Ash deepened his hotly drugging kiss and explored her mouth as if he was starving for her. Rosalind reminded herself how she had to birth their daughter alone before she discovered real, heart-and-soul and bone-deep love. The innocence of her baby—a perfect, fiercely loved little being who would never have been if not for their driven desire—was what saved her from loneliness and despair. She would never regret marrying Ash, because he had given her Jenny, but she would never let him hurt her that much again.
‘I said no, Ash,’ she finally managed to say and found the strength to push back against his arms.
He dropped his hold on her and backed away as far as he could get in this small space, which was not far. The scent of him, the fact of him, tore away at her resolutions so she was glad when he gave a heavy sigh and seemed to accept her no at face value. ‘Coward,’ he mocked softly all the same.
She still saw something new and almost regretful in his eyes as he let her go. ‘Heavens above, it really has been snowing,’ she gasped as he finally took up his lantern and forced the door on to the outside world open against a hindrance of snow. A lot more time must have passed than she realised while they were eating and arguing.
‘And I really must get back into the warm before I freeze on your doorstep, my Duchess,’ he said with a very visible shudder as his booted feet sank into the snow.
‘I am not a duchess.’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ he told her with a long, intimately assessing look that made her blush, ‘you have a way of looking down your nose that would not be out of place on a queen, let alone a duchess.’
‘How flattering,’ she said blankly.
‘Never mind, you will soon be dressed as befits your station again,’ he said as if her never knowingly fashionable countrywoman’s clothes were far more of a worry to her than he was.
‘I am perfectly happy as I am,’ she said impatiently, refusing to think of wearing fine velvets and satins, with softest lawn next to her skin instead of her usual practical gowns with their sensible underpinnings. She lived a practical and useful life and being decked out in the finest Bond Street had to offer would please him far more than it would her, wouldn’t it?
‘No, you are covered up and warm. Trying to fade into the background will never work when you could look spectacular in a sack.’
‘Thank you for that fulsome compliment, Your Grace, and goodnight,’ she said firmly, and shut the door in his infuriating face, so he would not know how very tempted she was to tell him she had changed her mind. She kicked the solid old door instead and instantly regretted it.
‘Goodnight, Sweet Princess.’ His deep voice managed to penetrate even that barrier and she was certain there was a chuckle in his voice, despite the snow and cold.
* * *
‘He’s gone, then,’ Joan said when Rosalind walked back into the house proper and went to stand in front of the still-glowing kitchen fire to warm up. She was racked by shivers and at least half of them were due to the cold.
‘Of course,’ she said, dignity offended by the suggestion she was not strong-minded enough to throw her husband out into the snow.
‘No “of course” about it—he is your husband.’ Joan sounded as if she was not very much in favour of the breed either. Rosalind considered her mother’s often-strained second marriage and her own very short one, until today, and could hardly blame her maid for being sceptical of aristocratic alliances.
‘I can’t shrug my shoulders and let him back into my bed as if he has never been away,’ she answered defensively.
‘Some would not wait for a yes or no, Miss Rosalind,’ Joan said as if trying to be fair. ‘And after all those weeks at sea he did listen to you.’
‘Are you playing devil’s advocate?’
‘Probably, but he is your husband.’
‘As he has been all these years, with never a word to his wife.’
‘Would you have known if he did seek you out?’
‘I read the papers after the Duck and Feathers have done with them. He could have advertised if he wanted to find me. He had no interest in where I was until he needed to divorce me, Joan. He would still be doing so if not for him finding out about Jenny.’
‘Oh, my dear girl, he hurt you so much, how can we be sure he isn’t going to do it again?’ her friend burst out, her real anxiety finally coming out as she looked about to cry.
‘I won’t let him break me, Joan. I am not an eighteen-year-old mouse scared of her own shadow now and I will not let my daughter grow up seeing her mother ruled and humiliated by her husband as I was forced to. My mother may have felt she had to endure Lord Lackbourne’s slights and petty rules for my sake, but I will not be dominated by my husband, you can be very sure of that, and he is not as chilly as the Earl even now.’
