The Duchess's Secret

by Elizabeth Beacon

No, especially not with that lover constantly under her nose, but flitting about like a will-o’-the-wisp and frustratingly never settling long enough to be told he would be welcome in his Duchess’s bed, now she could let herself recall what a fine lover he was again. Her fear he would take her daughter from her had abated and even the lingering fury left over from the past seemed like a useless sort of armour to fight this wretched attraction in now they were on the way to a new life.

  Every night along the way she had secretly longed for Ash to inform them he would be sharing the largest bedroom with her. And every night Jenny took up most of that big bed by sprawling across it at her mother’s side and Ash slept in the little room that the courier he sent ahead of them must have booked for their daughter. Rosalind could not get the image of herself and Ash making sweet, driven love together out of her head even when she did manage to snatch sleep at her restless daughter’s side in dream-haunted packages. She was a fool, she informed herself, as the mud-splattered coach and its latest team of weary horses finally pulled up in front of Cherwell House and she had forgotten how grand London town houses could be as she stared up at such baroque splendour it didn’t look like a home at all.

  ‘Is that all one house?’ Jenny asked as if she wasn’t sure whether to be awed or overwhelmed.

  ‘Yes,’ Ash said as he handed her down as if she was a princess.

  ‘Is it your house?’ she asked with a second look at her mud-splattered and windblown father as if it hardly seemed possible he could own so much.

  ‘It is ours now,’ he admitted and Rosalind was glad now they had told Jenny who he really was, before they got here and it came as a terrible shock to her.

  ‘And you really are a duke?’

  ‘Yes, although I don’t suppose I look much like one right now.’

  ‘And I am really Lady Imogen because I am your daughter?’

  Rosalind met Ash’s rueful look over their daughter’s head and he smiled—it reminded her sharply of their old warmth and complicity as young lovers for a brief moment—before he nodded and shrugged back to being a travel-worn duke as servants began spilling out of the grand front door to welcome him home again.

  ‘Ah, Snigsby, good to see you,’ he said to a butler who looked far more stately than his employer at the moment.

  ‘Thank you, Your Grace.’

  ‘My dear, Snigsby here has known me since I was a scrubby brat and is sure to be delighted my Duchess is finally willing to take up residence here when she is in London, now I am home again at long last.’

  ‘Indeed, Your Grace,’ the man intoned solemnly and Rosalind was very glad that courier had been sent ahead to warn his household the new Duke of Cherwell was on his way with a wife and daughter nobody had any idea he had until now. The man still looked so shocked he forgot himself long enough to raise his eyebrows as he finally took a proper look at the daughter part of his employer’s surprise. Jenny’s likeness to Ash’s little sister must be startling to account for a London butler losing his serenity even for a moment.

  ‘I am Lady Imogen Hartfield,’ Jenny informed him regally and Rosalind wasn’t sure if she was proud of her or worried this was all going to her head.

  ‘So I see, my lady,’ the butler said, perfect composure restored.

  ‘And I am very hungry.’

  ‘That is hardly to be wondered at after such a long journey, my lady,’ the man said and Rosalind was sure she saw his lips twitch as if he was hiding a grin and warmed to the man, although he would probably be far less human with a secretive duchess than he was with a duke’s secret child.

  ‘And I need a bath,’ Ash announced to chivvy them all inside before a crowd gathered to gawp.

  ‘We all do,’ Joan muttered as she followed them up the steps as if she was used to making such a grand entrance and of course she was, although this time her mistress was a duchess instead of a countess, so perhaps it ought to be an even grander entrance than it had been in the old days. Rosalind felt as if she was letting the whole household and her family down by being so countrified and plain and not looking as a duchess should.

  ‘Welcome home, Your Grace,’ Snigsby said solemnly once they were inside the grand marble entrance hall with the doors closed against a sneaky east wind.

