What the hell was happening to him? It was totally out of character for him to act as irresponsibly as he had today. But then, much of what he had done involving Rachel had been out of character.
It told him how much he was coming to care for her.
And that was a mistake.
A fatal mistake, Hellsfire, how could he be so stupid?
If he did not take care, he would pay for this mistake as he had paid for loving Cleo—with a broken heart. He could not stand going through that despair and disillusionment again.
Nor the aching loneliness and gnawing sense of betrayal that followed.
Cleo had been the second lovely woman to break his heart. He remembered the first, remembered all those times as a small boy he had stood on the front steps of Royal Elms, begging his mother to take him with her as she and Morgan, the two people he had loved most in the world, had left for another long visit to her brother,
But her impatient answer had always been the same. “No, Jerome, do not plague me like this. You must stay with your father.”
And he had watched with tears in his eyes as the coach pulled away, then gone with dragging steps back into the big house that was suddenly so lonely.
There his austere father had angrily chastised him for the weakness that his tears betrayed: “The future Duke of Westleigh cannot be weak like other men, Jerome. You disappoint me terribly.”
It was during one of his mother’s and brother’s long absences that the four-year-old Jerome had met Ferris, the son of the estate’s master of the horse. The two boys had become fast friends. Ferris had been one of the few bright spots in Jerome’s bleak, lonely childhood.
Rachel’s vivacity and beauty reminded him a little of his mother. And in time, like his mother, would she, too, desert him? Or betray him as Cleo had?
Jerome tried to tell himself that Rachel was different, but he had been so certain that Cleo was, too.
He would not make that mistake again.
It hurt too much.
Forcing himself to get up and away from the temptation in his bed, he dressed and left his chamber.
In the hall he met Mrs. Needham.
“I have had the duchess’s bedchamber cleaned and prepared for her grace,” the dour housekeeper said.
Jerome had given no thought to the other bedchamber in the suite. He wanted to keep his wife beside him in his own bed. How quickly he had grown accustomed to the warmth and comfort of having her there.
“Had I had advance warning of her arrival, it would have been ready for her when she came,” Mrs. Needham complained. “Shall I have her moved into it now?”
Jerome did not want that. He loved holding Rachel in his arms during the night.
Hellsfire, he was beginning to act like a besotted fool over her. His father’s repeated admonition echoed in his memory. The Duke of Westleigh cannot be weak like other men.
He had to curb his hunger and growing affection for Rachel.
His mouth hardened in determination. “Yes, after she awakens.”
Jerome had to distance himself from her.
He had become very good at that.
Rachel stepped into the hall in her violet riding habit. She had put it on in the hope that she could persuade Jerome to give her a tour of Royal Elms.
She had been disappointed when she had awakened from her nap to find him gone from their bed, but her mood brightened at the memory of how passionately he had made love to her—and in the middle of the day. Surely Morgan was right. Jerome did care for her.
Mrs. Needham, moving slowly and stiffly, came toward her. Rachel smiled at her, but it brought no answering response to the sour woman’s mouth. “If Your Grace is going riding now, I will have the maids move your things into the duchess’s bedchamber.”
“What?” Rachel had assumed that she would continue to share Jerome’s bedchamber as her mama had shared her papa’s.
“His grace told me to move you after you awakened.”
Rachel was shocked that her husband would have given such an instruction to the housekeeper. Had he suddenly decided that he did not want his wife with him? Struggling to hide her dismay, she asked, “Where is my husband?”
“In the estate office.”
Rachel found him there at a large walnut desk, frowning over a ledger, one of several open on the desk before him. His golden hair was badly mussed, as though he had been running his fingers through it.
He looked up at her entrance. Something leaped in his eyes at the sight of her, but it did not erase his forbidding frown. Before she could speak, he said, “If you are going riding, Ferris will accompany you.”
Rachel struggled to conceal her disappointment that Jerome showed no interest in going with her.
“You are to go nowhere on Royal Elms,” he went on, “unless Ferris, Morgan, or I are with you.”
“Why?” she demanded, bridling at this restriction on her freedom.
“Because as my duchess, it is unseemly for you to go about alone as you used to do at Wingate Hall. Your consequence requires an escort.”
“I do not give a fig about my consequence, and I am not—”
“Well, I do! You are my duchess.”
Rachel stared at him in dismay. What had happened to the ardent lover of two hours earlier? She tried to disarm him with a smile. “I was hoping that I could persuade you to show me some of Royal Elms.”
For a fleeting instant, his face betrayed how much that idea appealed to him, but then it tightened into determined lines. “I have not the time. I must deal with urgent problems.”
“I see,” Rachel said stiffly. “Mrs. Needham said you told her to move me out of your bedchamber.”
“Yes,” he said blandly. “I knew you would be more comfortable in your own room.”
The sudden pain in Rachel’s heart was so sharp that she nearly gasped. It was followed by anger equally as sharp. “As you definitely will be!” She whirled and stomped out the door, slamming it hard behind her.
