Desperate Duchesses

  “I would guess that this particular Venus will offend the female half of the ton,” Lord Gryffyn was saying.

  “She is not Venus, but Neptune’s Queen,” a lady standing to the side put in. “Venus was a tired concept five years ago!” She curled her lip with such emphasis that she had to be French.

  “Ah, but this isn’t Paris,” Lord Gryffyn said. “We’re of tender stock, and we like to pretend that we don’t know what various body parts look like. At this rate, Mademoiselle Caro, you will single-handedly instruct the better part of London on the composition of a beautiful pair of thighs. It’s not worth it.”

  “Your own brother agrees with me,” the duke snapped. “I will not have this sort of behavior in my house.”

  There was a freezing moment of silence. The cheerful smile dropped from the duchess’s eyes. “Won’t you?” she asked.

  The duke had to be six feet tall, but to Roberta he looked at least seven. “I will not.” He spaced his words in an ominous fashion.

  “In that case, I suppose I shall not be the one to educate the English on the delicate matter of a woman’s leg,” the duchess said. “Not when you’re there to do it for me, and in your own offices in Westminster.”

  Roberta blinked, but the duchess was turning away.

  “It’s damned hard to imagine Jemma as a political wife,” Lord Gryffyn remarked to Beaumont. “Do naked women grace tables in Paris? I’ve never seen one in London.” He checked himself. “Well, not in this kind of house anyway.”

  He looked up and met Roberta’s eyes. She involuntarily fell back another step. How could she possibly—

  “Looks like you have a visitor, Jemma,” he said.

  Jemma swung around, and so did the duke. The third gentleman was still deep in conversation with Neptune’s queen and didn’t hear.

  Roberta dropped a curtsy. “Good afternoon,” she said. “I’m afraid your butler was overcome by the event and retired to compose himself. I told him I would introduce myself.”

  The duchess smiled at her. Roberta was suddenly aware of her large feet. She even felt as if her overstuffed, shabby bag, dropped in the foyer by a disdainful footman, was humping along behind her.

  “Please forgive us for being in such disarray,” the duchess said, a wave of her hand signifying (one must assume) the naked woman and the squabble with her husband.

  “Not at all,” Roberta said, stammering. “My name is Lady Roberta St. Giles.” She paused.

  There wasn’t a spark of recognition on the duchess’s face, but the duke stepped forward. “I recognize the name, madam.”

  Roberta breathed a sigh of relief.

  “You’re collecting for the Chelsea pensioners, are you not? It was most kind of you to attend me here, but I assure you, quite unnecessary.” He came forward with determined kindness, clearly intending to sweep her out of the house. “I’m so sorry that you were present at a scene like this. It’s enough to horrify any woman of delicate sensibility.”

  The duchess intervened. “If I am to be a political wife, Beaumont, I might as well begin. I gather that charity, rather than peacock feathers, should be my every thought.” She tucked Roberta’s arm under her own. “Chelsea pensioners are a most worthy charity, Lady Roberta,” she said. “I’d be honored to hear about your work. Would you like a cup of tea?”

  “You don’t understand,” Roberta said, holding her ground. But when she opened her mouth, she could not bring herself to tell the truth. That everything she owned was drooping in the entryway. That she had come—unannounced and undoubtedly unwelcome—to stay. To find a husband.

  Without another look at her husband or her guests, the duchess began drawing her toward the door. “Please come to my sitting room,” she said. “Beaumont, do you make my farewells.” She didn’t look at him as she said it.

  The duke’s voice was icy. “And your centerpiece?”

  “We shall discuss it later.”

  “I see no reason to waste my time. A naked woman will never grace my dining table. That is all I have to say about it.”

  “Pish on that!” the duchess cried, stopping in her tracks and dropping Roberta’s arm. “She’s a work of art.”

  “She’s a disgrace,” he countered.

  The duchess showed no outward signs of fear, which Roberta thought was amazing. Faced with such a large specimen of enraged manhood, she herself would have quailed.

