He knew that he could no longer stay away from her, no longer intended even to try. Slowly, but surely, she was eroding the barriers he had built around his heart.
And it scared the hell out of him.
What did Rachel really feel for him? She had abducted him in a desperate attempt to escape marriage to Lord Felix. Jerome had been convenient. He was also rich and titled, and one of the few men to whom her aunt could not object.
Jerome could excite Rachel’s passion, but had he ever touched her heart? No word of love had crossed her lips. Not once during their lovemaking had she told him that she even cared for him.
At least, she was not a liar. He supposed he should be thankful for that. He remembered with a contemptuous curl of his lip Cleo’s profuse lies about loving him.
Jerome’s thoughts were interrupted by Ferris’s appearance at the door. Knowing that Ferris would not disturb him in his estate office except on crucial matters, Jerome asked in alarm, “What is it?”
“A stranger was at the village tavern last night, asking odd questions about your new duchess.”
Cold fingers of fear clutched at Jerome. That was what had happened at Wingate Hall before the shot had been fired at Rachel.
Ferris’s worried face told Jerome he was thinking the same thing. “The man wanted to know how the servants feel about their new mistress and whether there are any who do not like her.”
“Are there?”
“None that I know of. I looked for him today, but there was no sign of him in the village. I will be at the tavern the next few nights in case he returns.”
Jerome nodded, terribly afraid that whoever was stalking Rachel had followed her to Royal Elms. Jerome had thought to save her by marrying her and bringing her here, but danger still threatened her.
His voice was suddenly hoarse with apprehension. “Do not let her out of your sight.”
“Come with me,” Rachel told Jerome when he came down to dinner that night. “I have a surprise for you.”
Startled, he quirked a quizzical eyebrow at her. “Before dinner?”
Nodding, she pulled him with her. Her eyes were alight with excitement, and she looked so enchanting in a pale blue overgown over a white silk petticoat that it was all Jerome could do to keep from stopping and taking her in his arms.
She led him to the small sitting room that was one of his favourites. He had sat sometimes in the evening in its oriel, playing his guitar and looking out at the woodland beauty
As he stepped inside, Jerome stopped in astonishment. It had been transformed into a charming, intimate dining parlour with a round table in the centre. What surprised him most, however, were not the two place settings laid on the table, but its chairs. They were covered in the same colourful Indian needlework, embroidered with bright blue and rose flowers, as the room’s window valances.
He turned to Rachel in surprise. “Why this must have been the room’s original use.”
“Did you not know that?”
“No.” Jerome felt a little foolish. It had taken his wife only a few days to discover what he, who had lived here all his life, had not known.
Rachel smiled. “I have ordered dinner to be served here tonight. I hope you do not mind. I find it very daunting for just the two of us to dine in that huge dining room with all those footmen hovering over us.”
So did Jerome. The thought of escaping the burdensome show delighted him.
“I have also reduced the number of footmen serving us to one and instructed him to remain in the hall except when we summon him.”
Jerome was overjoyed at the prospect of dining in the privacy of this pretty, cheerful little room overlooking one of his favourite vistas at Royal Elms.
After the footman served the soup and retired into the hall, shutting the door behind him, Jerome revelled for a moment in the blessed privacy, then asked, “When was this room previously used for dining?”
“Until your father became duke. He decreed meals must be served in the state dining room.”
“My father! I should have known.” Jerome had never liked eating in the oppressive formality of the state dining room but his father had insisted that was the way the Dukes of Westleigh had always dined. Tradition must be upheld.
Now Jerome discovered that the tradition had begun with his father.
“I am told that until your father this was part of the suite of rooms used for informal family living. I would like to use them for that purpose again.”
Jerome felt a lightening of his spirit at the prospect of an alternative to the intimidating grandeur of the house’s state rooms. “So would I.”
Rachel asked Jerome about his day. He never discussed his problems with anyone, but under her skilful questioning he found himself confiding much more to her than he had ever done to anyone before, even Morgan.
His wife’s interest in Royal Elms delighted him. So did the intelligence of her observations and her suggestions for handling its problems. No wonder her father had put her in charge of Wingate Hall.
By the time the dinner concluded, Jerome could not remember when he had enjoyed a meal so much at Royal Elms. He was far more relaxed and at ease in this pleasant, comfortable room.
As they rose from the table, Rachel said, “I discovered your guitar. Would you play a little for me?”
He had work waiting for him, but he remembered her plaintive plea: Please, Jerome, do not shut me out of your life as you are doing. He picked up his guitar and settled in the oriel seat. Rachel sat down beside him.
He started with a haunting ballad. Rachel began singing it, and he joined her, pleased by how well their voices blended together.
She knew most of the songs that he did, including one or two that raised his eyebrows. She explained that her brothers with whom she used to sing like this at Wingate Hall had taught them to her.
The time flew by. It had been a long time since Jerome had spent such a pleasant night at Royal Elms. He would have hated for it to come to an end had he not looked forward to taking Rachel to bed with him.
