Barbara Metzger (17 page)

Sloane might awaken these mornings with his usual hangover, but he didn’t suffer from the load of worry and guilt that had been weighing heavily on his shoulders—except when he thought of his duchess, that is. So he sent more money to Kelly, new books from Hatchard’s he thought Lisanne might enjoy, trinkets, fabrics, and the most expensive French modiste he could convince to leave her own establishment and travel to Devon to outfit a duchess. Then he didn’t feel so like her money-grubbing uncle when he thought of Lisanne. And he was pleased with the refurbished suite he was having decorated for her at the town house. The duchess’s apartment was going to resemble a garden bower, no matter how many consultants he had to hire and fire.

That’s what St. Sevrin told everyone to explain why his bride wasn’t in Town with him, that he was preparing the house for her. The wedding notice had been in the papers the day after he arrived in London and questions were rife. She’d be coming once the Season was in full swing, the duke told his cousin Humbert, taking great satisfaction from the prig’s deflated ambitions.

Aunt Hattie, his mother’s half sister and the only blood relation he cared for, was not as easy to put off. Harriet, Lady Comstock, was a walking repository of genealogy and gossip. She wasn’t happy with the match.

“The breeding’s sound, even if Neville did marry beneath him, and the fortune is certainly welcome,” Hattie acknowledged, “but the mother was delicate. No getting around it, she was sickly, and there are some deuced odd rumors going around about the chit. You’d do best to puff her off soon, let the tabbies see she’s not got two heads or anything.”

When Sloane explained how St. Sevrin House wasn’t ready to receive its mistress, Lady Comstock snorted. “Then put her up at the Clarendon, boy. It doesn’t look right, keeping her hidden away in Devon. What, is she platter-faced? You wouldn’t be the first connoisseur to lower his sights to the pocketbook.”

“Not at all. In fact, she’s quite stunningly beautiful in a unique way.” St. Sevrin found himself at a loss to explain what made Lisanne so different from other pretty chits. “She’s a tiny bit of fluff, looks like she could fly away. And she’s young. There’s plenty of time to introduce her around.”

“She’s what? Eighteen, almost nineteen? I was married three years by my nineteenth birthday.”

“Lisanne is a young eighteen,” St. Sevrin admitted uncomfortably. “She has no Town bronze, no sophistication. No mother, don’t you know.”

“Hoydenish, eh?”

“Not precisely.” He didn’t elucidate, feeling disloyal to be discussing Lisanne this way.

Aunt Hattie had no such scruples. “Then what? Shy? Stupid? No, I cannot imagine you shackled to a muttonhead, no matter the purse. So what’s wrong with the gel that you don’t want to show her off? You need her on your arm if you hope to be received in polite Society again, you know.”

The devil take polite Society. “She’s neither tongue-tied nor bacon-brained. She just wouldn’t know how to go on.”

“That flibbertigibbet Findley woman couldn’t teach a dog how to bark. And you’re no better, you cawker, leaving the gel in the country. How do you expect the chit to take her place in the world if you don’t show her?” She batted at him with her lorgnette. “Bah! I’ll just have to go take her in hand myself. ’Twould be better done in the country, away from the wagging tongues. Time enough for the harpies to get their claws into your diamond after we’ve polished her up a bit.”

Since this was precisely the result the duke had hoped for with this morning call, he left his aunt’s house satisfied, promising to join her in Devon as soon as his business was concluded.

Some of his business was taking a bit longer than expected. With members of the Quality just now trickling back to Town for the Season, St. Sevrin was hard-pressed to find all the gentlemen who held his personal vouchers. When he did, he had to suffer their congratulations, ribald comments, and sly references to his well-filled pockets. It was only polite to accept their toasts and their invitations for a hand of whist or a round of piquet. Now that he didn’t need the money, the duke’s luck was in, but his patience was quickly wearing out. Members of White’s could be stared down with a frosty St. Sevrin sneer; the denizens of the lesser haunts of the gambling set soon learned that the Duchess of St. Sevrin was not a topic for conversation, not if they wanted to finish the night with all their teeth.

* * *

The duke had left a sheaf of directions for his man Kelly, and a one-page note for his wife:
Enjoy yourself, Duchess.
How was she supposed to do that, when she was so busy?