  Rosalind glanced round to see where Ash was, then felt him gently push her forward so she finally realised the butler was talking to her. If she went around forgetting who she was in her husband’s own house, what would she be like when she reluctantly joined the ton again at his side? She thanked the man for his welcome and was very glad when Ash cut short any attempt to introduce her to the rest of the household.

  ‘Later,’ he said with an expressive gesture at his own travel-stained person and a nod in the direction of the stairs. ‘Direct my wife’s dresser to her room and have the luggage brought in, there’s a good butler,’ he ordered genially and offered Rosalind his arm up the stairs.

  Jenny suddenly looked forlorn and grabbed Joan’s skirts as if she was afraid of losing her in such a vast space. She would be safe with Joan and Rosalind must not turn into an over-protective mother because she would like to cling to the familiar as well.

  ‘Heavens above,’ she gasped when Ash led her into a vast baroque bedchamber with so many gilded cherubs and cupids and bows and swags around the state bed she would feel as if she was never alone in here for a moment.

  ‘Monstrous isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said with a huge sigh of relief because he didn’t like it either.

  ‘If you think this is bad, you must see mine,’ he added and opened a connecting door on crimson-brocade-lined walls and enough heavy scarlet-velvet draperies on the gilded bed to give anyone nightmares.

  ‘Even worse,’ she exclaimed, then shot back to her own echoing room when a door to what must be his dressing room opened and a thin man who looked like a valet ghosted through it with a snowy white towel over his arm. ‘I shall leave you to your ablutions, Husband,’ she said hastily and shut the door.

  She would have to get used to the intimacy and strangeness of having a husband again, although their marriage over the anvil had been so brief she had never had much practice at it and now he was a duke as well. She wandered around the over-decorated fantasy room the Duchess of Cherwell was supposed to sleep in and felt even less at home when she caught sight of her own reflection in a myriad of mirrors. She didn’t look or feel much like a duchess. Perhaps she resembled a country wife who had been dragged through a hedge backwards, but definitely not a grand lady. Luckily a housemaid soon arrived with a hasty knock to say her bath was ready in the dressing room, so Rosalind was soon a clean country wife again and that was a relief.

  Chapter Nine

  Jenny had been given one of the smaller guest suite with Joan. Rosalind blessed whoever decided her daughter did not need to endure an echoing nursery at the top of this vast old house that probably had not been used in decades.

  ‘That’s better,’ Ash said as he strolled in with an approving look around to say he had ordered it.

  ‘Almost cosy,’ Rosalind confirmed absently.

  He was wearing immaculate white linen, a well-tailored coat and a pair of cream trousers that emphasised his long and muscular legs. It was not formal evening wear and she should bless him for being considerate when he knew she had nothing fashionable to wear, except she felt ridiculously shy and at a disadvantage. He really was handsome though, wasn’t he? With dark gold hair lightened by the sun and an unfashionable suntan highlighting his direct grey gaze, he was a mature and powerful man.

  ‘Mama and I are going to eat our dinner in the Small Dining Room. We would have preferred to share your supper, of course, but it doesn’t look as if there is much of it left,’ he told Jenny as she tried to pretend she was not tired and certainly did not need her bed.

  ‘Come back up and kiss me goodnight,’ she demanded past a mig
hty yawn.

  ‘We had best do that now,’ Rosalind said before he agreed to wake her up because he couldn’t deny his little girl anything now he had found her.

  That done, Ash crooked his elbow as if Rosalind was dressed in Bond Street’s finest. He had treated her with respect all the way here and now they were in his ducal London home Rosalind felt depressed by the time she had sampled bites of all sorts of delicacies his cook must have set out to impress them with. They could be two strangers settling down to while away an hour or two of stately boredom instead of husband and wife. Was this what a polite marriage felt like? Would he make an appointment to bed her once a week once they had finally reached an agreement and embarked on the project of producing his heirs? She didn’t think she could be coolly obliging when he knocked on that communicating door to signal his intentions to trouble her with his masculine attentions that night. Maybe he would take a mistress to satisfy his lustier urges and make sweet love to another woman. He had told her he intended to be faithful, but inside such a boring arranged marriage he would soon be restless and ready for a silken seductress to lure him away from dutiful couplings with a woman he had so easily managed without for many years.

