Paula Marshall

  The Daring Duchess

  PAULA MARSHALL

  TORONTO • NEW YORK • LONDON

  AMSTERDAM • PARIS • SYDNEY • HAMBURG

  STOCKHOLM • ATHENS • TOKYO • MILAN • MADRID

  PRAGUE • WARSAW • BUDAPEST • AUCKLAND

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Prologue

  1817

  Diana Rothwell, now the Dowager Duchess of Medbourne, was a widow who had never truly been a wife. She had become a Dowager at the early age of twenty-four, and had also insisted on being present when her eighty-year-old husband was lowered into the crypt in the family chapel, which stood in the grounds of Medbourne Castle in Nottinghamshire.

  This, of course, was against all the rules of etiquette, which stated that no woman of quality was ever to be present at the funeral service of any member of her family. She was dressed in her ordinary outdoor clothing, too, not in the compulsory black and the widow’s cap that mourning decreed she ought to wear for a full year.

  What the shocked spectators did not know was that, as usual, Diana was obeying the wishes of her dead husband, Charles. He had not only left her the majority of his entire fortune, including Medbourne Castle and the many acres that he had owned since he was the last of the Rothwells, there being no heir, but also a long letter setting out his wishes for her future.

  Present in the chapel were all of the senior servants and a number of men who had been friends and neighbours of the dead man and whom he had invited to the will reading, which would follow the ceremony. They were, although they had not yet been informed of it, all to be rewarded by being left either money or some memento of what had been long friendships or, in the case of the servants, long service. The quality’s wives, obeying the demands of etiquette, were in the Great Hall of the Castle, waiting for the men to return. They were happily passing the time by busily deploring their hostess’s behaviour and her appearance.

  ‘Neither proper nor comme il faut,’ they agreed to a woman, ‘but then, who would have expected anything else from her? Neither was it proper that a man of the Duke’s age should have married a girl of seventeen, young enough to be his granddaughter.’

  ‘And she never gave him any heirs, either,’ sniffed several of them.

  ‘Helped him with his experiments, too.’

  Heads were collectively shaken, and shaken even further when they later learned that the Duke had left her virtually everything—other than the titbits which had gone their, and their husbands’, way.

  Diana thought nothing of this nor of them. On his deathbed the Duke had handed her a letter.

  ‘You have been as good a wife as any husband could expect,’ he said. ‘As soon as I have died, read my letter and take careful note of my wishes for your future. On no account wait until after my funeral to find out what I have written.’

  Obedient as always, Diana had read the letter with mounting surprise, not to say shock.

  ‘My dearest child,’ he had begun, ‘for that is what you have always been. The child I could never have, since I am barren through impotence. Child and pupil, too, who loved an old man who could not offer you what was rightfully yours, a true marriage and children. I therefore cheated not only you, but your family, and you never reproached me once.

  ‘I also know that you only married me because I bribed your poverty-stricken parents so that they gladly handed you over to an old man. Fortunately I have not wasted all your youth and, now that I am gone, would wish you to enjoy yourself in the great world that has hitherto been denied to you.

  ‘I am sure that you do not entirely regret the years that we spent together when you proved to me something which I had always suspected: that a young woman could be as well educated and trained as a young man and perform as brilliantly. Were you a man, you would have achieved a double first at my old University. To that end you were my experiment and royally you have proved my belief to be correct.

  ‘Now it is time that you amused yourself. You are not to mourn for me in public. You are also to attend my funeral, but not in widow’s weeds. You are not to spend a year in black and further months in lilac, but you are to go out into society straight away and do all those things of which I robbed you of when you married me—even though I gave you other treasures instead.

  ‘These are my last commandments to you and I hope that you will carry them out. I know that you will always remember the years we spent studying together and that you will benefit from them. Beware of fortune hunters and if you do marry again I trust you to find someone worthy of you so that I may rest in peace.’

  Diana had put the letter down, her eyes brimming with tears. Yes, he had known, he had always known, that there had been times when she regretted the life she might have had—and now she would have it with his blessing. Let the polite world think of her as it would, she would carry out his last instructions to the letter. The one thing which that world would never know was what a bluestocking she was, able to cut and thrust in debate as well as any lawyer, that she was something of a natural philosopher, and in the last two years of her husband’s life had run his estates for him.

  He had added a Post Scriptum that amused her. ‘I have asked the Widow Marchmont, a distant relative of yours, to introduce you to the great world as soon as possible and she has so agreed. Do not shock her too much—but you have my permission to shock her a little.’

  His last sentence had made Diana smile through her tears. Mrs Marchmont had arrived at the Castle early that morning. She had immediately begged Diana not to attend her husband’s funeral service—and Diana’s refusal of her request had been her first shock. Otherwise she seemed to be one of those four-square sensible women who are the pillars of any community in which they live.

  The funeral service was over at last and the assembled company streamed back into the Castle, to eat, to drink, to listen to the will reading—and to express their shock at the last sentence in the will, which commanded his widow to go out into the world and enjoy herself. Intended, no doubt, Diana thought, to reinforce what he had written in his last letter to her.

