The Duchess's Secret (HQR Historical) Page 2

  ‘Yet he has managed it anyway,’ her Ash said bleakly and he hadn’t been listening after she told him her dark secret, had he? He had made up his own story about her fall from grace, but that would not stop her fighting for her marriage and this new, true lovers’ life they were so eager to begin.

  ‘No, that makes him the winner. I refuse to be used and ruined because of one foolish action when I was little more than a child, Ash. He was a cold-hearted rogue who took advantage of me, then left.’ She got out of bed at last to face his stony gaze bravely as she reached for her hastily discarded clothes and began to scramble into them.

  ‘So you say. That’s your version of what happened and how can I ever trust that again? You have had a lover and you didn’t tell me. This so-called rogue of yours didn’t sit by my side all the way to Scotland so we could marry in haste and repent at leisure. You were ready, willing and eager to elope with a lovesick fool. Who else was going to marry a soiled dove, Rosalind? I really thought you were an angel in human form and you look like one, on the outside.’ He must have seen her flinch at that tired description of her golden looks and his stare turned cynical. ‘You gave an exquisitely polished performance. Your unspoilt grace and sweetly hesitant manner were masterly. I suppose you already have a lover waiting to keep you in style.’

  ‘No. I am still the person you married. The same woman you swore you loved to the edge of madness last night.’

  ‘You are not a woman, but a silly little girl dressed up in fine clothes. You are a liar, though. I cannot live with one of those for the rest of my life.’

  ‘That means you cannot endure yourself, since you swore you loved me only a few minutes ago and it must have been a bare-faced lie.’ Even to her own ears Rosalind sounded childish. It seemed to confirm everything Ash said about her, but it was either that or sob and plead for forgiveness—miserable defiance it was then.

  ‘I loved someone who does not exist,’ he said stiffly, as if his pride was offended. ‘How can I love a woman who is a liar? Three whole months have passed since we met and you have never managed to find a single moment to tell me you are not what you seem? Oh, no, you made sure we were well and truly married before you told me the truth, when it was too late to escape your clutches.’

  ‘If that was my plan, I did not need to tell you at all. You can trust me, Ash, I swear you can. It wasn’t my fault.’ She heard her own defensive and, yes, childish response to his fury and despaired, but it was defend herself against his bitter fury or weep and she refused to when he was glaring at her as if she was his enemy.

  ‘It wasn’t my fault,’ he parodied cruelly. ‘That’s what she said,’ he burst out as if it hurt him to talk about the reason he felt so betrayed by her failure to tell him of her sad misadventure until now.

  Wild jealousy rocked Rosalind as well as an echo of his pain. Despite sobs tearing at her throat she was too proud to let out, and a sense of injustice burning inside her, she still loved him. His hurt felt like hers. Maybe he had never cared about her as he swore he did from the moment he first laid eyes on her. Maybe he was the true liar out of the two of them, but this accusation belonged to a guiltier woman. ‘Who said it?’ she said bleakly. ‘Who was she?’

  ‘My mother.’

  ‘Your mother? I thought you must have been betrayed by a lover. I almost felt sorry for you, but, no, you turned on me because of your mother. I never expected to trail in her footsteps,’ she said, fury so strong it buoyed her up even as her world fell apart. ‘What did she do, drop you on your head as a baby?’

  ‘She told us she was going to be at a house party in the next county, although she was really flitting off to join her latest lover.’

  ‘And that’s all?’

  ‘Of course not, but she made it impossible to find her when our little sister was taken ill. Our mother came back a week after the funeral in her mourning weeds, telling anyone it wasn’t her fault.’

  Ash’s voice sounded as if he was reliving his agony and even after all the terrible things he had said to her Rosalind pitied him. ‘Maybe it wasn’t,’ she said. ‘She might not have been able to save your sister even if she had sat at her bedside the whole time.’

  ‘Maybe not, but my brother Jas took it so hard you would think he had killed her himself. I hated my mother for lying over and over again and believing it. I did not go to her funeral; I did not owe her enough love.’

