Love Match

by Maggie MacKeever

  Justin brushed crumbs off his coat. Elizabeth was happily devouring her treat, temporarily oblivious to both propriety and mess. Rather like Birdie with a biscuit. Had his duchess given her breakfast to the bird? Ah well, easy enough to have the carriage cleaned out. More to the point, what was he to say to her? Something, certainly, for he had delayed long enough.

  “I wanted to speak to you without interruption, Elizabeth. Which is deuced difficult in the house.” At last he had her attention; she abandoned her muffin to observe him warily. “I regret Augusta has chosen to disturb our honeymoon. The devil is in it that she must decide to go off on one of her starts right now. I’m sorry to confess I cannot trust her. There is nothing for it but that she must be with us for a time.”

  The devil was in it that St. Clair would want his cousin with them. Because the duke was of a disposition that if he did not want Augusta with them, she would not be there. Naturally he expected his wife to accept his decision. Elizabeth recalled his hands in her hair, and immediately lost her appetite. “Why is that, Your Grace?”

  Did his duchess question his decision? Justin must have misunderstood. At least she had spoken to him, which she hadn’t done for some time. “You know Augusta is my cousin. What you may not also know is that her brother gambled away the family fortune, and her dowry with it. Afterward he fled the country, throwing her to the wolves. She despises him for it, nearly as much as she despises me.”

  No wonder Lady Augusta was as sour as a lemon. Elizabeth forgot for a moment that she was annoyed. “I can understand why she is angry with her brother. But why should she be angry with you?”

  Justin shrugged. “Augusta is dependent on me, and that stings her pride. I have restored her dowry, and make her an allowance, the majority of which she loses at the tables. She would gamble away even more, did I not keep a sharp eye on her. Unfortunately, Augusta shares her brother’s addiction to play.”

  First a Cyprian, now a gambler. Then there was the parrot. St. Clair’s household grew more and more strange.

  “Augusta thinks she is of an age to do as she pleases,” Justin continued. “I think she is not. Therefore, we are forever at odds. I knew the moment my attention was directed elsewhere she would be at the gaming tables. I did not anticipate she would follow us to Bath.” He glanced at Elizabeth. “And I am sorry that she did. You must not let her get to dagger-drawing. Augusta will go to any lengths for the sole purpose of creating a scene. Fortunately, Nigel will soon return and divert some of her spleen.”

  Perhaps Elizabeth would box Lady Augusta’s ears rather than the duke’s. “Your cousin and Mr. Slyte do not like one another?” she asked.

  Justin guided the horses down a side street to avoid a traffic snarl involving a sedan chair and a produce cart. “We all grew up together. Augusta was more amiable in those days. Nigel would have wed her once. She’d have none of it because he is a younger son.”

  Lady Augusta was not only a crosspatch and a gambler, but a pigwidgeon as well. Elizabeth imagined it might be amusing to be wed to Mr. Slyte. A pity he hadn’t married her for her fortune. Although she suspected Mr. Slyte would not be half as handsome as the duke in a dressing robe. Hastily she asked, “And now?”

  “And now Nigel takes delight in baiting Gus, for she is even poorer than he—Nigel has expectations from his aunt. You have not married into an easy family. I trust in your great good sense to keep above the fray.”

  Elizabeth trusted her great good sense to keep her from saying something she would later regret. St. Clair had told her everything but what she longed to know. Who on earth was Magda? Elizabeth would allow herself to be nibbled to death by rabbits before she mentioned the woman’s name.

  “You will be curious about Magdalena,” added the duke, with unnerving prescience. “Whom you met last night.”

  Elizabeth hadn’t met Magda, precisely; she’d been hustled off to bed. She refrained from pointing this out. It would be interesting to hear how St. Clair meant to explain the introduction of his inamorata into his household. Elizabeth was intensely aware of the duke’s muscular body, so close to her on the carriage seat.

  Justin was intensely aware of his bride’s silence. If she were older, wiser in the ways of the world— But if she were older, wiser, she would have been introduced to the ways of the world by someone other than himself.

  Unsettling reflection. He cleared his throat. “Magda is an old friend who has lived most recently in France. Her husband was beheaded. She fled with little more than the clothes on her back.”

