Christmas with the Duchess Read online

  Lady Anne jumped. “Come, girls,” she cried breathlessly, hurrying her daughters from the room.

  “Now, then,” said Lady Harriet, holding her candlestick up to get a better look at the young man in front of her. “Let’s have a look at you. My goodness! You are a beauty, aren’t you?”

  Nicholas gaped at the old lady in astonishment.

  “You must take after your mother,” she stated. “As a rule, the St. Austells are small, ugly, tedious creatures. But you’re like a big, bronzed Nordic god, aren’t you?”

  “I—I don’t think so,” he said, blushing. “But thank you, ma’am.”

  Her dark eyes twinkled at him. “Come, my lord, I will show you to your room.”

  “I wish you would call me Nicholas,” he said. “I don’t feel like a lord. Any moment now, I feel like I’m going to wake up from a dream and find myself back in the navy,” he confessed.

  Lady Harriet glanced back at him in surprise. “Since I am old enough to be your grandmother, I don’t see why not. And you may call me Aunt Harriet, if you like. That’s what the young people call me.”

  Nicholas followed her through a maze of corridors to a large, beautifully appointed chamber. A cheerful fire crackled in the fireplace.

  “Well, Nicholas! I hope you will be comfortable here in Westphalia,” Lady Harriet said. “It is not one of our best rooms, I’m sorry to say, but that is what happens when you are late. All the good rooms are taken.”

  The young man looked at the huge, four-poster bed in amusement. “I was put to sea, ma’am, when I was but nine years old,” he told her.

  “That explains it, then,” said Lady Harriet.

  “Explains what, ma’am?”

  “Why you seem to have absolutely no idea just how attractive you are,” said the old lady. “But, if you were put to sea when you were nine; if you have been in the company of men, for the most part, since that age, that would explain this strange case of modesty. Most young men with your good looks are vainglorious, insufferable peacocks.”

  “I hope I am not a peacock,” said Nicholas. “I was going to say, ma’am, that, in the Royal Navy, we are used to sleeping in our own coffins. When one of us dies at sea, he is simply nailed inside his bed and lowered overboard into Davy Jones’s Locker.”

  “Good God,” said Lady Harriet.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” he said quickly. “That is not fit conversation for delicate ladies.”

  “I am not so delicate as I appear,” Lady Harriet said dryly. “If you would prefer to sleep in a coffin, we will, of course, have one brought in!”

  “No, ma’am, I thank you. The room is more comfortable than any I have ever had the pleasure of seeing.”

  “Did your valet arrive earlier in the day, my lord? I will try to find him.”

  “Oh, we don’t have such things as valets in the Royal Navy,” he told her, chuckling. “I was not the captain, ma’am, merely a lowly lieutenant! And a second lieutenant at that. I can look after myself. I always have.”

  Lady Harriet inclined her head. “In that case, my lord, I bid you good night.”

  “Good night, Aunt Harriet.”

  My God, they’ll eat him alive, Lady Harriet thought sadly as she left him. She had not expected him to be so nice.

  Emma’s French maid roused her very early the next morning. Emma sat up, rubbing her eyes as Yvette fired streams of French at her.

  “What?” Emma cried, jumping out of bed. “When?”

  Pulling on her dressing gown, she ran to the door. Carstairs, the dignified old butler, stood there. “When did Lord Hugh arrive?” the duchess demanded.

  “Very late last night, your grace. After everyone had gone to bed. My subordinates did not make me aware of it until this morning.”

  “I’m sure they wanted to let you sleep, Carstairs. My sons were not with him, I understand.”

  “No, your grace,” Carstairs answered in his funereal voice.

  “You have not received any instructions regarding their arrival?” she asked hopefully.

  “No, your grace. Lord Hugh has asked me to inform your grace that he will see you this afternoon at three o’clock in the Carolina Room—if he is not too busy. You are to wait for him there?”

  Emma bit back a curse. “Is that so? Is there anything Lord Hugh desires?”

  “No, your grace.”

  “I’m afraid three o’clock is not convenient,” said Emma. “Where is Lord Hugh now?” she asked, forcing herself to speak calmly.

