An Ideal Duchess (53 page)

             
He paused, his hand on the light switch.

             
“Have you anyone with you?”

             
“No, I am alone. If you’ve come to rob me, I’m afraid you’ve chosen the wrong barrister.”

             
“The only thing I’ve come to rob you of,” The voice was a little stronger and more feminine. “Is your hospitality.”

             
“Miss Trant.” He flicked the light on to see his intruder, and nearly gasped in disbelief.

             
Jessica Trant was gaunt and hollow-eyed, her skin a sickly shade of pale gray, and she looked as though she would have crumpled to the floor if she were not holding onto his armchair.

             
“I’ve come to throw myself on your mercy, Anthony Challoner,” She said crisply, the old spirit back in her voice. “You see, I’m on the run from the police.”

             
“My God,” He staggered into the room, closing the door behind him. “How the hell do you expect me to help you? And what has happened to you?”

             
“A hunger strike, my dear Member of Parliament.” Jessica slowly walked around the armchair and then collapsed into it. “I have been in Holloway Prison for the past two months for sending Asquith a ticking present in his post, and when I refused to eat, they stuffed a tube up my nose and force fed me.”

             
Anthony closed his eyes in guilt. He had been aware of this new practice to combat the unruliness of the imprisoned suffragettes, but it had been an abstract concept until now. He sighed heavily and opened his eyes. “How can I help?”

             
The wariness and exhaustion around Jessica’s eyes lifted. “I shall need a way to Paris.”

             
“You can barely walk around my rooms; how are you going to get all the way across England, cross the Channel in choppy waters, and then on another train to Paris without collapsing?”

             
“I can too,” Jessica gripped the arms of the chair and tried to rise. Her skin turned a sickly green and she fell back into the chair with an
oomph
. “Well, Mr. Challoner, I suppose you’re right. What do you propose to do with me?”

             
Anthony looked at Jessica, who, despite her gauntness, remained the vibrant, fiery woman who haunted him since their first meeting, and smiled sardonically. “You can marry me.”

             
Her eyebrows flew up quickly. “You’re mad.”

             
“The police are searching for Jessica Trant, not Mrs. Anthony Challoner,” He crouched beside her chair.

             
“What will you say if I tell you I don’t believe in matrimony? It only further imprisons women to the injustices of society.”

             
“Would you rather your gaoler be someone who force feeds you into submission, or someone who admires your principles?”

             
“Your tongue is much too dexterous, Mr. Challoner.” She closed her eyes. “But I shall marry you, just don’t expect me to obey.”

             
“Good,” Anthony rose with a jaunty smile. “We shall marry tomorrow, post haste, by special license.”

*          *          *

              Amanda stared at the sleeping forms of her sons, fighting the desire to be a coward and remain as Malvern’s wife. Last night proved it a completely intolerable situation, and the only thing that could save them both from a lifetime of misery was if she broke away from him and this toxic situation. She would fight for her boys, however, no matter if it depleted what was left of her fortune. She crouched between their narrow beds and shook them awake. They were bleary-eyed and sleepy, but she gathered them into the tightest embrace she could possibly give. Their arms went around her neck, two identical boys with such divergent personalities, and she only pulled away when she didn’t want them to see her tears.

             
“I’m going to visit Grandmama in America,”

             
“For how long, Mater?” Rodborough asked with a deep yawn.

             
Amanda paused, stumped for the answer. “Two weeks, a fortnight.”

             
“That isn’t long at all,” Neil lay back on his bed and stretched. “Will you bring us presents when you return?”

             
“Only if you behave as you should,” She scolded gently. “Your headmaster despairs of your behavior Roddy.”

             
Her eldest son waved a hand in dismissal. “I don’t get into half as many scrapes as he claims.”

             
Amanda could only roll her eyes at his excuse. She stood, with one last caress of their faces, and then turned to go.

             
“Good-bye Mater,” The both said sleepily, their eyes already closed as they drifted back to sleep.

             
“Good-bye darlings,”

             
When she reached the ground floor, Maggie was already there with her travel case.

             
“You’re a brick, Maggie,” Amanda breathed. “New York will suit you quite well.”

             
“Will it, Your Grace?” Maggie gave her an excited smile. “I’ve always hoped to travel there one day, ever since you told me about how lovely it is.”

             
“Lovely isn’t a proper word…it’s immense,” Amanda lowered her voice as they crept carefully past Ursula’s boudoir. “Skyscrapers and luxury apartments, slums of the Lower East Side, and it’s incredibly noisy. Much noisier than London.”

             
“And you’ll send for me?”

             
“As soon as I land in New York, I will do so.”

             
Maggie moved to open the front door for her.

             
“Are you leaving?” Malvern asked quietly behind her.

             
She turned to face him as Maggie beat a hasty retreat back to her bedroom. Malvern had been drinking, the scotch glass in his hand empty save for the clinking of melting ice.

             
“Should I stay? Give me one reason why I should, Malvern.”

*          *          *

             
Christ
. Malvern stared blankly at his wife, all sharp angles and crisp lines in her gray wool traveling suit and wide black hat. His eyes dropped to her travel case, smooth leather, silver clasps, large enough to carry a few days worth of clothing, though, considering how many clothes she owned, he would scale that back to one and a half days worth. She was waiting for his answer, but his mind and tongue could not seem to work in tandem, and his heart pounded loudly in his ears with the knowledge that if he did not speak, she would leave him.

