The Accidental Duchess Read online

  That was hard to imagine. But if Cecy said it got worse, I would have to assume it did.

  “He’s a groom,” she said, quickly. “Neither of them has a feather to fly with. Father has turned him off with no reference, of course. She wants to live with us until they can set up household.” She dropped her head again to her hands. Her shoulders began to shake.

  This time, Myrtia put a gentle hand on her, brushing back her hair. “Don’t cry, Cec,” she said, “like everything else, this too will pass.”

  Cecy lifted her head and it was impossible to tell whether she was laughing or crying. Tears were running down her face, but the shaking seemed more due to gasps of laughter than sobs. “So she will live with us, growing visibly more with child every day, while she waits to marry her lover who is, by the way, not yet two decades. I’m older than he is! And she thinks it would be lovely if I were to make her an allowance, to compensate her, as she puts it, for all the sacrifices she has made on my account.”

  We were silent.

  “Well, what do you think?” she asked, finally.

  “I think,” I said, slowly, “that all things considered, my drawers through opera glasses don’t sound all that bad.”

  “Somehow I thought you might see it that way,” Cecy said.

  “Oh, Cec, is there anything we can do?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “Just promise that when I end up cast off by Barings, living with my mother and her new husband, henceforth to be known as the child, and their child, you will still come visit me and bring me tales of the polite world.”

  “Not only will I visit, Cec,” I promised, “I’ll bring fruit.”

  And Myrtia nodded. “Any kind of fruit you want!”

  16

  In which Cambourne continues to be both brothers

  I thought quite a bit over the next few days about some of the things that had been said to me. In particular, though, it was one thing that Cambourne had said that kept running through my head. It had been something to the effect of: Sooner or later we all find ourselves in an unfortunate situation not of our own making. And that it was up to me to decide how I wanted to go on.

  The point being, I supposed, that regardless of why he had done what he had, the fact was that it was done, and now the responsibility for my own behavior was firmly on my shoulders. It was so like him. Direct, uncompromising, arrogant, and yet so frustratingly elusive that it made me want to shake him, to loosen something that would help me to know him. At least, I told myself, with his revelation that he thought himself in some way above losing his temper, I felt as though I had gained the tiniest foothold in understanding him.

  “Am I a petted, cosseted, spoiled brat?” I asked Myrtia, as we sat in my drawing room.

  She hesitated. “Why do you ask?”

  “Is that your kind way of saying yes?”

  “No,” she said, smiling. “I just wondered. It always helps to know the context before one commits to answering a question like that.”

  “Oh Myrtia,” I said, laughing, and then told her what Cambourne had said.

  “You are no more petted, cosseted, or spoiled than the rest of us,” she assured me.

  “Truly?”

  “Truly,” she said, and I felt better. “But,” she added, and my new sense of well-being faded abruptly, “that doesn’t mean there is no room for improvement. We can all always improve.”

  Which gave me more to stew on. “How do you think you would react to finding yourself in my situation?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  “You would be more mature about it, wouldn’t you?” I said darkly.

  She laughed. “I honestly don’t know.”

  But I was spoiled, I decided. All my life I had been surrounded by privilege without ever thinking about it. My parents, whilst not exactly doting, were hardly ogres. I had wonderful friends, and had been blessed with wealth, good health, the promise of an advantageous marriage, and healthy, if odious, brothers. And perhaps, most of all, I had always been able to drift along without having to make any decisions of more gravity than which new gowns to order and which balls to attend.

  “What do you like about me?” I asked Cecy the next day.

  She had bid me to come visit and take her mind off her problems with her mother, so of course I had headed straight round. I had found her slumped in the sitting room off her bedchamber. “Now,” she had said, “entertain me with tales of life, chez Milburn. I declare, between our two households, one hardly needs go to the circulating library anymore!”

  So I told her of the latest, how against all odds Cambourne and I seemed to have fallen into an armed détente. How he was going back and forth between his two identities with a speed that I found astonishing. How he was completely exhausted from spending long hours over estate business and in Parliament, and then coming home and assuming his Milburn mantle. Then I had asked her my question about what she liked about me.

