Bertrice Small - Deceived

He had grown pale with shock. "No!" he said in a strangulated voice. "My God, Aurora! What have I done to you in my lust for you?"

She was startled. "Don't you want our baby?" she said.

"Not if it means losing you," he cried desperately, catching her to his chest. "I love you, Aurora, and I do not want you to die as your sister did! I could not bear to lose you, my darling!"

Aurora burst out laughing and pulled away from him. "Oh, Valerian, I am not Cally. I want this baby. I am overjoyed to be carrying this child. The queen's physician says I am in excellent health and spirits. He says I should have a houseful of babies with no danger to my health. I am not Cally."

"But your own mother died in childbirth," he said.

"Many white women in the Indies do, Valerian," she said. "We have no medical assistance, and must depend upon our women servants, who are as ignorant there as they are here. St. Timothy is a small island domain. Perhaps if we had lived on Barbados, or Jamaica, my mother would not have died. I am not my mother, and I shall have a doctor to shepherd me through my confinement. I will not have you worrying until November, Valerian. I won't!"

He kissed her, his mouth softly caressing hers, and then he swept her up in his arms and began walking toward the house.

"What on earth are you doing, Valerian Hawkesworth?" she squealed. "Put me down this instant, my lord!"

"You must not overtax yourself, my darling," he said seriously.

"You are a great fool," she laughed, snuggling into his embrace and laying her head against his shoulder.

"What has happened to Aurora!" The old dowager came hurrying toward them. "Is she all right, Valerian? Why are you carrying her?"

"I am to have a baby, madam, and this great fool has gone mad, I believe. Come, my lord, put me down. I will not endure another scandal at your hands now that I am at last safely home."

"Put her down at once, sir!" his grandmother commanded, and the duke obeyed with a grin. Then she turned to Aurora. "My dear, 1 am so happy for you both!" She kissed Aurora on both her pink cheeks. "And you also, my lord. How was London?"

"Crowded, dirty, noisy, and scandalous," the duke replied. "I am home to stay, dear madam. Scandal or no, we are home for good, and nothing will convince me otherwise."

"Their majesties are well? What is she like?" the old lady inquired.

"Delightful," Aurora said. "It was the queen's physician who confirmed my condition. She, too, is with child, and will deliver England's next king in August, madam."

"How wonderful!" the dowager replied as they entered the house, Peters hurrying forth to take their cloaks.

"Welcome home, your grace," the butler said to the duke. "Welcome home, your grace." He bowed to Aurora. "Tea is being served in the Yellow Salon."

They hurried into the sunny room and settled themselves.

"And has the scandal of our marriage died down yet, my dear grandmother?" the duke said, pouring himself a sherry in lieu of the tea the old woman was now serving.

"Of course," she said, "although for a while I thought it would not what with the reports of your riotous living up in London returning to titillate the district."

"Riotous living?" Aurora burst out laughing. "Someone has a rather fertile imagination, Grandmama. We lived a most circumspect life, I fear. I became friends with the queen, who is really a sweet little hausfrau, as am I. I think anyone else would have been bored to death. Several of the queen's ladies were, in fact, quite put out by our friendship. I was not, I fear, grand enough for them, and quite dull in their eyes, what with my talk of preserves and soapmaking."

The dowager chortled. "Well, my dears, you have at last been supplanted by a far more shocking scandal. It should be some time before it dies down, I am happy to say, at which point you and Valerian will be considered a respectable married couple, especially as you are to have an heir before the year is out." She chortled again, her blue eyes dancing with merriment.

"Well," the duke said, sounding just slightly aggravated, "are you going to tell us, Grandmama, what this new and obviously delicious scandal is?" He sipped his sherry.

"It does involve the family," the dowager teased him.

"St. John!" Aurora guessed. "It has to be St. John. Only he would have the ability to cause a greater scandal than we did."

The dowager laughed aloud now.

"Well, dammit, madam, what has my cousin done?" the duke demanded irritably. "I am astounded that he would try to outdo our alleged calumny, but then, St. John always must have the last word!"

The dowager laughed harder, tears coming to her eyes. "Well, dearest Valerian, he has indeed outdone you this time, and the entire district is talking about it, will be talking about it for months to come. What a rascal St. John is, but this time he has bitten off a tiny bit more than he can chew, although his fate is a better one than he deserves, I can tell you."

"Well, what has he done?" the duke almost shouted.

The dowager managed to compose herself. "St. John," she said, "eloped two days ago to Gretna Green with Miss Isabelle Bowen!"

ENGLAND, 1770

On June 6,1770, the Dowager Duchess of Farminster celebrated her eightieth birthday privately, with only her family as guests at a small party. The back lawns of Hawkes Hill, overlooking the magnificent gardens now abloom with roses, were manicured perfectly. A tea table was even now being set up with fine linen, the silver tea service, and the new porcelain dessert set from Dr. Wall's pottery in Worcester town. There was to be a cake with sugar icing filled with cream and strawberries.

Mary Rose Hawkesworth sat comfortably ensconced in a large high-backed chair that had been brought from the house. Bright-eyed and still sharp of wit, she watched as her great-grandchildren played upon the lawns with their St. John cousins. There were five great-grandchildren so far, and Aurora was shortly to deliver a sixth. Isabelle St. John with her four would deliver a fifth in July. The old lady smiled contentedly, thinking that while she might not be as agile as she once was, this was possibly the best time of her life.

