Lady Lucy's Lover (11 page)

“No. It will be a surprise.”

“I would rather she had been prepared,” said Lucy in a small voice.

“Well, that was not possible since I was not prepared myself,” said the Duke equably.

Lucy fell silent, rubbing at the steamy glass of the carriage and trying to see out the windows through the gathering twilight.

“It looks very big… the park, I mean,” she ventured at last.

He nodded and seemed absorbed in his thoughts.

Finally the carriage rattled to a stop and Lucy was helped down and stood looking up at the great pile that was Mullford Hall.

The house was Palladian in principle, consisting of a central oval building surmounted by a dome joined to two rectangular pavilions by curving wings.

“The west pavilion has not been completed,” said the Duke. “We use the east, and the central building is reserved for guests. Since you are our only guest, you will share the family wing.”

Lucy was led off by the housekeeper down a long corridor lined with statues and glass cases containing priceless china over to the east wing.

Her rooms were tasteful and cool with high ceilings, Adam fireplaces, and pastel walls. No sounds penetrated from the world outside. London seemed very far away and, for the moment, her marriage ceased to exist.

It was soothing to look forward to a quiet family evening. She imagined the Dowager Duchess a tall, elegant figure—for surely that was the sort of mother the Duke would have.

At last, a vastly imposing Groom of the Chambers arrived to escort her to the Long Gallery where she was told everyone was assembled.

It seemed more like a Royal procession to Lucy as she followed the imposing back of the Groom of the Chambers, who held his tall staff with all the swagger of a Macaroni. One footman carrying a candle in a flat stick supported her on one side, and on the other, another footman with her shawl, her fan, and her vinaigrette.

Lucy stopped at the entrance of the Long Gallery with a little gasp of dismay. The Duke had only mentioned his mother. He had obviously not seen fit to include the names of several members of the county, the rector, various cousins, and three old and moth-eaten hounds.

The company arose at her entrance and the Duke led her around, making the introductions in his easy manner. Lucy's eyes flew from face to face. Which was the Dowager Duchess? As if in answer to her unspoken question, the Duke said, “Mama is late as usual. She does it quite deliberately, of course.”

Lucy felt a pang of disquiet. Her feeling of escape was melting away, leaving her with the uneasy feeling that she should be at home with her husband, no matter what he had done. She had, she realized, been hoping for some lady of mature wisdom who would comfort and counsel her. Again her conscience gave a sharp twinge. She should turn to her own mother. But her mother was so obsessed with the glamor of a title that she would simply not listen. All these thoughts were churning through Lucy's shining fair head as she murmured pleasantries to the various guests.

“I don't know why Angela cannot be on time for once,” grumbled an elderly, choleric-looking gentleman called Sir Frederick Barrister, whose high starched cravat cut into the florid flesh of his fat cheeks.

“Oh, you know Mama's little ways,” said the Duke of Habard soothingly. “I tell
her
dinner is at seven, don't you see, and I tell my chef to arrange it for seven-thirty, and that way the kitchen staff is not thrown into disorder.”

The Groom of the Chambers rapped his staff and announced portentously from the doorway leading to the Long Gallery:

“Her Most Noble Grace, The Dowager Duchess of Habard!”

The Groom of the Chambers stood aside and the Duchess stood poised on the threshold, her eyes darting around the room.

She was tiny and grotesque. Her wrinkled face was rouged and powdered like a mask. Her diaphanous, high-waisted gown revealed a pair of perfect—perfectly improbable—breasts. They were, in fact, wax. The gown was cut low and the upper half of them gleamed palely in the candlelight. She wore a frivolous little lace cap adorned with multicolored ribbons on top of a blond wig. Her pale blue, slightly protruding eyes fastened almost greedily on her son as she moved forward to take his arm, baring a mouthful of china teeth.

“Now, you are about to scold me, naughty boy,” she cooed. “But you shall take me into dinner and then I shall know I am forgiven.”

“Much as I do not wish to forego the honor, Mama,” said the Duke, “my guest, Lady Standish, has the prior claim.”

