An Ideal Duchess (47 page)

             
He hung the telephone up with a chuckle and then came to her, hands out stretched for an embrace. He turned to the boys, whom she realized had managed to undo all of the scrubbing, combing, and pressing the poor, harried nursery maid did to make them presentable for their grandfather’s departure.

             
“In a spot of mischief, I see,” Her father placed his hands on his fists as he surveyed them in mock displeasure.

             
“Granddaddy, can we explore the ship?” Roddy stood up from the chair. “Mater says we’re too little.”

             
“Mater, eh? I like that.” He crouched down to their level. “Perhaps you can persuade your mater if you promise to stick to her side.”

             
“Of course we will, won’t we Neil?” Roddy elbowed his brother in the side, hard.

             
“May we, Mater?” Neil turned pleading eyes on her.

             
She rolled her eyes and sighed, unable to fight three against one. “Alright, Papa, boys, let’s go exploring.”

             
“Find my bank book before the ship departs, White, I cannot understand why it isn’t in my bag,”

             
Her father’s valet bowed, and then they left to go exploring the Titanic. They strolled along Bridge deck, peering into the restaurants and the other public rooms, and then descended down to second class and further to see the other amenities. They passed by the gymnasium, where a young woman took the picture of a slender, middle aged man and his female friend on the horses, and then went down to the Turkish bath, a large, steamy pool of water.

             
“Blimey!” Roddy chirped as they made their way back up the levels. “This is like a floating palace.”

             
“It is young man,” They were stopped by a crew member—one of the ship’s officers, Amanda recognized. “And we have no doubt that the Titanic would survive any disaster that could befall it.”

             
“That is a pretty bold claim, Officer,” Amanda said.

             
“The White Star Line is in the business of being bold, ma’am. I do hope you will enjoy your voyage.” He lifted his hat and continued on his way down the promenade.

             
Amanda allowed Roddy and Neil to run down the promenade and tucked her hand more tightly in the crook of her father’s arm as they followed at a more sedate pace. An early spring wind tugged at her toque and veil, and she reached up a hand to check the security of her hat pin.

             
“Puss, my dear…” Her father said softly. “I’ve put off asking this for some odd reason, but…are you happy? Truly happy?”

             
“Of course, Papa,” She replied flatly. “Will you send me a Marconigram when you set out from Queenstown?”

             
“I only ask because I realize I might be an old foolish man who forced you into a marriage you did not want.”

             
“You couldn’t force me to do something I didn’t want to do,” She turned to face her father. “I leaped, or rather walked, down the aisle at Grace Church, with my eyes wide open. Any regrets will be solely on my part.”

             
“And do you?” He pressed. “Do you have regrets?”

             
She turned at the sound of one of her boys’ whooping with delight. “No, Papa, of course not.”

             
Her father breathed a deep sigh of relief, and it was almost as though the worry he had confessed never existed. She was surprised by brief spike of bitterness she felt at his ease in moving on and not even bothering to truly probe her feelings. They continued on, and she tuned half an ear to his cheerful recounting of some business exploit, or surprisingly, some conversation he had had with Ursula.

             
It was quite odd how witty and warm her mother-in-law seemed to be with her father, but perhaps it was because he was a temporary guest, whereas she was a permanent fixture at Bledington. The funnels tooted deeply and loudly across the estuary, and Amanda saw the stewards gathering guests out of dining rooms and sitting rooms and libraries. She called for her sons, who scowled and slowly made their way back to where she and her father stood.

             
“Well, Papa, have a safe trip,” She hugged him tightly. “Don’t forget to send the Marconigram.”

             
“Of course, Puss,” He then turned to clasp her sons by their shoulders. “Remind your mother to bring the two of you to New York. You can’t call yourselves my grandsons without seeing the Yankees and eating taffy at Coney Island.”

             
Amanda laughed at that, and after another exchange of embraces, she guided Roddy and Neil off the Titanic and back to the pier, where they stood to wave good-bye to her father. He stood on the deck, waving back, until the tugs began to pull the Titanic out of the dock and on its way to Cherbourg, where it would collect more passengers before turning towards the last stop—Queenstown—and finally off to New York. She looked down to make sure Roddy and Neil were still by her side when she heard a scream. She gasped as another ship narrowly missed sideswiping the Titanic in a collision that could have been fatal. She did not realize her heart was in her throat until she saw the ocean liners drift apart, and after a perilously long hour, the ship carrying her father finally continued out of the harbor.

             
“Don’t those captains know how to steer their ships?” Roddy sneered. “That wouldn’t have happened if I’d been at the helm.”

             
Amanda steered them through the crowds and back towards the gleaming Pierce Arrow parked along the kerb. Her father decided to allow her to keep it rather than pay all of those taxes and duties to ship it to America, and she’d gladly accepted the opportunity to drive his new motorcar. She opened the rear door for Roddy and Neil to climb into, and something small and rectangular fell out onto the pavement.

             
She bent to pick up and realized it was her father’s bank book. It was definitely much too late to send it after him, and she began to tuck it into her handbag until she realized it would not fit. She flipped it open and idly scanned the running numbers and check dittos, suddenly realizing there were many instances of uncommonly large negatives in his balances.

