The Duchess

by Bertrice Small

  “I shall have to go to Pickford now that Sirena is limited in her travels,” Allegra said, putting an arm about her cousin. “Thank you for coming today, darling. You have suddenly popped and are showing your belly, Sirena. It is most becoming.”

  “Your godson is thriving,” Sirena laughed. “Ohh, Allegra, I shall miss you this winter when you are in London.”

  “I’d be just as happy to remain here,” Allegra said. “I don’t really like the city, but Eunice and Caroline insist we come. We shall only remain a few weeks, I promise.”

  “Where will you stay?” Sirena asked.

  “At Papa’s house,” Allegra answered. “It is foolish of us to purchase another house as Papa’s will belong to us one day. Besides we like Berkley Square, and it is quite conveniently located.”

  Sirena laughed. “I wish I could go,” she said. “You will have so much more fun than when we were debutantes, Allegra. We had to be so prim and proper then lest we spoil our chances for husbands. There is the theatre, Vauxhall Gardens, fetes, costume balls, opera, and the races! I will think of you when you are gone, cousin.”

  The Season always began in March or April, but ended by mid-June, when everybody who was anybody returned to their country estates and homes. A Little Season began in September, but by November the town was deserted again by the well-to-do. In January when Parliament began, many of the fashionables returned to town and the country was deadly dull. The duke and his three friends, who usually did not involve themselves in politics, had decided to attend the government session while they were in London. The Earl of Aston and Lord Walworth would be renting the old Earl of Pickford’s house during their stay as he was not coming to Parliament this year in anticipation of his grandchild’s birth. He wanted to be there when his next heir made his debut.

  Allegra and the duke traveled to London in a large, comfortable traveling coach drawn by six horses. The interior of the vehicle was well padded, and it was well sprung. The seats were upholstered in a soft beige leather. Beneath each seat was a metal box for hot coals so that the coach might be heated. The heat escaped through a brass latticework at the bottom of each of the two benches. There were small crystal oil lamps, banded in silver, for light. The windows were glass, and could be raised or lowered depending upon the weather. The windows had cream-colored velvet curtains that could be drawn for privacy. The back of the seat facing the rear of the coach could be drawn down. It held its passengers’ food and wine. The coachmen’s box held two men. There was a bench behind the coach for two footmen. The top of the vehicle was deep enough and wide enough for a goodly supply of luggage.

  The weather was so cold that even the duke would not ride outside, but remained within the coach with his wife. His vehicle was followed by a second carriage in which Honor, and the duke’s valet, Hawkins, rode with the rest of the luggage. This auxiliary vehicle had but one driver, the second undercoachman. It would be his duty in London to oversee the stables and ducal transport while they were there.

  While cold, the weather held, though it was gray and cloudy. They stopped for luncheon, and then for dinner and lodging at inns that were expecting them. They did not have to change horses because the animals were well cared for, and well rested each night. Allegra was very grateful for the hooded beaver-lined velvet cape her husband had given her for Christmas. She unashamedly wore several flannel petticoats beneath her skirt. This was no time to be fashionable, and besides, who was to know, she thought, as she snuggled into the dark green velvet of the fur-lined and -trimmed cape.

  It took them several days to reach London, but when they did, the servants hurried from Morgan House to help them out of their coach and escort them into the house. Marker, the family butler, came forward, bowing, a smile upon his face.

  “Welcome home, Your Grace,” he said. “Your father is here, and will see you and His Grace in the library when you are settled.”

  “Papa! Ohh, let us go now,” Allegra said, unfastening her voluminous cape and handing it off to a footman.

  “Very well, my dear,” the duke agreed. He hadn’t thought his father-in-law would be here, but then why wouldn’t he? It was his house, and he certainly always had business in London.

  Septimius Morgan arose from his chair by the fire to greet his only child and her husband. “I shall not be with you long,” he reassured them with a smile. “I am anxious to return home as soon as possible. Your stepmother hasn’t felt well of late.”

