The Ugly Duchess

Page 39

The Lord Chancellor sat on the Woolsack, a backless chair with a vague resemblance to a throne, above the peers now settled in their crimson and gold on the red benches below him.
He rose. “Right honorable the Lords Spiritual and Temporal in Parliament assembled,” his lordship said, his voice effortlessly filling the great hall. “We are gathered and convened with the charge of a solemn task: to determine whether or no the noble peer, your companion, the Earl of Islay, heir to the duchy of Ashbrook, should be declared lost at sea. We have assumed these medieval splendors of scarlet and ermine in his honor, in response to the ‘Death in Absentia’ petition submitted by his sorrowing heir, Mr. Cecil Pinkler-Ryburn, who quite fitly and rightly expresses his deepest sorrow at this tragic event.”
There was a little rustle of approbation, and Mr. Pinkler-Ryburn shifted uneasily in the bench just below Gismond, who instinctively began to calculate the length of ermine needed to adorn the scarlet robes that would cover such a magnificent stomach once the man was a duke. But to do Pink (as everyone seemed to call the heir) credit, he hadn’t the slightest air of triumph or joy about him.
“We will give our absent peer the title Duke of Ashbrook as a matter of courtesy,” the Lord Chancellor continued, “since his honored father died after the young man’s departure from England and indeed, likely after his only son had already succumbed to the waves. Consequently, the young Earl of Islay never assumed the titles and duties to which he was heir, and never took his seat among us, in the House of Lords.” He paused for breath, and to allow the weight of his words to be felt.
“His wife was unable to grieve for him in his absence”—here he cast a paternal eye on the bent head of the countess—“and has been unable to assume the duties and responsibilities of a duchess, nor the freedom and protections of the widow. Moreover, the duchy itself has naturally suffered without the guiding hand of its master.”
Gismond had heard the opposite; in fact, most people were aware of the countess’s guiding hand in making Ryburn Weavers such a success. His own lady had reupholstered the drawing room in Ryburn fabrics, and they had cost a pretty penny.
The Lord Chancellor was now calling for discussion of the petition to declare the Duke of Ashbrook dead in absentia. As expected, the duke’s heir, Mr. Cecil Pinkler-Ryburn, begged permission to speak to the assembled peerage. He climbed the steps and looked over the chamber, not speaking for a moment.
He had a strange dignity about him, for all he was portly and rather insignificant. “I am most deeply, and I may say with perfect truth, cruelly afflicted by the call to declare my beloved cousin lost to us in such a manner. I accede to this motion only on the request of Lady Islay. While I wish to avoid the duties and responsibilities of the duchy, she, of course, wishes to be free, as is only just, of the heavy burden she has carried in the absence of her husband.”
Everyone in the room seemed to feel this was well put, and there was a happy murmur and a great many nodding plumes from the gallery housing the peeresses.
The assembly then heard from a representative of the committee that had reviewed Mr. Pinkler-Ryburn’s petition. He noted that, in all, twenty Bow Street Runners had been sent to the various parts of the globe once the young earl had been missing for some years, and the only news unearthed of him was of an equivocal nature.
Since there was nothing left to be said, the Lord Chancellor stepped forward again, holding in his right hand the scepter of his office. “We certainly appreciate the sentiments of Mr. Pinkler-Ryburn, for the heavy mantle of an English dukedom comes to a gentleman, as ever, with sorrow and mourning for his predecessor.”
At this, an audible giggle rose spontaneously in several parts of the room; the spectators, it seemed, had witnessed more than one title assumed with delight rather than sorrow.
The Lord Chancellor ignored this lack of decorum. “The assembled might and force of all England cannot stop the march of time, any more than they can arrest the motion of the tides or the course of the planets.”
The Countess of Manderbury wore high ostrich plumes that curled behind her and kept brushing across Lady Bury St. Edmonds’s face. Gismond narrowed his eyes. Surely that metallic flash couldn’t be a pair of embroidery scissors in Lady Bury St. Edmonds’s hand?
Gismond resisted the impulse to check the timepiece he had discreetly placed under his sash of office, and let the powerful voice of his lordship—who had progressed from reference to the tides to the will of heaven—wash over him.
But at that moment something happened, an event about which Gismond never stopped talking for the rest of his days. It began with a commotion in the back of the chamber, where the Yeoman Warders were stationed in the event that some errant peer insisted on entering in a tardy fashion. (It was deplorable, yet known to happen.)
But the latecomer was surely not a peer. Striding up the aisle now was an interloper: a man wearing plain black breeches and coat, no gloves, and no wig.
The Lord Chancellor broke off in the midst of a sentence describing the arms of heaven embracing the lost nobleman.
Gismond moved forward a nervous step. He should, by all rights, throw the intruder out of the chamber. But he was not one for physical action; raising one hand, he looked to his Yeoman Warders at the back of the room. But they stood facing forward, their eyes lowered.
A little pulse of anger was followed by one of confusion: they had been properly trained and should assume that attitude only upon admission of a member of the peerage. Gismond felt himself turning pale. Could it be that a member of the journalist class had somehow dared to swindle his way past the guards and broach his doors?
He squared his shoulders and prepared to take action.
The man was at the front of the room now, and with one great step was on the very dais.
He was large, very large, but all the same, Sir Henry Gismond knew that this was a decisive moment in his life. He had to prove himself worthy of his position and save the ceremony from chaos. The very memory of the young earl depended upon it.
“I must beg you, sir, to leave this chamber,” he said, pitting his voice against the babble that seemed to vibrate against the very walls of the room.
The man looked down at him, and Gismond involuntarily fell back a step. The intruder’s hair barely touched his ears. His skin was brown as a nut, and below his right eye, he had the mark of a savage.
“By God, this is no place for a tribesman from the Americas,” the Lord Chancellor roared. “Sirrah, return to whatever exhibit brought you to this country!”
With no other response than a rather grim smile showing a flash of white teeth, the man turned squarely to face the assembled peers. Still he remained silent. Gismond saw with one helpless glance that even the occupants of the Spectators’ Gallery were on their feet, straining to see.
“Silence!” the Lord Chancellor bellowed. “If you would please take your seats, we will discover the meaning of this disturbance.”
The babble did not subside, but the peers began to settle back onto their benches.
And all the time the intruder merely stood before them, an odd grin quirking one side of his mouth. Gismond’s mind raced. He’d heard tales of the Indian peoples of the Americas, of their strength and cunning. He’d even seen a tomahawk and shirt made of deerskin on display. Yet this specimen seemed to have no weapon. What on earth—