The Wrong Duchess E-Book

Barbara Cartland

• Herausgeber: Barbara Cartland Ebooks Ltd
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Serie: The Eternal Collection
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 203

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

The illegitimate child of runaway lovers, lovely young Areta is condemned after her parents' to life in the shadow of her beloved and equally beautiful cousin Lady Millicent… Despised by her aunt and uncle as a "bastard child", she's fated never to be a débutante like Millicent, never to attend glamorous Society balls… and never to marry… Unless it's as part of her plan to save Millicent from a cynically arranged marriage to the Duke of Kerncliffe! After all, the two girls have always looked so very much alike – how hard can it be? But even she weaves her web of deceit, Areta dreads what will happen when the Duke discovers he's married the Wrong Duchess.

Leseprobe

AUTHOR’S NOTE

The fashion for racing in France came from England.

The author of Paris lllustrée pointed out in 1858, “In taking England as our model in the organisation of our races, we have borrowed not only most of her rules, but most of her ancient traditional trappings. We have adopted official costumes for the jockeys.”

In 1864 Manet painted brilliantly the races at Longchamp and the era of the French racing triumphs had begun ten years earlier.

The Racecourse at Longchamps was opened in 1857 and it was the Duc de Morny, the versatile Statesman, sportsman and amateur dramatist who first thought of instituting a Grand Prix.

The City of Paris promised a prize of one hundred thousand francs for the race and in 1863 it was won by an English horse.

La Païva, the richest and the most spectacular of all the famous Courtesans in the French Empire, was called the greatest debauchee of the century.

Her fantastically expensive and grand house in the avenue des Champs Élysées is now the Travellers’ Club, and I was given the special privilege, as a woman, of being allowed to see over it very early one morning before the members arrived.

The precious jewels and gold had gone from the taps in the bathroom, but there was still an atmosphere of the mystery and magic with which La Païva drew all the men of Paris.

It was her lover, Henckel von Donnersmarck, who made the Chancellor, Bleichroder, after the siege of Paris, demand an indemnity of three thousand million francs.

In March 1871, when the Prussians entered Paris, La Païva stood on the steps of her house, while in uniform Henckel von Donnersmarck watched his compatriots march past.

CHAPTER ONE ~ 1868

The Queen turned over yet again and gave a little groan.

Ever since she had retired to bed she had been suffering from a nasty toothache.

Although she greatly disapproved of it, she knew that the only thing to do was to take a spoonful of laudanum.

She lit the candle and climbed out of bed to go to the washstand where a very small bottle habitually stood.

Queen Victoria had expressed her disapproval over and over again of laudanum or any sedative which numbed the brain as well as the pain.

Now she decided that it was impossible to go on trying to sleep and she had a heavy day in front of her for tomorrow.

She found herself wishing, as she had wished so often before, that the Prince Consort was still alive and she could tell him the details of what she was suffering.

She just knew how comforting he would have been.

Tears came into her eyes as she remembered that she would never see him again and life had to go on without him.

She reached the washstand, but, when she looked for the bottle of laudanum, it was not there.

She then remembered that she had told her lady’s maid some weeks ago to clear away all unnecessary bottles and jars.

They had somehow inevitably accumulated on the washstand and the dressing table.

Now there was no laudanum, and even as she was aware of it, the pain in her tooth grew more acute.

She stood irresolute by her bed wondering what she could do.

Then she decided that she would go to the room of her nearest Lady-in-Waiting and ask for her help.

She recalled that it would be Lady Neathton whom she had appointed at the end of last year and who was a widow like herself.

She had felt particularly sorry for Lady Neathton.

Her husband had died of a tropical fever when, on her instructions, he had gone to a conference in North Africa as one of her representatives.

It seemed so unfortunate that Lord Neathton should have succumbed to one of what the Queen knew were native fevers that rendered the strongest of men weak and helpless.

She had at the time written to Lady Neathton the most sympathetic letter of condolence.

Having lost her own dear Albert she knew only too well what she was feeling.

