‘I have marks on my body where it had to stretch around my baby and I didn’t care enough to use oils to help it do so when Joan tried to persuade me I should,’ she said, hoping he would not hear the reason why she did not care enough for herself in her voice as she recalled being that lonely and despairing girl growing bigger and bigger with her husband’s child while he sailed away oblivious to her and began his life in a new world. ‘You might not like me naked now,’ she warned him as some of her insecurities crowded back in at the thought of being so despised by him he could not leave fast enough.
‘How could I not love the marks having my baby left on your body?’ he reassured her and there was fire in his eyes as if he might worship those silvery stretch marks and turn her into some sort of mother goddess if she let him. She wasn’t having that—she was a very human woman and he was her husband and they had not been together like this for far too long. At least that look said one worry was crossed off her list and she could look forward to being a lover again without it holding her back.
‘Why are we still talking, then? It has been eight years since I had a man in my bed and I am a very hungry woman,’ she said and, catching him off balance, she pushed him backwards on to the bed. Despairing of him taking the lead for fear of making her feel pressured into this, she bent to take his mouth with a kiss so hard and needy it felt as if they were melting together for all time like hot wax. At least that seemed to snap him out of his chivalry and back into Ash the lover. He met her challenge so eagerly it was hard to tell which of them won, or perhaps they both did, she decided hazily as wildfire shot through her. Heat met heat as her body remembered all he had taught her to glory in on their wedding night and added years of frustrated longing to the mix. It was hard to know where his urgent pleasure in her ended and her hot need of him began, but somehow they managed to fit them together and make vibrant, urgent love to one another until me faded into us again and joined hands in infinite pleasure that shot through them like a huge force of nature and landed them back in one another’s arms, gasping with passion and laughing like fools.
* * *
Refusing to discuss what they had done while the glorious heat and thunder of their lovemaking still echoed through her, Rosalind pretended she was already lost in sated dreams as she willed herself to go to sleep in Ash’s arms. She wanted to rest here while they calmed into silent contentment together. He was holding her so close she could hear his heartbeat and feel his chest rise and fall with each breath he took. The very life of him was beating under her head while she felt him play with her long hair as if it fascinated him. This felt so intimate and certain it was best not to think that he didn’t love her any more or of all the times she could have lost him in a far country or on a distant ocean. Best not to think at all, but drift like contented lovers as the only sound in the room was their steadying breathing and an occasional sizzle of burning sap from the glowing fire.
* * *
It felt like hours later when Rosalind stirred again. She felt Ash tense under her, as if he had been drifting in a daze of contented intimacy for most of the night as well. She longed to be back at Furze Cottage, waking up with him in the privacy of her own feather bed and without a whole great mansion outside this room waiting to break in on them again. She had to fight a heady urge to provoke him into doing what they did last night all over again, before anyone came to disturb them and make them a duke and duchess again.
‘Breakfast,’ she said sleepily instead. As if food was the only thing on her mind when it was really far more concerned with Ash’s powerful body waking up in a very different way. Learning to be lovers again would make up for some of the gaps in their convenient marriage, she decided, with a contented little stretch against the fine linen sheets that made his smoke-grey eyes go even smokier, as if he was tempted by all the possibilities being in his Duchess’s bed presented him with this morning as well.
‘Do you have a comb?’ he asked, eyeing the heavy and now knotted mass of her hair. ‘We seem to have tangled you up rather badly and I think your personal maid is busy,’ he added. There was a reminiscent glint in his eyes for how all that tangling happened that made her go heavy-eyed and dreamy all over again, but they needed to be up and doing and she didn’t want her daughter to catch them making love if she burst in to find out what was keeping her mother lying abed of a morning.
‘Luckily, yes, but you aren’t coming anywhere near me with it. It will take ages for me to tease the knots out as it is. You had best comb your own hair before you go, though, lover, or everyone will know what we did last night,’ she added with a longing glance at his dishevelled dark blonde locks she had helped make far more windswept than a fashionable hairdresser. She really was settling into her new role as an experienced wife and woman of the world rather nicely, in her opinion.
‘They will anyway,’ he said gruffly and she supposed she ought to stop trying to provoke him into losing control again. There must be a lock on one of those ridiculous doors somewhere, just in case they both lost it and forgot about the world outside them again before bedtime.
‘I still don’t want Jenny to see me looking far more dishevelled than she is used to of a morning.’
‘We need to find her a nanny or a nursery governess.’
‘We do, but not to keep her out of my bedroom at this time of day,’ she said with a frown because she didn’t want to be a remote mother who visited her child in her nursery every morning, then forgot her for the rest of the day.
‘Not what I meant, Rosalind,’ he said sternly and as if she had deliberately misunderstood him. That was the trouble with rearranged marriages like this one. There were still far too many prickly patches where misunderstanding could flourish between them. ‘Keeping a child as lively as Jenny happy and amused all day is hard work. And you need a lady’s maid as soon as your new clothes begin to arrive, if not before.’
‘Speaking of clothes...’
‘We must get up, you houri, so stop playing with fire,’ he chided.
‘As if I have been keeping you in bed rather than the other way about.’
