An Ideal Duchess (44 page)

             
“You truly believe that, Mother?” He sounded weary.

             
“I do,” Ursula rose from her chair and approached her son. “Banish any thought of self-doubt or any undue influence, and be who you are meant to be—the Duke of Malvern—and all will turn out the way it ought to be.”

             
He allowed her a brief embrace, and she was relieved his questions had only to do with needing a bit of bucking up. “Now, my dearest boy, play a bit of that marvelous Coleridge-Taylor.
Kubla Khan
was it?”

             
She returned to her chair, but Malvern interrupted her. “No Mother, sit in the blue chaise, where I can see you.” He pointed to where he desired her to sit.

             
“Of course, Malvern,” Ursula indulged in his whim and relaxed onto the chaise to listen to his playing.

             
She closed her eyes, keeping time with brief nods as the notes ran sprightly, neatly on. She opened them when Malvern paused briefly to begin another movement and drew in a sharp, painful breath. She tore her eyes away from the portrait of herself, the late duke, Malvern, and Alexander (then the Marquess of Rodborough), painted by Sargent just before Beryl was conceived. Malvern’s eyes were closed as he kept his own time, and she leaned back on the chaise, managing to just convince herself that his choice of seats was not deliberate.

*          *          *

              Amanda was surprised to find Malvern in the music room. He did not look up when she entered the room, and she took the liberty of sitting in the blue chaise, which had been moved from its usual position to face the portrait of Malvern, his brother, and their parents. She had been startled when it first appeared, so odd was it to see Malvern so young, but he did not seem inclined to discuss it, and it remained affixed to the wall, silent, questioning, ominously. He began playing a movement that she quickly recognized as the piece he played when she first visited Bledington. She was taken aback by the choice, and he seemed to be as well, abruptly stopping his play with a discordant note.

             
“Did you want something?” He closed the lid over the keyboard.

             
She blinked, finding another echo from the past—and his cruel response. She briefly regretted her impulse to thank him for his speaking up about the cake, and found it strange that Malvern seemed a willing party to tidying up after her.

             
“It’s about the cake,” She finally replied. “Thank you.”

             
Malvern lifted a brow.

             
“We had a little party in the schoolroom. The piece Nanny Tester gave them was brutally small, and I thought they deserved to enjoy their birthday.”

             
An emotion briefly crossed her husband’s face. “You stole the cake from the larder for a birthday party in the schoolroom.”

             
“When you word it in that manner, it does sound absurd.” Amanda felt a smile tug at the corner of her mouth. “But I do thank you for taking the blame for its disappearance.”

             
She rose to leave, but when she reached the door, Malvern spoke.

             
“Why…why was I not invited?”

             
She turned, even more surprised. “Would you have come, Malvern? The boys are quite intimidated by you, and you did say you did not believe in birthday parties.”

             
His mouth flattened. “Perhaps you are right, I wouldn’t have come.”

             
Amanda sighed and bit her lip. Malvern’s expression had turned cold and forbidding, and she closed her eyes briefly in regret over her hasty words. But they had been said and could not be taken back, even if she did apologize. She felt much older than her twenty-seven years, aged by the blunt emotional trauma of living with Malvern and at Bledington. It seemed that anything could open unhealed wounds between them: a hasty word, a wrong decision, choosing to go one’s own way. She couldn’t stand the thought of this being what she had to look forward to for decades, but what could she do to change this impasse?

             
She stared at Malvern, who only stared back, his mouth turning down in a surprising show of unhappiness. She could go to him, touch him even, and kiss his mouth to cling to the physical passion that had sparked something between them and try to rekindle that spark, but she wearied of chasing him.

             
Moreover, there was no guarantee that if she did respond to his unhappiness that he would not use her and use it against her, wielding his withholding of affection and love like tiny, razor-sharp cuts to her soul. He remained seated at the piano bench, and she turned her head on a spasm of pain, his inability—or desire, perhaps—to come to her like a blow to the face.

             
“Amanda.” Her name floated across the room like a tentative caress, but she knew he still did not rise to approach her.

             
It took all of her pride and self-respect to ignore her impulse to respond to his entreaty, to hope, and she turned to leave the music room, resolving that it was too little and much, much too late.

Bledington, March 1912

             
Amanda smiled at her father’s grave, attentive manner as her boys took his hands to lead him through the arboretum. His visit had been a complete surprise—one minute she was having a solitary tea in the drawing room and the next Fowler was entering the room to announce her father. Her first glimpse of him in eight years revealed a man a little grayer about the temples, a tad stouter, and just as fearsome looking, but the warmth of his expression when their eyes met was her same old Papa, and she fell immediately into his welcoming arms.

             
She was sure she shocked Fowler to his toes by her excessive display of emotion, but she cared naught—this was her father and by Jove she was going to embrace him!

             
She breathed in the fresh, heavy, heady scent of the arboretum planted by Malvern’s grandfather in the ‘seventies, and felt herself expand, filled with the security and affection given freely, unconditionally, by her father. She felt full to bursting from his presence, finding him almost a buffer between herself and the cold, sharp edges of Bledington and her English family. In fact, the estate seemed a bit brighter with her father around, his blustery voice and laugh filling the rooms and banishing Ursula’s edicts of everlasting silence.

