Runaway Duchess (London Ladies Book 1)

by Jillian Eaton

  Since her best friend Miss Charlotte Vanderley – Graystone now, following her impromptu and rather scandalous wedding to Gavin Graystone, a handsome entrepreneur – had retired prematurely to the country, Dianna had been calling upon her aunt more often than usual. Normally Abigail would have welcomed the extra attention, but not at the expense of her beloved crumpets.

  “Did you truly eat them all?” she said, aghast at the very idea.

  Dianna giggled. “No, Aunt Abigail, I did not eat them all. Calm yourself,” she said with a disapproving cluck of her tongue. “You know too much excitement is not good for your digestion. I put them by the window to cool. They will be ready to eat in a moment or so.”

  “Brat,” Abigail said with great affection. “I thought I raised you better than to play practical jokes on poor old women.”

  Dianna set the serving plates down on the table and pulled out two chairs, one for Abigail and one for herself, before she went to the window to fetch the plate of crumpets. She set them down in the middle of the table before sinking gracefully into her seat with only a slight flutter of blue muslin. “First of all, you are not old. Second of all, you are the one who used to encourage my pranks! Do you remember when you coaxed me into putting a frog in Mother’s drawer of unmentionables?”

  Abigail sniffed even as she hid a smile behind her hand. Dianna may have inherited her poise and ladylike grace from her mother, but her mischievous nature came purely from her aunt. “I am quite certain I have no idea what you are speaking of,” she said.

  Unfazed by Abigail’s prim denial, Dianna continued, “She was cross with me for weeks. Not to mention when we put some of Father’s scotch in the lemonade at the picnic—”

  “Eat your crumpet dear, it is getting cold.”

  They ate in companionable silence, and when the plate was empty and the dishes wiped clean retired to the parlor for a spot of tea. Dianna sat in front of the pianoforte and began to play a soft, lilting tune that brought to mind flowers in the springtime and rolling fields covered in sparkling dew.

  “You have been practicing,” Abigail observed with no small amount of pride. Crossing her legs at the ankle, she leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes with a little sigh, letting the music wash over her in a tinkling wave of notes. This was what she had always wanted and never let herself dream: a house filled with music and children and light and laughter. She could have had all of that, she supposed. But without Reginald beside her it would not have been true, and having something be only half of what you wished it was far worse than not having it at all.

  “Aunt Abigail, I have been thinking about what you said all those weeks ago in the carriage,” Dianna said suddenly.

  Abigail opened her eyes to find Dianna had stopped playing and was watching her, a troubled expression marring her fair countenance.

  “Oh?” she said, her brow creasing in thought as she struggled to recall what conversation would give her niece reason to remember it after so much time had passed. As Dianna’s chaperone she accompanied the younger woman on nearly every outing and they often discussed a myriad of topics ranging from the weather to Dianna’s tenuous relationship with her parents. Nothing out of the ordinary immediately came to mind, forcing her to ask, “What did I say?”

  “Charlotte was with us,” Dianna began, referring once again to her dearest friend, “and we were on our way to Twinings Tea Shop.”

  That hardly helped to narrow it down. “I am afraid you will have to be more specific.”

  “Your engagement to the Duke of Ashburn.”

  Reginald.

  Abigail’s breath escaped in a little hiss of dismay. She had never meant to tell Dianna and Charlotte of her one time fiancée, but given Charlotte’s predicament at the time it seemed a rather fitting story to share.

  They had been on their way to Twinings, just as Dianna said. Charlotte was meeting with her maid to learn more information about the heinous man she was engaged to against her will, and Abigail was attending as their chaperone.

  Now that she had a reference as to what conversation Dianna was referring to, it played back through her mind as though it had happened yesterday instead of weeks ago.

  “I was engaged to a duke once, you know,” she had said, setting aside the book she had been reading on the carriage seat beside her.

  “A duke, Aunt Abigail?” Dianna had repeated dubiously. “Are you certain?”

  “Am I certain who I was once engaged to?” She smiled, amused by her niece’s incredulous expression. “Yes, I do believe I am. I may now spend my days with my nose buried in a book, but it wasn’t always so, my dears. I once led quite the exciting life.”

  “What was his name?” Charlotte asked.

  “And what happened?” Dianna piped in.

  Taking a moment, she smoothed her skirt into place before resting her hands across her lap. She gazed out the window, her countenance softening as she remembered a time long since past. “His name was Reginald Browning the Third, Duke of Ashburn.” The corners of her eyes crinkled as she smiled. “I called him Rocky. We grew up next to each other and as a result became fast childhood friends, even though he was destined to inherit a dukedom and I was the third daughter of a Baron. He asked me to marry him on my seventeenth birthday. He was the impulsive sort. We both were.”

  “Oh, how romantic,” Dianna sighed.