‘Ah, but we Dukes and Duchesses have duties to perform and only a couple of weeks in London to do them in.’
‘I thought that was what we had been doing.’
‘No, that wasn’t duty, it was pleasure,’ he argued and to punish her for that suggestion he kissed her until she could hardly remember her own name, then slipped out of her bed and went back to his monstrous red room without looking back. She knew it cost him every ounce of willpower he had because she had to use all of hers not to call him back and risk someone catching them making love after all.
* * *
It was actually a month before everything was finally ready for them to leave Cherwell House for the north. Rosalind and Jenny had the makings of a fine new wardrobe each by then and even Ash had added a few more layers of manly warmth to the ones he hastily ordered when he stopped at Cherwell House on his return from India. That was before everything changed, when he still meant to divorce her so he could start a new life with a very different woman. She knew it was foolish of her to harp on that other woman, now everything was so different between her and Ash, but Rosalind was still haunted by his other Duchess—and jealous, which felt even more stupid and self-defeating since the girl did not exist. It was not as if she wanted to be a debutante again, paraded for the likes of Ash to pick for a splendid marriage of convenience. Yet that girl would have been unmarked by life, an innocent page for Ash to write ‘Duchess’ upon. She left her fantasy rival behind with a sigh of relief when the new travelling carriage Ash had bought for the journey rolled smoothly out of London and the fine team of horses were soon bowling along in fine style on the open road.
‘Do you think Joan minds being in the second carriage with Carrie and Miss Burrows?’ Jenny asked.
‘I think she will strive to endure all that blissful peace and quiet as
best she can,’ Rosalind teased.
‘I am not that noisy, Mama,’ Jenny protested indignantly.
‘I expect Joan is enjoying telling Carrie exactly what you will eat and not eat and describing to Miss Burrows all the marvels of education Mama and the Belstones’ long-suffering governess have managed to cram into you between them, my scamp,’ Ash said.
His scamp looked wistful for a moment when reminded she used to have her lessons with her best friends, but he realised he had done that without meaning to and managed to convince her it would not be very long now before the Belstones kept their promises to visit Edenhope in the summer.
‘What’s it like, Papa?’ Jenny asked and Rosalind thought it had become something of a game for the them: What Papa Remembers about his Grandfather’s House As A Boy and What Jenny Would Like It To Be.
Rosalind was secretly delighted Ash had chosen to stay in the coach with them this time, rather than riding ahead. It was only partly because it was easier to keep their daughter amused with Ash’s help and Jenny always seemed to be wondering where her father was and what he was doing or seeing without her when he was out of sight. Jenny adored her father and that was another thing Rosalind had to accustom herself to. She was glad they had become so close without either having to try very hard, of course she was, but sometimes it felt difficult being only Mama, who had always been there and always would be, whilst this was Papa, who was new and shiny and a duke into the bargain.
Jenny had longed for a father and Ash had a light touch with her. She did not know where their marriage was heading, but at least it was a true marriage now and he was a very present father. Not perfect, of course, he would be sickening and even more infuriating if he was, but he did try to understand the hopes and fears her bold little girl faced every day. The Duke and Duchess and Lady Imogen intended to take their journey north in short stages—as befitted such stately people. It could be an adventure this way and not the tedious, seemingly endless journey Rosalind and Ash remembered from their dash by mail coach from London to Scotland to get married. That was a longer journey and they were tense with nerves, but this was going to be different in every way. Rosalind stared out at the passing scene and told herself everything was different now and at least she had learned not to expect too much.
Even in February there were sights to see and fine old inns to stay in while they explored marvels along the way. And fine old inns meant fine old best bedchambers, where the Duke and Duchess of Cherwell could explore one another all over again. Every night they made passionate, satisfying love after Jenny was so fast asleep a regiment marching past her window with bugles at full blast would not wake her. And sometimes they even lasted until after dinner, when of course it was quite commonplace for a husband and wife to seek their bed after another not-very-weary day travelling or exploring less intimate sights than one another.
Making love with Ash on their leisurely journey north was almost as hungry and driven as it had been at Cherwell House when they had taken up every aspect of being married again with such enthusiasm. When they fell on one another with the ravenous hunger of all those years apart to make up for, it was always hotly wonderful as far as Rosalind was concerned. Sometimes it could even be leisurely; Ash could stretch out pleasure into a glorious climax that made every nerve and sinew in her body vibrate with sated contentment if she let him have enough time. He was a master craftsman when it came to making fiery love to his wife.
And how many other women had he done it with just as urgently and hotly since he left her? a snide little voice asked as Rosalind floated back down to earth in their latest comfortable bed for the night.
She still shook with echoes of the wild ecstasy that had convulsed her again and again as they found their own private Eden yet again, but there were snakes in Eden, weren’t there? Her own particular snake was jealousy. Not of a present and hateable rival, but all the ones he had met and made fierce love to while he was away from her. Rosalind had never been able to give Ash naive innocence and trust, even on their wedding night. Not with another man vaguely remembered and the humiliation of realising what that rogue had done to her after he rode away laughing. That night had tainted her first night with her husband and made her fearful the first time they made sweet, driven love at Carlisle. Not the second or the third time they did so that night, of course. There may even have been more—she was in such a haze by then they could have done it again on that hotly enthusiastic wedding night.
