My Dear Duchess (16 page)

The Duke had never been so drunk in his life, or so angry. He had planned to revenge himself on Frederica for her cold silences and snubs by appearing at the play with that particular bit of muslin on his arm. But somehow it had all rebounded when he caught a glimpse of her horrified face across the theater. She should not expect him to behave like a monk. The small voice of conscience telling him that she had every right to expect him to keep his amours from the public eye made him even angrier.

He pushed open the library door and went in. His wife was lying asleep in a chair by the fire. Her small face under the blazing and flashing tiara looked very young and vulnerable.

He stirred up the fire and threw on a shovelful of coal. The noise awoke her and she looked up into her husband’s face. He looked very handsome and debonair and she smiled at him sleepily.

Then her eyes focussed on a stain of rouge on his cravat and her face hardened and she sat bolt upright.

“Will you kindly explain your behavior this evening, sir?” she demanded imperiously. “And am I to expect such behavior in the future? Are you going to flaunt your lightskirts in front of me?”

“Yes,” he said casually, tapping his fingers lightly on the bookshelves. “So long as you are content to behave like a nun, do not expect me to behave like a monk.”

Frederica was shaking with anger. “It is as well I found out about your amours in time, my lord Duke. Only think what might have happened to me had I decided to share your bed.”

“What are you talking about? What could happen to you?”

“The pox,” said Frederica, clearly and distinctly.

Shock sobered him momentarily. “I will have you know, madame, that the ladies I consort with are diamonds of the first water and, above all, clean. You have furthermore no right to know about such things.”

“Hah!” sneered his wife. “It is just as well I do.”

“I have no doubt that you have been well taught by your gallants,” he said. “It is as well you do not share my bed, madame. I have no taste for Haymarket ware.”

“Nonsense!” replied his little wife, looking him up and down. “That is the only type of female you know how to deal with… that is with the exception of dear Clarissa whom, of course, you positively worship.”

“Clarissa is a common little slut and so are you,” remarked her husband in a conversational voice.

The hard and bitter words were building up enormous barriers between them but both were too proud to try to conciliate the other.

The Duke weaved slightly and clutched at the mantle for support.

“You’re bosky,” said Frederica bitterly. What had happened to the gallant and charming Captain Wright? He stood glaring down at her, the red lights from the fire glinting in his eyes.

“On the other hand,” he said, “I may as well have a sample of what you have been giving away so freely.”

He pulled her to him and kissed her hard on the mouth. He smelled of wine and cheap perfume.

Frederica tore herself free and wiped the back of her hand across her mouth. “I am leaving you, sir. You are too drunk to know what you are doing.”

She turned towards the door and he lunged after her. She twisted, eluding his grasp, and then ran as hard as she could up the stairs. Avoiding her rooms, she ran to the top of the house and hid in one of the attics. She heard him roaring her name, she heard doors being thrown open, and then there was blessed silence.

She found she was trembling with shock. She rose on shaky legs and made her way down to her bedroom. From the gossip at the tea tables, she had gathered that a drunken husband was a common occurence in this hard-drinking society. Women of her acquaintance seemed to cope with an elegant shrug. Men, it seemed, were not men unless they crawled home in the small hours on their hands and knees. Why, even the Prince Regent was reported to have spent his wedding night with his head in the fire-irons—although the gossips said that his mistress, Mrs. Fitzherbert, had put a sedative in his wine.

But Frederica had considered her husband to be far above such behavior. She was bitterly disappointed in him and considered herself well out of the agonies of love. Tomorrow, her coldness would not be affected. It would be a part of her soul.

With a cold courage, she started the next day, confident that she would be spared her husband’s presence at the breakfast table. But to her horror, he was already there and obviously waiting for her before he went out. Beau Brummell, that arbiter of fashion, had damned the masculine wear of knee breeches and swallow-tail coats for day wear since they were affected by Bonaparte and his rabble of commoners. The Duke was all the crack in a silk frogged coat lined with beaver and biscuit colored pantaloons. He was wearing his snowy cravat in the style known as Trone d’Amour—well starched and with one single horizontal dent in the middle.

He had already breakfasted and was obviously prepared to go out.

