An Ideal Duchess (55 page)

             
“I’m going to take you to London, to your Mater,” He said haltingly. “She will keep you safe while I am away.”

             
“Is there going to be a war, Father?” Rodborough asked hesitantly.

             
“It seems so,” He shifted his feet. “But it will be over by at least Christmas.”

             
“That’s no fun! I’ll still be a little boy.” His heir looked aggrieved.

             
“For which you should be grateful,” Bron said, slightly exasperated and amused by his bloodthirstiness.

             
The governess returned shortly thereafter, holding two bulging Gladstone bags. He took them from her with a nod of thanks, and the gestured for the boys to follow him downstairs. He met Viola in the Saloon.

             
“Where is my mother?” He asked, wanting to cut any conversation between them as short as possible.

             
“Bron—”

             
“I will go find her myself,” He walked around Viola and headed for the drawing room.

             
He found his mother there, seated on the couch with her embroidery hoop. The walking stick she needed for mobility lay against her leg.

             
“I’m taking the boys to Amanda,” He said without preamble.

             
“There is nothing wrong with their remaining here,” Her accident shortly after Amanda’s bold choice to end their marriage had not diminished her imperiousness.

             
“There is not, but they should be with their mother.” He said. “I shall write you as soon as I can.”

             
“Malvern—Bron—”

             
He turned when his mother called him by his given name. She only nodded, too proud, as was he, to express her anxieties over his departure. He walked back to her and bent to kiss her cool cheek before returning to the Saloon, where Viola hovered over his sons.

             
“Good-bye,” He said curtly, and gestured for the boys to precede him from Bledington.

             
Jacky Wilcox, also clad in his RFC uniform, had the motor waiting for them outside. Wilcox saluted him, as his superior, and then jumped into the chauffeur’s seat. Bron helped Rodborough and Cornelius into the enclosed passenger seat. He ducked inside behind them, and was touched and surprised to see the entire staff coming from the front door to see him off. He lifted a hand in good-bye and then stared up at the great facade of Bledington Park, the longtime home of the Townsend family and the Dukes of Malvern. It had withstood Roundhead sieges, fires, and the alternations of the building-mad 3rd Duke, and would withstand this war. It was what he was fighting to preserve, no matter if his foolhardy clinging to this tradition had cost him his marriage.

*          *          *

London
             

             
Beryl linked arms with Lady Diana Manners, Nancy Cunard and Iris Tree as they pushed through the crowds filling The Mall and around the Victoria Memorial as everyone awaited His Majesty’s arrival on the balcony of Buckingham Palace. It was a lark, milling about with the common people instead of cheering on the war in a respectable drawing room.

             
Mama would be horrified if she knew Beryl was not at Lady Randolph’s, but Beryl had quickly come to realize that her mother’s concepts of respectability were shaped by her desire to control and prohibit rather than genuine concern, and she just as quickly shed her concern for such concepts.

             
“Can’t we get any closer?” Nancy muttered, her kohl-rimmed blue eyes darting about the crowd.

             
“Not unless we could sprout wings a fly,” Beryl replied with a laugh.

             
“We ought to find some strong man to lend a shoulder,” Diana drawled. “One of these deevie enlisted men.”

             
There were a lot of enlisted men in the crowd, khaki soon blotting out regular summer suits, and Beryl’s amusement over her friends’ frank perusal of brawny privates and corporals faded at the thought of Anthony joining up to fight. She remained soppy over him no matter that he was married, and she could not rightfully give her hand in marriage to one of her innumerable suitors when her heart belonged to him for good.

             
The laughter of her friends and the roar of the crowds reminded her of her pledge to live for pleasure alone. She forced herself to forget all thoughts of Anthony Challoner or respectability as a private Diana found lifted her onto his shoulder to see His Majesty better.

             
People began honking klaxons as the hour struck nearer eleven o’clock, and Beryl’s cheers strangled in her throat as she surveyed the excited crowd, suddenly realizing that what they so eagerly awaited was the hour that would mark their devastation.

*          *          *

              Amanda could hear the cheers of the crowd ‘round Buckingham Palace from her home in Eaton Place. Surprisingly, Malvern had only one condition when she demanded custody of their sons—that she remain in England—and sent his solicitor to London to take a lease on a home. She had fallen in love with the small, elegant Belgravia townhouse the moment she stepped through the door, and two years later, she remained disconcerted by Malvern’s uncanny recognition of her tastes.

             
She interrupted her rubber by rising from her seat, startling her guests, and walked to the window overlooking the terrace, pushing aside the curtains to see into the starry black night. Someone joined her at the window: Lady Aysgarth, who murmured, “So it has begun; Britain has declared war on Germany.”

             
“It seems so,” Amanda said softly. “How calm the night seems, when we shall expect much destruction on the morrow.”

             
Bim and his wife Jessica and Sir Phillip Aysgarth came to join them at the window, and she closed her eyes at the sound of another cheer. She and everyone else had thought nothing of the Archduke’s assassination in late June, but events had escalated before anyone could draw a breath of sanity.

             
All of England’s domestic troubles—Irish Home Rule, the Curragh Rebellion, violent suffragettes, strikes, Lloyd George’s reforms—were swept away by the ultimatum sent to Germany earlier that evening.

