The Duchess's Secret

by Elizabeth Beacon

  ‘If I had said it more in the past, we would not be glaring at one another across my humble kitchen now, Your Grace.’

  ‘Would you have waited until you were of age to marry me, then?’ he shocked her by asking as if he truly wanted to know.

  ‘Yes, maybe it would have been better if I had. You might have lost interest in me altogether,’ she said and saw him veil something like hurt pride as he stared at her as if he was still reluctantly fascinated. ‘Or we could have got to know one another better and might have weathered the storm my old folly unleashed when I finally found the courage to tell you about it,’ she added.

  ‘I doubt your stepfather would have let you sit on the shelf for three years while we tested out our faithfulness.’

  ‘True, but at least mine lasted better than yours.’

  A hot flush of colour across his high cheekbones was all the answer she needed. Of course he would have kept a string of mistresses while he was away. Most noblemen had affairs with courtesans while playing the dutiful husband and father even when they were at home, so why would Ash resist them when he was so far from a wife he despised? Now he thought she would take him to her bed after one hot kiss and a click of his ducal fingers? She had never wanted to be one of a crowd and there was far more to marriage than passionate kisses, as she was in a very good position to know.

  ‘And you were never tempted?’ he asked as if her lack of interest was an insult. There really was no pleasing some husbands, was there?

  ‘I am human, but I have a child. Ask Joan if you don’t believe me, but I have no room in my life for a man.’

  ‘She would lie for you,’ he said, a bite of jealousy in his grey eyes she was fiercely glad to see. A lot more was roaring through her at the thought of all the lovers he must have had in eight years.

  ‘She would not lower herself and she knows I would rather scrub floors than be at the mercy of a capricious lover again.’

  ‘There will be plenty of floors in need of a good clean at Edenhope,’ he said with an unforgivable, wolfish smile.

  ‘And you are capricious beyond belief,’ she told him crossly, trying not to smile as a picture of herself in a duchess’s coronet and robes down on her knees scrubbing floors to keep her desire for him at bay flitted through her mind like a traitor. Her mind was a very busy street nowadays, thanks to the ridiculous emotions he was arousing in her and very uncomfortable it was, too.

  ‘I was once. Now I am an industrious and steady sort of fellow and I dare say I will make a fine duke once I put my mind to it. Which is something I shall not be able to do properly if you are busy rearranging my dukedom but refusing to sleep in my bed.’

  ‘We would need to get used to one another again first, if Jenny is not too shocked to find out you are her father, for us to travel and live together straight away.’

  ‘And if there isn’t an r in the month or snow on the ground or birds in the air?’ he said as if she was the awkward one and he hadn’t stormed off, then pretended he didn’t even have a wife all this time.

  She shrugged. ‘Do you want me to endure life as your Duchess or not?’ she asked haughtily.

  ‘I do,’ he said, suddenly very serious and what a difference having a daughter made to a duke, her inner cynic whispered.

  ‘Do you intend to be faithful to me from now on?’ she asked to get the contract clear before she agreed to it on even a trial basis.

  ‘If you take me to your bed before I expire of frustration,’ he qualified as if it would be a struggle to keep his hands off her and she didn’t believe that for a moment. He had lived without her very easily for years and would have done so for the rest of his life if he had not chanced on Jenny up to her usual mischief at the village inn. It was probably just a warning not to expect a white marriage, as if she was that stupid when he so obviously needed an heir. Was she supposed to be grateful he was prepared to wrap that need up in a fantasy he wanted her so urgently then, when he had managed very well without her for so long?

  ‘Should I take that as a no, then?’ she asked coolly.

  ‘If I had you in my bed, why would I want anyone else?’ he said with a hot and hungry look that said she was still physically beautiful and she still wasn’t sure if that was a curse or a blessing.

  ‘I don’t have the skills of a courtesan or the charm of a mistress and I have lived my own life for years. I am not a pretty plaything to pick up in idle moments and put down when you need a little variety.’

