Lady of Shame

‘Then who else is coming for breakfast?’

Jane looked up with interest.

‘No one else, madam,’ the butler said.

Claire frowned. Such extravagance. All this food would be wasted.

Lumsden must have guessed the direction of her thoughts because a fleeting smile crossed his face. ‘The food will end up in the servants’ hall, madam. The staff had a small piece first thing this morning, bread and cheese, before the fires were alight, but they will have breakfast proper when early-morning chores are done.’

Heat travelled up her cheeks. She had forgotten how it went in a house full of servants; she had never had more than a couple of live-out maids during all of her marriage and sometimes none at all. These past months she’d been her own cook and housemaid. How would she ever fit back into this world of privilege and idleness if she kept thinking like a poverty-stricken widow?

‘Will there be anything else, madam?’ the butler asked.

Claire looked at her plate and at the piles of food on the sideboard and couldn’t eat another bite. No matter that she’d felt hungry when she first walked into the room, it was all just too much.

‘No, thank you. Jane, are you finished?’

Her daughter, who now had nothing but a few smears of egg on her plate and crumbs on the tablecloth, nodded.

‘Then that will be all, thank you, Lumsden. You may clear away.’

Lumsden frowned, looked as if he was about to speak, then pressed his lips together. No doubt he wanted to tell her the chef would not be pleased she’d eaten so little. Next the man would be bringing her another plate of food. Surely not after her unfriendly dismissal the previous evening. He wouldn’t dare to visit her room again. And a good thing too, even if she did admire his dedication to his work.

As she’d come to admire the hard-working shopkeepers, merchants and other businessmen with whom she’d come into contact while living on her own. Unlike George, who had dedicated his life to doing as little as possible, they were dedicated to the improvement of their families.

Perhaps that was what made the chef seem so attractive. He cared about his work.

Lumsden took her plate back to the sideboard and clicked his fingers, signalling the waiting footman to clear the platters.

‘I would like to see His Grace at the earliest opportunity, preferably this morning,’ Claire said, rising from her seat.

‘Indeed, madam. Smithins will collect you from the blue drawing room.’

‘Very well. Come, Jane.’ She swept from the room with Jane’s hand in hers. At least she hadn’t made a complete cake of herself, playing the duke’s daughter. As she and Jane wandered along the corridor lined with pictures of her ancestors, she regretted not finishing her breakfast. It seemed that standing up for herself had restored her appetite.

Then she remembered a thought that had occurred in the deep reaches of the night. It hadn’t woken her. No, her rest had been disturbed by a low seductive voice in her dreams and images of an arrogant chef running long tanned fingers down her arm, then moving on to the rise of her breast.

Panting and hot she’d sat up in bed, not terrified but full of longing. For passion.

She squeezed her eyes closed against the memory of the heat and the flutters low in her belly. She would not think of that. But as she had lain there in the dark regaining her composure with the ticking of the clock and the howl of the wind among the chimneys for company, she had remembered the words spoken yesterday. Another one crawling out of the woodwork claiming to be a relative.

What had the cheeky Irish footman meant by ‘another one’? It was a question she intended to ask Mrs Stratton.

Jane skipped into the drawing room with its heavy gilded and scrolled furniture adorned by, Claire blinked, half-naked females. Mermaids. She had better not linger in this room for too long or Jane would be asking her about them.

‘Can we go outside now, Mama?’ the child asked, looking around her with obvious disappointment. ‘To see the lake?’

‘Perhaps. After we see the duke.’

Jane slumped back against the chair cushions and folded her hands in her lap. Her daughter was much too obedient, Claire thought with a pang. Too still. Too careful. George’s fault. He’d had a temper in his cups. They’d both learned to walk quietly around him.

The child needed laughter and joy.

And she would find it at Castonbury if they were permitted to stay. There would be no more moving. No more running from debtors.

A scratch at the door before it swung back brought her upright. An elegantly garbed gentleman of some sixty years entered the room. He was no more than five feet tall and his person was slim. He had thick white hair carefully coifed à la brutus.

He held out both hands in a gesture that seemed almost feminine. ‘Lady Claire. How wonderful to see you home after all these years. And your daughter.’ He executed a flourishing bow.

‘Smithins,’ she said, smiling at his effusive greeting and obvious warmth. ‘It has been a long time.’

‘Seven years at least, Mrs Holte.’

‘Are you here to escort me to His Grace?’

‘Madam, I am. His Grace is quite chipper this morning.’ He beamed at her, then his smile dimmed. ‘Of a surety you will find him much changed. It is the doctor’s opinion that too much excitement is bad for him, but knowing you are here, he has made a great effort to be up and about this morning.’ He smiled triumphantly as if bestowing a gift.

The nerves in Claire’s stomach leapt around like butterflies in boots. ‘So he has agreed to see me.’

‘He looks forward to it.’ He glanced at Jane. ‘And to meeting the little lady.’ He spun around and headed out of the door.

She took Jane’s hand and followed.

‘His Grace uses the old state apartments these days,’ Smithins said as he directed her along the corridor to the central block. ‘Fewer stairs to climb. I am sure you remember the way.’

‘Smithins?’ she asked as they travelled through the antechamber towards the great double doors, ‘who else has come to claim relationship to the duke?’

Smithins stopped and pivoted a hand to his lips. ‘You have heard already?’

‘I heard a chance remark. It is not one of his … his …’

The duke had been a bit of a rake before his marriage. And after, if some of the tales were true.

‘No, no.’ The man waved an elegant hand like a lady batting away a fly. ‘It is Lord Jamie’s wife.’

‘I hadn’t heard that Lord James had married.’ She’d always watched the newspapers for news of her family. Births, deaths and the occasional mention in court reports.

‘Nor had anyone else,’ Smithins said with a sly smile. ‘Married her on the continent. She arrived just a few months ago with her son, Lord Jamie’s heir.’ He lowered his voice. ‘And very little proof, I’m told. But His Grace is happy to be convinced.’

‘She’s here at Castonbury?’ It was strange she hadn’t taken dinner with Claire or that Mrs Stratton hadn’t mentioned her.

‘She lives in the Dower House.’ He flung back the door and ushered her and Jane into a vast room where the curtains covered the windows and only one branch of candles shed any light apart from that given off by the hearth.

A smell of illness pervaded the room. Sickly smells. And the smell of elderly man. Someone should open a window and let the fresh air in. It reminded her of visits to her aged father, the previous duke.

It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the gloom. When they did, she made out a male figure sitting close to the flames in a scarlet banyan and slippers with a matching embroidered cap perched on a balding pate.

He looked like a man of eighty instead of the sixty summers she knew he owned. The gaze fixed on her seemed bright enough though. She approached his chair. ‘Your Grace.’ She dipped a curtsey. ‘It is Claire. Your sister. I am come home. This is my daughter, Jane.’ She drew the child closer.