  “He’s been placed in the Dresden Suite, your grace.”

  Emma frowned. “And where the devil is that?” she wanted to know. The house was so large, and she visited it so seldom that she did not know all the rooms. “No, don’t bother trying to tell me. You’ll have to take me to him, Carstairs,” she said decisively. “The house is full of strangers. It would never do if I went to the wrong room.”

  “No, your grace,” he agreed.

  “Wait here while I get dressed.”

  The duchess’s toilette usually took three quarters of an hour, but this morning her maid’s perfectionism had to be balanced with Emma’s desire to be done quickly. In the end, it took fifteen minutes, and neither woman was satisfied. The maid ran after her mistress, putting the finishing touches to Emma’s hair until she could keep up with the duchess’s pace no longer.

  “Is he awake, do you know?” Emma asked Carstairs. “If he’s gone down to breakfast already, I shall miss him.”

  “I do not know, your grace. I felt it best to come to you, directly. But it is not Lord Hugh’s habit to wake early.”

  “He brings his sad little wife with him, of course, and all their daughters,” Emma murmured as she followed the butler through the house. “I’m surprised he didn’t invite all his friends, too! But, perhaps, he has no friends.”

  “His lordship did bring one young man with him,” said Carstairs.

  “Only one?” Emma snapped angrily. “But why should he not invite anyone he likes to my son’s house? This young man is attached to one of the girls, I suppose,” she sniffed. “Do we hear wedding bells, Carstairs?”

  “The night footman informs me that the young man is Lady Anne’s nephew, your grace.”

  “Anne’s nephew?” Emma repeated, frowning. “If Anne has got herself a nephew, why, he must be the new Earl of Camford! The one they’ve been looking for all these years.”

  “Yes, your grace.”

  Emma gave a short laugh. “I’d heard they were scouring the globe for some long-lost heir, but I had always assumed he was entirely fictitious. I suspect this young man is nothing more than an artful impostor. His discovery—just as the Crown was about to take possession—! well, it’s too convenient for belief. Has the Crown conceded?”

  “There was an announcement in the Times of London some weeks ago. Your grace was in Paris.”

  “Oh, I see,” Emma said, making a face. “It must be true, then. Well! Hugh and Anne must be delighted that Camford won’t be reverting to the Crown, after all.”

  Carstairs prudently offered no comment.

  “I wonder they do not spend Christmas at Camford,” Emma said after a moment. “But then again, why shouldn’t they entertain his lordship here instead, with little trouble and no expense to themselves? The earl must be a single man.”

  “I believe so, your grace,” Carstairs replied evenly. “At least, his lordship does not bring his wife with him.”

  “Of course he’s single. They would not bother with him if he were married already; he would be quite safe from the Miss Fitzroys. He will be expected to marry one of them, of course. I suppose he is to be pitied.”

  Emma fell silent, mentally preparing herself for the coming interview with her husband’s uncle. She wondered if, in her battle with Hugh, Lord Camford could be an ally, or, at least, a useful tool.

  As they passed through the long gallery that separated the east wing from the west wing, a young man suddenly stepped from behind one of the marble columns,
stopping directly in Carstairs’s path. Emma looked at him curiously. She was sure she had never seen him before, but, then Warwick Palace was always full of strangers at this time of year. He was too brown to be a gentleman, she decided, and his ill-fitting clothes, she noted with some amusement, were of poor quality. His coat was so tight that it all but pinned his arms to his sides. Though he was tall, much taller than she, his shoulders were pulled forward by his tight coat, giving him a round back, and causing him to stoop a little. She didn’t like his long hair.

  He looked distinctly out of place amid the incredible grandeur of Warwick, where even the servants were splendidly and immaculately dressed. He reminded her, oddly, of poor Cecily, who could never get it right, no matter how much she spent on clothes. Unlike Lady Harriet, Emma could not look past his flaws to see that he was actually quite good-looking. She did not see a bronzed Nordic god. She saw a scruffy-looking, badly dressed, overgrown boy.

