An Ideal Duchess (45 page)

             
“Wear your tiara, Puss,” Her father tapped a finger on the object in question. “It makes you look like a real duchess, almost royalty.”

             
“Maggie has already dressed my hair to go with the pearl combs,”

             
“You can fix it up in a trice to go with the tiara, can’t you Maggie?” He winked at her lady’s maid.

             
“Of course, sir,” Maggie went pink beneath her father’s mild flirting.

             
She sat still while Maggie redressed her hair to fit the Bledington tiara. She glanced at herself in the mirror, finding the glittering, opulent tiara almost too grand for a dinner en famille at Bledington. She had worn the tiara when out and about with Sylvia, but since that monumental cock up, she kept it tucked away in her jewelry box. Seeing it on her head after nearly six years brought a wave of nausea she immediately stifled, and she rose from the seat to escape her haughty reflection.

             
“I’m sorry Mother couldn’t come,” She turned to her father. “Was she very ill?”

             
“Ill?” Her father waved the smoke out of his face. “Where did you hear that bit of news?”

             
She frowned at him. “I merely assumed that she had to be ill to not accompany you to England.”

             
An inscrutable expression crossed her father’s face before he lifted his shoulders in a brief shrug. “I don’t quite understand your mother these days, but she did send her regrets and hopes to come over in the fall.”

             
“Papa—” She laid a hand on his arm, searching his face for a hint of the potential difficulties.

             
“Don’t fuss, Puss,” He said irritably, his cheeks turning red.

             
She knew not to press for more, realizing that she wasn’t the only one who to conceal one’s marital troubles for the sake of emotional peace, and smiled her thanks at Maggie before allowing her father to escort her down to dinner.

*          *          *

London

             
Amanda conceded that her father might have been correct in urging her to travel to London for a taste of the season. Of course, things were very different now, with the King dead and His Majesty King George V on the throne—namely, Town had lost a touch of its lavish, frenetic air—but the typical social functions carried on. As it was March, London had not yet filled up, but there were a fair number of people attending the charity bazaar held in the Hotel Cecil in support of the London Hospital. She clutched her programme as she followed the circuit ostensibly to view the gewgaws made and sold by royals and other ladies, but mostly to examine the latest feminine attire before the season began and have a bit of gossip about one’s fellow peers.

             
She felt safe, even superior, in her sartorial tastes, attired in a House of Redmayne walking suit of black and white striped charmeuse and white hobble skirt with just a peep of black on the hem. Her hat, large and white, with flowers and a white stuffed bird on the crown, was an original Virot, her umbrella Redfern, and the handbag dangling from her wrist from Lucile.

             
She could feel puzzled but admiring glances thrown her way, for she had been out of society for so long, her face was no longer instantly recognizable as that of American beauty and heiress Amanda Vandewater, later the Duchess of Malvern. The anonymity suited her, for she would rather stroll about the banquet floor of the Hotel undisturbed than to exchange pleasantries with strangers.

             
She paused at a stall selling lace handkerchiefs ostensibly sewn by the Countess of Fairholme’s own hand, and was reminded of the exquisite items created by the village girls at Bledington. After their initial interest had been piqued by her suggestion, the local branch of the Girls’ Friendly Society voted against “giving the girls airs” or making them feel “higher than they ought to be” by encouraging them to tat lace and embroider for their own living.

             
Amanda was so disgusted and irritated by yet another sign of her insignificance, that she declined any further visits to their meetings. Ursula refused to speak with her for an entire week, but she considered her time better spent with her sons than with a group of intractable old women.

             
She smiled her thanks at the tired young girl running the Countess’s stall and turned right into a slightly familiar face. The young woman lifted her soft cap to reveal smooth brown hair cut in a thick fringe that tapered into an unruly version of the Castle bob.

             
Amanda frowned, puzzled and recognition tickling at the edges of her brain. “Lady Dulcie?” She said hesitantly.

             
“The one and only, as theatrical types like to say,” Lady Dulcie looked her up and down. “You look rather ridiculous, but you’ll have to make do.”

             
“What?” Amanda replied soundlessly, bewildered by Lady Dulcie’s change of subject. “I don’t look ridiculous.”

             
“You do, my dear duchess,” Lady Dulcie said as she grabbed her arm and began pulling her out of the bazaar. “Both in attire and most likely when you squeeze into my sidecar.”

             
“I beg your pardon; this is the latest mode,”

             
“The latest mode of ridiculousness!” Lady Dulcie replied cheerfully. “You can’t even walk in that blasted hobble skirt.”

             
“If you would stop dragging me, I could,” Amanda tugged on her arm, reluctant to admit that she could only take small, hobbled, mincing steps in her skirt. “And to where are you attempting to drag me?”

             
“To Bethnal Green,”

             
“Isn’t it a rather dangerous area?” Amanda replied nervously.

             
“It is, but the people aren’t savages,” Lady Dulcie smiled challengingly.

             
They reached the entrance of the Hotel Cecil, where six black-clad men stood arguing over some object in the courtyard entrance.

             
“Pardon me, gentlemen,” Lady Dulcie released her arm and stepped in the middle of the men. “Thank you for watching my vehicle.”

