Duchess in Love

  “How disgraceful!” chimed in the lady in yellow, whose name Phineas couldn’t remember. “Although I don’t believe it of her mother. Why would she bother to lock her daughter in the room with a second son? No, no, the girl is fast. I always thought so, since the moment she debuted. You know, she tripped over her train when she bowed to the Queen. Careless chit.”

  “I think it’s likely her mother was instrumental in locking them in the room,” Mrs. Flockhart insisted. “She always was a wily one. When we were just girls, she used to swear that she was going to catch a duke. Never did, of course. The boy may be a second son, but he’s got a nice income of his own.”

  Phineas narrowed his eyes. If the duke and duchess were locked in a room together, would they be forced to remain married? Surely the marquess would discard his engagement if the duchess was compromised.

  “What room was it?” he asked.

  Three pairs of sharp eyes looked at him. “What the devil are you talking about, boy?” screeched Mrs. Flockhart.

  Phineas felt his ears turning crimson. “The room,” he said. “Where were they for two hours?”

  There was a cackle of laughter. “Not the bedchamber, if that’s what you’re thinking!”

  “It is not a good way to win yourself an heiress,” said Lady Wantlish. At least she had a twinkle in her eye. “Too risky.”

  “I am not hoping to win an heiress,” Phineas said with dignity.

  “Good,” Mrs. Flockhart said acidly. “I don’t think there are any here who are uncompromised.”

  “Now, now,” said Lady Wantlish. “Miss Deventosh is quite a catch. She was the recipient of her late aunt’s estate. And I assure you that she is uncompromised.”

  “That red-headed little snip?” The old woman was scathing. “If she’s an heiress, why is she wearing those dreadful clothes? She looks like a ruffled turnip.”

  Phineas felt a stab of sympathy for the unknown Miss Deventosh. He felt like a turnip and apparently she looked like one.

  “They were locked in a conservatory,” Lady Wantlish commented, turning back to him. She had a friendly look in her eye. Or perhaps she just wanted him to create a scandal.

  “Ah,” he said, trying to sound uninterested. He felt a sharp dig in his ribs.

  “Who are your parents, boy?”

  “My father’s name is Phineas Finkbottle,” Phineas said, starting to blush.

  “Finkbottle? You’re Phineas Finkbottle’s son?” To his amazement, Lady Wantlish softened all over and looked as sweet as butter. “He was one of my very first beaux. That was before he lost all his money, of course.”

  “Good thing you didn’t take him,” Mrs. Flockhart observed.

  “My father wouldn’t allow it,” Lady Wantlish admitted. “How is he now?”

  “He’s lame, madam,” Phineas stammered. “He suffered a carriage accident a few years ago.”

  “Are you good to your parents, boy?”

  He started to turn purple with embarrassment. “Yes,” he mumbled. “At least I think so. My mother died in the accident.”

  The old woman nodded. “Thought I heard something about that. A few years after Finkbottle lost his money on the ’Change, wasn’t it? You have a nice look about you. Doesn’t he, gels?”

  They all stared at him with beady eyes.

  “I expect you’re right,” said the plump one to his right. “He does have a nice look.” She sounded quite surprised.

  “I’ll introduce him to the Deventosh chit,” Lady Wantlish announced. “She’s my goddaughter, after all. As you said, Mrs. Flockhart, she dresses like a turnip and she’s unhappy as a turnip too. Told me she doesn’t want to marry a useless aristocrat. I’ll hand her a nice young solicitor. Mind you”—she gave Phineas a sharp look—“no locking yourself into a conservatory with my goddaughter. She’s a good girl, for all she has advanced ideas.”

  Phineas turned quite purple with shame. Thankfully the ladies were gathering their scarves and reticules and preparing to leave. He bowed, and bowed again as they left, swallowing a lump in his throat that made him positively long to jump into a coach and flee to London. Except then he would lose his position, and…the thought of his father at home stilled his nerves. He had to keep this job. He simply had to.

