The Duchess's Secret (HQR Historical)

by Elizabeth Beacon

  It was far more than the marriage of convenience he had proposed to her in Livesey and she agreed to so reluctantly. Yet there was something held back even as their lives knitted together in so many ways. Rosalind knew his desire for her was leashed but strong. She could not say he was inattentive, or showed any sign of wanting younger or slimmer women now she was visibly with child, but there was something unsaid and held back between them. Some last shred of caution always seemed to step in and stop them being true lovers as well as a practical duke and duchess, busy with their new lives and growing family.

  * * *

  Ash was finding it hard to keep secrets from his wife. If she knew what he was up to, she would react as if he had stuck a knife in her back, then put her armour back on to fight the intimacy weaving their lives together. He knew it was reckless to risk so much, but he was stubborn and might as well try to change the rock Edenhope was built on as pretend it was easy to get an idea out of his head once it was in there. He rode to the top of Edendale to watch his land, so abundant with new life at this time of year, and argued with his own set-in-stone determination Ros’s seducer must pay for what he did when she was so painfully young. He wished he had found her first, with her head still full of dreams and all those years ahead of them to watch her grow into the mature beauty she was now. His fault he had lost so many of those because he had lost his temper and decided she was just like his mother, for no sane reason, he decided now he looked back.

  He realised she had tried to lock it away and forget and she had said at the time her mother told her never to tell anyone, especially not her future husband, and perhaps Lady Lackbourne had been right. If Ros had not found the courage to clear her conscience, they might have been together all these years instead of far apart. Except did he really want a marriage full of little pockets of lies and evasions to drag it down? No, and they had to live with what was instead of what might have been, but that cur came between them once and he was never going to do it again.

  He broke the seal on the first missive that arrived yesterday she did not know about. This one was from his London lawyers. It had been locked in a drawer in his desk in the old part of the house. Sighing at his own stupidity, he muttered a few soothing words to his horse and let the reins slide while Pegasus grazed and he brooded. Ash smoothed the hot pressed paper and read his lawyers’ judgement. Apparently the Church considered marriage by mutual consent, freely given in front of witnesses, truly binding. Excellent news as far as the Duke and Duchess of Cherwell were concerned, except Common Law had argued over the issue endlessly since the Marriage Act of 1753 forbade such marriages under English law, while they were still allowed by the Scottish legal system. The English courts had still not been able to decide if the children of such runaway marriages were truly legitimate. The transmission of property to such children could be challenged now or at some time in the future, if a precedent should be set at last or the arguing Law Lords finally made up their minds one way or the other. It was all hedged about with caveats and maybes, but the crux of it seemed to be Brilliana was right; in order to prevent any future uncertainty and legal challenges to his heir, he and Ros ought to marry again before the baby was born.

  He did not look forward to sharing this learned opinion with his wife, but they could always wed in private, with Joan and some other close-mouthed and reliable witness to render it legal. The right to wed by special licence with no banns was a privilege of the peerage so they might as well take advantage of it. Now he was thinking about ways to stop Brilliana finding out she was right and crowing about it. Except they must keep it secret for Jenny; they needed a record of a second marriage lest their first was challenged, but not a public admission they thought they might not have been properly married to bastardise their little girl. His personal fortune could go wherever he chose to leave it, but to inherit his titles and Edenhope his son must be unimpeachably legitimate if he was not to be knotted up in Chancery if an opportunist distant relative decided to challenge him one day. It was entailed and even if it wasn’t they could hardly carve the old place up and hand pieces to their children so the eldest boy needed to inherit the lands that kept it in good order as well as Ash’s title.

  A delayed visit from the Belstones could be the ideal chance to marry again without Brilliana finding out. Ash wondered if the Reverend Belstone would agree to marry them in another man’s parish, but if he explained well enough he was sure the man could be persuaded. Ben Belstone was obviously fond of Jenny and his own two little demons thought of her almost as an extra sister. Now he came to think about it, Plumstead must be overdue to retire and, if he could persuade the Belstones Hartley was a fine parish with a large vicarage Ash was prepared to rebuild from the ground up if it got them to come here, Jenny would be ecstatic and Ros would have her good friends close by.

  And now he had considered that knotty problem, what about the next? He carefully pocketed the first letter and pulled the second out. He could forget he ever wrote it and put the past behind them. Except he could not let justice for the girl Ros once was slip through his hands as if she didn’t matter, so he broke the seal and unfolded his second missive.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Rosalind had no idea Ash was gone until she came down to dinner one day to find he had left her a brief note to say he was called away at short notice and would be back soon. No loving goodbye, no hungry, regretful kisses to tell how much he was going to miss her. She glared at his letter saying business called him away, but he would be home shortly. She asked Snigsby, in charge here now Cherwell House was shut up with a skeleton staff to keep it safe, if he was aware that anyone had called on the Duke.

  ‘I am not aware of any messengers, Your Grace,’ Snigsby told her with the usual bland butler’s manner she was beginning to see through now she was getting to know him better.

  ‘How about letters?’