  And there were the bleak, unsaid words between them: I would not bother to turn up for yours either.

  ‘I am truly sorry you lost your sister so tragically, Ash, but I promise I am not lying when I say I love you,’ Rosalind said, but felt the faith she had been clinging to until now began to fail as the dogged reason he was so angry ate it up and spat out the bones.

  ‘Not enough to tell me the truth,’ he said bleakly and left the room as if she was a stranger he did not care for.

  Chapter One

  1818

  Ash stopped pacing his austerely opulent office in the sticky heat to glare between the gaps in the window screens at the lush landscape outside. It was monsoon season and most of his neighbours had departed for the hills with their families, but he had no family. He stayed to watch the relentless miracle of the rains enrich this exotic, fascinating land and to seize the odd business opportunity they were too far away to grasp.

  He swung away from the view and cursed the steamy heat for sapping his energy and dulling his mind, then strode to his desk and picked up the letter to reread impossible news. Stupid to hope his eyes had deceived him and he must have imagined those dire words in neat script on hot pressed paper.

  The outside of the letter was almost unmarked by its long journey, as if to prove he was now a very important man. Even his letters must be taken great care of aboard a busy merchantman. Not for this cursed thing a sack in the hold with the cargo.

  He blamed the form of address the prestigious firm of London lawyers used to direct it: To A. Hartfield of Calcutta; with the words, Sixth Duke of Cherwell, Marquess of Asham and Earl Morfield added in smaller letters, as if to warn of terrible news.

  It is with great regret we must carry out our sad duty as the Fifth Duke of Cherwell’s legal representatives and executors and inform you of His Grace’s untimely death.

  The day before yesterday your cousin, Charles Edward Frederick Louis Hartfield, died in a terrible carriage accident on his way to spend the summer months at Brighton...

  Ash could not make himself read any more, now or when the first shock of those words bit like steel. The shining young hope of the Hartfield family, his scapegrace cousin Charlie was gone. The lad could only have been four and twenty. Ash pictured the gangling seventeen-year-old youth he had last seen seven years ago and sadness beyond tears caught him by the throat. He wanted to yell defiance at the gods. Was his whole race cursed to die before their allotted span on earth? No, reason stepped in and argued—his grandfather, the Fourth Duke, had lived to be an upright, if irascible, eighty-eight and even Ash’s father, Lord John Hartfield, managed to survive into his forties before he met his end drunk on the hunting field. Yet three years after Waterloo, Ash’s mind flinched at the dreadful truth that his brother Jasper was dead, left among the piles of dead on that bloodiest of battlefields until his batman found him. All over Europe there were fathers and brothers, sons, husbands and lovers dead so many decades before their time because of the war. He was not the only one to feel this aching loss day after weary day, but he never thought Charlie would join in and make Ash feel blighted and guilty that he was alive when two better men were cold in the ground.

  There was no point blaming himself for not being there to protect his little cousin from every ill wind that blew, but he still did. Charlie would have hated it after growing up under Grandfather’s stern gaze until the old man gave up his fierce grip on life five years ago. Better be glad Charlie had had a few years as a handsome young duke wit
h the world at his feet than curse the gods for taking him so long before his time. No, why the devil not? He was right to be furious. Except stamping about the room blaspheming and trying to pretend his eyes must be deceiving him did not make him feel better and heavy tears were still aching in his throat.

  Ash glanced at the date below the formal listing of the lawyers’ partnership and chambers. He hated the scribe who had set it out so neatly he clearly did not care about the tragedy he outlined. Ash had been Sixth Duke of Cherwell for six months of blissful ignorance. The letter had made its slow way through Biscay, past Spain and Portugal, down the coast of Africa to the Cape of Good Hope until it got to the Indian Ocean and at last to here. If he went home he would have to wear the heaviest coronet below the weight of a crown on state occasions. He shuddered; Charlie or Jasper should be there to lead what was left of the Hartfield clan.