What in the world was wrong with the man? First, he refused to marry her, then he carried her off and seduced her into doing so. This afternoon he could not wait to make love to her. Now, he was shutting her out of his bed.
And Rachel was furious about it.
She marched up to her new bedchamber. While it was a lovely room, done in rich blue silk with delicate, feminine furnishings, it lacked the one thing she most wanted—her husband.
Rachel noted that it had a connecting door to his bedchamber and that the key to the lock was on his side of the door. Angrily, she yanked it out and put it on her side.
And maybe, just maybe, she would lock it against him, and let him see how it felt to be shut out.
When Rachel went up to her bedchamber that night, she walked to the connecting door and resolutely turned the key in the lock.
After she had left the estate office that afternoon, she had not seen Jerome again until dinner in the great, gilt-encrusted state dining room that could easily accommodate fifty.
The meal was a silent, strained affair, eaten at a long table under the watchful eyes—and listening ears—of the phalanx of footmen who were serving them.
Rachel was still angry and hurt that her husband had moved her out of his bedchamber, but he did not appear to notice her pique, and she could not give voice to it in front of all those servants.
Afterward he went immediately to his estate office.
As she undressed for bed, she listened for the sound of his steps in the hall, but she had been in bed for nearly an hour when she finally heard them. He went into his room, and she waited apprehensively for him to discover that her door was barred to him. She was certain that he would be furious when he discovered it.
Well, so was she!
The minutes ticked slowly by until an hour had slipped away. Rachel, curled up beneath the covers, strained in the darkness to hear any sound in the other room, but there was only quiet.
Finally, she had to concede to herself that
he had gone to sleep in his own bed and had no intention of trying to join her tonight. Rachel blinked back tears of pain and defeat. She had counted on his wanting her as much tonight as she wanted him.
How could she teach her infuriating husband a lesson by barring him from her bedchamber if he would not even put himself in a position to learn it?
Chapter 22
The post chaise that Morgan had hired to bring .K the rest of Rachel’s belongings from Wingate Hall to Royal Elms arrived three days later, only two hours after the duke’s coach with Peters and Maxi pulled up.
At the sight of his mistress, the little terrier raced up the steps, barking furiously, and hurled himself at her. She gathered him into her arms, hugging him to her, delighted to have something that lavished affection upon her at Royal Elms.
After the trunks from Wingate Hall arrived, Rachel supervised the unpacking. Time was hanging heavily on her hands.
Since the afternoon her husband had pulled her into his bedroom at midday and made passionate, exhilarating love to her, she had not seen him except at dinner in the state dining room, which she had already come to hate. The oppressive formality of the huge room and the half dozen hovering footmen made the private, intimate conversation she wanted to have with Jerome impossible.
He seemed determined to avoid her at all other times, excusing himself after dinner to return to the estate office.
The cold reserve that he used to keep the world at a distance was now being employed against his wife with the same effect. He was deliberately isolating himself from her, and Rachel did not understand what she had done to cause him to do so.
Her initial anger at him for having moved her out of his bedchamber had given way to dismay and pain as she realized that he seemed to be ousting her from his life as well as from his bed. She no longer locked the door between their bedchambers. What was the point? Besides, by now, she would welcome a nocturnal visit from him.
Rachel had clung to Morgan’s assurance that his brother cared about her. But it was becoming harder for her to believe that. She wished that Morgan would come back from London where he had gone on business for Jerome. Rachel desperately wanted to talk to her brother-in-law. She had no one in whom she could confide, and she felt so lonely and isolated.
These feelings were exacerbated by her new home. Built on a grand scale and furnished with ornate splendour, it left Rachel, used as she was to the informal comfort of Wingate Hall, overwhelmed and ill at ease.
At least, she decided with characteristic resolution, she could do something about that. After all, whether Jerome liked it or not, she was the mistress of Royal Elms now. She would strive to make this awesome house more comfortable and less intimidating.
After her trunks were unpacked, Rachel changed into a riding habit and went out on horseback, accompanied by Ferris who was her faithful shadow wherever she went. She enjoyed his company and had learned a great deal from him. He and her husband had been unlikely friends since early childhood. Jerome had even insisted that Ferris be given lessons with him. Jerome’s father had been horrified, “but no one can be more stubborn than your husband when he sets his mind to something,” Ferris had told her.
As Rachel and Ferris rode today, she felt him studying her. Finally, he said, his voice full of sympathy, “You must be patient with the duke. He may seem remote at times, but no man is more loyal and caring to those he loves.”
If only he could love her, Rachel thought, a lump rising in her throat.
“Why,” Ferris was saying, “when he heard of the reward about to be offered for Gentleman Jack’s capture, he dropped everything and went immediately to Yorkshire. There was nothing the duke would not have done to get Lord Morgan to end his career as a highwayman.”
“How did my husband convince his brother to do so?”
Ferris shrugged. “I do not know that—only that he succeeded.”
That night as Jerome escorted Rachel from the dining room after another strained, stilted dinner, she asked, “Why did you send Morgan to London?”
