American Duchess

by Karen Harper

  On it went until my brain clicked off. Boring restrictions, I thought. I was trapped in a gilded cage, and these new people and new rules were the bars, at least the ones I could see so far.

  AFTER NEARLY A week in London, it was on to Sunny’s Blenheim—my Blenheim now, too. That day was outright cold, so he insisted I wear my sable coat. We went by regular train to Oxford where a special train, with our parlor car decorated for a duke, took us the rest of the way to Woodstock. Sunny had told me everything would be both formal and festive to welcome their duke back and their new duchess home. Yet I could not have been more surprised by the turnout. It made the crowds on our wedding day look meager.

  “Good,” Sunny said only as we disembarked to cheers and huzzahs. “I would expect no less.”

  Women cried and waved, and men, some with little children on their shoulders, snatched off their hats or caps. The station flew bunting, British flags, and Marlborough coat-of-arms banners. A red carpet had been laid on the platform. We were welcomed by the mayor of Woodstock in crimson robes, who greeted me with, “I must tell Your Grace that Woodstock had a mayor before America was even discovered.”

  I was quite used to that attitude by now, but I was not prepared to control my emotions when the mayor’s daughter presented me with a huge bouquet of pink roses. They were so lovely, so fragrant, not American Beauties, but it brought back to me Win’s half-wilted rose that he had pulled from his coat the day he proposed on his bicycle and I accepted. I desperately blinked back tears and bit my lower lip—my upper lip not at all stiff but quivering. I had tried so hard to put the past behind me, but it kept lurking.

  Speeches, welcomes, more cheers. To my amazement, our carriage up the road to Blenheim was drawn by estate workers rather than horses. That seemed off-putting, but the men looked proud, so I waved, smiling now much more than Sunny whose sharp nods indicated that all this was his due.

  A triumphal arch had been erected. At the front door to the palace we were greeted by the chief steward, Mr. Angus, and the housekeeper, Mrs. Ryman, while a small band played “Home Sweet Home.” I did love the schoolchildren’s singing and promised myself I would visit their classroom soon. Tenant farmers, household servants, and other employees stood in separate groups, which bothered me, too, but apparently that was the way of it as we stood on the front steps of massive Blenheim.

  Sunny, obviously their beloved duke, made a speech. “I did not plan to be so long away from you or that when I returned it would be the occasion of such good feeling and so kind a reception. Our new duchess has expressed to me numerous times that she hopes to become a friend to the people among whom she is going to dwell, and prays she might endear herself to your hearts.”

  And to yours, I thought. We had been intimate only in the bedroom, not in sentiment or emotion. I so missed that, longed for that. I still felt I did not know this man, let alone his people and all that would be expected of me. Suddenly, the roses and my coat seemed so heavy, even my hat and hair. I was swimming in exhaustion when I was about to face a luncheon for three hundred fifty people involved in these ceremonies in a chamber called the audit room.

  I had never been so glad to see a hot bath. It had been prepared for me by my new English maid, Rosalie, for Sunny had not liked Jeanne and had sacked her. Sometimes I had the feeling he would give me the heave-ho, too, if I did not measure up. I had no time to soak in the bath, only to wash off the dust. Then it was time to be on display again.

  As the pealing of church bells sounded near and far, Rosalie told me, “In your honor, Your Grace. Fireworks later too. And many trains coming tonight to take home people to their parishes, come to see their new duchess, they did. Mrs. Ryman says near thirteen hundred come in today.”

  Rosalie had laid out another outfit for me, perhaps one dictated by my husband, but I would change all that soon—as soon as I could. I actually liked that Rosalie was chatty, for I missed my American maid and Miss Harper terribly. For a moment, I almost missed my mother.

  THAT NIGHT, SUNNY and I watched from a private tent in the park as fireworks filled the sky, great booming bouquets and whirligigs of colored lights. Strange, but I thought then of Jacques Balsan who had told me he loved to sail the heavens. He had promised me a ride in them someday, a someday now that would never come.