  I’ll lock the duke and duchess in a garden building, he decided. If that doesn’t work, at least Mr. Rounton couldn’t say that he hadn’t tried. That very night he would do it. It would be easy enough. All he had to do was send the duke and duchess out individually, follow, and lock them in. As for the key…the key. What key? For that matter, what building? He set off with renewed vigor. He’d have to walk the grounds until he found a structure that locked.

  By a half hour later Phineas was quite discouraged. Wandering around in the dark, he had found two little garden buildings, but they were so dirty that he couldn’t imagine the elegant duchess entering either of them. Then he found an outdoor earth closet that looked like a little house from a distance. But inside it was quite malodorous, and what would the duke and duchess do for several hours? It was extremely difficult to imagine them sitting peacefully on stools.

  The problem was that none of the little grottos or conservatories scattered about the grounds locked. And when he discreetly asked a gardener about keys to the Roman temple, he got nothing more than a suspicious look and a muttered response that there weren’t no need for it.

  Finally he was driven back into the house. He’d have to lock the duke and duchess into a room. Which sounded better, in truth, because they were bound to create a greater scandal by being locked in right under the house party’s noses.

  But he encountered the same problem. The library locked, but only from the inside. In the end, he found only two possibilities: the billiard room and the cupboard water closet off the ballroom. On the whole, Phineas thought the billiard room sounded the better proposition. He walked out of the water closet, contemplating ways by which to maneuver the couple into the billiard room. To his horror, a gentleman was standing just outside. Phineas turned scarlet with confusion.

  “Interested in the facilities, are you?” the man asked jovially. “As am I, as am I! I’m thinking of putting a Stowe water closet into my own house. My wife wants one in her dressing room. Have you seen the plunge-bath?”

  Phineas shook his head.

  “Come along, let’s find it, shall we?” The man blew out his walrus-type mustache. “My name’s Wimpler.”

  “I am Phineas Finkbottle,” Phineas replied, bowing.

  “Good!” Mr. Wimpler exclaimed. “Good, good, good. Now, the butler told me that the steps down to the plunge-bath come from the east portico. Must be this way.” And he set off vigorously, Phineas trailing behind.

  They walked down a set of narrow, winding steps and peered into the plunge-bath. It was lined in brick.

  “What do you think?” Wimpler shouted. “Think I ought to have one of those?”

  “It looks chilly,” Phineas pointed out.

  “Now there you’re wrong,” Wimpler said. “Lady Troubridge told me that it’s heated. Somehow…ah! Steam heat, I would guess. Look at that!”

  Phineas looked.

  Wimpler smirked. “Lovely place for a ron-dee-vous, wouldn’t you say?” He elbowed Phineas cheerfully. “A little splash and tumble? Don’t suppose that’s what Lady Troubridge had in mind when she installed it, though!” He laughed at his own cleverness and set off back up the stairs. “Come along, then,” he called back. “We shouldn’t like to be late for the dancing.”

  Phineas followed more slowly. What really struck him about the plunge-bath was the key on the door. The key, and the silent, oiled way in which it turned. If he could lure the duke and duchess into visiting the bath, he could lock them in. Moreover, since the entrance was on the east portico, the couple was unlikely to be discovered before sufficient time had lapsed to ruin their reputations.

  The next question was how to lure them to the plunge-bath.

  But that turned out to
be quite easy. As he was walking back along the corridor, Mr. Wimpler having dashed away to find his wife, he saw the duke and duchess just leaving the library.

  “Your Graces!” he called, rushing toward them.

  The duchess had just begun to climb the stairs and didn’t turn her head immediately. The duke stopped, however, and greeted him rather curtly.

  “Lady Troubridge requests your presence,” Phineas said, catching his breath.

  The duke had a hand on the duchess’s waist. For a moment Phineas had a qualm: what if the duke was, indeed, going to take care of the problem himself? But then the sight of Mr. Rounton’s apopletic face shot across his memory. No: he couldn’t trust the duke. It was for his own good, after all.

  “Her Ladyship would like to see you immediately,” he said, injecting urgency into his voice.

  The duchess turned around, finally, and smiled. She put a hand on the duke’s sleeve. “Why don’t you greet Lady Troubridge for me? I shall take a small rest.”

