The Duchess's Secret (HQR Historical)

by Elizabeth Beacon

  ‘I wish you would stop carrying me about and I can’t seem to stop crying,’ she complained with a hiccup in her voice from all these dratted tears.

  ‘You have had too many shocks of late, my Duchess,’ he said gruffly. ‘I suppose you must have bottled the tears up until they broke free of their own accord.’

  ‘Like a lachrymose flood?’

  ‘A release; it’s good to be strong, and heaven knows you have had to be, but why wouldn’t you cry after what you just went through, Ros? I nearly did when I finally realised our little terror was really safe.’

  ‘She is not a terror, she is a unique and wonderful child,’ Rosalind said stoutly, then recalled how near Jenny got to disaster and nodded. ‘And such a handful I was sometimes at my wits’ end until you came home.’

  ‘I don’t know if I will ever forgive myself for being such a damned fool,’ he said and got into the bath after hastily throwing off his ruined clothes. As if he was glad to hide his thoughts from her, he made a great show of washing every bit of his large and powerful body as quickly as possible in the cooling water.

  ‘If you mean for leaving in the first place, we were both too young to cope with a romance gone wrong,’ she said with a reluctant glance into the past and a quick shake of the head to dismiss it. ‘Let’s concentrate on now though, Ash, there’s no point raking up the past when nothing can change it.’

  ‘That’s enough of it for tonight anyway. Do you suppose anyone has remembered to bring up my traps?’ he asked and reached for another bathsheet.

  Since an argument seemed to have broken out between Joan and Dawkins and his troops, Rosalind suspected they had. She had to laugh when Ash swathed his lower half in a bathsheet, then draped another over his shoulder like a Roman toga, and at least her tears had finally stopped. ‘You could tell them we are both decent,’ she pointed out.

  ‘And spoil their fun?’

  ‘Probably, we have a deal to do tonight.’

  ‘I might have, but you’re not going anywhere. You will eat your supper in bed if I have to tie you to the bedposts and feed you myself.’

  ‘Another time, maybe,’ she said with a mock leer that startled him into a bark of masculine laughter, then a much better imitation of a rake it was a shame to waste, but they would have to. He was quite right; they must be careful for a day or two. ‘Will you go up and see Jenny once you’re dressed again?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said with a sigh. ‘I don’t want her to have nightmares or be terrified of heights, even if it might make our lives easier.’

  ‘It’s not us who matter.’

  ‘No, and you have two of them to consider now, although it still hardly seems possible when there is no outward sign of my child on your body yet.’

  ‘They get more and more real as they grow in your belly, Ash. Wait until this one starts to quicken and you can feel it move as well.’

  ‘Not from the inside like you,’ he argued as if he almost envied her such intimate knowledge of their baby before it was born.

  ‘Well, no, but at least you don’t have to give birth.’

  ‘True,’ he muttered and looked a little pale at the thought, but managed to smile reassuringly at her before he went out to put a stop to the argument Joan and Dawkins were enjoying on the other side of their bedroom door.

  Chapter Fourteen

  ‘Well, Lady Imogen; and what have you got to say for yourself this time?’ Ash greeted his daughter sternly.

  ‘I am sorry, Papa.’

  ‘I truly hope so,’ he told her. ‘If your mother had not caught you, we would all be feeling a lot more than sorry right now.’

  ‘I won’t do it again,’ she said, tears swimming in her grey eyes.

  ‘How often have you said that to Mama, then done something just as foolish next time, Jenny?’ he asked with a sorrowful shake of his head.

  ‘I don’t mean to be naughty,’ she said woefully.

  ‘But somehow you still are.’

  ‘Weren’t you naughty when you were my age, Papa?’

  ‘I never threw myself into thin air and expected my mama to catch me, which was just as well since she was not often at home when my big brother Jasper and I were boys and I would have tumbled to my death.’

  ‘I didn’t know you even had a brother,’ she replied and perhaps she was right to leave out the most terrifying bit of that sentence. He wanted her to be less reckless, but not frightened of her own shadow, and he realised what a tightrope a father must walk when he had a child as adventurous as this one.

