An Ideal Duchess (41 page)

             
Ursula clamped her lips shut and turned away. Amanda followed her mother-in-law’s gaze across the rolling hills of Gloucestershire, across which ran the distant figures of the local pack, temporarily lead by Lord Tewksbury after the premature death of Sir Hugo Hambly in a riding accident. She caught the surprising look of longing that briefly crossed her mother-in-law’s face.

             
She assumed it was Ursula’s desire to hunt until she looked again and realized the focus of Ursula’s attention was on Lord Tewksbury. Scraps of innuendo floated back to her brain, followed by the look of significance Lady Dulcie gave to Beryl. She drew a sharp breath and turned to her young sister-in-law, who miraculously seemed to have skipped the awkwardness of youth and possessed an elegant, coltish grace at fifteen.

             
That old hypocrite
, she thought mirthlessly. Castigating her for her folly and seated amongst a society of women devoted to moral purity. Amanda opened the fist she had clenched and realized she still held Lady Dulcie’s card. Its address stood starkly against the white pasteboard and for a brief moment she contemplated ripping it to pieces and tossing it from the carriage. She checked that impulse, and for some incomprehensible reason, she decided to keep it, and tucked it into her purse.

Salisbury Plain, July 1911

             
Before Bron had gone up in the aeroplane, Archibald Low, the fantastically brilliant engineer he’d met in the City whilst visiting The Low Accessories and Ignition Company, blithely informed him that flying was like riding a bicycle. As he sped swiftly through the air some hundreds of feet over Salisbury Plain’s undulating chalk hills, he was inclined to believe Low was mad—brilliant, but bloody mad.

             
He sat in the horizontal pilot’s seat of the Bristol Boxkite, feet fixed to the footrest, one hand on the strut and the other on the lever, with the large Gnome engine droning at his back and the wind rushing, exhilaratingly, over his goggled-face. This was his third flight, and first after earning his certificate from the Royal Aero Club, which was a bittersweet accomplishment in light of his quitting his aeroplane experiments just before the Wright Brothers successfully achieved flight.

             
In the interim, other more dedicated—and less encumbered—aeronauts built upon the earlier plans of a decade ago until aeroplane flying had superseded ballooning. Even the British Army and Navy were intrigued by the possibilities of aircraft, possibly to add to the modernization of England’s defense system in the wake of Germany’s irritating desire to compete with Britannia. Bron wanted in on all angles, and as he soared over Stonehenge, his world felt right,
he
felt right, and possibly more assured than he had in years.              

             
The golden-yellow sun against the pink-and-cream clouds and the azure color of the sky spread across the horizon suddenly reminded him of Amanda, and his stomach clenched with anxiety at the impenetrable coolness between them. He shifted his feet on the footrest to keep the aeroplane steady across the swift rush of air bumping beneath the wings, wishing mastery of flight were just as easy as mastery of one’s marriage. What should be just as easily fixed as repeating and fine-tuning experiments revealed itself to be completely uncontrollable and unable to fit within the precise, orderliness of the scientific method.

             
Amanda was alchemy: esoteric, unpredictable, and explosive, and divinely unsettling to his emotions, which terrified him more than the thought of being dashed to pieces in a crash.

             
It was with great concentration that he looped the Boxkite back to return to the British and Colonial Aeroplane Company hangars at Larkhill, landing skillfully and gently, and he was almost reluctant to step out of the pilot’s seat when the aeroplane mechanics and flight instructors approached his plane. He chatted briefly with them before taking his leave.

             
“How was it, Your Grace?” Wilcox had waited at the motorcar during Bron’s flight.

             
“Bloody ripping,” Bron said contentedly, pushing his goggles from his face and stuffing them into the deep pockets of his greatcoat.

             
A slightly wistful expression crossed Wilcox’s usually immobile face and Bron felt a pang of guilt over forgetting why he enjoyed having him in his employ. He climbed into the enclosed section of the Hooper limousine and Jacky started the motor. Bron stared out of the window for a moment, idly watching the scenery rush across his window, and then leaned forward to open the glass shielding him from the open chauffeur’s seat.

             
“Say, Wilcox, would you like aeroplane lessons?”

             
The chauffeur turned briefly to look at him, his eyes wide with surprise. “Yes, of course, Your Grace. If you don’t mind.”

             
“No, I don’t,” Bron crossed his arms over the window ledge. “Just say when and I shall let you off—and pay for them of course.”

             
“If you don’t mind, Your Grace, I’d like to pay the fees from my own pocket.”

             
Bron lifted a brow in surprise. Well, he supposed, a man does have his pride. He nodded. “It’s a standing offer, so do let me know when you wish to commence your lessons.”

             
“Thank you, Your Grace,” Wilcox lifted his cap before quickly replacing both hands on the steering wheel.

             
Bron closed the window and leaned back in his seat, rummaging in his coat pocket for his watch. His elation ebbed a bit as the time reminded him of the event which was to meet him upon his return to Bledington: the seventh birthday of his heirs. Being a father still felt so new, and each time he looked at them, he felt the burden of needing to mold them into proper sons of Bledington as his father had done, and his father’s father before him.
Much good it did him
, he snorted to himself.
Or of Alex
. Nevertheless, this was his only frame of reference, and he struggled with his alienation from them even as he feared that if they grew close, they would reject him.

