The Duke's Wager (17 page)

And here, he thought with heavy irony, is the object I rode all the heavy miles for, spurred by that unreasonable whim. Here is a little squashed and sallow girl child, who, by the look of her, has never entertained a fancy, much less a whim. She has much the look of her mother, poor thing, the Duke thought, too much the look of her mother. But then he had seen the eyes, and noted that her complexion was as white as his, and even though black curls trembled about her forehead and the nose had the same foolish tendency to point upward as her mother’s had, still there was none of the light or inconsequential in her aspect or her demeanor. No, he thought, allowing his lips to curl in their first true smile since he had arrived. The poor lady never played me false. If she found no comfort in my embrace, she sought no other’s either. I cured her of that tendency, if indeed she ever possessed such a tendency. She died as chaste in spirit as she was born. But see what we created, that pure lady and her impure wedded husband. A creature neither foul nor fair, but leached of all life.

The Duke of Torquay stood in his library, which he had not visited for six years, or rather his father’s library, for so he still regarded it, as all he had done with the room since he had inherited it was to have it cleaned thoroughly and furnished in shades of maroon and gold to take the curse of his father’s gray scholarship from it. He gazed down upon his only begotten child. She stood, small and patient as a marionette, expressionless, before him, dressed properly and expensively in a little blue dress chosen to accentuate her eyes, her feet in small blue slippers, her black hair falling to her shoulders. The Duke, dressed in riding clothes of various shades of brown, stood before her, his fair hair touseled, his face wearing a mannerly smile. We make a delightful picture, he thought with amusement, quite an admirable still life.

“I don’t expect transports of delight, my child,” he said in his low hoarse tones. “After all, you have only my word for it that I am your father, and the word, in any case, is meaningless to you, as we have never met. But I bear gifts, you see, to ensure a warm welcome here. Allow me to present you with a token. One which the shop girl assured me would be the envy of all your acquaintances.”

He made a protracted show of unwrapping the parcel on his desk, and finally, after what seemed like a mighty struggle with the tissue within, shrugged and beckoned her to his side.

“See what a weak fellow I am.” He smiled. “I cannot seem to unearth the thing. But you are all of…six, is it?” She only nodded gravely in return. “Ah then, and a fine strapping big girl, perhaps you can take it out for me.”

She reached into the box and, without fuss, peeled the tissue away from the gift. It was a large doll, an expensive, overly dressed French doll, all bubbling lace and sleek satin with a porcelain head, with pouting lips and high color and long lashes that opened and closed over eyes almost as blue as her own. She gazed at it seriously, and then handed it to the Duke.

“Here you are, sir,” she said quietly.

“But it is for you, child,” he protested.

“Oh,” she said quietly. “Then thank you, sir,” and she held the doll at her side at a distance like an alien thing and looked at him again, waiting for him to speak.

“Well then,” he said with false heartiness, thinking mockingly that he sounded like one of those fatuous avuncular uncles he had known as a child, or like an overeager child molester he had once seen trying to entice slum brats playing near the square until a zealous merchant had seen him and chased him howling down the street. “And what pastime did my sudden arrival call you from today? What had you been doing before I came and summoned you?”

“Lessons, sir,” she replied gravely. “Drawing.”

“And were you enjoying yourself?” he asked.

“Yes, sir,” she answered.

“Well, then,” he said, “I don’t want to disrupt your schedule overmuch. You may return and we will see each other later. At dinner, then?”

“Yes, sir,” she replied, and executing her perfect curtsy, she turned stiffly and left.

“Miss Barrow,” he called, and the retreating governess turned and reentered the library. “Miss Barrow,” he said sweetly to the spare, gray woman, “is she always like this, then?”

“Like what, Your Grace?” the woman answered, puzzled.

“So very polite, so very proper. I realize, naturally, that she doesn’t know me from Adam, but does she never show any animation?”

“Your Grace,” the governess answered, unsure of his tone, “it is not that she does not know you. She has been trained to be a lady. She has been taught that which is right and fitting in one of her station in life. Do you find that extraordinary?” she asked with a hint of steel in her voice.