  Yes, she would do as he wished: her last tribute to him.

  Chapter One

  1819

  Sir Neville Fortescue later thought that his whole life changed after he accidentally overheard two of his supposed friends talking about him at Lady Leominster’s ball.

  ‘Fortescue,’ Frank Hollis proclaimed to Henry Latimer. ‘Oh, no, I shouldn’t trouble to ask Fortescue to make up the party for the Coal Hole. He’s not a bad fellow, reliable and respectable, but dull, damned dull. Never put a foot wrong in his life. Virtue its own reward and all that. It bores me just to think of him, never mind doing the hobnob bit. He can neither hob nor nob.’

  ‘Slow and steady often wins the race, you know.’

  ‘Depends on what race you’re running in. He’s spent five years in Parliament and he’s not left the starting gate yet. No, let’s forget him and talk of better things. What do you think of his cousin Alford’s latest ladybird? Now there’s a fellow who knows how to live. Let’s ask him to join us.’

  The speakers moved away, leaving Sir Neville Fortescue MP to reflect glumly that listeners never heard any good of themselves. Not that what they had said had been particularly
bad, rather that it was the wrong kind of good for him to be dismissed as merely a priggish bore. Even though he had no great opinion of Frank Hollis’s ability to judge anyone correctly, his careless remarks stung him to the degree that he found himself in a simmering rage at being judged at all.

  It would not have been so bad had he not, earlier that day, called on Harriet Beauchamp whom he rather thought would be a useful wife, and proposed to her. His widowed mother, who occasionally acted as his hostess, was constantly nagging at him over his failure to marry.

  ‘A man in your position needs a wife,’ she frequently told him, and when he had mentioned to her that he had decided to ask Harriet to marry him, she had been overjoyed.

  Well, Harriet was a pretty little woman, if a touch frivolous, but he and his mother both agreed that she would undoubtedly make him a very creditable wife, even if his mother would have preferred him to pop the question to Diana Rothwell, the Duke of Medbourne’s enormously wealthy young widow who had descended on society last year. It was this that had made him suddenly decide that if he had to marry, Harriet would be a more suitable Lady Fortescue than Diana, the daring Dowager, who was as frank as any man and had the wit of the devil. She was, he was sure, the very last woman he would choose for a wife. He needed someone quiet and comfortable, whose conduct would always be proper.

  Alas, he had done and said all those things which a man ought to do when proposing to a pretty young thing after speaking to her papa. To which Harriet had said, outwardly sorrowful, but inwardly pleased that her papa would support her in her refusal of him as he supported her in everything, ‘Oh, Neville, dear, I like having you as a friend, but I could never be your wife.’

  Neville, trapped on his knees, and having never thought for a moment that she would refuse him, exclaimed, a trifle indignantly, ‘Why ever not?’

  Harriet looked down at him, and decided to tell him the truth. ‘When I marry I want to have some excitement in my life. You are so sure to do the correct thing at all times that I fear that our marriage would never have any.’

  He rose, reflecting that the tight breeches which were the current fashion, made prolonged kneeling painful, and replied a trifle stiffly, ‘I thought that most young ladies preferred a husband they could depend on.’

  ‘True, but you are so dependable that it makes you a trifle dull,’ she informed him tactlessly, ‘and I could not bear a dull married life. I am sure that you will find some nice but proper young lady who would make you a far better wife than me. You will still remain my friend, I hope. I am certain that if I ever needed any help you would always offer me the most excellent advice.’

  Neville’s first instinct was to say, rather savagely, ‘On the contrary, I think that you ought to go to a good lawyer for that,’ but, as usual, he came out with something safe, but banal. ‘I’m sorry that you have seen fit to refuse me, Harriet, but rest assured that I shall always wish you well.’

  ‘There, I knew that you would not take offence at my refusal. You are much too good for that.’

  The something wild that lived inside Neville, but which he usually managed to suppress, had him on the verge of seizing hold of Harriet, and giving her a savage and prolonged kiss, before he retreated, snarling at her, ‘Was that exciting enough for you? Or do you wish me to go further?’

  Of course he did no such thing. He had spent his whole life trying to be the opposite of his drunken and rake-hell father who had died in the arms of a lady of easy virtue. Only the fact that Neville’s grandfather had, on her marriage, tied up his mother’s inheritance so that her husband could not pillage it had prevented them both from being reduced to penury after his death.

  It was just as well that his mother was spending the summer with her widowed sister in Surrey, for were she at home he would have had the painful duty of facing her reproaches for failing to convince Harriet that he would make her a good husband. Never mind that he did not particularly want to marry her—that had never entered his mother’s consideration.

  Harriet, he thought, driving away from his failure on the field of amorous battle, would be well served for her folly in wanting an exciting marriage if she ended up marrying someone like his father, Sir Carlton Fortescue, Baronet, and was then compelled to live in the misery that Sir Carlton had inflicted on both his wife and his son.

