Page 2 of The Disgraceful Duchess

It was the first time that someone had addressed him as “your grace.” “‘Disrepair’?”

The solicitor was a heavily pomaded young man who’d recently inherited the practice from his father, who'd retired. A ruby and diamond stickpin winked from the folds of his neckcloth. “My father informs me that the late duke was at March Castle when he was struck down by an apoplexy. He intended to convalesce there for a few months before returning to London. But his symptoms worsened. Eventually he took the decision to stay in Shropshire indefinitely. March House is empty.”

“Empty? What do you mean?”

“No one has been inside it for… some time.” He consulted some papers on his desk. “Your uncle had three sons. None married. All predeceased their father. Your last cousin died in Egypt last year. There was a delay in tracing the line of succession, and in locating you. All we knew was that your father died many years ago, at Fort York. There was also a story that you had"—he gave a small cough—"died in infancy. It took some time to establish that you were merely in France.”

“There was a family estrangement many years ago. My father’s family did not approve of his marriage to my mother. After his death she remarried—to the late Sir Godfrey Rivers, who raised me as his son."

The solicitor’s stare seemed skeptical.

“Well.” He cleared his throat. “I attended Cambridge. I was an officer in the war. Before I relocated to Paris, I was an under-secretary to the Chancellor of the Exchequer.”

“I see.”

West began to feel that if he continued to explain himself, he might talk himself into some sort of trouble. What would a duke do? he asked himself. Certainly, he wouldn’t continue to offer details about himself, as though he had to prove his identity. He would sign these documents, take the ring of keys, and leave.

So he did that.

When they arrived at March House, it looked like all the other great houses that lined St. James Square. But as he stood at the front door, trying one after another of the unlabeled keys in the lock, the signs of abandonment were evident. The paint was peeling off the door and window frames. Rust blistered the railings. Dead, bleached weeds waved in the gutters. And the door knocker was missing—the traditional indication that the family was out of town.

On his only previous visit to the house, West had been five years old. He'd been most impressed by that door knocker. It was bronze, of course, and cast in the shape of the medieval bear on the March crest. The bear had struck him as very fierce indeed, with its bared teeth, lolling tongue and outstretched claws.

His only other memory of that day was holding his weeping mother’s hand after the old duke turned them away.

He found the key that turned the lock. The door shrieked on rusty hinges as he pushed it open, as though the angry spirits of his March ancestors were objecting to his accession to the title. “Well.” He gave Tompkins a wry look. “I shall have to find some oil for that.”

He stepped across the threshold. It felt as though he’d done something irrevocable. The window above the door had been plastered over on the inside, and the entrance hall was as chilly and dark as a mausoleum.

Tompkins set the trunks on the dirty marble floor. “Good God! It is colder inside than out, sir… er, your grace.”

And that was saying something, because outside it had just begun to sleet.

Now, as he managed to unlock the study door, hollow thuds far above suggested that the chimney sweep and his crew were already on the roof.

In the study, papers and ledger books were stacked on the desk, as though his great uncle had intended to return in a few moments. But everything was covered in a furry gray layer of dust and there was a bitter, musty odor. He picked up a piece of paper and blew the dust off it. The ink had faded to a pale brown tint. It was a tradesman’s bill, dated 12 April, 1808.

This grand house in the heart of St. James had stood empty for nearly eleven years?

A thick cascade of black ash showered into the fireplace and puffed outward into the air of the room. He began sneezing—although whether it was because of the ash, the dust, or the nearly freezing air, he didn’t know. Clanging and scraping noises came from the chimney as the sweeps lowered their brushes from the roof, and ribald laughter echoed down the flue.

Still sneezing, he gathered an armload of dusty ledger books from the desk and shelves. By the time he returned to the entry hall, two housemaids he’d never seen before were hard at work—one sweeping up the loose grit and litter that had somehow blown into the house, and the other scrubbing the marble tiles that had just been swept. They didn’t pay any attention to him. That was a relief.

He went back upstairs and found that the ducal bedroom was being stripped bare. Mrs. Raines—respectable, ruddy, and wearing a figured dark gown befitting her status as a senior servant— was measuring the bed frame. The moth-eaten carpet and moldy featherbed that had greeted him on his first night—the reason that he’d ended up sleeping on the billiard table—were already gone. A pair of housemaids had gathered the dusty bed and window curtains into a huge hamper. A coal fire was burning in the grate, and a waiting bucket and scrub brush indicated that the floorboards would soon receive the soap and water treatment.

All three of them saw him and dropped into curtseys. “Your grace.”

“Good morning, Mrs. Raines. Pay me no attention. You are clearly busy.”

A shriek of protesting metal came from the window, where the glaziers were using a pry bar to pull nails out of the sill. “His Grace the duke is here.” Mrs. Raines’ tone was sharp.

The men stopped their work and made awkward bows. West felt more and more as though he were in the way. “We, er… have a fire, I see.”

“Yes, your grace. We must have good fires throughout the house for at least the next fortnight, to drive the damp out of the walls.”

“Ah. Very good.” He struggled to suppress another cough. “Well. I shall… leave you to it, then.”

They all curtseyed again.