The Duchess’s Secret

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 tracks.

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.

Right; that was the past back in its rightful place then, now where was he? Ah, yes, the lawyer. Ash had dismissed the man as soon as he had told him Rosalind’s new name and humble address. Then he made himself come here himself to make sure the Mrs Meadows the man had come across living so obscurely really was the former Rosalind Feldon. A dishonest lawyer could always lay his hands on a dishonest woman, so Ash had to see for himself before he believed the man. If not for that, Ash would have been happy to do as the impudent letter she sent to his family lawyers after Charlie died suggested and divorce her in absentia.

* * *

Rosalind shifted under Ash’s coldly critical scrutiny. When he jumped down from his horse to confront her on level ground it still seemed impossible this was really was him. Standing on the same earth as he was an assault on her senses and she didn’t trust a single one as he calmly held the mighty grey’s reins and studied her like a portrait. By summoning all the strength and self-reliance the last eight years taught her, she just about managed not to flinch under his stony scrutiny.

‘You look like a duchess in disguise,’ he mocked, but there was something in his eyes that reminded her how it felt to truly be his wife, for one passionate and largely sleepless night.

‘Nonsense, I am a simple countrywoman,’ she argued. She tugged the watch from her pocket to avoid his puzzling stare. ‘One who must hurry home or be very late for an engagement,’ she lied, closing the case with a snap. There was a flicker of feeling in his eyes at the sight of the watch she had once spent all her pin money on, so he could count the hours until they were together again. He had left it behind so it could not really mean anything to him.

‘You kept it, then?’ he asked huskily.

‘I needed a timepiece and it cost nothing.’

‘A laudably practical attitude,’ he said with a frown that disagreed.

‘I am a prosaic creature.’

‘I very much doubt it,’ he argued, looked about to smile, then changed his mind.

‘Country widows need to be,’ she insisted.

‘Not when they are not widows at all they don’t.’

‘Since you must have come about a divorce I suppose the whole world will soon know I am still wed,’ she said gloomily and now he had tracked her down that was probably true, one way or another.

‘They don’t have to.’

‘The only way I shall not be notorious now is if you hire an actress to pretend to be me and I stay quiet and pretend not to be me under yet another name.’

‘A tempting idea, but lies have a habit of catching up with a person, don’t they?’

‘That’s cruel and even a little bit mean of you, my lord Duke. I don’t think we need to descend to name calling when our divorce will be humiliating enough as far as I am concerned to satisfy even you.’

‘I am not that vindictive, but you are right. I apologise,’ he said and Rosalind did not quite know what to make of him now.

‘It will be appalling,’ she said with a shudder.

‘I suppose we could always employ someone desperate to pretend to be you,’ he almost offered and it was tempting, for a moment.

‘We would be a laughing stock when she sold her story to whoever offered the most money and you might not get your divorce.’

‘True,’ he said with a disgusted shake of the head for the very idea of being tied to her for the rest of his life and that was good. As long as he was being the opposite of her dashing, charming and funny lover of long ago she could face him with indifference. It was when he reminded her of the young Ash who had loved her that he was dangerous.

‘I don’t know why you are here. I have already offered to come to London and face the mob so you can pillory me for my imagined sins—and you will have to imagine them because I never ignored my marriage vows.’ Drat, why had she let that slip? He would know she was jealous of the idea of him lying in another woman’s arms if she wasn’t careful. But if she didn’t care, how could she be jealous? Good question, Rosalind, her inner schoolmistress observed.

‘I had to make sure it was you and not some actress my former lawyer set up here to take the money I intend to settle on you after the divorce. He took what little I had when I left the country and thought I was leaving it behind to support you.’

‘Did you do that? I had no idea.’

‘I was right then, he made no effort to find you before you disappeared and I cannot help but wonder why you did that, Rosalind?’

Don’t wonder too hard, she silently urged and faced him with raised eyebrows, as if to say she thought it was too obvious to need explaining.

‘Why didn’t you tell the world about us?’ he ignored her sceptical stare to ask as if that puzzle had been plaguing him for years.