  Elizabeth remembered the lady’s scanty garb. “In that case she must have been quite cold.”

  Fortunately the city bells rang out, obscuring that unwifely—or very wifely—comment. Justin glanced at her. “What did you say?”

  Elizabeth was not so imprudent as to repeat herself. “A desperate journey in truth, Your Grace. And so she fled to you.”

  Unless Justin was mistaken, and he didn’t think he was, his companion’s voice held an acerbic note. He supposed it was not surprising that she might be miffed. “I realize it makes an awkward situation. However, I have a certain obligation which leaves me little choice.”

  Obligation, was it? Inclination, more like. If anyone had countless choices, it was the duke. Apparently the large majority of the misses in the marriage mart, not to mention Maman, had been holding a philanderer in high esteem. Lord Charnwood did intend that his light o’ love take up residence under the same roof as his wife.

  This, after all the lectures she had been given by Maman about what was proper and what was not. Up until this moment, Elizabeth had not believed Charnwood could be so wicked. She smoothed her gloves.

  His bride remained silent. Had Justin failed to make his position clear? “Magdalena and I have a history. I was fond of her once. For me to fail and do my duty now would be unconscionable. I trust that you will try and understand.”

  Not a current ladybird, but a previous one? Who would doubtless waste no time in worming her way back into the duke’s embrace? If she had not already done so the previous evening, while the duchess slept alone. “I meant to please you in all things,” Elizabeth retorted. “But I find I do not wish to humor you in this, Your Grace.”

  The spirited blacks that drew the phaeton might have turned their heads and spoke to him, so astonished was the duke, “Humor me?” he echoed.

  To the devil with duchessly decorum. Elizabeth lifted her chin and met her husband glare for glare. “You will not like such plain-speaking, but I know no other way to phrase it. I do not care to share my honeymoon with your blasted ladybird, St. Clair.”

  As result of this outburst, a number of notions chased themselves through the duke’s startled brain. Surely the chit didn’t mean to defy his authority? He must have misunderstood. Yes, and didn’t her defiance lend an attractive animation to her features, and color to her cheeks? She was trembling with indignation, her bosom quivering with outrage.

  And a nice bosom it was. No fit moment, this, to envision his bride aquiver with an altogether different emotion. Nor could he release the reins to shake her. “You are quick to judge me, madam,” Justin said icily.

  So she had been. Elizabeth didn’t regret her outburst in the least.

  It would hardly do to say so. She watched the passing scenery. “I beg your pardon. For me to question your judgment was a shocking thing. It is not my place to quibble about whomever you decide to include in your household.”

  Her tone was scathing. Though he had already discovered that his bride had a temper, the duke was not best pleased to find that temper directed at himself. Her stubborn chin was outthrust, her lips clamped tight together, her hands clenched in her lap. Justin had a horrid suspicion that at any moment she might burst into tears. He pulled his horses to a stop.

  “I am not the greatest beast in nature,” he said, a little less stiffly. “You might trust me a little, you know.”

  Trust St. Clair? Elizabeth didn’t trust herself to speak. What
the duke mistook for tears was a strong desire to kick him in the shins.

  “As for Magdalena, you are under a misapprehension,” he continued. “She is not my ladybird, nor has she ever been.”

  Not? Go shoe a goose. “Forgive my presumption in asking, but what is she, then?”

  Definitely she had a temper. Those big brown eyes spit fire. “Your mama didn’t tell you, I credit,” Justin said dryly. “No doubt it didn’t signify to her because I am a duke. At any rate, it happened a long time ago. Magda and I were both young.”

  Elizabeth’s patience, such as it was, was wearing thin. “Maman didn’t tell me what?”

  Her eyes sparkled, her bosom heaved. Justin would have preferred to have this conversation somewhere more secluded than an open carriage, in the middle of Bath. “That Magdalena is my first wife, from whom I have long been divorced.”

  Divorced? Elizabeth gaped. “But how—”

  “I traded her for a horse!” snapped Justin. “In the usual way, of course. I had not yet come into the title, and my father paid well to have the business quickly done with. Now let us have no more of this nonsense, if you please!”

