An Ideal Duchess (26 page)

             
“Wake up, Madame Duchess,” He braced his hands on either side of her head to watch her wake.

             
She looked bleary-eyed at him, still frowning. “Go away, Bron.”

             
“No,” He straightened and then yanked the bedclothes away from the bed, exposing the delicious curves of her body. “The hunt begins early, and I expect you out of bed immediately.”

             
“What hunt?” She raised herself on her elbows, her golden skeins of hair spilling down her back.

             
“Your first day with Hugo Hambly’s pack. I told you about this hunt last week.” He said irritably, when she flopped back onto the bed, an arm slung over her eyes. “Get up Amanda.”

             
“It’s much too early, Bron. I am utterly exhausted.”

             
“I don’t see what you have to be so bloody exhausted about. My mother shoulders the burden of running Bledington, a burden, I might add, you seem content to disdain.”

             
She lowered her arm to give him a withering look, and he frowned slightly, unnerved by the dark circles beneath her eyes. Before he could speak, the door behind him opened and a young housemaid entered the room with a deep curtsey. He gave his wife a measured look and tilted his riding crop over his shoulder.

             
“Here’s Maggie. I expect you up and dressed, and ready to hunt within the hour,”

*          *          *

              Bron paused on the main staircase to admire the Christmas tree before acknowledging the chaos that reigned below, as they readied to join the hunt with Hugo Hambly’s pack. His mother’s lady’s maid darted after his mother to adjust her riding habit, Beryl’s quiet governess held her charge’s hand, his mother’s spaniels yapped and tumbled over one another, their tails wagging in excitement, and Fowler huddled with three of the footmen, no doubt instructing them on the preparation of the hunt breakfast. Viola turned to greet him before his feet even hit the parquet floor of the Hall, and he smiled in admiration of her smartness. She always looked her best in a riding habit, the severe tailoring softening her pale, fine-boned features and brightening the ashen chestnut of her hair.

             
“The scent will be ripping today, don’t you think?” She took his arm. “I’ve never seen such a glorious morning for a hunt.”

             
“That’s precisely what I thought when I looked out of my bedroom window.”

             
“Bron!”

             
He removed himself from Viola’s grasp to catch the body of his eleven-year-old sister as she launched herself into his arms.

             
“I’m going to have my first hunt today, brother dear—Mama said I could.” Beryl leaned back and grinned.

             
“And how did you wrangle that, imp?” He set her back on the floor.

             
“I’m eleven! Mama said ladies were old enough to join a hunt when they turned eleven. You haven’t told me how I look in my habit.” Beryl raised a small dark eyebrow and twirled to show off her black, child-sized riding habit and derby.

             
“You don’t need to fish for compliments from your boring old brother,” He jutted his chin towards the majestic, corseted figure of Colonel Grainger. “Go test your wiles on the Colonel.”

             
“He’s old!” Beryl scrunched her nose. “Is Amanda coming too? It’ll be ever so much fun—it is the first time for the both of us!”             

“
              Yes,” He turned to frown up at the empty gallery, mentally daring her to remain in bed. “She shall be down in a trice.”

             
“I didn’t know the Duchess was going to hunt.”

             
He turned to face Viola. “I want her to get to know the country—and the county families. She hadn’t had much time to do so before she retired from society.”

             
“But so soon, Bron? She hasn’t recovered from her delicate situation…” Viola trailed off. “I’m speaking out of concern for her health. We wouldn’t want to place any undue strain on her.”

             
“She’s rested long enough,” He said shortly, and then looked across the hall for his mother.

             
His mother caught his eye and swatted her lady’s maid away, stepping gracefully across the hall in her old-fashioned and bustled, but still elegant riding habit.

             
“We’re just about to set off, Malvern. Where is your wife?”

             
“Here, Your Grace,”

             
Bron turned to look up at the sound of his wife’s voice. She leaned slightly over the gallery, and then when she noticed their full attention, made her way slowly down the staircase, her black riding habit fitting close enough to her skin that he feared—and lustfully hoped—she wore no underpinnings.

             
Her black top hat gleamed in the gaslight, which caught the shimmering veil over her face and tucked beneath her chin, and she placed a white-gloved hand on the balustrade, the slide of her fingers over the hard, dark wood sending a jolt directly to his groin. She drew near, and the curve of her lips, the intentness of her gaze, told him she knew precisely, exactly, the effect her appearance had on his body.

             
He jerked away from that superior, knowing smile and flicked his riding crop, lowering it angrily to his side as she came to stand beside him.

             
“I apologize for my tardiness,” Her voice was low and throaty, having deepened half an octave since giving birth. “Bron didn’t bother to wake me until half past seven.”

             
He drew in a sharp breath and looked at her then, but her blandly welcoming expression gave away no hint that she intended her explanation to sound so…sexual, so intimate and knowing.

             
“The horses are going to be impatient,” Viola said tightly, and turned on her heel to walk towards the door.

They had no choice but to follow her. In the courtyard, the grooms held the reins to the covert-hacks they were to use for the day, which they would ride the ten miles to meet the rest of the hunt at Hambly Court, where they would mount the hunters on which they would ride to hounds.

              “Aren’t you excited, Amanda?” Beryl moved to take his wife’s hand, her other hand clutching her child-sized riding crop.

             
“I think so,” She darted a bright glance at him. “I’ve never hunted before, but your brother has attempted to explain the rules.”

             
Bron shrugged a little at her, and then approached the sleek bay field hunter a groom led in his direction. He gathered the reins, placed his left foot in the stirrup, taking care of the spurs on his boots, and his hand on the pommel, and then stepped up, swinging his right leg over the horse’s back and settling onto his saddle. The horse sidled beneath his weight, and he balanced neatly, holding the reins confidently in his hands to wait for the horse’s confidence.