             
She only wished her mother were here, and even Lulu and Quintus, though they were now terribly grown-up since the last she saw them as they passed through England two years ago on their European motoring tour with a few of their Yale classmates.
Ah well
, she thought,
what did they have in common with their dear old married sister?

             
She followed the sound of Roddy and Neil’s voices around the Irish yews and saw them pointing out the various flowers and trees that covered the one hundred acres that required thirty members of the outdoor staff to tend. Her father appeared suitably impressed, though she wasn’t certain whether it was with her sons’ flawless Latin or with the unfathomable scale of land on which Bledington stood and the number of servants they kept.

             
She knew her father was still rather starry eyed about the house and her title; he was the personification of the satirical take on Juvenal, where it was stated, “To have a grandson heir to a dukedom is considered a greater distinction than to be President of the United States.”. It was the one thing that did rankle her about her father, but she pushed it aside to enjoy his stay.             

             
Roddy and Neil had since switched their attention to their scouting accoutrement, and her father sent them off with a pat before she could catch up. She grimaced a bit at that painful reminder—that Maggie knew their interests better than she did! It was both humiliating and demoralizing.

             
“There you are, Puss,” Her father’s face brightened when he caught sight of her. “Such clever little monkeys you have.”

             
“Yes, they are,” She agreed. “I don’t see them as often as I would like, being away at school and all.”

             
“It’s traditional, ain’t it?” Her father removed his hat to smooth his hair. “Eton, Harrow, and all that.”

             
“Not Eton, not just yet. They are attending Summer Fields and then shall enter Eton when they are twelve.”

             
“Splendid,” Her father looked pleased. “And what of you, Puss? Become the belle of London society like I always knew you would?”             

             
“Not exactly, Papa, I’m at Bledington more often than not.” She said, sliding her hand into the crook of his arm.

             
“That husband of yours is away in London,” Her father narrowed his eyes at her, and she averted her face, grateful for her large Gainsborough hat.

             
“Malvern has duties in London—the House of Lords, of course.”

             
“It just doesn’t sit right to me. You ought to travel up to London to see him and enjoy the season. That’s why you married him, isn’t it?”

             
“And leave you here all by yourself?” She forced a bit of girlish gaiety into her voice. “Didn’t you come to visit me?”

             
“I can entertain myself at Bledington for a few days, and your boys are here to keep me company when I’m not wrangling with that dragon of a mother-in-law of yours,”

             
Amanda laughed at his description of Ursula even while her mind raced as she struggled to find an excuse that would conceal her estrangement from her husband.

             
“Buy yourself a few pretty dresses too while you’re in the city—”

             
“Town, Papa,” She corrected automatically. “The City is the financial district.”

             
“There you go,” He waved his hand. “You know the proper distinctions and whatnot.”

             
“Being a duchess is more than knowing proper distinctions.”

             
“Nevertheless, Puss, go up to
Town
—see, I got it right this time—and show off your wealth and position.”

             
She could only nod and agree, deciding that it would hurt her father more to know the truth than to indulge in a brief falsehood. “Alright Papa, I shall travel to London tomorrow and stay the week.”

             
“Good girl,” He patted her hand. “Now tell me more about this arboretum of yours. Has it really been photographed for Country Life?”

*          *          *

              Later that evening, as she dressed for dinner, she heard a knock on her door. For a brief moment she failed to recognize the sound; Malvern had never cared enough anymore to see her while she dressed. The sound came again and she glanced at Maggie in the floor length mirror as the lady’s maid began fastening the closures of draped yellow taffeta evening gown. She straightened the square neckline and adjusted the elbow-length sleeves before calling to Maggie, “Will you answer the door please?”

             
“Yes, Your Grace,” Maggie curtseyed and disappeared from the mirror.

             
Amanda turned to find her father standing just outside the door, looking dashing and distinguished in his dinner jacket, striped waistcoat and matching bow tie. He held an unlit cigar in his hand and grinned.

             
“I timed my arrival just right,” He said, stepping into the room. “Your mother always finishes her toilet in precisely forty-two minutes, and I rightly figured you would be the same.”

             
“Ha!” Amanda grinned back and sat at her dressing table. “I haven’t completed my toilet just yet, Papa. I’ve still my gloves and my jewelry—and my shoes,” She wriggled her stockinged feet.

             
“Well hurry up, Puss,” He pulled up the chair normally stationed beside the fireplace and sat, crossing his legs as he lit his cigar.

             
“I don’t know why you are in such a hurry to join another silent dinner,” She gestured for Maggie to continue. “It must be dull compared to the dinners you have in New York.”

             
“It’s rather restful, I think. Let’s you focus on what you’re eating rather than jawing off at the mouth,”

             
Amanda rolled her eyes heavenward. It appeared Bledington and its customs could do no wrong in her father’s eyes. She accepted the yellow satin slippers Maggie held out to her, placed them on the floor and slid her feet into their snug confines. She pulled on her gloves and made to rise when her father reached over to open her jewelry box.