             
He shut his eyes tightly to block Amanda’s image from his eyes. They were strangers; all of whatever kernel of understanding they possessed during their earliest times together having withered into polite indifference. It was for the best, he told himself; he preferred to rid Bledington of messy emotions and disruptions that caused a hitch in the house’s well-oiled cogs.

             
He shifted his booted feet restlessly, stricken by a gnawing emptiness that his return to flight had unsettled. He almost felt as he did ten years before, aged twenty, free to plunge headfirst into the what-ifs of aeronautics because his brother and father were tied the responsibilities of Bledington. In the air he could pretend, he realized, pretend that the clock could turn back before so much pain and devastation had erupted in his life.

             
In flight, he could hold the kernel that had withered so long ago.

*          *         *

              Amanda had long since ceased dressing to please or attract her husband, and so, as Maggie helped her into her ultra-fashionable plum chiffon and black satin Callot Sœurs evening dress with a plunging neckline and back, she decided to dress for the simple pleasure of being the best-dressed woman in the room. She sat at her dressing table to screw her golden earrings into her pierced earlobes as Maggie dressed her hair full and low and wrapped a beaded bandeau around her forehead.

             
She added a few gold bracelets to her left wrist and bent her head so Maggie could fasten the clasp of her golden necklace around her nape. She lifted her eyes, caught Maggie’s reflection in the mirror, and smiled.

             
“I know you’ve purchased something special for the boys, Maggie,” She teased, turning in her seat as Maggie moved away to tidy up.

             
“Just trifles, Your Grace,” Maggie said primly, folding a dressing gown over her arm. “Things any boy would enjoy.”

             
“What is it? You know how I hate surprises.”

             
Maggie shook her head. “And spoil their fun, Your Grace? That’s the best part of a surprise, the waiting and anticipating what’s inside.”

             
“I understand the fun of anticipation,” She rose from the dressing table, checking behind her to make certain she had not stepped on the delicate chiffon train. “It is the subterfuge that accompanies the surprise—the concealment and the deception.”

             
“Tisn’t like you to be so suspicious, Your Grace,”

             
Amanda paused in the act of pulling on her elbow length gloves and glanced briefly at Maggie. She lowered her eyes to her arm where she smoothed the wrinkles from the glove as she tugged them over her elbows. “You haven’t heard anything from your brother, have you? The chauffeur, I mean.”

             
“No, Your Grace,” Maggie’s voice was low and quiet. “Me and Jacky don’t get a chance to speak much these days, what with him out with His Grace all the time.”

             
She raised her eyes, but Maggie was at the wardrobe, folding and hanging up her discarded clothes. She had the ugliest suspicions, but dared not to say them aloud for fear of causing them to materialize. She and Malvern weren’t on the best of terms, but surprisingly—and she had no idea why she was mad enough to allow it—he continued to visit her bedroom intermittently, allowing her the ephemeral illusion that she could hold him close and have him for just a few hours. But she had no illusions about his ability—and desire—to find someone more amenable to his personality. At first she thought he had rekindled whatever he had with Viola, but his cousin appeared as openly unhappy and bewildered as her own subterfuge concerning her emotions (touché, she thought to herself).

             
So who was it?

             
She mentally cataloged all of the possible women with whom Malvern might have an affair, but came up short, none of the personalities fitting with Malvern’s predilections or timing of his disappearances. Her ear caught the faint hum of the dinner gong, and she stepped from her bedroom just as Malvern stepped from his own adjoining chamber.

             
He appeared wind-burnt, his skin a ruddy pink around his forehead and cheekbones, shaping around his eyes like a pair of field glasses. There was that distracted, secretive, exhilarated look again that made her stomach claw at her belly with gnawing curiosity and fear. The hand he reached out to her was warm and callused, and his grip was easy and assured, as though he had little, if anything, to hide. But he was concealing something from her, and she was too cowardly to ask outright.

             
The Ascot tied neatly at his throat matched the silvery glow of his eyes in the dimly lit hall, eyes that raked over her as though he were running two pieces of ice across her heated skin. She averted her eyes first, and looked towards the hall just beyond his room as hum of the gong sounded louder.

             
“There’s Fowler signaling supper,” She said lightly.

             
“The boys are downstairs?” He asked as he tucked her hand into the crook of his arm.

             
“Yes, the nanny brought them down an hour ago for their birthday supper, and we shall all have cake,” She glanced at him. “It’s all rather gloomy, don’t you think? They should have birthday parties, not just cake in a solemn dining room before being sent up to bed.”

             
“We’ve never had birthday parties at Bledington, so why begin now?”

             
Amanda forced him to stop. “You mean you’ve never had a birthday party?”

             
“I’m not pining for a lost childhood, if that is what you are attempting to convey,” He looked irritated. “Let us go down before it grows too late.”

             
“I-I’m merely shocked, Malvern. It is much too absurd, even by Bledington standards,” She laughed shortly. “No birthday parties for children.”

             
“They’re much too old to be coddled, Duchess, particularly once they are sent away to school,”

             
“Surely not right now, Malvern, they are only seven!”

             
“I assumed you knew they were to begin their first term at Summer Fields this Michaelmas,”

             
“Malvern!” She gasped. “You cannot be so cruel to send them away so young.”

             
“I was the same age when I entered school,” He frowned at her bewilderment. “Have you so little concern for their future, you would deny them their proper education?”

             
“That is unfair, Malvern,” She gave him an appalled look. “You didn’t even give me a say in this.”