  In reply, she gave me a rather diabolical smile. “Well,” she said, after a moment. “You are loyal, clearly—you did, after all, expose your derrière for me. And you’re very amusing.”

  “Do you think so?” I said, pleased.

  “Absolutely,” she said, firmly. “Lively and witty and clever.”

  “But do you think I am immature?”

  She waved a hand. “Maturity is greatly overrated,” she said. “Plenty of odiously mature people about, and one hardly finds oneself seeking them out.”

  “Myrtia’s mature,” I pointed out.

  “But not odiously mature,” she said. “And, anyway,” she added, “she’s really more thoughtful and serious than mature. But what are you getting at, Gwen?”

  “I suppose I am wondering what Cambourne sees when he looks at me,” I said.

  “I see,” she replied, looking at me as if she were thinking hard. “I suppose that would depend on how he feels about you. Two different people would have two different visions of any one of us, I would guess.

  “When I first met Barings,” she continued, “I thought he was rather ordinary, both in looks and demeanor. Pleasant, but nothing much out of the common way. But, then, as I came to know him, he seemed to grow steadily more handsome and fascinating until I couldn’t understand how I had ever seen him as ordinary.” I would have asked her more, but she held up her hand. “Don’t ask.”

  I opened my mouth to object, but she shot me a look that would have done Violetta proud, so I acquiesced. It was not as though I did not have my own fair share of problems to occupy myself with at the moment.

  More days passed in which Cambourne kept up both sides of his deception. I thought a lot, shopped, saw Myrtia and Cecy almost every day, and entertained endless visitors to endless cups of tea.

  One Tuesday, Cambourne/Milburn and I were entertaining an assortment of visitors. At some time nearing four of the clock, the room emptied, as people began to recollect that it was time to move on to their next call. Only Lord Trafford (yes, the Lord Trafford of the Stainsteads’ terrace Incident) and the Honorable Mr. John Darleigh had overstayed their welcome. I was attempting to simulate rapt attention to Mr. Darleigh’s accounting of a rather splendidly fascinating (his words, not necessarily my impression) curricle race in which he had recently participated, when Cambourne and Trafford, who had been seated across the room, made their way over to us.

  “Afternoon, Darleigh,” Cambourne said, making a slight bow, and then turning to me. “My love.” He fastidiously shook out his cuffs and sat down beside me, crossing one yellow pantaloon-clad leg over the other, pausing momentarily to admire the shine of his Hessians as he did so.

  Trafford perched on a chair. “Gloomy day, ain’t it?” he observed, but before we could get far with this thrilling line of conversation, two new arrivals were announced: Lady Emily Arbuckle and Mrs. Fanny Toth to pay their respects. Both were friends of my mother’s, but I was fond of them, nonetheless.

  “You two are attending my ball?” demanded Lady Ar
buckle without much in the way of preamble. “For, I warn you, I shall be most put out if you do not.”

  Cambourne, in best Milburn fashion, appeared preoccupied with Darleigh’s cerulean waistcoat. He eyed it with apparent disfavor. “I believe we are planning upon it,” he roused himself to say. “P’raps m’wife might even go so far as to save me a dance.”

  “Bit in the wife’s pocket, these days, aren’t you, Milburn?” observed Trafford.

  “D’you know, p’raps I am,” drawled Cambourne, relieving his sleeve of an invisible lint speck. “You have something to say to that, I collect?”

  “Bad ton,” observed Darleigh. “That’s all.”

  “Quite true, young man,” agreed Lady Arbuckle. “It is not done for couples to appear overly fond of one another these days.”

  “I blame,” said Mrs. Toth, “this mania for fashionable ennui. That was not the way of it in my youth!”

  Lady Arbuckle nodded her agreement. “To be sure, one does quite expect young couples to display a marked lack of preference for one another, I’m afraid.”