  ‘Two communications came for His Grace the day before yesterday, Your Grace, marked for his personal attention,’ Snigsby said almost helpfully.

  ‘Thank you, Snigsby.’

  ‘And dinner, Your Grace?’

  ‘Is Cook aware my husband will not be here?’

  ‘Apparently so, Your Grace,’ the man said, and bless him for looking faintly disapproving that Ash had told Cook he would not be here, but not his wife.

  Rosalind ate because she knew she ought to, but the fine food seemed tasteless. The sense of unease she had been struggling with for weeks was telling her this was important. Ash had been distracted for days. What if he was bored with domesticity and all the problems the old part of the house kept throwing up after being left untended for so long? From what she had managed to find out about his years in India, Ash was used to the constant challenges of trade and outwitting his rivals, so would restoring a crumbling mansion in Yorkshire and living with the realities of family life hold his interest for long? She told herself not to be a fool and accept they had more than the convenient marriage they agreed to for Jenny’s sake. Yet after the closeness of their journey here and that appalling day when Jenny’s life had literally hung in the balance, Ash seemed to want more out of their marriage than an heir and a ready-made family. This sense he had withdrawn part of his attention from them since that day had hurt her far more than it should.

  And what would Ash say if she kept important matters from him? He would probably accuse her of lying again and disappear for another eight years. No, that was unfair, they were further on than that, or at least she had thought so until today. And even if he had left them where she could find them she could not open his letters—that would be far too intrusive and mistrustful.

  * * *

  After dinner she went up to kiss Jenny goodnight and there was another setback to her belief that she and Ash were now far closer than they’d set out to be when they agreed to be Duke and his Duchess.

  ‘When will Papa be back?’ her little girl asked forlornly and another
layer of Rosalind’s fragile trust she was special to him peeled away. Everybody seemed to know Ash was leaving but her. Of course he had told his daughter he would be away for a few days—she was important to him.

  ‘Well, what did he tell you, my love?’ she asked, feeling guilty for asking such a sly question.

  ‘That he will be back before I can miss him and I promised him I would be good while he was away, Mama.’

  ‘There you are, then; it doesn’t sound as if he will be gone very long since he knows what a strain it will put on you to be so well behaved.’

  ‘That’s not nice of you, Mama.’

  ‘Even if it is true?’

  ‘Not all the time and I said I would miss him lots so he is sure to come home soon.’

  ‘Promise me you will be good for Miss Burrows and Carrie if he is away for a few days more than you think he should be? I cannot run about rescuing you from adventures that go wrong now I am expecting your little brother or sister to be born in a few months’ time.’

  ‘Papa says I will have to set an example,’ Jenny said with a worried look that made Rosalind want to laugh.

  ‘True,’ she said solemnly instead. ‘The baby will look up to you as soon as he or she is big enough to take notice.’

  ‘I might like that and with it being so much smaller than me it will have a long way to look, won’t it?’

  ‘Yes, Jenny love,’ Ros said and managed to kiss her and tell her to go to sleep like a very good big sister before she left the room and could let out a chuckle at Jenny’s version of looking up to someone without offending her. Then she wanted to tell Ash about it and he wasn’t here.

  * * *

  Ten days later Rosalind was annoyed with herself for missing Ash so painfully after the last few months of daily intimacy it felt as if half of her had been chopped away. Once again she had to force herself to eat for the sake of her unborn child and anyone would think she was pining for the wretched man, like a misguided spaniel when its master was away from home. She heard the serenely ticking clock softly telling out the silence and wanted to scream. Ash was not here to chivvy her into eating more, or enquiring about her plans for the day over the breakfast table. Didn’t he value the life they had started to build at the heart of his ducal empire?

  Obviously not, she answered her own question. All she thought they were building after that first night together in London looked like not much at all from where she was sitting now.

  They had never said anything about love though, had they? At least, yes, he called her love the day she held on to Jenny for grim life until he came to save their little girl from hurtling down on to the stone slabs three storeys below. It must have been an excess of relief talking and he hadn’t meant it at all. So that day, when she knew for certain she still loved him, he could not have meant it.

  She knew now she had loved him from the moment she first laid eyes on him and, like that spaniel, she had never stopped doing it under her armour of pretend indifference. She had cried for him while she was carrying Jenny. Then dreamt of him afterwards, waking with tears wet on her cheeks and trying to fool even herself she didn’t care. Oh, yes, she had loved him through eight years of silence, of absence, of him not admitting he had a wife at all. Yet he had gone away and stayed away for all those years and kept who knew how many other women for their mutual pleasure and entertainment. And now he had blithely left her sitting here in his lair without a single word of explanation and it hurt so much she wanted to scream. All those empty years of loving a shadow hurt. She had stayed faithful because anything else was unthinkable and now he had gone away as if he felt no need to explain himself to his convenient wife? Suddenly furious with him for his protracted absence, she threw her toast at the gilt mirror that was mockingly reflecting a flushed and furious duchess back at her—and the dratted woman was crying now as well.