He knew that his little wife did not speak French so it was impossible to carry on conversation in front of the servants. He waited until her plate was filled and then with a wave of his hand, dismissed them.

His wife’s long heavy hair had been piled on top of her head in a style that was entirely her own. Her slim, girlish figure was able to carry the current mode of gown—which was padded in the front to make the wearer look about six months pregnant—without appearing ridiculous.

Frederica choked some toast down her dry throat and desperately wished he would go away.

She reached forward for another piece of toast and his long thin fingers closed over her wrist. “Please look at me, Frederica,” he said in a soft voice.

“I am truly sorry for my behavior last night. I got in with a pretty hard-drinking set at Watier’s yesterday and won quite a sum of money and the tickets to the Haymarket Theater. Sackett was drunker than I and he began to bait me about my wife’s gallants. He was hoping to hurt me and to start a quarrel with Chuffy. I told him that I was fully aware that Mr. Pellington-James was a friend of my wife’s and that I was grateful to him for squiring her when I was gone from town. He began to imply that I was a cuckold and I challenged him to a duel. Don’t worry,” he added as Frederica gave a gasp of horror. “He did not accept the challenge. I am accounted a pretty fair shot.

“I decided to walk from Watier’s to the Haymarket and the fresh air, combined with the wine I had drunk, addled my wits and I began to become furious with you, my dear. I felt that it was all your fault that I had been put in this humiliating position. I wanted to humiliate you in return. I called on a certain ladybird I used to know and begged her to accompany me. I only succeeded in humiliating myself further. I took her home and then repaired to Brook’s where I made myself further obnoxious by insulting all the Whigs. The Beau took me aside and told me there was absolutely no
veritas
in
vino
and told me to go home. I challenged
him
to a duel to which he replied, ‘Good God, certainly not!’ My humiliation was complete.

“I am extremely sorry, my dear. Please forgive me.”

Black eyes met grey ones for a long moment while poor Frederica fell more in love with her husband than ever.

“Of course I forgive you,” she remarked truthfully. “But I would still like to know, sir, how you came to be reeking of cheap perfume and how you got that rouge on your cravat?”

He had the grace to blush. “My… er… lady friend tried to detain me when I took her home.”

“You are a terrible man,” said Frederica lightly.

“It was all caused by Sackett’s jealousy of Chuffy. That Dandy set spit and fight like cats over who has the best waistcoat. By the way, did you hear what happened to poor Chuffy?”

She shook her head and so he told her the fate of the swansdown waistcoat and made her laugh.

“There!” he cried. “That is more like my Frederica.”

He smiled into her eyes, those large black eyes with the little gold flecks, which held his own with such an expression of… of what? “What are your plans for the day?”

Frederica hesitated a little. “I had planned to drive with Mr. Pellington-James but if you would rather not…”

“No, no,” he laughed. “Chuffy is the best of men. You must forgive my jealousy of last night…”

Frederica looked at him with a gleam of hope. Jealousy?

“You know what men are like,” he teased, “when it comes to their wives. Like dogs with bones.”

“Oh!” said Frederica in a small voice.

“We shall be going to the Queen’s House together this evening?” When she nodded her assent, he suddenly bent and kissed her lightly on the cheek and then left.

When Chuffy arrived she was still holding her hand to her cheek and staring in a bemused way at the door.

Frederica hurriedly made her apologies and ran to change. When she returned, she was dressed in a blue velvet carriage dress with a fur lined blue velvet coat and an enormous swansdown muff.

The only thing warm about Chuffy’s dress was his cravat which was tied in the Mail Coach, a style, according to the publisher Stockdale, in his pamphlet “Neckclothitania, or Tietania: Being an Essay on Starches,” worn by “all stage-coachmen, guards, the
swells
of the
fancy
and Ruffians.” It consisted of a large Cashmere shawl with one end brought over the knot, spread out and tucked into the waist. It was mostly worn with the many-capered livery of the Four-in-Hand Club but Chuffy had elected to sport it with a jacket of the thinnest silk, skin-tight leather breeches and boots with white tops.

