Love Match (6 page)

He didn’t
look
like a gentleman with a love of dissipation. Not that Elizabeth would know. Yes, and why should she be surprised that her bridegroom had taken his amorous inclinations elsewhere? Maman had said that he would likely do so, after the honeymoon. Maman had failed to explain how, after
he
had taken said inclinations elsewhere, Elizabeth was expected to act. She was still pondering that matter as she reached the bottom of the stair.

The duke smiled at her. “You are very fine today,” he said, and offered her his arm. Elizabeth remembered the feeling of his hands in her hair, on her shoulders, against her cheek. How warm she’d felt, how breathless. How confused. She placed her fingers on her husband’s arm, and squelched her impulse to box his ears.

The morn was bright and sunny, the air a little chill. Dew sparkled on the grass. The huge sweep of the Palladian facade glowed golden in the bright tight.

At the front door waited an elegant phaeton. The carriage was painted, varnished, and polished to a high degree of perfection; the horses sleek and black. Justin helped his bride into the high seat, in the process enjoying a glimpse of a well-formed ankle and silver boots; sprang up beside her, and took the reins from his groom. There was no coachman in the vehicle, no place for a tiger to ride behind. “I thought you might like to see Bath by daylight. You will tell me if you begin to feel travel-sick.”

His coat was not light-colored today, Elizabeth noted, but dark. The duke was a cautious man. Or his valet was. “I am fine, Your Grace.”

“I told you to call me St. Clair.” Justin flicked the reins.

Bath was a town of hills and trees and fish ponds, bowling greens and clipped yew hedges; terraces and buildings and flights of steps enlivened with beautiful stone and bud vases and garden sculptures. Lord Charnwood entertained his bride with stories of the city as the phaeton clattered over the cobblestones. Bath had been established as a town soon after the Roman invasion of Britain in A.D. 43. It soon gained fame for its baths and the adjoining temples. For over two thousand years the main attraction of the place remained the same, sulphurous waters that sprang out of the earth ready for use.

Modest Brock Street opened into the Royal Circus, a perfectly circular space divided into three segments of uniform houses, their separate identities indicated by doors at intervals, for all the world, Elizabeth thought, like an English version of the Roman Coliseum twisted inside out. From there they progressed past the Assembly Rooms, the Baths, the Abbey—an Abbey in name only since the dissolution of the monasteries in 1530—where in pinnacled Gothic grandeur, angels perched on a ladder to the heavens. Elizabeth was fascinated to observe that one of the angels was carved upside down. Then on to Pulteney Bridge, a three-arched structure with a Venetian window in the center and domed pavilions at each end, lined both sides with shops. By the time the duke had finished explaining that in the 1600’s the waters at Bath were so revered for fecundity that after one visit ladies often proved with child, even in the absence of their husbands, the streets were filling up with smart barouches and gentlemen on splendid horses and elegantly garbed women out for a stroll.

Hoofs and wheels clattered, newsboys shouted, the muffin man’s bell clanged. The duchess expressed a desire for a muffin. The duke fetched her one himself.

Justin brushed crumbs off his coat. Elizabeth was happily devouring her treat, temporarily oblivious to both propriety and mess. Rather like Birdie with a biscuit. Had his duchess given her breakfast to the bird? Ah well, easy enough to have the carriage cleaned out. More to the point, what was he to say to her? Something, certainly, for he had delayed long enough.

“I wanted to speak to you without interruption, Elizabeth. Which is deuced difficult in the house.” At last he had her attention; she abandoned her muffin to observe him warily. “I regret Augusta has chosen to disturb our honeymoon. The devil is in it that she must decide to go off on one of her starts right now. I’m sorry to confess I cannot trust her. There is nothing for it but that she must be with us for a time.”

The devil was in it that St. Clair would
want
his cousin with them. Because the duke was of a disposition that if he did not want Augusta with them, she would not be there. Naturally he expected his wife to accept his decision. Elizabeth recalled his hands in her hair, and immediately lost her appetite. “Why is that, Your Grace?”

