All I Want Is You (11 page)

Likewise I pleasured her with my mouth, brushing my lips to and fro over her sex then driving my tongue deep inside her, thrusting steadily. She liked that best of all. She moaned, moving her head from side to side and calling out my name in her extremity, then we lay in each other’s arms while the autumn sun lit the room and we heard the motorcars coming and going on the driveway outside as more guests arrived for the old Duke’s funeral.

‘Have you heard yet?’ I asked her drowsily. ‘When Lord Ashley is arriving?’

She shook her head. ‘Whether Ash is here or not for the funeral, you will still be my gift to him.’ She kissed my cheek. ‘You and I together – how can he resist?’

Beatrice told me again and again what we would do when he did arrive. How when the time was right she would invite him up here to her rooms, where I would be waiting. We’d even chosen the garments we would wear. ‘We must remember,’ she reminded me, ‘that he’ll be enduring the funeral rites of a family that loathes him and wishes he didn’t exist.’

I nodded, but my spirits were low. I was afraid, you see, that I would find him so repellent that I wouldn’t be
able to do what I was supposed to do; wouldn’t be able to conceal my revulsion.

What a fool I was, now that I look back on it all. What a fool, not even to start to guess.

The news finally came that Lord Ashley would
not
be arriving in time for the funeral. The body had already lain in state in the Duke’s cold bedroom for several days so that everyone could pay their respects; the funeral was imminent. But a message had arrived on the butler’s telegraph machine to say that Lord Ashley had been in New York when he heard of the Duke’s death, and though he had boarded the next transatlantic crossing he would, of course, be late.

Nothing, it seemed, could be a worse insult. The Duchess, Beatrice told me, was furious beyond imagining.
If there is any justice in this world
, the old lady said – Beatrice was an expert at mimicking her –
that man’s ship will sink to the bottom of the ocean
.

‘The funeral, of course,’ pronounced the Duchess in her grandest manner, ‘will proceed without Lord Ashley’s presence.’ Still Lord Ashley – never the Duke.

‘Of course, Your Grace.’

‘Your Grace.’

More house guests arrived for the funeral with their valets and ladies’ maids in tow. The lower servants had to wait on them in addition to their usual work, and all
half-days off were cancelled. Betsey, Harriet and the others grumbled increasingly about their workload, but they knew very well the Duchess would dismiss them – just like
that –
if they complained, and without a reference they would never find anything else.

I kept my distance. I had become colder and harder, I knew; Beatrice had offered me the chance of getting away from here and starting a new life, and I wasn’t going to throw that chance away. The day before the funeral, she and I had dressed up in some new lingerie that had just been delivered from London. ‘Mourning attire,’ Beatrice had explained sadly to the Duchess when the trunks arrived, but once the footmen had hauled them up to Beatrice’s rooms we opened them together, exclaiming with joy over the contents. We dressed up – well, rather we
undressed
each other, then put on the exquisite slips of nothingness, the little satin brassieres and Milanese silk vests, the short chemises with flounces of lace, and then we danced.

She was teaching me more tango steps, I remember, but her gramophone was turned low, so low. ‘Not suitable for funerals,’ she winked at me, while the Latin pulse faintly throbbed, stirring my blood as we stalked arm in arm up and down her room to the hypnotic beat of ‘My Tango Girl’
.

We kissed, of course, and ended up on her bed, entwined naked in each other’s arms on the silken coverlet. But I think by then that I was aching in my bones for a man’s love, and I guessed she saw it.

The funeral was a day of great state and solemnity. I dressed Lady Beatrice in her black mourning clothes; she seemed agitated and was smoking more than usual. The new Duke’s transatlantic crossing, Mr Peters had heard on the telegraph, had been delayed by easterly gales; Mr Peters, like the Duchess, still referred to him as ‘Lord Ashley’. I also knew, because Beatrice had told me, that the new Duke would be faced with enormous taxes – death duties – on his inheritance, and the old Duchess was cackling with glee.

‘But I will not permit him to sell any more land!’ We all heard the Duchess’s imperious voice ringing down the corridors. ‘I will not allow him to betray my dead husband’s sacred heritage!’

‘As if she’ll have any say in the matter,’ Beatrice muttered to me.

