The Desirable Duchess (16 page)

“What w-was I to d-do?” stammered Gerald. “She wrote to me, begging me to meet her.”

“Where is the handkerchief she gave you?”

Gerald thrust his hand in his pocket and held it out. The duke snatched it.

“I would like to beat your face to a pulp, Warby,” he said, “but there has been scandal enough. Heed my words or I will kill you.” The duke turned to go. “Did I see Werford and that son of his leaving here?”

“Not here,” said Gerald. “Fitzwilliam lives next door and he knows Werford.”

And thank God that’s over, thought Gerald, as the door closed behind the duke, and thank God I’m still alive. But somewhere in his mind, he wished that Werford and Percy had not called, that he had left, but as soon as he had heard them out, he thought again of all the money they would give him. He was sure they would give him the money and then try to kill him and take it back, but he meant to leave the country for once and for all before that happened.

He poured himself another glass of brandy and drank it down in one gulp. And then he thought of Lady Macdonald. He would call on her and let her think he had deliberately engineered Alice’s disgrace. She might even give him more money! His conscience gave another twinge, but he put it down to indigestion.

Humphrey Dogget-Blythe, “Doggie” to his friends, looked like a whipped cur. In the cruel world of society, it was not only young ladies who were press-ganged into unsuitable marriages but young men as well.

Humphrey was the victim of domineering and ambitious parents who had teamed up with another set of equally domineering parents with a marriageable daughter. So in spite of Humphrey’s bewildered protests that the Honorable Mary Sutworth was a long-nosed, Friday-faced antidote, he soon found himself wed to her. At university and then in the army, he had experienced freedom. He had been popular and had led an easygoing life. Now he was nagged by Mary from morning until night. Her voice had a particularly shrill edge that reminded him of an unoiled garden gate.

Edward Vere, calling on his old friend, was appalled to see the once cheerful and plump Doggie of the army reduced to a thin, careworn man who jumped at his own shadow. Edward could only count his blessings in having found his Lucy. Ferrant was miserable, and now Doggie was miserable. While Lucy talked to Mary, Edward suggested that Humphrey show him the garden.

“My only consolation.” Humphrey sighed as they strolled across the lawns. “I wish I could reenlist.”

“Why don’t you?” asked Edward.

“Can’t,” said Humphrey miserably. He jerked his head in the direction of the house.

Edward wanted to say that it was time Humphrey asserted himself, but he had only the day before received a stinging lecture from Ferrant on the impertinent folly of friends poking their unwanted noses into other friends’ marriages.

“Going to this breakfast of Rother’s tomorrow?” asked Edward instead.

“Yes,” said Humphrey. “Mary says we are going.”

“Humphrey! Come here!” called an imperative voice from the house.

Humphrey trailed back. “I did not give you leave to go wandering off like that,” said Mary, meeting him at the French windows.

“Sorry, dear,” mumbled Humphrey.

“Doggie was showing me the roses,” said Edward.

“I will not have anyone calling him by that ridiculous nickname,” said Mary.

She was a tall, thin, flat-chested woman, and the nose Humphrey so disliked had a habit of developing a pink spot on the end of it when she was displeased, rather in the manner of a sort of marital beacon warning of reefs ahead.

“We really must go,” said Lucy brightly.

“No, don’t go,” pleaded Humphrey. “Haven’t seen Edward this age. Haven’t seen anyone this age.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Humphrey. You are always being ridiculous,” said Mary. “Simpkins! Call Mr. Vere’s carriage. We shall be pleased to entertain you again, Mr. Vere, but in future, write to apprise us of your visit. We do not like impromptu visits.”

“Oh, poor Doggie.” Edward sighed as he and Lucy made their way home. “Another unhappy man.”

Humphrey listened for the rest of that day to strictures from Mary on his “vulgar” friends. Edward was so coarse, more like a Billingsgate porter than a gentleman. And Lucy was vulgar and made no effort to conceal her pregnancy, as any lady ought to do.

