An Ideal Duchess (50 page)

             
It took a moment for the bold, black, screaming headlines to sink into her brain, and she had read halfway down the front page before her mind caught up with her eyes. She shrieked, nearly dropping the breakfast tray in her shock. Cedric lowered the newspaper and nodded grimly.

             
“You’d better get up there to warn Her Grace before someone else—someone less gracious, mind you—gives her the news,”

             
Oh, Her poor, poor Grace
, Maggie repeated over and over to herself as she hastened up the servants staircase to her mistress’s bedroom.
Oh, Her poor, poor Grace
. She braced the tray against the wall as she freed one hand to twist the knob and open the door, backing into the room and then nudging the door closed behind her with her foot. She turned, planning to set the tray over Her Grace’s lap on the bed, when she saw Her Grace standing beside her bed, white and swaying as she stared at the telegram in her hand.

             
“M-Maggie,” She whimpered before crumpling into a dead faint.

             
This time, Maggie did drop the tray, food and breakfast service shattering and splattering as she rushed to catch her mistress before she reached the floor. She staggered beneath Her Grace’s heavy, limp body just as the door flew open to reveal His Grace, hair wild with sleep and his dressing gown half tied.

             
“What the devil?” He growled, and stepped gingerly over the broken contents of Her Grace’s breakfast.

             
“Th-the Titanic, Your Grace,” Maggie stammered warily, shifting her hold on Her Grace. “It’s sunk.”

             
His Grace stared at her in incomprehension, those frightening gray eyes of his trained on her face in a manner no member of the family—save for Her Grace—ever did. She was unaccustomed to such scrutiny, particularly from him, and she lowered her eyes, grunting as Her Grace began to slip from her grasp.

             
“Give her to me,” His Grace demanded, even as he was already lifting Her Grace out of Maggie’s arms.

             
He laid her carefully on the bed, a pained, raw expression on his face until he realized Maggie was watching him. He glanced impassively at her and crossed his arms. “Now what has sunk?”

             
“The Titanic,” She repeated. “With Her Grace’s father aboard. She had a telegram.”

             
“Good God!” His Grace looked wildly about the room.

             
Maggie bent to take the telegram from the carpet. “Here it is.”

             
He read the telegram and she watched his face shift from bewildered to a sickly white horror. Until the end of her days, Maggie would never forget the look on His Grace’s face, or the sound of his voice, as he ordered her to fetch the doctor.

              Bron reached for his wife the moment she gasped awake, her eyes a crystalline blue in a face leached of all color. Almost immediately, she began shivering, great, body wracking, and disturbing shudders, and he instinctively climbed into bed with her to wrap his arms and legs around her body to stop those disturbing shudders.

             
To his shock, she was cold and clammy beneath her nightgown, rivulets of sweat causing the white flannel to cling to every curve of her body. He scowled in disgust at the line of his thoughts; he was the greatest fool to ever walk the earth, and she was right in denying him her bed. He wrenched his mind back to her crises, his own mind blanking with shock at the thought of Cornelius Vandewater perishing at sea.

             
“Malvern,” His mother appeared in the open door, clad in blue velvet dressing robe and her still dark hair wrapped in curling rags. “What on earth is this about Mr. Vandewater dying on the Titanic? Moreau rattled on in French so I could hardly understand her. My word, what is wrong with her?”

             
He jerked his head at the telegram once again lying on the floor. His mother bent to retrieve it, and paled, her eyes widening as they moved back to Amanda’s damp, shivering body. “Cover her, Malvern. The blanket.”

             
He reached for the blanket his mother plucked from the floor, and pulled it over and around Amanda until it was tucked tightly beneath her chin. Her eyes stared wildly, sightlessly about the room until they snapped onto his, and he flinched from the revulsion he read in her gaze.

             
“No!” She pushed at his arms and hands, teeth chattering. “Not you. Let me go, Malvern. Not you.”

             
He released her immediately, slid from the bed, and stricken mute by how wretched her rejection made him feel. Not even in the deepest bowels of grief could he be trusted with her, and he stared dully at her when she closed her eyes and turned away from him, still shivering and her teeth still chattering. His mother moved beside him and placed a hand on his arm.

             
“Malvern—”

             
“I’ve told her maid, Wilcox, to fetch the doctor,” He said evenly. “Satterthwaite ought to be here soon.”

             
“Of course,” His mother said just as evenly. “He is good and loyal.”

             
They stood silently, awaiting the arrival of Dr. Satterthwaite, as Amanda suffered untold agony over the loss of her father. He turned to the door as it opened to see Wilcox ushering in the doctor, her small, heart-shaped face set in determined lines.              

             
“I’ve kept everyone away, Your Grace,” Wilcox belatedly bobbed a curtsey.

             
“Thank you, Wilcox,” His mother said, before turning to the doctor. “I’m so grateful you could come on such short notice, Satterthwaite.”

             
“I was just stepping from my cottage when your maid arrived to fetch me,” Dr. Satterthwaite set his Gladstone bag on the edge of Amanda’s bed. “Her Grace has fallen ill, I believe?”

             
“Her da—her father,” Wilcox burst out. “He’s gone down with the Titanic.”

             
Amanda moaned, a ghostly, unearthly moan that raised the hair on Bron’s arms and goosepimples on his bare skin. He remembered his dressing gown was open, and hastily closed the lapels and tied the sash tightly around his waist. “She received a telegram of his passing this morning.”