             
She closed the bank book immediately, and shoved it into her handbag, caring naught whether or not it fit, and she opened the passenger door to slide into the driver’s seat. She placed her hands tightly on the steering wheel until they ceased their trembling, and then felt able to turn the ignition and drive, drive back to Bledington.
Oh Papa
, she murmured to herself,
just what mess did you get yourself into?
Perhaps this was the source of the unknown trouble between her parents…she shook her head in denial, and forced her focus back to the road.

*          *          *

              “Tell me, Amanda,” Ursula looked up from her embroidery. “Did your father cross the Channel safely?”             

             
“He sent a cable a few hours ago from Queenstown,”

             
Ursula gave her daughter-in-law a second look, slightly curious over her subdued manner. She had been preoccupied since returning from Southampton, so much so even Viola mentioned it the other morning during their daily walks about the estate. She lowered her eyes back to her embroidery hoop, where she painstakingly looped the colors that would make up the missing threads in the pillows in the library. None of that replacing old, quality, but threadbare heirlooms with factory manufactured replicas for her. She possessed two hands and a detailed eye, and her governess had drilled her in embroidery every day of her childhood, so she was not going to allow her talent to go to waste.

             
“The Titanic,” She looped another cross-stitch into the canvas. “It is a very safe ship, I hear.”

             
“One of the officers mentioned something about bulkheads,” Her daughter-in-law sighed. “I know nothing at all about it, but he was very assured of their capacity to save the ship from sinking.”

             
Ursula started on another row of embroidery before speaking again. “And your mother? I am surprised she did not accompany him to England.”

             
“Why the curiosity, Ursula?” Her daughter-in-law said stiffly. “You’ve never shown any interest in my family.”

             
She raised her brows at Amanda, who had set aside her magazine. “I’m merely making polite conversation. I was under the impression you enjoyed polite conversation.”

             
She lowered one brow when Amanda scowled. “I am going for a walk in the gardens. If anyone should call, please send Maggie to fetch me.”

             
Ursula lowered the other brow as her daughter-in-law rose from the chaise and left the drawing room. She was loathe to admit it, but her “polite conversation” was merely a ploy to steer Amanda onto the subject she wanted: the charming, urbane Cornelius Vandewater. She made no excuses for allowing him to turn her head: she was fifty-seven, and had been without masculine companionship for over twenty years.

             
It was a mild flirtation that suddenly left her feeling bereft and full of the old resentment over letting Jeremiah Tewksbury slip away. She winced—she had not even permitted herself to think of his name in two decades, and now wounds she thought had healed burst open as though his very name were a lance.

             
Ursula busied her hands with the embroidery, wanting the distraction of the repetitious stitching and looping, snipping and snapping. If anyone knew what was racing through her mind it would drag her name through the mud, and so she forced herself to watch the design unfold over the canvas. She jerked her head up when the doorknob turned and closed her eyes when Beryl, now eighteen, sailed into the room, her masses of dark hair up and her hemlines touching the floor.

             
Here was the fruit of her onetime paramour, though fortunately—for her—Beryl Townsend bore only the faintest traces of her actual parentage.

             
Only Ursula, who knew Tewksbury in the most intimate of ways, caught a ghost of his smile when Beryl smiled or laughed. She was even left-handed like her father, though Ursula ordered the governess to cure Beryl of this affliction. She opened her eyes to stare at her daughter, both angry and resentful that the modes of the day required Ursula to emerge from her cocoon at Bledington to launch this uninvited child into the very milieu from which she hoped to hide her. It was not that she did not love her daughter, but her birth and the concealment of her origins had cost Ursula so much, and fear gnawed away at her mind that one day she would be found out.

             
She forcibly set her embroidery aside when Beryl fetched a book lying on the table and placed it on her head, “Miss Snowden has forced me to practice endless court curtseys until I want to keel over. How is this?”

             
Beryl kicked one heel back, her expression solemn, and sank into a deep curtsey, her skirts billowing gracefully around her on the carpet.

             
“Chin up,” Ursula scrutinized the girl’s posture. “You aren’t examining Their Majesties’ shoes.”

             
“I try,” Beryl lifted her chin, but the book on her head began to wobble. “See? This always happens, and then I start to wobble.”

             
She rose from the sofa to touch Beryl’s shoulders. “This is why—you must keep your posture quite erect; shoulders back and chin up.”

             
Beryl reached for the book and climbed to her feet. Their heights matched, and Ursula met her daughter’s merry gray eyes. “I fear I shall embarrass you this Season, Mama,”

             
“Nonsense,” Ursula turned away. “It is the simplest of acts, and if you believe that you will fall, you will fall.”

             
“I shall show you,” She swept the train of her teagown over her arm and despite being forty years past her debutante days she executed a flawless court curtsey.

             
“Oh, brava, Mama!” Beryl clapped. “You looked so lovely and fine.”

             
Ursula straightened from her impromptu curtsey at the timid knock on the door and ordered, “You may enter.”

             
Viola poked her head around the door, her eyes briefly skimming across the room until they fell on Ursula. “Shall I bring my typewriter into the drawing room, Your Grace, or will you do your correspondence in your boudoir?”

             
“I’m sure you have the machine with you, so bring it in here,” Ursula bent to tuck her embroidery into the wicker sewing basket on the floor. “You may return to your studies, Beryl.”

             
“Might I stay downstairs, Mama?” Beryl clasped her hands together. “I’m much too old to remain in the schoolroom all day—I am almost out.”