Christmas with the Duchess

by Tamara Lejeune

  “Lady Catherine was born in that house,” Nicholas told her sharply. “It is the only home she has ever known. I will not take it from her and give it to you. Besides, she is very popular with the local people. Her goodness will repair some of the harm my father-in-law caused.”

  “I’m sure my brother only did what he thought was best,” Lady Susan snapped.

  “Now it is my turn to do what I think best,” Nicholas replied shortly.

  Lady Harriet looked at him shrewdly. “Have you come here for revenge, sir? What can you do to my brother? He can’t even walk. He can barely talk. He can’t even feed himself.”

  Nicholas blinked at her in surprise. “Revenge? Not at all, ma’am. It would be cruel to pursue a vendetta against a man in a Bath chair.”

  “Then why are you here?” Lady Harriet asked bluntly. “Anne is right—and I do not say this often. You should be at Camford.”

  “I did not want to come to Warwick,” Nicholas admitted, “but Julia has not seen her family since April. She has not seen her father since his unfortunate…decline. She wanted to be with her family at Christmas. I am prepared to be civil to everyone,” he added.

  “Does that include me, Nicky?” Julia drawled. “Are you going to be civil to me?”

  A servant entered the room with refreshments. Lady Anne hurried to make the tea.

  “Aren’t you glad to see me, Mama?” Julia demanded, watching her mother with narrowed eyes. “You look nervous. What are you hiding?”

  “Of course I am glad to see you,” Lady Anne protested. “And Nicholas, too, of course. I am just surprised, that’s all. You might have written to me, Julia.”

  “I’m a married woman,” Julia said loftily. “I’m far too busy to write letters. Where are my sisters?” she asked, her suspicions now thoroughly aroused. “They should be here to pay their respects to me. Has Cornelia brought her new husband? I long to see him. He must be a great fool to have taken her. Or, perhaps his spectacles were broken the day he proposed.”

  Lady Anne flushed faintly. “Regrettably, Mr. Farnsworth has obligations to his family, and Cornelia, of course, will not want to be parted from her husband. She is with child, you know.”

  Julia laughed unpleasantly. “How nice for Cornelia! And my other sisters? They are here, surely. They have no husbands to take them anywhere.”

  Lady Anne made a silent appeal to Lady Harriet.

  Lady Harriet grimaced. “Your sisters went out for a ride with Mr. Palafox, but they were caught in the rain. I am sure they will join us presently, when they have dried off.”

  Nicholas frowned at the mention of Palafox. He had thought that he had seen the last of that gentleman. “Charles Palafox?” he said stiffly. “He is here?”

  Julia sat forward in her chair. “Charles?” she shrieked. “What is he doing here?”

  Lady Anne now looked quite frightened. Again, it was left to Lady Harriet to explain. “Charles Palafox is engaged to your sister, Octavia,” she said bluntly.

  “Octavia! I am all astonishment,” Julia said coolly. “Poor Mr. Palafox!”

  Lady Harriet snorted. “Not he! When the marriage takes place, Mr. Palafox will be a very rich man, from what I understand. His rich old aunt, Mrs. Allen, approves the match.”

  “How nice for Octavia,” Julia said sourly. “I am glad she finally has found someone. I do feel rather guilty at times for having stolen Nicky from her. That is why I have never allowed him to buy me that enormous pink diamond he is always raving about! Why, how merry we shall be this Christmas!” she went on gaily. “Who knows? Perhaps we will find husbands for poor Flavia and Augusta!”

  “I doubt it,” Lady Harriet said dryly. “In case you hadn’t noticed, Julia, we are all in mourning for Lord Michael.”

  “We mourn General Bellamy, too, Sister!” Lady Susan said angrily.

  Nicholas was startled. “I beg your pardon, ma’am! I—I did not know that your husband had died. I thought—”

  “Killed at Waterloo,” Lady Susan interrupted. “Just like poor Michael.”

  “I am sorry,” Nicholas stammered. “I could have sworn I read in the papers that General Bellamy had been sent to India to put down the latest mutiny.”

  Lady Harriet sighed. “He was, Camford. He was. George Bellamy is not dead, Sister,” she told Lady Susan firmly. “I don’t doubt you wish he were dead, but wishing don’t make it so. He has gone to India with his mistress, that Campersdine creature, but he is not dead.”