             
“That’s a boy. Good Vulcan,” He stroked the bay’s neck and then nodded his thanks to the groom, who then stepped back.

             
He nodded with approval as he watched Amanda mount her own horse, a trim, soft-mouthed silver Irish hunter, whose graceful lines matched his wife’s tightly-clothed figure. His mother had no trouble mounting her own black hunter, her carriage so erect, she appeared the Amazon he remembered as a child.

             
Beryl was given a nice Welsh cob, perfect for a child of ten who had ridden since she was a small girl, yet not too unmanageable for a first-time huntress. He turned when Viola rode up beside him, having chosen the most high-strung hack in their stables, though she controlled the Irish hunter with expert hands. He gave Amanda one last glance, and then grinned at Viola, flicking the rump of his horse to start off.

*          *          *

              Whoever invented fox hunting ought to be shot, Amanda thought wearily, only just remaining in her sidesaddle as she heard yet another volley of short and long blasts of the hunting horn echoing across the hunting field. Every muscle and every bone in her body ached, she was cold and hungry, and she was bewildered by the masses of scarlet-clad huntsmen and neatly clad huntswomen pounding down country lanes, across fields, leaping over fences, and generally appearing everywhere like a great muddle of confusion.               Adding to this confusion were the barking hounds yapping at their heels, darting this way and that way when they scented the fox. Every tip Bron had given her seemed to slide out of her brain and shatter beneath her hunter’s hooves, as she gamely kept apace with Sir Hugo Hambly’s pack.

             
She looked about for Bron, having lost him during the first hour of the meet, wondering whether he would be terribly cross if she turned back to Hambly Court to await the end of the hunt. The only familiar face nearest her was that of her mother-in-law, who, to her shame, remained fresh and alert, her advanced age imperceptible in her bustled riding habit atop a brawny horse.

             
A few murmurs of gossip she caught expressed awe over the Dowager Duchess’s prowess; apparently, she had been the darling of the Midlands hunting elite in her youth, and her feats were allegedly on par with those of the late Empress of Austria-Hungary. Judging by the doting huntsmen that stuck to her mother-in-law’s side through every covert and check, Amanda assumed this could possibly be true. She was definitely not going to ask the Dowager for permission to leave the hunt, so she held on to her reins, and pressed on after the hunters.

             
To her immense relief, as she drew up behind the group of hunters, the expressions of appreciation led her to assume the fox had been caught by the hounds. She ambled closer, craning her neck and peering around the group to find Bron, the men and women parting easily to allow her to make her way to the front of the pack. What met her eyes when she made her want to vomit. She swung terrified eyes to the pack, and the first person her eyes caught was Viola, who appeared cruelly triumphant. Viola’s expression changed instantly when their gaze held, and she smiled, turning to the person beside her. It was Bron, who turned to look at her when Viola whispered something in his ear.

             
“I want to be blooded!” Beryl piped, and the idling huntsmen and huntswomen laughed indulgently when she guided her smaller horse to the front.

             
“The Duchess of Malvern, as well,” Viola cried.

             
Amanda shrank away, her horse growing frisky in reaction to her sudden burst of anxiety. Bron separated from Viola, and she shook her head, No Bron, No. He frowned at her, and reached for her reins when his horse sidled beside hers.

             
“It’s tradition.” He said tersely. “Besides, it’s only a little bit of blood.”

             
“Bron, no,” She pleaded. “I’m going to be ill.”

             
He ignored her, his expression tightening when a tall, portly gentleman she assumed to be the Master of the Fox Hunt, Sir Hugo Hambly, dismounted and reached into the pile of hounds sniffing and digging beside the fox’s remains. She heaved, her stomach rolling ominously, when Sir Hugo held up the bloody tail of the fox, but Bron’s grip on her bridle was strong and unyielding, keeping her from fleeing as the Sir Hugo first smeared blood on Beryl’s excited face.

             
Sir Hugo then turned to her, the bloody fox’s tail lying limply in his hand, his fingers covered in blood. They drew nearer and nearer, her eyes crossed as she focused so intensely on the proximity of his fingers, and at the first cold, disgusting, sticky sensation of blood touched her face, she bent over and vomited all over his scarlet coat.

              Amanda lifted the warm, comforting body of her elder twin from his brass swing bassinette, ignoring the disapproving clucks of Nanny Tester, cradling him in her arms and going to sit in the rocking chair, her nose pressed to the wispy, downy hair on his head. He squirmed impatiently, his tiny fists flailing as he opened his mouth and yawned. He blinked up at her, and she could almost sense his infant questioning of her identity.

             
They had been taken from her as soon as she had given birth, the Dowager having employed a wet nurse, a nanny, and two nursery maids before Amanda could protest and say she wanted to nurse her own children. The thought that she had little place in their life was depressing, intensifying the ever-present miasma of weariness and helplessness that threatened to overtake her when she stopped long enough to allow her thoughts to catch up to her.

             
She rocked and brooded, feeling infinitesimally lonelier than when Bron had remained away from her for so long. The thought of Bron darkened her mood considerably; she was hurt and angry that he would allow such a barbaric thing to happen to her, to have the nerve to get angry with her for vomiting on Sir Hugo’s stupid hunting jacket and then sliding off her horse into a dead faint. She had come to in his arms as he carried her to one of the motorcars a member of the pack had driven to Hambly Court in lieu of a covert hack, his mouth a thin white line, his expression broking no compassion or clemency for how she felt being blooded against her will.