  ‘Jas is dead now, but he would have doted on you.’

  ‘When did he die?’ she asked suspiciously. She still seemed dubious about death being permanent since he had apparently been lost at sea and then come back to life again.

  ‘Jasper was killed at the Battle of Waterloo; he was as brave as a lion.’

  ‘So are you, Papa,’ she said comfortingly and she truly was his little miracle, wasn’t she?

  ‘No, I am a coward,’ he said rather bleakly, with his flight from marriage to Ros and his refusal to see himself as he really was until today making him feel like a worm as he confronted what he had done to his very young wife full on for the first time. Then he recalled Jenny was only seven and a half years old and unable to understand what he meant even if he wanted her to. ‘Would you like to hear about my brother and the things we did as boys?’

  ‘Yes, I wish I had known him.’

  ‘I wish you had, too, he truly would have doted on you.’

  ‘What does dote mean?’

  ‘That my brother would have loved you, despite your bad habits and wicked ways, Lady Imogen Hartfield.’

  ‘Was he a lord, too?’

  ‘No, my father was Lord John Hartfield, because he was the second son of a duke, but Jas and I were plain misters.’

  ‘I quite like being a lady.’

  ‘It would be nice if it was in fact as well as name.’

  ‘You said you would tell me about when you were little—did you sleep here when you came to stay?’ she said as she picked out the bits of their conversation her ears wanted to hear.

  He sighed and decided to let her. ‘If I did, I don’t remember it. I had a room in the older part of the house as soon as I was thought old enough to behave myself. My grandfather always said he preferred us boys under his nose rather than stuck up on a nursery floor where we could have got up to anything without him knowing about it.’

  ‘I would have liked a grandfather,’ Jenny said rather wistfully.

  Ash thought about some of the gaps in both their lives and told her some of his milder adventures with his big brother as boys to divert her from them. Jenny’s eyelids began to droop and he finally fell silent and stared at his sleeping daughter with such love and fear in his heart. The more you loved the more you feared losing, he realised, but at least he knew Ros and their child were the centre of his universe now. Terror of losing them was a terrible ache he wondered if he would ever get used to.

  He was right about being a coward, though. He feared telling Ros how he felt and maybe he had always felt it under his boy’s fury with the world and his mother. Yet why would Ros want to know he loved her after he had treated her so callously, simply because his own mother had lied as if it cost her nothing and always swore anything that happened to them was not her fault? Maybe Ros’s secret past seemed like treachery and trickery to the silly boy he was back then, but what a bitter betrayal of a sixteen-year-old girl’s trust her sad tale of supposed first love was. No wonder she had hesitated to tell him. His fists tightened at the thought of anyone doing such a thing to his daughter—he would hunt the brute to the ends of the earth and kill him with his bare hands. So why hadn’t he thought of doing that for Ros? Instead he had gone off to India like a whipped cur when he ought to have brought that excuse for a man to account for his sins against
that sixteen-year-old girl instead.

  He recalled how Ros had flinched away from polite society and the very idea of being a part of it again when they were in London. Did she dread meeting the unscrupulous cur who once betrayed her at Almack’s Club or in a glittering ballroom? Ash was disgusted at the thought of her having to fear that the rogue who had raped her might turn up in polite society as if he belonged when even the gutter wasn’t low enough for him. Ash might not feel he could bother her with feelings she would never be able to truly believe in after what he did to her eight years ago, but he could make sure that piece of scum would never dare taunt her with a knowing leer across a crowded ballroom.

  * * *

  Next day Ash insisted the local doctor visit Rosalind and Jenny. He prescribed a day in bed for Lady Imogen, since she clearly deserved it, but Rosalind must stay in hers for a week to help heal the strain of holding on to Jenny until help came. Her mother’s weary stay in the sunny south-facing bedchamber, propped up only to eat and lying flat the rest of the time, seemed to make Jenny think harder about her sins than a stern rebuke. Rosalind insisted she was not told about the baby until they were sure it would survive, though. She was not having her daughter weighed down with guilt over something she did without any intention of causing harm to herself or anyone else.