  Cambourne crossed his legs, and leaned back, somehow managing to possess himself of my hand. “Far be it from me to step a foot from the realm of the fashionable,” he drawled, pushing up the ruffle of my long sleeve, just enough to touch, for the merest instant, the sensitive skin on the inside of my wrist.

  “Truly, Milburn. Never thought to see you take quite so strenuously to playing the devoted husband,” observed Trafford.

  “Did you not?” Cambourne said lightly, his glance brushing me. “It had never occurred to me that I would be anything other than an … affectionate spouse.”

  “Only be warned, they are saying that you are a sad case, indeed,” said Trafford.

  “They?” inquired Cambourne with a raised brow that, in my estimation, looked just a little too ducal to have come from Milburn.

  “Y’know. They. At White’s, etcetera,” explained Darleigh.

  “How lowering,” replied Cambourne, not sounding in the least bit lowered. “To be thought a sad case! Am I to suppose we figure heavily in the betting books at the moment?”

  “How vulgar!” said Lady Arbuckle. “One cannot like this deplorable tendency of the young men about town to bet on the least little thing!”

  “I think it’s rather exciting,” said Mrs. Toth, merrily.

  “The wags are giving it another week,” Trafford assured him.

  “A week for the charms of one as lovely as my wife to pall!” said Cambourne, as he slanted a laughing look at me. “I hardly know whether the slight is intended toward m’self or toward you, wife.”

  “Oh, me, you may depend upon it, husband,” I assured him, returning his look. Surely Milburn’s eyelashes were never that long and dark? “I am certain your reputation remains intact.”

  “Then I shall simply prove wrong all those who would doubt your attractions,” Cambourne said, possessing himself once again of my hand and making a great show of turning it over and kissing the palm. When he raised his head, he directed a smile at me, so entirely different from Milburn’s that I wondered if anyone else had observed it.

  I tried to tear my eyes away from that smile, and the blood seemed to rush into my face. Cambourne, I realized, was flirting with me. Here. In front of a room full of people.

  But, “Ain’t like you, Milburn,” was all Darleigh said.

  I darted a look at Lady Arbuckle, but she, too, seemed to notice nothing amiss.

  Cambourne raised a brow slightly, as if to let me know that he knew precisely how much he could get away with. “Sometimes, Darleigh, a man is simply not himself,” he replied, with a hint of a smile, not looking at Darleigh, but at me instead.

  I almost choked on a laugh. “So long as he recognizes it,” I said.

  “He would have to be a fool not to recognize it,” he replied, not removing his gaze, and I felt my skin heat beneath the soft wool of my gown. “And no one who knows me,” he said, with lazy assurance and a hint of steel, “would mistake me for that.”

  And I knew that this was Harry to Gwen, nothing at all to do with Milburn. “No,” I almost whispered, my eyes caught with his.

  “I find it quite touching,” said Mrs. Toth. “That one so fashionable as you are known to be, Lord Bertie, could be willing to be thought a fool for love.”

  “It seems to me,” Cambourne said, still in that lazy Milburn-like way, “that a foolish man is one who leaves his wife open to any opportunist who might come along. Even one, say, inviting her to gaze at the sunset from the Stainsteads’ terrace.” Although Cambourne did not look his way, a slight color suffused Trafford’s countenance.

  “I don’t know,” mused Darleigh. “Are you implying that a man of wits would hang on his wife’s sleeve, Milburn?”

  “A man of wits, I think,” said Cambourne, looking directly at me, “would make certain his wife was so happy with her current state of affairs that she would have no interest whatsoever in … observing sunsets.” To me, his light tones conveyed a message not the least bit suited to the drawing room, but no one else seemed to have noticed.

  “Clever boy,” said Lady Arbuckle.

  “But surely one cannot expect a woman to lose her interest in natural phenomena simply because she has become a bride, Milburn!” Darleigh said to him.