It was while she was talking that a little glow of comfort began to spread through Humphrey’s soul. He would kill himself, that very evening. He would probably go to hell, but he might find some jolly fellows there to play cards with. Mary prided herself on being good and she would probably go to heaven, but he did not relish the idea of a heaven full of Marys. For once, he felt an inner strength, and the flow of her voice broke on the rock of his decision and swept out past his shoulders to the garden. Hanging would be fine and tidy and quiet, thought Edward. There was a hook on a beam in the tack room that would do perfectly. Provided he was cool and calm about it all and made sure the knot was under his ear so that his neck would break immediately, it should not be too bad.

Mary liked to retire to bed at nine in the evening, after a shared supper of dry toast and tea. All he had to do was to say, in his usual way, that he would follow her upstairs.

No sooner had she planted a cold kiss on his brow, no sooner had the light from her bed candle wavered past the first landing, than he was off and running to the stables.

He slid into the warm mustiness of the tack room, lit an oil lamp, and set it on the floor. He found a coil of rope and fashioned it into a noose. He stood on a chair and fastened the rope competently to the hook and then tested the noose. Perfect.

Now for welcome death. But first, he really ought to say his prayers and ask God for mercy on his soul.

He knelt down in the middle of the tack room—beside the chair and under the shadow of the noose—clasped his hands, bent his head, and closed his eyes.

“Have you lost something, you great ninny?” came Mary’s voice from the doorway. Surely to even the most insensitive woman the sight of her husband kneeling in prayer, under a gently swinging noose, would have told its own story. But Mary had been blessed with a hide tougher than that of the usual human being and only saw a bumbling and ineffectual husband who had dropped something.

Superstitiously Humphrey felt that this was God’s way of punishing him for having tried to commit suicide. As he got to his feet, he said in a squeaky voice that he had dropped his ruby pin earlier and thought he might have left it in the tack room.

“How could you drop something in the tack room when you have not been in it all day?” demanded Mary. “It’s a good thing I saw you go over here from the upstairs window or you might have been looking all night. And tell the stable boys to take that noose down. Playing hangman can lead to disaster. Come along, sir. You have been looking peaky all day and a good dose of paraffin is what you need to bring you to rights. Come along.”

“Yes, dear,” said Humphrey.

 *  *  *

The Duke of Ferrant was not looking forward to the breakfast at Lord Rother’s, but then he did not look forward to anything these days. He had made an appointment with his lawyers to discuss a divorce from Alice, but then he had canceled it at the last minute, for he thought that if Alice were free, she might immediately marry Gerald Warby, and he could not bear that.

It was a fine sunny day when he drove to Streatham. When he arrived, the first person he saw after he had been welcomed by the Rothers was Lady Macdonald. He bowed to her but did not go to join her. He would not add to the gossip that surrounded him.

He almost did not recognize his old friend, Humphrey Dogget-Blythe, in the careworn man who was plodding along behind his wife, carrying her fan and shawl. But Doggie saw him and his face lit up in a sweet smile.

“Is it really you, Doggie?” asked the duke.

Mary looked him up and down with cold eyes. “Kindly address my husband by his proper name,” she snapped.

“My love,” quavered Humphrey, “this is His Grace, the Duke of Ferrant. Allow me to introduce you.”

Mary simpered and curtsied. A duke was a duke. “You must forgive me, Your Grace,” she gushed. “I thought for a moment you were one of my husband’s rough army friends.”

“I knew your husband in the army,” said the duke, looking at her with dislike. He turned to Humphrey. “Well, how goes the world? You are but a shadow of your former self.”

“He ate much too much,” said Mary before Humphrey could open his mouth. “I put him on a diet of vinegar and potatoes.”

The duke bowed and moved away, vowing to try to have a word with Humphrey in private later.

He then met Lord Werford and Percy, but as he disliked them both, he only exchanged a few words before joining more congenial company.

They were then told to take their places. High above the babble sounded Mary’s voice. “I cannot sit in the sun. This place card says I should sit
here
, but it is in full sunlight and my skin is amazingly delicate.”

At the same time, the duke had just discovered that he was to be seated at the top table, in the shadow of the house, next to Lady Macdonald. He approached Mary. “You may take my place, ma’am,” he said, “and I will sit with your husband.”

Mary looked gratified. Everyone would see her at the top table. To Humphrey’s relief, she thanked the duke and swept off.

“Oh, God,” said Lord Werford to Percy. “It’s all gone wrong. You’ll need to get up to the roof and tell that fool Warby to leave the gargoyle alone.”