Did his duchess question his decision? Justin must have misunderstood. At least she had spoken to him, which she hadn’t done for some time. “You know Augusta is my cousin. What you may not also know is that her brother gambled away the family fortune, and her dowry with it. Afterward he fled the country, throwing her to the wolves. She despises him for it, nearly as much as she despises me.”

No wonder Lady Augusta was as sour as a lemon. Elizabeth forgot for a moment that she was annoyed. “I can understand why she is angry with her brother. But why should she be angry with you?”

Justin shrugged. “Augusta is dependent on me, and that stings her pride. I have restored her dowry, and make her an allowance, the majority of which she loses at the tables. She would gamble away even more, did I not keep a sharp eye on her. Unfortunately, Augusta shares her brother’s addiction to play.”

First a Cyprian, now a gambler. Then there was the parrot. St. Clair’s household grew more and more strange.

“Augusta thinks she is of an age to do as she pleases,” Justin continued. “I think she is not. Therefore, we are forever at odds. I knew the moment my attention was directed elsewhere she would be at the gaming tables. I did
not
anticipate she would follow us to Bath.” He glanced at Elizabeth. “And I am sorry that she did. You must not let her get to dagger-drawing. Augusta will go to any lengths for the sole purpose of creating a scene. Fortunately, Nigel will soon return and divert some of her spleen.”

Perhaps Elizabeth would box Lady Augusta’s ears rather than the duke’s. “Your cousin and Mr. Slyte do not like one another?” she asked.

Justin guided the horses down a side street to avoid a traffic snarl involving a sedan chair and a produce cart. “We all grew up together. Augusta was more amiable in those days. Nigel would have wed her once. She’d have none of it because he is a younger son.”

Lady Augusta was not only a crosspatch and a gambler, but a pigwidgeon as well. Elizabeth imagined it might be amusing to be wed to Mr. Slyte. A pity
he
hadn’t married her for her fortune. Although she suspected Mr. Slyte would not be half as handsome as the duke in a dressing robe. Hastily she asked, “And now?”

“And now Nigel takes delight in baiting Gus, for she is even poorer than he—Nigel has expectations from his aunt. You have not married into an easy family. I trust in your great good sense to keep above the fray.”

Elizabeth trusted her great good sense to keep her from saying something she would later regret. St. Clair had told her everything but what she longed to know. Who on earth was Magda? Elizabeth would allow herself to be nibbled to death by rabbits before she mentioned the woman’s name.

“You will be curious about Magdalena,” added the duke, with unnerving prescience. “Whom you met last night.”

Elizabeth hadn’t met Magda, precisely; she’d been hustled off to bed. She refrained from pointing this out. It would be interesting to hear how St. Clair meant to explain the introduction of his inamorata into his household. Elizabeth was intensely aware of the duke’s muscular body, so close to her on the carriage seat.

Justin was intensely aware of his bride’s silence. If she were older, wiser in the ways of the world— But if she were older, wiser, she would have been introduced to the ways of the world by someone other than himself.

Unsettling reflection. He cleared his throat. “Magda is an old friend who has lived most recently in France. Her husband was beheaded. She fled with little more than the clothes on her back.”

Elizabeth remembered the lady’s scanty garb. “In that case she must have been quite cold.”

Fortunately the city bells rang out, obscuring that unwifely—or very wifely—comment. Justin glanced at her. “What did you say?”

Elizabeth was not so imprudent as to repeat herself. “A desperate journey in truth, Your Grace. And so she fled to you.”

Unless Justin was mistaken, and he didn’t think he was, his companion’s voice held an acerbic note. He supposed it was not surprising that she might be miffed. “I realize it makes an awkward situation. However, I have a certain obligation which leaves me little choice.”

Obligation, was it? Inclination, more like. If anyone had countless choices, it was the duke. Apparently the large majority of the misses in the marriage mart, not to mention Maman, had been holding a philanderer in high esteem. Lord Charnwood
did
intend that his light o’ love take up residence under the same roof as his wife.

This, after all the lectures she had been given by Maman about what was proper and what was not. Up until this moment, Elizabeth had not believed Charnwood could be so wicked. She smoothed her gloves.

His bride remained silent. Had Justin failed to make his position clear? “Magdalena and I have a history. I was fond of her once. For me to fail and do my duty now would be unconscionable. I trust that you will try and understand.”

