American Duchess

by Karen Harper

  “And if my firstborn is a girl—as with your own children?”

  “Then you will marry her well someday—perhaps to royalty,” she said with a little laugh. “And then try, try quickly again. I did. Never give up, Consuelo. Never stop striving.”

  It seemed to me her marriage to Oliver Belmont had mellowed her, though when I pointed out to her one night the ragged folks in the park, she ranted on about women’s right to vote in America, though I did see a connection. Actually, I was amazed and pleased that she was in such fine fettle, and more pleasant than I recall, but then—so far—I was doing just as she, not to mention what Sunny, wanted. Indeed, I silently clung to Mrs. Prattley’s blessing as much as I did the spirited talks from my mother.

  SUNNY AND MY mother colluded to keep the doctor around too much. From their being on edge, one would think they were having the baby. In a bad moment Mother had said to me, “You do not call me Mama anymore, Consuelo. Do duchesses feel no more devotion and appreciation than to desert their affection of the Mamas of their youth?”

  Coward that I still was, I shrugged. “Mother does sound more formal, and using Mama is more girlish.” I squared my shoulders as we sat across the breakfast table from each other. Sunny had gone to bid Winston good-bye at the railway station. Now was the time for this confrontation as well as for this baby to be born. I felt a thousand eyes were constantly on me.

  Putting down my cup of hot chocolate, I told her, “I think of the term Mama as being one from a child, a dependent.”

  “Well, indeed you are not my dependent anymore.”

  “I mean in the way of trusting. You did so much for me—overly much—that I had not the slightest notion, for example, of how to buy my own clothes when I was on my honeymoon, let alone run a household. I am glad to hear you are concerned about and speaking up for women’s rights at home, but did I not have rights—at least the right to choose my own husband and future?”

  Her eyes widened. Her lower lip dropped. But that didn’t mean she did not have a comeback. “I knew what was best, saw the opportunity for your glorious future,” she insisted. “You were so young and—”

  “Too young to know whom I loved, what I wanted, what country I would like to live in and rear my children in?”

  I burst into tears when I was trying to be strong. My emotions were swelling, going to pop—and why wasn’t this child ready to be born?

  “Consider all you have to look forward to, my dear,” she said, rising to come across the table to bend over me. I was amazed she was holding her temper for once. Her new marriage . . . my status, which pleased her . . . Had all that softened her heart? I could not fathom and would not accept that my dear Papa would not have been a good husband. But then, did people think the same of me and Sunny?

  “Consuelo, I see you are still too young to understand. Perhaps when this child comes . . . someday later when you have a daughter to provide for and protect. I needed to save you from Win. Oh, yes, he swept you off your feet, but he and his family were not good enough, not for you, not for the Vanderbilts. Think of the status you have now, the things you can do for those beneath you, the very thing I dream of doing for America’s women someday. The older and wiser you get, the more you will realize . . .” She plunged on, but I heard nothing else, wanted to say more, stand up to her even again, stand up to Sunny and just plain stand up, for a pain crunched through my middle and I doubled over to bump my head into my cup and saucer. The cocoa bled dark on the linen tablecloth, and I gripped the arms of the chair.

  “Consuelo, did you swoon or are you in pain?”

  I wanted to scream at her that I had been in pain for years. Since I could not have the man I had wanted. Since I had been in England. Since I was expected to bear a son.

  “Yes,” I managed as the power of that single vast pain still swept through me. “Yes, and I am sitting in . . . in the baby’s water. Mother . . . it . . . it must be time.”

  I WAS SWIMMING in the deep blue sea, rocked with waves of agony. I tried to push them away, but they kept rolling back over me, drowning me. My mother’s voice . . . How had she done this three times? A man’s voice, not Sunny’s. Push? Push what?

  “We can give her what Queen Victoria took for the births of her children,” the doctor said. “Her Grace’s hips are small. I will get the bottle of ether and the mask, but we shall not use them yet.”

