An Ideal Duchess (14 page)

             
Her mother merely stared at her, her mouth drooping at the corners as tears welled in her eyes. “You look so lovely. So beautiful. If only my Mamma and Father were here to see you.”

             
“Oh, Mother!”              She exclaimed in empathy, not caring if she were crumpling her dress as she sank to her knees and placed her head in her mother’s lap. Her mother’s hands were comforting and warm when they clasped her chin and tilted her face up, her gaze searching and fierce.

             
“Is this what you want, my dear girl? Is this really what you want?”

             
“Yes.” The word came easily, almost painlessly, from her mouth. “I want Bron. I want to marry him.”

             
Her mother smoothed a hand over Amanda’s brow and then cupped her cheek. “I know you want
him
—I’m not blind, Amanda, though I have turned a blind eye out of respect for your engagement—but do you want the duke?”

             
“They are one and the same, Mother,” Amanda frowned.

             
“I’m not quite sure that is true,” Her mother said carefully. “Sometimes I think…”

             
“What do you think?” Amanda sat back angrily, pulling away from her mother’s hands. “Bron has been nothing but wonderful his entire time as our guest.”

             
“Please, my dear, don’t misunderstand my words,” Her mother caught her chin, her fingers firm as they kept her from twisting away. “I merely want you to understand just how important a step you are taking this afternoon.”

             
“Mother!” Amanda flushed, closing her eyes in embarrassment since she could not squirm away.

             
She opened them when her mother laughed, amusement banishing all traces of seriousness. “We shall discuss that as well, but my primary concern is to alleviate my concerns over my only daughter not only marrying, but leaving America.”

             
“You enjoy England, Mother—you also loved mingling with titled persons while we were there.”

             
“Enjoying their company for a season is not the same as living there permanently, and marrying into their tribe.”

             
“What a funny word to use, ‘tribe’; as though Bron and his family, as well as the entire British peerage were specimens to read about in the pages of the National Geographic.”

             
“I wouldn’t go so far as to classify them in that exact manner,” Her mother said dryly. “But you have seen, just as much as I have seen, that we Americans can only penetrate the best circles so far before the English begin to retreat.”

             
“It sounds no different than our penetration of Mrs. Astor’s set.”

             
“Ah, but I was one of them,” Her mother replied bitterly.

             
Amanda clutched her mother’s hand and pressed a kiss to her palm. “You should be rejoicing that my engagement to Bron has repaired the bridge between you and your old friends.”

             
“I should, shouldn’t I? Your father is more than pleased to see me socializing with my childhood companions after all of these years.”

             
“Have you been very lonely, Mother?”

             
“Of course not!” Her mother patted her cheek. “I’ve had your father, you, your brothers, and our travels to keep me company.”

             
“You—and Papa of course—must travel to England as often as you like to see me as Duchess of Malvern.” Amanda rose to her feet, brushing the creases from her wedding dress as she returned to her mirror. “Bron will be glad to have you.”

             
“And his mother?”

             
Amanda looked at her mother, drawn by the sharpness of her tone. “Bledington Park will be my home once I’m wed, so Bron’s mother will have little to do with who we choose to entertain.”

             
“I thought it odd that his mother failed to cross the Atlantic for your wedding. Sending her companion—a distant cousin, I believe His Grace mentioned—instead was a rather curious decision.”

             
“Bron said Miss Townsend is practically his mother’s right hand, and that sometimes, Viola goes to suppers or acts as his hostess to other engagements when Her Grace is unable to attend.”

             
“I still find it an odd and somewhat distasteful practice, but I won’t spoil your wedding by continuing to talk about it.”

             
“Good, because you’ve been very tenacious on that topic, when Viola Townsend is quite nice, and I feel more confident knowing that since she likes me, Bron’s mother will like me as well.”

             
“I hope your confidence is not misplaced,” Her mother said, but held a hand up to halt Amanda’s response. “Your ‘Something Blue’ has been added to your bridal bouquet, but your ‘Something Borrowed’ is my own special treat.”

             
Amanda returned to her mother’s side when she opened the ivory box she had brought into the bedroom. It was small and wide, and her mother removed the lid carefully. Amanda gasped at the large, perfect, matched set of pearls coiled atop a pile of delicate blue tissue.

             
“My mother wore this strand of pearls when she married my father in the drawing room of her parents’ Washington Square home.” Her mother lifted the necklace from the box, the pearls clinking delicately as they slid over her fingers.

             
The pearls glowed, their luster bold and luminous even beneath the harshness of the electric lamps.

             
“Mother,” She breathed reverently, not daring to touch them. “Have you kept them locked away all of these years?”

             
“Pearls must be worn often, or they grow cold and dirty, so I wore them occasionally with this day affixed in my mind.”

             
Amanda stood in the mirror when her mother gestured for her to do so, and held her breath as her mother slid the necklace around her neck, her wedding veil rustling softly as it was pushed aside so the necklace could be fastened. She touched them tenderly, feeling their warmth and the deep emotions they carried in their luxurious depths.

             
“I wish I’d met Grandmother,” She whispered. “She must have been very kind.”

             
“She was a tartar,” He mother grimaced, but with obvious affection. “But she would have adored you and your brothers, and I know she and my father would have regretted missing your wedding had they known they were to pass away before Lulu was born.”

             
Amanda turned around to hug her mother, burying her nose in the familiar rose-scent she would associate with Lucretia Vandewater all of her life. Her mother’s embrace was just as fierce, and she smiled gently when she felt a trickle of wetness on her neck.

