There was a terrible banging on their hotel room door the fourth night Lucile and her mother were in Monte Carlo.
“Good gracious!” Mother said. “I pray someone has the wrong room.”
“Who’s there?” Lucile called out, standing near but not at the door.
“If he’s in there, I want a word with him here and now!” a deep male voice bellowed. A voice with a distinctive and disturbing Scottish burr.
Cosmo! Cosmo was here!
Holding up a hand for her mother to stay where she was, Lucile fumbled with the latch and lock and swept open the door to find him looking quite magnificent with a sword drawn from a scabbard. He was in full Scottish regalia to knee stockings, belted kilt, and loose-sleeved, laced shirt with a black wool jacket and tam. For once, he smelled of whiskey instead of Highland air.
“Cosmo, whatever is it? What are you doing? And put that sword away.”
“Is he here?”
“There’s nobody but Mother, and you’re frightening her out of her wits.”
“Lord C was all Elinor would admit to me. I saw her before I sailed, having to chase you halfway across Europe. Is it true he’s been courting you and turning your head? Pray God you haven’t given him a promise or he’s laid a hand on you.”
Elinor, indeed, she thought. The great romantic and fiction writer had embellished the story they’d planned. She remembered how Elinor had been talking about that regal, powerful Lord Curzon, viceroy of exotic India, as she’d put it. Is that where Elinor had dreamed up Lord C? Even if it was, she had no intention of telling Cosmo.
“Cosmo, sheathe that sword, and we will talk.”
“Is he British? Who is he? I intend to challenge him to a duel over your honor.”
“Now that you’re here, I can hardly recall his name. Put that down, I said, and sit.”
“Good evening to you, Mrs. Kennedy,” he said, finally noticing her. He lowered his voice and seemed to steady himself as he slid his sword back into its scabbard. He looked a bit sheepish as he came in.
“Good evening to you, Lord Duff-Gordon. How kind of you to drop by. Now if you will excuse me, I shall let you two hash this out and be in my room, Lucy dear, if you need me.” And she made an exit worthy of Ellen Terry.
Lucile closed the door behind her. She was in one of her Oriental silk robes with little underneath, and it was—she glanced at the clock—nearly ten thirty.
“You can bet you won’t so much as recall his name now that I’m here,” Cosmo insisted as he dropped the scabbard and sword onto the carpet and reached for her. “He better not have laid a hand on you, but I intend to.” He gave her a resounding, earthshaking kiss until he nearly lost his balance, then sank to the sofa where she’d been sketching designs. She sat beside him, pulling her split robe closed over her bare knees.
“If you’re going to marry anyone, you’re going to marry me,” he went on. “Did he pressure you? Did he propose?”
“I suppose he proposed some things—which, of course, I did not accept.”
“Thank God. But why did you leave London with nary a word?” he demanded, turning toward her. His breath was as sharp as his expression. Yes, he had been drinking and not his usual Duff-Gordon sherry. For a moment that bothered her. Clayton was forever in his cups, and maybe, now that Cosmo’s strictly religious mother had died, he’d taken to it too, but no. She’d studied this strong, honorable, and loyal man. And because he was strong, she’d decided what she must do if he ever proposed—and was he proposing now?
“You see,” she said, reaching gently for his big hand clenched on his knee and unflexing his fingers, “I thought you had grown weary of me, oh, maybe not as a business partner, but you hardly said you so much as loved me lately.”
“I haven’t grown weary of you. I’ve loved you, damn it, for over seven years, almost from the first time you stood with little silky underthings in your hands and then put them under your pretty bum before you rather quickly tossed me back out on the street.”
“But I tried to retrieve you later.”
“Ha! That makes me sound like a hunting dog. And you did not. You let me make the first—the second move—and then played hard to get.” With his free hand, he reached out to finger the fine, silky material of her gown at the neck, as if he would pull it awry to bare her to him. In a quiet, coaxing voice he went on, “Sweetheart, don’t you remember I told you that you must wear such bonnie things for me someday? Do you think a dour Scotsman and sporting man would ordinarily invest time and money in a ladies’ fashion house if there wasn’t something there he wanted? And you don’t do men’s clothes.”
“Not yet—but,” she told him, reaching for her design sketchbook on the table and flipping to a back page, “if I ever do, this will be the first. It’s what I have dubbed a ‘Cosmo sporting suit.’ See? I’ve labeled it thus.”
“Damn good looking,” he said, leaning closer, almost on her shoulder. “Tweed and then leather there on the lapels, I hope.”
“Cosmo Duff-Gordon,” she said, tossing the sketchbook on the table, “I haven’t given a flying flip for any other man since I met you. But because you are a strong man, one who usually gets your own way—”
“I intend to with you.”
