Christmas with the Duchess

by Tamara Lejeune

  Lady Harriet was at the back of the room playing cards.

  “I don’t believe you,” said Colin. “Why would Aunt Harriet do such a thing? We’ve always been good friends.”

  “It’s a case of the green-eyed monster, I’m afraid,” said Lady Susan. “Ridiculous, I know, but how else do you explain it? Spinsterhood can do strange things to a woman. She had to get rid of your Scotsman because she wants you all to herself.”

  Colin was staring at Lady Susan, almost paralyzed by horror. “Are you saying that Aunt Harriet is in love with me?” he yelped.

  “You are the wayward child she never had, and never will have.”

  “So you’re saying it’s a maternal sort of thing?” To Colin, this seemed even less likely than the alternative. Lady Harriet seemed not to have a maternal bone in her body.

  “Take her pulse on the subject, if you don’t believe me. Invite her to take a turn about the room with you. I’ll take her place at the card table.”

  “Go on,” said Emma. “I dare you.”

  Lady Harriet was delighted to take a turn about the room with Lord Colin. “You’ve rescued me just in time, dear boy,” she told him happily, giving his arm a squeeze. Colin could have dispensed with the familiarity, but he was nowhere near to giving credit to Lady Susan’s assertions. “Now Susan will have to cover my losses,” she added gleefully.

  “Who will cover my loss, I wonder,” Colin murmured as they began their promenade down one side of the room.

  “Why, have you suffered a loss?” she inquired solicitously.

  “Surely, you noticed that my friend, Lord Ian, is no longer with us.”

  “Really? I hadn’t noticed,” said Lady Harriet, shrugging. “But I daresay we can do very well without the likes of him. He wasn’t worthy of you, dear boy.” Her skinny hand patted Colin’s arm fondly. “There was a littleness to him. I trust you see it now.”

  Colin stopped in his tracks. “Aunt Susan was telling the truth, then,” he whispered.

  Lady Harriet’s ginger-brown eyes narrowed. “Susan? What has she been telling you?”

  “That you hated Monty,” he hissed at her. “That you’d do anything to get rid of him. That it was you who wrote those beastly letters! Do you deny it?”

  “Why should I deny it?” she answered coolly. “Monty, Monty, Monty! I am sick to death of Monty! Yes, I hate him. You were always so attentive to your Aunt Harriet, before he came along. But then you changed! You’d speak to me, but always, always, your eyes would be searching the crowd—for him, the loathsome beast. I could tell at once he wasn’t worthy of you, Colin. He proved as much by walking out on you. We’re well rid of him, my darling,” she added, patting his arm with her skinny hand. “Now that it’s just the two of us again, everything is going to be just perfect.”

  She sighed contentedly.

  “I will never forgive you for this, old woman,” he said coldly, breaking free of her.

  “Oh, my poor little lamb,” she said soothingly. “In time you’ll see that I was right. You cannot stay angry with your Aunt Harriet forever.”

  “Shall we wager on it?” he said coldly, going back to his sister. “Aunt Susan was right,” he told her. “Aunt Harriet is guilty.”

  “Then we know what to do,” Emma said grimly.

  It was not until the following evening, at dinner, that Charles Palafox realized he had been banished. No longer was he seated at the duchess’s elbow. Instead, he had been pushed almost to the opposite end of the table, sandwiched between Octavia and Augusta Fitzroy. It was not difficult to guess that someone had told Emma of his dealings with Julia Fitzroy.

  Thwarted, Captain Palafox felt himself to be the victim. Never had he sought out Julia’s company, after all. On the first occasion, he had found her in his room. On the second, he had discovered her, quite by accident, locked in the kitchen garden. He wrote letters to Emma, pleading his case, but they were all sent back to him unopened.

  To Emma’s annoyance, Nicholas was late to the rendezvous, but he burst into her bedchamber in such a desperate hurry that she instantly forgave him. She greeted him from her bed, dressed to please him in a beautiful negligee of pale blue silk trimmed with silver ribbons, her ash-brown hair arranged in long, loose ringlets. He went straight to her, kneeling by the bed and seizing her hand. “My love, what is the matter? Are you ill?”