“To hire an investigator to try to learn what happened to Stephen.”
“You did?” Rachel had thought her husband had forgotten about the “wedding gift” she had requested. That he remembered lifted her spirits. She turned to him with excited, shining eyes. “Why did you not tell me before?”
Jerome stared at her with the oddest expression. It sent heat twisting through her body. For a moment, she thought he meant to kiss her.
Then he frowned, and the strange spell was broken. “I was waiting until I heard whether the man thinks he can discover anything. You must excuse me, my dear, but I have more work to do tonight in the estate office.”
Rachel hated it when he called her “my dear,” in that cool tone. She wanted to engage him in conversation, to make him respond to her! She would not let him dismiss her so easily. In a low voice, she asked, “How did you convince your brother to give up his life of crime?”
A sardonic smile tugged at one corner of his mouth. “I married you.”
“What?”
“Morgan promised that if I married you, he would do so.”
Rachel could only stare at Jerome in shock. There is nothing the duke would not have done to get Lord Morgan to end his career as a highwayman.
Now she knew the real reason for Jerome’s sudden change of heart about marrying her. She had been clinging to the forlorn hope that it had been because Jerome had realized he cared for her.
But now she knew the bitter truth.
He had married her because he loved his brother.
She felt as though her heart had been pulverized. Turning away from him, she said coldly, “I am happy to learn our marriage had some benefit for you. Good night.”
She went up to her bedchamber where she spent a sleepless night trying to come to terms with the reality of her marriage.
She had been living in a fool’s paradise, clutching at Morgan’s assurance that his brother cared about her. She had told herself that in time, when Jerome learned that she was not fickle and perfidious like Cleo Macklin had been, his budding love for her would bloom and flourish.
Now it all seemed so hopeless.
And she had no one to blame but herself. She had abducted him to get him to marry her. Now they were both trapped. The lonely years stretched ahead of her, endless and bleak. Burning tears spilled down her cheeks.
Rachel got up from her solitary bed and went to the window. The first light of dawn was turning the world from black to a gray that matched her despairing mood.
Maxi trotted in from his bed in her dressing room and came to her side. She bent and gathered him up in her arms, resting her cheek on his soft, silver coat. What was she to do now?
Rachel looked out across the park of Royal Elms, carefully landscaped to offer lovely prospects and vistas. With her tears still flowing, she thought of her paternal grandmother. Rachel could feel sorry for herself as she was doing now, or she could do what her grandmother had done when she had discovered that her husband preferred other women to her.
Grandmama had put her pain and humiliation aside and set out to make the lives of others happier. Her granddaughter would follow her example. Rachel would keep so busy at Royal Elms that she would have no time to weep and mope over a husband who did not want her.
Maxi lifted his head and licked at her tears. She squeezed him to her and looked at the rolling green hills. All the land as far as her eye could see belonged to Royal Elms. Jerome might not have wanted her, but he had made her his wife and the estate’s mistress.
And Rachel was determined to be the best one that Royal Elms had ever had. She would make the house a more relaxed and pleasant place to live. She would learn as much about the people of Royal Elms and their lives as she had known about those at Wingate Hall. And she would have her healing work. She would start an herb garden and seek out other herbal sources here for her remedies.
Perhaps Jerome would never love her, but at the very lea
st she intended to win his respect.
In time, perhaps she could win more.
The next day, Rachel launched her campaign to make Royal Elms a home she could enjoy. She began with the food that, though excellently prepared, was bland and unimaginative.
Armed with her mother’s recipe book, which had been included among Rachel’s belongings sent from Wingate Hall, she diplomatically told the cook that she had a yearning for some of the food she had been used to at home and asked her to make some of the recipes.
The woman accepted the book eagerly, confiding, “There was not much the old duke liked, and so the menu was very restricted. Your husband gave no indication he wished it changed, and I was afraid to do so.”
As the cook left, Mrs. Needham came into the room. Studying her stiff, aching movements and swollen joints that bespoke rheumatism, Rachel wondered whether her sour disposition stemmed from her being constantly in pain.
“Do you take anything for your rheumatism, Mrs. Needham?”
The housekeeper looked startled that Rachel should have noticed. “Nothing that has worked.”
“I make an excellent bolus. Perhaps it would help you.”
Hope flared in the woman’s dull eyes. “Perhaps it would. The scullery maid’s face is nearly healed. All the servants are talking about how well your treatment worked.”
After Rachel gave Mrs. Needham the medication, she questioned her about Royal Elms when she had first come to work there, back when Jerome’s grandfather had been duke.
Among the things Rachel learned was the house had once had a small family dining parlour, but Jerome’s father had refused to use it, insisting that nothing less than a formal dining room befitted his lofty status in life. The parlour had been turned into another sitting room, and its original furnishings relegated to the attic.
An inspection of the room with its oriel overlooking a meandering woodland walk lined with irises and lily of the valley convinced Rachel that it should be restored to its original use. She decided against telling Jerome what she intended, fearing he would object. Instead she would surprise him.
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