“—we need to come to an understanding before some sort of arrangement.”
“Arrangement? I’m marrying you, lass.”
“But, as you know, I have another love besides you, and I don’t mean another man. The arrangement I’m speaking of,” she went on, pulling her dressing gown together again under his steady stare, “is that I simply cannot abandon my business, my shop, and my career. And a Scottish estate on the river Dee, however lovely, I am sure, is far from the Maison Lucile in London.”
“Don’t I know. You haven’t set one foot in Scotland yet, and it’s the place I love most. So I would want the woman I love to be there—though back and forth to London, too.”
He put his hand on her knee, caressing and gripping it through the slick material. But she must not be distracted or deterred.
“But as my bulwark of strength and adviser for the shop,” she went on, “you understand that it takes a great deal of my time. You’ve always counseled well, that I not jump ahead of my resources, but I have dreams and plans to open a shop in Paris and—”
“The fancy frogs won’t patronize a British woman’s shop.”
“They will if they love the clothing. And America, not that I have an exact plan for that, but I want to visit there, see the opportunities, so—”
“So give me one of those sheets of paper, maybe the one with the Cosmo suit. I’ll cut my finger, my wrist, anything and sign in blood to all that if you’ll wed me, lass. My lass,” he said and reached for her.
He lifted her so easily onto his lap, then held her there a moment, staring intently into her face. “If your mother wasn’t in the next room, probably listening at the door, I’d seal our bargain another way. Lucile-Lucy Sutherland Wallace, will you marry me? After all, maybe being able to have the name Lady Duff-Gordon will help with sales when you take over the world. I’ll be there beside and behind you. I know you have a hard time trusting men, but we can work on that.”
Her head spun at his words and at his touch. “Agreed,” she told him. “With that plan, I agree. I don’t know what I would have done without you over these last years, but I believe I do know what to do with you now.”
“Quit talking about your plans and kiss me. I have no intention of being put off or losing you again—ever.”
They were wed two weeks later, May 24, 1900, in Venice at the house of a friend of Cosmo’s who was in foreign service there. He’d even found a bagpipe to blast—it was really called skirling, she learned—Scottish tunes at the intimate reception.
Mother attended, but not Elinor or Esme, who was staying with her aunt. Lucile’s only other regret was that, considering all the sumptuous wedding gowns she’d made for others, she wore her favorite ball gown, an old one. But what mattered was that she was marrying the man she loved.
Cosmo was so proud and happy, and, yes, she was happy too. So indeed, she was now Lucile, Lady Duff-Gordon.
He took her to a beautiful site called Abazzia in western Croatia for their honeymoon, a spot where they knew no one. They swam in the warm bay of the Adriatic Sea each day and sat in the shade eating seafood and sipping wine. This setting seemed so open and so real, not closed off or made by man. The second day in a row, when she beat her muscular athlete in a swimming race, she realized she loved the feeling of winning. She’d won her dream career and the man of her dreams.
That night with their hotel suite’s double door open to the July night breeze and the stars, they sat naked in their bed and watched the moon rise over the sea with the music of its crashing waves on the shore.
“I’m used to winning races and matches,” he whispered, “but you beat me twice fair and square, so you get a prize.”
“I already have a prize,” she said, flashing her heirloom engagement ring and gold wedding band at him in the glow of moonlight that illumined their bodies and their bed.
“A new prize,” he said. “Something I wager you’ve never had or done, my sweet, wild lass of a wife.” He turned to her and put one hand on her shoulder, one on her waist. His mere touch made her shiver with desire. “I’m proud of you for not drawing one sketch of a costume while we’ve been here, and you beat me fair and square at swimming, so name your prize.”
“Besides your helping me find and open a shop in Paris?”
“Yes, damn it!”
She laughed deep in her throat. “All right then,” she whispered, moving her thigh to press against his. “No more teasing or cat and mouse. I want to show you I can win at more than a swimming race. And at building a business. I know you are the man in the family, but I can lead too.”
She amazed herself at her boldness, but, good gracious, times were changing. Just wait until Bertie took the throne. Elinor thought so too, and had talked about an idea for a novel where the woman seduced the man—novel and naughty indeed in Queen Victoria’s world.
She pushed Cosmo back on their pile of pillows and mounted him, settling in at once. Despite his bravado, he gasped, but cooperated fully, gripping her to him. He barely managed to whisper, “And I used to think fencing was my favorite athletic endeavor.”
She gasped too. It was strange to be the one on top, the one in charge. But she reveled in it and found that it led to a strange surrender too. And, for one mad, shattering moment, there was no one or no thing in the world besides this man she loved.