  I pictured the queen, that tiny woman who had kissed me on the forehead. Mother had liked that story, but then she would. If she could have pushed me far enough—push, push—she would have turned me into the Queen of England instead of some duchess. Indeed, if that little woman could bear nine children with her narrow hips, I could too. Did being tall not count for something?

  “Your Grace,” the doctor’s voice came again, “I’m going to give you something to help with the pain, but you must push hard first. We have the baby’s head crowning but not the body.”

  We have the head. Have I lost my head, my mind, to be the Duchess of Marlborough?

  Suddenly, I felt a screaming rip, as if a huge black curtain was torn in two. No, someone had screamed. It must be me.

  Push, push. Push one’s way into British society, let alone Sunny’s family. Are you in a family way, my dear? I have to bear this child, make a family, make a life here when all I want to do is float up and away, up in a hot-air balloon, but it is so hot in here. I am soaking wet, swimming and here came yet another wave.

  Someone was screaming again.

  “All right, the baby has more than crowned. If we can just get one shoulder.”

  “Can you not give her the ether now, just a little?” a woman asked. That was Mother, but she should be telling him, ordering him. At least it meant she was on my side. For one shrieking moment, I almost called her Mama, almost begged her to stop the pain, stop telling me everything that I must do.

  “I cannot do this, I cannot . . .” I cried. “I am going to die.”

  I felt a little wire mask pressed around my nose and mouth. Oh, it had a small cloth over it and smelled like the gilt paint Sunny insisted on using before the prince and princess came to visit. Were they here again? Must we give up our rooms and move upstairs at Blenheim?

  Floating now, floating. Something left me, left my body. Was it my spirit? Was I really dying?

  “Wait until the duke hears this!” a man said.

  I just let myself sink farther under the huge waves. Under and far away.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Our son, John Albert Edward William Spencer-Churchill, Marquess of Blandford, was born September 18, 1897. I, however, was nearly unconscious and feverish for a week after, so I actually made my darling boy’s acquaintance a bit later. The first day I finally felt strong enough, I insisted he not be put back in his cradle, nor simply shown to me by Nanny or my mother, but handed to me to hold for as long as I wanted.

  “Oh, he is lovely,” I said, looking into those pale blue eyes.

  “Indeed he is,” Sunny said, hovering by my bed. “Perfect.”

  We actually smiled at each other, really smiled from the heart. Whatever barriers lay between us, we had made this beautiful child. Bless Sunny, he gestured at Nanny to step outside, and my mother had the good sense to go, too. Actually, I liked Nanny, for she was also besotted with the baby, though she did not like the undernurse working with her.

  “I want you to make a full recovery,” Sunny told me, perching on the edge of the bed and patting my knee. “It was . . . well, a battle for you, but a victory, too.”

  “I shall wave that Blenheim battle flag over him when we get home.”

  “Do you mean that? Blenheim being home to you now? I thank God that Blandford, as we shall call him, has his mother and I my wife—my duchess back among the living.”

  I did not say so then, but I intended to call my son Bertie, for his second name Albert, to honor the Prince of Wales who had taken the Marlboroughs back in his good graces. Bertie’s first name, John, was in remembrance of the
first duke, but I did not care for the nickname Johnnie. And Blandford seemed so, well, so bland, but I would fight that battle another day. Granted, it was ducal tradition to call boys by their titles, but he was half American as far as I was concerned. He would not be treated with kid gloves but be allowed to be a boy. And he would learn to value all levels of people.

  I could barely tear my gaze away from that little face. The shape of it was mine, I was certain. I ventured a quick glance up and saw my husband’s eyes were shimmering with tears.

  WHEN I WAS up and about again, we laid plans to return to Blenheim after the christening, which would take place in the Chapel Royal, St. James’s Palace, with the Prince of Wales and the entire Marlborough clan—and, of course, my mother—in attendance. I was now the darling of Sunny’s family for delivering what I overheard Albertha call “the future tenth duke.”