All the servants walked to the church for the funeral, and it was so crowded that many of the tenants and villagers had to stand outside. We maids were in a pew right at the back, with the footmen in front. Robert turned round to whisper to us that the Duchess was praying not for her dead husband’s soul, but that the ship the new Duke was on might sink mid-Atlantic. We giggled, and Mr Peters gave us such a look over the rims of his spectacles.

The vicar addressed the old Duchess in his final summing-up. ‘To lose a son, an heir and a husband in a few short years is a tragedy indeed, but the Lord God Almighty is wonderful in his ways. Let us all pray for Her Grace in her grief.’

Though we, the servants, knew it wasn’t grief but
sheer fury at the thought of the upstart Lord Ashley inheriting the estate that so contorted the Duchess’s face.

After the funeral several guests stayed on at the Duchess’s invitation, and Mrs Burdett was so short-staffed that Lady Beatrice agreed to let me go for two or three hours each day to help the other maids. ‘You can listen for gossip, Sophie,’ Beatrice instructed. ‘I know they’re all Ash’s enemies and I want to hear what they say.’

I took my place below stairs again with trepidation. Only Nell was in any way my friend, and my dismay became acute when I realised that Will Baxter had taken a job here as a footman – Nell whispered to me that there wasn’t enough work at the mill for him now that autumn had set in. Occasionally our paths would cross and I was aware of him watching me, a silent reproach on my secret life, my secret ambitions.

Nevertheless Beatrice had been wise to ask me to listen for gossip, since most of the conversation below stairs revolved around the new Duke. The Duchess, they said, was in despair and existing on smelling salts, but all the maids were terribly excited about Lord Ashley’s arrival. He was cold-hearted, they whispered, and rich and ruthless.

‘When he was a child in France, his parents found him simply a nuisance – so they sent him off to an English boarding school as soon as he was six.’ This was another of Cook’s scraps of information, offered up when a few of us were gathered in the servants’ hall.
‘And one summer,’ she went on, ‘when little Lord Ashley had just turned eleven, no one at all came to collect him for the holidays. Imagine! It turned out his mother had run off somewhere with a Frenchman – and his father had gone painting in Switzerland.
Painting
.’ She made a sound of disgust. ‘Neither of them could be bothered in the slightest with their little lad. And so, for that one summer, he came here to stay –
here
.’

‘Here?’ gasped Betsey, peering around as if he might suddenly appear.

‘Yes,’ said Cook, thoroughly enjoying the rapt attention, ‘for the school holidays, though of course it was before I worked here – in fact I think Mrs Burdett and Mr Peters are the only ones who would remember it. The Duke and Duchess had as little as possible to do with him – Lord Charlwood too. After all, Lord Charlwood was ten years older than him, and far superior in rank.’

I could see Nell’s eyes filling – she was always easily moved to tears. ‘Oh, poor, poor Lord Ashley! Did he never see his parents again?’

‘Certainly not his mother, and his father didn’t want much to do with him either, I gather,’ said Cook briskly. ‘But the lad knew how to get on in life. After his schooldays were done he went on to Oxford – they say he’s terribly clever, terribly sharp-witted. Look at all the money he’s got – most of it made during the war, while other men were fighting; though he doesn’t throw it away on high living, oh no. Why, he doesn’t touch a drop of alcohol, they say. And he must have had
mistresses in plenty, but he’s mighty discreet about it, and he’s never been in any hurry to marry.’

‘I wouldn’t be either,’ chuckled Robert as he polished the glasses, ‘with all those rich lasses eager to bed me.’

After that I returned upstairs to find Beatrice pacing her room with ‘Alexander’s Ragtime Band’ playing on her gramophone. She wore a silk kimono patterned with pink flowers; she often said she found it too depressing for words to see black all around.

‘Well?’ she demanded. ‘What’s the servants’ gossip today?’

‘They’re saying he’s been here before,’ I told her.

She turned on me, suddenly guarded. ‘Are they?’

‘Yes. When he was a child, and his parents divorced.’ I couldn’t help thinking of the lonely child in this vast house where nobody wanted him.

But Beatrice waved her hand dismissively. ‘Ah,
that.
Now, what else did you learn?’

I searched my roaming thoughts. ‘They say, my lady, that Lord Ashley won’t touch any alcohol. Do you think it could be true?’ I’d taken note when Cook mentioned this, because it was so rare; most of the rich men seemed to live for their fine wines and their brandy.

