The Ugly Duchess (16 page)

Twenty-two

May 30, 1816

The House of Lords

London

T
he Garter King-of-Arms, who was responsible for behavior and precedence in the House of Lords, was dreading the day before him. “I have to get them all in line to enter the Chamber,” Sir Henry Gismond said fretfully to his wife over toast and marmalade. “Almost two hundred of them, all told, and they will wander, especially the older ones. I dread these formal occasions, I truly do.”

Lady Gismond nodded. She knew that her beloved Henry hated them, even if he reveled in the chance to exhibit himself as the principal advisor to the Crown in matters of ceremony and heraldry. “It’s a terribly sad occasion. Lord Islay was a lovely young man, by all accounts. I hate to think of him lost on those cruel seas.”

“It’s the drunkards that make the most trouble.” Gismond continued his own train of thought. “You’d never guess how many of them conceal a flask under those scarlet robes, my dear. Truly shocking. I can hardly stop myself from rapping them on the knuckles on occasion.”

“They won’t be tippling today,” her ladyship said firmly. “How often is a peer declared dead in absentia? And Lady Islay herself will be in attendance. I’m sure everyone will respect her anguish at bidding good-bye to her young husband. They did say it was a love match, you know.”

It required the help of seven heralds, but Gismond managed to shepherd the peers into line, ready for their procession into the formal Chamber of the House of Lords: dukes paired with dukes and earls with earls. “Like the bloody Noah’s ark,” Gismond muttered to himself, and not for the first time. “Your Grace must stay in position,” he said, actually laying hands on an elderly and quite deaf peer.

Finally he was able to breathe a sigh of relief as the trumpet formally called the peers together, and he strode through the doors like a particularly magnificent mother duck leading two straight rows of quacking peers. Sunlight was flooding through the high arched windows, bouncing off the gilded chandeliers that hung from the ceiling.

Altogether, he found a rather glorious sight before him as he turned at the top of the room and waited as the crimson- and ermine-clad peers filed into benches. Lord Fippleshot seemed to have misplaced his spectacles, and His Grace the Duke of Devonshire was waggling his fingers at the crowded Spectators’ Gallery, currently occupied by the peeresses. But all the same, they were in line, and no one appeared to have overindulged in brandy during luncheon.

Sadly, the room took on this crowded, excited atmosphere only when the subject at hand was a question of death—a peer accused of murder, for example, or thought to be dead, as now. Though the peeresses tended to turn up for questions of wills and illegitimacy as well. It was only the routine votes governing the kingdom for which most didn’t bother to appear. But that was an unworthy thought, and he dismissed it.

There was a pause for a breath, and then a herald stalked up the aisle, the young Countess of Islay following in his wake. She wouldn’t ever become a duchess now, Gismond reminded himself, feeling a little pang of sympathy. But there, Lady Gismond—who read the scandal rags with the kind of concentration some reserved for the Bible and others for the racing docket—was passionately attached to the idea of the countess’s marrying again. “She needs a man of her own,” Lady Gismond had said that very morning. “Never a whisper of scandal about her, but the poor woman won’t have children if this drags on much longer.”

All the peers rose as the countess, dressed entirely in mourning, proceeded to the front of the chamber and curtsied, first to the Spectators’ Gallery, then to the assembled peers, and then to the Lord Chancellor. Formalities completed, she retired to the alcove reserved for peeresses and seated herself next to Mrs. Pinkler-Ryburn.

Gismond took a moment to squint at her, as his wife would demand every detail of her attire when he returned home. But Gismond could see nothing extraordinary. She was tall and she appeared to be thin, though it was hard to tell, as she probably wore four or five petticoats. She stood out like a drop of blackness in the midst of glitter. Not being required to wear robes, peeresses tended to wear their fortunes instead; the benches reserved for them positively sparkled.

The Sergeant-at-Arms boomed a request for silence, and then they went through the formal ceremony that opened the proceedings (every moment of which thrilled Gismond’s ceremonious soul). Finally, he himself knelt and handed the Lord Chancellor his staff of office.

The Lord Chancellor sat on the Woolsack, a backless chair with a vague resemblance to a throne, above the peers now settled in their crimson and gold on the red benches below him.