  ‘I would not toy with you, Ros,’ he told her so seriously she might have to believe him if she wasn’t careful. ‘One day, if I am a very good duke, and you are my Duchess again in more than name only, maybe we can build on our mutual need and make something better than we had last time. Our kisses proved we still want one another urgently and we won’t have stepfathers and grandfathers trying to frustrate us at every turn this time.’

  ‘They had very little to do with what went wrong between us last time. I would like to believe we could have something better than a marriage of convenience in time as well, but we have been apart for years, Ash. We are very different people and can hardly have known each other even when we eloped, since we parted so soon afterwards.’

  ‘At least we can never make the same mistakes again.’

  ‘Just different ones,’ she said cynically.

  Perhaps it was as well Joan came in then, with a great show of stamping snow off her boots and shuffling about in the little hallway to warn them she was home. ‘You haven’t broken my kitchen china, then?’ she said with a look around to see if shards of it were lying in a dark corner.

  ‘Not yet,’ Rosalind replied.

  ‘Better if we had perhaps,’ Ash said satirically. Rosalind blushed at the scene of unrestrained passion he was obviously playing out in his head.

  ‘For you maybe, young man, but we have to live here until the snow melts and I don’t enjoy eating straight out of the pot,’ Joan told him with one of her best disapproving looks. ‘Speaking of eating, it’s time I was busy cooking and more than time you two got out of my kitchen.’

  ‘We could all eat at the Duck and Feathers,’ Ash offered.

  ‘You go, we are quite used to eating stew or a pie, but you must be used to the captain’s table.’ Rosalind hoped the thought of humble fare would make him leave them in peace tonight. They were hardly going to steal off into the snowy darkness without Jenny and she needed time to think.

  ‘And very tedious it was after a few weeks at sea,’ he replied a bit too seriously for her taste. ‘And we still have a great deal to discuss.’

  ‘I disagree,’ she said, all they had already talked about rattling about in her head.

  ‘Go and argue in the parlour, then, and light the fire while you’re about it,’ Joan said impatiently, then lit them a tallow candle and shooed them out of her domain.

  ‘I thought she was a lady’s maid,’ Ash muttered as he shivered in the chill on the other side of the kitchen door.

  ‘She was my mother’s maid and then mine, as I am sure you know.’

  ‘Aye, but she was never quite convinced I was good enough for you even before we left her behind when we eloped.’

  ‘She was right then, wasn’t she?’

  ‘Yes, but I thought we were beyond sniping at one another like this.’

  ‘We are,’ Rosalind agreed with a sigh. ‘We have to be,’ she added and reached for a spill from the jar on the mantelpiece.

  ‘I should do that,’ he said as he reached it far more easily and held out the spill in front of him as if wondering what to do with it.

  ‘You lit a lot of fires while you were in India, then, did you?’

  ‘Not exactly,’ he replied and she twitched the thin sliver of wood from his loose grip and held it to the candle flame.

  ‘Best leave it to those of us who have, then,’ she said and it would have
been a fine put-down if only giving him such a wide berth did not make the lit spill flicker and die.

  ‘You were saying?’ he mocked, stretching out a hand for another.

  ‘I would do a lot better if you would only get out of my way.’

  ‘As you have been telling me since I got here.’

  ‘Quite right, too,’ she muttered as she snatched the next spill from him and this time picked up the candle so she could take it with her to the fire.

  ‘Clever,’ he observed as the spill caught and she held it to the wood shavings and kindling with an almost steady hand.

  ‘Necessary. I thought you were cold.’

  ‘I am; I haven’t been properly warm since we passed Africa and hit the Bay of Biscay.’

  ‘It must have been rough at this time of the year,’ she said, carefully keeping her back to him as she blew gently on the beginnings of the fire and watched the fragile flame.

  ‘It was,’ he said grimly and she wondered how rough it really was.

  ‘You should have waited for spring.’

