His Unlikely Duchess

by Amanda McCabe

To one side of the fireplace was an image of two golden-haired boys: one, a bit delicate-looking and with terribly serious green eyes, stared out at the viewer, while the other boy was in motion, leaping as if his energy could not be contained. It had to be Aidan and his brother. The brother who had left him with the responsibility of this house and name. The brother who was meant to have been Duke. He looked as if the weight of the world was upon him, even as a child. Was this why Aidan worked so hard now, living up to that serious-eyed brother?

  And what did he really think about one more task, about being told to steer some American girl around his family gardens and impress her? And what about Lady Rannock, the beauty both brothers cared about? How it must have affected Aidan’s relationship with his brother! That seemed so ineffably sad.

  ‘Ah, I see you are admiring the study of my two dear sons, Miss Wilkins,’ the Duchess said quietly. ‘It’s by Barnard—such a fine likeness. How studious my Edward was! And Aidan, always so much energy. I could barely keep a nanny employed. How I do treasure that portrait.’

  ‘They are certainly both very handsome, Duchess,’ Stella said carefully. ‘Were they your only children?’

  The Duchess sighed and dabbed at her dry eyes with a lacy handkerchief. ‘Sadly, yes. The Duke and I longed for a large family, but we were not so blessed. I should so have liked a daughter!’

  ‘Daughters are a joy,’ Stella said piously and Lily almost laughed into her napkin. Rose nudged her and Violet stared hard out the window.

  ‘Yours certainly are, Mrs Wilkins! So pretty and such manners. One would hardly believe they were Americans at all.’ The Duchess studied Lily so closely that she almost squirmed in her seat. ‘I shall certainly look forward to a granddaughter one day. And a grandson, of course, a future Duke of Lennox.’ The drawing room door opened suddenly and Aidan stepped in. ‘Speaking of which...’

  Lily instinctively smiled when she saw Aidan and half rose from her chair at the sight of him, so golden and windblown and welcome in that grand room. A quick, stern look from Stella made her sit back down, but she still smiled. He was wearing riding clothes, doeskin breeches and rough tweeds, his sun-streaked hair falling over his brow. He laughed a little self-consciously, and ran his fingers through the tangled strands, mussing them even more. Lily had to practically sit on her hands to keep from going to him and smoothing them. Feeling the silk of his hair slide over her skin like when they were alone at the park...

  ‘Really, Aidan—’ his mother tsked ‘—I’m sure I told you what time our guests were arriving. And here you are, looking quite like a stable hand! Whatever will dear Mrs Wilkins think?’

  Lily didn’t know what her mother would think, but she knew what she thought—or rather, felt. As though she wanted to run to him and throw her arms around him. Especially when he looked rather boyishly chagrined.

  ‘Oh, heavens, but I don’t mind!’ Stella laughed, waving her hand airily. The dusty light from the window caught the diamonds on her fingers, bright and new in that old room. ‘When darling Coleman and I married, we hadn’t a bean! My own dear family lost all our rightful possessions in that dreadful war and Coleman was a law clerk. We were living in... Oregon, maybe. Or Idaho? Coleman worked a silver mine. He would come home at night looking quite like His Grace does. Quite...manly.’

  To Lily’s amazement, Stella’s cheeks turned girlishly pink and she giggled a bit into her napkin. ‘Oh, yes, those were fine days.’ Lily had never imagined her parents were ever happy. What had happened? Could such a change happen to her, in her own marriage, some day? It was a scary thought.

  ‘I don’t remember them,’ Violet said a bit sulkily.

  ‘Oh, you and Rose were so tiny. But Lily was so very pretty, an Indian Paiute chief’s wife, who had sadly lost her own child, wanted to buy her from us. Said Lily had a sacred old soul hidden in her eyes. I am sure she was right.’

  ‘Mother,’ Lily murmured, feeling her cheeks burn. She peeked at Aidan, wondering what he would think of her true childhood, her true life, but he looked rather intrigued.

  ‘Well, then, why didn’t you sell her?’ Violet said, stuffing a cucumber sandwich into her mouth as Rose nudged her. ‘You said you were so poor back then, Mother. You might have had such an exciting life, Lily!’

  ‘My life is quite exciting enough, Violet,’ Lily said.

