The American Duchess (15 page)

Chapter 19

“The engend’ring,” quoth he, “of beauty in beauty aright were the engend’ring of a beautiful child in a beautiful woman; and I would think it a more manifest token a great deal that she loved her lover if she pleased him with this then with the sweetness of language you spoke of.”

—The
Book of the Courtier

The month of January went very slowly for Tracy. Parliament reopened and Adrian went up to London for days at a time. She missed him. She felt ugly and fat and dull. She felt as if March would never come.

Her winter boredom was finally alleviated, but not in a pleasant manner. It was a cold, wet day in late January when she picked up one of the newspapers at breakfast, saw the headline, and went white and then red as she read the article.

General Andrew Jackson, on an expedition to West Florida, had arrested two British subjects as spies. He had had the two men, a Scot named Arbuthnot and an ex-marine named Ambrister, tried by an American military court, and then shot.  All of this had occurred several months ago, but the news had just hit England. It exploded like a bombshell. All of the newspapers were clamoring for the government to take action against the United States.

Tracy was terribly agitated. The Duke was in London. Richard Rush, her Ambassador, was in London. She decided that she had to go up to London too, and rang the bell with great vigor to order the carriage.

Wilton was almost as agitated as Tracy by her order. He was quite sure the Duke would not want his wife to be traveling in her condition, and, as he, a mere butler, could certainly not prevent her, he went to the one person whom he thought might have some success. He went to Miss Alden. The governess thanked him for his information and made her way with some misgivings to the Duchess’ bedroom.

She found Tracy pacing about like a caged tiger as Emma, looking distressed, packed her portmanteau.       “Tracy, I must speak to you,” the governess said quietly. Tracy merely shook her head and kept on pacing. Miss Alden made a gesture to Emma, who turned and hurried out of the room.

Tracy turned on the governess. “How dare you send my maid away? I am going to London, Elizabeth. Haven’t you read the papers? England is going to declare war on my country!”

“Yes, I have read the papers, but I feel quite certain that there will be no war. You know the English papers, Tracy! They always exaggerate.”

Tracy’s eyes were green as grass. “I don’t know what to think and I am going to go where I can find out the truth of it. I want to talk to Mr. Rush. I want to see my husband.” The room was electric with her alarm and her determination. Miss Alden was a little overwhelmed, but she made another effort.

“Tracy.” Her voice was urgent. “Think. The Duke would not want you to travel in your condition.”

That was the crux of the matter.  In fact, Miss Alden herself did not think a drive up to London would harm Tracy, but the Duke would be very angry if she went. Miss Alden was quite sure that some of that anger would be directed at herself for not stopping his wife from making what he would regard as a foolish and dangerous journey. She could not bear it if he were displeased or disappointed with her.

Miss Alden had been aware for many months of the power of a pair of dark blue eyes, of the fascination of a face that resembled to her mind an engraving on a fine old coin. She wanted, very much, for him to think well of her. “His Grace will not like it,” she repeated desperately.

“Then it’s too bad about him,” retorted his wife, and the door opened behind Miss Alden.

“Really,
ma mie
,
”
an easy voice said in soft complaint, “that is hardly respectful of you.”

“Adrian!” cried Tracy with intense relief. “I was going to come up to London to find you.”

“Yes, well, that is hardly necessary, now that I am here,” he replied reasonably.

“Is there going to be a war?” She was rigid, her eyes still glitteringly green.

He looked profoundly surprised. “War?
Of
course there is not going to be a war. Good heavens,
ma mie,
you don’t believe the papers, do you?” He walked across the room to take his wife in his arms as Miss Alden backed slowly out the door.

She went downstairs to cancel Tracy’s order for the carriage, only to find that the Duke had already done so. He had left London at the unheard-of hour of six in the morning in order to reach Steyning Castle by ten. He must have known how his wife would react to the newspapers. Miss Alden sighed with relief that the responsibility for Tracy was now off her shoulders.

