by M C Beaton
“Rape!” she screamed. “Rape!”
The couple broke apart and got to their feet as other servants came rushing into the drawing room.
“Duke or no duke, you are not going to seduce one of my girls,” shouted Mrs. Moreton. “Men are filthy beasts.”
“Control yourself, Mrs. Moreton,” came Mr. Camden’s amused voice from behind her. “If I guess right, they are to be married.”
“Married? A duke marry our Lucy?”
“I am afraid your Lucy has lied to you. She is in fact the duke’s fiancée and was playing a trick on him. I must trust to your discretion, Mrs. Moreton.”
Mrs. Moreton looked from Lucy’s radiant face to the duke’s happy one and gave a defiant sniff. “A funny game to me, Mr. Camden.”
“Well, I am sure His Grace and Miss Bliss are anxious to be on their way. If you would be so good as to send one of the maids to get Miss Bliss’s things and bring them out to the carriage… unless you wish to change, Miss Bliss?”
“No,” said the duke, replying for Lucy, “there is not any time.”
“And may I congratulate you?” asked Mr. Camden.
“Yes, you may,” said the duke.
“And must you leave so soon? I could rouse my guests and we could have a party.”
Lucy shuddered, thinking of all the work that would mean for the servants as the duke repeated that they must leave right away.
The servants were all gathered in the hall by the time Lucy descended the stairs. She looked round at their tired, strained faces and turned to Mr. Camden.
“I must beg you, sir, to treat your servants better.”
“Hey, they are better-paid than most,” protested Mr. Camden.
“They are being worked nigh to death by your houseguests,” said Lucy. “They do not get to bed until the small hours, and then they have to rise at six. You would not work a horse as hard as they are worked.”
“Well, bless my soul. Mrs. Moreton, you should have said something.”
“It is not my place to complain,” replied the housekeeper, giving Lucy a scandalized look as if Lucy were an uppity housemaid and not the duke’s fiancée.
“Never mind,” said Mr. Camden. “I’ll go easy on them. Send you a present for your wedding. What would you like?”
Before the duke could reply, Lucy said eagerly, “You could give your servants a holiday. That is a present I would like. They could rest and have a whole day’s and a whole night’s sleep, which is what they need.”
“Done,” said Mr. Camden cheerfully. “Mrs. Moreton and Crenshaw”—to his butler—“you may have a whole week off, demme. I’ll take this lot up to my box in the Highlands.”
Lucy wanted to point out that in that case, the Highland servants would end up with the workload, but suddenly felt too tired to protest. She walked out to the carriage with the duke and climbed wearily in. At least she had done something for her former fellow servants, and knew they would feel grateful to her.
As the carriage drove off, Mrs. Moreton said to the butler, Mr. Crenshaw, “That one will never make a proper duchess.”
“Neither she will,” agreed the butler. “Playing games acting as a maid and then stepping out of line to get us a holiday. Servants should know their place, and that goes for duchesses, too!”
The journey home for Lucy was a blurred impression of towns and villages as she drifted in and out of sleep, feeling the duke’s arms around her in the swaying carriage, seeing the tenderness in his face by the light of the bobbing carriage lamp.
When they reached Sarsey, the duke told her to go to bed immediately and then went in search of Mr. Bliss and his secretary. Unfortunately, Mrs. Bliss arrived when they were discussing the new plans for a double wedding, and she began to exclaim. “Lucy to be married after all! Not ruined! Oh, my stars. The wedding gown. She will need to wear Belinda’s. Belinda will just have to have a ball gown made over.” She would have gone on for longer if the duke had not told her firmly that Belinda was to wear the wedding dress that had been made for her and that she, Mrs. Bliss, was to have no say in the organization.
Thwarted, Mrs. Bliss tried to go to Lucy’s room but found her bedroom door was locked. She searched for Belinda, but Belinda had just been told of Lucy’s arrival and the wedding plans and had rushed off to tell Mr. Marsham.
“It’s a lot to get ready before tomorrow,” said Mr. Marsham doubtfully. “I am so happy Lucy is to wed. Working as a servant! Your sister is a trifle odd, is she not?”
“No odder than the duke,” said Belinda cheerfully. “We are all to be married tomorrow and live happily ever after, and nothing can go wrong now.”
But things started to go wrong for Lucy that very evening. At first she was radiant as she joined her parents, the duke, and the guests in the drawing room before dinner. Belinda thought Lucy had never looked prettier.
