The Duchess's Secret

by Elizabeth Beacon

  ‘You don’t deserve any dressed like that, Your Grace.’

  ‘I am Mrs Meadows, plain and simple.’

  ‘Nothing plain or simple about you, my girl. Easier if there was.’

  ‘And you could not keep up, even if I was willing to wait while you put on your boots and fuss for half an hour about fires and pots.’

  ‘At least I know my duty and you are a lady born, like it or not.’

  ‘I don’t—a lady is not supposed to have opinions or lift anything heavier than a teapot or embroidery frame. I would rather be a quiz than endure such idleness ever again.’

  ‘You are still young and beautiful, despite all those dull clothes and that daft cap you think makes you look invisible. A girl like you should not be flitting about the countryside alone just because you need to think about them as don’t deserve it,’ Joan said with a significant glance at Rosalind’s left hand.

  Rosalind had kept Ash’s ring to give her story weight when she came here with his baby growing in her belly. ‘I cannot help but think about him now,’ she snapped disgustedly, then strode up the grassy lane so fast that her russet countrywoman’s cloak swung out behind her like a banner.

  She had to stop and draw breath as soon as she was out of sight of the cottage and now she had a stitch and must stand still until it went.

  Look where intemperate feelings get you and learn your lesson, Rose Meadows, her inner schoolmistress nagged.

  It was only fury that made Ash seem close enough to feel her rage today. Only a man could make a divorce and even then he had to be an aristocrat. Ash had always been one of those to his very fingertips and she dreaded to think how arrogant he must be now. Eight years ago he had turned his back on her as if she were dross and then left the country to avoid her. She would not let him fill her life now as she had for so long after he left her. There, that was him recalled, dismissed and done with. Now she could turn her thoughts to gallant winter sunshine and a clear blue sky.

  The wind had dropped after weeks of storm and tempest and she was tired of feeling hollow inside when Ash must have forgotten he even had a wife until the dukedom landed in his lap. There now, drat the man, but she was thinking about him again. It would not do; she had time to walk to the old stone circle at the highest point on the heath and be home again before dark and she must watch her step. If her thoughts wandered to him on that rough path she might blunder into a foul-smelling bog or tangle herself in a sneaky thicket of brambles. So this was exactly the sort of vigorous exercise she needed until she reached the brow of the hill and could stand in awe of the wide view across the heath and out to the distant sea before she strolled on and reached the stone circle.

  * * *

  When Ros reached her objective without letting her mind wander or think of the unthinkable more than once or twice, she rested against one of the lichen-covered stones in the January sun to get her breath back. The heath had a strange, secretive beauty at this time of year and she wished she could paint it and take a reminder home for times when the walls of her cottage seemed to close in. Even the pale ribbon of sea on the horizon looked serene as a millpond after weeks of storm and turmoil and only the faintest of breezes stirred the wisps of her hair escaping from its knot to tickle her flushed cheeks.

  ‘Would I was so calm,’ she murmured and searched the pocket no lady of fashion would dream of allowing to spoil the smooth lines of her gown. Luckily fashion was a stranger to her nowadays so she did not have to worry about such things. Here was the gold half-hunter watch she had bought for Ash as an engagement present and he later thrust back at her as if he wanted no reminders of what they had been to one another before they wed. She calculated how long it would take to walk downhill by the bridleway down to Livesey Village as her fingers ran absently over finely chased metal warm from her body. So many times she had decided to sell it, then put it back in her pocket or hung it by her bed again. Now the familiar details pulled her traitor memory back and she was eighteen again, rounding the corner of a secluded walk in Green Park with her heart hammering with eager anticipation.

