‘At least Ash and I agreed this would be a marriage of convenience from the outset this time, Joan. I went into it with eyes wide open and this is enough for me.’ She paused. ‘More than enough,’ she added dreamily and already felt the heat building in her belly at the very thought of another night of driven lovemaking to come.
‘No, it’s not,’ Joan argued as if she could not keep the words in any longer. ‘He has no idea what you went through after he was gone. He wasn’t the one left here to hold and try to comfort you while you sobbed your heart out for him as if you might break from sheer loneliness and sorrow. I was afraid you might even lose the baby because you didn’t care enough about yourself to take care of you both. I remember all the times you needed him to be a husband to you and a father to your coming child and where was he? Why, he was sulking on the other side of the world, pretending you was nothing to do with him, no, nor that sweet babe neither,’ Joan said, her Cockney origins showing far more now she was letting her emotions rip. ‘And now I’m supposed to act like I’m that pleased he’s come home I can hardly contain myself? Well, I ain’t. I can’t pretend that hard, Miss Rosalind. Send me away if you must and you know I love you and Miss Jenny so dearly it would fairly break me to go, especially since your poor mother begged me to take care of you when she knew she was dying. I’ll not have him looking down his long nose at you again and calling you names. Not while I’m here to argue he’s a fool, even if he is a duke. After what you went through birthing his child without a father, I ain’t got it in me to pretend it don’t matter that he’s come back and decided he wants a wife after all.’
Rosalind hugged her good friend and wished she had not been quite so bound up in enjoying what she and Ash could do in a bed now they truly were husband and wife again. Of course Joan was concerned and she was grateful for it. Her maid was the only person who had offered her warmth and understanding when Ash was gone. Lord Lackbourne would never have understood she adored the thought of her coming child, disgraced and deserted by her husband as she was. If she had waited to show before she left of her own accord he would have made her feel less than she knew she could be. And with Joan’s support she had been strong enough to be reckless for her baby’s sake. Her maid had been her loyal friend and sole companion in a harsh world while they waited for her baby to be born and built a new life on the ashes of the old one.
‘I could never turn my back on you, Joan, whatever you say or do. I worry as well, but I decided to live life as it is and simply enjoy being married again. I did miss him so and you know that better than anyone. But you were my family when I had nobody, Jenny’s and mine once she was born, and you still are now. I will never be as alone as I was when he left me again though, not with Jenny and any children we have in the future to make it impossible to be so shattered again and he won’t do it, Joan. He’s different now. And even if he wasn’t, how could I do anything but love you when you stayed with me through so much and are family anyway?’
‘Aye, well, there’s no need to get mawkish about it,’ Joan replied with a suspiciously loud sniff and bustled about the bedchamber as if she had never let that outburst of anxiety out.
* * *
‘I heard,’ Ash said when he came into their bedchamber several minutes after Joan had left. ‘I listened at the door, then crept away before either of you heard me.’
‘They do say eavesdroppers seldom hear good news, don’t they?’
‘I always knew your maid was your stern protector, so why should she pretend I was good for you when I was young and wild and stupid,’ he said with a shrug.
‘Joan really is family to myself and Jenny,’ she told Ash defensively and dared him to argue.
‘I would never even try to dismiss her for showing too much loyalty to you, even if I had the power. Joan is in your employ, not mine.’
He had always treated the servants with an ease her stepfather had deplored and now he was passing Rosalind independence inside marriage. He was a fair man and a fair employer, but the old Ash had been easy with most people. She missed that genial young man for his own sake, not only as the ardent lover she used to steal away from Lackbourne House to meet wherever they could snatch a few moments of heaven in each other’s arms. He had not been real though, had he? He had only lasted a single day of marriage, as if she had wed a shadow instead of a real man. She sighed and wished life was a lot less complicated as she eyed the man who had grown out of that boy and nobody could call him unreal, could they?
‘Did you really miss me that badly?’ he said as if he had only just realised how much he had hurt her.
‘I had your baby in my belly. Of course I missed you, you great idiot. You hurt me more than I ever thought it possible to hurt until then, but I loved you so much, how could I not miss you?’
‘Poor little girl,’ he said, grey eyes heavy with shadows as he seemed to be looking for a girl who didn’t exist any longer as well.
‘Don’t pity her; she’s dead,’ she said starkly. ‘She had to die so I could be a fit and proper mother. Young Rosalind and young Ash both had to be dead for me to do that. If they were not, I would never have got over the loneliness, so I killed us both off when I went to live in Livesey as Mrs Meadows.’
‘Oh, Ros,’ he said as if the hardness behind those words hurt him far more than her softness that made her sit in that wretched carriage and weep all the way from Carlisle to London, since he was so intent on deserting her when they got there, had hurt her.
She managed a wry smile and made light of it. ‘I am not sorry the old version of me is gone, Ash, she was such a watering pot I am well rid of her.’
‘I suspect she’s not quite as dead as you think,’ he said as if he knew her better than she did herself. ‘You always had a sense of humour under the vulnerability and strength under that. You were a complicated young woman and I was nowhere near clever enough to work you out the first time around, but I’m getting better at it, Duchess Rosalind. I might even be starting to know you better than you know yourself.’