             
“What was it Grey said?” Anthony said shakily, clutching the surprisingly quiet Jessica’s hand. “’The lamps are going out all over Europe. We shall not see them lit again in our time’”

             
They all stood there in stunned silence for a while, and Amanda wanted to close the curtains, but the reality of the war could not be escaped, and unbidden, her thoughts turned to Malvern.

             
“I suppose we should make our way home before the crowds grow too thick,” Sir Phillip said gravely in the silence.

             
Lady Aysgarth and the Challoners agreed, and Amanda forced herself to play hostess, perhaps for the last time, to see them off at the door. They all went through the motions of goodbyes and promises to attend planned suppers and parties before departing in their automobiles.

             
She turned to find her servants hovering behind her in the hall, and smiled slightly when they immediately turned away, pretending to be engrossed in some task. Granby, her butler, straightening the flowers on the table, Sarah and Enid, the housemaids, dusting the balustrade, and Cartwright, her chauffeur, Mrs. Nash and Mary, the cook and scullery maid, respectively, moving towards the service door. Maggie should have been there, she knew, and she had no excuse for her grievous mistake in allowing the turmoil of her father’s death and her struggle to end her marriage to make her forget to send for her lady’s maid and friend.

             
Her fear of retaining any link with Bledington was to blame, and by the time she felt brave enough to write the name on an envelope, she was too afraid of Maggie’s rejection to send the letter.

             
She closed the front door with a sigh and cleared her throat as five pairs of eyes—alternately worried, anxious, excited, and bewildered—turned her way.

             
“As you may be aware, Britain has declared war on Germany a few minutes ago,” Amanda maintained a firm but even tone. “What this means, I freely admit my ignorance, but if you would like to join the crowd at Buckingham Palace, I shall gladly overlook any tardiness in the coming morning.”

             
“Cor!” Sarah exclaimed. “Are we really going to fight the Germans?”

             
“Well it’s about time, is all I can say,” Granby said in his rolling Scottish brogue. “Beg pardon, Your Grace.”

             
“No, I somewhat agree, Granby,” Amanda said bemusedly.

             
She walked back into her morning room when the servants returned downstairs to collect their hats and coats in order to join the throng of people waiting for His Majesty to speak. She touched the abandoned cards on the green baize table and then gathered them into a stack, cutting them neatly, and then sliding them back inside their pack. She folded the legs of the bridge table and was carrying it across the room to rest against the wall, when someone knocked on the door. She set the table down, leaning it against the chair, and moved back towards the entrance hall. She supposed whomever it was had rung the bell, but since the sound went downstairs for Granby to answer, they realized they had to knock.

             
She opened the door and froze. Malvern stood on the other side, his face shadowed by the brim of his peaked cap. She ran her eyes across his khaki uniform visible beneath his open trench coat and its officers’ markings, and back to his face, as her knees wobbled. She planted her feet firmly on the floorboards before she gave way to the impulse to faint, and touched the wall for composure.

             
“You’re going to war.” She whispered inaudibly.

             
“I’m afraid so,” He said tightly. “I’ve brought the boys with me.”

             
She pulled her eyes away from his face to see the small faces of Roddy and Neil peering around his body.

             
“Come in,” She backed away from the door, slightly dazed and thrown in a fog of confusion by his uniform and by his presence in her house.

             
“Hello Mater,” Neil hugged her briefly before joining Roddy in lugging their Gladstone bags upstairs to the bedrooms she always designated for their use. She stared at Malvern again, eyes fixed on the unfamiliar markings of what she supposed was his rank. “The…Army?”

             
“The Royal Flying Corps,” He corrected her with an inscrutable look. “Quite a different outfit.”

             
“I see.” She swallowed, her throat tight. “You’ve always been interested in aeroplanes, now that I recall…that is how we met. You were flying.”

             
“Crashing, more like,” His words should have been humorous, but they emerged as neutral as his expression.

             
“Is the war going to be long, do you think?” She tried for an equally neutral tone, but her voice trembled beneath her anxiety.

             
“I don’t know.” His impassivity disappeared and he looked just bleak as he removed his peaked cap and ran a hand through his hair. “Christmas they say, but this feels different.”

             
“Yes, it does,” She whispered.

             
Their eyes met and for once, his expression was open and genuine, a mixture of fear and certainty that caught her heart. He shifted his glance about the entrance hall with a brief, wistful smile, before looking at her again.

             
“Amanda, I—” He closed his eyes with a tiny frown.

             
She found herself leaning towards him, as though this would force him to continue whatever it was he wanted to say.

              But he opened his eyes and it disappeared behind the blank wall of duty. He turned away to look out of the door, his stiff, officer’s bearing already proclaiming him a million miles away with more cares than their obsolete marriage.

             
“I must be off. Have picked up a few other men on the way to the camp. I’ve said my farewells to the boys, so don’t bother calling them down.”

             
Amanda followed him to the door, where he paused to turn towards her. Malvern looked on the verge of saying something again, perhaps touching her with the hand he braced on the wall beside her head, and she stiffened. His mouth was grim, and he lifted the peaked airman’s cap to place it snugly on his newly-trimmed hair. He gave her one last, long, inscrutable look and then nodded.