Then she had heard, purely by chance, that Lady Neathton was in somewhat straitened circumstances and she thought that the least she could do was to ask her to become one of her Ladies-in-Waiting.

Lady Neathton had accepted with the deepest gratitude and the Queen had found it easy to talk to her of their joint loss.

They had mingled their tears several times since she had arrived at Windsor Castle.

‘As Lady Neathton is a sensible woman,’ the Queen told herself, ‘she will realise that only in an emergency would I resort to laudanum. In fact I cannot endure this pain a moment longer!’

She had considered whether she would ring for her lady’s maid, but told herself that it would take too long.

Windsor Castle was noted as being a wilderness to a visitor and extremely inconvenient for those who lived there.

The Queen knew that if she summoned her maid, she would then have to get dressed.

It might easily be half-an-hour or more before the pain in her tooth could be relieved.

She therefore decided that she would go to Lady Neathton’s bedroom herself.

She put on a woollen dressing gown trimmed with lace that had been left on a chair at the foot of her bed.

Then she slipped her feet into the heelless slippers that went with it.

There was a candle in a silver holder on a table near the door.

She lit it with the candle that was burning by her bed and started off down the corridor.

All the corridors in The Castle were dimly lit. It was one of the economies that had been instituted by the Prince Consort to save on the expense of candles.

He had in fact been horrified when he had investigated the expenditure at Windsor Castle and Buckingham Palace to find what was being spent on lighting.

One manservant had the job of collecting every morning the hundreds of candles that had not been lit the previous evening.

This was one of the first frugalities the Prince had inaugurated and he was delighted to find a considerable improvement in the accounts.

The Queen knew her way around The Castle, as a great many other people did not.

After turning right, then left, down the dimly lit silent passages, she reached the bedroom where Lady Neathton was sleeping.

Her Majesty was sure she would be asleep and so decided not to knock, but to enter and awaken Lady Neathton gently, so as not to frighten her.

Accordingly, holding the candle in her left hand, she turned the handle.

As the door opened, she was startled into immobility to find herself facing the Duke of Kerncliffe.

He was a tall, very handsome man and by the light of the candle he seemed, in the dark robe he wore which reached to the ground, almost overwhelming.

If the Queen was surprised, so was the Duke.

For a moment they just stared at each other in astonishment.

Then the Queen found her voice.

“Your Grace!” she exclaimed.

There was no mistaking the horror in her voice, but the Duke with a swiftness of action that was characteristic of him, put his finger to his lips.

Then, as the Queen was about to speak, he came out through the door pulling it behind him.

In a voice that was little more than a whisper he said,

“I entered this room by mistake and the occupant is fast asleep. It would be a mistake to awaken her.”

“I can hardly, Your Grace – !” the Queen began.

To her astonishment the Duke, with a bow of his head, turned away before she could say anything more.

He walked swiftly down the corridor in the opposite direction that she had come from.

Because she was so surprised, scandalised and at the same time horrified, the Queen, and as she thought later rather mistakenly, did not enter Lady Neathton’s room.

Instead she turned around and returned to her own bedroom .

As she climbed into bed, she rang the bell violently for her maid.

*

The Lord Chamberlain rose as the Duke of Kerncliffe came into the room and held out his hand.

“Good morning, Your Grace.”

“Good morning,” the Duke replied.

“Do sit down,” the Lord Chamberlain suggested.

He indicated a comfortable chair rather than the one that stood by his desk.

The Duke seated himself and, apparently at his ease, sat back and crossed his legs.

It was in fact the Lord Chamberlain who was the more uneasy of the two.

He fiddled with his watch-chain, which was a sure indication that he was embarrassed by what he had to say.

He thought before he spoke that it would be difficult to imagine anyone more impressive or more handsome than the Duke.

That he was admired by every woman at Court went without saying.

Although his private life was as discreet as he could make it, it was inevitable that hardly a day passed without the gossips chattering about him.

It was not only the women.