  “Romantic, yes. Practical, no. Rocky’s mother was furious with him, and with me. She demanded he break the engagement. By then it had gone public, of course.”

  “Oh dear,” Dianna murmured.

  “Yes,” Abigail agreed, “‘oh dear’ sums it up quite nicely. Rocky said he loved me, and I believed him. But we both knew the engagement could not continue, and he ended it a week later. We fell out of touch after that. I saw him occasionally in London, but after his father died and he became a duke he ran with a more exclusive set than I did. He ended up married to the daughter of a Marquess, I believe, and moved to France to be near her family. I have not seen him since.”

  “Were you heartbroken when it happened?”

  Dianna’s question, bluntly spoken, drew Abigail out of the past and into the present. Had anyone else asked her about Reginald she would have changed the subject, but if Dianna wanted the truth, then she would receive.

  “I was,” she confessed. Her hands twisted in her lap and for a moment she stared at her left ring finger where the Ashburn crest had once rested. She wondered now, as she had wondered then, how different her life would have been if the ring remained there still. But she banished the wayward thought with an inward shake of her head, chasing away all of the “would haves” and the “could haves”.

  Dianna bit her lip. “I do not mean to pry, but I have been giving my own engagement considerable thought lately. I never loved Miles as you loved your Rocky, but it still hurts.”

  The Mannish women, Abigail reflected dryly, were quite unlucky in terms of love. Of her three sisters only Martha had ever married, and it was not precisely what one would call a happy union.

  Rodger Foxcroft, a baron of some wealth and property, had swept Martha off her feet in a matter of weeks and she was married before the season’s end. Unfortunately, by the time Dianna was born the passion between Rodger and Martha had cooled considerably and they lived completely separate lives; a sad, albeit not uncommon, occurrence within the ton.

  That did not stop them from forcing the same fate upon their daughter, however, and Abigail’s mouth twisted in anger as she thought of the ridiculously outdated betrothal contract her sister and brother-in-law had made Dianna enter at the young, impressionable age of nine.

  To her surprise and relief, however, it seemed for a time as though all would be well. Dianna and her future husband – a charismatic lad who would one day inherit the Earldom of Winfield – got along splendidly as children and continued their friendship into young adulthood. But the day they were to be married Miles left to travel the continent.

  That was four years
ago, and no one had heard a word from him since.

  “It must be positively dreadful for you,” Abigail said sympathetically. “I cannot imagine.” To lose Reginald was bad enough, but at least she knew what had happened to him. To go through her life never knowing… It was unbearable to think about. “I do not mean to upset you, dear, but do you know how much time must pass for one to be declared legally deceased? If that were to happen then you would be free from the contract.”

  “His mother claims she still receives letters from him,” Dianna said, a rare sliver of bitterness creeping into her tone. “I fear she lies, but what proof do I have?”

  “What proof indeed,” Abigail murmured. She sighed and straightened in her chair. “When I lost Reginald, it was a decision we came to together.” More or less. “We were foolish to ever think we could be married.”

  Dianna’s blue eyes darkened. “You were not foolish, you were in love.”

  “Stupidly so,” Abigail agreed.

  “Do you… Do you still think of him? After all this time?”

  Every day. “Once in a great while.”

  “You must despise him for what he did.”

  “Oh, no,” she said honestly. “When I remember him and our time spent together it is with great affection and fondness. We were children, Dianna, and were both forced to pay the price for our impetuousness. But that part of my life is long over.” Reaching out blindly, she grasped her teacup and took a liberal sip of the cooling liquid. “Best not to dwell on the past, my dear. Memories are what they are. You cannot change them.”

  One of Dianna’s shoulders lifted and fell in an elegant shrug. “I suppose that is true enough. It is curious, though, is it not, that you never married?”

  Something twisted unpleasantly in Abigail’s stomach. Now she knew why she never talked of Reginald, nor of the history they had shared. It hurt her now just as it had back then. It seemed time did not lessen the pain of all wounds, and the ones she had sustained all those years before were still slowly trickling blood. “I did not marry because I had no wish to do so,” she said firmly, hoping her tone would put an end to the subject.

  “So you have no lingering feelings at all,” Dianna persisted.

  “For Reginald?” Abigail took another sip of her tea. “No, none at all.” It was, she reflected, one of the only lies she had ever told her niece.

  “Then it will not matter to you, then.”

  Abigail peered at Dianna over the curved rim of her cup. “What will not matter?” she asked suspiciously.

  “It was in all of the papers yesterday morn. I am surprised you have not heard already.”

  “Heard what?” She loved her niece, she truly did, but sometimes the girl could be nothing short of exasperating.

  “The Duke of Ashburn. He is returning home.”

  Abigail’s teacup slipped from her hands and shattered on the floor.