  “Another ride through the streets, then home again,” Sunny repeated over the noise. He took my elbow. “And what a night for our creating the next duke,” he added, putting an arm around my waist.

  I tried not to wilt. This was my husband and my new life. Of course I would love children. Are you in a family way? the words of the formidable dowager duchess sounded in my ear with the last of the booms that echoed through the trees followed by the gasps of Sunny’s people, now my people.

  “If you aren’t tired,” I said, trying to hint at my exhaustion.

  “This place invigorates me and always will,” he said, urging me toward our waiting landau.

  And so I was now home in England, at Blenheim.

  Chapter Nine

  If I thought keeping Sunny’s family straight was a challenge, I soon learned “commanding” the palace household staff of forty was more so. But my biggest surprise was that their rankings and domestic status seemed to be as important to them as were their places and privileges to the nobles of this land. Unfortunately, those above another, even belowstairs, seemed quite put out if the long-standing rules—which I was struggling to learn—were breeched by their underlings, or even by their new duchess.

  For example, under the butler was the house steward, then groom of the chambers down to the numerous, lowly footmen. Yet Sunny’s valet ranked high in his tails and striped trousers, too, and let everyone know it. Even when the housemaids had their meals downstairs, seating was strictly by rank of their duties and whom they specifically served, which gave my maid priority. And then there was another caste system in the kitchen from chef down to scullery maids.

  I could have pulled my hair out with all the upsets and rows between our French chef and his staff of four over what went where on breakfast trays. I tried to settle the ruckus by telling them that, since the kitchen was a good distance from the bedrooms, keeping hot what should be hot should be their chief concern.

  Of course we had had servants at home as I grew up, but I had never met with them, guided them, or corrected them. Sunny had said he would help, but he spent a good deal of time in London and, when home, immediately took to planning the water terracing of the grounds. So I relied on Mrs. Ryman, the housekeeper, as well as the butler and house steward and let them manage the other numerous workers. Sunny’s tendency at all times was to criticize rather than help—both the servants and me.

  Those first two months of Blenheim married life made me quite frazzled. I knew I must have control of things before we left for my first London social season in early May. At least, except for family, we did not entertain grandly those few first months.

  My maid Rosalie was older than most in service and told me right up front that she would hate visiting away from Blenheim, because she would have to share a room with other ladies’ maids. I should have stood up to “the duke,” who had chosen her personally, and had her replaced right then, but I was already floundering in deep water.

  I best summed up my struggles by relating it all to my mother in a letter, where I told the story of how I had asked the wrong servant to light a fire for me on a chilly afternoon. He dared to look down his nose and tell me, “The under steward has that task, Your Grace, and I shall speak to him for you, though his duties are not in this part of the palace at present.”

  “Never mind,” I told him, rising from behind my desk—I had no secretary—“because I shall care for it myself. You see, we Americans do not mind sharing tasks and helping out in a pinch.”

  And what my mother wrote me back was most interesting. She didn’t comment on my story. Instead, she went on and on about how her divorce—she was so happily married now—had set a bold prece
dent for an American woman to be able to escape the unhappy bondage of a bad marriage and yet retain her social status. I was such a frustrated bride that I decided to remember that scrap of information. She, too, applied pressure for me to bear an heir and said she would come to help out for the birth and christening of “the next duke.”

  What birth, what next duke, I thought, wadding up the letter. I could not even take care of myself, let alone a child—with a nurse and nanny hanging on and, no doubt, lording it over the downstairs servants.

  The one person who greatly helped keep up my spirits was Sunny’s sister Lilian, whom I had gravitated to when Mother and I had first visited Blenheim. She filled me in on not only gossip, but the history of the family and the palace itself.

  “I swear, when I was young,” she told me as we walked through the house on a rainy spring day when we could not venture out, “it frightened me that the first duchess, Sarah Jennings, haunted this place.”

