The Accidental Duchess

by Madeline Hunter

  “He grew up in Kent, like me, but not near the coast.”

  “It sounds like the two of you have spoken to each other.”

  Sarah blushed. “He helps with the horses at the White Swan, and comes around a bit. I’ve not neglected my duties or—”

  “I did not think you had, Sarah. Is the man as nice as his smile?”

  “I think so. He wants to court me properly. I told him I would ask you for permission.”

  “You do not need anyone’s permission to accept a man’s attentions, Sarah. I will tell the housekeeper that she is to allow him to wait for you down in the servants’ sitting room, and not object if you walk out with him.”

  Sarah pressed the pastry into its pan. “You need to cut those apples thicker or they will turn to mush.”

  Lydia tried to make the slices thicker. “I am glad a decent man whom you find attractive wants to court you, Sarah. I am happy for you.”

  Sarah set to grating sugar off the small cone they had brought. “And I am happy for you too. I can say that to Deea, but it would not be my place to say it to milady the duchess.”

  “You are? Why?”

  “Because of the duke, of course. He likes you more than such men have to like their wives. I see it in him when he watches you.”

  Did he like her? Was their growing comfort more than just two people accommodating the inevitable, or the result of the physical intimacies of marriage?

  She set down the knife and wiped her hands. Sarah started heaping the apples into the pastry.

  Lydia went to the sitting room and took her spencer from a peg. “I am going to take some air in the garden, Sarah. I will return soon.”

  She stepped through the garden door and looked at the familiar plantings. Her aunt had not been here in several months, but the caretaker maintained the property well. She spied the stone bench at the far end of the center path. In summer the shrubbery obscured it more from the house, but those leaves now skimmed along the ground, yellow and dry.

  She could do this. She was not that infatuated girl anymore. She would conquer the fear and sadness. She would not hide in the cloud again, not ever. One can’t see much from within a cloud, for one thing. Perhaps that had been its appeal.

  She strode toward the bench, and toward the past.

  • • •

  Fairbourne’s auction house had become known for its grand previews. A crush of notables filled this one. Penthurst attended without his duchess. After drinking good wine with the prime minister and pawing through the books alongside the prince, he turned critical eyes on the paintings.

  The event distracted him from the thoughts racing through his mind these days. He had spent the last week seeking out the men whose names were on the list he had received from the War Office. They were all suspected of having bought the influence that garnered them a commission. Five of them had admitted to him that they paid Lakewood for arranging the recommendation of an earl or duke. Lakewood had not limited himself to their circle, it seemed.

  Other than those confirmations that the scheme had been larger than guessed, little information had come to him. There had been a few other sightings of some woman, but she had possibly been Lakewood’s current mistress. He might have sworn unrequited love for Cassandra, but he had never stopped pursuing other women.

  So the threatening scandal would have been bigger than Penthurst had known the morning of the duel. Big enough to cause the despair that would make a man arrange to die?

  Southwaite and Emma found him while he peered at a landscape as his mind went over it all again.

  “You appeared so interested in that van Ruisdael that Emma felt obliged to come and urge you to bid on it,” Southwaite said.

  “I do not intend to urge at all,” she said. “That is Mr. Fairbourne’s duty, not mine.” She glanced to where her brother enjoyed the party rather too much, and neglected the duty she described.

  “You look beautiful and happy, Lady Southwaite.” It was the honest truth. Emma was not the most beautiful of women, but she had always had something compelling about her, and being in the family way enhanced that indescribable quality.

  “That is because I am relieved this preview is such a success. Will you attend the auction tomorrow?”

  “I expect so. It will occupy me for a few hours now that I am a bachelor again.”

  Southwaite laughed. Emma did not. She looked to the other side of the large exhibition hall, where Cassandra chatted with Kendale and his wife, Marielle. “Please tell me the truth. Did Lydia leave town so she could avoid us tonight without being bluntly rude? Cassandra and I will be heartbroken if it is true, and if we offended her, we need to make amends.”

  “I do not know what was said among you, but I do not think she was offended. Her absence from town is not to avoid this invitation, or you, I am sure.”

  “More likely it is to avoid him,” Southwaite quipped, jabbing his thumb in Penthurst’s direction.

  “I am sure that is not true,” Emma said.

  He was not sure of much anymore, where Lydia was concerned. She had written twice—brief, empty letters that could have been sent by a passing acquaintance.

  Kendale, Ambury, and their wives came over. The ladies peeled away to examine the jewelry.

  “Are you enjoying the monk’s life?” Ambury asked.

  “There are unexpected benefits. I am being reacquainted with my aunt, for one thing. She seeks me out no matter where I hide, to fill my ears with gossip.”

  “I’m sure you have had a lot of time to read at night too. It is always good to exercise one’s mind,” Ambury said.

  “A respite from the other kind of night exercise in which you have been indulging recently can be reinvigorating too,” Southwaite said. “Or so I have been told.”

  “A bit early for that, I would think,” Kendale said. “Early for a separation too, no matter how brief. Did she wear you out as Southwaite says, Penthurst? Or was there a row?”