  “Slander!” snarled Lady Susan. “I tell you, my husband was killed leading a cavalry charge at Waterloo. That was my George, brave and faithful to the end. He died with my name on his lips!” she shouted, glaring at them defiantly. “This other Bellamy, that one reads of in the newspapers, is nothing more than an imposter.”

  Lady Harriet rolled her eyes. “There is no arguing with her,” she told Nicholas. “Bellamy’s desertion has driven her out of her wits, I’m sorry to say.”

  “You must forgive my sister’s stupidity,” Lady Susan interrupted coldly. “She has been in love with George these many years, and his death has unhinged her mind. She cannot accept that he is dead. She cannot accept that he died loving me,” she added. “But, then, ever since the curate found her naked in the baptismal font, she’s been a little bit off.”

  “I…I see,” said Nicholas, wondering if it were not too soon to make some excuse and run back to his room, or perhaps even back to London. If the sisters’ irrational bickering was any indication, it was going to be a most tedious Christmas.

  “Will you not sit down, Nicholas?” Lady Anne said pleasantly.

  Nicholas declined. “I have been sitting in the carriage all day. I prefer to be on my feet.”

  Julia, in a burst of wifely duty, brought Nicholas a cup of tea. “Where is everyone?” she demanded, returning to her seat. “The duke isn’t here.”

  “His grace has been delayed,” Lady Anne told her. “We expect him tomorrow.”

  “Very well, but where are the other guests? Nicky and I expected the house to be full of people and gaiety. Instead, it’s quiet and dull.”

  “Julia, we are in mourning,” Lady Harriet reminded her. “I’m afraid that means you can expect a very quiet, dull Christmas. There’s to be no Christmas Eve Ball this year.”

  “Why not?” cried Julia. “I have brought the most beautiful ball gown from London. I had it made specially! It cost me a fortune.”

  “You mean it cost me a fortune,” Nicholas corrected her.

  “It has not been six months since I lost my poor Bellamy!” Lady Susan bawled. “Not to mention poor Michael. Would you dance on their graves, young woman?”

  “I don’t think they’re buried under the ballroom floor, Aunt Susan,” said Julia.

  “My George is interred in the Fitzroy crypt, of course,” said Lady Susan. “There is a place beside him waiting for me. I will join him soon, I daresay. But poor Michael was buried in godless Belgium. It was the most terrific scandal! But I suppose that dago wife of his couldn’t be bothered to bring him home,” she sniffed. “Well, she has gone back to her own dusky people now, I understand. I still say she should not have been allowed to keep Michael’s fortune—or the little boy, for that matter. Though, personally, I doubt the child is my nephew’s.”

  “Based on what, you old fool?” Lady Harriet demanded.

  “These dago women are all the same,” Lady Susan informed her curtly. “Fast! Very fast indeed! I am sure she was deceiving poor Michael. She tried to seduce my poor Bellamy, you know. But George could never stop loving me. He died with my name on his lips.”

  “And Mrs. Camperdine on his whatsit,” Lady Harriet muttered under her breath.

  Nicholas could endure no more. Hastily, he made his excuses and returned to his room, where he spent the rest of the afternoon writing letters.

  Chapter Sixteen

  That evening, before dinner, Nicholas was the first to arrive at the lounge. His attention was immediately caught by the pain
ting hung prominently beside the fireplace. It showed Emma, Duchess of Warwick, seated beneath a beautiful spreading oak tree, flanked by her two sons, the younger being encircled in his mother’s arms. The 11th Duke of Warwick looked straight at the viewer with an expression of arrogant condescension as he placed a crown of leaves on his mother’s head.

  The triple portrait had not hung there last Christmas, but Nicholas recognized it all the same. Earlier in the year, it had been on display in London in the atelier of the famed society portrait painter, Sir Thomas Lawrence, who had been knighted only that January. Engravings had been available for purchase all over London, but crowds flocked to Russell Square to see the original, especially after Napoleon Bonaparte’s return to France, when the duchess’s fate was still in doubt.

  “Quite a good likeness, don’t you think?” said a voice at Nicholas’s elbow.

  Lady Susan had sailed into the room “Ma’am,” he muttered, embarrassed to have been caught staring at Emma’s portrait like a lovesick schoolboy.