  “What is the matter?” Allegra cried, a worried expression crossing her beautiful face.

  “Nothing more, my child, than a winter ague,” her father assured her with a smile. “How it pleases me that you love Olympia as I do.” He indicated a settee opposite his chair, and the couple both sat. “How long do you plan to remain in town?” Lord Morgan inquired as he seated himself.

  “Only a few weeks,” the duke replied. “Our friends, Aston and Walworth, are also here with their wives. We plan to make a time of it, Septimius. We shall visit the opera, the theatre, perhaps even Vauxhall if there is something of note to see. I should also like to go to Tattersall’s. While I have an excellent stud, I could use some good blooded mares to improve my stock. We will certainly be gone before The Season begins.”

  “Do you intend to take your place in the house, Quinton?” his father-in-law asked him.

  “Yes, I think I should like to see what is going on right now,” the duke answered.

  “I have never asked you this,” Lord Morgan said, “but are you a Tory, or a Whig?”

  “I think I am a little of each, sir, which is why I do not visit Parliament too often,” the duke responded with a small smile. “Nothing in this life is only black or white, Septimius. I cannot become enthusiastic over a political party and cleave only to it. Politics are made up of men, and men, I have learned, are quite fallible.”

  Now it was Lord Morgan’s turn to smile. “You have married a wise man, my child,” he told Allegra.

  “And you, sir,” the duke said. “Are you fish, or fowl?”

  “Like you, Quinton, neither. A man in trade such as myself, even with a Lord before his name, cannot afford to take sides. I leave that to cleverer heads than mine, and those whose passions run higher.”

  The duke chuckled, and turned to his wife. “You have a devious and clever father, my darling.”

  “As long as the country is well run,” Lord Morgan said, “I am content.” He looked closely at his daughter, and what he saw pleased him greatly. Sirena had written that Allegra had fallen in love with her husband, who was already in love with her, but now that he saw it with his own eyes, he was happier. They had only been at Hunter’s Lair overnight for his daughter’s birthday, and he had had no real chance to observe the pair. Olympia would be delighted, for it was really she who had engineered the match with Lady Bellingham’s aid.

  “When will you leave us, Papa?” Allegra asked him.

  “In two or three days, my child, but I am leaving Charles Trent behind to oversee my business. He will be a shadow, of course, but should you entertain, he will be an excellent extra gentleman for the table. He has offered to tuck in at my offices, but I said you would not hear of it.”

  “No, no,” Allegra agreed. “He must remain here in his own rooms.”

  The next morning while her father and husband had gone off to the House of Lords, Allegra sat down with Charles Trent. “It will be expected that I give an at home,” she said. “How long will it take to arrange the invitations? I assume you know to whom my cards should be sent? We do not intend to remain in London long, but I know that as the Duchess of Sedgwick I cannot come and not have an at home.”

  “The invitations are already engraved, Your Grace,” Mr. Trent answered her. “It only remains for you to choose the day. Might I suggest the last day of February?”

  “We intend leaving shortly afterward,” Allegra said thoughtfully. “How ridiculous that we must give people a month’s notice. Sirena and I went to several at homes last sea
son. What a silly custom. You push into a huge crush of people, remain only fifteen minutes, and then leave. There is no food, no drink, no entertainment at all. And your levee is not considered a success at all unless at least one woman faints dead away, and the crowds are overwhelming. I do not see the point of it all. Still, it is the fashionable thing to do, and so I must. I would not want the gossips saying I was not worthy of my husband’s name and title.”

  “I am inclined to agree with Your Grace on both counts,” Mr. Trent said with a small smile. “It is ridiculous, but the gossips will indeed cry you are ill-bred if you do not do it. Shall we say the last day of February?”

  “No, make it the twentieth, if it is not a Sunday,” Allegra said. “Then at least we will have a pleasant final week in town.”

  “Very good, Your Grace,” Mr. Trent answered.

  “How odd to hear you call me that instead of Miss Allegra,” she replied. “I am still not used to such grandeur, although here in London I suppose I must play the role to the hilt.”