London was grey and black and bitter cold. Chuffy decided that they should take a short drive round St. James’s Park and then return. He accordingly edged his chariot in that direction through the press of traffic. London seemed to be bursting at the seams and the hotels were crowded. Stephen’s in Bond Street was full of the army, Ibbetson’s crammed with undergraduates and clergy, the Clarendon with gourmets, and fusty and dreary Limmer’s chock-ablock with country squires and race course touts. At last they reached St. James’s Park and Chuffy reined in so that Frederica could admire the view.

Still thinking of her husband Frederica looked around vaguely at the desolate park. Fog was beginning to creep towards them as if pale ghosts were emanating from the Queen’s House at the other end. It hardly merited the title of ‘park,’ being a long dirty field intersected by a wide dirty ditch and thinly planted with rotting lime trees.

Chuffy shivered in his thin silk and once again mourned the loss of his swansdown waistcoat. He had never had the heart to order another. What a terrible day that had been with the long ride to Barnet and then tripping and falling in front of Lady Jersey at Almack’s. But good old Pegasus. Even the Duke had been amazed at the old animal’s stamina. “Do
anything
for oranges,” said Chuffy dreamily.

“Who?” asked Frederica, turning her eyes away from the gloomy view.

“Pegasus. M’horse. Henry couldn’t believe the way Pegasus flew up that hill to Barnet when we was lookin’ for you.”

A cold hand clutched at Frederica’s heart.

“When did you go to Barnet?” she asked.

“Didn’t I tell you? Suppose not. After the accident to my waistcoat, damme if everything else wasn’t driven out of my head. It hurts a chap deep when things like that happen. Did I ever tell you of…”

“Yes,” said Frederica. “Why were you in Barnet?”

“Lookin’ for you,” said Chuffy, surprised. “When the Duke came back from Scotland, he says, ‘Where is my wife?’ I said, ‘I don’t know. Think she’s gone to Richmond with that Comte fellow.’ He said, ‘What?’ I said, ‘The Comte Duchesne.’ He said, ‘Never heard of him.’ I said…”

“Oh, get to the
point
,” screamed Frederica, scaring a covey of mallards out of the rushes.

Chuffy looked at her in surprise. “I
was
getting to the point but if you’re goin’ to shout at me.…”

“
I am not shouting
,” shouted Frederica and then, forcibly calming herself, she went on in a gentle voice, “Dear Chuffy, just tell me simply why you and my husband went to Barnet.”

“Well, to look for you, o’course,” remarked Chuffy. “Told Henry I thought the Comte looked a havey-cavey fellow and he had faked that letter from the Jenningtons and we went off to Barnet but couldn’t find you.”

“How did you know I had gone to Barnet?” asked Frederica quietly.

“I can’t remember. I suppose Henry knew somehow,” said Chuffy, forgetting all about the visit to Clarissa.

Frederica sat as if turned to stone. If her husband had known she had gone to Barnet then he must have known about the Comte… even have paid the Comte.…

“But you should have seen old Pegasus,” Chuffy went on. “Do anything for oranges that old boy would. Hey! It’s getting demned foggy. Let us go back.”

But he felt a small gloved hand on his arm and, turning, he saw his young companion’s face was wet with tears.

“Oh, I say,” bleated Chuffy. “What did I say? Don’t you
like
horses?”

Frederica smiled wanly through her tears. “I want to stay and think for a bit, Chuffy. Please.”

Chuffy shivered but was too much of a gentleman to protest. Great yellow clouds were blotting everything from sight and a fine rain of soot was beginning to fall on his wrist bands. His hands under their York tan gloves seemed to be frozen to the reins.

He suddenly spied wavering lights approaching them in the fog and cursed under his breath. In no time at all, a gang of ruffians was upon them, the horses seized by the reins and the carriage encircled by the most evil group of vagabonds Frederica had ever seen, their faces flickering like demons in the light of the flaring tar torches they carried.

“Here’s a fine pair o’ gentry morts for the plucking!” cried the leader. His red eyes gleamed in his pock-marked face and his clothes, like those of his band, were no better than a series of rags held together by a rope round the waist. They were armed with cudgels and chains and their faces were alight with savage glee.

“Let’s get rid o’ the fat un and then we’ll have our fun with the moll,” said the leader placing his greasy, grimy hand appreciatively on the fine silk of Chuffy’s sleeve.