  Perhaps he was making a mistake.

  The duke was grinning back at his wife. “No indeed. I couldn’t let you do that. Not without exerting yourself first.”

  Phineas was fairly sure that there was a double meaning to the conversation.

  But the duke and duchess began walking quickly down the hallway. He actually had to run after them to direct them to the plunge-bath. Luckily, they didn’t seem to notice where they were going, and accepted his hasty explanation that Lady Troubridge was down the stairs off the portico without even glancing at him. The duke was whispering in the duchess’s ear; Phineas could see that she was faintly pink in the cheeks.

  He hesitated, swung the door shut behind them, and turned the key. Instantly he felt enormous relief. He’d done what needed to be done.

  He would return with witnesses in three hours. At the end of the evening. Surely people would notice the duchess’s absence during the dancing. He smiled with newborn confidence. He, Phineas Finkbottle, was a man of action. A man who came up with a plan and satisfied his employer. He strolled in the door of the ballroom full of well-being.

  26

  Cabined, Cribbed, and Confined,

  as Hamlet Put It

  It took a good two minutes before Cam and Gina realized that not only was Lady Troubridge not in the plunge-bath, but Phineas Finkbottle, for reasons known only to himself, had locked them in.

  “What the devil?” Cam banged on the door. It was made of such solid oak that his fist only made a dull thunk.

  “What could that man have been thinking?” Gina asked.

  “He won’t be thinking long once I get out of this dungeon!” Cam snarled.

  “It’s not a dungeon.” She retreated back down the stairs. “He can’t be planning to murder us, because Lady Troubridge told me herself that she takes a plunge-bath every morning. In the worst case, we shan’t be discovered until morning.”

  “Perhaps Finkbottle doesn’t know that Lady Troubridge is addicted to the bath,” Cam pointed out.

  “He doesn’t seem a murderous type of person.”

  He tramped down the stairs after her and then stopped. “He’s stealing the Aphrodite!”

  His wife looked up at him and smiled. “I gave it to Esme for safekeeping this morning. I decided that you may be correct in insisting that the thief would return.”

  “Damn him. It crossed my mind that he was your no-good brother, and I ignored it. More fool I.” Cam was filled with the rage of a man unable to rescue his lady, even though she was only debatably in danger.

  “You think Mr. Finkbottle is my brother?” Gina gasped.

  “He has red hair. He trained on the continent. And he’s off stealing the Aphrodite. Only your brother could possibly know about the statue.”

  She froze for a moment, thinking it through. “Mr. Finkbottle is my brother?”

  “It’s the only explanation that makes sense.” He stomped down the rest of the stairs. “I expect he’s turning over your mattress at this very moment, looking for the statue.”

  “Why didn’t he simply ask me for it?”

  “Because he’s a criminal,” he snapped, still smarting over their enforced imprisonment.

  “Still, if he’d asked me, I would have given him the statue.” Her eyes were so sad that Cam felt some of his annoyance melt away.

  “Fools, both of them,” he said, a bit more gently. “Your mother didn’t answer your letters and your brother didn’t introduce himself properly.”

  Her chin wobbled.

  “Oh for goodness’ sake,” he said with exasperation, and tucked her into his arms. “Why would you want your by-blow of a sibling to introduce himself anyway?”

  Gina bit her lip hard and didn’t say anything because she might cry. Duchesses never cried in the presence of others.

  “Well?” Her husband sounded cross but he was holding her so sweetly that it almost—almost—made up for the fact that neither her mother nor her brother cared to meet her. Cared to speak to her, or write to her, or know her at all. She deliberately pushed the thought away and thought: Duchess is as duchess does. Duchess is as duchess does, Duchess is as duchess does.

  “What is a plunge-bath anyway?” Cam asked, looking around at the vaulted brick ceilings.

  “They’re quite the newest thing,” she said. “That’s the bath.” She pulled herself from his arms and pointed down at the tiled bath. “One enters by those stairs. It’s really quite clever. The water is piped across the kitchen hot wall, so it’s already warm by the time it arrives in the bath. And one could make it hotter by turning this switch.”