Lady Fortescue and Mr. Graham were among the guests. Lady Fortescue had been delighted when she had heard at first that it was Belinda to wed and not Lucy. Her hopes of getting the duke for herself rose high, and she had been just about to break off her engagement to Mr. Graham when she heard, along with the other guests, about the double wedding planned for the next morning. At first she had congratulated herself on her wisdom in not being too precipitate in ending her engagement to Mr. Graham. But there was something about Lucy’s virginal happiness that roused her jealousy and bad temper. As the evening progressed, the desire to dim Lucy’s happiness began to burn inside her. Lady Fortescue sparkled and shone as brightly as her diamonds as she tried to focus all attention on herself, and with the exception of the duke and Mr. Marsham, succeeded in doing so, but felt no sense of victory, for Lucy Bliss had not even noticed.
In the drawing room after dinner when the ladies were awaiting the gentlemen, Lady Fortescue saw her opportunity. Lucy was standing by a window, looking dreamily out into the gardens. Lady Fortescue joined her. “So very beautiful, is it not?” she asked. Lucy swung round, her face hardening a little. “Yes, very beautiful,” she agreed.
“And soon it will all be yours.”
“Yes,” said Lucy with a slight air of hauteur. “I will be living in my husband’s home, if that is what you mean.”
“Such a lucky little girl,” cooed Lady Fortescue. “Heigh ho! I suppose I should have accepted Wardshire when he asked me.”
“That was so long ago,” said Lucy lightly.
“He has changed a lot.” There was a waspish edge now to Lady Fortescue’s voice. “Ah, we were such innocents once, just like you yourself. Of course, since then, I have been married, and he… he has had so many women. Not like yourself, of course. I mean courtesans and experienced women, experienced in the wisdom of the bedchamber.” She fanned herself languidly. “I trust he does not frighten you to death.”
“Not as much as you frighten me, Lady Fortescue,” said Lucy candidly. “I feel as if something slimy had just crawled over me.” She walked past Lady Fortescue and went to join Belinda and bent down to pat Barney to hide her feelings.
The poison that Lady Fortescue had dripped into her ears was beginning to creep through her whole being. She gave a little shudder.
“Tell me of your adventures,” begged Belinda. “We have barely had time to talk.”
So Lucy sat down beside her and told her all about being a servant, but when she got to the bit about how she had realized at last that she really loved the duke, her voice faltered. Belinda did not appear to notice.
“I shall be glad when the wedding service is over,” she confided, “for Mama is so angry with the duke that she plans to leave immediately. At one point I thought she meant to move into the vicarage. You are suddenly looking a little pale, Lucy. You have had quite an ordeal. Do not worry. Soon you will be alone with your duke.”
Alone!
The gentlemen entered the room at that moment. Lady Fortescue went to join the duke. She said something to him and then began to flirt with him in a practiced way. He looked amused.
> He will find me boring, thought Lucy, assailed with panic. He is used to women like that. What can he want with a green girl?
But he looked across the room at her and smiled, and she felt her fears drop away and her heart lift again. He loved her, and that was all that mattered.
Anxious to be well rested for the wedding service in the morning, Lucy and Belinda went early to bed. But even on this night, they were not to be spared their mother’s presence. She followed them up.
“It is time we all had a comfortable talk,” said Mrs. Bliss. “Wardshire and that secretary may think they can handle everything, but it takes a mother to speak to her daughters about certain things.”
“Such as?” demanded Belinda, sitting down in a chair in Lucy’s room with Barney on her lap.
“Tomorrow,” said Mrs. Bliss, “you will both lose your virginity. It will be a disgusting and painful ordeal, but it is part of the burden a married woman has to bear.”
Both, stricken with embarrassment, looked at her.
“It is best to bite down on something,” said Mrs. Bliss. “On my wedding night, I bit clear through the ivory sticks of my fan. Try not to scream too much, for it alarms the servants, and a lady should never scream. Now, I am glad I have put over that distasteful piece of advice in what I pride myself was a practical way.” She then began to rattle on about her own gown and how Monsieur Farré had designed it specially, while her daughters sat silently, willing her to go away.
Lucy at last interrupted her by saying if they stayed awake much longer, they would be wrecks on the morrow, and this, thankfully, had the effect of forcing their mother to say good night to them.
When Mrs. Bliss had gone, the sisters looked at each other in dismay. “I don’t think I like the sound of what goes on in the marriage bed,” said Belinda.
“It’s different for you,” said Lucy. “Mr. Marsham is bound to be a virgin as well. But what of Wardshire? Hundreds of women in his past, I am sure. And Lady Fortescue told me that he was only used to women of experience.”
“She is a jealous cat who was trying to upset you,” retorted Belinda. “Do you know, Lucy, I read in a magazine that it is quite common for a timid bride to ask her husband to wait, perhaps for some years.”
Lucy brightened momentarily and then her face fell. “I cannot see Wardshire agreeing to that. I am so worried. Perhaps things will look better in the morning.”