  “But then no one knows her better than Lawrence,” Lady Susan went on. “They were lovers, of course. They are still good friends. Such a philanderer! Why, he even tried his charm on me, if you can believe that!”

  Jealousy writhed in Nicholas’s breast. He could not contain it. “Is there anyone who was not her lover?” he muttered bitterly.

  Lady Susan looked at him with pity. “Oh, you poor man,” she said.

  Mr. Charles Palafox escorted Octavia Fitzroy into the room. Or, perhaps, it was the other way around. To Nicholas’s annoyance, Octavia brought her fiancé directly to him. Pale and slim, Octavia looked like a scarecrow in her black gown. “Good evening, Cousin Nicholas,” she said evenly. “You remember Mr. Palafox, of course.”

  “Vaguely,” Nicholas said, yielding to childish pique as Palafox smiled at him.

  The man had not changed at all. He was as handsome and false as ever. He had sold out of the army just in time to be spared any danger of having to fight at Waterloo.

  “My lord,” he said, offering Nicholas an ironic bow. “You have heard our good news?”

  “Yes. My congratulations,” Nicholas answered shortly.

  “Thank you, Cousin Nicholas,” Octavia answered evenly, her handsome face as masklike as ever. “Is Julia not with you? She will want to congratulate us, I am sure.”

  “Yes, indeed,” said Palafox, his gray eyes sweeping the room. “Where is the vivacious Lady Camford this evening?”

  “If she is true to form,” Nicholas answered, “she will be the last to arrive.”

  Octavia suddenly stiffened, looking over Nicholas’s shoulder. “Lord, what are they doing here?” she murmured resentfully.

  Turning, Nicholas saw two gentlemen in evening dress standing on the threshold. One was Lord Colin Grey. The other Nicholas recognized belatedly as Lord Ian Monteith. Monty had been badly wounded at Waterloo, and he was still recovering.

  As Colin helped his friend down the steps, Nicholas made his excuses to Octavia.

  “Hullo,” he greeted the two men cheerfully. “Am I glad to see you! I thought I was going to have to pass the port with Palafox.”

  “Fetch that footstool for me, will you?” Colin said, hardly acknowledging Nicholas’s greeting as Monty lowered himself onto a sofa, his rugged face pale from exertion.

  “I am using this footstool,” Lady Harriet snarled at Colin.

  “Hand it over, you old witch, or I shall make you eat it,” he threatened.

  “Please don’t fight,” Monty said wearily.

  Muttering a curse, Lady Harriet pushed the footstool away from her with her foot. Thanking her, Nicholas carried it over to the sofa. “Compliments of Lady Harriet,” he said, as Colin eased Monty’s foot up onto the stool.

  A horrifying scar cut across the Scotsman’s cheek, slicing him right across the lips. At Waterloo, he had been slashed across the face by a French cuirassier, and thrown from his horse. Left with a broken leg, he somehow had dragged himself into the relative safety of a farmyard, where he had lain overnight before being found the next morning, one of the few to have survived the night. He had been thrown on a cart and taken to a cottage.

  “The most unsanitary little hovel you ever saw,” Colin elaborated, shuddering delicately, as he related this part of the tale. Colin looked incredibly unchanged, as slim and young and beautiful as ever, and no less flamboyant. “I nearly fainted when I saw it. What a nightmare! I couldn’t sleep a wink, I was so terrified of the rats. I still wake up in a cold sweat. But this is not the work of a Portsmouth tailor!” he suddenly exclaimed, eyeing Nicholas’s attire with warm approval. “Why, Camford, I do believe you have acquired the London stamp!”

  Nicholas hardly heard the compliment. “You were there? In Belgium?”

  “My dear, everyone was there,” Colin replied. “Except you, of course, and poor Emma, who was stuck in Paris missing all the fun.”

  “Fun!” Nicholas protested.

  “Oh, yes; it was great fun while it lasted,” Colin replied. “When the London Season ended, we just picked up and moved the party to Brussels. It was nothing but balls and parties until that horrid little man invaded with his nasty little army. Why, the night before the invasion, Monty was doing his sword dance at the Duchess of Richmond’s ball, weren’t you Monty?”