  Yes, there he was; impatiently waiting for her as he had promised last night when he daringly climbed up to her bedroom window at Lackbourne House to kiss her goodnight and beg her to meet him here in the morning. Here was her love, her Asher Hartfield, handsome, carelessly elegant and infinitely dear. And, wonder of wonders, he must love her back or he would never risk her stepfather’s wrath and a crashing fall just to wish her goodnight. She had been quite right to ignore all the warnings that he was too young to settle down with one woman and as wild and untameable as a feral moorland pony. One look into his warm grey eyes and she knew here was her one and only and what else was there to know?

  ‘You are precisely ten and a half minutes late, my darling,’ he had told her that morning, closing the watch she had given him as a secret betrothal gift and putting it away so she could run into his arms. Then he was close enough for her to feel his warm chuckle against her skin.

  ‘I missed you so much I—’ she said, but he stopped her mouth with hot sweet kisses until they both forgot about words for a while.

  The sharp cawing of rooks nearby brought Rosalind back to now with a thump. Oh, for goodness sake! Here she was, lolling against the ancient stone with a foolish smile on her face. Cross with herself for reliving that silly, broken dream, she stood upright hastily and hoped nobody had seen her. No, the heath was as empty as usual at this time of year. Even the almost-wild heath ponies kept to lower ground and sheep were safe in winter pastures. She heaved a sigh of relief. Rosalind Feldon, one-time society beauty, was still safely hidden under Mrs Meadows’s stern disguise. Cold nipped at her fingers now so she pulled on knitted gloves, wrapped her shabby cloak closer to her chilled body and waited to feel warmer, but the cold seemed to have crept into her bones.

  Hunger, she told herself practically and ate the small pie she had put in that useful pocket as she left the house. It was time she set off for home if all she could do up here was brood on the past. She soon found the bridle path that would take her back by an easier route and settled to a steady pace. She wondered why those rooks were still complaining like harsh-voiced old women discussing a scandal, but a clump of stunted pines hid the track from Dorchester so she could not see what the fuss was about. At last she heard a horse on the old pack road and wished she had worn the stark white cap after all. And why the devil had she been crying over the bittersweet memory of how much she and Ash once thought they were going to love each other for the rest of their lives?

  She pulled her hood up to hide her face and hoped the rider would pass by with a brief Good day. The horse’s hooves were so close now she could actually feel the vibration of its coming through the lightly grassed-over chalk under her feet. The animal snorted as it came alongside and tried to jib at something about her it decided not to like. It was swiftly controlled and she risked a hurried sideways glance. A fine grey gelding—good, his wealthy owner would have no time for shabby countrywomen. She got ready to bob a curtsy and walk stoically on, as if she was only intent on getting home before the early dark of a winter afternoon cut her off up here with only ghosts and creatures of the night for company.

  ‘Is this the way to Livesey Village?’ Ash asked and Rosalind felt the earth shift under her feet as his deep voice echoed around in her reeling head and she looked up at him like a simpleton.

  Had her silly dreams conjured him up then?

  Idiot! she accused herself as she stood staring at him as if turned to stone. You could have said no and hidden your face.

  Then she would be free to run home on paths a stranger could not know about and escape before he got there.

  Aye, and pigs will grow wings and fly, a mocking inner voice argued.

  She numbly added up the time it would take her to whisk Jenny into hiding and let Joan know she had been forced to run away without even a toothbrush
.

  ‘Ah, I see it is. Well met, Wife,’ said the Sixth Duke of Cherwell, with a harsh parody of his old smile that made her heart ache.

  She had to peer up at him through the black spots dancing in front of her eyes and she could hardly hear his mocking words past the thunder of her frantically pounding heart. Maybe she was still leaning on the ancient stone inside its eerie circle, dreaming impossible things. Yes, that was it; she had fallen under a malevolent spell. Local legend promised terror to anyone silly enough to dally there and her Ash had been lean and self-conscious about his height, whereas this man sat his horse like a Roman emperor posing for a triumphal statue. She had taken great pains to hide her tracks when they came here as well and had never contacted anyone from her former life, except the Hartfield family solicitor by the most devious route she could think of, so nobody could have betrayed her to him, therefore he could not really be here.