It had taken all the Duke’s skill to soothe and reassure his wife. It had taken a great deal of patience and forbearance as well. According to Tracy, Arbuthnot and Ambrister were scoundrels who had been stirring up the Indians along the American border. They deserved, in her vigorously voiced opinion, everything they had gotten.

The Duke thought otherwise, and in a frank conversation with Richard Rush, he had gathered that the American government was not happy either, but felt it had no choice but to stand behind its General.

This was not an opinion he could advance to Tracy. She was always slightly defensive about her country, always quick to detect smugness and condescension in the English attitude toward America, and on this issue she would admit no wrong. General Jackson was a hero, and Arbuthnot and Ambrister were scoundrels and skunks. Period.

Her unreasonableness grated on the Duke’s nerves, on his finer sensibility, but he displayed only infinite tact. He got Richard Rush to come down to Steyning Castle. He put in heroically long hours with the Cabinet in order to insure that the situation would
not
come to war, a possibility that was not as remote as he had implied to Tracy. In fact, months later, Lord Castlereagh would say to Richard Rush that such was the temper of Parliament and such the feeling of the country that he believed war might have been produced by holding up a finger. That the finger was not held up, according to Castlereagh, was largely due to the Duke of Hastings.

It was a trying time for Adrian.
On one hand, he had his own countrymen, whose tempers were running very high over the “murders” of Arbuthnot and Ambrister. And on the other hand, he had his wife, who kept telling him the English should see what it was like to try and live along a border where alien malcontents were stirring up Indian atrocities. It was all very wearing and made him realize for perhaps the first time that having an American wife was not all roses.

* * * *

The crisis passed, however, and March arrived. International politics faded from Tracy’s concern and approaching childbirth took their place. She made Dr. Brixton sit down and describe to her the whole process. He had been reluctant at first, afraid to frighten her, but she was adamant. “I can face anything if I know what it is,” she said. “The unknown is far more frightening, I promise you.” So he described the process of birth in detail, and she listened attentively. She thought she was prepared.

Her imaginings, however, did not come close to the actual pain of the reality. The pain was terrible, so terrible that it swallowed her up, consumed her, so that she was not Tracy any more, but just pain. She moaned with it, writhed with it, all the time bearing down, trying to push the child out so that it would be over and the pain would stop.

Her labor began at five in the morning and the doctor arrived at six. As soon as
Dr. Brixton arrived, with a woman to assist him, the Duke was banished. Mary had been sent to stay with Lady Bridgewater two weeks earlier because it was not considered suitable for a young girl to be in the house while a birth was in progress. Miss Alden had accompanied Mary and Harry was at school, so he was alone.

For the Duke it was an interminably long day. He breakfasted and then wrote letters in the library all morning. He walked around the garden for a while in the early afternoon, and returned to the house and the library where he sat at his desk with estate work in front of him. He had been staring at the same paper for over an hour when there came a knock on the door and Dr. Brixton appeared. It was the second time the doctor had come to make a report.

“Yes?” the Duke asked sharply.

“It will be a while yet, Your Grace. It’s a breech birth, I’m afraid.”

“Breech birth? What is that?”

“The baby is coming out buttocks first instead of head first, Your Grace.”

“Is that dangerous?”

“Not necessarily,” the doctor said soothingly. “But it takes longer. The Duchess is being extremely cooperative. There is no cause for you to worry.”

Tea was brought into the library at four and the Duke, his face expressionless, poured himself a cup, which he drank slowly, standing by the window. At five o’clock the door opened to reveal
Dr. Brixton. “I am happy to tell you that you have a son,” he said with a smile.

The Duke was standing in front of the fire. “And my wife?”

“The Duchess is very tired
,
Your Grace. It was not an easy birth, I can tell you that now. But there is no reason for her not to make a full recovery.”

For the first time all day there was a flicker of expression in the Duke’s eyes. He crossed the room to the doctor. “May I see her?”

Dr. Brixton nodded. “For a few minutes. She needs to sleep, Your Grace.”

The Duke nodded. “I understand.” He hesitated, as a thought struck him. “And what do
you
need, my dear man? A glass of wine? A brandy?”