Percy moved to the doorway of the house. He found his way blocked by Lady Rother, a sprightly widow with a hard, ambitious eye. “Where are you going?” she asked.

Percy murmured something about needing to visit the “necessary house.”

“A footman will conduct you there and bring you back,” said Lady Rother testily. “I would like everyone to be seated.”

She summoned a footman and gave him instructions, and so Percy was conducted to the privy while the footman waited outside, and then the footman escorted him back to the guests. Percy looked across at his uncle and spread his hands in a gesture of resignation.

“Horrible place, isn’t it?” said Humphrey to the duke. Both men surveyed the Gothic building, where gargoyles sprouted out at all angles from the roof.

“Badly in need of repair,” remarked the duke. “A friend of mine was here last month and said a piece of masonry nearly landed on his head when he was walking in the garden.”

“Do you believe in God?” asked Humphrey.

The duke looked at him in surprise. Everyone in the beginning of the nineteenth century believed in God. “Yes, why do you ask?” he demanded.

“Sometimes when one is in great pain,” said Humphrey, “one prays and prays for help… but nothing happens.”

A look of pain crossed the duke’s own face, but he said soothingly, “Oh, whatever happens to us is meant to happen.”

Up on the roof in the sunshine, Gerald chiseled happily away at the gargoyle, happy because he could not see his target, although knowing it would undoubtedly land on the duke’s head. Not seeing him made it seem more impersonal. There was nowhere else it could fall. It was a nasty gargoyle anyway, its head like a serpent, its huge, gaping mouth opened in a stone snarl.

Underneath, Mary’s nose flashed its angry warning, but her husband did not seem to notice. He was talking to the duke. Humphrey should have told her he was friendly with a duke. How like him to be secretive! She would punish him for this!

“I should not discuss my wife,” Humphrey was saying, “but I am at the end of my tether.”

“Then get away from her,” said the duke. “Join the army again.”

“I cannot. Mary holds the purse strings.”

“Look, old friend, I cannot bear to see you like this. I shall buy you a commission. In fact, do not go home after this. Come back with me. You would be free.”

“Free,” echoed Humphrey. And then his face fell and he shook his head sadly. “You don’t know what Mary’s like. She would follow me to the ends of the earth to get her revenge. I tell you what, Ferrant, I tried to kill myself last night, but she even stopped me doing that.”

“Was she not appalled at the extremes she had driven you to?”

“Would you believe that when she found me saying my last prayers on the tack room floor, with a noose swinging above my head, she thought I had lost something?”

The duke looked across the guests to Mary and said, “Yes. But you must not do such a thing again. There is always hope.”

“What hope? A bolt from heaven will strike her down?”

Lady Macdonald was seated next to Mary but was confining her attentions to the gentleman on her other side. The gentleman on Mary’s other side had exchanged a few words with her and then turned away with relief, feeling he had done his duty for the meal. So Mary sat alone. No Humphrey to nag. Her temper was becoming worse by the minute.

Humphrey looked across the garden; his eyes met his wife’s basilisk stare, and he trembled.

The duke said something, and he turned his head.

Then there was a rending scream and he looked across again. Where Mary had been sitting was a large gargoyle.

He jumped to his feet and struggled through the milling, screaming, and swooning guests. It looked as if Mary had been
swallowed
up by the gargoyle. Its stone mouth had engulfed her, what was left of her crushed under that terrible maw.

Humphrey began to laugh hysterically and was still laughing when the duke reached him and led him away.

Alice wandered about the gardens of Clarendon followed by her maid, Betty. Her parents had tried to call several times but had been turned away by the efficient Mr. Shadwell. Alice turned her head and said impatiently, “There is no need to follow me everywhere, Betty. I wish to be alone.”

“Don’t go doing anything silly, Your Grace,” said Betty gloomily. “I would lose my job.”

“You will not lose your job,” said Alice testily. “I have no doubt His Grace will divorce me and then you will be in my employ as usual.”

Betty reluctantly withdrew. Alice walked idly over to the stables. She usually walked about the grounds for most of the day, hoping to exhaust herself so that by nightfall she would fall into a deep sleep and forget about the duke.