Ah, then she has heard of me, the Duke thought, amused. “No, Miss Barrow, I quite understand. It is only that when I was her age, I was more inclined to childish pursuits.”

“She is to be a lady, Your Grace,” Miss Barrow replied. “She has to put such things behind her.”

I should like to light a fire behind her, the Duke thought, and you as well. “Thank you, Miss Barrow,” he said, dismissing her. He turned and sat in the great maroon chair that had been his father’s. The sunlight glinted in the long windows, and although the maroon carpets absorbed much of it, the gold shone, the gold spun in the air in the little dust flecks that arose as he sank into the chair. The gold glowed from the draperies and echoed round his flaxen hair, and yet it seemed to him that the room was yet gray, his gray father’s gray room. And why should I care that the world is determined to bring her up as a replica of her mother? It is, after all, only a case of one artificial flower reproducing another, he reflected. Would it be better for her to be a replica of her father, he thought, scornfully? And why did I even venture here to begin with? She has lived six long years in comfort without me, and doubtless will survive sixty more very nicely in the same fashion. Why should I care here and now, when I did not then? What has addled my wits and brought about this uncharacteristic fever of fatherhood? He lay his sunset-gilded head back upon the chair and closed his eyes, extinguishing their blue flame. Premature senility, he sighed, or an excess of boredom, or enforced celibacy, too much Squire and too many hopeful daughters have driven me to this charade of concern. But not boredom, he thought, opening his eyes again. No, this new game I have embarked upon is everything but boring. And she, and all my subsequent machinations since that damned night at the Opera, every plotted moment up to this unplotted one, have been because of her. And the game grows beyond my control. And that disturbs me more than anything has since I was that poor sadly squashed child’s age. And that which disturbs me the most is myself. For I feel the stirrings of something very much like humanity within, and we can’t have that, can we, My Lord Black Duke? We can’t tolerate that at all. For I think, he sighed to himself, that it will result in a kind of death, one crack in that frozen void and, like a rushing spring thaw, I will be washed away in those unleashed torrents. It does no good to undam that which has been safely secured for so long. And for what, he laughed, for one poor, untried, untitled, unworldly female who has too many scruples, and a head full of bookish morality, and who, moreover, has not had enough temptation put in her way of becoming a saint? Oh no, Miss Berryman, he thought merrily, you of the exquisite face, form, and morals, you do not qualify as yet for a mantle of sainthood. All saints must be tempted to the limit, and I have not yet begun. Not nearly, he anticipated, brightening. And, feeling much better, the Duke of Torquay rose and stretched and went out into the chill air to find a proud mount to carry him on a nostalgic tour around his broad acres.

The day telescoped to three, and with each advancing hour he found himself becoming more unsettled. He was not used to spending so much time in his own company. In town, each night would provide its own diversions, and he could always ensure that there was at least some entertainment or some other human being he could converse or have some sort of concourse with. But here in the country, he found himself quite alone. He could not bring himself to open one of his father’s books, as if the very dust motes would release visions of his youth, his father, his mother. And when he rode out to visit with his neighbors to reacquaint himself with them, he noted their wary attitudes. Those with comely wives or young daughters either hid them away or displayed them to him like pearls on a jewelers’ cushion. On the whole, he preferred those men who secreted their daughters, but their attitudes were ones of uneasy deference. So he rode, and wandered, and watched his own daughter. And though he longed to be away, to return to the only life he knew, to take up the game again, perversely, he could not leave. At least until he had made some provision for his own daughter. For she unsettled him the most.