  ‘Sell my darling baby? Certainly not!’ Stella’s smile turned teasing, a hint of the twinkling Southern belle she’d once been. ‘But it was a rather large sum. And Lily does have an old soul, one that deserves a special fate.’

  Aidan laughed and sat down at the table, tweeds and dust and all, and his mother handed him a cup of tea with a tiny frown. ‘It does sound like an exciting time, Mrs Wilkins. Quite like Aidan’s own adventures in the last few years! How did you find yourself there, looking for...silver, was it?’

  ‘Oh, I hardly know, Duchess. I was quite young and silly myself! My darling parents had recently passed away and I had gone to stay with my aunt in Charleston. My Coleman was a law clerk then, as I said, and he was working on a case there. We met at a dance. Like the Duke and my Lily, I am sure! It was grand, like something in a novel. I saw him across the room and he was so handsome, so...vigorous. Those dark eyes of his! I was wearing pink, I think, with a wreath of rosebuds in my hair. We danced and danced, and I...’

  ‘Happily ever after?’ the Duchess suggested wryly.

  Stella laughed. ‘Not quite, at least on my part. You know how it is for us ladies, Duchess. We must be very careful.’

  ‘Oh, yes, indeed,’ the Duchess murmured.

  ‘When we wed, I thought he would go back to practice law in the north somewhere. But he was like you, Duke, he craved adventure in his youth. He and his partner heard of a promising silver mine in...’

  ‘Idaho?’ Aidan suggested.

  ‘Oh, no. It was Colorado by then. He wanted to try it before he settled down, see if he could make enough money to buy me a diamond for my ring. A house for our babies. I didn’t care about diamonds then, of course, I just wanted to be with my Cole. We lived in a tiny little shack in the mountains, with my tiny girls.’ Stella reached out to gently touch the loose curl at Lily’s temple. ‘It was not easy, but then my Cole struck his lode! The Lily Marie mine. And then he moved on to coal mines, railroads, things like that.’ She looked sad for a moment, before she veiled herself in her usual smile.

  ‘What happened to the partner?’ Violet asked.

  ‘Whatever do you mean, dear?’ Stella said, the moment of tenderness vanishing.

  ‘The partner in the mine, Mother.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. He ran away or was paid off, I think.’ Stella waved that bit of her tale away with a flash of those diamonds.

  ‘What an exciting life you have led, Mrs Wilkins,’ the Duchess said. ‘You do put our dull little existence here to shame, except for Aidan, of course. Our days are all much the same, just as they have been at Roderick for centuries.’

  Lily glanced again at the portrait of the two boys and thought of the glamorous Lady Rannock. Love triangles. It could not have been all that dull. She couldn’t begin to compete.

  ‘Oh, not at all, Mama. You were considered quite the dashing beauty in your time, weren’t you?’ Aidan said, deceptively mild and teasing as he took a slice of seedcake.

  A dull flush touched the Duchess’s powdered cheeks and she looked away. ‘That hardly matters now, Aidan dear, really. I am a widow now and that was such a long time ago. Now, don’t you want to show Miss Wilkins the long gallery? It’s so lovely at this time of day and surely the gong to dress for dinner will sound soon.’

  ‘I thought I looked too disreputable,’ he said with a grin. A dimple flashed deep in his left cheek, half hidden beneath the golden-tinged stubble of the day, and it was almost unbearably gorgeous and enticing. Lily longed to press her fingertips just there. To lean close, close enough
to smell him and the fresh outdoorness that clung to him.

  But everyone was watching the two of them, much too closely, and she leaned back in her chair.

  ‘I should like to see the gallery,’ she said quietly.

  ‘Wonderful!’ the Duchess said with a cat-that-got-the-cream smile. ‘Mrs Wilkins, we can have a lovely little chat here before the gong. I am quite aching to hear about what it’s like to live in a mine shack. Just like a novel! Donat can have the maids see Miss Rose and Miss Violet to their chamber.’

  Violet looked very much as if she wanted to protest, but the Duchess rang a bell by her chair and Donat immediately appeared. Aidan rose and offered Lily his arm and she took it shyly. They had embraced, even kissed, but here in his own home it all felt so different. He was the Duke, as well as Aidan. And either way, he was so tempting, so havoc-making to her good sense.