Being one of the richest men in the country, the Duke was not only admired by men but also envied by them.

His Racing Stable was beyond compare and to be Master of his own Pack of Hounds was a privilege as much coveted as being invited to Kerne Park.

His magnificent ancestral home in Kent was to be compared only with Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire.

In fact, the Lord Chamberlain was thinking that, where the Duke himself was concerned, he was easily first in the Ducal race.

Because the Lord Chamberlain was taking a long time in explaining why he had asked for his presence, the Duke, with a somewhat mocking twist of his lips, asked,

“Well? Am I to be stood in the corner or sent on a mission to a tropical island where the only thing to drink is coconut milk?”

The Lord Chamberlain laughed before he replied,

“It is not as bad as that, but very nearly!”

“What you are telling me is that Her Majesty did not believe my explanation that I had gone to the wrong room.”

“It sounded quite plausible,” the Lord Chamberlain replied, “except that there are a great number of bedrooms between yours and the one where Her Majesty found you.”

“No one knows that better than you do,” the Duke replied. “The whole Castle is nothing but a rabbit warren as a large number of people have said before me.”

This was undoubtedly true and the endless stories of visitors who got lost were repeated and repeated amongst the Courtiers and anyone else who stayed at Windsor Castle.

One man lost his way to his bed and was forced to spend the night on a sofa in the State Gallery. A housemaid found him in the morning and then supposing him to be a drunk, fetched a Policeman.

This story, and several others, flashed through the Lord Chamberlain’s mind before he said,

“The trouble is, Your Grace, that Lady Neathton is most attractive. If the same situation had occurred with most of the other Ladies-in-Waiting, Her Majesty’s feelings might well have been rather different.”

“And so would mine have been,” the Duke said with a flash of humour that made the Lord Chamberlain laugh once again.

Then, as the smile left his lips, he said,

“This is very embarrassing for me, Your Grace, but you know Her Majesty’s feelings of propriety where her Ladies-in-Waiting are concerned.”

“I do,” the Duke agreed, “so tell me the worst.”

The Lord Chamberlain drew in his breath.

“It is,” he said, “that Her Majesty thinks it is time that Your Grace took a wife!”

The Duke, who had been reclining comfortably in the armchair, sat bolt upright.

“Are you saying,” he asked, “that Her Majesty is ordering me to be married?”

“I can answer that in one word,” the Lord Chamberlain replied. “It is ‘yes’!”

“I don’t believe it!”

Then in a different tone of voice he added,

“It is inconceivable that any Monarch in these enlightened times could force a man into marriage.”

“Naturally Her Majesty cannot compel you to do anything you do not wish to do,” the Lord Chamberlain said quietly, “but, as you should be well aware, unless you produce a wife, you will not be accepted at Court.”

“I am Master of the Horse!” the Duke exclaimed.

“You can hardly sit in the stables,” the Lord Chamberlain observed.

The Duke was silent, but there was an expression on his face, that not only his staff but also his friends knew was ominous.

“When Her Majesty told you this,” he said, “did you then suggest to her that it was an ultimatum she should give to no one and was far beyond the Royal prerogative?”

The Lord Chamberlain made a very expressive gesture with his hands.

“You know as well as I do, Cosmo, that one cannot argue with the Queen on a matter such as this. She merely instructed me to tell you her wishes and after that we talked of other things.”

The Duke rose to his feet and walked to the mantelpiece.

“It is something that no man would have done in the same circumstances,” he said.

“But we have no King,” the Lord Chamberlain reminded him, “and I doubt whether, if the Prince Consort was alive, he would have been any more sympathetic.”

‘No, you are right there,” the Duke agreed, “he was always a prig and a prude and, thank God, the Prince of Wales is very different from either of his parents.”

“Her Majesty is not particularly pleased at the moment with what is known as ‘The Marlborough House Set’,” the Lord Chamberlain replied, “and last week she denounced His Royal Highness’s friends for ‘gambling, racing, smoking’ and then regretted that he enjoyed associating with ‘Americans and foreigners’.”