  ‘We could retire to separate rooms for port and tea,’ Ash said when they had both shaken their heads at Snigsby’s offer of yet more food. ‘Or would you prefer to retire for the night and avoid me altogether?’

  ‘Is there anywhere truly small we could retire to in this vast house?’ she said, looking around the huge ‘Small Dining Room’ and feeling she had suddenly shrunk to Lilliput-like proportions. So far she disliked the pompous state of his hereditary town house and wished they were back in her cosy parlour or one of the comfortable coffee rooms in any of the inns where they had spent the night on the way here. She felt like a kitchen maid pretending to be a duchess rather than the real thing and all her insecurities were lining up to tell her she would never make him a creditable duchess, in bed or out of it.

  ‘Not really. Would you like to see the rest of it though, anyway? We might find a room comfortable enough to want to sit in for more than a couple of minutes if we look hard enough.’

  ‘I suppose so, but do we really have to live in such state whenever we are in town, Ash?’

  ‘Not necessarily,’ he said, looking very thoughtful as he waited for her to precede him through double doors heavy with the usual carving and gilding. ‘Charlie and Jas and I always hated the place when we were young and strictly forbidden to sully the public rooms with our grubby presence. The first Duke seems to have had a very high opinion of his own importance and political ambitions. Thank goodness he spent most of his time in London, or Edenhope would be covered in gold leaf and self-importance as well.’

  ‘I am sure it was much admired at the time, but I prefer less splendour and more comfort.’

  ‘And warmth,’ he agreed with a shiver. ‘This place would do very well for a palace, but for ordinary mortals like us it is a burden I could happily do without.’

  ‘Do we need to economise?’

  ‘No, but we already have one daughter to provide for and I never did subscribe to the view an eldest son should inherit everything, so it will be a drain on ours and I don’t think you like it any more than I do.’

  ‘Not so far,’ she admitted, his casual mention of the son they had not done a thing to bring to being yet making her insides flutter and her nerves jump even more. ‘I thought we might make some improvements and perhaps divide up some of these vast rooms and redecorate, but if you would rather begin again that would be much simpler.’

  He seized a branch of candles from a heavily gilded side table so he could show her the not-very-intimate details of the rest of the staterooms.

  ‘Isn’t it entailed, though?’ she asked as they briefly viewed the first few feet of the cavernous State Dining Room and exchanged rueful glances at looming splendour wrapped up in so many covers it looked more like a ghostly lumberyard.

  ‘No, I think my great-great-grandfather thought it so splendid none of his descendants would ever want to sell it,’ he said. He was so careful not to touch her as they continued down the enfilade the awkwardness of their situation only made her feel more out of place and disorientated than ever. She was supposed to be mistress of all this, she told herself hollowly as they moved on to glance at the State Saloon, the Duchess’s Drawing Room, the Duke’s Sitting Room and all the rest until they got to the Library at the least important end of the long sweep of wonders, most of them wrapped up and only used for a few days of the year and probably not even that since the old Duke died.

  ‘I doubt your ancestors were great readers,’ she said as they surveyed yet more gilding and not very many books and the sound of their breathing and an occasional spit and flare from the fine wax candles in one of the draughts that teased past shuttered windows and brocade curtains. This room was a little smaller and less intimidating and Rosalind felt the familiar prickle of awareness making her skin feel hot and yet shivering, oversensitive, so she hid her hands behind her back and clasped them fiercely together to stop herself reaching for him—for comfort if nothing more intimate was on offer, but they were not that sort of man and wife, were they? And she was nothing like the Duchess he had promised himself on his way back to England and told her about that first time on the heath, before he knew about Jenny. He was showing her all this out of duty. Their whole life together, if they ever actually began to have one, would be founded on his duty to his duchy and his child. He was not the wild young lover she eloped with because the thought of spending the rest of her life without him was unthinkable. He was the Duke of Cherwell and a much more sober and mature man than that young man had dreamed of becoming in his wildest nightmares.