  What he had not bargained for was that on the very same day, while attending the Leominsters’ ball, he should overhear a pair of rakes describing him in language very similar to that which Harriet had used.

  Was he so dull? Was it wrong to be virtuous and dull? Was it possible for one to be virtuous and exciting? Why was it that he should feel so offended by the sad fact that a pair of fellows whom he had thought were his friends were able to dismiss him so cavalierly? Was it possible that he might enjoy being a little less dull, still avoid the excesses of his father, but not appear to be the kind of prig whom the two men had laughed at and Harriet had dismissed?

  It was useless. He was what he was, the first Fortescue for two hundred years to live a good life and not be a byword in both town and country for his escapades. He had become an MP in his mid-twenties and had always tried to fulfil his Parliamentary duties carefully and honestly—which was more than most of them could claim.

  Neville walked back into the ballroom. He would take his leave of Lady Leominster, go home to try to forget what he had just heard and continue his orderly life no matter what others thought of him.

  On the way to her, however, someone clapped a hand on his shoulder exclaiming, ‘The very man! Come and enjoy yourself for once, my dear Neville, by joining the party I’m assembling to move on to the Coal Hole when we’ve finished doing the pretty here. But before that, allow me to introduce you to Duchess Diana, who for some unknown reason claims that she is positively dying to meet you!’

  It was his cousin, George, Lord Alford, with whom he had, earlier, been compared—to his own detriment. He winced a little. George was everything he was not: flashily handsome, dressed to kill, and determined to enjoy every moment of his life, whether he was with fast women, fast horses, betting in dubious gaming hells or racing his fast curricle to Brighton to win a bet. If Neville were a betting man, which he wasn’t, he would have bet that George was running through his inheritance at the same speed as one of his better horses.

  He had absolutely no wish to accompany him either to the Coal Hole or to be introduced to the Daring Duchess, as Diana had been nicknamed. From all he had heard of her she was as irresponsible as George: the very last woman he wanted either as a mistress or a wife.

  ‘Now I really do doubt that, George—the Duchess Diana bit, I mean, and, no, I don’t wish to oblige you on either count. I’m for home and my bed.’

  George Alford began to laugh. ‘You could oblige me, old fellow, if you would. I’ve bet Frank Hollis that I could persuade you to join us and I stand to lose a tidy sum if you refuse me.’

  Neville stared at him, remembering only too well Frank’s unkind remarks about him. ‘Frank Hollis, eh?’ he said at last. ‘In that case I will join you—but not for long.’

  ‘And Duchess Di, too. He also bet that you wouldn’t agree to meet her.’

  ‘Did he, indeed? Yes, you may take me to her, but I don’t promise to enjoy myself at either rendezvous.’

  ‘That’s no matter. I’d like to see Frank’s face when you make your bow to the lady and when you join us on the stroke of midnight to depart for pastures new.’

  Reluctantly, Neville allowed himself to be led by George to where Diana was holding court in one corner of the room, surrounded by admirers.

  She had come upon the town with all the éclat and passion that Lady Caroline Lamb had once displayed. True, she was not so carelessly silly as Lady Caro, since she would have passed for a bluestocking had she cared to reveal that interesting fact. Instead, she frequently demonstrated that she not only had the power to charm all around her by her beauty, but that she was also able to enliven even the dullest func
tion by her wit and originality of mind.

  She played whist and chess as well as any man, her performance on the piano was masterly and it was whispered that she spoke three foreign languages. What was more, she had created a sensation in Hyde Park when she drove there in a curricle with two spirited horses that a man would have been proud to control and handled them perfectly.

  Not only that, once, when out for a walk with the elderly cousin who was her chaperon, she had come upon a man brutally thrashing a dog. She had immediately demanded that he desist; when he refused, she had set about him with her parasol, calling on a passing gentleman—to whom, of course, she had never been introduced—to assist her in overcoming the man so that she might rescue the dog.

  Fortunately, the gentleman proved to be more than that. He was Lord Vaux, a peer of impeccable lineage, fortune and behaviour, who promptly did as she bid him, before handing the fellow over to a passing constable. He then insisted on escorting both the ladies and the dog to Diana’s home off Piccadilly. Two days later he proposed to her, but was refused.

  He was not the only one who sought her hand—but she refused them all, both high and low, steady and rakish. It seemed that the catch of the season was determined not to be caught. Bets were laid at Watier’s as to how many fellows would propose to her before the season was over. It was said that the count had already reached twenty and included Prince Adalbert of Eckstein Halsbach, a cousin of the Princess of Wales, and Neville was determined not to be added to the list, since she was exactly the kind of woman whom he most disliked.

  Nevertheless, facing her while George introduced him, he was also, again reluctantly, aware that she was possessed of a rare beauty. He had seldom seen such glossily gorgeous raven hair, such heavenly blue eyes and such a shapely mouth, which seemed to have been especially designed for kissing.

  Her toilette surprised him a little because it was so simple; her dress was a plain white, adorned with silk snowdrops, and her fan was small, not some great thing with which to strike at and tease a man. Most surprising of all, she wore no jewellery.