  “Did you ever see her ghost? I know she is buried with the first duke in the chapel here.”

  “And under such a monument!”

  “It does look so heavy and ornate, all that marble, so she would never creep out at night to scare little girls.”

  Lilian smiled. “When I was about seven, I did think I saw her in the bedroom that is now yours. I liked the painting of the golden cupids and the flowers there. And the fact it was not large like some of the vast, chilly chambers.”

  “Now you are trying to frighten me.”

  “I am not, dear Consuelo, I swear it. Well, you wanted to know all about her. They were a love match, you know, and she had to live here over twenty years after her dear husband died, and her goal was to finish Blenheim and make it grand in his memory.”

  “He is the one who should haunt these grounds.”

  She linked her arm through mine. “No,” she said with a little smile again tilting up the corners of her mouth. “Sunny’s planning never to leave, so he’ll do that—if Sarah Churchill, First Duchess of Marlborough, lets him. I rather think she was the one to run the show in their marriage. Yet the first duke loved her madly,” she said with a sigh.

  I told her, “When I sit at chapel each morning at exactly nine-thirty, staring at the tomb as if it were an altar, it seems the first duke and duchess are to be worshipped. And maybe Sarah liked that dreadful saying on the marble mantelpiece in my room that reminds me of a tomb.”

  “Oh, I remember: Dust Ashes Nothing.”

  “Cheery to wake up to that,” I told her with a little laugh, but I could not help but think that was an epitaph for Sunny’s marital duty to get me with child. He tried, I cried, because I know I should feel happy, excited, something—and so far, nothing.

  WE HAD THE entire family to a formal dinner on what I was remembering to call a Saturday to Monday, not a weekend. Everything went fine until my nemesis, the most senior dowager duchess, rose as if she were hostess to indicate it was time for the ladies to depart and the men to enjoy their brandy.

  It was quite an affront to me and my place. Everyone looked up. Conversation ceased. Granted, when Sunny was unwed, as ranking duchess, she had that honor, but she was brazenly usurping it from me now

  From across the table, Lilian mouthed, “Make her go alone—do not move!”

  But I stood quickly and went to the door and met the dowager there. “Are you ill, Duchess Sarah?” I asked her and patted her shoulder.

  She glared at me. “Ill? I am never ill, but strong and ready.”

  “Oh, I am glad to hear that,” I told her in the best upper-class British accent I could manage at that point. “There surely was no other excuse for your hasty exit when I and the others are not yet ready to depart.”

  Her eyes widened. She colored and cleared her throat.

  “Oh,” she said. “I must learn to use my lorgnette at dinner. I must have thought you had given the sign.”

  Sunny’s sisters and aunt hid smiles behind their hands. China, silverware, and crystal clinked again as the men turned back to their dessert. I made a show of helping her back to her chair. And that, I felt, was my first victory in the Battle of Blenheim.

  HOWEVER, I FELT I lost most of the dinner table skirmishes when it was just Sunny and I who dined. At least I insisted our places be set, not at the far ends of the long table, but across from each other on the sides. Yet I felt at times that we might as well have been on distant planets. I tried hard to entice him to converse about his plans for landscaping the terraces, for fixing the roof, for information about the local tenants—anything! It simply was not his way to make conversation, and no one would have believed how little he talked, how little he even ate.

  We were always both dressed to the nines, I in a satin and lace gown with Catherine the Great’s heavy pearls or Marlborough diamonds about my neck. I hated to eat in the huge pearl choker Sunny favored, so had argued I was saving that for the coming season. He was always fully, formally attired as if we were eating with nobility—even the distant royals.

  The servants served the first course, then retired to the hall so we could talk privately and intimately, which we seldom did, despite my attempts at conversation. “Sunny, I understand there is an elderly lady ill in the village. I should like to visit her. Rosalie says she is blind and loves to have someone read the Bible to her.”

  “Fine.”