  Ash cursed again and paced and cursed a bit more. The vexing problem of what to do about the slightly smaller and lighter coronet of a duchess crept into his head like a bad fairy. He had a vision of Ros in it before he bit out a choice epithet to add to the collection echoing around this lofty room like malicious flies. He did not want to be haunted by visions of the loveliest girl he’d ever seen gloriously grown into her looks after eight years apart from her hoodwinked husband. Eight years without him to catalogue her by the changing seasons and count the lovers she was sure to have cuckolded him with by now. Only a handful of people even knew of his misbegotten marriage; two were dead and the rest had kept quiet so divorce might not be the nightmare it was for other noble cuckolds. They had been apart for so long there would be discarded lovers aplenty in Rosalind Feldon’s wake. He could take his pick of deluded fools to sue for criminal conversation with his wife, then seek a bill of divorce in the House.

  No, it was foolish to delude himself it would be so easy and there could be no hiding his youthful idiocy now. The public dissolution of his marriage would be chewed over and chuckled at in every newssheet in the land. At least when they realised the sad depths of his youthful folly his peers would send his Bill of Divorce through unopposed and there was sure to be plenty of evidence; no woman as fiery, passionate and silly as his wife could have fooled her own kind she was virtuous for so long and she could hardly marry one of her lovers with a husband still alive.

  The thought of Rosalind in the arms of whoever was keeping her now sent a roar of fury through him that hurt like a whip. As well he had so many weary weeks aboard ship to look forward to, then. By the time he got home and tracked down his Duchess he would be cold as ice. Neither Jas nor Charlie had lived long enough to wed and have children, so it was up to Ash to sire legitimate heirs to the family honours and next time he would make sure he picked a plain and dutiful wife. His new Duchess would not blind him to her true character with breathtaking looks and fine acting and they would enjoy a marriage of convenience. He could not be like his father, careless and wild himself and managing to ignore his wife’s parade of lovers once she had provided him with an heir and a spare. That sort of marriage was not for him and he needed a dutiful wife without a head full of silly dreams. Love and lies made a tangled trap he had no intention of ever falling into again.

  Six Months Later

  Ever since she had seen the notice of Charles Hartfield, Fifth Duke of Cherwell’s tragic death in a week-old copy of the Morning Post almost a year ago Mrs Rose Meadows had been waiting for trouble to strike. Charlie Hartfield’s early demise would force Ash into divorcing her now and what a harsh and humiliating business it promised to be. She had sent a letter to his family solicitor by a very roundabout route to tell their noble client she had no wish to remain a duchess by accident. If she had to go to London and set herself up as a brazen hussy to deflect attention from Livesey Village and her real life, she would do that as well. She would do anything to keep Ash away from Livesey and her dearest secret.

  ‘More tea?’ Joan asked when she bustled into the little parlour to clear the breakfast dishes and frowned at Rosalind’s untouched plate.

  ‘No, thank you.’ Rosalind had already let two cups go cold and it was a luxury they could not afford to waste.

  ‘Are you feeling badly?’ Joan asked her bluntly.

  ‘I am perfectly well, thank you.’

  ‘You ain’t been right for months, my girl,’ she thought she heard Joan murmur as she went back to the kitchen bearing cold tea and limp toast.

  They lived a spartan life in the cottage Rosalind had bought with a small legacy from her paternal grandmother. Considering Grandmother Feldon was a clergyman’s widow whose schoolmaster son had to attend a famous charity school after her husband died, it was a wonder she had managed to leave anything at all to her only grandchild. Mama once whispered Grandmama Feldon ran a lodging house in a not-very-respectable part of town to pay for her son to go to Cambridge, but least said soonest mended. There were a lot of small secrets in the late Lady Lackbourne’s life and Rosalind wondered now if growing up keeping the mesh of little white lies that held up her mother’s splendid second marriage had caused her to take a cavalier attitude to the truth as well. Perhaps Ash was right to call her a liar.