  “You’re going to lose this one,” Lord Gryffyn said cheerfully. “Believe it or not, Jemma, your husband is up to good works that shouldn’t get mucked up by your naked ladies, no matter how luscious. What do you think?” he asked Roberta. “You’re obviously a proper young lady. Would you think that a ball featuring Lady Neptune would be ill-received?”

  Roberta glanced up at the centerpiece. She truly was naked: it was rather interesting how different her body was from Roberta’s. For one thing, her breasts had to be three times as large. “I believe that most people will find it unhygienic,” she said. “I gather that is your dining table? There’s a chance that people might hesitate to dine here in the future.”

  Her comment was met with flat silence, and then a bellow of laughter from the duchess’s brother. “She’s got you there, Jemma.”

  The duke smiled, and Roberta suddenly felt the power of his rather icy face when it melted into a smile. “I am feeling very prone to helping pensioners,” he said softly. “One good deed, etc.”

  The duchess gave a wry little shrug, and then turned around and called to the Frenchwoman. “Caro, darling, she needs to be clothed. Could you fashion her something appropriate?”

  “Surely you jest!” she replied, throwing her hand to her brow. “Do you conceive of the diaper?”

  “As long as it covers her from collarbone to ankle,” the duke stated. The woman broke into remonstrations, waving her arms in the air.

  “Now I really need a cup of tea,” the duchess muttered, taking Roberta’s elbow again. “Shall we go to my sitting room? It’s cowardly of me to leave Beaumont with my secretary, but he deserves it, don’t you think? I promise not to be petulant about Lady Neptune’s nappy.” Lord Gryffyn had turned away; the secretary’s voice was escalating into a shriek.

  “Perhaps Mademoiselle Caro will be able to bend her designs to the tender sensibilities of English gentlewomen,” Roberta suggested, feeling quite certain that most of the Frenchwoman’s designs would terrify and amaze the ladies of her acquaintance.

  “And perhaps not. Then she will leave me and return to Paris, where at least three comtesses are slavering for her services. I’ve had to double her wage twice in the last few years. Which is a frightfully shallow thing to admit when you’ve called on such a serious business.”

  “Well, as to that—”

  “Please, let’s not talk of sad subjects until we’re seated with a cup of tea. I would ring for claret; I always think that claret is a sustaining drink for unpleasant subjects, but it’s too early.”

  They walked into a small sitting room. “I must have this redone,” the duchess said, pausing a moment. “I’ve only come from Paris a day or so ago, or I assure you that I wouldn’t bring you into such a shabby place.”

  The room did have a rather forbidding aspect. It was painted a drab mustard color and featured a large picture of a smiling young woman holding a severed head by its hair. “Just look at her,” the duchess said. “She carries that head with all the jaunty air of a tavern maid.”

  “It must be Judith and Holofernes,” Roberta said. “Under the circumstances, Judith looks rather cheerful, don’t you think?”

  The duchess strolled over to the picture. “Actually, I think she looks rather drunk. Don’t you think she looks tipsy?”

  “I believe that Judith first brought Holofernes some wine,” Roberta said. “Before she took off his head. Though I would hate to cast disparagements on the artist’s skill, her drunken aspect might have to do with the fact that her eyes do not appear to be level.”

  “Her face is als
o remarkably rosy.”

  “Probably the hard work,” Roberta pointed out. “I would guess that it takes a strong arm to sever a man’s neck.”

  “Good point. I can see that you are very practical. Do sit down here, Lady Roberta, with your back to the severed head. I shall have it removed at my very first opportunity. I haven’t lived in London for eight years, but I still wake up trembling when I think of my mother-in-law; this is her special sitting room, you understand. Thank goodness, she lives in a dower house in the country now.”

  Roberta seated herself. “I should explain who I am—”

  “Yes,” the duchess interrupted. “You are my very first encounter as the wife of a politician. So you understand that I am very anxious to get this right. How much money would you like?”

  “It’s not money,” Roberta said. “You see, I am—”

  “Not money! Oh dear, then it’s that altogether more valuable commodity of time, isn’t it? I’ll be no use to you. Not only am I congenitally unhelpful in practical matters, but I tend to gather people around me who are as—shall we say—immoral as I?”