‘A husband has all the power in a marriage,’ Joan said bleakly. ‘I believe Lord Lackbourne loved her, but longed for a son so much it bent him out of shape.’
‘Ash is no Lord Lackbourne, even if he is a duke, Joaney,’ Rosalind said, ‘and this is not going to be a love-match on either side this time.’
‘You can’t undo the past and you loved him far too much once upon a time.’
‘And now I know better,’ Rosalind said lightly, but she still crossed her fingers behind her back because she really had loved him so dearly back then. Never again, she promised herself as the thought of what she might have done if not for the little life growing inside her when he left her made her shudder away from the little fool she had once been for love. She did know better, she had to. It was too much of a risk to let the impulsive, needy young Rosalind out of her closet and let her yearning to be loved rule her again. ‘And I don’t know about you, but I have found all these shocks quite exhausting,’ she added as if she thought she would get even a wink of sleep.
They went about the reassuring routines of bedtime: making up fires and placing guards in front of them; laying out plates, cups and knives ready for breakfast and making sure doors were locked and bolted. Satisfied at last, Joan went to her bedroom by the little staircase that wound around the kitchen fireplace to the little bedroom above it and Rosalind went the other way to the not-very-grand main bedchamber to toss and turn for most of the night. Jenny was not in her familiar little slip of a bright room tonight and nothing was as it should be. The bed felt empty and that yearning Rosalind felt was a lot more substantial tonight than it ought to be. The girl who had loved Ash enough to walk to the ends of the earth for his sake kept prodding her with all sorts of inconvenient memories she would really rather forget and get some sleep. She didn’t trust the feelings he provoked in her, but he seemed very different in some ways from the boy she once knew. He had matured well, in body and mind, but what about the Ash underneath, the boy with all that hurt and grief boiling inside him the day he had denounced her as a liar, then walked out of her life and kept on walking? Could she ever trust him again with the true inner Rosalind who had loved him so much she felt torn apart when he left?
* * *
It snowed again in the night and Rosalind woke to the odd light of sun reflecting off snow. After not being able to eat much last night and her long walk yesterday she was hungry and ate her toast and even the egg Joan insisted she needed to keep her strength up. Rosalind was pouring a second cup of tea from the fat brown pot when a knock came on the back door and she knew it was Ash. Her heart was pounding when Joan stood aside to let him in, his tall, greatcoated figure almost blocking the light. He had found an extra scarlet muffler from somewhere and what looked like another pair of gloves under his riding gauntlets. He might look funny if she felt like being amused, but he was far too real and intimidating to laugh at.
He rid himself of outer garments before entering the parlour. ‘I had breakfast at the inn, I thank you,’ he said to Joan, who was watching from the little hallway. ‘And I wiped my boots before I came in, like a good duke,’ he added drily.
‘I never said you didn’t and now you’re here again I must get hold of some extra provisions,’ Joan said with another stern look before going back to the kitchen.
‘I doubt she will get anyone to kill a fatted calf for me,’ Ash said ruefully.
‘Never mind, I expect they will do that when you get to Edenhope,’ Rosalind said, imagining a small army of inside and outside staff startled to see their new Duke with an unexpected Duchess, and the sinking feeling in her stomach made her wish she hadn’t eaten that egg after all.
‘Aye, but they would be pleased to see anyone who will have the roof mended and chimneys rebuilt so the place is warmer than the Arctic again so I will try not to let it go to my head.’
‘It is really that cold there?’
‘Charlie always said so, but let’s not talk about it now. I might decide to stay here until it’s high summer and I doubt you or your maid would like that.’
‘Nor would you if you had to stay at a country inn for months on end.’
‘You need a few weeks to get used to me before we are husband and wife again, but don’t expect more, Ros. I am only human.’
‘Yet you have been without me for so long,’ she said coolly.
‘Which doesn’t mean—’ He stopped speaking and froze in the act of adding a new log to the dying fire as the back door opened abruptly.