Beatrice wanted me to brush her hair, and I did so while she sat at her dressing table and answered me. ‘I’ve heard the same. No wine, no spirits… Yes, that’s lovely, Sophie, carry on, do. Though when I met him in London he used to drink as much as anyone. Perhaps he became an alcoholic and had to give it up.’

My image of a portly imbiber changed to one of a thin, unhappy man.

‘Whatever,’ Beatrice went on, ‘we need to be ready to move quickly. It would have helped if he drank, but I’m still going to make very sure of him. My God, I’ve had enough of this deadly place to last me fifty years.’

‘But surely, now that Lord Ashley’s the Duke, he’ll make Belfield Hall his permanent home?’

‘You’re joking, little Sophie. With the Duchess here, and all her cats?’

‘Won’t she move to the Dower House if she hates him so much?’

‘She’d still be less than a mile away, breathing fire down his neck. Don’t forget she’s convinced herself he’s a changeling and not the true heir at all.’ She turned her head a little, touching one of her exquisite pearl earrings. ‘Sophie, I know – I’m
sure –
that a place like this, for a man like him, would be hell on earth, as it is for me. So you and I are going to make him our little offering, just as soon as possible.’

I’d stopped brushing her hair and I shivered, though she didn’t notice; she was too busy studying herself in the mirror.

‘As soon as possible,’ she repeated softly. ‘He might arrive any time. And it’s best if he doesn’t see you at all, Sophie – until we’re ready to act.’

Would she watch?
I remembered her lacquered case with that ivory wand, which I’d not seen since; I felt a storm of sudden longing, to be replaced by bitter disappointment that the man to whom she was in effect selling me was a man I’d already learned to despise.

‘Perhaps he won’t want me,’ I said.

‘My dear, there’s no chance of that. No chance at all.’ Beatrice rose to her feet, slipping her hand under my starched apron to gently stroke my breast through the black cotton of my maid’s dress. My blood raced and a sudden dark turmoil churned in my abdomen and below. ‘I have prepared you nicely,’ she breathed, fingering my breast more firmly, drawing out the nipple until I was biting my lip to restrain the low moan that rose in my throat. ‘He will not be disappointed with my present to him.’

Striving for calm I raised the question of pregnancy, remembering poor Nell: Lady Beatrice simply laughed and told me about the sheaths the gentlemen used, to ensure their seed did not spill inside the woman. ‘Or sometimes,’ she explained, ‘they withdraw just before their crisis. They might ask you to help them, to hold them, at the moment of their ejaculation; to stroke them.’

I remembered seeing the thickset American naked on her bed; the way she caressed his thick arousal, the way she cupped the heavy pouch at the root of his shaft.
Oh, God, let it be over soon
, I breathed to myself.
Let it be over, and then I will be free.

November came, and rain lashed the countryside until the trees in the great park were almost bare. And during a particularly heavy squall of rain, the new Duke arrived at last. I didn’t see him, but I heard about it because I was down in the kitchen fetching some bread and butter for Lady Beatrice when Betsey flew in. ‘He’s here! The
new Duke’s here, in his motorcar!’ she called out in excitement.

But then, faced with a barrage of questions, she had to admit that she hadn’t been able to see his face at all, because his coat collar was turned up against the rain and his hat was pulled down low. ‘I saw his chauffeur, though,’ she said. ‘And
he
looks a proper treat.’

‘Doesn’t matter anyway what the new Duke’s face is like,’ smirked Harriet. ‘If I get the chance, I’ll eat him for breakfast.’

Betsey snorted with laughter. ‘From what I’ve heard of His Grace, he’ll give as good as he gets. He’s a bad man, they say.’

‘God, Betsey, don’t.’ Harriet pointed at me. ‘You’ll embarrass our innocent little Sophie here.’

They chuckled and carried on whispering as I prepared Lady Beatrice’s afternoon tea. ‘He’s had his full share of beautiful women, apparently,’ Betsey went on. ‘Though now he’s Duke he’ll have to be a bit more careful, because there’ll be all sorts of marriage traps laid for him…’

The fine china plate rattled as I set it on my lady’s tray.

‘The new Duke is here,’ I said as I returned to Lady Beatrice’s sitting room.

‘Oh, Sophie.
Sophie
.’Beatrice, ignoring her tea, did a little twirl of happiness, then pulled me to her and kissed my cheek.

When can I go to London? When will I be free?
All my unspoken questions burned on my lips.