The little Lady Lucinda could not be said to be unacquainted with him now, and yet she was as still and stilted with him as ever. But, he noted, she was much the same with all those who came within her sphere. She showed no real emotion with her governess, with the servants, or even with other young children, those of his tenants that he pointed out to her when he took her riding with him in the afternoons. She was as cold and uninvolved with them all as she was with him. Only with animals, with her pony, with the stable dogs and kitchen cat, did she allow herself to smile, even, on occasions when she thought no one noticed, to laugh. And it was only on those rare occasions, that he saw, unclouded, his clear paternity in her unguarded face. On the third night then, since time was drawing close for him, and the ball he anticipated with such mixed emotions was only a little more than a week away in time, he sat at his desk and carefully composed a provocative letter. This done, he sat back with a rare real smile upon his face. If she still lives, this will provoke her enough to return, he thought, even if she is on her death bed. And, summoning a footman, he made arrangements for his note’s immediate delivery.

It is only a small thing, he chided himself, and on balance with my sins, will perhaps only extinguish a very small flame when I am consigned to my eventual eternal torment, but it might make a great difference to the child, and I owe her that much at least. Owe? he thought quizzically. There I am speaking like a Miss Berryman again. But looking around the sumptuously furnished room, picturing in his mind’s eye his rolling lawns and wooded parklands, his marble halls, even his daughter’s exquisitely furnished rooms, the word
owe
did seem a little foolish. She has everything already, he thought, but perhaps, in deference to the absent Miss Berryman, there is, yes, one thing else that I owe her, and since I surely cannot provide it personally, I shall have another supply it. Thus I pay one debt. One moral debt, though, Miss Berryman, does not make a habit, I warn you.

She arrived exactly two days later, and, staring at her, he could not believe so many years had passed.

“You needn’t goggle, My Lord,” she remarked acidly, taking off her gloves. “No, I am not risen from my grave.”

“Not from your grave, my dear Pickett, but rather from a night’s sleep, for I swear you have not changed a hair.”

“I have changed several thousand, Your Grace, unless your advanced age has clouded your vision, for as you can plainly see, they are all quite snow-capped now, and when last we met, they were the hue of a raven’s wing.”

“And this,” he crowed with delight, “from the lady who would knock me silly for only a little fib. Why Pickett, my eternal love, you were gray as a goose when I last saw you. And why the ‘Your Grace,’ when I swear the only title you ever acknowledged me by was ‘rogue’ or ‘devil’ or ‘wretch.’”

“Not so,” said the small wiry woman, lowering her strident voice. “For once I was wont to call you ‘Jason,’ before you reached your majority, My Lord.”

“Oh come,” he said, taking her hand and leading her into the room. ‘Your Grace’ and ‘My Lord’ are uneasy on your lips. Call me ‘wretch,’ then, or ‘rogue,’ though I’d prefer ‘Jason,’ but do not bury me and our past under such a heap of civility. I am glad you have come back, Pickett, I truly am. You bring back my youth.”

“I should not think you would wish it brought back,” she said, her bright gray eyes searching his face. “Or anyone who brought it back to you.”

“No,” he said soberly, “not my youth, then, but you, certainly, for we shared the one endurable part of it, didn’t we? You were more than governess, Pickett, you were my one friend.”

She stood and stared at him for a moment and what she saw displeased her, for she pursed her lips and then shook her head.

“And still am your friend, but where is this ‘squashed child’ you wrote of? For nothing except the visions of
a
sadly flattened little person would have dragged me from my hearth in my richly deserved retirement. No, that is not true either. The world is filled with flattened children. Your unfortunate daughter alone accounts for my presence, Jason. Although I think that now, as then, you tend to exaggerate. Still, I am here, as you see. But I warn you, only to observe. I promise nothing else, as yet. Where is the child?”

“You shall see her at dinner. Which you shall have, my love, as soon as you freshen up. It must have been
a
weary journey. But it is a miracle how you have not changed,” he commented as he led her up the long staircase to her room. But then he noted that although the years had not seemed to touch her at first glance, her carriage being just as erect, her homely, wise little face just as shrewd, her voice just as distinct and piercing as his childhood memories had enshrined them, yet she walked a little more slowly, a few more wrinkles sat upon her forehead, and her movements were a little more stiff. And yet, he thought, when last she saw me, my only sin was selfishness, my only crime, a child’s thoughtlessness, my only lack, a conscience.