Now Rosalind lay next to her husband as he slept and stared into the familiar darkness, wondering about the future. Ash had wanted a wife who would stay neatly inside the lines he marked out for his Duchess and instead he had got her. She was already the mother of his child and, since he seemed to want to be a proper father to Jenny, he could hardly get Rosalind with child every time he felt the need for another heir, then leave her in Yorkshire while he lived the carefree life of a not-quite-single duke in London. And he did make love to her with exquisite consideration. The Asher Hartfield she fell fathoms deep in love with at first glance had been left behind somewhere though, hadn’t he? Maybe that Ash was still in India with the svelte and soft-skinned woman he whispered love words to after he found Rosalind so undeserving of them? She remembered the wonderful fizzing sense of absolute happiness from the day she first fell in love with the finest and most handsome young man ever born and wanted to weep, even after being made love to by the Ash of now as if he had spent eight years secretly yearning for her, which he most definitely had not or he would have been back long ago.
‘What is it?’ he asked rather gruffly and turned out to be awake after all.
‘Nothing,’ she answered as lightly as she could. ‘I am not tired.’
‘Me neither,’ he admitted and got out of bed to stoke up the fire lest the whisper of a draught got past fast-closed shutters, drawn curtains and a firmly closed door. He had already done everything he could to seal any cold air out of the room and Rosalind wondered how he would manage in a draughty mansion in North Yorkshire. Maybe they could oust the scullery maid from her truckle bed and sleep next to the kitchen fire.
‘Do you think you will ever get used to our climate?’ she teased as he visibly shuddered in a room she thought a little too warm already.
‘I hope so, or I will have to build my own private hothouse at Edenhope for when it’s snowing outside or the wind comes in off the North Sea,’ he said, his disgust plain at the thought of never growing used to his native land again.
‘Maybe you stayed away too long,’ she said before she caught the full sense of her own words. She had not meant to refer to the years they had lost, or at least it felt like it now.
‘I did,’ he admitted steadily. ‘I acted like a whipped boy, Ros,’ he added and looked weary at the thought of the old Ash she had loved so much.
‘We were not much more than children,’ she said with a shrug. ‘We should have found out who we really were before we risked marrying each other.’
‘Lord Lackbourne would have persuaded you to wed some rich old man long before we had a chance to. It was either make a runaway match or watch you married off to a cold, old aristocrat with an empty nursery and deep pockets. I could not endure the thought of you caged up and sad inside such a marriage.’
‘I have learnt a lot about real life in eight years, Ash,’ she told him as he pushed back the covers and got into bed again. It felt glorious to have a long-limbed, rough-haired male in the bed next to her again, but maybe this was not the time to find any contact with his naked body quite so stimulating. ‘And, as you were the one who taught me to need, you can hardly claim I do not enjoy your male body as deeply as you seem to enjoy my female one. You made me feel things I never thought a true lady could or should feel, Ash. And you have shown me a wild need most of them will never find out about.’ She warmed up to her subject in more ways than one and began to feel that need stir as sharply as if they had never sa
tisfied it so intensely not half an hour ago.
‘Even if they love their husbands they will never know how fierce and fiery lovemaking can be and I pity them. This is your fault,’ she told him triumphantly and laid back against the pillows, waving an airy gesture over her voluptuously naked figure with her desire-tight nipples crowning breasts that had gone fuller and tighter again far too soon for comfort and invited him to be wickedly abandoned with her all over again. His gaze followed the course of her hand over her naked body as if he was still as hungry for her as a starving wolf. When she lay back even further on the soft feather mattress and opened her legs to let him see how ready she was for him all over again, he could not keep his hands or the rest of him off her, since he was visibly in the same state when they both ought to be exhausted and fast asleep by now. Rosalind simply abandoned herself to being just that—abandoned, beyond shyness or guilt. By stoking their carnal desires so high there was nothing left but the absolute need to be pushed to the highest peak, then taken with the utmost pleasure by one another. She could stop them talking about anything wider or deeper they once thought they were going to have, until they got caught in this silken trap instead and, apart from her secret demon of jealousy, she was loving every moment of it.
Chapter Eleven
Rosalind knew Joan was worried Ash was making heirs instead of love with his wife as they made their very slow way to their new home. Her maid was the only one who had cared enough to pick up the broken pieces of her late mistress’s daughter last time Ash had his way with her, then walked away, so of course Joan had a right to worry, but this time everything was different. Rosalind had seen concern in Joan’s eyes whenever they bade each other goodnight, though, before Ash could endure the wait no longer and entered whatever bedchamber they had for the night whether she was ready or not. And what could she say to reassure her friend when she had no real idea how Ash really felt about her either? He made love to her so passionately he had to see her as something more than the Duchess who would give him little lords and ladies for his sadly depleted succession, but it was not quite the grand romance they thought when they sped north as fast as horses could get them there to be wed eight years ago.
The Duchess's Secret (HQR Historical) Page 14