  * * *

  ‘I am perfectly well now,’ she insisted to Ash when her week was finally up and the young doctor finally agreed with her.

  ‘Two lucky escapes for this little fighter in one day though, Ros. It’s a wonder I didn’t turn grey overnight,’ Ash told her as he laid a protective hand over her still-flat belly. ‘When will it start to show?’ he asked and of course he had no idea, he had never knowingly been a prospective father before.

  ‘Four months for a few speculative looks and five for it to be obvious to most people who care to look. After that I will just get bigger and bigger,’ she said ruefully. ‘I must wear as many of my fashionable gowns as I can before I am too big to fit into them for months on end.’

  ‘We can order more,’ he said with a casual dismissal of the cost that made her shiver at the thought of Mrs Meadows’s economies.

  ‘I do like wearing beautiful gowns and dressing up as a duchess now and again, but I want to run with the children and be busy or go for a walk without perpetually changing into this or that gown, Ash. Shall you mind if I am still just me most of the time?’

  ‘You would look beautiful in a sack,’ he told her, almost exasperated by her lack of self-confidence. ‘As long as you are wherever I am for the rest of our lives you can wear one of those if you want.’

  ‘Everywhere? Riding pillion on the back of your horse; interfering in every decision as a duke; watching out for local beauties who want to lure a handsome duke into their bed when his wife is not looking?’

  ‘Perhaps not everywhere, then, and you know whose bed I want to be in,’ he said with a long, brooding look that said Judith Belstone’s reply to the letter Rosalind had dictated to him while she was lying flat on her back had better come soon or he might get very moody indeed. It must be good news, though. Married couples all over the world would have gone mad or fallen apart for the lack of lovemaking by now if it was sternly forbidden during pregnancy.

  ‘It might be best if we wait another week, just to be sure all is well.’

  ‘I thought so, too,’ he said gloomily. ‘And I will not be looking at any other women in the meantime, before you start any getting ridiculous ideas. They might as well be invisible as far as I am concerned.’

  ‘I keep thinking about the beautiful mistresses you must have had in India, though, Ash,’ she admitted as the image of girls trained to pleasure a man in bed and out of it lined up to make her feel less than she ought to and compound this ridiculous lack of confidence in herself that growing up lonely and unwanted in her stepfather’s house seemed to have left her with, despite Ash’s fascination with her body and his sensual attention being focused on her and her alone these last few months.

  ‘None of them was ever as beautiful as you and I never wanted them as I want you. You are like a fire under my skin and water in a desert, Ros.’

  ‘That was almost poetic,’ she said dreamily.

  ‘Put it down to frustration,’ he replied and left the room as if staying there with all that on his mind would cost too much effort.

  * * *

  By the time Rosalind’s pregnancy began to show it was full summer and even Ash could not complain about being cold on clear sunlit days and he obviously loved the green abundance of his native land even in the rain. At first she had secretly yearned for Dorset and the familiarity of Furze Cottage, but now she was learning to love the tough and often breathtaking beauty of the Dales. She liked these hardworking people with their dour humour and forthright speech. Except for Ash’s Great-Aunt Brilliana, of course, who still aired her opinions with brutal frankness and seemed determined to hate every change she and Ash wanted to make at Edenhope. It was beyond Rosalind why Ash’s late cousin Charlie was said to have adored the peppery old lady. She often did battle with Lady Brilliana over her determination to banish the stately formality of the past. Lady Brilliana would sweep into the New Wing unannounced and give her blunt opinion of this change or that innovation she insisted would never have been tolerated in her father’s day.

  ‘Her father sounds like a rigid old martinet,’ Rosalind said to Ash one day, as the echoes of the door slamming behind his great-aunt still rang through the sunny little parlour they had turned into a morning room.

  ‘He looks as if he had far more humour than his daughter will admit to in his portraits.’

  ‘So she is putting words in his mouth?’