  Chapter 7

  “As a woman grows older, she should assume a graver habit and less vivacious air.”—Lady Ratchett

  The Duke of Charnwood’s previous wife, who had not been traded for a horse, or divorced on grounds of temporary insanity on the part of her spouse (though he had considered it), surveyed the interior of the Pump Room. This was a splendid structure with great columns, and curved recesses at each end, thronged already with visitors come to drink the first glass of water of the day. In their gallery, musicians played. Among the crowd were professional men and philosophers and rakes; rheumatics, gout sufferers, people afflicted with unsightly skin diseases; snobs, social climbers, and upstarts of fortune; ladies, both respectable and not; invalids in wheeled chairs.

  Accompanying Madame de Chavannes was Lady Augusta, who grimaced as she sipped the nasty-tasting beverage. “I don’t know,” she muttered, “why you were so determined to come here.”

  Magda sampled her own water. “Zut! It does taste very bad. That London doctor must have made good his threat to cast toads into the spring.” Augusta choked. Magda grinned.

  “You did that on purpose!” accused Augusta. “I don’t see how anyone can stomach three glasses of this stuff a day. And I shan’t have a bath, no matter what you say.”

  Magda idly touched her cameo. “Never? You will eventually reek.”

  “You are being deliberately provoking. Which shouldn’t surprise me. I’ll make you a bargain. I’ll go into the Baths when you do.”

  Magda had no intention of going into the Baths with Augusta. Or anywhere else, actually, which went to show how easily one’s intentions could be overset. “The scandal of nude bathing has been removed, and along with it my interest. Do not stand there gaping! Come along, ma chère.”

  Madame de Chavannes threaded her way through the crowd, glancing with keen interest at the various faces around them. None were worthy of her attention. She cast a quick eye over the book designated for the registration of the city’s more worthy guests.

  Magda did not add her own name to those pages. She turned to Lady Augusta, who trailed in her wake. Augusta was almost winsome in her short robe of white muslin, trimmed round the neck with lace, worn over a striped muslin petticoat; her Dunstable hat trimmed round with a narrow blue ribbon, across its crown a wreath of artificial flowers. Or she might have been almost winsome if not for her expression, which was fierce enough to frighten off anyone. “It is your own fault if you are unhappy. You insisted on coming with me,

  Gus.”

  Augusta’s elegant nose twitched in irritation. “Don’t call me that!”

  Magda returned her attention to her surroundings. “Better Gus than some of the other things Nigel has called you. I especially recall the episode of the hornet’s nest. Poor boy, he was badly bitten. Unfair of him to blame you when we were all equally at fault. Eh bien! Those were better days.”

  Augusta emptied her glass and set it down with a thump. “For you, perhaps. I do not remember them so fondly. Nor do I think Nigel wax nostalgic about being hornet bit. May we please speak of something else?”

  Magda emptied her own glass. Her companion was as touchy as a bear with a sore paw. Not that it was difficult to understand why. “Try and not be so dour, chérie. The day is young, and we are in Bath, which I might point out was also your idea. And if the place does not delight you, it is a joy to me after France! Taxes upon tobacco, road travel, legal documents, windows, and doors. Domiciliary police visits and rigorous examination of travelers. Paris is a maelstrom of intrigue.”

  Augusta eyed her companion. “And in the midst was meddling Magda. You shan’t convince me you didn’t enjoy yourself.”

  Magda gazed into the distance. “After the fall of Robespierre, Paris followed the countryside in an intensifying reaction against the Revolution. In the springtime returning émigrés with a renewed hope of royalty congregated in le petit Corblez to hear the monarchial philosophies being preached abroad by Bonared, and joined the countless counterrevolutionary groups, such as the Societe de Egaux, and found themselves being given two weeks to leave the country or become intimate with Madame Guillotine. Mais oui, ‘twas vastly entertaining to see poor Jules’s head atop a pike.”

  Augusta could have bitten off her bitter tongue. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

  Magda shrugged. “How could you? It is not an uncommon thing. There were bals de guillotine, where ladies who lost loved ones to the blade wore red ribbons round their neck. But I have escaped all that. Now I am determined to be gay.”