  She had endured enough and this was the final straw. She had come here and tried so hard to be a good enough duchess, despite her reservations about the stately role chance had landed on her shoulders. She had put up with his distracted mood and brooding silences since that never-to-be-forgotten day they arrived and most other wives would have turned tail and refused to come anywhere near his tumbledown inheritance until it was glowing with polish and newness. Now she was sitting here, patient as some medieval martyr growing bigger with Ash’s child every day and she didn’t even know where he was. Maybe he would leave her alone for another eight years, or perhaps he would come back when she was due to give birth, just to see who they had produced between them this time. Well, they would see about that, she decided militantly and glared at the Duchess, who seemed to have finally stopped crying and was glaring back at her from the mirror. Part of her knew she was overreacting and there might even be a rational explanation for Ash’s absence, but the rest had reached the end of her tether. What a stupid idea to hope they could learn to live warily together inside a marriage of convenience for the rest of their natural lives.

  ‘Convenience be damned,’ the Duchess of Cherwell told her flushed and tearstained reflection past that piece of cold toast slowly sliding down the mirror and she doubted she could do that again if she tried it every morning for the rest of her life. Best not do that, but that was the least of her worries and she really had had quite enough of sitting here, like patience on a monument waiting for her lord and master to come home and reclaim her.

  ‘I beg your pardon, Your Grace?’ Snigsby asked hesitantly from the doorway.

  ‘What for?’ she said with a flustered look at the mirror now in need of a clean and polish from someone with better things to do.

  ‘I thought you called me.’

  ‘No, but please will you tell Joan that I need her.’

  ‘Very well, Your Grace,’ the butler said impassively and retired before any more bits of breakfast flew around the room.

  ‘Whatever is it, Miss Ros?’ Joan said as she huffed into the room only a few minutes later so Snigsby must have told her it was urgent.

  ‘It is hot and noisy here and I miss the sea. We will pay a visit to—’ Rosalind thought frantically for a moment. ‘Whitby, that’s it. We will go there for a few days of fresh sea air and a respite from all the hammering and sawing and trying to keep Jenny out from under the builders’ feet.’

  ‘Just like that?’

  ‘Yes, just like that. I am a duchess and what use is there in being one of those if I can’t indulge in a whim every now and again.’

  ‘What about Himself?’

  ‘What about him?’ Rosalind said with a haughty glare at the mirror and the Duchess there, with jam and butter slowly sliding down her regal face. ‘What’s sauce for the gander is sauce for the goose,’ she announced and dared even Joan to argue with her furious need to get away from Ash’s home without him in it.

  * * *

  Two days later Ash rode back up the beautifully kept drive of his grandest country house. The main house was busy with builders and glaziers and plumbers and masons and sundry other artisans called in to correct the years of neglect Charlie had railed about with such good reason. He got to the stable yard and handed the reins of his weary horse to Dawkins, then looked around the sleepy silence of the stable yard. ‘What’s to do?’ he asked uneasily.

  ‘You’re home at last then, lad,’ the man said as if he hadn’t heard the question. ‘About time,’ he added.

  ‘You are impertinent.’

  ‘Aye, and the Duchess is at Whitby with your lass.’

  ‘Is one of them ill?’ Ash said, a sharp plunge of fear in his belly at the very idea.

  ‘Not as I know of.’

  ‘Then why has she gone away?’

  ‘Happen she wanted a change of scene and a bit of peace,’ Dawkins told him with little respect and Ash had a feeling the old groom thought he hadn’t earned any lately.

  ‘Why the devil didn’t you go with
her?’ he barked.

  ‘I did; she sent us back, said she’d send for the coach when she needed us and there was no point paying for stabling.’

  ‘Then stall Peg until he’s cooled down and had a good rest and turn him out for a day or two,’ Ash told him abruptly, then strode across the lawns to the New Wing as if the devil was on his heels.

  ‘Mr Snigsby and Miss Burton are with the Duchess, Your Grace,’ a flustered Ruth told him between curtsies.

  ‘Tell my valet to bring hot water to my bedchamber, then pack for my next journey,’ he ordered brusquely. ‘Oh, and send someone to tell Dawkins I expect my curricle in half an hour,’ he added as he headed for the library to see if Ros had left an explanation.

  Her letter was addressed to The Most Noble Duke of Cherwell on the outside. Inside there was no greeting at all.

  We have decided on a change of scene. I dare say we will be back in a few days. Jenny sends her love.

  And that was that. He ran upstairs to the modest main bedroom of their temporary home while the grand chambers in the main house were restored. As usual, it was bathed in sunlight and looked neatly comfortable. Yet it felt as empty and joyless as his foolish ducal chamber at Cherwell House in London had been without Ros in it. He missed the delicate scent of her light perfume, the rustle of her gown or the shine of a silk scarf discarded across the back of a chair, glowing with colour as sunlight poured in from the long windows she refused to have shuttered to stop it fading the upholstery. Most of all he missed her; the vital presence of her that lit up a room for him now he had let himself realise how very much he loved her and always had under a boy’s pettishness and stupidity.