  Southwaite hung his head and shook it slowly in amazement. Ambury grasped Kendale’s shoulder with tight fingers and leaned into him. “Southwaite was joking. And we don’t ask each other about the other thing.”

  “You mean the rows with wives?”

  “Yes, I mean the rows.”

  Kendale cleared his throat. “Sorry.”

  “There was no row,” Penthurst said.

  “Of course there wasn’t,” Ambury said. “No one except Kendale ever wondered.”

  “No one,” Southwaite echoed.

  “She knows she must start a long round of calls and receptions, and has gone to the country to rest before embarking on those duties.” It spilled out, sounding almost reasonable.

  When he had agreed for Lydia to go to Hampshire, he had never thought how odd it would look for her to leave so soon after the wedding. If his own friends found it peculiar, the rest of the people in this hall must be spinning all kinds of unflattering suppositions.

  “That was probably wise of her,” Ambury said. “Resting, that is.”

  “So, she did not wear you out. You wore her out,” Kendale said.

  Ambury threw up his hands. “Zeus, will you think—”

  “I am the one joking now. Penthurst sees the humor even if you do not.”

  He did see the joke, but not the one Kendale intended. He had been very careful not to wear her out, as Kendale put it. Lydia was a passionate woman, but it had not been a love match, after all. He had not been the great love of her life.

  Yet, the nights since she had left had been torture. Normally he did not find periods of abstinence hard to bear. This one was driving him mad. He did not just want relief either. He wanted her.

  Cassandra gestured for Ambury to join her at the jewelry.

  “Uh, oh,” he muttered. “This is going to be expensive. Come with me, Southwaite, and pull away your wife so she does not convince Cassandra to bid on half the case.”

  They walked away, which left him drinking wine with only Kendale.
r />   “Do you miss her?” Kendale asked.

  It was another question that men did not ask each other, unless they were the closest of friends, which he and Kendale were not. But then Kendale had even less finesse in talking about women than he had in other areas of conversation.

  Kendale’s gaze settled on the ladies bent to the jewelry case, and in particular on the willowy, elegant one who was his wife. The look in his eyes said he knew what his own answer to the question would be.

  “Yes, Kendale. I miss her.”

  • • •

  The preview was nearing its end when Penthurst saw Ambury standing alone. He walked over. “I have another small way you can help me with my investigation of Lakewood’s activities.”

  “Whom do you want me to find?”

  “No one. I only need some information.”

  “Tell me what it is. If it can be found, I will find it.”

  “It can best be obtained from one person. You.”

  Ambury looked at him. “Damn.”

  “You knew him best, Ambury.”

  “The hell I did.”

  “The longest at least.”

  “Damn.”

  “If you would rather not—”

  “No. Better it be me.”

  He might as well have said, Let us not alert anyone else to how much he was a scoundrel. Perhaps something of his good name can still be saved.

  They went out to the garden to have some privacy. The night had chilled enough that their breath showed.

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Did he ever have a mistress with red hair?”

  “You want to know about his lovers?”

  “Only the red-haired ones.”

  Ambury thought about it. “He did not have mistresses as such. Not the sort he would introduce to friends. There were women, of course. I’d see him with one sometimes. About five years ago I saw him in town with a woman with hair more chestnut than red. She was striking, so I looked twice. No way to know if that is what she was to him, though.”

  It was not much. It might not even be the same woman Greenly and the others saw. A lot of women had red hair.

  “Tell me about his estate.”

  Ambury laughed. “You know he inherited very little.”

  “So little he never spoke of it. That is why I am asking you.”

  “He chafed at his lack of fortune. It had to be hard on him, especially with you and Southwaite as friends. I at least had my father keeping me poor for a while.”

  “Perhaps that is how he justified using us. We had so much, he had so little, surely we would not mind his helping himself to a few pounds with our unknowing aid.”

  “More likely he counted on our never finding out, and was prepared to lose the friendships if we did.”

  Ambury sounded more bitter than Penthurst felt, but then the disillusionment was fresh still with Ambury.

  “He always hoped to make a good marriage, of course,” Ambury said. “After that business with Cassandra, that became less likely.”

  “Was he in debt?”

  “Less than you would think. No expectations mean not much credit.”

  “He had some property, however. I recall once when he spoke of it in passing.”

  “A few farms in Derbyshire kept him in cravats and brandy. He could eke out something resembling a fashionable life on those rents, but he had to watch every shilling.”

  “He used to joke when in his cups about his country manor. I assumed from how he referred to it that it was not a manor at all. Was that house in Derbyshire?”

  “You mean Dunner Park.” Ambury chuckled. “I knew him two years before I realized the name was a joke. I don’t think Dunner Park, whatever its size or condition, was up there. Hampshire, I think it was. He had a spot of property there that he would go down to on occasion. Maybe fifty acres.”

  Cassandra arrived then to steal Ambury away. Penthurst wandered out to the street amid the remnants of the guests. Ambury’s information had not told him much on the face of it. It had added some nuances regarding Lakewood’s lack of fortune, but little more.