  “Are you quite immoral?” Roberta asked, her scruples overcome by strong curiosity. The duchess didn’t look immoral. Of course, Roberta’s assessments were quite likely inaccurate, given that they were founded on years of living with her father’s mistresses, women who prided themselves on a reckless disregard for conventional morality.

  “Quite,” the duchess said with unrelieved cheerfulness. “Absolutely. Up to my neck in it. Naked ladies on the table is only the start, I assure you. So I’m afraid that my assistance wouldn’t be of the least use to you.”

  “In truth, I think you can be,” Roberta said.

  The duchess looked alarmed. “Truly, I cannot. I become irritable—fierce—when bored, and I am so quickly bored.”

  Roberta was thoroughly enjoying herself now. “How fierce?”

  “Dastardly! Once, in the midst of a tedious dinner, I insulted the Comtesse de la Motte by being a trifle too forthright about her origins. She would have gone white in the face, but for her excessive application of rouge.”

  The door swung open rather violently, revealing the duchess’s secretary. Her chest was heaving, her hair was disheveled, and her fists were clenched. In fact, she was the very vision of Judith, lacking only a severed body part or two. Clearly, if her wishes were respected, she would be toting the duke’s head.

  “Oh dear,” the duchess said, under her breath.

  “I return this minute—this evening—this very minute to the shores of France, where my work is appreciated! This husband of yours is a man with no sense of the beauty in life. No sense for the aesthetic value. He has a soul of the mud. He bathes in the dirt, this one! I pity you!”

  “Oh, Caro,” the duchess said, rising from her chair. “Surely you cannot mean to say that you will leave me. Me? After all the glorious events we planned together? Think of the satyrs! Think of the King sending you a note after the Crystal Forest!”

  “Your husband does not understand my genius,” the enraged Frenchwoman hissed. “I know the type. He will be hedging me about with his concerns and his proprieties. I cannot be hedged about! I am a genius!”

  “Geniuses sometimes have to work under terrible conditions,” Roberta suggested, coming forward. “In fact, it is then that they produce their best, their most enviable work. Think of Michelangelo, lying on his back to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.”

  The maddened eye of the Frenchwoman fixed on Roberta. “Michelangelo was a foolish Italian! I am French! I cannot be stymied by the hidebound opinions of a petty bureaucrat!”

  Behind her, Roberta heard a small snort of laughter from the wife of the petty bureaucrat.

  “But to turn your back on a true challenge…” Roberta shook her head. “It’s not the action of a Frenchwoman, mademoiselle.” Then she decided it would be better to soothe the wild beast in her own language, and continued in the same vein in French, silently thanking her governess for her insistence on the language. “Escusez-nous, c’est bien pour ça que Leonardo da Vinci a choisi de vivre en France. Nous étions, encore, des barbares.”

  “She is right,” the duchess cooed. “Your artistry has suffered naught but a small setback.”

  “I suggest,” Roberta said, “that you think not in terms of the Queen of the Sea—so redundant, so tedious—but in terms of the great mythological figures. All of whom wore clothes. Now when I see a giant shell, do I think of Neptune? No!”

  “I know,” the secretary said, lip curling. “You think of Venus. I’m tired of Venus and her foolish shell.”

  “I think of Helen of Troy, the most beautiful woman ever to live.”

  “And precisely when did Helen appear in a sea shell?”

  “It’s not a seashell, but an egg,” Roberta explained. “It can be painted white. The huge egg splits to reveal the woman who began the Trojan War. Of course, she would be wearing classic Greek garb.”

  “Ah,” Caro said, her eyes narrowing. “Perhaps…”

  “Brilliant!” the duchess cried. “I adore it, love it, and so will Beaumont.”

  “But my tail!” Caro said. “The glorious touch of the Queen of Neptune’s mechanical tail, which took two days to design.”

  “Never fear, we can use your brilliant peacock tail for something else,” the duchess promised. She ushered her out of the room and turned back with a huge smile. Roberta blinked; the pure force of the duchess’s personality was unnerving. “Your pensioners, Lady Roberta, just became my special project!”