  I was ready to leave London soon, though, for I had long stretches of time with nothing to do. Mother was back and forth, visiting friends in London and Paris. More than once while she was away, without Sunny’s knowledge, I sent coins anonymously out to the “park people” as I came to think of them, especially the woman with the baby.

  But one day Sunny came home from a reception I did not attend because it would take so much standing. He came into the library where I was reading to announce, “I have brought you a special gift you will love! No, your mother is not back yet—ha! I have invited a new friend to visit, a young American lady, one even with ties to Newport!”

  He was beaming and looked so proud of himself.

  “Someone I know?” I asked, wracking my brain for who could be here visiting in the off season in London.

  “Someone who knows of and admires you greatly—and would love to see Blenheim. I just met her today, and what a charming young woman, well-educated, well-traveled, even as you are.”

  “Do not keep me in suspense!” I demanded, standing. “You mean she is here now?”

  In answer he went to the door he had closed behind himself and opened it. No footman in sight, just a lovely woman who came in, smiling and dipped me a slight curtsy. She had dove-gray eyes under perfectly arched brows, a rosy complexion, and Cupid’s-bow lips. She wore expensive but not fussy garments. Her golden-brown hair and classic profile were so perfect that she reminded me of a painting by Botticelli, The Birth of Venus, I’d seen in Florence.

  Yet despite the impact of her face and charm, I had no clue in the world who she was.

  “Consuelo, I would like to present to you Miss Gladys Deacon, here on tour visiting, as you often were at her age.”

  At her age, I thought? But I am only twenty and a half, so how old is this lovely creature? Sixteen? Seventeen? Feeling as ancient as Queen Victoria, I extended my hand.

  “I am so honored to meet you, Your Grace,” Gladys—Sunny had pronounced it Glade-is—said. “Ever since I read about your beautiful wedding, I have wanted to meet you and the duke, and see your lovely palace someday.”

  “Someday soon,” Sunny put in.

  “I understand your mother is still in occasional residence with you,” Gladys went on, with a sweet smile. “I envy you a loving mother, father too. I told His Grace,” she added, with a glance at Sunny, “because everyone knows I have not been so blessed, and it has been hard to live that down.”

  It hit me then. This was the young woman whose father, a Boston millionaire, had shot one of her mother’s lovers to death in a French hotel about five years ago. Since then the president of France had pardoned her father, and her mother had reared Gladys all over Europe. I would never have known about the scandal had I not overheard it during the Newport season.

  And I thought my parents had created problems? How I felt for this girl, even thought I understood her. And Sunny evidently did, too, bringing home someone who must yet be the target of gossip—or had her charms won everyone over?

  “Please sit down,” I told her, “and I shall ring for some tea. How lovely to have a visit from another American, however continental your upbringing.”

  “Oh, I see you were reading in French,” she observed, glancing down at my book on the table. “Such a romantic language, one of several I have fallen in love with and studied.”

  In the next two hours, I saw all that was true. For so young a woman, Gladys Deacon was very well read, spoke French smoothly and Italian far better than I. She was an excellent conversationalist and obviously awed to meet me. After a while, Sunny left us alone and went up to tell Nanny to bring Blandford down for a visit.

  I found myself matchmaking in my head, but then, Gladys was too young for Winston—or was she? Men of all ages and circumstances would surely fall for this bright beauty. Poor Winston had managed to be turned down by two ladies already, one a young American actress named Ethel Barrymore and the other the lovely Muriel Wilson he had courted.

  And so, I had a new baby and a new friend, a young one when so many around me seemed even older than my mother.

  MOTHER CAME BACK to Blenheim to spend a few days with us. Although we got on well enough, she sided with Sunny on calling the baby Blandford and on my not visiting yet in the village—not until “you are yourself again, Consuelo.” I was content enough to have her about but I must admit I felt smug when I came across the way to make her leave or keep her away if I wanted.

  As we admired Bertie sleeping in his cradle in Nanny’s room, the night before Mother was to leave, she whispered to me, “Whoever is that woman in the satin robe who bustles down the hall late at night? I try to talk to her, but she pays no heed, and she should be talked to. She acts haughty or else she’s deaf.”