             
They parted, faces creased with consternation, to reveal the source of their aggravation: a motorcycle equipped with a sidecar. Amanda glared at Lady Dulcie when the woman mounted the machine (she wore a divided skirt, Amanda realized) and gestured for her to climb into the sidecar.

             
“Climb in, Duchess.”

             
Amanda opened her mouth to object before she realized she had little to object to, and indeed, that it might be rather amusing to ride in a sidecar. She managed to maneuver into the small sidecar without destroying her clothing, and tied the scarf Lady Dulcie handed her snugly around her hat and beneath her chin, and then fastened the motoring mask she found in the seat over her face. She stuck her umbrella beside her and held on as Lady Dulcie turned on the motorcycle and kicked off to a roaring start out of the courtyard.

*          *          *

              “This is my settlement house,” Lady Dulcie was saying as they walked through the halls of the sprawling brick former warehouse. “But it is attached to my brother’s parish—he’s the Reverend David Hambly, you know.”

             
“Hambly?” Amanda frowned at her. “As in Hambly Court? I thought your parents were the Marquess and Marchioness of Tewksbury.”

             
“Oh they are, but they are David’s parents as well,” Lady Dulcie lifted a slim dark brow. “He was born when my mother was still married to Sir Rufus.”

             
“My God…you mean you and he are Beryl’s siblings?”

             
“Ah,” Lady Dulcie smiled ruefully. “So you’ve discovered that secret as well? It shouldn’t worry you a bit—my father has many bastards strewn throughout various hunting packs. Think of him as a human stud.”

             
“You don’t sound too cut up about it,” Amanda was rather shocked by these revelations.

             
“Why should I be?” Lady Dulcie shrugged as they turned a corner. “There is David right now, and his wife Reggie.”

             
Had she not been regaled with tales of illicit births and bastards, Amanda wouldn’t have given David Hambly a second look. He was tall and fair, and rather unremarkable in any way, but he had the kindest, sweetest smile when he greeted her and she felt somehow lifted in spirit.

             
His wife, however, was dark and dramatic in appearance, with the keenest green eyes—eyes which presently narrowed at Amanda with cool suspicion. She had not survived nearly ten years as Ursula Malvern’s unwanted daughter-in-law without learning the art of the withering stare, and the Reverend Hambly’s wife looked away first with a murmured, “Your Grace.”

             
“Oh, I do hope you shall dispense with all of that here,” Reverend Hambly smiled warmly. “Please.”

             
“Of course, Reverend,” She extended her hand. “Amanda.”

             
“David,” He shook her hand. “And my wife Reggie.”

             
“Regina,” Mrs. Hambly corrected.

             
David appeared faintly amused by his wife’s correction, but merely took her by the arm and steered her to fall into step with she and Lady Dulcie.

             
“Now, what has Dulcie told you about the settlement?”

             
“Only that it is
her
settlement,” Amanda grinned.

             
“I thought she’d stick on that point,” David returned her grin, which made him look almost handsome.

             
“Oh tosh, David,” Lady Dulcie said heatedly. “I must stress that it is mine, since it has been taken—forcibly, might I add—from my control.”

             
“You are still listed on the board, and they give you a rather long leash on which to run Taplow House.”

             
“I shouldn’t have to have any leash,” Lady Dulcie glowered. “If it weren’t for that bloody Silvanus Dewsbury—”

             
“Five pence, Dulcie,” Mrs. Hambly said smugly.

             
“Oh bloody hell, not that!” Lady Dulcie stopped in her tracks.

             
“Two crowns now,” David said blandly.

             
“Pirates!” Lady Dulcie handed two crowns to Mrs. Hambly, who promptly dropped the coins into one of the boxes affixed to the doors.

             
“For swearing,” David explained with a roll of his eyes towards his wife and his sister. “We can’t curb some of the salty language of many of our settlement inhabitants if two, ahem, ladies, cannot control their tongues.”

             
Amanda laughed, dreadfully and genuinely amused.

             
“Anyways, as I was saying,” Lady Dulcie continued. “If it weren’t for that blasted—”

             
“Dulcie,” David said warningly.

             
“Blasted isn’t swearing.”

             
“It is when you are using it as substitute for the oath,” Amanda lifted a brow at Lady Dulcie.

             
“Not you too!”

             
Amanda merely laughed again, and was pleased when the others joined in as well. They continued on their tour of the premises, and Amanda found that their mission—to bring the privileged into everyday contact with the underprivileged, through education and care, and advocacy and discussion of the problems of the poor—was incredibly exciting.

             
Lady Dulcie and David playfully fought over who was to explain all they did at Taplow House Settlement, and even Mrs. Hambly began to thaw a little beneath Amanda’s genuine interest in their work. She saw poor, ragged children playing with abandon, and working class men in deep discussions with long haired, neatly tailored young men David explained attended his college at Oxford, and lots and lots of women.

             
“It was a women’s settlement at first,” Lady Dulcie said. “I worked with the Women’s University Settlement when I came down from Somerville, but I wanted a place to explore my own concerns, and David managed to obtain this building for me.”

             
“She’s fortunate that I’d just been transferred to this parish,” David picked up the story. “Lang—the Archbishop of Canterbury now—was concerned about the fiery radical who clomped about the East End, rattling a donation box and proclaiming damnation on all who did not support her mission, and my assurances kept their worries at bay.”