The doctor laughed. “A glass of wine wouldn’t come amiss, Your Grace. It was a long afternoon.”

“Yes,” said the Duke quietly as he pulled the bell. “It was.” When a footman appeared he ordered a bottle of wine for the doctor and two glasses. “I’ll join you shortly,” he said with a faint smile, and
Dr.
Brixton looked enormously pleased.

He walked with measured tread up the stairs and along the corridor to Tracy’s room. He stood for a minute in the doorway, watching her. She looked so slight in the big bed.

“Adrian.”

Her voice sounded low and thin. He crossed the floor to her side and picked up her hand. She looked gray. Her beautiful tawny hair was dark with sweat.

He was holding her hand so tightly that Tracy felt the bones ache. “It was a long day,
ma mie
,
” he
said.

She smiled a little. “Go look at your son.”

He walked over to the cradle and stood for several minutes looking down. He thought of the months Tracy had toiled around, uncomfortable and unaccustomedly awkward. He thought of the long, long labor and the tiredness of her face. And out of it all—miraculously—had come this perfect baby. A son. Another Deincourt to carry on his name and his heritage. Without saying anything, he walked back to the bed.

Tracy felt exhausted and she knew she looked dreadful. Yet Adrian, when he returned to her side, stood looking at her as if he were regarding a miracle. After all she had been through, it helped enormously to have him look at her like that. “Isn’t he beautiful?” she murmured. “He came out the wrong way.”

“He is beautiful and so are you. And now you are going to go to sleep.”

She nodded a little and the nurse came into the room behind them. “Thank you, my love,” he said softly and, bending, kissed her on the mouth.

As he reached the bottom of the stairs on his way to rejoin the doctor in the library, he was surprised to see a large number of people assembled in the hall. It seemed as if half the servants in the house must be there the Duke thought. He smiled a little. “Her Grace has had a son,” he said, telling them what he supposed they wanted to hear.

There was little change in the expressions before him. Then Wilton said, “And Her Grace is well, I hope?” The Duke suddenly realized that all these people were worried about his wife. He was surprised and deeply touched.

“Her Grace is well,” he said. “Tired, but well.” And the faces before him split into smiles. He thought, with wonder, as he proceeded toward the library, that he had not been the only one keeping vigil through that day.

Chapter 20

Is love a tender thing? It is too rough,

Too rude, too boist’rous, and it pricks like thorn.

—Shakespeare

It took Tracy a long time to recover from childbirth. Physically, she was exhausted. She had had a difficult delivery and she found nursing the baby painful and draining. But she fought her fatigue, refused to admit it to either her doctor or her husband. She had always been so splendidly healthy that she had had no experience with physical weakness; she tended to regard it as a moral flaw in herself that she should be so constantly tired.

Her mental state was even more seriously depressed than her physical one. She found herself missing her father dreadfully. There was a great pit of loss inside her whenever she realized that he would never see this little grandson, would never play with him on the floor or take him sailing off Beachy Head.

She was homesick. Tears came to her eyes whenever she heard someone call her baby his ‘little lordship’ or ‘Lord Hythe’. It seemed a measure of her foreignness that she should be the only one to call her son Billy. Even Adrian called him by the more formal William.

She hid her grief and her homesickness as well as her fatigue. The outward face she presented to the world did not at all reflect her inner state. But the toll of concealment was severe; dammed up inside, all her feelings—perfectly normal feelings of post
-
childbirth depression and fatigue, grief for a lost parent and homesickness—created a pressure of terrible tension. Denied any outlet, they festered instead of healed.

One of the results for this inward turmoil was that she began to doubt herself. She became convinced of her own inferiority and inadequacy as a wife. The Duke had returned to his governmental duties and was once more traveling back and forth to London. Tracy felt horribly guilty that she was making him live the kind of life that involved constant travel and a part-time wife. She was an inadequate wife in other ways too. Sexually, she just could not respond to him, and after one or two times he had ceased to approach her. He was being infinitely patient, and that made her feel guilty too.