He smiled in anticipation. He could not ask for a more passionate and responsive wife. But his happy mood suddenly disintegrated into doubt. He could not hope that such a dazzling woman would continue to be satisfied with only her husband.
It would not be a problem at Royal Elms where there was no one to vie for her attention, but once he took her to London, her beauty would draw every handsome rake in the city like flies to honey. She would not be able to resist their polished and persistent attentions.
Perhaps the answer was never to take her to London. She would be safe here.
At least from the rakes. Jerome’s mouth tightened as he thought of the unknown person who wanted her dead. He was terribly afraid that the villain was her brother George. He was the only one with anything to gain from her death.
After Ferris had told Jerome about the man at the tavern, he had sent a messenger to Morgan in London that he urgently needed him at Royal Elms.
Jerome prayed that he, his brother, and Ferris, would be able to protect Rachel from the spectre that threatened her.
Chapter 24
“Emily Hextable has come to call on you,” Jerome told his wife the following morning. “I will introduce you to her. She is a wonderful woman.”
Rachel wondered why Emily would be calling so early in the day, but she dutifully went with her husband to the drawing room to meet the “wonderful woman” whom she had prevented him from marrying.
She was already a little weary of hearing how marvellous Emily was. Rachel’s first callers at Royal Elms after her arrival had been the fat vicar of the parish church and his complacent, equally fat wife. Both of them had lauded Emily’s virtues so effusively that they had set Rachel’s teeth on edge.
“I do not know what the parish and its poor and sick would do without Miss Hextable,” the vicar had said. “It is rare, indeed, in this day and age, to find a woman so devoted to good works.”
Jerome guided Ra
chel into the drawing room where Emily awaited them. She was a tall, thin woman, perhaps a half-dozen years older than Rachel. Her narrow face was neither pretty nor unattractive, but nondescript with no outstanding feature to attract attention. Her gray eyes held no sparkle and her mouth was thin and unsmiling except when she caught Jerome’s eye.
Emily’s gaze remained on him even as she acknowledged the introduction to his wife.
Rachel said politely, “The duke tells me you are devoted to helping others.”
“Yes,” Emily said, her gaze still on Jerome, “I never shirk my Christian duty”
He told Rachel admiringly, “Emily is tireless in her efforts on behalf of the less fortunate.”
Emily gave a small sigh tinged with weariness. “I must be tireless, for the poor things depend upon me so. They all say they do not know what they would do without me. Indeed, it is that knowledge which keeps me going.”
She gave Jerome a smile that seemed to Rachel— who admittedly was prejudiced—more calculating than sincere. “Their gratitude is so touching. The sick tell me how much my coming to comfort them in their illness means to them. They say I am the only one who dares to do so. No one else will go near them.”
“You are very brave,” Jerome agreed.
Emily smiled proudly at his compliment. “I could not bear to be otherwise,” she assured him. “But I do not neglect the hungry. Poor Mrs. Quigg tells me over and over that she and her children would starve were it not for me. It is so sad, Jerome. It makes me weep to see their plight.”
She wiped delicately at her eyes, although Rachel, looking closely, could see no sign of tears.
“You must forgive me for calling at this early hour,” Emily said, still looking at Jerome. “But I have so many visits to make today, several of them to your tenants. I shall be happy to take your wife with me, if she should wish to go.”
Rachel suspected that only another woman would have caught the subtle nuance in Emily’s tone that betrayed she was certain Jerome’s new duchess would want nothing to do with such calls.
Rachel did not intend to give her that satisfaction. “I shall be delighted to go with you,” she lied. Emily’s chagrined expression was worth subjecting herself to the woman’s company.
Jerome said to Emily, “I hear that the eldest child of Bill Taggart over at Stanmore Acres is ill. Perhaps you could stop by to see her.”
“That Godless man,” Emily exclaimed, her face mirroring her revulsion. “I will pay no visit to his home. He is a shocking blasphemer and an ungrateful, lazy lout.”
“A lazy lout? I am surprised,” Jerome said with a frown. “When Lord Stanton owned Stanmore Acres, he used to say that he wished he had another dozen tenants like Taggart.”
Emily sniffed. “No longer. You would be shocked at how neglectful that wretched man has become.”
“I am very sorry to hear that,” Jerome said.
Since her husband was now Taggart’s landlord, Rachel thought, it was one more problem with which he must deal.
As Jerome took his leave, Emily’s gaze followed him until he had left the room. He might have married another woman, but she still wanted him.
As Emily’s chariot rolled across the rich, verdant hills, Rachel tried to converse with her, but she had very little to say now that Jerome was not around. Emily clearly was not happy to have his wife’s company.
Rachel’s thoughts turned to her husband. She was stung by his continuing appreciation for the “wonderful” Emily. Would she ever measure up in his eyes to the saintly paragon? Rachel tried to cheer herself by recalling the great success the dining parlour had been the previous night. Jerome had clearly loved it.
When they had gone upstairs after their evening of music-making, he had led her past the door to her bedchamber and taken her to his own. There he had made such tender love to her that it revived her hope that, even though he had married her only to save his brother, she might yet win his heart.