‘Don’t flatter yourself,’ she said disgustedly.
‘There you are, you see? I knew you would react like that.’
‘A lucky guess.’
‘Spiky, outspoken, stubborn to a fault, quick tempered, impatient...’
‘Stop right there. According to you I am such a virago I am surprised anyone is prepared to work for me, let alone live with me.’
‘I had not finished. Now where was I? Ah, yes, impatient...’
‘Don’t be ridiculous; I am the soul of patience. I could not put up with you if I was half as hasty and bad-tempered as you say I am.’
‘Impatient,’ he continued with a look that told her there was all the proof he needed. ‘Funny, brave, compassionate, strong, loving, kind—did I mention stubborn?’
‘I believe you might have done,’ she said and tried not to let that second list go straight to her silly, soft heart and persuade her she loved him all over again. He was right, confound him; young Rosalind wasn’t dead at all. Best let the act of loving blot out the possibility of it taking her over ever again, she decided, and stood up on tiptoe to press a hot kiss on his mouth to silence him. Not that it worked for very long. He snatched a breath, held her slender waist in both hands to push her a little further away and look down at her with goodness knew what questions and emotions in his smoky gaze this time.
‘And impatient, did I say that?’ he said huskily.
‘Three times,’ she replied with a snap in her voice.
‘There’s nothing wrong with a little bit of impatience in the right place and at the right time,’ he said and his hands moved round to her back so he could pull her closer. ‘And I do believe this is both,’ he added softly as he kissed her mouth with butterfly kisses that made her so impatient she raised herself on tiptoe and pushed her mouth hard against his to stop him promising so much and delivering too little.
After that there were no words big enough, only sighs for breath and guttural little lovers’ noises as she revelled in their mutual impatience. She shook with haste and heat as he undid the tiny buttons of her new nightgown with a ridiculous amount of patience. At last there he was...oh, there...and there as well. His magician’s hands were on her breasts again and it felt like bliss.
‘Lush,’ he murmured. Her nipples went as hard as pearls in the cooler air, longing for his mouth there. ‘Plush,’ he added admiringly as his wicked hands measured the richness of her mature figure. His approving hum was more seductive than a book full of poetry and he slid a teasing finger across them admiringly, wickedly arousing her as he withheld just enough of his touch to make her long for more. She actually felt her breasts go fuller and more eager under his gloating gaze and wriggled sensuously against him to push them closer to his hands and mouth.
‘Hurry,’ she urged and linked her hands behind his neck to urge him physically closer to the hotly tight nipples that needed him so badly it almost hurt. She bowed and moaned softly when he did as they both wanted him to and played his tongue teasingly across one and flicked it with such delicate provocation everything about her tightened and loosened at the same time as fiery need shot from there to the heart of her inner self and back again. Heat threatened to overwhelm her when he set up a merciless rhythm and she writhed and gasped while he held her torso steady despite her frantic wriggling and begging for more.
‘Impatient,’ he murmured as if his mouth had almost forgotten how to form words because he wanted her so much.
His self-control was still oceans ahead of hers, though, and she felt a hitch of insecurity before the pleasure of his hands and mouth and anything else he could get closer to her with washed it away again. Oh, but the heat of them, the power of him, the raking, velvet longing for him inside her was all that mattered right now. He had made her need like this, made her his that first night when they created Jenny between them. She parted her legs and ground her aching need against his aching need and he definitely, very obviously needed her. His turn to moan and raise his head from the feast he had made of her almost painfully aroused breasts; his turn to be hasty.
At last, here he was. She was so ready she needed to fly past the usual stops on the scenic route he had planned for them and get straight to the heart of her hunger. She refused to let him gentle her, but set a merciless pace, her and him together as she got so close to taking fire it felt as if she would explode if she didn’t burn out of control soon. They were so near to the achy, heady, wonderful, pleasure at the heart of all life in this world. Her Ash-damped nipples must have cried out for something even in the shadowy glow of firelight because his long, strong fingers played with her while she rode them both frantically, as if their very lives depended on reaching a climax before one of them broke.
‘Ah, yes, there and there and there,’ she found enough breath to gasp as the feel of him rampant inside her drove her up so fast she lost her way and he bucked eagerly under her until she snatched the reins back and there it was, the winning post, the glorious finishing line. She moaned with eager anticipation and triumph as it raced up to meet them and there; they were over it. Spasms of ecstasy shook her so hard she wondered if she was going to faint clean away with the power of this richness and release for a long heady moment as completion refined and claimed her. She spared Ash a greedy, lover’s look as the ultimate pleasure rode him as well. His eyes had rolled back in his head and his mouth was open in a long, silent moan of release as his manhood jerked and drove hard inside her and her orgasm met his and clasped its hands. They spent each other—not His Grace seeding his Duchess, but Ash making love to Rosalind.
My love, she mouthed to the shadows as she bowed backwards to send those words up to the ceiling where he could not read them, even when he was looking at the world again and not the fierce moment of completion that belonged only to them.
