An Ideal Duchess (10 page)

             
“Her helpfulness is to be commended,” His mother replied crisply. “A duchess should never be afraid to pitch in when all other avenues of assistance have been exhausted.”

             
“I was just telling His Grace how helpful my daughter could be to Bledington,” Mr. Vandewater said blandly, still waving his hat like a fan.

             
“Oh?”

             
Bron grimaced when his mother glanced at him, her dark eyebrows lifted in surprise.

             
“Forgive my obtuseness, Mr. Vandewater, but I struggle to discern in what capacity your daughter could be helpful. Does she propose to donate her time to the local cottage hospital, or a sum to a charitable function?”

             
Mr. Vandewater’s hat-fan paused for a beat; apparently, Her Grace, the Duchess of Malvern was deemed too formidable to bully with his American blunt and bluntness. Bron was grateful when Vi and Miss Vandewater returned, though it was one of the liveried footman—Cedric—who held the tray of glasses filled with lemonade. His mother visibly marked Miss Vandewater’s ingenuity with a slight nod of her head, and even Vi appeared a trifle subdued and bewildered as she returned to her place just behind his mother’s chair. For her part, Miss Vandewater sank into her chair beside his mother, her white lawn skirts flowing gracefully over her limbs and over the manicured grass, almost a perfect specimen of a duchess.

             
He stared hard at her, almost wanting to applaud her performance, yet slightly unsettled by how easily she could manipulate a situation in her favor. He met his mother’s brief glance and frowned at the shining approval he found in her eyes; he was caught in a trap of his own making, and more he tried to pull away the tighter it fastened around him.

*          *          *

Liverpool

             
The large ocean liner began to slide from its berth to the sound of cheers from both the people waving on the pier and those crowding the railing aboard the RMS Celtic, and the piercing bellows from the two black-tipped smoke stacks. The Vandewaters had taken most of the large staterooms for the family and their servants, and Amanda stepped from her own stateroom to peer over the private railing of the uppermost deck to watch as the gulf between the ship and England gradually widened. She searched the throng of somberly clad spectators waving hats, bunches of flowers, and handkerchiefs until her eyes finally fell on the one person she both hoped and dreaded to see: His Grace, the Duke of Malvern. He was almost a lone spot of tranquility, clad in a dark Chesterfield coat and his coppery locks covered by a black derby. She could almost feel the gravity of his gray eyes even from this distance, and raised her hand in farewell, feeling almost vulnerable for having made the first gesture.

             
He returned it, his gloved hand slowly rising, fingers half-bent towards the curved brim of his hat. As the boat slipped further and further away, His Grace’s figure growing smaller and smaller, she found she could not move from her post, her hand still in the air in that tentative gesture of farewell. She stood there until the distance and the swirling fog broke their connection, and she lowered her hand to grip the railing, unsettled and uneasy by her tumultuous emotions. She could only return to her stateroom, which connected to that of her parents on the left door, and that of her brothers on the right, and prepare herself for dinner.

             
She stared at her reflection in the mirror over her dressing table, slowly brushing her thick golden hair with the monogrammed silver-backed brushes her father had given her for her eighteenth birthday. Her thoughts turned to her father’s words over breakfast at Foxcote. Was marriage a business contract? Her parents seemed delighted enough with one another, but they had been raised differently, and in a different social set. They were expected to marry for love, or at least deep affection. She had discovered that the wealthy and well born expected otherwise during her year as a pupil in the exclusive Swiss finishing school, where she’d been enrolled after leaving Miss Porter’s in Connecticut.

             
She smiled faintly when she remembered her shock when her European schoolmates gossiped openly about their mothers’ lovers and fathers’ mistresses. Countess Marie de Czerny, who shared a room with Amanda and two other girls, was prosaic about the elderly Prince she was expected to marry when she left the Château Mont-Choisi in Lausanne, and they giggled well past their curfew on many a night over just whom Marie planned to take as a lover
after
her marriage. Amanda’s smile faded at that as she remembered that if she were to marry into one of these great European dynasties, perhaps she too would be expected to take a lover…or her husband would already have one.

             
The thought was abhorrent to her, and she brushed her hair furiously until it crackled with electricity. She parted her hair into two sections, plaited them, and tied the ends with ribbon, her appearance in the mirror suddenly that of a young girl rather than the well-coiffed sophisticate. She placed her hand over her reflection, wishing she could smash the mirror into dozens of tiny pieces to express the frustration of being caught between two periods in her life. She was unable to retreat into childhood, yet unwilling to plunge headfirst into adulthood.

             
She satisfied herself with throwing her hairbrush across the room, where it slammed into the door and bounced against the wall, before clattering to the floor. She rose and began unbuttoning her jacket when the door leading to her parents’ suite opened, and her mother, the back closures of her shimmering red dinner gown unfastened, stepped into her room. Her mother gestured absently towards the dinner gown and Amanda left her buttons alone and played lady’s maid for her mother, neatly hooking the back of the Worth gown and pushing the buttons through the cloth loops.

             
“Thank you, my dear,” Her mother turned and sat in the seat Amanda vacated. “I’d noticed you were rather subdued on the train to Liverpool. Are you missing your duke?”

              “He isn’t
my
duke,” Amanda muttered, lowering her chin to watch her fingers finish unbuttoning her jacket, hoping to cover her unexpected blush.

             
“You seemed to enjoy spending time with him…” Her mother said carefully. “Were you merely being polite to His Grace?”