Her eye went to her grandson. Valerian was slightly heavier than he had been several years earlier, but he was thirty-seven now. They had celebrated his birthday just two days before. He was a happy man, and she thanked God for it. He stood now, speaking with his eldest son and heir, seven-and-a-half-year-old George. George's twin sister, Charlotte, was vying for her father's attention. The birth of the twins had been a great surprise, for never before had twins been born into the family. Then had come Robert, James, and little Calandra. Aurora was certainly keeping up with the queen, or at least trying to keep up with her. Queen Charlotte had delivered her seventh child, a third daughter, to be named Elizabeth, just the previous month.

"How are you feeling, Grandmama?" Aurora inquired solicitously. She settled herself in the chair next to the dowager.

"Quite well, considering my years," the dowager said wryly. "And how are you feeling with your great belly, my dear. Is it a son or a daughter you carry this time? What think you, Aurora?"

"Oh, I hope it is a daughter, Grandmama" was the reply. "We already have an heir, a son for the navy, and one for the church. What would we do with another boy? I suppose we could buy him a commission in the army." She sighed. "Daughters are easier. All you have to do is find them suitable husbands, and a duke's daughter with a generous dowry will have no trouble making a good match."

"Unless, of course, she favors her mama in her temperament, and then even a duke will not be good enough," the dowager teased her granddaughter-in-law, a smile upon her lips.

Aurora laughed. "I was really quite the fool, wasn't I?" she said. "I still feel guilt over Cally's untimely death even if it did bring me all this happiness. I am only grateful that my stepmother finally found it in her heart to forgive me. It pained me to hurt Oralia, for she was always so good to me, and really the only mother I ever knew. I'm sorry she will not come to England, but her fear of the sea is far greater than her desire to see my children."

"She has Betsy and George's children," the dowager comforted Aurora. "I imagine those three little boys keep her quite busy."

"Perhaps we shall go to St. Timothy next winter," Aurora said thoughtfully. "I would like to see the islands again."

"St. Timothy. The island snatched from me by my greedy cousin, the duke," St. John said teasingly, coming up to where the women sat. He kissed his wife, who was seated on the other side of the dowager, upon her cheek.

Isabelle smacked his hand lightly. "Behave yourself, St. John! You are worse than the children, I vow. Have you spoken to Frederick about teasing his sister, Caroline? It really must stop! When Augustus and Edward see him begin, they join in, and poor Caroline is quite overcome by them. Well, have you taken Freddie to task yet, St. John?"

Aurora arose quietly and walked across the lawns toward her husband. St. John had really, as the dowager remarked more than once, bitten off more than he could chew when he married Isabelle Bowen. He had indeed gotten his just deserts in a loving martinet of a wife, as Isabelle had turned out to be. She utterly adored him, and to his amazement St. John felt the same way about her. She ran his house with an iron hand, and bore him beautiful children; but she expected total obedience from her husband, her children, and her servants. She had totally engineered her courtship and elopement, the dowager said. Poor St. John had never realized he was being taken in hand until the ring had been placed upon Isabelle's dainty finger-and in St. John's aristocratic nose.

Coming up to her husband, Aurora slipped her hand through his arm. "What a perfect day," she said. "Could it be any better?"

He smiled down at her. "No," he agreed. "It could not."

"Mama!" Her eldest son tugged at her skirts. "Mama! There are new puppies in the stables! May I have a puppy? Please!"

"How many puppies are there, Georgie?" she asked him.

"Five, Mama! They are liver and white, and Franklin says they'll be ready to leave their mother in eight or nine weeks. Their eyes aren't opened yet. They are so tiny, Mama. I may have one, mayn't I?"

Aurora looked up at her husband. "If Georgie gets a puppy, the others will want one too," she warned him, and then she laughed at the look on his face. "Oh, very well," she said, and she looked down at her son. "Yes, Georgie, you may have a puppy. And so may your brothers and sisters too."

"But I get to pick first because I am the eldest," the boy said. "I am the eldest, and I am the heir."

"I was born five minutes before you were," his twin sister, Charlotte, said. "I don't want a puppy, Mama. I want one of Pusskin's new kittens, and so does Cally. If he gets a puppy, I get a kitten."

"Cally isn't old enough for a kitten," Georgie said. "Or a puppy either," he concluded. "You just want two kittens, Lotte."

"You're just jealous because I was born before you were," his sister replied. "Cally will want a kitten if I get one, Mama."

"You may be older," the boy replied, "but I am the heir. I will be Duke of Farminster one day, and I shall banish you to a nunnery, Lotte."

"You can't do that!" she cried. "What's a nunnery, Mama? He can't do that, can he?"

"A nunnery is where ladies who have decided to devote their lives to God live, Lotte," her mother said, "and no, Georgie cannot banish you to a nunnery. One day you shall fall in love, and marry."

"And I shall marry a duke who is even richer than you will be," Charlotte Hawkesworth told her brother smugly.

"Will not!" he cried.

"Will too!" she replied.

"Sheep face!" he insulted her.

"Frog's head!" she taunted him, and giving him a quick smack she ran off, her twin in hot pursuit to gain his revenge.

The duke looked into his wife's face. His deep blue eyes were dancing wickedly. Tenderly he patted her belly. "Nonetheless," he said, "I do love children, my darling, and I love you even more than the day I married you. I think our life together a fairy tale."