  “May I be of assistance to you, sir?” Carstairs said smoothly.

  “Please! I’m completely lost, I’m afraid,” the young man confessed. “One needs a compass and a map in a place like this! Would you be so kind as to direct me to the breakfast parlor? I think it’s around here somewhere.”

  “Which breakfast parlor would that be, sir?” Carstairs asked.

  The young man’s eyes widened. “Which breakfast parlor?” he echoed in disbelief. “You have more than one, then?”

  “Yes, sir,” Carstairs said gravely. “There are four: the summer breakfast parlor, the spring breakfast parlor, the autumn breakfast parlor; and the winter breakfast parlor.”

  “Perhaps it would be simpler to ring for a footman,” Emma suggested, out of patience.

  At the sound of her voice, the young man’s eyes flew to her face. He blushed, staring. His mouth did not hang open, but it might as well have. Emma guessed he could not be more than nineteen. She promptly dismissed him as a mooncalf.

  “I beg your pardon, ma’am!” he exclaimed, stuttering and bowing. “I did not see you there.”

  “Do you see me now, sir?” Emma asked him tartly.

  “Oh, yes, ma’am!” he answered, shy and eager at the same time. Emma did not find his lack of sophistication refreshing. She could almost imagine that he had never lain with a woman before. He behaved almost as if he had never seen a woman before.

  “Oh, excellent. What you want to do is find a bell and ring it,” Emma told him. “Do you think you can manage that, sir?”

  “Yes, ma’am! Thank you, ma’am!” he said gratefully. “I don’t know why I didn’t think of that. I’m not used to servants, you see.”

  Emma caught sight of a footman at the end of the hall. She beckoned to him, and he hurried over. “Would you be good enough to take this young man to the nearest breakfast parlor, with my compliments.”

  “Yes, your grace. This way, my lord, if you please.”

  Emma started in surprise. “Did you hear that, Carstairs?” she said in amazement, when the young man was out of earshot. “Arthur milorded him. Does he know something we don’t?”

  Carstairs looked aggrieved. “He must be Lord Camford. Now that I think of it, he does meet the description.”

  “What!” Emma exclaimed in astonishment. “That—that cub who gawped at me like a country bumpkin? That is the Earl of Camford? Where in God’s name did they find him?” she went on, beginning to laugh. “In a Hertfordshire hayrick?”

  Carstairs was still suffering from the mortification of having incorrectly addressed a Peer of the Realm as “sir.” But he set aside his pain to answer the duchess.

  “I understand his lordship was a lieutenant in the Royal Navy.”

  “The navy?” Emma echoed in surprise. While the younger sons of the aristocracy routinely served as officers in the army, the navy was considered quite beneath them. Naval officers typically were drawn from the gentry. Emma laughed lightly. “Well, that explains it, I suppose! What a fine thing for the Miss Fitzroys!”

  A short while later, Lord Hugh was shrieking in terror as Emma threw open the door to his bathing closet. Without his corset he was fat, and without his wig he was bald. Boiled pink by the hot water, he was not a pretty sight.

  “Oh, good, you’re awake,” said Emma, in a tone of dire boredom.

  “You!” he sputtered, his round, black eyes staring from his bald head. “How dare you! I am naked!” he cried. “Have you no shame?”

  “Of course not,” Emma replied. “Don’t you read the gossip columns? Shame is exactly what I do not have.”

  Lord Hugh’s heavy face turned almost purple. Veins stood out in his forehead. Quickly, he snatched the corners of the bathing sheet that lined the big copper tub, wrapping himself up like a package. All the while, he screamed for his manservant.

  “Don’t worry, Uncle,” said Emma, as Lord Hugh’s valet came into the room, fluttering his hands ineffectively. “I did not come to gaze upon your crudites. You know why I’m here. I want to see my sons. Where are they?”

  “Don’t just stand there, you idiot!” Hugh screeched at his valet. “Get this woman out of here! Throw her out, you imbecile!”

  “Touch me, and I’ll have you killed,” Emma calmly told the valet, securing his immediate withdrawal. “Now then,” she said, turning back to Hugh with a wide smile. “You were just about to tell me where my children are.”