             
She would leave him, the less rational side of his mind thought. Leave him, embarrass him, and expose the family to ridicule again.

             
She lifted her chin and pivoted on her heel.

             
“No,” He said numbly. “Wait.”

             
“Tell me Malvern,” She said softly. “Do you love me?”

             
The word
love
seemed to explode in the air, bracketed by her dulcet tones. If love meant doing one’s duty when one wanted to run against it, if it meant upholding certain standards, and overseeing the welfare of others, then yes, he did love her. But he supposed that was not her definition…she wanted unruly emotions and irresponsibility and recklessness. The sort of emotion that ruined lives and left the people who cared for you in the lurch.

             
The sort of emotion he was afraid he did not have, one he was not supposed to have. His hand, the one holding the scotch glass, fell limply at his side as he stared at her. All of the sudden, her face contorted, her beautiful, lovely, golden-American-heiress face, crumpled into tears. Great, ugly, red-faced, sodden tears that made him feel angry and helpless.

             
He reached for her, but she had already spun away and darted out of the open door, down the steps, and to the motorcar sitting at the kerb. His scotch glass slipped from his fingers to shatter to pieces at his feet, but he didn’t care, and ran to the door and down the steps. But by the time he reached the kerb, she was already pulling away, gone, leaving, fleeing, escaping. And because of him, because he was the biggest, cruelest, most foolish man who could not separate himself from the position he had acquired. The wind whistled across Belgravia, a cold, ill, spring wind, that sliced through his shirtsleeves and trousers, instantly snapping him from his scotch-created fog, and the finality of her departure finally hit him.

*          *          *

              They returned to Bledington shortly after Beryl was presented to the King and Queen at Buckingham Palace. A hole seemed to have formed in the household once Amanda departed, with even Beryl listless and glum after the excitement of her first season. Bron lied to his mother about her leaving, but he could not lie about the return of their financial insecurity due to Cornelius Vandewater’s folly.

             
It had come out in the press soon enough, with newspapers feasting on the shocking death of Vandewater on the Titanic, his connection with an English duke, and the mysteriously hasty sale of his sugar empire just weeks after his going down with the lavish White Star liner on its maiden voyage. His uncle Lord Charlie had trooped up from Sussex to discuss breaking the entail now that he was rumored to be hard up again in spite of his American heiress bride.

             
Charlie was currently an established guest at Bledington, replete with his father’s finest cigars and wines and Mrs. Alcock’s excellent cooking, while Bron put off making the decision to break the entail, which irony of ironies, had been kept together because of his marriage. Now his marriage was over and he was back in the same place he was ten years ago: burdened by crippling debt and alone.

             
Bron stared at the innumerable rows and columns of numbers in the estate’s ledger book, Matthews’ precise handwriting bleeding into itself after six hours of attempting to juggle accounts with income and what he had left of Amanda’s marriage settlement. He closed his eyes at even the thought of her name crossing his mind. He was furious with her for leaving and furious with himself for allowing it, but he shrank away from the thought of pursuing her, of watching her face wax cold when he could not say what she wanted him to say. He shuddered in pain at her rejection if he did manage to find some ticket for a liner to travel to New York. It was too much; the onslaught of emotions tumbling inside him was like a live wire, as though he had poked his finger into an electric socket and now sizzled and crackled like a piece of raw, undercooked meat.

             
He touched the blurring numbers on the open page, staunching the running ink markings before he realized the moisture ruining the accounts were falling from his face, from his wretched, dry and prickling eyes. He had never wept before, not even when he saw Alex’s coffin lowered into the Townsend vault, his brother, his twin shut away in stone for eternity, and it shamed and angered him.

             
He dashed at his face with a crumpled handkerchief, and then crushed it into his pocket when he caught a whiff of Amanda’s perfume, only to take it out and walk to the fireplace, where he dropped it onto the coals. The silk burned slowly, curling away from the flame, as though it gave him an opportunity to save it from extinction before disappearing into a pile of ashes. He hesitated briefly, and then reached for it, uncaring that the fire singed his fingers, but it was too late, and he touched its sticky remains before it melted into itself.

*          *          *

              Viola waited until she was sure of everyone’s slumber and crept towards the staircase and down the steps to the Saloon, the object of her attention being Bron. She knew he was concealing something from her, something so large and important he would not even share it with her, his oldest and dearest love.

             
The mahogany floor of the Saloon was cold and clammy beneath her bare feet, and she moved towards the plush Axminster carpet stretching across most of the room. He was awake she knew, for he had remained ensconced in the drawing room all evening, first with his mother, and then with Lord Charlie.

             
She stood in front of the drawing room door, wanting to savor this moment, the moment she had waited for and had finally come: Amanda was gone. Bron, to her mind, did not seem to mourn her absence at all, and Viola even dared enough to presume that he was relieved. She finally reached for the knob and sighed with relief when it turned easily—it was not locked. She pushed open the door to a blaze of lamplight and Bron jerked up from the chair at his desk, his expression startled and angry.