Feeling a bit frozen herself, Rosalind listened to Jenny chatter excitedly to Joan about her night with her friends and all they had got up to already this morning while she was handing over her coat, hat, gloves and scarf, then being whisked into the kitchen to take off her wet boots and stockings by the fire. They could hear Joan’s half-hearted scolding through the slightly open door as she insisted Jenny put on the dry stockings and the indoor shoes warming by the fire before she let her charge out of her sight again.
Ash stoked the fire and stood up, looking as if willpower was stopping him rushing into that kitchen and seizing his startled daughter in his arms now he finally knew he had one. It felt almost as hard for Rosalind to sit and wait for Jenny to be dry and warm again as it must be for Ash not to pace and curse while he struggled to contain his emotions.
‘Just look at your toes, Miss Jenny, they’re nigh blue with cold,’ Joan’s muffled voice exclaimed and Rosalind strained her ears for her daughter’s usual protests as they were rubbed with a rough towel until she was warm and dry again. When her stepfather was not about Rosalind, her mother used to argue about such little things as wet feet and the time it took to dry them when there was so much for a young girl to do. Would a duchess be permitted to fuss over her child with so much stateliness to keep up on her husband’s behalf? Probably not—she was sitting here now while Joan did it for her and there would be nannies and nursery maids and governesses galore for Lady Imogen Hartfield and any future brothers and sisters she might have.
Inside the parlour the old mantel clock ticked solemnly on and the log Ash had added to the fire shifted, then sank into the heart of it to give out an extra glow of heat. They both listened for any word they could catch as Jenny told Joan about her day so far and Ash waited, tense as a racehorse ready for the off. Rosalind felt slightly sick when she realised Jenny must have had enough of being fussed over at last and was heading for the parlour to tell her mother about her latest adventure.
‘Oh,’ Jenny said as she stared at the tall stranger looming over the low-ceilinged room. Rosalind guessed Ash had been struck dumb and motionless by this second look at his surprise child and she was about to intervene when her daughter added, ‘You’re the man from the stables at the Duck’, before shooting Rosalind a guilty look.
‘I hate to think what you were doing there yesterday,’ she scolded mildly. ‘And where are your manners, young lady?’
‘I beg your pardon. Good morning, sir,’ Jenny said with a long-suffering sigh and even managed a wobbly curtsy.
‘Good morning. Mistress Jenny Meadows, I presume?’ Ash replied rather hoarsely.
‘My real name is Imogen,’ Jenny corrected him gravely.
‘My apologies, Miss Imogen.’
‘You were not to know,’ she said kindly, ‘but who are you?’
‘Jenny...’ Rosalind’s rebuke wound down as her daughter frowned and shook her head at her as if to say, If a complete stranger uses my proper name, why can’t you? ‘Oh, very well, then. Imogen, if you insist. Whatever name you want to go by this week, you know it is shockingly rude to ask such direct questions of a grown-up.’ Rosalind shook her head as if Jenny’s lack of company manners made her very sad indeed.
‘She has a right to know,’ Ash argued.
‘Why?’ Jenny asked and Rosalind held up her hands in mock despair.
‘It doesn’t matter if she has forgotten to be seen and not heard just this once,’ Ash argued again, as if he was impatient of such things at the best of times and this was not one of them.
‘It might not if she had ever learnt it in the first place,’ Rosalind muttered, but watched him with wary eyes and decided it was time she recalled her own manners and introduced him to his own daughter, before he could not contain himself any longer and blurted it out. Her nerve almost failed her as they both watched her with smoke-grey Hartfield eyes. What if Jenny never forgave her for the lies she had told since her daughter was old enough to ask where her papa was? ‘You remember I told you Papa had to go to India before I knew I was expecting you and I never heard from him again so we had to believe he was dead, Jenny love?’
‘Of course I do,’ Jenny said with a puzzled frown as if to say, Why bring that up now?
‘Well, as it turns out he is not dead at all.’