He rose. “Right honorable the Lords Spiritual and Temporal in Parliament assembled,” his lordship said, his voice effortlessly filling the great hall. “We are gathered and convened with the charge of a solemn task: to determine whether or no the noble peer, your companion, the Earl of Islay, heir to the duchy of Ashbrook, should be declared lost at sea. We have assumed these medieval splendors of scarlet and ermine in his honor, in response to the ‘Death in Absentia’ petition submitted by his sorrowing heir, Mr. Cecil Pinkler-Ryburn, who quite fitly and rightly expresses his deepest sorrow at this tragic event.”

There was a little rustle of approbation, and Mr. Pinkler-Ryburn shifted uneasily in the bench just below Gismond, who instinctively began to calculate the length of ermine needed to adorn the scarlet robes that would cover such a magnificent stomach once the man was a duke. But to do Pink (as everyone seemed to call the heir) credit, he hadn’t the slightest air of triumph or joy about him.

“We will give our absent peer the title Duke of Ashbrook as a matter of courtesy,” the Lord Chancellor continued, “since his honored father died after the young man’s departure from England and indeed, likely after his only son had already succumbed to the waves. Consequently, the young Earl of Islay never assumed the titles and duties to which he was heir, and never took his seat among us, in the House of Lords.” He paused for breath, and to allow the weight of his words to be felt.

“His wife was unable to grieve for him in his absence”—here he cast a paternal eye on the bent head of the countess—“and has been unable to assume the duties and responsibilities of a duchess, nor the freedom and protections of the widow. Moreover, the duchy itself has naturally suffered without the guiding hand of its master.”

Gismond had heard the opposite; in fact, most people were aware of the countess’s guiding hand in making Ryburn Weavers such a success. His own lady had reupholstered the drawing room in Ryburn fabrics, and they had cost a pretty penny.

The Lord Chancellor was now calling for discussion of the petition to declare the Duke of Ashbrook dead in absentia. As expected, the duke’s heir, Mr. Cecil Pinkler-Ryburn, begged permission to speak to the assembled peerage. He climbed the steps and looked over the chamber, not speaking for a moment.

He had a strange dignity about him, for all he was portly and rather insignificant. “I am most deeply, and I may say with perfect truth, cruelly afflicted by the call to declare my beloved cousin lost to us in such a manner. I accede to this motion only on the request of Lady Islay. While I wish to avoid the duties and responsibilities of the duchy,
she,
of course, wishes to be free, as is only just, of the heavy burden she has carried in the absence of her husband.”

Everyone in the room seemed to feel this was well put, and there was a happy murmur and a great many nodding plumes from the gallery housing the peeresses.

The assembly then heard from a representative of the committee that had reviewed Mr. Pinkler-Ryburn’s petition. He noted that, in all, twenty Bow Street Runners had been sent to the various parts of the globe once the young earl had been missing for some years, and the only news unearthed of him was of an equivocal nature.

Since there was nothing left to be said, the Lord Chancellor stepped forward again, holding in his right hand the scepter of his office. “We certainly appreciate the sentiments of Mr. Pinkler-Ryburn, for the heavy mantle of an English dukedom comes to a gentleman, as ever, with sorrow and mourning for his predecessor.”

At this, an audible giggle rose spontaneously in several parts of the room; the spectators, it seemed, had witnessed more than one title assumed with delight rather than sorrow.

The Lord Chancellor ignored this lack of decorum. “The assembled might and force of all England cannot stop the march of time, any more than they can arrest the motion of the tides or the course of the planets.”

The Countess of Manderbury wore high ostrich plumes that curled behind her and kept brushing across Lady Bury St. Edmonds’s face. Gismond narrowed his eyes. Surely that metallic flash couldn’t be a pair of embroidery scissors in Lady Bury St. Edmonds’s hand?

Gismond resisted the impulse to check the timepiece he had discreetly placed under his sash of office, and let the powerful voice of his lordship—who had progressed from reference to the tides to the will of heaven—wash over him.