‘Hadn’t you made enough of a fool out of me without the rest of the world knowing?’ she parried. She wasn’t going to tell him she hadn’t cared about anything much at all after he left. When she had finally woken up to the new life they had made between them on their wedding night she had had good reason to slip away from the ton as if she had never existed and she definitely didn’t want him to know about that. Every time she needed or wanted to tell him about Jenny over the years she would remember him turning on her the day after their wedding and know it was impossible. Except now he was so close to their daughter panic goaded her heartbeat to a gallop again.

‘I thought the shoe was on the other foot,’ he said cynically and he would, wouldn’t he? The young man he once was had been dashing and handsome and entirely wonderful as far as young Rosalind knew, before they wed, but he was also hot-tempered and arrogantly convinced he was always right.

‘I cannot imagine how you intend to stay anonymous now I am home and you can hardly go unremarked even here looking as you do,’ he said.

‘Looks give no hint of a person’s inner life. You are handsome in a gruff sort of way on the surface, but you are not the man I fell in love with.’

‘Pah—love,’ he said with a revolted expression, as if she had said blasphemed.

‘Yes, love. It is vital to me, which is why I want a divorce every bit as fervently as you do. You have been away from me for eight years and I doubt very much you stuck to the marriage vows you thought you were deceived into making with me,’ she challenged him with a very straight look that defied him to lie. He avoided it for a moment, then met it defiantly and she knew she was right. As expected, Rosalind, as expected, she reminded herself and hoped she was managing to look scornful about it when confirmation he had been enjoying himself as if he had never married her made her want to scream and lash out at him, but that would never do, it would look as if she cared. ‘One of us has been unfaithful to our marriage promises, so that will have to do for both our consciences while you lie it was me who took lovers, since only a wife’s adultery can dissolve a marriage. Imagine that; me having to live a lie to cover up yours, after all you had to say about me being a liar when you left.’

He looked offended and defensive and ducal so she must have caught him on the raw with that barb and she really must stop sniping at him. She wrapped her arms across her shivering body at the thought of what a disaster it would be if he ever found out about Jenny. However much he had wronged her, she could not sue him for divorce since the law did not recognise her as a sentient human being, merely as her husband’s chattel. And if he was furious with her for lying by omission when he left her, how would he feel if he found out she had borne his child? Somehow she must get him to leave.

‘I am ready to do what you want because it is what I want as well. So you can go away with my promise to turn up to be insulted and defamed, now you have satisfied yourself I am really me,’ she said lightly.

She would leave Livesey first and make sure there was no trail for his bloodhound to follow this time. Then she could set out for London by an indirect route to act the adulteress for him, since that was the only way out of this prison they had made for each other all those years ago when they wed over the anvil.

‘You will bolt as soon as I turn my back,’ he said abruptly and that was annoyingly perceptive of him.

‘I agree to let you fabricate grounds for a divorce and I do not go back on my word.’

‘Hmm, we shall see about that.’

Inside she was raging at him for pretending her failure to confide in him before marriage was a deliberate lie, but that paled to nothing besides her worry his former lawyer would tell Ash the truth even if she did manage to get away without him finding out he had a daughter. The lawyer must know about Jenny, so why had he kept her secret? Blackmail, she decided. If what Ash said was true he had made provision for her before he left and someone stole it. The lawyer must be venal and lazy and if he could make money out of her to pay back what Ash would demand he returned to him he would still win, wouldn’t he? Most of that settlement, the conscience money Ash had intended to settle on her, would have to go on paying the man to keep quiet but it would be worth it, she assured herself as she shot this hard-faced stranger a sideways look. The headache she had come up here to cure thundered in her temples now as a new hazard was added to her list and how she wished Ash would leave her in peace to try to work out a way around them.

‘They expect me at the inn in Livesey, by the way, before you try to tell me the place is full to the rafters with benighted travellers.’

‘Why? What more can you want from me than a promise to go quietly?’ she asked rather desperately.

‘Nothing, but I knew I would be cold and weary after riding from London as fast as my horse can carry me. My former lawyer told me the inn at Livesey is comfortable and clean and Peg needs a rest even more than I do.’

‘Peg?’ she echoed hollowly and shock could make the strangest things seem important. It sounded a very odd name for such a noble steed.

‘Short for Pegasus—his last owner had high-flying ideas to go with his huge debts.’

‘Oh, I see,’ she replied vaguely and she wasn’t really interested in him or his horse, was she? ‘You could get stuck there and you would not want that, would you?’ she said as she fought those silly tears back and focused on the yellowish band of cloud now creeping across the sea and realised what it meant.