  ‘Something she seems very good at, don’t you think?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ she said grimly, remembering Brilliana’s last official visit to the New Wing, which she openly called a miserable little hovel for a duke to live in when he had a palatial mansion next door.

  Trailing an array of expensive cashmere shawls, although some of them were almost worn to rags, the old besom had eyed Rosalind’s baby bump with a sharp shake of her elaborately dressed head. She had never abandoned the fashions of her youth, but at least her silvered locks saved a fortune in hair powder. ‘You two will have to get married properly before that child is born,’ she informed them by way of greeting.

  ‘We are already married,’ Rosalind said calmly, glad Jenny had agreed this was the wrong night to want any part in a grown-up dinner.

  ‘Hah! A few words mumbled by a blacksmith? Ridiculous. An anvil is no substitute for a church service—lot of heathen nonsense if you ask me.’

  ‘Luckily we did not,’ Ash bellowed in Lady Brilliana’s slightly less-deaf ear.

  ‘You are a rogue, boy,’ she told him fondly and turned her fire on Rosalind, as usual. ‘Do you want your son to be challenged for his father’s title one day, just because you were too slipshod to make sure you were properly wed to his father in the first place?’ she demanded brusquely.

  ‘Marriage by declaration is perfectly legal in Scotland,’ Rosalind said, reminding herself it was bad for the baby to let the fearsome old woman goad her into a temper. ‘We would only have to tell two witnesses we were man and wife for it to be a legal commitment for life.’

  ‘Poppycock—told Plumstead you should get wed again and he agrees.’

  ‘He would agree to anything you tell him to. His nerves are completely shot from decades at your beck and call,’ Ash told her.

  ‘High time he retired, then,’ Lady Brilliana said.

  ‘And I would have to ask my wife to wed me twice,’ Ash said, turning a deaf ear on her for a change.

  ‘There is that, of course, but don’t you want to make an honest woman out of me?’ Rosalind asked contrarily.

  He had been silent for a long moment and Rosalind tensed as she watched him warm his coattails in f
ront of the fire he insisted on even in July. ‘You are already my wife; it would be a fuss about nothing.’

  ‘Not as far as your wife and child are concerned,’ Lady Brilliana said impatiently.

  At least she had accepted Rosalind was Ash’s Duchess then.

  * * *

  The next day poor Reverend Plumstead toiled his way up from the village to offer his services, so Brilliana was even more intent on getting her way than usual.

  ‘Do you think we should marry again to make sure nobody can challenge the baby’s claim to your throne one day, Ash?’ she asked after the weary vicar of Hartley had gone home to recover.

  ‘It might be a girl.’

  ‘True, but what if it is a boy?’

  ‘I will write to my London solicitors and see what they have to say about a possible legal challenge if you like, but I feel very married—what about you?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ she said with a significant glance down at her rapidly vanishing waistline. ‘Very much so.’

  ‘Then I will write to them, but I don’t want to see Brilliana proved right any more than you do.’

  ‘Indeed, if she had ever learnt the art of subtlety the world would be a far more dangerous place for the rest of us. You had best hurry up and write, though—knowing what solicitors are like they might not find a sure enough reply before the baby is born if you delay.’

  ‘True,’ he said, then Jenny burst in with news the stable cat’s kittens had opened their eyes at last and managed to tug her father out to see them so that was the end of that, even if Lady Brilliana still brought the subject up regularly.

  * * *

  Ash was fascinated by the baby growing in Rosalind’s belly. He made love to her gently but with flattering regularity as soon as Judith Belstone’s letter arrived to say it was all perfectly possible as long as they loved quietly, which was Judith’s tactful way of saying do nothing wild or too adventurous. Despite Rosalind’s fear her pregnancy would put him off her changing body, Ash seemed to find it enthralling. He would rub oil into her rounding belly and feel for the whispers of movement she reported when their baby quickened inside her with such awe she fell in love with him on yet another level she now had to keep quiet about as well. He gentled his hungry need of her and found new ways to enjoy themselves without hurting the baby. Finding a honeyed tenderness under all the heat felt new to both to them and she hoped he had never felt like this with other lovers.