"The world's delight is sweet and lovely, its way of life is soft and adorned. For the world's allurements I burn willingly - I'll not shun their voluptuousness."
~ Carmina Burana (XIII Century)
"Where were we, again?" An older lady takes a cup of tea sitting on the coffee table and brings to her lips.
The woman was absolutely stunning, despite going on years and the weight of a viduity, with a fair, smooth complexion, pale skin that seems to have never seen a working day in her life and a curly, black hair fashionably styled on the top of her head.
"You were telling me about the time you arrived at the house of your natural father, Your Grace." Her companion responded.
"Of course." The lady nods, reminded. "My sickly and horridly poor mother had only just died, after keeping my noble parentage hidden my entire life. I resent her over it to this day, but I must admit the woman had her use, as she had levered with my father to take me in upon her death.
"If not for that carefully worded, strategic delivered letter, I doubt I would be welcomed on the manor that warm summer afternoon. I would be just another orphan girl at the spike. My mother provided more dead than she ever did while alive.
"Good thing Vincent was never the kind to assert authority, too, bleeding heart like no other. Perhaps if he was, he would have thought to keep the bastard on her rightful place, but he clung on to an idea of family, and my arrival seemed to be the last straw for him to grasp."
"Perhaps he thought it to be a blessing." The interlocutor weighed. "A daughter that late in life! For a dying line, no less. Some families can only dream on being so fortunate."
She chuckled dismissively. "If only I was a man, perhaps I would tend towards your line of thought. But no, I was no saving grace. Indeed, the late earl had to go to great lengths to assure my right of succession. Nevertheless, if nothing else, undeserving I was not.
"You know the law of the land. Women shall hold no property. It would not be so easy to solve like a simple letter to the Prince Regent, I had to work if I wanted my birthright to be recognized. And as soon as I stepped foot in Edgewater, I started assessing my assets."
"You seem savvy for a peasant just off the hovels." The companion comments.
A sombre look passes through the face of the Duchess. "Poverty is a cruel mistress. I lacked just about every gift one must have to prosper within the upper echelons of society, except for wit and determination. I would not return to the miserable life my mother bequeathed me. I was certain that while I breathed, I would fight."
"And fight you did." The other noted. "What about the rest of the family?"
"My grandmother, Dominique, was willing to go to great lengths to help me. She tried to convince me it was a labour of love, but for all her age, I was wiser. Her hatred against my stepmother knew no bounds, and the sentiment was reciprocate. She would be out on the streets if my father happened to pass. A sympathetic, and dependant, figure on the head of the family was a necessity.
"My greatest threat was my stepbrother. My actual brother, half-brother that is, had died the prior summer on a hunting accident. Ever since then, Edmund had been filling the position of heir to the estate, but the man was absolutely inadequate. No wit to speak of, nor charm, and a small dog passing as hair.
"If it was only him, it would be only too easy. No, the danger laid with my stepmother. Vincent had let his wife walk all over him for the better part of two decades by the time I arrived, Henrietta had a comfortable station at the manor and was not about to lose it all to me without a fight."
"What about the Duke? How does he fit in with the story?" The conversationalist questioned.
"Yes, I am getting there." The Duchess tattles slightly annoyed. "I met Tristan at my first gathering at the manor. By then, I was involved with our neighbour, Ernest Sinclaire. A handsome man, charming on occasion, shamelessly wealthy. His greatest flaw, however, was a pathological sense of sociability."
The interlocutor chuckled. "Was he too talkative?"
The woman could not help but laugh at the notion. "Much the opposite. Sour like rotten passion fruit. Ernest could not be bothered to interact with his fellow human beings. If he was so inclined, you could count it to be an admonishment."
"What makes him memorable, then?"
"Looking back, I believe his demeanour was more related to shyness than haughtiness. He had been orphaned at a young age and had no relatives or close acquaintances other than my father and grandmother. Moreover, as such, he was fun to tease.
"In fact, more than fun, it was incredible useful. Ernest and Tristan had an intense rivalry, probably over the fact that Ernest was young and handsome, two things the Duke intensely desired to be while being loud and boisterous, traits the young landlord despised over any other.
"By showing favour to Ernest, I became all the more desirable to Tristan. By the end of that summer, I was engaged to the Duke, telling Ernest it was the designs of my family and I could not do a thing."
"What did he do about that?" The other asks, with a sober tone, fitting to the subject.
"What all the young men of his time were doing." She says, with a disconcerting coldness. "He killed himself. A shot to his head and a depressive journal explaining, in detail, what led him to the act. Just like in The Sorrows of Young Werther."
"How ghastly!" The companion gasps.
The Duchess shrugs. "If he wished for death, he got his bullet's worth. If you are so inclined to pity anyone, pity the living. For the dead, there is nothing to be done."
Faced with the constrained silence of her companion, the noblewoman continues her tale: "Of course, for a will to come to fruition, someone has to die. My marriage was not enough."
"You killed your father?" The companion inquired, taken aback.
"Of course not. Once married, I had fulfilled the designs of the earl's will. I was the heir, and a Duchess, and so I had no hurry for him to die. But die he did." The woman takes a sip from her tea. "Hunting accident, as fate has you. It was not in my best interest having my father dead. But Henrietta was on a different mind."
"But if you were recognized as heir and had fulfilled the conditions for inheritance, wouldn't you stepmother be thrown on the streets upon viduity?" The conversationalist wonders.
"She thought she could question the will on court, on grounds that my father had another match in mind, and dead men don't tell tales." A small pause pass before the Duchess continues, "If it came to fail, I suspect she would try to pin the murder on me."
"But she could not." The interlocutor says with certainty and the Duchess hums her agreement. "What did you do?"
"Have you ever heard that between two people there are no secrets?" The noblewoman asks, an amused smile on her face. "Henrietta did not commit the murder herself. She put her child to do it, and he complied with her designs. But Edmund was a good Christian, he felt legitimately conflicted about the crime, and so he confessed his wretched emotions to a sympathetic ear."
"You?"
She snorted. "God, no. He confided on his fiancée, Theresa Sutton. However, I would say it would have been better if he went straight to the constable. It was a careless decision, certainly, as the girl was ambitious and had a clear sight of how increasingly unfavourable that match was becoming. She had signed up to be a countess, after all, not some lukewarm relative of a Duchess-Consort.
"She bartered the information with me for my help on the marriage market. I set her up with some old-and-grey marquis who soon made of Theresa a wealthy, wealthy widow. My stepmother was hanged for orchestrating the murder of her husband and trying to usurp the title of a peer of the realm. Edmund was spared of such a fate, but was deported to Australia. The last I heard, though, was that he did not make it to the Cape."
A spell of silence befell the two of them before the companion asks, "What of the Duke?"
"I was a dotting and dutiful wife to Tristan." She hummed. "I was, indeed. I kept his properties flourishing, his bed warm and was a darling companion on every social engagement of his. I gave him two beautiful daughters and a healthy son. In all, I have been a bastion of propriety up until his untimely death."
A sip of tea and a wicked smile, the Duchess whispers: "The lead I put on his food notwithstanding."
The two of them chuckle darkly.
"But enough about me." The Duchess say. "How about you, darling?"