“You’d think they’d appreciate Gladys’s efforts,” Pru added, with a sniff.
“Yes. You’d think. But Gads’s father cursed her name until the day he died, which, as I said, was only a few months back.”
“What about Gads and his brother? How did they feel about the duchess?”
“Gads is and was indifferent. He’s a reasonable chap, about this anyway. Never met her, so reserved his judgment. John, on the other hand, inherited not only his father’s title but also his unending hatred of the woman. His various wives haven’t been particularly chuffed either, some dowager duchess with a better name than they could hope to have.”
“My head is spinning with all these wives,” Pru said. Or maybe it was the wine. “How many are we talking about here?”
“Gads’s brother married his third last year, the aforementioned daughter-of-a-count. His second wife, a Greek woman, was a drug addict. Not unexpected when your first husband ditches you for Jackie Kennedy.”
“Six marriages between Gads and his brother,” Pru said. “Throw in the ninth duke, and I think I’ve counted eight in your story so far. Sounds like the Marlboroughs have horrible romantic tastes. Or bum luck. Or both.”
Pru leaned back onto Win’s bed. She normally had more couth than to lounge all over some strange man’s bedsheets, but she was also not normally so pissed.
“Most people have horrible romantic tastes,” Win said. “Why do you think I remain unmarried?”
“Didn’t think it was really your choice,” she said sleepily.
“Goodness. Does the so-called second wave of feminism also include browbeating tatty writers? Listen, when you’ve got a title and a palace to maintain, sometimes you marry for the wrong reasons. If money is a ‘wrong reason,’ which one could argue either way.”
“So is that why everyone hated Gladys Deacon? Because she wasn’t a Vanderbilt?”
“That’s part of it. Also some believed she put a curse on the castle and the land. It’s why the money was never enough. The love was never enough. It’s why people left the home more mucked up than when they walked in. As the story goes, shortly after Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford visited, they decided to divorce.”
“A curse? And the Marlboroughs think she is crazy?”
“Jinxes aside, she flat offended them. Gladys Deacon was brilliant and eccentric and cared little about decorum. She refused to play by their meticulously crafted script. Year after year, they ranted about her, told endless stories of her scandals and misdeeds. Because of these things, as a lad, this hellcat mesmerized me. And as a young man, I picked up on something else. Once you waded through all the shite there remained a begrudging respect. Or as Berenson put it: ‘One admires her and one is horrified with her at the same moment.’”
“I experience that very sensation once per day, minimum,” Pru said with a tired, eyes-closed chuckle. “Mrs. Spencer and the duchess must be the same person. So, did you think the house was cursed? As a kid? I’ll bet it was creepy as hell.”
“Miss Valentine!” he said, more offended by this than the puppet show comment. “Blenheim is not ‘creepy as hell.’ It’s magical. It was my childhood.”
“Geez. No need to get all ‘tetchy.’ It’s just a house.”
“JUST A HOUSE! I suppose, if the earth is merely a clod of dirt, the oceans a place for a dip. Blenheim is visually staggering, its grounds enchant. As lads we’d lose ourselves for weekends, weeks even, as we played tennis and shot fox and bumped through the box hedge maze.”
“I’ll bet you ‘became a man’ there, too,” Pru said.
“I did but that’s not the—”
“Uh-huh. Now it all makes sense.”
“Anyhow, you randy young thing, as I was saying. Every day was memorable, each night a dream. We held grand balls and watched orchestras play on the lawns. When the weather was nice we took boats onto the canals. We frolicked in the fountains as golden droplets of water sprinkled on us in the late summer sun.”
“Uh. Wow.”
Pru opened her eyes, then scooted up onto her elbows.
“That doesn’t even sound real.”
It surprised her that the man was not just gruff and vinegar.
“My fondest memories happened there,” Win said. “And through it all threads of the duchess. Stories of her past. Theories about her present. At every dinner and party and hunt she was the topic of discussion.”
“Yet you never met her,” Pru said. “How come? If you were there so frequently?”
“Despite your uncharitable thoughts on the matter, there is a sizable age gap between the duchess and myself. Gladys Deacon left the palace in 1934 after Duke Nine died. I wasn’t even born until 1938. Please reserve your shock.”
“Wow. No television then, even.”
“Yes, we had to follow our wars the old-fashioned way,” he said. “Through radios and newspapers. As dark and backward as the times were, I didn’t lay eyes on Blenheim until 1945, eleven years after she disappeared.”