  ‘Go back to hell,’ she ordered the spectre and crossed her fingers under her cloak to ward off evil.

  ‘Only if you come with me,’ it said coolly. ‘Cat got your tongue?’ he added in a darker version of the voice she remembered so well her hopes he was an illusion were beginning to waver.

  ‘I have nothing to say to you.’

  ‘Not even “Where have you been all these years?”’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Yet I am very curious about you, Mrs Meadows. My lawyer tells me you live alone except for a maid and teach music and dancing to aspiring young ladies. Is your latest lover a wanderer, too, then? Does he have a different lovebird in every parish as a reason for not keeping you in style?’

  ‘You never knew me at all,’ she said distantly, silently blessing her close-mouthed neighbours for not being at all helpful to any official-looking strangers asking questions along a coast where smuggling was rife.

  ‘I know everything there is to know.’

  Ha! her inner rebel argued. ‘You know nothing,’ she said out loud.

  ‘I know enough,’ he said icily. ‘And as I need a duchess rather badly now you are damnably in the way.’

  ‘Have you come to kill me and bury my body up here where nobody will ever find it?’ her inner idiot challenged, but somehow she still trusted him not to physically hurt her. Disconcerting, she decided, as she met his eyes without a single shudder for her safety. He was shaking her world to its core yet again and she could not bring herself to hate him wholeheartedly even now. Still, if she irritated him enough, maybe he would ride away and never get any closer to Livesey and find out she had borne him a child.

  ‘And wait another seven years before I can have you declared dead?’ he said with a cynical smile. ‘Even I am not that stupid.’

  ‘Do you have your next Duchess picked out and waiting, then?’ she asked just as cynically back, in order to mask the fact it had hurt her that he seemed to think disposing of her merely stupid, instead of unthinkable after what they had been to one another, once upon a time.

  ‘No, but I should be able to find a gentle and biddable young lady with no illusions about love and a practical mind easily enough once I am free to wed her, what with me being a duke and under the age of thirty.’

  Arrogant of him to think it would be that easy even if he was right. He was also formidably handsome and obviously rich and should have no trouble finding a suitable candidate among the debutantes, even if they were secretly terrified of such an awe-inspiring aristocrat. He meant his next wife to be her very opposite. Good again—a romantic fool like Rosalind Feldon would have her heart broken and no man should be able to do that to two wives in a lifetime.

  ‘I wish you joy of one another,’ she said coolly, thinking it sounded as empty and joyless a union as he deserved. When she considered how deeply they had meant to love one another the day they married over the anvil, his new version of marriage sounded as frozen as an Arctic waste. She shivered at the thought of all the dash and promise he had at one and twenty turning into this cold man with a cold heart, aiming for an even colder marriage. What a relief he meant to divorce her if that was what he wanted from a wife. He might look like Ash, but this man was very different under the skin. There were still glimpses of young Ash in his smoky gaze and tawny hair and she eyed him sideways and longed for things she didn’t understand. She recognised the Ash of eight years ago under the hard shell and she wanted him, not this hard cold man he had become. That was the only reason for this thrill of attraction still so annoyingly alive under her armour against him.

  Chapter Two

  Ash would have been relieved to know Rosalind thought he was hard and emotionless. All it took was one look at her white, closed face and she had divided him in two again. One half was doing and saying cool and rational things while the other slid about on thin ice like the boy he was when they first met. And she was so lovely now she took his breath away. He felt his inner boy grieve for the light-hearted girl she had once been, but a beautiful face could never make up for a fickle heart and shallow nature. Yet there was something about her now that even made cynical, grown-up Ash wonder how best to describe her. She was pared down—that was as close as he could get.