  “I gather Finkbottle doesn’t mean us to freeze to death then,” Cam said, walking over to inspect the pipes. “This is ingenious. Perhaps we should put in a bath at Girton.”

  “I thought about it,” she said. “It would be quite easy to pipe the water through the kitchen, since it is set so far to the east.”

  “That’s an optimistic way of looking at the kitchen’s location. Father always cursed the fact it was so far away from the dining room, but I suppose a warm plunge-bath is better than a cold meal.”

  “We have the cold meals anyway,” Gina pointed out. “We might as well have a warm bath.”

  Cam climbed the steps down into the bath and was fiddling about when suddenly a huge gush of water erupted from the pipe.

  “Damn it to hell!” he howled, jumping back on the stairs. But it was too late: he was completely soaked from his knees to his boots.

  Gina giggled. “More fool you. What did you think would come out? Air?”

  Cam ignored her. “Lady Troubridge is right: the water is quite warm.” He walked back up the steps, sloshing as he went. “Perhaps I had better remove these wet clothes.” He grinned at her. “I wouldn’t want Finkbottle to succeed in murdering me due to a chill.”

  Gina blinked. “You may not undress in front of me!”

  “Have a heart,” he said pathetically. “I shall freeze if I stay in wet clothing. Besides”—he pointed to the water splashing into the bath—“I believe when all’s said and done we might as well experiment with Lady Troubridge’s invention.”

  “Take a plunge-bath with—with you? One takes baths alone.”

  His smile was secret and inviting and passionate, all at once. “Not always.” He sat down on the top of the stairs to the bath and pulled off his boots.

  “You are really going to undress? What if someone arrives to let us out?”

  “They won’t. I would guess that we’re here for the duration, duchess. Finkbottle is searching your room at leisure; it should take him at least an hour. And then I expect that he’ll make good his escape. You might as well make yourself comfortable.”

  “I am quite comfortable, thank you.” His wife put her nose in the air and tapped her foot with annoyance. He thought she was quite the most delectable woman he’d ever seen in his life. The more he thought about it—he pulled off his second boot—the more he had a mind to give Phineas Finkbottle a handful
of bank notes when they got out of the bath. After a trouncing, of course.

  He stood up and put his hands at his trousers. Gina was watching him with fascination.

  “You mustn’t do this.” Her voice sounded weak, to his mind.

  He grinned and undid his trousers, pulled them down, and threw them to the side.

  She didn’t shriek and run up the stairs. Of course, his shirt did hang rather low. He started to unbutton it.

  “Cam!”

  She said his name in a sort of gasping way.

  He stopped unbuttoning and walked over to her. Then he kissed her. He couldn’t stop himself, not with her lips so plump and rosy. She sighed and he put his hands on her shoulders to steady her.

  “Gina, what did you think we were going to do in your bedchamber?”

  She looked at him with those lovely green eyes, secretive and inviting and passionate, all at once. The edge of her mouth curled up. “Take a bath?”

  “No. But undress…I would have undressed you, duchess,” he whispered against her ear and the soft skin of her neck. He pulled her into his arms, holding her tightly against him. Without trousers, he was fairly certain that she would know exactly what was on his mind. “Gina, my love, I would have undressed you.”

  She looked at him: at his wild smile and high cheekbones, at the mischievous twinkle in his eyes.

  She was no idiot. He would take what he took, and leave for Greece. But before he left…And he called her “my love.” Her heart melted. Her conscience scolded, but some other part of her melted when he said that. He called her “love.”

  The plunge-bath was housed in a small room, and it was quickly growing toasty warm from the water pouring into the bath.

  Cam kneeled before her. “May I remove Your Grace’s slippers?”

  Gina’s heart was singing. She was quivering all over. She delicately raised her skirts in both hands and pointed her narrow shoe at Cam.

  His smile had no hint of complacency, just a pure joy that sent a burning heat to Gina’s middle. His hand slipped around her slender ankle and pulled off her shoe. He set it precisely to the side, and she offered her other ankle.