             
“No, of course not, Mother,” Amanda removed her jacket and folded it over the end of her bed. “I did enjoy entertaining His Grace—and Mr. Challoner, and the others we met at the garden party. I’m just uncomfortable with singling him out as more important than any other gentleman.”

             
“Your Papa wouldn’t force you to marry a man you didn’t love—you know that, don’t you?”

             
“Yes, Mother,” Amanda sighed. “Can you send Smith in to help me dress for dinner?”

             
She felt her mother’s confused silence as she moved to her steamer trunks, and hunched her shoulders in guilt for shutting her mother out. Their relationship was not exceptionally close, but she had always been able to confide in her mother during her few times of trouble. Somehow, the duke made her feel vulnerable and exposed and her inability to categorize him or to place him in a box with a neat ribbon was aggravating.

             
He was a challenge and a puzzle, all right, and she was sure her simple, kind-hearted and optimistic mother would not understand her equal parts resistance and attraction to the Duke of Malvern. Therefore, she focused on one of the few things she could control: her dress. She touched the delicate silks and lace of the gowns hung on the hangers inside of the steamer trunk with reverence. She would hate to dress shabbily or without distinction, and was grateful that her father’s wealth permitted her to present a refined, au courant image to the world.

             
“Amanda, dear,”

             
“Yes, Mother?” Amanda glanced over her shoulder to find her mother frowning.

             
“Never mind; I shall send Smith in at once.”

Newport, June 1903

              T
he
Mrs. Astor—or rather, her minor satellites, Mrs. Fish and Mrs. Oelrichs—could not ignore the Vandewater’s singular coup of hosting the young, handsome, and more importantly,
unmarried
  Duke of Malvern for their very first summer in Newport. Amanda felt rather like Cinderella, plucked from obscurity overnight, deluged with invitations, and admired by all she knew.              

             
It was exciting even though she had quarreled with her father when he announced His Grace was to be their guest. She had been adamant in not wanting to single out any of the gentlemen she’d met in England, particularly not one who made her feel so off-kilter, but her father, it seemed, had other plans, and was going to force her to marry the duke.

             
She shook off the angry distraction of her thoughts and shielded her eyes from the sun to watch Blanche Oelrichs line up her cleek with the tee and swing, sending the gutta-perch golf ball flying into the impossibly blue sky and across the undulating green of the golf links. Miss Oelrichs hunched her shoulders in annoyance when the ball soared in the sky, only to disappear over the cliff and into the splashing, churning ocean.

             
She turned towards the mid-sized group she’d got up for an impromptu  round of golf with a rueful smile, gesturing for the next player to take their turn. The brisk, salt-sea air tugged at Amanda’s tailor-made skirt, and she placed her own cleek against the length of her leg to preserve her modesty, barely concealing her impatience as Jack Schuyler sauntered onto the green, his young colored caddy carrying a set of cotton-swaddled golf clubs in a tubular leather bag.

             
The others around her began to murmur, half of the men  in the group eyeing Schuyler with lips curled in envy and the other half of bristling with anticipation. Amanda felt a hand touch her arm and turned to meet the friendly brown eyes of Douglas Warfield. The corners of his eyes crinkled in a smile, the wind whipping at his thick russet hair. He bent close to her ear, his breath tickling her skin.

             
“He won’t make it; the wind is too strong.”

             
“Why Mr. Warfield,” She raised a brow. “Are you trying to entice me into a wager?”

             
“Call me Douglas,” He smiled, flashing a row of white, even teeth.

             
“I think that would be just as improper as agreeing to bet on Mr. Schuyler’s golfing prowess. What would your mother think?”

             
“My mother thinks of me—and everything associated with me—as charming,” He placed a hand over his chest and closed his eyes with a beatific smile.

             
“She sounds like my father,”

             
“Ah,” Douglas looked serious. “The burdens of a doting parent.”

             
She smiled slightly and shrugged, uncomfortable with revealing so much of herself to a relative stranger. A nice, good-looking stranger, but a stranger nonetheless.

             
“Look, there he goes!” She shielded her eyes to watch Schuyler take his swing, his long, lean body twisted elegantly in the follow-through.

             
The plump man in the blue suit near Schuyler clapped profusely, unconscious of the perspiration darkening the fabric under his arms and dampening his hair beneath his straw boater. “Well done, Sky, well done!”

             
Schuyler ignored the man, as well as the claps and calls of appreciation from the spectators and fellow players. He briefly clasped the shoulder of his caddy before sauntering after his ball, arrogance radiating from every pore. Amanda only clapped enough to not appear rude, stopping the moment another player stepped up to place a tee and golf ball in the ground.

             
“I dread your reaction to my game,” Mr. Warfield murmured, his eyes widened in mock horror.

             
“You wouldn’t use the game as an opportunity to show off,”

             
“Schuyler is an alright chap, rather difficult to know, especially when he’s on the green. He’s very good—just as skilled as James Braid or Harry Vardon. He’s won most the amateur championships in the country.”

             
“I wouldn’t know who they are, but since you speak their names with such reverence, I assume they are very good too.” She scowled slightly. “But being better at something than most people doesn’t give you a right to treat others rudely.”

             
“Have I offended you?” Mr. Warfield looked appalled. “I apologize, Miss Vandewater.”

             
“I beg your pardon, Mr. Warfield,” She sighed apologetically. “I shouldn’t have taken my crossness with Mr. Schuyler out on you. I haven’t been in a good temper lately.”