  “Indeed you must,” he advised her. “Wealth and position mean a great deal to most of the people with whom you will have to associate while you are in town, Your Grace. In one short season you have climbed from the bottom of the tree to the top of the tree. There will be many who still resent it, completely overlooking the fact that it is your wealth, and the duke’s family, that have made you such a perfect match. You do, however, have an excellent friend in Lady Bellingham.”

  “Is she in town yet, Mr. Trent?”

  “I believe she arrived with her husband several days ago.”

  “Please send her an invitation to tea tomorrow,” Allegra instructed her father’s personal secretary.

  “Of course, Your Grace,” Mr. Trent replied.

  The duke and Lord Morgan returned from Parliament’s opening late in the afternoon. Allegra had tea served in the smaller green drawing room. Marker set the large silver tray on a table before the young duchess, and then stepped back politely. Allegra poured the fragrant India tea into French Sèvres cups for her husband and her father, while a footman passed around the crystal plates holding bread and butter, and small cakes filled with fruit that had been iced with a white sugar icing.

  “Was it interesting?” she asked the two men.

  “There is a small visitors’ gallery,” her father said. “Any day that you and your friends would like to visit, I shall arrange it. Depending on what they choose to argue about makes it interesting, or else deadly dull. Today the king opened the session, and while colorful, it is usually quite boring. I must say the day lived up to its promise, eh, Quinton?” he finished, his eyes twinkling as he looked at his son-in-law.

  “Indeed,” the duke replied. “The Whigs are out of power right now, and seem to become more radical with each passing day. All they can talk about is reform, reform, reform. That usually involves taking from those who work hard, and giving it to those who do not. Since many of the more prominent Whigs are wealthy men, you can be certain they will not penalize themselves.”

  “But there is much poverty, especially here in the city,” Allegra said. “I have seen it myself.”

  “You can be sure the government will do only what they are forced into to care for the poor,” her father said dryly.

  “But what about the Tories?” Allegra asked.

  “They are more conservative,” the duke replied. “They have, since their inception in the sixteen hundreds, favored the Stuarts, and opposed any attempts to deny our Roman Catholic citizens their rights. When King James II was overthrown in what the historians like to call the Glorious Revolution, and his daughter Mary came to England to rule with her Dutch husband, the Tories favored the Jacobite cause. But they were not averse to the Hanoverian succession after Queen Anne died. The Whigs, however, used the Tories’ former Jacobite leanings against them. Tories were very neatly excluded from government by the first two Georges. The current Prime Minister, Mr. Pitt the younger, has changed all of that,” the duke said.

  “How?” Allegra asked her husband.

  “Now, my pretty darling,” the duke responded patting her cheek, “certainly you don’t want to fill your pretty head with such stuff as politics.”

  Lord Morgan watched amused as he saw his daughter stiffen her spine, an irritated look crossing her pretty face, her eyes becoming hard with her annoyance.

  “Quinton,” she said in a soft, well-modulated voice, “if you do not answer my question, I shall smack you. If I were not interested, I should not have asked. Surely you know better by now than to classify me with those silly creatures who flutter about our world giggling, and fluttering their eyelashes and swooning at the drop of a hat.”

  At first startled by his wife’s suggestion of violence, the duke then recovered and said, “Mr. Pitt has done many good things for England, Allegra. He managed to place the East India Company under government control, which is much better for trade. He has tried to ease the problems in the Canadian colony, which as you certainly know is peopled by both English and French colonists. He did this by dividing it into Lower Canada, which is predominantly peopled by the French, and Upper Canada, which is English speaking. He has reduced customs duties which has undoubtedly been of great help to your papa’s business ventures. He has established a sinking fund, which takes a percentage of the government’s revenues, and uses it to pay off the government’s debts. Not all of it, of course, but some. Of course the trick is to keep the politicians from using the sinking funds for other purposes instead of the ones that they’re intended to cover.