  Gooseflesh instantly skimmed my skin. I gestured mother out into the very hall she referred to and motioned Nanny to go back in. I knew full well that my mother was terrified of ghosts, some sort of encounter or superstition from her past having to do with losing her beloved childhood mansion during the War Between the States.

  “I have seen her, too,” I admitted. “Mother, do not panic now, but Lilian has seen her also and . . . and I saw her go through a door though it remained closed. We think it is an emanation of the first duchess, so perhaps it is an honor that she appeared to you, too.”

  She had gone stark white in the face. I put my hands out to steady her shoulders. “Of course, loving this house she built,” I went on, “she means no harm, only seems to watch over it—and us.” My voice was shaking now.

  “What . . . what does the duke say?” she whispered, wide-eyed.

  “He thinks it is a woman’s silly whims. Perhaps she does not appear to men, dukes or not, because he thinks we are making it up.”

  “But the baby . . .”

  “Will be fine. Bertie will be fine. She is protective of the house, of us all.”

  “Now, don’t you fret your husband by defying him with that name Bertie!” she told me and shook a finger in my face as if I were ten again. Though she was obviously deeply shaken by what I had said, she not only seemed to accept it, but to want to just plunge ahead as if all were normal. She was obviously desperate to change the topic.

  I both laughed and cried. “Mother, as if you never stood up to Papa or gave him a moment’s unease.”

  “Do as I say, not as I . . . as I did.”

  “Divorce and remarriage? Perhaps I have thought of it,” I blurted out, suddenly wanting to hurt and not assure her as I had about the ghost. Yes, I was my own woman now, finally. “But with little Bertie here, I will behave,” I assured her. “Mostly.”

  I heard after she had departed that she had made her maid sleep in a chair at the foot of her bed that last night. Despite Sunny’s fussing, the day Mother left, I went to visit Mrs. Prattley and the ladies at the almshouse.

  THE MONTHS AFTER Bertie, alias Blandford, was born were some of the happiest of our marriage. Sunny seemed more content. He went to London less often and brought Gladys back with him upon occasion, and she always cheered me up. My father, who was living in France, visited, some of the best days for
me at Blenheim. The William in Bertie’s string of names I had insisted on was to honor my father, William Kissam Vanderbilt.

  Perhaps it was that I felt at home now, more relaxed, that I conceived a second child rather quickly, so that put Sunny and the Marlboroughs “over the moon,” as the British liked to say. I was happy, too, though I prayed not to face such a difficult birth again. Well, I thought, this time round, I shall know much more about everything.

  “My, aren’t you a little brick!” Albertha crowed when she heard I was pregnant again. She promised no more tricks like the time a footman lifted the silver cover from a tureen of soup at our dinner table with family there and inside had been a doll in bathwater—with male genitalia painted on!

  But maybe things had partly gone so smoothly because I was doing something behind Sunny’s back rather than arguing with or riling him—that is, sending donations to a distant village. Sunny’s estate agent had told us people were hungry from crop failures in the area beyond Woodstock. I had later told the agent to offer work to the men in the area to repair ruts in the roads with which I was achingly familiar. Only the agent knew I planned to pay the workers from my funds, and they weren’t to know it was from me.

  That was a huge mistake, however right I thought I was. The laborers sent Sunny a note of gratitude for something he had no idea about.

  “You did this—through my agent—for my distant tenants—without a word to me?” Sunny shouted at me over our breakfast table when the note was brought in to him on a silver salver. Both the butler and the footman, on their way out anyway, scurried from the room and closed the door.

  “You were busy and were doing nothing to alleviate their situation, as far as I could tell,” I told him, calmly spreading strawberry jam on my toast. “How lovely that they wrote to you and that you will have the thanks for feeding their families until a better harvest.”

  “Consuelo, it just isn’t done—going behind my back. What else is going on in that pretty little American head of yours?”