The Duke of Kerncliffe knew as the Lord Chamberlain spoke, that however sympathetic the Prince of Wales might be, there would be no help for him.

He therefore said,

“How long have I to consider Her Majesty’s order?”

He accentuated the word ‘consider’ and the Lord Chamberlain made a gesture that spoke for itself.

“I should imagine,” he said slowly, “that, if the Master of the Horse is absent for much longer than a month, it would be most inconvenient, especially at this time of the year. Her Majesty might therefore appoint somebody else.”

The Duke pursed his lips together as if to prevent himself from saying what he thought out loud.

Then he said,

“Well, there is nothing else for me to say and I suppose that you had better inform Her Majesty that you have carried out her instructions.”

“I am sure she will be waiting to hear from me this afternoon and that you have accepted what she had decreed.”

“Then you can also inform Her Majesty,” the Duke said, “that I consider the punishment exceeds the crime!”

Leaving the Lord Chamberlain’s office the Duke walked very slowly along the twisting corridors that led to the entrance of The Castle.

Because he was aware that being sent for by the Lord Chamberlain meant trouble, his phaeton was waiting for him.

It was drawn by four perfectly matched jet-black horses. They were in complete contrast to the phaeton itself, which was yellow with black wheels and black upholstery.

As he stepped into it, his groom handed him the reins, then, as the phaeton moved off, he sprang up behind.

The groom had looked at his Master and knew at once by his expression that something was wrong.

He sat at the back of the phaeton, his arms folded in the correct fashion.

He was thinking that he would warn the household as soon as they reached London that there was trouble afoot.

The Duke was furious at what he had just heard and by the way he had been treated.

It was in fact extremely bad luck that the Queen, of all people, should wish to visit Lucy Neathton in the middle of the night.

He had only just unlocked the door and in another two minutes he would have been out of sight.

He found his way back through, what he quite rightly called the ‘rabbit warren’, to his own bedroom.

It seemed incredible that Queen Victoria should have been outside the bedroom just as he was leaving.

He only hoped that Lucy would not suffer.

He had in fact sent her a very discreet note by his valet before most of the people in The Castle were awake to tell her what had occurred.

He thought that she might have heard him speaking outside the door, even though he had whispered.

Unless the Queen had entered her room after he had left, she would have no idea who it had been.

He told her to save herself by making the Queen believe that she had no knowledge of anything untoward occurring in the night.

And that she had slept peacefully from the time she went to bed until she was called in the morning.

He had found Lucy Neathton very receptive to his advances, very passionate and very satisfying.

But one night of love was no compensation.

Unless he could think of some miraculous way of escape, he had to find himself a wife.

The idea was not new.

Ever since he could recall, his family had been nagging him to get married and produce an heir.

This he had refused to consider.

Yet for the last two years since he had passed his thirtieth birthday the pressure on him had intensified.

He was an only child.

If he did not have a son, then the Dukedom and the great fortune that went with it would be claimed by a cousin whom nobody liked and who was already over fifty.

“There is plenty of time,” the Duke had said patiently to all requests.

He shrank in horror from the idea that he should shackle himself to some tiresome young woman whose only claim on his attention would be that her blood matched his.

Ever since he had been a small boy he had been told over and over again that his wife, when he had one, must be his equal socially.

What was more, his choice must be a credit to the Family Tree.

He was so tired of hearing it that it made him even more determined than ever not to be married until what he thought of as ‘the very last moment’.

This would mean before he was too old to produce the much-desired heir.

“It is not something I should think of until I am almost in my dotage!” he had said to one of his friends recently.

Reginald Dalby, to whom he was speaking, had laughed.

“That is too far away even to consider!” he said. “At the same time you may fall off your horse and break your neck, or get shot, if not by accident, then by one of the husbands who go black in the face with fury at the very mention of your name!”

“You are talking nonsense,” the Duke asserted.

Once again he put the thought of marriage out of his mind.

