you were put to sea when you were nine; if you have been in the company of men, for the most part, since that age, that would explain this strange case of modesty. Most young men with your good looks are vainglorious, insufferable peacocks.”

“I hope I am not a peacock,” said Nicholas. “I was going to say, ma’am, that, in the Royal Navy, we are used to sleeping in our own coffins. When one of us dies at sea, he is simply nailed inside his bed and lowered overboard into Davy Jones’s Locker.”

“Good God,” said Lady Harriet.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” he said quickly. “That is not fit conversation for delicate ladies.”

“I am not so delicate as I appear,” Lady Harriet said dryly. “If you would prefer to sleep in a coffin, we will, of course, have one brought in!”

“No, ma’am, I thank you. The room is more comfortable than any I have ever had the pleasure of seeing.”

“Did your valet arrive earlier in the day, my lord? I will try to find him.”

“Oh, we don’t have such things as valets in the Royal Navy,” he told her, chuckling. “I was not the captain, ma’am, merely a lowly lieutenant! And a second lieutenant at that. I can look after myself. I always have.”

Lady Harriet inclined her head. “In that case, my lord, I bid you good night.”

“Good night, Aunt Harriet.”

My God, they’ll eat him alive,
Lady Harriet thought sadly as she left him. She had not expected him to be so nice.

Emma’s French maid roused her very early the next morning. Emma sat up, rubbing her eyes as Yvette fired streams of French at her.

“What?” Emma cried, jumping out of bed. “When?”

Pulling on her dressing gown, she ran to the door. Carstairs, the dignified old butler, stood there. “When did Lord Hugh arrive?” the duchess demanded.

“Very late last night, your grace. After everyone had gone to bed. My subordinates did not make me aware of it until this morning.”

“I’m sure they wanted to let you sleep, Carstairs. My sons were not with him, I understand.”

“No, your grace,” Carstairs answered in his funereal voice.

“You have not received any instructions regarding their arrival?” she asked hopefully.

“No, your grace. Lord Hugh has asked me to inform your grace that he will see you this afternoon at three o’clock in the Carolina Room—if he is not too busy. You are to wait for him there?”

Emma bit back a curse. “Is that so? Is there anything Lord Hugh desires?”

“No, your grace.”

“I’m afraid three o’clock is not convenient,” said Emma. “Where is Lord Hugh now?” she asked, forcing herself to speak calmly.