But at that moment something happened, an event about which Gismond never stopped talking for the rest of his days. It began with a commotion in the back of the chamber, where the Yeoman Warders were stationed in the event that some errant peer insisted on entering in a tardy fashion. (It was deplorable, yet known to happen.)

But the latecomer was surely not a peer. Striding up the aisle now was an interloper: a man wearing plain black breeches and coat, no gloves, and no wig.

The Lord Chancellor broke off in the midst of a sentence describing the arms of heaven embracing the lost nobleman.

Gismond moved forward a nervous step. He should, by all rights, throw the intruder out of the chamber. But he was not one for physical action; raising one hand, he looked to his Yeoman Warders at the back of the room. But they stood facing forward, their eyes lowered.

A little pulse of anger was followed by one of confusion: they had been properly trained and should assume that attitude
only
upon admission of a member of the peerage. Gismond felt himself turning pale. Could it be that a member of the journalist class had somehow dared to swindle his way past the guards and broach his doors?

He squared his shoulders and prepared to take action.

The man was at the front of the room now, and with one great step was on the very dais.

He was large, very large, but all the same, Sir Henry Gismond knew that this was a decisive moment in his life. He had to prove himself worthy of his position and save the ceremony from chaos. The very memory of the young earl depended upon it.

“I must beg you, sir, to leave this chamber,” he said, pitting his voice against the babble that seemed to vibrate against the very walls of the room.

The man looked down at him, and Gismond involuntarily fell back a step. The intruder’s hair barely touched his ears. His skin was brown as a nut, and below his right eye, he had the mark of a savage.

“By God, this is no place for a tribesman from the Americas,” the Lord Chancellor roared. “Sirrah, return to whatever exhibit brought you to this country!”

With no other response than a rather grim smile showing a flash of white teeth, the man turned squarely to face the assembled peers. Still he remained silent. Gismond saw with one helpless glance that even the occupants of the Spectators’ Gallery were on their feet, straining to see.

“Silence!” the Lord Chancellor bellowed. “If you would please take your seats, we will discover the meaning of this disturbance.”

The babble did not subside, but the peers began to settle back onto their benches.

And all the time the intruder merely stood before them, an odd grin quirking one side of his mouth. Gismond’s mind raced. He’d heard tales of the Indian peoples of the Americas, of their strength and cunning. He’d even seen a tomahawk and shirt made of deerskin on display. Yet this specimen seemed to have no weapon. What on earth—

His speculation was interrupted. “Does no one recognize me?” the man asked. Gismond had never heard a voice like his: powerful, deep, a growl that quivered in the air like the howl of a bear.

Yet despite its roughness, it was unmistakably the voice of an English gentleman. There was no mistaking the vowels. Now there truly was dead silence in the chamber.

From the corner of his eye Gismond saw the Lord Chancellor twitch, caught between the exercise of his authority and a shock so profound that he—like everyone in the room—simply waited for whatever would come next.

“Given that you were so distressed to consign me to a watery grave,” the man added, turning to the Lord Chancellor, “I quite thought I would be recognized.”

His lordship made a noise like the squeal of a young pig. “Impossible!”

“Entirely possible,” the intruder replied. He seemed to be enjoying himself. “The arms of heaven have not yet pulled me into their embrace, you see.”

A wave of excited babble followed this observation. Gismond craned his neck to look at the countess, tucked into the gallery. It occurred to him that the lost duke—
if
it was indeed he—didn’t realize that the peeresses were in attendance; he hadn’t looked in their direction. But Gismond could catch only a glimpse of her face, white as parchment.

Then Mr. Pinkler-Ryburn came to his feet and once more climbed to the dais. Though the man claiming to be duke was by far the more ferocious figure, Mr. Pinkler-Ryburn had an odd dignity of his own.

“I do not recognize you, sir,” he said. His voice was cautious and respectful, the sort of address one might give a lion that has suddenly expressed, in the King’s English, a wish to eat you.

“We never knew each other very well,” the man replied.

“If you are indeed the duke, your voice has altered beyond recognition.”

“Having your throat cut tends to do that.” The man tilted his head back. There was a little gasp in the room, as everyone saw the wicked scar that ran across his brown throat as neatly as a cravat.