  Emma laughed at his panic. “Don’t be silly,” she murmured languidly, caressing his cheek with the back of her hand. “I am not ill. Why would you think so?”

  “You are in bed,” he pointed out. “Did you not ask me to meet you here?”

  “I am not ill,” she told him firmly. “I am free. My year of mourning is over. It ended at the stroke of midnight. I am yours…if you still want me, of course,” she added provocatively.

  She heard him swallow hard. “Would—would you not rather wait?” he said nervously.

  “I have waited,” she reminded him. “If you ask me, I’ve been awfully good about it. I am not known for my patience. But I’ve suffered enough for you, I think. Now I must have satisfaction.”

  “You shall have it then,” he promised. He kissed her clumsily in the near dark, his hands falling heavily on her shoulders, rather like a pair of leaden weights. He was shaking like a lamb suddenly confronted by the wolf.

  Emma resigned herself to having to perform the lion’s share of the work. “Shall I undress you?” she whispered, reaching for him. “Shall I be your valet tonight as well as your lover?”

  He seemed to take this as some form of rebuke. Instantly, he sprang to his feet. “Not at all, my love. I can do it. You need not trouble yourself.”

  He danced around the room on one leg as he pulled off first one boot, then the other. Realizing she was missing the entertainment, Emma sat up and lit a candle. Half out of his shirt, he froze. “W-what are you doing?”

  “I want to see you,” she explained. “I want to see my beautiful young man. And doesn’t he want to see me? Don’t you want to look deep into my adoring eyes as we give one another the supreme pleasure?”

  “Good God, no!” He looked quite shocked. His round eyes glowed in the candlelight like a frightened animal’s.

  “You have some other idea?” Emma asked curiously.

  “My love,” he said earnestly. “I would never ask you to do anything so degrading, so unworthy of your—your elegant womanhood.”

  “N-no?” Emma was quite surprised. “My God! Is it true that you are a virgin?”

  “Of course,” he said indignantly. “I would not be worthy of your love if I had defiled myself with other women.”

  “In that case, I’d say it’s high time you were defiled,” she purred, sliding toward him. “Let me show you how.”

  “Absolutely not, my love,” he said sternly. “Now, Emma, I know that your husband was a depraved man. I know he hurt you. The last time we were alone together—when you started to do those shameful things to me—I realized that he must have forced you to service him in that disgusting, intimate manner, as if you were some back-alley creature. Oh, Emma, my queen, my angel! I will never make such demands of you. You need not do anything at all. I take full responsibility. You are blameless in the act. The sin is all mine.”

  To complete her astonishment, he blew out the candle.

  “When it is over, you will think it was a dream,” he promised.

  “And was it?” Colin asked her the next morning over cups of chocolate. “Was it like a dream?”

  Emma sat curled up on her sofa, grumpy and unspeakably sore.

  “Come on, Emma,” he coaxed. “Let me live vicariously through you. I’m all alone now, you know.”

  “It was like a dream,” Emma said. “A bloody awful dream! A nightmare!”

  He winced. “As bad as that? As bad as Byron?”

  “Worse than Byron,” she said emphatically. “At least with Byron, it was over and done in the blink of an eye, and his little tiny affair hardly even made an impression. This was a
massacre and a marathon.”

  “If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well it were done quickly,” Colin quoted.

  “He was plenty quick,” she retorted. “He just kept doing it over and over again. I was killed repeatedly by this fool. It was abundantly clear he hadn’t a clue what he was doing.”

  “So he was a virgin?”

  “Lord, yes! But that is no excuse for what he put me through,” said Emma. “I hung on, just to see how long he could go, and how much I could endure, but, after about the eighth crises, I confess I gave up. I simply closed my eyes and placed my thoughts in a better place while he hammered away at me like a battering ram. I almost felt sorry for him.”

  “My dear girl! If you had eight crises, what the devil are you complaining about?”

  “He had eight,” she explained bitterly. “Or thereabouts. I had none. I can barely walk, I’m so sore. Just because the damn thing looks like a truncheon doesn’t mean it ought to be used as a truncheon!”