“Who's she?” demanded his mother rudely, her eyes raking around the room.

The Duke went across the room and took Lucy by the hand and led her forward. Lucy sank into a low curtsy while the Duchess looked down at all that beauty and youth and innocence with her face setting into a petulant mask.

“There is no need to stoop so low.” She laughed shrilly, rapping Lucy playfully on the head with her fan but with such force that she snapped one of the sticks of her fan on the jewelled comb which held Lucy's blond ringlets in place.

“Now, let me see… Standish,” the Duchess went on, beginning to rap the handle of her fan against the china of her false teeth with an alarming series of clicks.

“Pon rep, I have it now. Dev'lishly handsome buck. So he married you, heh? And where is my lord?”

“In Town, an it please Your Grace.”

“It does not please me
at all
. He was a great flirt of mine. All the bucks are. Why isn't he here?”

“He may join us in a few days,” interrupted the Duke smoothly. “Sir Frederick, will you oblige me by taking Mama into dinner? Your arm, Lady Standish.”

Lucy's heart sank to the points of her little kid shoes as the Dowager Duchess led the way, tossing venomous glances over her shoulder.

The Duke took the head of the long table and his mother took her place at the other end—to Lucy's relief. She herself was placed next to the Duke with an ebullient young man called Harry Brainchild on her other side.

“Are
all
these people house guests?” asked Lucy in a low voice.

“A few cousins and aunts, I believe,” said the Duke carelessly. “You are not eating, Lady Standish.”

“I… I am still fatigued. And… and I fear your mother does not approve of me.”

“I think you will find this Moselle to your taste,” said the Duke. “If this weather lifts, I shall be able to take you riding tomorrow.”

“Thank you,” said Lucy meekly, wishing however that he had not deliberately ignored the remark about his mother.

Harry Brainchild promptly engaged her attention, and finding she knew nothing of the surrounding countryside, launched enthusiastically into an exhaustive description of every bird, bush, tree, animal, and fish in the surrounding district. He professed himself to be a great Lover of Nature and then went on to describe how many foxes he had killed, how many birds he had shot, and how many otter cubs he had put to death, and this history of carnage went on so long that he had, it seemed, finally paused for breath when the Dowager Duchess arose to her feet indicating that the ladies should rise also and leave the gentlemen to their wine.

It seemed to Lucy as if all the other ladies followed the Duchess's example. They clustered around her on the road to the drawing room, pointedly ignoring Lucy.

The drawing room was the one room in the house where the Duke's austere and elegant taste had not been allowed a foothold. It was dominated by a full-length portrait of the Duchess in a sky blue gown and Leghorn hat, posing before an open window which looked out onto a sky in which an approaching typhoon threatened. Garish stripes climbed up and down the walls and furniture, reminding Lucy of the interior decoration of her own townhouse. The air was suffocatingly warm and scented with patchouli. One half of the room had broken out in a rash of chinoiserie with carved dragons, silk screens, and jade buddhas, and the other half was in the new Egyptian style with Recamier couches and an enormous fireplace with carved glass sphinxes on the pilasters.

There was, however, very little light in the room. Perhaps the Dowager was conscious of her wrinkles and did not want to parade them in a blaze of candlelight.

Lucy retired quietly to a corner of the room and picked up a book of poetry, while the chatter of the ladies, grouped around the Duchess who was lying on a couch by the fire, rose and fell.

One faded cousin called Bella Bly was undulating around the sofa on which the Duchess lay as if about to perform the dance of the seven veils. She waved her arms expressively, although her arm movements had nothing to do with her conversation. Bella was describing how to make a solution which would remove the ugly effects of sunburn. “Use twenty parts of white vaseline to five parts of bismuth carbonate with three parts of Kaolin,” she was saying enthusiastically, while all the time her arms and long, thin tapering fingers acted out another tale, and her deep-set haunted eyes looked down on the Duchess like Andromache seeing Hector's body bound to the victor's chariot, approaching over the plain, under the walls of Troy.