Emily told Rachel that their first visit would be to comfort a Royal Elms’s family in which four of the five young children had been stricken with an ague and were very ill.
When the chariot stopped in front of a neat cottage, one of the two footmen riding behind the passenger compartment jumped down with a small basket on his arm and went to the door. Rachel would have opened the chariot door, but Emily placed a restraining hand on her arm. “We are not getting out.”
“Then how can we call upon them?”
“We dare not go inside.” Emily sounded appalled. “The children are sick. They might be contagious.”
“I do not see how we can comfort them from the chariot.” Rachel observed tartly.
“We will leave them food.”
A woman, clearly exhausted and distraught, opened the door, and the footman handed her the little basket. A loud feverish wail drifted through the entranceway. The woman bobbed her head in thanks and started to close the door, but the footman prevented her from doing so.
He hissed, “You must come out and give proper thanks to Miss Hextable for her generosity, you ungrateful woman.”
The wailing from inside the cottage grew louder and was joined by a second child’s reedy voice. The woman cast a harried look over her shoulder as she obediently stepped outside and walked toward the chariot.
“Do not come any closer,” Emily called in alarm when the woman was still eight feet away. “You may thank me from there.”
Rachel shrank back into the seat in embarrassment.
The woman obediently stopped and curtsied to the chariot. “Thank you, Miss Hextable,” she said in a toneless voice. “You are most generous.”
Emily nodded her dismissal. The woman, clearly frantic to get back to her crying children, turned and ran into the cottage.
The footman returned to his seat, and the chariot drove on.
They had gone some distance when Rachel saw a small, thin boy in coarse homespun and bare feet picking bilberries near the side of the road.
Emily saw him, too, and cried, “That dreadful child is stealing your berries!”
She called to her coachman to stop at once. As the equipage rolled to a halt, she exclaimed, “It is one of that Godless Bill Taggart’s brats. Their father has no respect for anything, so what can you expect of his children?”
The boy was on Rachel’s side of the chariot. Emily leaned across her and thrust her face through the open window. “Why are you picking those berries, Billy Taggart?”
The boy turned to face her. He looked to be no more than six years old. “‘Em’s for me sister. Maggie’s sick and craves ‘em somethin’ fierce.”
“You cannot have them,” Emily said sternly. “They do not belong to you. You are stealing.”
A defiant look gripped his thin little face. “They’ll only go to waste.”
“Yes, they will,” Rachel interjected. “You are welcome to the berries, Billy.”
“You cannot reward him for stealing!” Emily cried in a scandalized tone.
“I said he could have them, so he is not stealing.” Emily flopped back against the seat, muttering darkly, and the chariot moved on.
The great number of calls that Emily had to make totalled exactly three. The final one was to what could only be called a hovel. Once again Emily and Rachel remained in the chariot while Mrs. Quigg, a haggard woman, old before her time, came outside. She was trailed by seven children in garments as tattered as her own. The oldest was about nine. In her arms, she carried a scrawny baby.
“Are these Royal Elms’s tenants?” Rachel asked, much shocked at the sight of the gaunt faces and thin bodies before her. They looked half-starved. Knowing her husband’s concern for his people, she could not conceive that he would have permitted them to fall into such a state.
“Now they are. This is part of Stanmore Acres.”
The children’s eyes fastened hungrily on the tiny basket of food that the footman handed their mother. Rachel was certain that it could not hold enough to provide one decent
meal for a family half the size of this one.
The rehearsed way that Mrs. Quigg and her offspring lined up and curtsied to Emily told Rachel that this was a frequent ritual for them,
Their voices uttered praise for Miss Hextable’s generosity, but their eyes bespoke animosity rather than gratitude. And Rachel could not blame them. To be required to go through that for the little dab of food in the basket was outrageous.
Morgan’s words echoed in Rachel’s memory: Emily is very careful to conceal her real nature from Jerome, and he has never seen her as she really is.
After Emily returned her to Royal Elms, Rachel immediately sent word to Ferris that she wished to go riding. Then she went upstairs to change into her nondescript brown habit and collect her leather case of herbal remedies.
It was already midafternoon, and Rachel would have time for only one visit today. The children suffering from the ague were most in need of her attention.
“Where are you going?” Jerome asked the following day when he saw Rachel in her old brown riding habit. She was carrying her leather case.
“To call on a sick tenant.”
“With Emily?” he asked. Emily’s concern for others had been her principal, indeed her only attraction for Jerome. He had wanted a duchess who would give generously of herself to help his people. And he was beginning to hope that he had found her in Rachel.
“I prefer to make my own calls,” she said.
Jerome did not want that. He had known that Rachel would be safe the previous day with Emily because she was always accompanied by a coachman and two footmen. The more people around Rachel the less likely a possible killer would make another attempt on her life. “I prefer that you go with Emily.” His fear for his wife made his voice sharper than he intended.
For a moment, Rachel’s face was shadowed by some pain he did not understand, then she said quietly, “By calling separately, Emily and I can benefit twice as many people.”
Jerome could not argue with the logic of that, but still he worried about his wife’s safety and that made him frown disapprovingly.
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