Now, when he least expected it, the Queen had ordered him to take a wife and even to think of it made his fingers tighten on the reins.

He knew, unless he was to be ostracised, and no one could do it more effectively than the Queen, he had to obey her.

‘God knows where I will find a wife,’ he said to himself beneath his breath.

He said the same two hours later when he was sitting in White’s Club with Reginald Dalby.

He was his oldest friend and they had been at Eton and Oxford University together and for five years in the Household Brigade.

Reggie was just the same age as the Duke and in a way not unlike him. He also was very good-looking and an excellent rider.

The only real difference between them was a question of money and possessions.

While the Duke had everything, Reggie was the son of a Peer who found it difficult to keep up his ancestral home, which was always in need of repair.

Reggie could not get married for the simple reason that he could not afford to and, like the Duke, seldom came into contact with young girls.

He spent his time with sophisticated, charming women.

They were either widowed or else had husbands who had ‘other interests’ of their own.

Alternatively they turned a blind eye to what their wives did, so long as they were really discreet.

Reggie had listened attentively to every word that the Duke told him. Only when he had finished did he say,

“It is the most confounded bad luck I have ever heard, Cosmo! How the Hell could you imagine the Queen would be wandering about The Castle at night?”

“It does seem incredible,” the Duke replied, “but it has happened and now what am I going to do about it?”

“The most important thing is to keep the whole story hushed up,” Reggie said. “You do not suppose Lucy Neathton will talk?”

“Not if she wishes to keep her position as Lady-in-Waiting,” the Duke said. “The only possible way out is to do as I have told her, so that the Queen will not think she was a party to my perfidy.”

“You were fortunate that Her Majesty did not ask you who you were in fact seeking,” Reggie remarked.

“I thought of that afterwards,” he replied. “I suppose I could have said the Archbishop of Canterbury or someone like him.”

“I cannot believe even the Queen would have believed that!” Reggie commented.

There was a pause.

Then he said somewhat tentatively,

“You are not thinking of marrying Lady Neathton?”

“Good God, no!” the Duke exclaimed. “She is charming and very attractive, but, if I was with her for more than a week I would undoubtedly find her a bore!”

“I was afraid that was what you would say,” Reggie answered. “The only good thing that has come out of this mess is that she cannot press you into marrying her by saying you have ruined her reputation.”

“There is no question of it being ruined if she just keeps her mouth shut,” the Duke said firmly. “And, as I think the Queen has a certain fondness for her, Her Majesty will not talk.”

“Very well then,” Reggie said, “who do you intend to marry?”

“That is exactly what I am asking you,” the Duke answered. “You know as well as I do that I know no young girls. In fact I cannot remember when I last spoke to one.”

“Perhaps at your age you would be happier with a woman who has been married before,” Reggie suggested. “Someone like Belinda. You were very infatuated with her for quite a long time.”

“Belinda was undoubtedly one of the most amusing women I have ever met,” the Duke admitted, “but she would never be content with one man.”

His lips tightened before he went on,

“Although I may be promiscuous myself, I have no intention of having a wife who takes another man into my bed the moment I have left it!”

He spoke forcibly, which told Reggie he had thought of this before.

Because he was close to the Duke and he had always admired him, he knew that he had certain principles that some other men did not have.

For one thing, he disliked making love to a man’s wife in her husband’s house.

He knew in some strange way the Duke had a feeling almost of sympathy for other men, even if they did not look after their wives properly.

Reggie was aware without the Duke telling him, that the one thing he would not tolerate was for his wife to be unfaithful.

Or that he should be made to look foolish because of it.

Without saying any more he merely said,

“Well, the only thing you can do now is to consider what girls there are available and, as your father would have said, how well they would fit into the Family Tree.”

The Duke did not reply, but Reggie knew that he was listening.

They finished their drinks and the Duke signalled to a Steward to bring him two more before they spoke again.

Then Reggie said,

“I have just been going through the various Dukes in my mind and trying to remember which one has an eligible daughter.”

“And what have you discovered?” the Duke asked.