‘Have you brought us a message from him, then, sir?’ Jenny faced Ash with her eager question. Rosalind searched for her last drop of courage to tell her more, but Ash took the start she had given him and ran on with it.
‘No, I do not need to send messages to you or your mother now I am home at last and longing to meet you properly.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I am your papa, Jenny,’ he said gruffly and there was so much hope in his eyes, such love, Rosalind held her breath while they waited for Jenny’s reaction.
‘You can’t be,’ Jenny told him with a fierce frown Ash ought to recognise as a mirror of his own.
‘I am, I promise you. I had to go away and do a lot of things before I could come back home to you both,’ he tried to explain that impossible gap of years and whatever Rosalind thought of his feelings for her she could see how important his daughter was to him. His hand shook as he held it out to his child almost beseechingly, then noted the fact and tucked it behind his back as if he thought she ought not to be burdened with his feelings and had his wretched mother taught him that? His emotions were right and true for his own child and she cursed Lady John Hartfield even if she was long in her grave for teaching her children a parent should not actually have any feelings for their offspring, or that they must be concealed if they did exist.
‘You never wrote to us and you never sent any presents,’ Jenny said in a hard little voice that made Rosalind’s heart twist for the tears knotted up in them. She felt as if she had failed her daughter by letting Ash slip through her fingers before she was born. ‘And Ally and Hal and me are sure my papa is dead because Mama gets tears in her eyes when I ask about him.’
That revelation earned Rosalind a thoughtful look from Ash, but he was too preoccupied with his child to spare much more than that right now. ‘I really am your father and certainly not dead, Imogen. I have been in India and it is a very long way away,’ Ash said carefully. ‘And I did not know your mother was expecting you when I left. If I had known that, I would never have gone, but even your mother did not know about you back then. She decided not to tell me she was expecting you after I had sailed. She thought it would make me feel even worse about being so far away that I could not co
me back until I had made my fortune and could afford to buy a passage home.’
He bent the truth a little and shot Rosalind a pleading look as if to say Please let me get away with this version of us for now? She is too little to know what you and I really did back then.
She met his eyes and shrugged, then watched her daughter’s face to gauge what she made of his gentled-down version of the past.
‘Did you make one, then?’ Jenny asked artlessly and Rosalind smiled despite her anxiety about the huge changes about to overtake her daughter’s previously very settled young life. No doubt a long list of toys, games, finery and ponies were lining up to be spent good money on if Ash was rash enough to admit his new riches.
‘Yes, but it took me far too long,’ Ash said and softened his story with a few more white lies. ‘In the end I had made enough money never to need to worry about keeping you and your mama in fine style ever again so it was time I came home.’
‘Good, because Mama needs new gowns and a smart hat and coat all matching, like the ones she and Joan made me for Christmas.’
‘Oh, Jenny, my love,’ Rosalind said before she had to stop so she would not cry. ‘Thank you, darling,’ she added gruffly and hugged her wonderful child despite Jenny’s martyred expression. Rosalind even managed a wobbly smile at Ash, as if to say Isn’t our girl a marvel?
‘You ought to have told him about me, Mama, and you should have written to ask how she was, even if you didn’t know about me. If you were very sad about not being able to get home, you could still have written so we would know you were not dead,’ Jenny challenged Ash.
‘I wrote to your mother so many times, but somehow I never sent the letters and I could not write to a daughter I did not even know existed,’ he excused himself with a manly shrug.
At least he was not treating Jenny as if she was witless, like some adults who lacked experience with young children were inclined to. Rosalind had longed for a letter after he left, though, and his lie felt hard to swallow. Any letter would have done, sent from any port along the way, or even full of his new life without her once he got there. None came while she waited at Lackbourne House, pretending to be the still-marriageable Miss Feldon until she was quite sure she was carrying his child. She did not believe Ash had sent any after she left the place of her own accord either, before she began to show and even her stepfather would notice she was pregnant.
The Duchess's Secret (HQR Historical) Page 10