  Although he had piled food on his plate, he often pushed the plate away along with his rows of silver utensils, even his drinking glasses. I felt rude eating, but I was not going to let his fastidious, fasting nature stop me after the first time or two. No wonder he was slight and slim.

  “The food is delicious,” I ventured.

  “I am not that hungry.”

  Worse, he backed his chair away from the table, as if he wanted to get even farther from me. He crossed one leg over the other and proceeded to twist his ducal ring around his finger. After a period, where he was either brooding or sat deep in thought, he scooted close again and picked at his now cold food.

  Between the long, drawn-out courses, I actually brought knitting, but he seemed neither to get my message nor care. I excused myself once and found the butler reading a detective novel in the hall.

  He looked embarrassed and hid the book, but I told him, “I cannot blame you. I only hope the master of the house does not die from starvation in that mystery novel. If so, I would like to borrow it.”

  I imagine that comment made the rounds downstairs, but I was at my wit’s end.

  I FELT MY personal, second Battle of Blenheim victory came the next day, and that was also over food at the table. We were dining with his sisters, Norah and Lilian. His mother, Albertha, alias Goosey, was there too, so we were all on edge. Sunny and his mother were like oil and water, though, I must say, I sympathized with Sunny this time around.

  Having been warned about Goosey’s antics, I had watched her closely to be certain there was no soap in the soup. But what I noticed—really noticed—for the first time was, when I lingered to be certain Albertha actually left the table after the meal with no hanky-panky, was the butler overseeing the dumping of leftover food into a tin pail. Although the meal had been delicious, the swirling mess it made mixed together almost turned my stomach.

  “I thought that extra food went to poor people on the estate,” I said.

  “Oh, yes, Your Grace,” the butler told me. “Straightaway.”

  “But the pudding with the bread, with the gravy, with the sweets, with . . . Why, it has turned to slop!”

  Albertha said, “Always done that way. My dear, we cannot have an array of separate tins with everything wrapped up just so, you know.”

  The butler looked confused, caught between the two of us. He nodded, but I was not certain whom he was agreeing with.

  “I’m going to the village on the morrow,” I told him, “but I want breakfast and any other decent remains of the day to be packaged separately. I know you will take care of that, Mills.”

  “Oh, yes, Your G
race.”

  “Hmph,” Alberta said. “You know, though, I did mix pudding with gravy once to teach Sunny he was not to stir things together on his plate.”

  I almost accused her of causing his wretched habit of staring at the food before he ventured to eat it, but I said only, “You know, Your Grace, my brother once put a frog in my bed, and I put it right back in his. I told him ‘That’s what happens to tricksters.’”

  “Oh my,” she said and dared a little smile. “I suppose some do take harmless jests the wrong way, but it sounds as if you were a brave girl.”

  But, I wondered, was I ready to be a brave duchess? I was going to the village on the morrow after church with some decent separated food and not slop fit for pigs. And if anyone else—including Sunny—protested about an American fouling up English tradition that was just too bloody bad.

  THE NEXT SUNDAY, instead of being annoyed Sunny had stayed over in London on business, I decided to enjoy the day. He had spent much time looking for a place for us to live during the coming social season since Marlborough House, also built by the first duchess, was now the London home of the Prince of Wales and Princess Alexandra. They even had a close group of friends called the Marlborough House Set, which Sunny was not a part of because his father had been such a roué and had embarrassed the prince by naming him as a woman’s lover in a public court.

  So Sunny, now that he had a duchess, had let a place on South Audley Street to “make do” for the season. However, when my father heard that, he promised us money to build our own London place, which would be grandly titled Sunderland House and would be ready for future seasons.

  My, I thought, however were we to climb out of the prince’s displeasure? And yet I was to be presented at court? And by the jokester Albertha? I would have to be certain my long court train wasn’t booby-trapped somehow, for she had slipped some things past me at Blenheim, which sometimes, I swear, she wanted to turn into Bedlam.