But a bright, sunny morning dawned and Lucy’s fears rushed back to her, double. She stood like a puppet while Monsieur Farré, who had been up all night with his seamstresses altering one of Lucy’s ball gowns, fitted it on her and then darted to the other end of the long saloon that he had commandeered as a dressing room to oversee the fitting of Belinda’s gown. Down the length of the long room, the sisters exchanged agonized glances, each still worried to death by what their mother had told them.
Finally they were both ready, and Monsieur Farré had done such a clever job on Lucy’s gown that she looked every bit as grand as Belinda, who was attired in a creation of white satin and Brussels lace. Lucy’s white and silver ball gown had had the silver trimming ripped off, and now it was trimmed instead with intricate rows of seed pearls and flounces of old lace. She had a pearl choker of four strands round her neck and a pearl and diamond tiara for her head.
The sisters were placed in chairs, side by side, and told not to move until the bridal carriages arrived at the main door.
They sat like white statues until Belinda gave an exclamation and jumped to her feet. The saloon was on the ground floor with a long stone terrace outside French windows. She had just seen the duke and Mr. Marsham walking past. Belinda jerked open a window and called to them, and they turned about and walked up the terrace, the duke looking amused and saying he thought they were not supposed to see their brides before the wedding.
“We have something to say to you,” said Belinda. “Step inside.”
“We can’t, Belinda,” protested Lucy in horror.
“I am going to enjoy my wedding,” said Belinda defiantly. “I am not going to it frightened to death.”
“What has frightened you?” asked Mr. Marsham.
“Mama said—” began Belinda.
“No!” cried Lucy.
“Go on,” prompted the duke. “What did Mama say?”
Belinda put her hands behind her back and faced both men like a child about to recite poetry. “She told us that we would find the loss of our virginity a disgusting and painful experience.”
A painful blush crept up Mr. Marsham’s face, and he covered it with his hands.
“A moment,” said the duke coldly. “Come with me, Marsham.”
“Now look what you have done,” wailed Lucy as the two men walked outside. The duke was talking fiercely to Mr. Marsham. Both waited anxiously, Belinda looking as if she was on the verge of tears.
And then the duke came back. “Go and join Mr. Marsham in the garden for a few moments, Belinda. I wish to speak to Lucy alone.”
Belinda obediently trotted out.
The duke closed the window behind her and jerked the curtains closed and then closed the curtains at the other windows. Then he went and locked the door.
He turned and stood with his arms open. “Come to me, Lucy.”
She walked stiffly into his arms and he closed them tightly about her. “You will forget everything your mother told you,” he said.
“But—”
“No buts. Just kiss me.”
His dark face swam above her own and then his lips came down on hers, hot and burning with all the passion he had previously tried to hold in check. Lucy felt her very bones melt, her whole body seem to fuse with his own, as she suddenly strained against him.
For what seemed the hundredth time, Mrs. Bliss thought she would die of shame. Voices rose and fell at the wedding breakfast, saying they had never been to such a charming wedding, while Mrs. Bliss sat silent, picking at her food.
How could her daughters have behaved so disgracefully? They had both appeared just in time to get into the first of the flower-bedecked wedding carriages. Lucy’s tapes were untied, her tiara was askew, and her lips were swollen. Belinda was in a worse state. There were grass stains on the back of her beautiful gown, and mud from the garden on her white satin shoes.
They had not acted as brides should act either. They had not looked modest. Both had looked triumphantly happy, and they had kissed their husbands in a disgracefully lewd way at the altar.
It was only when the happy couples were ready to leave, Lucy and her duke on the first stage of a journey to Italy, and Belinda and her vicar to their vicarage, that Mrs. Bliss’s spirits rose. For one of London’s most formidable hostesses, none other than the Countess Lieven, she who often stated, “It is not fashionable where I am not,” turned to her and said, “I have never in my life been to a more delightful or well-run affair. I congratulate you!”
And Mrs. Bliss promptly forgot that the now-exhausted Mr. Lewis had arranged the whole thing, and gracefully accepted the compliment before finding her voice again and proceeding to bore as many guests as she could about how she had organized the whole wedding ceremony.
In the best bedroom of an elegant posting house on the Dover road, Lucy watched shyly as her husband prepared to join her in the large four-poster bed. “What did you say to Mr. Marsham?” she asked.
“When, my sweeting?”
“When Belinda called you in from the garden.”
“Oh, that.” He put one knee on the bed and smiled down at her. “I told him Belinda had bride nerves and that he ought to… er… warm her cold nerves before the wedding.” He slid in between the sheets and reached for her. “Like this,” he murmured, “and this…”
Lucy stretched languorously against him and sighed, “You are a very wicked duke, after all!”