  He led her out of the Yellow Drawing Room, down the marble staircase to the cold blue and white grandeur of the entrance hall. Lily barely dared breathe, with their mothers—Scylla and Charybdis, perhaps—behind them. She was alone with Aidan, at last.

  Well, alone with all the footmen and maids stationed around the vast space. At least that slightly frightening butler was busy dealing with the twins. Lily could almost feel sorry for him.

  They went through a doorway and found themselves in a small, dark-panelled space, furnished only with two straight-backed old chairs and a tall clock in the corner. ‘Ah!’ She sighed. ‘I think perhaps I can breathe again.’

  ‘Yes, indeed. The tea table interrogation. I have faced it many times myself,’ Aidan said with that dimpled grin. He leaned back against a small window, the dusty light shimmering on his hair, and loosened the rough muslin stock at his throat. ‘I am sorry it was your first glimpse of Roderick.’

  ‘I did see it from the drive as we arrived. It’s quite astonishing.’

  ‘And what did you think?’

  Lily closed her eyes and remembered that glimpse as they turned the corner out of the woods. ‘Like something from a fairy story. My sister said it was Sleeping Beauty’s castle. The mysterious, frightening dark woods—and then suddenly, light! The revelation of the house, like a jewel set in its rolling lawns and gardens.’

  ‘Ah, then you saw Roderick exactly as it was meant to be presented.’ He led her out of the antechamber and up another staircase. ‘My great-grandfather brought Repton himself to refashion the grounds,and he was, of course, a great proponent of the picturesque. Sweeping views, revelations around every corner, nature forced to conform. You may have been more impressed years ago, before his plans began to be taken over by neglect.’

  ‘I don’t see that it would be hard to restore it. Even make it lovelier! Perhaps add a parterre to the side, with an orangery built on...’

  Aidan laughed wryly. ‘I love seeing it anew though your eyes, Lily. It used to be my home, but it all feels strange to me. Maybe you can help me see it again. But even simple improvements need money. We have only one ancient gardener now and his grandson, plus a maid for the kitchen garden and a man who looks after the old greenhouse. In my childhood, we had almost a hundred.’

  Lily studied the vast space beyond a window they were passing and conjured up from her readings what it might be like. Vast gardens overflowing with flowers, a kitchen garden fragrant with herbs, greenhouses filled with pineapples and lemons.

  ‘I see the rose gardens must have been meant to expand over that way,’ she said, gesturing. ‘But I think a chamomile lawn would be just the thing to improve the sightlines to the folly. And perhaps a grove of beech there, to give some silvery colour? A perfect place to put a table for al fresco luncheons. They say the Prince of Wales enjoys a picnic. Maybe he could be lured to a party there? How funny that would be!’

  Aidan stared down at her, his expression unreadable. ‘You are quite right. And what of that strange stand of pines over there? Would it need to go?’

  Lily tilted her head as she studied the silvery-green trees. ‘Roderick Castle is large. It surely needs many Christmas trees, yes? Like the Queen at Windsor.’

  ‘Lily, Lily. Is there anything you don’t know?’

  Lily laughed nervously, wondering if it was a compliment. ‘My mother did insist on a broad education. And I love to read. History and botany are both always interesting.’

  ‘That must have come after the silver mine.’

  Lily frowned, remembering her vague memories of the tiny house, wind whistling through the paper windows. ‘Indeed. I don’t remember the Paiute chief’s wife, or being an old soul. As for my father’s partner, after he left...’

  ‘Left?’

  ‘Yes. Violet doesn’t know, but the poor man was killed by cattle rustlers. My mother insisted on finding some civilisation after that. We moved to New York and my father diversified into his railroads and his Pennsylvania coal, steel, that sort of thing.’

  ‘Yes,’ Aidan said quietly. They both knew ‘that sort of thing’. Money. It was what had brought them together now, in this sleeping castle. If she was not the Lily Marie of Colorado, he wouldn’t need her. She suddenly felt cold and wrapped her arms around herself.

  ‘The lady was right, I think,’ he said.

  ‘The lady?’ Lily asked, puzzled.

  ‘The one who called you an old soul. Just think, you might be an Indian princess now instead of being here with me.’