             
“If you keep crying now, you won’t have any tears left during the wedding ceremony!”

             
“You sound like your Papa,” Her mother said, smiling.

             
Amanda handed her mother a handkerchief. “Where is Papa? He will make us late for the wedding.”

             
“Oliphant said he was on the telephone in the study.”

             
“It’s just like Papa to work up right until the moment he and I are to drive to Grace Church.” She said exasperated, making her way to the door. “I’m going down to pry his fingers away from the telephone, and with a poker if I must!”

*          *          *

              She found her father precisely where her mother said he was—downstairs in the study overlooking the gardens, telephone to his ear—and to her amusement, only partially prepared to take her to Grace Church, a situation his valet White attempted to rectify. She peeped around the door, her hand over her mouth to smother her laughter, as White practically wrestled her father’s morning coat onto his flailing arms and over his shoulders, as her father paced rapidly across the carpet. The harried valet ducked and dodged her father’s elbows to button the waistcoat and the coat, and then scurried at his heels to brush the shoulders free of lint with his stiff-bristled coat brush. All the while, her father argued with the occupant of the other side of the line over stocks and bear markets and other Wall Street savoir-faire that made him one of the greatest businessmen in America.

             
When White started for the door—after giving her father one last brush of the coat and tug of the crease in his gray striped trousers—she opened it, allowing him to pass her by as she entered the study. He lowered one eye slowly on a wink of approval when he examined her wedding dress, and she grinned in response, knowing the staff would be all agog to know just how she looked. Her father faced the window, the mouthpiece still in his hand and the earpiece held to his ear, and she closed the door hard behind her to gain his attention. He turned, a scowl marring his wide brow and then froze, lowering the earpiece from his ear and hanging up on the barking voice on the other end.

             
“Puss,” He said simply, his childhood name for her layered with meaning.

             
“Do you like it, Papa?” Amanda lifted her silk moiré skirt with a self-conscious half-twirl. Her veil swirled around her before fluttering to rest on her shoulders.

             
“You look beautiful, my dear child,” Her father approached her, his hands outstretched.

             
Amanda rushed into his arms, hoping she would not cry and ruin her complexion. Her father patted her shoulders, his drooping mustache tickling her forehead when he pressed a kiss to it, and in his familiar embrace, she felt, for the umpteenth time, the enormity of her decision. Marriage was an irrevocable step, and by marrying Bron, she was not only leaving her family behind, with everything she knew and loved, but also the security of knowing she had her father’s unstinting, unconditional support.

             
“There, there, my girl,” Her father said briskly as he held her at arm’s length. “Are you wearing the little trinket I gave you over breakfast?”

             
Amanda raised her left arm to allow her father to see the diamond bracelet clasped around her white gloved wrist. He nodded, his mustache twitching with approval.

             
“Didn’t want to say this in front of the staff, but it’s a present to show how proud I am for how you’ve pulled this off.”

             
“You mean by marrying Bron?” She asked flatly, slowly lowering her wrist to her side. Suddenly, the bracelet felt like a shackle, and it took all of her willpower not to tear it off.

             
“You weren’t very amenable when I expressed my pleasure in the idea last summer, but I knew my girl wouldn’t let me down,” Her father smiled beatifically down at her, obviously taking her silence as agreement, because she had never dissented to his opinions and proclamations.

             
All at once, her euphoria and anticipation collapsed beneath the weight of her father’s utter elation in her supposed complicity with his plans to woo the Duke of Malvern into a match with his heiress daughter. She wanted to deny this, to claim she wanted to marry Bron Townsend, not the duke, because she liked him and found him intriguing; however, she had been her father’s adoring companion and accomplice for too long to struggle against the gilded cage of his expectations. And when, after they drove from their Fifth Avenue home to Grace Church in the ornate gilt and cream carriage her father purchased from some impoverished Pomeranian princess, she silently took his hand and allowed him to lead her into the church.

             
The crowd assembling opposite Grace Church was diverse, ranging from weary shop girls who walked from Herald’s Square, Italian waiters from the lobster palaces along Broadway, grimy newsboys seeking headlines, to a few Lower East Side socialists milling about, loudly protesting the evils of capitalism. All, however, were united in their eagerness to catch a glimpse one of New York’s most anticipated weddings. No matter how many English aristocrats walked down the aisle with their American brides, the fairy tale of a young American girl entering a church as plain Miss and exiting as the Duchess of This, or Princess That, never failed to arouse the latent romanticism beneath the hustle and bustle of the American psyche. Bron had soon grown accustomed to the roar of cheers and whistles that rolled through the church whenever a carriage or motorcar carrying an exalted wedding guest rolled to its entrance and they walked through the door. What he had not grown accustomed to was the anxiety that set his teeth on edge and made him pace in an angry circle in the vestry.

             
Bim, to his irritation, took the time waiting for Amanda and her father to arrive to sleep, legs outstretched, hands folded over his stomach, and top hat tipped over his eyes and nose. It took all he had not to kick Bim awake, and before the urge to do so dominated all of his senses, he walked to the stained glass window overlooking the small park surrounding the church and pressed his forehead against the cool, knobby brick wall, palms flat on either side of his head. It was simply his nerves getting the best of him; he knew this was right, that this was a sound decision, but the finality of his marriage and the return to Bledington after three months in America frightened him.