  And perhaps not, Rosalind, her inner critic argued sternly. No point forgiving him for what he did when he is about to divorce you.

  She sighed and recalled Mama telling her about how she was going to have a new stepfather to distract herself from the horrid prospect before her. Apparently his lordship fell in love when he called on a canon of his local cathedral and met the canon’s beautiful widowed daughter. Mama thought his lordship had a good heart under the cool reserve he showed the world, but that sounded like another comfortable lie to Rosalind now. The women of her family did not have much luck with love and marriage, did they? At least, thanks to Grandmother Feldon, there was enough money to buy Furze Cottage with a little left over for emergencies. Ash’s return as Duke of Cherwell was one of those in anyone’s book and she had no intention of letting him ruin her new life. Even the thought of Ash in the same country again, walking the same earth and breathing the same air, felt disturbing, but at least when their marriage was officially ended she would finally be able to forget him.

  ‘Mama, Mama, please can I go to the vicarage to play with Hal and Ally?’ Miss Imogen Meadows, known as Jenny, burst into the parlour to ask her mother. ‘Mrs Belstone sent you a note.’

  ‘Oh, and Mrs Belstone addressed it to me, did she?’ Rosalind asked her daughter, raising her eyebrows since Jenny seemed to know the contents of it already.

  ‘Yes, and she would have sealed it if she didn’t want me to know.’

  ‘Maybe she thought you such a good little girl you would not dream of reading your mother’s letters,’ Rosalind said, but the irony went over her daughter’s head and this did not feel like a good time to drill some manners into her.

  Rosalind read her good friend Judith’s account of Christmas at the vicarage with three lively children, another baby on the way and a hard-working husband to support at one of his busiest time of year, then smiled at her friend’s invitation to please allow Jenny to come and divert her darlings from trying to kill one another for a few hours.

  ‘Promise you will do as Miss Galvestone, the Vicar and Mrs Belstone say and try to be a good girl?’ Rosalind said warily, having learnt to add conditions before rather than after agreeing to anything, since Jenny’s ears seemed to go deaf as soon as she got what she wanted.

  ‘Of course, Mama.’

  ‘Ah, but what sort of a promise is that?’

  ‘I promise to be good and do as I am bid,’ Jenny parroted with the usual martyred sigh.

  ‘Then I will try to believe you, but please don’t break anything.’

  ‘As if I would,’ Jenny said with a cheeky grin and a glint of mischief in grey eyes that looked too much like her father’s. Jenny had dark hair and was built like a sprite instead of a lanky Hartfield, but her smoky ga
ze was pure Ash.

  ‘You should respect your aged mother, Imogen Meadows,’ Rosalind told her headstrong daughter, who grinned happily, held up her face for a kiss, then ran off to meet her next adventure.

  Now the silence in the spotless little house felt oppressive and Rosalind decided a good walk was what she needed. Her pupils were absorbed in family life or absent from home at this time of year so she had nothing much to do, for once. Joan kept the house clean and neat as a new pin and digging over the neat vegetable plot behind the house ready for spring crops would not distract her from the treadmill of her thoughts long enough. A ramble up on to the high heath above Furze Cottage was what she needed to help her forget Ash until he was actually home and even more eager for his freedom than her.

  The ancient stuff gown she kept for rough chores was good enough for rough exercise. Rosalind plaited her corn-gold hair tightly and wound it around her head, then sighed and let it down again. This time she twisted it in a loose knot and pinned it more gently to take the pressure off the headache that had become all too familiar since she read about Charlie Hartfield’s tragic demise. She eyed the reflection of her pure oval face, finely moulded features and deep blue eyes in the mirror with a frown, then turned away before she could change her mind about the cap she usually hid behind. The stark white linen would stand out against the heath and she preferred not to be seen.

  ‘You look like a tramping woman,’ Joan said when she saw Rosalind standing at the back door scanning the lane for onlookers.

  ‘I’m going out,’ she replied absently.

  ‘Where to and why?’