  Madame de Chavannes certainly looked gay in her long tunic of light muslin pulled in under the breast and trimmed with a Grecian design, bracelets around her ankles, rings on her toes, and Greek style sandals on her feet. At least she wore a shawl around her shoulders. And not, for which Gus was grateful, a red ribbon round her neck.

  The crowd pressed close around them. Lady Augusta wrinkled her nose at the stink of strong perfume and unwashed flesh. It was said of Bath that in this city everyone met everyone else each day, and mixed with perfect equality. French Revolution or not, Gus was no great believer in egalité. “Might we,” she said faintly, “go outside?”

  Magda noted Augusta’s nauseous expression; glanced at the fine Tompion clock that marked the passage of the hours; led the way past the statue of Beau Nash in the eastern alcove, through the elegant colonnade of the entrance, and paused beneath the Greek inscription which translated ‘Water! Of elements the best.’ “There! Are you feeling better now?”

  Gus drew in a deep breath, which was perhaps unwise; Bath, in its basin of hills, tended to retain bad smells. She exhaled and made an acid comment on a passing lady’s gown.

  “Ah. You are feeling better.” Magda drew her arm through Lady Augusta’s, and guided her past the sedan chairmen waiting in the courtyard. Along the busy street strolled more people with whom Gus had no desire to rub shoulders, cardsharpers and soldiers of fortune, ladies of the town and widows in search of husbands, the sick and not so ill. A stage doctor on an elevated platform covered by a ragged blanket extolled the virtues of a nostrum designed to cure all imaginable disorders, and some that were not. Street sellers hawked cigars and walking sticks, spectacles and dolls, ballad sheets and shirt buttons, rat poison and whips.

  A dapper fellow in a lemon yellow jacket tipped his hat and smiled, revealing a fine set of Egyptian pebble teeth. “A fine day, ladies. How d’ye do?”

  Gus was having none of this classes-come-into-contact-with-perfect-equality-nonsense. She took a firmer grip on Madame’s arm. “We don’t! Be on your way. I told you we should have brought a footman with us, Magda. And you still haven’t told me how you escaped from France.”

  There were any number of things Magda hadn’t told her companion, nor would she, because Gus had never been a marvel of discretion, and Mag
da couldn’t afford to have the cat escape the bag. Therefore, she repeated the tale she had told St. Clair of her journey via Rouen to Le Havre, and her departure by way of a friendly fishing boat. In reality, the fishing boat had taken her only as far as a Royal Navy frigate, which had fetched her home along with Sir Sidney Smith. Magda had received no hero’s welcome, unlike Sir Sidney, who was now embarked on frog-hunting in the eastern Mediterranean. She had entered the country without a passport, and would leave it the same way. Among Magda’s acquaintances she numbered William Wickham, head of a clandestine organization that had made espionage the most flourishing industry of Europe, due to the influx of British gold; Richard Ford, the chief magistrate of Bow Street; the Abbé Ratel, go-between for the British and the Bourbon Princes’ court; and a certain Louis Bayard, also known as Crepin, Louis Vincent, Franc, and a number of other aliases to the grand total of thirty-one, several more than Magda’s own. All of which had led her to the conclusion that Royalists were as fragmented in London as in France, where each agent had a different Paris master, and everyone watched every other like hungry hawks.

  Even now Magda couldn’t be certain she wasn’t being watched, due to her known connection with the Comité Français, which was effectively a royalist government in exile. “I am hungry,” she announced, as she towed Augusta down the street toward a coffee house. “Come along, ma chère. We shall refresh ourselves, and inspect the shops, and discover if we may meet any of our acquaintances promenading among the fashionable crescents and squares.”

  For her part, Augusta hoped she might not meet any of her acquaintances while in company with Madame de Chavannes. Not for Madame the traditional trappings of mourning. Rings on her toes, for heaven’s sake.

  Magda was up to something. Gus wanted to know what. She also wanted to delay as long as possible a further confrontation with her cousin, whom she must placate somehow. She followed Magda into the coffeehouse.

  It was a coffeehouse reserved for ladies. Young girls were not admitted, because the conversation dwelt on politics, scandals, philosophy, and other subjects not fit for their tender ears. The room was of a goodly size, the front window filled with coffee cups and pots and strainers of a dozen different designs, pint coffeepots waiting ready by the well-filled antique grate, clean, polished floors.