It wasn’t safe to let him know this part of her still loved him and always would. This part could—the Rosalind who went wild in his arms every night she could get there—but the rest was not sure. That part still hurt too much to take such a huge risk so easily. She sank on to his heaving body with a great sigh and one last, powerful jerk of complete ecstasy as she wished ridiculously that their life was so different she could say anything to her lover and he could tell her all his secret hopes and dreams. It’s enough, she told herself. More than I ever dreamed of when we left Livesey. Yet the Rosalind of all those years ago still stared into the firelit darkness while her lover slept and yearned for everything she was so sure she already had on her wedding night.
* * *
It was the middle of March by now and Rosalind saw the irony of the ducal entourage going one way up the Great North Road while a good many of the ton would shortly be travelling down it to the capital for the main social Season and all sorts of liaisons and making and breaking of young girls’ dreams. She remembered her own certainty she would meet the love of her life on the dance floors of Mayfair and she had been right, hadn’t she? She had been sceptical and unconvinced by any of the beaux who had swarmed around her because of her looks. At least her experience of so-called love at sixteen had made her cautious about anyone who claimed to love her purely because she had golden hair, blue eyes and a pleasing arrangement of features. Then she was finishing a dance with one of them when she looked up into a pair of smoky-grey eyes and saw Ash’s wicked smile for the first time. The noisy ballroom had faded into silence, the inane chatter of her dance partner halted as he eyed Ash, then backed away as if he might be dangerous. ‘Dance?’ he asked as if that was all he could get out and she simply smiled brilliantly at him and said, ‘Yes’, and that was that.
Strange how life turned out when nothing about her youthful love affair had gone quite according to plan after the blissful beginning. Speaking of plans, which they were not, so very carefully not that Ash had not even mentioned the fact she had not seen her courses since the week they left Livesey. Had he forgotten wives had them? Not that she stood much chance of enduring many with him around to get her with child as soon as look at her. Rosalind had begun to suspect she was pregnant again by the time they set out from Cambridge on their long and meandering journey at the end of February, but now she was certain. She had decided to keep the news between her and Joan for the time being, because if she told Ash they would probably be marooned halfway between Yorkshire and London until the baby was safely born and he dared complete what felt almost like the bride journey they had never had. Far too romantic an idea for a duke and his convenient Duchess, especially with a daughter in tow, but it had been a lovely interlude between grandiose Cherwell House and palatial Edenhope Place.
Now she was feeling sick as soon as she got out of bed in the morning and her nipples were tight and sensitive even when Ash was not around to encourage them to beg for his touch and drive the rest of her to distraction yet again.
* * *
She was able to delay another week before telling him her suspicions; since their journey had been so leisurely she wondered if he dreaded arriving at Edenhope even more than she did becoming its latest chatelaine. They were staying at the most comfortable hotel in Selby when she finally had to tell Ash he had proved himself as potent now as he was at one and twenty, or was she every bit as receptive to his rampant desire for his wife as she was at eighteen? Either way, she was pregnant again, but the Duke of Cherwell seemed less than delighted by the outcome he had bargained for when he discovered he already had a child and might as well keep the Duchess he already had to go with her.
‘You truly believe you are with child again?’ he said, sitting back down on the side of the bed he had just been trying to urge her out of so they could take an early morning ride she knew for certain would be a bad idea until she had finished feeling sick for the day, so she had finally had to tell him why she would not be up for some time.
�
�It does happen,’ she said solemnly, glad she had not dared get out of bed yet, since she knew she would feel the room start to spin the moment she was upright again. He looked pale enough to faint even before she began her daily appointment with the pristine bowl in the adjoining dressing room Joan would have placed there in readiness. ‘Especially to us,’ she pointed out helpfully, in case he had not noticed it seemed almost as if he only had to look at her to get her pregnant.
‘Not yet, though,’ he said as if such things could be ordered one way or the other.
Rosalind was in a very good position to know Mother Nature had her own timetable as far as making babies was concerned. Apparently she and Ash were very good at it, almost too good. ‘You are disappointed,’ she said flatly, feeling as if the secret she had been keeping in case she was simply feeling a little queasy after so many upsets in her life since he came back into it, or it was too soon to tell and she lost the precious little life growing in her belly, had fallen very flat in the telling.
‘Not that—never that, Rosalind. I just wanted you to myself a bit longer, that’s all. We have had so little time together, I wanted—’ He stopped himself from saying whatever it was he was fantasising over.
She looked away from his sternly handsome face, feeling a bit apprehensive about the whole business now she had finally plucked up the courage to share her hopes of another child with him. She had no idea if it was safe for them to carry on making love as if they had invented the act of it in all its infinite varieties either. He had not been here last time for her to worry about such important details and this might be his precious heir in her belly, so he would not want to take risks with it any more than she did. She would have to write a very private letter to her good friend Judith Belstone, mother of five children now little Rosalind was safely born, and where would their plans for this Rosalind to attend little Rose’s christening as godmother end up now? Anyway, as soon as they were close enough to Edenhope for a reply to reach her as fast as it could be carried she really must write that letter and send it by messenger, who could wait for a reply.
The Duchess's Secret (HQR Historical) Page 15