  Without waiting for a reply from his friend, Colin ran on. “Of course, I knew all along that Bonaparte would move to strike before the Allies had consolidated their forces. But no one ever listens to me.” He sighed. “I spent three days looking for Monty, first in all the makeshift hospitals. Then I screwed my courage to the sticking place, and rode out to the battlefield. I found Lord Michael first, just clinging to life. His wife was with him already. He’d been knocked off his horse by a cannonball. They’d taken him to some dreadful farmhouse, too. I didn’t find Monty in his hovel until the twenty-first of June! He’d not seen a surgeon; indeed, there were scarcely any surgeons to be had. By this time, the army was in pursuit of the French, and they naturally had taken their surgeons with them. I ended up having to nurse him myself. What a bore! I really thought that Michael would live, and Monty would die, but mysterious are the ways of God and man.”

  He made no mention of his sister, and Nicholas did not ask.

  Colin shook his head as if to clear it of all gloomy thoughts. “But enough of that! Damme, I’m hungry. Who are we waiting for?” he asked brightly. “Julia, of course.”

  Julia arrived at last, looking ravishing in a satin gown of royal blue. “Sorry, I don’t have anything black to wear,” she said carelessly, enjoying the effect her entrance had on her drab unmarried sisters, especially Octavia, who looked positively green with envy.

  “Oh, dear!” she said, looking at the gentlemen in the room. “Only four men! And seven ladies? I’m afraid my sisters will have to console each other. Now then! Which of you handsome gentlemen will be taking me? To dinner, I mean,” she added with a laugh. “Let’s see…Nicky should take Mama. Lord Colin, of course will take Aunt Harriet. That leaves Lord Ian for Aunt Susan, and Mr. Palafox for me.

  “You’ll have to give him up, I’m afraid,” she said, marching up to her eldest sister with breathtaking arrogance.

  “I’m not taking that moldy old nanny goat anywhere!” Colin declared. “’Tis enough to make a man lose his appetite. Come, Julia, I’ll take you.”

  Lady Harriet glared back at Colin with venomous hostility. “Whoreson! As though I should go anywhere with a tedious, puking, milk-livered, mincing fop like you.”

  “What did you call me?”

  “Oh, you’re not still fighting, are you?” said Julia, taking Mr. Palafox’s arm, even though Octavia had not relinquished him. “I thought for sure you would have mended fences by now. So he kidnaped you, Aunt Harriet. He stripped you naked and locked you in the church. It’s Christmas! Can’t you just forgive him?”

  “She?” Colin shouted. “She—forgive me? She’s the one who started it! I’m the victim here! I
should be forgiving her for writing her poison letters.”

  “Oh, but it was not Aunt Harriet who wrote those letters,” Julia said gaily, her beautiful, dark eyes dancing with amusement.

  “Of course it was,” said Colin. “She admitted it!”

  “No, I didn’t,” said Lady Harriet, her lip curled back over her teeth like an angry dog’s. “I refused to deny it, that’s all. I refused to answer your impertinent questions.”

  “That’s because you did it,” Colin growled at her. “You were jealous of Monty, so you got rid of him.”

  “It wasn’t her,” Julia insisted. “I did it. If you could see your faces right now!” she went on, giggling as they all stared at her in disbelief. “Oh, I could just die laughing! Did you really never suspect me?”

  “Julia!” Nicholas rebuked her.

  “I must say, I never saw what all the fuss was about,” Julia babbled on. “So what if Lord Colin is a backgammon player? Lots of people play backgammon. I play backgammon. When I am in a mood, I can even prefer it to cards. Charles, do you play backgammon?”

  “Never mind all that,” Nicholas said impatiently. “Why would you do such a thing, Julia?”

  His tone was that of an autocratic husband, but nearly a year of marriage had taught Julia that his bark was worse than his bite. She had no fear of him.

  “I’ll never tell,” she said coyly.

  “I put her up to it,” Monty quietly announced. Pushing aside the footstool, he struggled to his feet. “I’m responsible.”

  “Ha!” said Lady Harriet. “I guessed as much. You never fooled me for an instant!”

  Colin was stunned. “What? Monty!” he said, fumbling his words.

  “He told me it was a joke,” said Julia, eager to reclaim everyone’s attention. “He told me he’d do it himself, but that Colin would recognize his handwriting.”

  “After Emma rejected my advances, I really had no excuse to stay,” Monty explained. “I had to leave. So…I asked Julia to write the letters.”