He was right: maids and footmen and gardeners and stable hands started parading onto Priory grounds the same morning St. Sevrin had left. Some were Neville Hall retainers dismissed when the Findleys brought in their own staff. Lisanne recalled many of them and made them welcome. Others declared themselves to be previous employees of the Priory, let go without their back pay. A third group had no claim on the available positions except that they were poor and needed the work. Lisanne hired them all.

When Kelly protested, she insisted that there was certainly enough work for all of them. “But some is too old to do a day’s labor, Yer Grace.”

“Then they shall do half a day’s labor. Or, if the older maids cannot help with the scrubbing, perhaps they can sew. And footmen who cannot repair shingles can polish the banisters. I am sure you can find jobs for everybody.”

Kelly was sure they didn’t need seven grooms, not when His Grace owned three horses, and one of them was in London with him. For that matter, the ex-soldier saw no need for a kennel master when the only canine on the premises slept in the master bedroom. But his instructions were clear: he was to make sure the duchess was happy. If she was happy filling the stables with a crippled goat and an ancient, abandoned peddler’s pony, the kennels with baby birds fallen out of nests and sick rabbits, and the Priory itself with servants older than the dirt they were cleaning, he wasn’t about to argue. It was her money.

And the money started coming in from London. Kelly opened a household account for Lisanne at the bank in Honiton, and a separate, personal one for the duchess’s generous allowance plus her income from the Neville holdings.

With which the duchess hired more derelict dependents to trip over each other. She had them working on the servants’ quarters first so they’d have somewhere decent to sleep, and the kitchens so they could have nourishing meals. The people from her parents’ household remembered a sweet, sunny child. They were proud their lady was thinking just as she ought. The Priory workers had never known an employer to care a whit about the hired help. There was a lot of head-shaking. Those rumors must be true, that the new duchess was dicked in the nob. Her disappearing for hours into that patch of trees didn’t sit easy, either, not once someone resurrected those old stories about haunted woods.

Then Neville Hall’s previous housekeeper arrived from her daughter’s overcrowded cottage and took over the chatelaine duties, to Kelly’s temporary relief. She had the crews working in shifts, getting the walls, rugs, and furniture spotless until repairs and replacements could be ordered. Kelly had the gardeners and grounds people in military formations, stripping overgrown ivy off the stone walls, scything the lawns, reclaiming what was left of formal plantings.

Now Lisanne could turn her efforts to the Priory farmland, with Kelly trailing behind arguing that His Grace had left definite instructions concerning the hiring of a bailiff.

“Oh, the man arrived this morning while you were at the bank. He wanted to evict what tenant farmers still remain and turn the entire property into sheep pasturage. I dismissed him.”

“You dismissed the duke’s man?”

“He thought the home woods would offer good hunting.”

“So you sacked him the same day he got here?” No one had ever disobeyed Kelly’s master, not when he was a fresh lieutenant, not when he was a major, and absolutely not when he was a duke. “Oh, lud, His Grace’ll have my head for sure.”

“Nonsense. He’ll see how much progress we’ve made.” With the help of Neville Hall’s steward, Lisanne found families willing to move into the abandoned farmsteads, and men to help make repairs so they’d be comfortable. She had Kelly order new seed drills from Taunton and plowshares from Manchester. She was knee-deep in mangel-wurzels and manure, when she wasn’t writing away for the latest strain of wheat or inspecting farms for breeding stocks of sheep, cattle, and pigs. And there was a new crop of orphaned lambs and cows with swollen udders for her to tend.

Kelly had to admit Her Grace had an eye for livestock, but he didn’t think farming was any more suitable an occupation for the duke’s lady than captaining the mop brigade. Of course, it was better than the hours she spent trudging around in the woods with her dog and coming back to brew Zeus only knew what. With all the oldsters in the house, the duchess was constantly concocting remedies for chilblains and shingles, sore gums and inflamed joints. She even interrogated Kelly about the duke’s troublesome war wounds and packed a bottle of salve for him to send on to London. No, it wasn’t fitting at all, but what Kelly was supposed to do about it he couldn’t begin to guess. From what he heard, no one had ever changed Lady Lisanne’s mind about anything, though Findley had almost died trying.