‘Why?’

‘Have you been away from England so long you have forgotten what yonder sky means?’

He followed her pointing finger as if he didn’t trust her to know snow clouds from a hole in her shoe. ‘Aye, you’re right,’ he finally had to admit. ‘There is a goodly fall of snow on its way.’

‘Best hurry back to Dorchester and be comfortable there for however long it lasts, then. I promise to be on my way as soon as the roads allow travel again,’ she urged, hoping she could escape while his back was turned and she wasn’t exactly lying, was she? She did plan to scoop Jenny up and run as fast as she could go in the opposite direction. She had not said where she would be on the road to—how could she when she had no idea herself?

‘I am not the soft aristocrat you seem to think me. A village inn will do me very well,’ he argued with a suspicious look that asked why she was so determined to get him away from her humble home.

She managed to shrug as if she didn’t care what he did. ‘Well, I am going home anyway. I have a great deal to do before it snows,’ she said with a warning glare as if to say Don’t even think about hauling me on to that great horse and making us ride double.

‘Chickens and things, I suppose,’ he said, Duke to peasant.

The old, impulsive Rosalind would have smacked his smug face for that taunt, but this one gave him a look of icy contempt and marched away from the bridle path he would have to follow as a stranger to the heath.

‘Don’t get bogged down, Your Grace,’ he shouted after her and she strode on even faster to stop herself turning around and sticking her tongue out like a street urchin.

* * *

What a fool—what a lunatic he was. Why not do as she said and avoid her until he had to see her again for whatever reason the lawyers dictated? He had this stupid, boyish impulse to break through her determined serenity because his body wanted her, so his tongue had said things he cursed it for even when he was saying them. Ash urged his horse along the track to Livesey someone told him was shorter than the toll road and with a fine view—nowhere near as fine as the one he found at the top of it. If only he had been prepared for the sight of Rosalind there he might not have sniped at her and given himself away as far less calm and cold about this divorce business than he thought he was until he saw her again. It was that silly boy talking; the one who wanted to jump off the grey and chase his wife down the snaky track he had not even seen until she bolted down it as if the devil was on her tail. A little bit of logic survived and wondered why was she so intent on getting back to the village so fast she was prepared to risk a sprained ankle as well as very muddy legs and torn skirts. He stared after her as she neatly twisted and turned to avoid hazards until she was lost to his sight. Then he shook his head to try to settle some sense back into it and sighed.

The boy he once was still wanted her mercilessly, but it was the man who said stupid things then stuck to them as if taking it back would be a sign of weakness. He didn’t really want to go to Livesey Village in the middle of nowhere and risk seeing her every time he walked down a road or looked out of the taproom windows. One look at the fine gold curls that had escaped the severe knot she had skewered it into and shining like a halo in the winter sun, those deep blue eyes and that glorious feminine mouth and he wanted her nearly as badly as he had on their wedding night. He should never have come here alone; better still he should have found another lawyer and sent him to bargain with the Duke of Cherwell’s unwanted wife. Instead he recalled her extraordinary beauty and decided not to trust even the most staid lawyer with the task, but he didn’t appear to be that trustworthy in the face of it either.

Despite his impatience with himself Ash managed to ride down to the village as if he was not in a hurry. Even running recklessly over rough ground and jumping streams and walls Rosalind could not beat him there by many minutes. He had been lucky to find this fine beast for sale at a livery stable to pay the bill his last owner could not afford and he had no intention of ruining the gelding’s legs by galloping on unfamiliar ground. Time for the Duke of Cherwell to pretend he was just a modestly well off gentleman with business in the area, except why on earth had he booked that room in the name of Meadows? Rosalind seemed to be pretending to be a widow and a snowstorm ought to stop her grabbing whatever treasures she had and bolting off into the blue to hide under another name in another obscure place for reasons best known to herself.

Chapter Three

‘Joan, Joan—where on earth are you?’

‘Here, Miss Rosalind.’ Joan emerged from the little bakehouse-cum-scullery with the delicious smell wafting out behind her. ‘Heavens above, just look at the state of you,’ the maid gasped and took in Rosalind’s torn and muddied petticoats and wild-looking hair half-up and half-down after she had lost most of her hairpins on her reckless dash home.