  Her old sidelong looks of girlish uncertainty and a puppy-like need for approval were gone. She was the woman she had not yet found room to be when he fell in love with her and he wanted her so urgently it hurt. He refused to brood over the lovers she had no doubt enjoyed, told himself he didn’t care who had enjoyed her richer curves and the privilege of exploring the sweeter, tighter hollows of her silky skin with the slavish attention of a lover. Except he did; he envied them like the devil. Temper at the thought of another man exploring her secrets would hand her victory in this battle of wills and that would never do. He had come here to do business with his wife, it was just a shame he could not remember what it was right now.

  Remember, Ash, he cautioned himself and tried to see the little changes that would make him feel repelled by her shop-soiled charm.

  There was a faint trail of freckles across her high cheekbones and she had the slightly gilded skin of a woman careless about wearing a hat on unladylike tramps around the countryside, but that was all.

  You would have thought time would write ‘liar’ across her purely beautiful face, wouldn’t you?

  No sign of it that he could see. Well, his mother could act the innocent so beautifully a saint might be taken in and he was no saint. He still eyed the high neck of Rosalind’s disreputable stuff gown and simple cotton collar and caught himself longing to trace the line of sun-exposed skin where it met whiter, even softer, Rosalind with passionate kisses. Devil take the woman; he had come here to make sure he could finally be rid of her, not to fall under her witchy spell again. His body wanted to lead him about by an organ far more wilful and troublesome than his nose and if he wasn’t careful his sex would betray him. He had come for his freedom and didn’t want his heart mangled by his confounded wife again.

  ‘Why are you dressed like a dowd?’ he heard himself ask even so.

  ‘Because I am one?’ she said cautiously, as if she didn’t understand why he was asking either.

  And he had never been able to accuse her of vanity, had he? ‘Not if you wrapped yourself up in chainmail and put on a suit of armour to try and snuff out your sex altogether,’ he scoffed.

  There, young Ash was even speaking for him now. He wanted to kick the immature fool where it hurt and ride away, but since that was impossible he watched her muffle her thoughts with a bland, blue stare and wondered what was going on in her head. Maybe he had put that curb on her passions when he left, but he could not afford a conscience about it now. He needed his new Duchess and his heirs and her sceptical gaze said she would rather have the poor life she lived now than bend the knee to any man and what a humbling thought that was. He eyed her rough clothing and recalled the little life his lawyer reported when he had finally found her after months of false leads and well-hidden track
s.

  It really had been high time he rid himself of the man, despite that clever feat of detection. The lawyer had made little or no effort to find Mrs Asher Hartfield after Ash left for India, so the income from the tiny fortune Ash inherited at one and twenty had not gone to his wife as he had intended but into the fat lawyer’s pockets. At least news his client was the next Duke of Cherwell stirred the man into tracking Rosalind down, despite all those false leads and dead ends she scattered in his path. Ash had never meant his wife to earn her own bread and eke out a spartan existence in a cottage. When he was an angry boy he had not wanted to use the law firm his family had always employed though, because he hadn’t wanted his grandfather to find out he had eloped with Ros, then run away. That would have been the final nail in the coffin of any love they had had as grandson and grandfather and he could not have endured the old man thinking so badly of him when he was on the other side of the world. Coward, he accused that boy now. He should have known better than to have trusted an obscure lawyer he had found more or less at random with all the money he had had at the time. Given the wild races he used to ride over any terrain Ash knew he was a challenge for his grandfather to love. Little wonder Grandfather had sent him abroad with a flea in his ear and said he might as well risk death doing something useful instead of wasting his life on aimless adventures. Just one day of marriage before he had given up on Mr and Mrs Hartfield would have added contempt to Grandfather’s despair at his least important grandson’s wildness. Ash was far too cowardly to admit to the old man that he had married and deserted the Earl of Lackbourne’s stepdaughter because she had told him a lie and he thought she might grow like his mother. The thought of his grandfather’s contempt made him feel uneasy even now the man had been dead five years, but he had been right to go, hadn’t he? Once a liar, always a liar. Rosalind could never have loved him if she thought it was all right to marry him without telling the truth about her lover first.