             
Dr. Satterthwaite nodded gravely, and moved towards Amanda, who allowed him to turn her onto her back to check her vitals. Bron began to feel a bit detached from the proceedings, and his eyes drifted across the bedroom, noting the slightly fraying tassels on the bed’s four posters, and the flattened piles on the carpet. Those ought to be replaced, he thought idly, wondering why she chose to neglect her bedroom when she infused so much of her dowry into the house and the estate.

             
And his investment in the British and Colonial Aeroplane Company
, a small voice reminded him. It was a cracking company, and one run by men who saw the future in flight. This idealism was particularly vital in the wake of news reports about the aerial battles between Italy and Libya. He blinked, his mind almost like a blasted fugue, when he realized the doctor began to speak.

             
“She’s experienced a great shock, of course,” Dr. Satterthwaite said calmly. “A sleeping draught should keep her nicely for a few hours.”

             
“I can see to it, Dr. Satterthwaite,” The maid, Wilcox stepped forward, her hand outstretched.

             
“You shall have to stay with her all day,” Dr. Satterthwaite frowned. “I oughtn’t keep you from your duties.”

             
“I am her lady’s maid,” Wilcox said primly. “Her Grace
is
my duty.”

             
“She is correct, Dr. Satterthwaite,” His mother replied. “Come along Malvern, doctor…Her Grace is in excellent hands.”

             
Bron stared down at Amanda, and then flicked his gaze at the proud, fierce countenance of her lady’s maid. His lifted his brows in surprise when Wilcox met his eyes, her small mouth pursed stubbornly and insolently. He narrowed his eyes warily at the girl, and she lifted her chin. He nodded shortly with the thorny knowledge that Amanda was in far more capable hands than his, and turned to follow his mother and the doctor from the bedroom.

*          *          *

              It was a full three weeks after her father’s death, and Amanda still wore bleak, unrelenting black in mourning for his passing, much to Ursula’s dismay. Malvern varied between studied indifference and wary hovering, and his indecisiveness made her even angrier than when they last quarreled. He had not come to her bedroom again, though at times, in the midst of her grief, she wished he would so that she would have someone to fight or someone to touch her in some way to fill the empty deadness inside.

             
To her surprise and relief, Maggie remained in black as well, and Amanda was touched by her maid’s fierce loyalty and devotion. She paused in her task of responding to the many letters of condolence she’d received in the interim to pinch the bridge of her nose against the throbbing ache that pounded behind her eyes. What she wouldn’t give to toss them into the fire and never see a black-bordered missive ever again in her life.

             
There were letters from social acquaintances, members of her father’s London-based American club, from the Ambassador and the Consulate, from other Americans residing permanently in England, and, much to her surprise, even one from Her Majesty, the Queen Mother.

             
Of course that one could not be consigned to the rubbish basket, but it was tempting, and she could only imagine the staggering amounts of correspondence her mother was now dealing with. She closed her eyes at the thought of her mother, now suddenly widowed, and thanked God that at least she had been spared the nightmare of going down with the ship.

             
She flinched at the nightmares that plagued her thoughts, the imagery dredged up by tabloids on both sides of the Atlantic flickering across her brain like a motion picture. She had stumbled from acute shock and hours of blissfully drugged sleep, to sleepless, hollow-eyed nights where she devoured every scrap of information shared in the newspapers, as though one day she would find a headline declaring it was all a mistake.

             
Cornelius Vandewater and some fifteen hundred souls had not perished in the icy Atlantic. The boat had not sunk. They had all been saved by the combined efforts of the
Carpathia
, the
Mount Temple
, and the
Californian
.

             
Any day now she would receive a cable from her mother or brothers declaring Cornelius was in his study, barking orders at one of his board members on his telephone. And White! She squeezed her eyes tightly at the sudden reminder of her father’s longtime valet. White would fuss and sigh while he attempted to dress her father for the day, cursing Cornelius Vandewater’s inability to remain still for more than five minutes at a time. She could almost smell the scent of cigar smoke and Bay Rum that was her father’s signature fragrance, and nearly cried out when it almost seemed as though he was there, sitting in the library with her, calling her “Puss” and extolling the virtues of Bledington and the English manner of living.

             
She wrenched her eyes open and dabbed at the tear stains that had fallen onto her letter to the Ambassador and smudged her ink. The tears fell faster as she ruined the letter, ink spreading across the white vellum and staining her fingers, and she pushed the letters, envelopes, blotter, and pen away in frustration, pulling her crumpled handkerchief from her pocket and wiping her face.

             
“Oh!”

             
Amanda spun quickly around to see Beryl standing in the library, twisting her fingers with a sorrowful expression on her face.              

             
“Oh, Amanda,” Beryl ran to her and folded her into an embrace. “I told Mama I refused to have my season since we are in mourning—”

             
“You silly goose,” Amanda held her sister-in-law at arm’s length. “You mustn’t do so on my account.”

             
“But I want to,” Beryl said, frowning stubbornly. “How am I to enjoy myself when I know you’re here all alone, suffering from the loss of your father? I was quite young when I lost my own, but I know yours must be important to you for his loss to be so painful.”

             
“You’re right, but I am the one in mourning, not you.” Amanda lowered her arms and sighed. “Now go tell your mother you’ve changed your mind.”

             
Beryl eyed her suspiciously. “I’m not blind Amanda, I see how Mama is about you, which is why you need an ally, a friend.”