“I have no need for such ointments,” said the Duchess petulantly. “My skin is perfect. Lady Standish, on the other hand, might be glad of your remedies.”

Lucy kept her eyes fixed on her book. She felt to acknowledge such a remark would only bring down more bitchery upon her head.

Four lines of verse seemed to leap out of the page.

Her present plight had nothing to do with the anonymous voice of the Elizabethan poet, but the intense longing of the lines hit her jumbled emotions like a hammer blow, bringing with it an intense longing for freedom to love and be loved, home, children, friends, security.

And then the gentlemen joined the ladies.

She looked up from the page, her eyes wide and very dark, mirroring her loneliness and youth.

The Duke caught his breath and took a half-step forward.

“Simon!” called his mother shrilly. “We are of a mind to have a romp.”

“And I am in no mood for cushion throwing. Come, Mama,” admonished the Duke. “You are always putting up romps and a great deal of cushions are thrown and a great deal of glass is broken while you never remove from your couch. I can see Miss Bly is anxious to entertain us.”

With many wild gestures, Miss Bella Bly headed for the pianoforte where an elderly aunt was already sifting through sheets of music.

The Duchess pouted and hunched a shriveled shoulder and then began to talk very loudly to Sir Frederick Barrister about the despair of a mother who was young at heart and who was cursed with a son who was as old as the grave.

“There is a lady sweet and kind,” warbled Bella while her hands and arms put ashes on her head and sackcloth on her body.

The Duke walked over and stood by Lucy, who looked up at him with blind eyes, the poetry book lying open on her lap.

“I would like to retire,” she whispered.

He nodded and held out his arm as she arose, the book slipping unnoticed to the floor.

“I will say goodnight to your mother,” said Lucy nervously.

“It is not necessary to speak to anyone other than me,” he said, smiling down at her in such a way that her legs trembled.

The dark blue silk of his evening coat made his metallic eyes seem almost blue. A sapphire winked in the snowy folds of his cravat and the fine frill of his shirt was almost transparent. His very elegance, Lucy reflected, seemed to set him apart. It was hard to believe he had ever kissed her. The long corridor was faintly lit by shaded oil lamps which cast little islands of golden light. China and glass shimmered softly in the shadows. A strand of ivy tapped at one of the windows.

“The wind is rising,” he said. “The rain should be gone by tomorrow.”

“How long shall I stay?” Her voice was very faint, almost a whisper.

“I shall be here for two weeks,” he said. “After that, we will see. After a few days, perhaps it would be as well if you write to your husband….”

“No!”

“
Write
to your husband and tell him where you are. The servants will have, no doubt, already told him.”

“As you will.”

“You sound like a tired but obedient child. Don't look so gloomy, Lucy. Things always look better in the morning.”

“But your mother, the Dowager Duchess—I fear she does not welcome my presence.”

“She will do as she is bid, never fear.”

“But I would rather someone were not
bidden
to tolerate me.”

“Mama has to be bidden to tolerate anyone who is not precisely old and ugly. No, not another word.”

They had reached the door of her apartment. He opened it for her and ushered her into her sitting room.

“How very hot it is!” said Lucy nervously. She went to the window and tugged it up a few inches from the bottom. A warm, garden-scented wind rushed into the room, sending the curtains billowing about her.

He came to stand beside her.

“There is no question of you being compromised while you are under my roof,” he said gently. “Were you worried about that?”

“Yes… no,” said Lucy, hypnotized by the long curve of his mouth.

A strand of hair blew across her mouth and he gently lifted it away, his fingers brushing her lips.

Her lips trembled and her bosom rose and fell rapidly.

“What shocked you… startled and upset you… just before I came into the drawing room? Did Mama say something?”

“No,” said Lucy. “It was nothing. Just a poem.”

“Which one? By whom?”

“It's anonymous. Oh, a silly thing to upset me so. Something about the west wind and being back home in bed.”

“Ah,” he said slowly. “And do you wish you were back in your bed again with your love in your arms? Do you miss him already, Lucy? That husband of yours?”