  She laughed. ‘I don’t think it quite works that way. And a duke is almost like a prince, too, I believe?’ She suddenly wished she hadn’t said that. He might think she wanted to be his princess.

  And she did. Too much. Just not his ‘dollar princess’. His princess of the heart, if such a fanciful thing would even be possible for a man like him.

  Aidan frowned and shrugged. ‘I suppose a prince has it worse. Look at poor old Bertie. He will have to be in charge of an entire kingdom, once he gets out from under his mother’s thumb. I just have an estate.’

  ‘And the people on it? They rely on you, don’t they?’

  He arched his brow as if in question.

  ‘I do know something of it all,’ she said. ‘History and how the land and the people work together. How business is run.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’

  ‘Yes. My father wanted a son, you see, and when he saw he would have none he decided I would do. He taught me accounting and my mother taught me charity, and when I knew we were coming to England, I read your history. The Tudors, the Glorious Revolution, the eighteenth century. Not a patch on practical experience, perhaps, and nothing like all those girls I met in London who grew up knowing these things instinctively, in their bones. But a start.’

  Aidan laughed, not the wry sound over the tea table with his mother, but one filled with light and golden glory, like champagne bubbles. A real laugh. Lily found she would give anything to hear it again. ‘An equestrienne and a gardener. What other secrets do you harbour, Miss Lily Wilkins? What plans do you have for England?’

  Emboldened, she reached out, ever so lightly, and touched that dimple as she had longed to do. His skin was warm under her touch, slightly rough with his amber-tipped whiskers. For an instant, he leaned his cheek into her palm. ‘You don’t even know the beginning, Duke.’

  His green eyes darkened to the grey of clouds just before a storm and his expression intensified, grew leaner, hungry. He leaned close, so close she could feel his cheek brush hers, tingling, and could smell the leather and sweat and hay and heat. She could barely breathe, but she wanted to fall into him, only him, and never be found again. He studied her, too, as if he had never seen anything like her before.

  He raised his long, sun-browned fingers and carefully brushed their tips over her cheek, feather-light. She shivered. He leaned closer, even closer, and her eyes fluttered closed. She wanted to taste his kiss again so much she shook from it.

  A door slammed somewhere upstairs
and he pulled away. Cold, tingling with disappointment, Lily turned from him and pressed her palms against her cheeks.

  ‘My mother will surely not be happy with whoever dared slam a door here,’ Aidan said roughly. ‘Strictly forbidden at Roderick.’

  Lily dared to peek back at him. He was running his hands through his tousled hair, smoothing it. He smiled, but his eyes were still dark. She found she was glad someone did dare to do so; they had stopped her from making an utter fool of herself.

  They stood together for another long moment, trapped in silence. She could hear the loud, stentorian tick-tock of the old clock in the corner. Time waited for no one, even in a moment she wished could go on for ever.

  Then it seemed a curtain dropped over him and his smile turned carefree and teasing. That flashing white grin he had given her as they danced, or as they raced their horses against a rainstorm, had returned. It was surely the English way, she thought—all hidden.

  ‘I did promise you a look at the gallery, Miss Wilkins,’ he said. ‘Shall we?’

  ‘Of course,’ she murmured, and followed him from their secret little room. He didn’t take her arm this time, or walk close to her. He might have been a tour guide in truth. They hurried past what he said was the Red Dining Room to the grand White Drawing Room—‘Used only by very important guests,’ he said with a laugh. ‘The Queen and Prince Albert played cards here in 1855, I believe!’—and then the pretty pink and green Music Room where Lily longed to try the piano.

  She could barely take it all in. The frescoed ceilings, the Van Dyck paintings of past Lennox Dukes, the tapestried furniture and velvet curtains. They went up yet another staircase, pale wood, elaborately carved with rose trellises and confusingly switch-backed. It was all a large job indeed.

  At the last turning was a seven-foot-tall portrait of a lady in diaphanous green fabric, looking rather terrified as she ran from an approaching storm, glancing over her shoulder as her dark hair streamed in the wind.

  ‘Mrs Siddons, the great dramatic actress,’ Aidan said. ‘She was a great friend of my grandmother. I forgot she was even hanging here. How you are introducing me to my own home, Lily, making me see it all anew.’