The old retainers and the new tenants were all grateful to the duchess, and were all afraid of her. The Priory ghosts were as nothing to Lady St. Sevrin. The people didn’t dare talk when Kelly might hear, but he knew. The hushed voices and the sideways looks told the tale. There was no disrespect, but there was a distance.

The only one Kelly could trust with his worries was Mary, who was as devoted to the duchess as the dog was. Mary was waging her own campaign to get Lisanne to behave more in keeping with her—and Mary’s—high estate. She started by burning the dresses sent over from Neville Hall.

“Spotted and stained every one, I tell you, Mr. Kelly. Why, I wouldn’t wear such a thing to clean the vicar’s cellars. It’s no wonder these ninnies whisper about our lady when we ain’t looking. So I fixed them. Set some of the old maids, them as can still see good enough, to altering some gowns we found in one of the closets. His Grace’s mother’s, maybe.”

Kelly sighed over the tea the two were enjoying in the butler’s pantry. Since Kelly was doing that job, he felt entitled to that privacy. There was a bit of the bottle in his tea, none in Mary’s. Kelly sighed again over lost opportunities. “No matter, Her Grace’ll just get them new gowns soiled. I never seen such a one for mucking about.”

Mary took offense at the slur to her mistress. “Lots of high-born ladies garden. Don’t they have them fancy rose societies?”

“When ladies of Quality grow their own flowers, they have three gardeners to do the dirty work. And they wear gloves to keep their hands smooth and hats to keep the sun off their faces and smocks to protect their gowns.”

So Mary set the old maids to making smocks out of old bed ticking and sheets. And she made sure her lady was wearing gloves when she left the house. The duchess usually came back with the gloves in her pocket, along with sundry other items Mary was reluctant to handle, but at least the altered gowns stayed fairly neat. No afternoon caller, tenant farmer, or tradesman was going to mistake the duchess for one of her own scullery maids.

“I’ll work on hats next week.”

Kelly poured some of his brandy into Mary’s teacup. “You’ll need this.”

Then parcels and packages started arriving daily from His Grace in London. He was detained on business, he wrote, but meantime he sent bonnets and shawls and slippers that had Mary in alt, and books—Miss Austen’s novels, Scott’s romantic tales, Wordsworth’s poetry—that had Lisanne staying up half the night in the library after she was finished with the day’s accounts.

Next to arrive was a French dressmaker with enough yard goods to guarantee the aged seamstresses sinecures for life. Lisanne couldn’t have cared less about her new wardrobe. She refused to be fitted, in fact, or make decisions about colors, styles, or trims, but the modiste had her orders and her deposit. The Duchess of St. Sevrin was going to be dressed like a lady, even if she persisted in rambling around the countryside like a Gypsy.

And then the duke sent his aunt. Lisanne wanted a new mule for the plows. Lady Comstock came close.

And
what time do we take dinner, my dear?” Aunt Hattie, as she told Lisanne to call her, was standing in the Priory hall amid bags and boxes and an army of servants.

“Dinner?” Lisanne blinked. She was used to asking for a tray at whatever hour she came in from the fields or the woods, or wandering to the kitchen and helping herself and Becka to whatever she found. The habit would have wreaked havoc in any respectable kitchen, with the staff never knowing when or what the mistress would be wanting, but the duchess hardly ate enough to keep a bird alive. In fact, had Cook known it, most of her breads and rolls and cakes did just that—go to keep the birds alive. If a particular cut of beef or a slab of mutton went missing from the servants’ own meal, no one was going to argue with the big dog over it. There was enough to go around, thank heaven and marriages of convenience.

Such slipshod scheduling was not at all
convenable
for a duke’s household. Or a duke’s aunt. “Yes, my dear, dinner. I prefer Town hours, of course, but I would understand if you’d like to dine earlier, shall we say seven? That way we have a lovely evening to become better acquainted and catch up on our needlework. Perhaps play a hand of cards or read aloud. Then there’s music. So soothing to the digestion, I find. You do play, don’t you, my dear? That’s when we don’t have company, of course. I haven’t seen Mrs. Squire Pemberton in ages, I swear.”

Lisanne was inching toward the door. She and Becka could live in the woods, or in that derelict cottage no one wanted. Then two of the footmen carried in a large portrait in a heavy gilt frame. The painted gentleman was in wig and satin breeches, and held a bust of Homer. The footmen set the picture down, awaiting instructions.