  ‘They must have been too busy entertaining,’ he said and she searched her memory for what they had been talking about before she got diverted by silly fantasies, then slammed up against stern reality.

  Books, she recalled as she faced his interrogating look and managed a weak smile of agreement, or something polite and agreeable á la convenient Duchess. Now she was trying to be someone she could never truly be and she shot him a sidelong look in an attempt to read his thoughts. No, they were a complete mystery to her. Either he was as conscious of her every move as she was of his, or Ash did not feel this aching attraction she was struggling to resist. She puzzled over his feelings until he coughed and quirked an eyebrow at her as if he was inviting her to share her thoughts with him. Absolutely not. She shook her head and decided it was intimate and dangerous in here in the half-dark, surrounded by their little circle of candlelight and all but alone in the silence of too much space.

  ‘Are all the other bedchambers as bad as our rooms?’ she asked more or less at random.

  ‘There are one or two smaller ones like Jenny’s, but I think the first Duke wanted everyone who stayed here to be overawed.’

  ‘I really don’t feel the need to impress anyone that much.’

  ‘Nor do I. Shall we do it, then, Ros? I could easily live without this much splendour in my life and I can imagine Charlie cheering us on and Jas as well. And we had best get on with it since it could take decades to find someone who wants to live in this sort of state and Jenny will be making her debut before we can get it off our hands if we’re not careful. We will need to make our family a comfortable home here before all that fuss and flummery begins.’

  Rosalind stared at the spines of the books in front of her as if she could read their gilded titles in the fitful light as his implication they would have a tribe of children by the time Jenny was old enough to make her debut sank in. The idea of bearing his child, with him here to wait and hope with her this time, felt more than a price to pay for staying in Jenny’s life and only made this silly yearning for the physical closeness with him she had missed for so long feel even worse.

  ‘You think it could take so long to be rid of the place, then?’ sh
e asked the nearest shelf of not-very-worn volumes.

  ‘At worst, but we don’t have to stay here very much until then, do we?’

  ‘No, I dare say if it was only for a week or two at a time we could endure it until it can be sold.’

  ‘We are agreed, then?’

  ‘No need to sound so surprised.’ Except she was surprised he had consulted her before he sold it anyway; surprised it felt as if they were both trying to build a real marriage instead of the chilly contract he laid out when he realised Jenny was his and decided he did not want a divorce after all. But she was not surprised when he lit their way up the stairs and along the chilly corridor to the Duke and Duchess’s private suites, then left her outside the gilded double doors to hers with a polite goodnight and not even a ducal peck on the cheek.

  * * *

  Ash stirred in his sleep and suppressed a groan as he came sharply back to his senses and felt far too wide awake, but it was the middle of the night. He tried to relax in the vast old bed. It had felt like being laid out in a museum when he returned from his travels, but now Ros was next door. The thought of her in the same house was enough to keep him awake, even in the most comfortable bed in London. Only one fragile door away, she was the most exquisite temptation he could imagine. He cursed his wretched body as the very thought of her on the other side of that door made his sex go hard, again. If only Ros was here with him, this would be the finest bed in London and never mind his ancestor’s questionable taste. Fantasising about her lying next to him, sated and limp with loving, was not going to calm his wretched body, so he tried to imagine he was marooned on a lonely Arctic ice floe yet again, before he woke her up to beg.

  Contrarily he longed for the comfort and intimacy of her cottage, if only she would have let him share it with her, but that was firmly in the past now. When he had first stepped inside the place it felt small and cramped and he wondered how she endured it, but now his whole body cried out for the luxury of being Mrs Meadows’s long-lost husband and lying next to her exhausted and thoroughly pleasured warmth instead of lying in the lonely and frustrated Duke of Cherwell’s lofty state bed.