  ‘Apparently it can be even worse then and time was a-wasting. My cousin Charles was always writing to me about the parlous state of his houses and estates. Grandfather was ill for a long time before he died and then there was Charlie’s minority. He had no power to do very much about any of it until he was five and twenty and fully of age as far as the Hartfield trusts are concerned, but he never got that far. He was still a year away from taking control of his inheritance when he died.’

  Ash’s deep voice sounded full of regret for the lively young cousin Rosalind only vaguely remembered. The endearing young man she had once met in Ash and his elder brother Jasper’s company in the Park could only have been a year or so younger than she, but he had seemed such a boy. She sighed and hoped he managed to have some fun before he died.

  She sat back on her heels and pretended to give all her attention to the flourishing fire. Ash carried a heavy load of sorrow for a man not yet out of his twenties though, didn’t he? Perhaps it was no wonder he let distrust of his mother and grief for his little sister eat away at his trust of any woman who did not fit his ideal of angelic purity. She had only wanted to love him when she was eighteen and he was one and twenty, but his love had been so easily lost. His mother did sound incapable of loving anyone but herself and Rosalind supposed a boy who grew up with such a large blank in his life had some excuse for reacting to her belated confession as if he had been stung by a serpent. How hard it was to be fair when she was the girl he had called a liar then refused to listen to all the way back to London. The past still stung—how could it not when she had loved him so much and he obviously only saw her as a pretty possession? He would never have left her so easily if he truly loved her. The fact remained she loved their daughter and would do almost anything to see Jenny grow up happy and secure, so she never made the sort of mistakes her mother did when she was so desperate to be loved she could not tell lust from the real thing.

  ‘Your cousin must have been fidgeting to be fully of age and get on with things,’ she said carefully as she leaned forward to take a log from the basket and add it to the fire.

  ‘Even I can stoke a fire once it has been safely lit,’ he said impatiently and took it off her and placed it, as if he thought she might break if she didn’t take care.

  ‘I am not a weak little ninny used to having everything done for me, Ash. I shall go mad if I do come with you to Edenhope and you insist on treating me like one.’

  ‘No need to snap at me for trying to act the gentleman for once,’ he said mildly. ‘I suppose you don’t want to know you have soot on your hands and now on your face as well, considering you are such a rough-handed woman-of-all-work nowadays.’

  ‘I do not have rough hands,’ she protested, and sped out of the room to find soap and water and a square of mirror to at least get rid of the soot, even if her hands might take a little more work with one of Joan’s softening lotions and a stern resolution to wear gloves to protect them whenever she was digging the garden or sowing and planting from now on.

  Hold up, though, Rosalind; there can be no more of any of that for the Duchess of Cherwell.

  She supposed she ought to be glad, so it was a pity she felt as if she would even miss the exertion, and satisfaction, of digging her vegetable beds and all the planning of what should go where this year. She would miss her home as well and would have to turn the vast, empty Edenhope Place into a home somehow, if she went there with her husband. It seemed almost impossible when she realised her whole house would probably fit once or twice into the entrance hall of Ash’s famously grand mansion.

  Chapter Six

  Ash fastidiously wiped his own hands on a snowy handkerchief, put it back in his pocket and wished he was warm again. It would be rude to go and fetch his greatcoat to wear inside the house, but he would rather not die of an inflammation of the lungs now he knew he had a daughter. Shock at the complete turnaround his life had undergone since he rode towards Livesey, met Rosalind on the heath, then looked up into that hayloft and met his daughter, shook him all over again as he huddled close to the fire. He had never known how much he longed for a daughter of his own until he saw one staring back at him fully formed. She was so very real his Jenny, so much herself, even if she was also the living image of his little sister Amanda. Jenny Meadows, he reminded himself with a smile—it had a nice ring to it, even if it wasn’t quite his family name to make it clear she was his. He had to give Rosalind her due, though; it was a version of it. ‘Trust my clever wife to turn her fields and meadows around and leave off the heart bit,’ he murmured.