  “That’s always been my motto. But why didn’t you speak up for yourself?”

  Emma shrugged. “He was so proud of himself, I didn’t have the heart to tell him what a disaster he was. He really did try his best, you know, and he was so grateful to me afterward. I can’t remember the last time a man actually thanked me for my ‘sacrifice.’ Then again, I’ve never actually felt like a sacrifice before.”

  “Are you going to let him try again?” Colin asked, laughing.

  “Not bloody likely! My poor elegant womanhood has suffered enough, I think.”

  “You could teach him, Emma.”

  “Not interested,” she said firmly. “Anyway, I’m not sure he can be taught. He has some very strange ideas about women. Apparently, we are angels, and angels do not take matters into their own hands, so to speak. We are to lie there, silent and immaculate, while the man knocks about in search of the correct opening.”

  Colin winced. “How dreadful for you. But, perhaps, Captain Palafox can console you.”

  Emma made a face. “Do you know,” she said dully, “I think I’ve lost my appetite for men. All men.”

  “Oh, no. It’s finally happened.”

  “What?”

  “You are officially a matron,” he teased.

  He meant to rile her up, but, to his surprise, she sighed. “Do you know, I think you could be right,” she said sadly.

  “You know some people say there’s more to life than sex,” Colin remarked.

  “Well,” Emma sighed, “let us hope they are right.”

  For his part, Nicholas had never been so happy. That evening at dinner, as the consomme was being removed, he scraped back his chair and got to his feet.

  “To the duchess,” he said, raising his glass, “for she has made me the happiest of men. In fact, she has agreed to be my wife. We are to be married!”

  Blushing with pride and joy, he looked into the faces of the other guests. They stared back at him in blank astonishment. No one was more astonished than Colin Grey, except possibly his sister. All the color had drained from Emma’s face.

  Lord Michael Fitzroy found his voice first. “May I be the first to congratulate you, my lord. Your grace,” he said, looking question marks at his sister-in-law.

  “No!” said Emma.

  Nicholas laughed. “My dearest love, if he wants to congratulate us, we should hear him out, I think.”

  “How dare you!” she breathed. Two spots of harsh, bright color appeared in her cheeks, spreading rapidly over her entire face. “Sit down.”

  “I forbid it!” cried Lord Hugh Fitzroy, starting up from his chair. “My nephew is not yet of age, madam. He cannot wed without my permission, and I certainly do not give it!”

  “I shall be twenty-one in a few months!” said Nicholas, ironically sounding far, far younger than his actual age as he protested.

  “There will not be the least need for you to exercise your authority as this young man’s guardian,” Emma coldly told Lord Hugh. “We are not engaged. I have not agreed to be his wife. I have not the slightest idea of what he is talking!”

  “Emma!” cried Nicholas, both horrified and bewildered by her strange reaction.

  “Sit down, Lord Camford,” Emma said sharply. “I do not like your joke.”

  “Joke? What do you mean?” Nicholas’s face was ashen.

  Emma was furious. “What do I mean, sir? What do you mean by announcing an engagement between ourselves? You know perfectly well there is no such thing in existence.”

  “Emma! H-how can you say that, after—after—well, you know, after. After all we have meant to each other,” he finished lamely, inadvertently choosing a euphemism well known to everyone present. “We are in love.”

  “Sir!” Emma interrupted him coldly. “Are you drunk?”

  His mouth worked helplessly. “Why are you doing this to me?” he whispered.

  Emma glared at him. “Uncle Hugh!” she said sharply. “Your nephew obviously is drunk! Kindly remove him from my table, or I will have him carried out by my footmen.”

  Lord Hugh went around the table and took Nicholas by the arm.

  “Come, Nephew,” he said gruffly.

  Almost in shock, Nicholas allowed himself to be led from the room.

  When they had gone, Emma took a deep, cleansing breath. Reaching for the golden bell that rested next to her plate, she shook it violently to summon the next course.