Not a current ladybird, but a previous one? Who would doubtless waste no time in worming her way back into the duke’s embrace? If she had not already done so the previous evening, while the duchess slept alone. “I meant to please you in all things,” Elizabeth retorted. “But I find I do
not
wish to humor you in this, Your Grace.”

The spirited blacks that drew the phaeton might have turned their heads and spoke to him, so astonished was the duke, “
Humor
me?” he echoed.

To the devil with duchessly decorum. Elizabeth lifted her chin and met her husband glare for glare. “You will not like such plain-speaking, but I know no other way to phrase it. I do not care to share my honeymoon with your blasted ladybird, St. Clair.”

As result of this outburst, a number of notions chased themselves through the duke’s startled brain. Surely the chit didn’t mean to defy his authority? He must have misunderstood. Yes, and didn’t her defiance lend an attractive animation to her features, and color to her cheeks? She was trembling with indignation, her bosom quivering with outrage.

And a nice bosom it was. No fit moment, this, to envision his bride aquiver with an altogether different emotion. Nor could he release the reins to shake her. “You are quick to judge me, madam,” Justin said icily.

So she had been. Elizabeth didn’t regret her outburst in the least.

It would hardly do to say so. She watched the passing scenery. “I beg your pardon. For me to question your judgment was a shocking thing. It is not my place to quibble about whomever you decide to include in your household.”

Her tone was scathing. Though he had already discovered that his bride had a temper, the duke was not best pleased to find that temper directed at himself. Her stubborn chin was outthrust, her lips clamped tight together, her hands clenched in her lap. Justin had a horrid suspicion that at any moment she might burst into tears. He pulled his horses to a stop.

“I am not the greatest beast in nature,” he said, a little less stiffly. “You might trust me a little, you know.”

Trust St. Clair? Elizabeth didn’t trust herself to speak. What the duke mistook for tears was a strong desire to kick him in the shins.

“As for Magdalena, you are under a misapprehension,” he continued. “She is not my ladybird, nor has she ever been.”

Not?
Go shoe a goose. “Forgive my presumption in asking, but what
is
she, then?”

Definitely she had a temper. Those big brown eyes spit fire. “Your mama didn’t tell you, I credit,” Justin said dryly. “No doubt it didn’t signify to her because I am a duke. At any rate, it happened a long time ago. Magda and I were both young.”

Elizabeth’s patience, such as it was, was wearing thin. “Maman didn’t tell me
what?”

Her eyes sparkled, her bosom heaved. Justin would have preferred to have this conversation somewhere more secluded than an open carriage, in the middle of Bath. “That Magdalena is my first wife, from whom I have long been divorced.”

Divorced?
Elizabeth gaped. “But how—”

“I traded her for a horse!” snapped Justin. “In the usual way, of course. I had not yet come into the title, and my father paid well to have the business quickly done with. Now let us have no more of this nonsense, if you please!”

Chapter 7

“As a woman grows older, she should assume a graver habit and less vivacious air.”
—Lady Ratchett

The Duke of Charnwood’s previous wife, who had
not
been traded for a horse, or divorced on grounds of temporary insanity on the part of her spouse (though he had considered it), surveyed the interior of the Pump Room. This was a splendid structure with great columns, and curved recesses at each end, thronged already with visitors come to drink the first glass of water of the day. In their gallery, musicians played. Among the crowd were professional men and philosophers and rakes; rheumatics, gout sufferers, people afflicted with unsightly skin diseases; snobs, social climbers, and upstarts of fortune; ladies, both respectable and not; invalids in wheeled chairs.

Accompanying Madame de Chavannes was Lady Augusta, who grimaced as she sipped the nasty-tasting beverage. “I don’t know,” she muttered, “why you were so determined to come here.”

Magda sampled her own water. “Z
ut!
It does taste very bad. That London doctor must have  made good his threat to cast toads into the spring.” Augusta choked. Magda grinned.

“You did that on purpose!” accused Augusta. “I don’t see how anyone can stomach three glasses of this stuff a day. And I shan’t have a bath, no matter what you say.”

Magda idly touched her cameo. “Never? You will eventually reek.”