  If not for the snow, he would get them all on the road as soon as he could hire a coach and organise their journey. Charlie’s worries about his lands and property had weighed on his mind all the way from Calcutta and the long voyage meant even more damage would have been done by the time he got home to start putting it right. It felt like a sacred trust now Charlie would never have full control of his own estates and fortune. His daughter was an even greater responsibility than any Ash had ever dreamed awaited him in England, though, and she must come first. Charlie would understand if he was still alive. Having been brought up by his grandfather after Ash’s Uncle Edward, Marquess of Asham, died, his cousin valued the relatives he had left so dearly he even managed to love their prickly and eccentric Great-Aunt Brilliana and that took a lot more tolerance and dedication than Ash had had when he was a boy. Charlie used to follow Ash and Jasper about like an eager puppy and always swore he would have an enormous family of Hartfields as soon as he came across the right Duchess to have them with. ‘Some achieve duchesses, some have duchesses thrust upon them,’ he misquoted under his breath and decided he had to stop it before his wife came back and heard him.

  Was she such an imposition, though? His cautious mind whispered, maybe, but his body had no doubts at all how it felt about the former Miss Feldon. It longed for her with a feral passion it never seemed to have quite got over after that one night of unmatched pleasure in Rosalind’s arms. Even the thought of her naked and eager and as heartbreakingly lovely as she had been that night when she gave everything she was to her silly young husband was enough to make him very glad she wasn’t in the room—given the embargo she had put on lovemaking. So, no, she was not an imposition at all. But this was a very different future to the one he had planned when he had come to find out if this was really Rosalind and make it very clear to her that their marriage was over. He had been prepared to be generous with her, he recalled guiltily. As long as she really had agreed to be divorced as quietly as the ridiculous fuss only a rich man could stir up to end a marriage allowed. Instead he was looking at a very different future now he knew they had a child and did he truly regret it? He didn’t think he would miss his milk-and-water second Duchess. He contrasted his sensual longing at first sight of his estranged wife up on the wintry heath and felt guilty about the girl
he had promised himself he would keep in a duchess-shaped box while she got on with providing him with heirs. He would have made sure it was a comfortable space, with all the luxuries a girl could dream of at her feet and her noble husband’s respect to make it tolerable, but he never had any intention of loving her or even wanting her more urgently than it took him to make those sons with her. The poor girl would have had a cold life, perhaps loving her children, but denied the true relationship he had grown up promising himself with his one-day wife. His marriage was not going to be like his parents’—a thing of convenience and dynastic duty that barely even held together after his own birth and what his mother saw as the end of her obligation to provide spare heirs for her husband’s father. He wasn’t going to be caught in that trap—with Charlie and Jas between him and the dukedom Ash would find a woman he could love and enjoy and live with as a man should truly live with his wife. Look where that notion got him and Rosalind.

  So here he was, back to the real here and now; waiting to persuade his wife a cool, cynical marriage where they both got what they wanted was better than the alternative of divorce and her living without their child. Not much of a choice, though, was it? He sighed and wondered what that hot-tempered young man would make of his older self. Not a lot, he realised; but just look at the damage the young Ash had done with his dream of true love. The boy had made the mess his older and wiser self was trying to clear up with this offer of exactly the sort of marriage he once despised.

  The reason they had eloped was to stop Ros being nagged into a marriage of convenience with a middle-aged lord by her stepfather while Ash was far away. He thought of coming back to England after leaving it as her desperate and disappointed former suitor instead of her estranged husband and felt his hands clench again. Would he have experienced the same hot mist of desire at first sight of her again after so many years apart? What a disaster to want Lord Somebody Or Other’s convenient wife so hotly and deeply. Or perhaps she would have settled for being her husband’s lovely and adored wife and been happy enough without him? Appalling thought, he decided, and forced his imagination away from futures that would never happen to work on the one he had. He only wanted a convenient wife in a different form, he told himself uneasily, as he recalled that haze of hot need on first seeing his wife after so long away from her unique allure that it punched him in the gut.