  “Oh, I think one can,” he said, low, and I recalled, for a fleeting instant, our wedding afternoon. How he had stood behind me at the window and I had watched our reflections against the deepening sky as his hands had moved knowingly over my body. I knew the sun must have been setting, because it had grown steadily darker, and our reflections more pronounced, accordingly, but could not for the life of me have recalled what colors had streaked the sky, or, in fact, whether there had been any.

  Our gazes met, as the recollection heated my cheeks. I knew we were sharing the same thought. I let my glance fall away from his, and resisted the urge to open my fan and use it. Surely the room was not that warm?

  Fortunately for my peace of mind, Mrs. Toth turned to me. “And what time does the sun go down, my dear?” she asked, with a twinkle in her eye.

  I pulled myself together. “At forty-two minutes past three, yesterday,” I replied promptly, which was greeted by much laughter.

  “Now you shall have to redeem yourself, wife,” said Cambourne, smiling at me. “By agreeing to save a dance for a mere husband at Lady Arbuckle’s ball.”

  I dropped my gaze first. “A quadrille,” I said.

  “A waltz,” he replied, low, and I could almost feel his hand, warm, at my waist.

  I swallowed. “A quadrille. And that only if you are very well behaved between now and then.”

  “That’s the way,” said Lady Arbuckle, approvingly. “Keep him on a short string.”

  Everyone laughed further at this, but my mouth was dry as Cambourne’s gaze held mine.

  “He was flirting with me, I would swear it,” I told Myrtia later the next morning when she came to call. “And he was doing it so that I knew, but no one else did.”

  Since my disastrous attempt at seduction, I had more or less decided to bide my time, while I figured out what to do. And so Cambourne and I went about our lives, venturing out into Society. Overall, he was so good at being Milburn that I was able to tell myself that I really could not be faulted for not having recognized the deception from the first. Yet, every once in a while, I would catch him out. He would be unable to resist adding something to a debate about parliamentary issues, or his eyes would glaze over during a discussion of the Season’s colors, and he would give me that quick, secret smile of mutual understanding. And that, somehow, that growing connection, might have been the most troubling thing of all.

  If he was escorting Mathilde Claussen on the evenings he went out by himself, well, neither of us made mention of it and I didn’t witness it again. I had my dark moments of suspicion, of course, but refrained from confronting him with them. If anything, I was more aware now than before that as much
as I might object to his seeing Mathilde, I hardly was in a position to tell him he couldn’t.

  At home, we managed, seemingly by mutual agreement, to keep a rather civilized distance. As companions, there was no question that we rubbed along well together, although with each of us so intentionally on our best behavior, things were not as easy between us as they had sometimes been. And with the slight distance, I kept thinking that I should be less physically affected by him. The problem, of course, was that this was in no way the case.

  That traitorous trip-hammer-blush sequence seemed to happen quite a lot still. And I was no longer able to sit across from him at the table without recalling what it felt like to smooth my fingers through his hair, or press up against him, or be kissed by him, or, even, disgracefully, for him to have his hand on my breast. A little knowledge is indeed a dangerous thing, as the saying goes, and I often found myself wondering at odd moments if he would make that strangled kind of groaning noise deep in his throat were I to rise and press myself against him. Not thoughts particularly conducive to harmonious coexistence or restful nights of sleep.

  I also discovered, quite by accident, that Cambourne played the cello every morning. It had been my custom to stay abed fairly late in the mornings, partly because, in truth, I didn’t have all that much else to do. But then, early in the second week following the night at the Arbuthnots’, Cambourne bought me a horse.

  What happened was (all right, I admit it, despite my rational assurances that I understood I was hardly in a position to object to him seeing Mathilde, and rather rosy version of our life given above, the truth was that I had … objected) that we had argued. He had returned to Milburn House quite late one night, after having gone out as Cambourne. I was in the study reading (snooping for information), as I usually did when he went out. He had seen the lamp burning, and had come in.

  “Evening, Gwen,” he had said, leaning against the doorframe and crossing his arms. “You did not go out?”