  Lord Hugh sank down in the tub, scowling at her. “I do not have to tell you where they are,” he said petulantly. “There is nothing you can do. You are only a woman.”

  “I am their mother!” Emma protested.

  “But I am their guardian.”

  “You stupid man!” said Emma, reduced by frustration to petty insults. “Where are they?”

  He sniffed. She had caught him off guard, but he was back in control now. “I thought you were in Paris,” he said conversationally.

  “I always come home for Christmas. You know that,” she said coldly.

  “I could have saved you the trouble. Did you not get my letter? But I suppose,” he went on contemptuously, “you were much too busy entertaining your French lovers to bother about your children.”

  “I received no letter,” Emma snapped. “And my children were perfectly safe and content at school, along with all the other children of the nobility. You took it upon yourself to interrupt their education, take them out of Harrow, and put them God knows where! Where did you put them? Are they even at a school?”

  “If you had read my letter, madam, you would know where they were,” he told her. “You would also know that I have many debts of honor.”

  Emma stared at him. “And why should I be interested in your gambling debts, sir?”

  “Because you must pay them, of course,” he answered as if she were a simpleton.

  “Indeed! Why is that?” she asked.

  “Because I cannot pay them, and you are rich,” Lord Hugh explained, apparently amazed by Emma’s stupidity. “When he was alive, my nephew Warwick always paid my debts. I explained all this to you in my letter,” he added petulantly.

  Emma controlled her temper with difficulty. “Even if my husband did pay your debts—which I do not believe—what has it to do with me?” she demanded. “I am no relation to you, except by marriage. Why should I pay your debts?”

  He sighed. “In a perfect world, madam, your son would pay my debts. But his grace is still a minor. If I could borrow the money from the duke’s estate, I would, but these damned lawyers are very tightfisted. I can’t squeeze so much as a farthing out of them! Nay, madam, it will have to come from you. My debts are very pressing. Let me be blunt. If you do not pay my debts, you will not see your children. Is that simple enough for you to understand?”

  “You expect me to pay to see my own children?” Emma said incredulously.

  “Money is nothing to you,” he stated resentfully. “That German mother of yours left you millions, didn’t she? Seven thousand pounds would clear me entirely.”

  “Then you must rais
e the money, sir,” she said coldly.

  “I am a Fitzroy. We are descended of King Henry the Eighth. A Fitzroy does not go to Jews,” he said indignantly.

  Emma laughed angrily. “No! He blackmails women, using their children as pawns!”

  Hugh grew red in the face. “Will you pay or not, madam?” he snarled at her.

  “No, I shan’t!” she said.

  “Then you will not see your children,” he huffed, “if that matters to you.”

  “You are bluffing,” Emma said confidently. “The war is over. Michael will be coming home any day now. He will expect to see his brother’s children. How will you explain to Lord Michael Fitzroy that you have kidnaped his nephews and are holding them for ransom?”

  “There will be nothing to explain because you will pay me, madam,” he answered. “I came up with the plan myself. Therefore, it is bound to succeed.”

  She scoffed at his sheer stupidity. “You would not dare prevent the Duke of Warwick and his brother from returning to their own home for Christmas. You would be reviled by everyone you know. You would be blackballed from your clubs. And, if it comes to it, do you think Lord Camford would marry the daughter of such a man?”

  Lord Hugh started up in his bath, the color draining from his face. “What do you know of Camford?” he demanded, but his voice was hollow.

  Emma saw at once that she had struck a nerve. “I know you would like him to marry one of your daughters,” she said, pressing her advantage. “When I expose your character, he will not be able to get away fast enough!”

  “You speak to me of character?” he cried furiously. “Harlot! Jade! If my judgment is questioned, I will simply say that, as their guardian, it is my sacred duty to keep the boys away from the poisonous influence of their mother, a known wanton. Your beauty may blind others to the impurities of your own character, but I know all, madam. I know all about your little bastard, and the provisions you made for her.”

  Shocked, Emma trembled, her face white. “What?” she gasped.