  Chapter Twelve

  With a wave of his hand, Lord Hugh sent the servants from the smoking room. Nicholas scarcely noticed them, he was so upset. “How could she do this to me?” he demanded, anger quickly replacing his surprise and humiliation. “She told me we would be together. I thought…We only waited to make the announcement until her year of mourning was over.”

  Lord Hugh snorted. “Mourning! Emma Grey doesn’t know the meaning of the word. When her husband died, there was scarcely a pause in her…activities. I am sorry for you, Nicholas, but, considering her reputation, you cannot have expected any better!”

  “What reputation?” Nicholas wanted to know.

  Lord Hugh stared at him. “Dear boy, you must have heard about Emma Grey! She is the most notorious jade in England! The country, and, indeed, all of Europe, is littered with her former lovers. We are obliged to tolerate her presence here, for my nephews’ sake, but, I assure you, when we are in London, we do not know her. No respectable lady will receive her, apart from her sister-in-law, Lady Scarlingford.”

  Nicholas drove his fingers through his hair. “Lady Susan tried to warn me, but I refused to listen. Why didn’t you tell me, Uncle?”

  Lord Hugh blinked at him. “But I assumed you knew. You must have heard the stories about the Duchess of Warwick. She has been steeped in scandal all her life.”

  “Uncle, I have been at sea for most of my life,” Nicholas reminded him. “How could I have heard anything? I know only that she told me she loved me.”

  “That harlot loves only herself,” Lord Hugh said scathingly. “Men are playthings to her. I am sorry to cause you more pain, Nicholas, but…are you not well rid of her? Now that you know what she is, she can do you no more harm.”

  “I can’t believe she feels nothing for me,” Nicholas said stubbornly. “I must speak to her. There must be some explanation for this…this horrible change in her. I must know why…in what way I have offended her. I…I shall go mad if I do not speak to her.”

  Lord Hugh stared at him in alarm. “Her hold over you is strong, indeed! Let me break it for all time. Emma Grey is a modern-day Messalina! I know for a fact she has at least one bastard secreted amongst her brother’s brood.”

  Nicholas’s face was white. “That I cannot believe.”

  “I have a letter that proves it,” Lord Hugh told him. “I will show it to you, and the scales will fall from your eyes! She is an immoral and unscrupulous woman. She never cared for you, Nicholas. She was only using you. That is what she does: she uses men to get what she wants. Why, she only took up with
you in the first place to blackmail me!”

  Nicholas swung around to look at his uncle. “Blackmail you? What do you mean?”

  “She threatened to seduce you. Then she offered to ‘give you back’ if I let her see her sons. Of course, she wants her letter back, too. She actually had the gall to offer me money,” Lord Hugh went on, assuming an air of injury. “Naturally, I refused. As if I could be bribed or bullied by this common strumpet!”

  “If you let her see her sons?” Nicholas repeated, shocked. “Are you—Uncle, are you keeping her children from her? Please tell me I am wrong!”

  Lord Hugh frowned. “It sounds heartless, I know,” he said quickly. “But I am their guardian, Nicholas. It is my duty to protect my great-nephews from unwholesome influences. Though it is hard, I take my duty very seriously,” he added virtuously.

  Nicholas was deeply shaken. “She must have wanted to see her children very badly,” he murmured, the words dripping with bitterness, “to take up with me. I hope it was not too unpleasant for her.”

  Lord Hugh shook his head sadly. “I did my best to protect you, Nicholas. The harlot agreed to leave you alone if I let her have her children for Christmas, but I see she has reneged on our agreement. Her lascivious nature has overruled the maternal instinct.”

  He would have touched Nicholas, but Nicholas shook him off, his lip curled in contempt. “I think you have it backwards, Uncle. I think it was you who was blackmailing the duchess! As for protecting me, you did not want her to interfere in your plans for me, that is all.”

  Lord Hugh gave a display of bewilderment. “Plans? What plans? Nephew, I do not know what this wicked woman has told you, but, I can assure you—”

  “You cannot assure me, sir,” Nicholas interrupted him. “Since the moment you heard of my existence, you have been plotting to trap me into marrying one of your daughters! Admit it!”