  “Mr. Pitt the younger was quite committed to parliamentary reform, but he has put it aside in the wake of what is happening in France. He has also, due to the difficulties in France, suspended the writ of Habeas Corpus, but you wouldn’t know what that was, Allegra, would you?”

  “It is a law requiring anyone detaining another individual to produce that person in a court of law within a specified period of time, and to furnish reasons for the detention then. I believe the law was first written in the sixteenth century. It has been revised somewhat over the years, but it is basically the same now as it was then, except that originally it was only used for criminal charges, and now it is used for civil charges as well. Habeas Corpus was suspended during the Jacobite uprisings at the beginning and middle of this century. Is that the Habeas Corpus you are referring to, my lord husband?” Allegra smiled sweetly.

  “Did you let her study the law, Septimius?” the surprised duke asked his father-in-law, but then he began to laugh. “What other surprises have you in store for me, my darling?” he asked.

  “Now, that, sir, would spoil all my fun,” Allegra responded pertly, and she laughed, too.

  Lady Bellingham came to tea two days later, and was delighted to find her niece and the young Countess of Aston had been invited as well. “What, Caroline, you are in town, and did not call upon me?” she demanded of Lady Walworth.

  “We have not even settled in yet, Aunt,” was the quick reply.

  “Where are you staying? Has Walworth rented a place, for I know he has no house of his own,” came the next question.

  “Adrian and Marcus Bainbridge have rented the old Earl of Pickford’s house, Aunt. Sirena is breeding, and could not travel, so they have no use for the house in London this winter.”

  “An excellent address,” Lady Bellingham responded. “Well, what is it that you three intend to do in London?”

  “We mean to sightsee,” Allegra said, “and visit all the places like Vauxhall, that a proper debutante could not go to without fear of ruining her reputation, Lady Bellingham.”

  “Be careful you don’t ruin your reputations now, my gels,” Lady Bellingham said sharply. “Marriage is not a blanket license to run wild. You don’t want to follow in the Duchess of Devonshire’s footsteps. Why the gossip about her is outrageous, but true, I fear. She is in debt up to her pretty ears, I am told. Loses thousands each night at cards and in the gambling halls where ladies are not s
upposed to go. Most shocking!”

  “I certainly do not gamble,” Allegra replied. “Oh do try some of the salmon, Lady Bellingham.”

  “Salmon? Why, m’dear, ’Tis an especial favorite of mine,” Lady Bellingham said, helping herself to a small rectangle of buttered bread with an equally small sliver of pink salmon upon it. “Delicious!” she pronounced. “But I am too clever an old fox to be wheedled off the subject, Allegra. What is it exactly that you young women intend doing?”

  “We really have come to sightsee, Aunt,” Caroline, Lady Walworth assured her elder. “And there is the theatre, and the opera since Allegra and Quinton don’t gamble, and as neither Walworth nor Bainbridge have the ready for such high stakes as here in London.”

  “You are wise, my gels, for the gambling is entirely out of hand thanks to Prinny and his friends. Fortunes are made and lost in a single night. Many lives have been ruined. Prinny and his friends may mock the king, but he is a good man who has set a good Christian example for us all. What a pity his son cannot follow it, especially now that he is a father himself. I would not come to London at all nowadays but that Bellingham must attend Parliament. How he loves his politics, and, of course, Mr. Pitt is such a fine man.”

  “You would not prefer to remain in the country, and let my uncle come up alone?” Caroline asked mischievously.

  “Gracious, child,” her aunt exclaimed. “One should never allow a husband to come up to London alone. Much too much temptation for a gentleman, even the best of them. There are women, not the kind we would associate with, I assure you, just looking for unaccompanied gentlemen like my poor gullible Freddie, to take advantage of, and fleece. No! No! As long as Frederick Bellingham wants to come up to Parliament, I shall be at his side, I can assure you.” She helped herself to another bit of salmon.

  “Poor uncle,” Caroline murmured softly to her friends who struggled not to giggle. They all knew that old Lord Bellingham, a rather charming gentleman, was under the firm control of his forceful wife whom he simply adored.