  “In truth, I don’t have any pensioners,” Roberta said, returning to her seat. “I’m afraid that the duke mistook me for someone more charitable.”

  “How unusual. Beaumont actually got something wrong. I feel as if a Hallelujah Chorus ought to break out in mid-air.”

  “I only have myself,” Roberta said. “That and my luggage.”

  “Your luggage?” The duchess was looking a bit bewildered now.

  “I am your cousin, thrice removed. Actually more than three. At any rate, my mother looked something like you. We are remotely connected, and I was hoping that you would bring me into society.” Roberta said it with a gulp. She was being remarkably bold, and as Mrs. Grope had assured her, she was likely to be thrown in the street. She clenched her hands together tightly.

  “I have a letter from my father,” she added. “Your father and he were very dear to each other in their youth.”

  The duchess didn’t appear to be curling her lip in horror. “Really? I would have thought my father had no friends at all, from various pleasant little memories I have of him. It’s heartening to imagine that he was once a boy,” she said. “But what am I thinking; you’ve come to stay with me. How splendid!”

  Roberta’s heart thumped. “It is?”

  The duchess was smiling. “Of course it is! I never had a sister, and I always wanted one. Don’t worry; I shall know everyone in this benighted city within a week or two, and we’ll make you a splendid marriage. If you don’t mind my asking, are you connected on my mother’s or my father’s side?”

  “On your mother’s,” Roberta said, feeling slightly dizzy from the relief of it. “I’m afraid it’s a rather faint connection. My mother was your great-aunt’s second cousin’s child. Her maiden name was Cressida Enright. She was rarely in London, as she married at the age of sixteen. She died when I was quite young.”

  “Wait a minute!”

  Roberta waited, knowing exactly what was coming.

  “The Mad Marquess,” the duchess exclaimed. “Not—your father? The poet?”

  Roberta nodded reluctantly.

  “My goodness, I suppose that I knew he had a daughter. How old are you?”

  “Twenty-one.”

  “I am twenty-eight. You’re a newborn compared to me. But surely you’re an heiress? Isn’t the Mad Marquess—” She checked herself. “I’m so sorry, your father is Marquess of Wharton and?”

  “Wharton an
d Malmesbury,” Roberta said. “It’s quite all right. No one remembers his title. At any rate, I do have a dowry, but how could I possibly marry, while immured in the country? My father refused to travel even to Bath in the last few years.”

  “Your neighbors are no help?”

  “We don’t have many. My father bought the adjoining estate to the north some years ago. And I’m afraid that he has alienated those who live nearby.”

  “By sending them poetry?” the duchess asked, and stopped. “You must tell me at your leisure; I shan’t question you like a fishwife in your first five minutes. At any rate, you have done just the right thing. You shall be my ward. All the finest ladies in Paris had wards; they’re so useful in forcing one to not malinger at home.”

  “I can’t imagine you malingering at home,” Roberta said, rather shyly.

  The duchess twinkled at her. “Perhaps not alone, but there are certainly times when one finds oneself, shall we say, drawn to the idea of a lazy evening? And yet I consider that to be a woman’s downfall. One must dress every evening, or one quickly becomes a slug.”

  Roberta nodded. Rarely having had an occasion to dress formally in the whole of her life, she found the prospect of a quiet night at home loathsome.

  “You couldn’t have come at a better time. I suppose you heard about Beaumont’s collapse in Lords last fall? Naturally, I hope that it was nothing more than a case of nerves, but…” Her voice trailed off and Roberta thought that she actually looked rather stricken, which didn’t agree with the biting dislike she’d seen between the duke and duchess.

  “Duty meant I must return.”

  Roberta nodded. Her father’s response to reading of the Duke of Beaumont’s collapse in the very midst of a speech in the House had been to laugh uproariously and prophesy the man was a drunk, but having met the duke, she doubted her father’s diagnosis.

  “I must produce an heir and all the rest of it,” the duchess remarked, quite as if she were saying it might rain tomorrow. “Most unpleasant, but it needs be done, and clearly I’m the one to do it.”

  “Oh!” Roberta said.