  Unless he wanted to count the information about “Dunner Park.” That all but confirmed that Lydia had gone to Hampshire to find answers to questions that involved the man who had been lord of the manor there.

  • • •

  “Now, this is odd,” Lydia said upon reading a letter that came in the post from London. “Do you remember how I said that I could not find my trunk? I looked everywhere. The attics and cellars and every chamber. It had disappeared. I wrote to my aunt Amelia asking what had become of it.”

  “Did your aunt send it back to town, when she knew you were not going to return?”

  “Here is what she wrote: I had the man put it in the barn with the other things, so it would not be in the way.” She looked over at Sarah. “What other things? What man? The caretaker?”

  “What barn? There is no barn here.”

  “Perhaps she meant the carriage house. Let us go see.”

  They crossed the garden toward its back portal. Lydia glanced at the stone bench when they passed it. She could sit there now and not be sucked into nostalgia. With effort and sheer will she had banished any ghosts from the house and garden.

  The rest still waited. The paths of those long walks, the kiss under the tree deep in Forest of Bere, the words both ambiguous and incriminating. Tomorrow she would start looking honestly at the hardest parts.

  The carriage house stood to one side of the garden’s back wall, about a hundred feet behind. No carriages lined the left wall. No horses ate hay in the enclosed stalls on the other side.

  She walked down the center, looking for the trunk. In the third horse stall she found furniture heaped in a jumble. She recognized some of it as having once graced the house. She peered around and through the pile.

  “Help me. I think I see it.”

  Together she and Sarah moved small tables and chairs. Underneath it all lay her trunk.

  “This furniture perhaps holds memories of my aunt’s husband, and she had it removed. As long as a man was doing that, she must have decided to move this too.” Lydia crouched down and examined the latches on the trunk. She had never locked it. She flipped the top open.

  Clothing lay at the top. Sarah shook out and held up each piece.

  “Take what you want, and sell the rest for your own purse,” Lydia said while she moved aside some books.

  “Are you sure? This dress—”

  “I am very sure.”

  She stacked the books on the stall’s floorboards. She plucked out a little doll that she had forgotten she had packed. She could not remember why she had brought it. She had not been a child that visit, and had left dolls far behind.

  More followed. A small box of jewelry, filled with simple but favored items she had concluded were lost. The sheet music of a song she was trying to learn. A sketchbook. She resisted flipping through it because she knew what it contained.

  Long before she hit bottom she knew the manuscript was not there.

  She sat back on her heels and surveyed the contents. She knew she had not brought it back to London, but she had searched her apartment in her brother’s house anyway, to make sure her vague memory was correct. She had placed that novel in this trunk, and now it was gone. So Trilby indeed had it all, most likely. She had hoped perhaps he did not.

  She piled the books and the rest back into the trunk. “Bring the garments if you want. I must write to my aunt again.” She needed to know the name of the man who moved the trunk, and whether anyone else had access to its contents after she returned to London.

  • • •

  Two mornings later Penthurst shared breakfast with his aunt. She made sure he regretted it.

  “Her absence from town is all the talk. You allowing it is very odd. You must make her return or people will think you are one of those men who indulges his bride to the point of idiocy.” She sank her teeth into a cake with a firmnes
s that suggested the cake would suffer what she thought Lydia deserved—a thorough chewing out.

  “I doubt my reputation will be affected at all,” he said.

  “How like a man to believe that. There are names for men made weak like Sampson by a female.”

  “There are? Enlighten me.” He raised his gaze from his paper and feigned curiosity.

  She blushed. “It would be vulgar for me to repeat them. They are very rude names. Not something to be said in decent company.”

  “Yet you know them, and I do not. I suppose that means my company is more decent than yours.” He returned to his paper. Tsking and sputtering sounded across the table.

  The butler brought the first post’s mail into the breakfast room. Rosalyn’s big stack would occupy her for a good while. Penthurst’s smaller one heralded a week of private meetings while the government considered some secret overtures from France for negotiations to end the war. Not only ministers had written, although the number who wanted a private word was interesting. Two junior treasury appointments and three members of parliament had requested audiences too. He assumed some controversy was brewing and most of these letters came from men wanting him to exert influence, not impart useful information.

  At the bottom of the stack, a different sort of letter waited. Thick, and written in a hand he did not immediately recognize, it had been posted in London the afternoon before. He set it aside while he read the others and calculated which he could decline.

  “Has she at least written?” Rosalyn asked while pretending to be distracted by her own letters.

  “I received a letter yesterday afternoon. I am sure you do not expect her to write twice in twenty-four hours.”

  “I can guess what happened, and I think you are handling it wrong.” Her voice dripped with sympathetic understanding. “Her maid can hardly give her advice. She needs to talk to an older woman with experience in these things. Her aunt Amelia, for example.”

  The oddity of her new tone and words eventually settled into his mind. He set aside the letter. He rested his chin in his hand. “What do you think happened?”

  “Surely you do not expect me to speak of it.”

  “I do expect it. I am very curious. Your insights are often enlightening. ”