The Duchess's Secret (HQR Historical) Read online

  And why be ashamed he could now offer her so little of himself? She lied eight years ago and had carried on lying ever since. He could hardly claim she knew about the baby when he left England because he didn’t give her enough time to find out before he left, but she had kept her pregnancy and the birth of his child a secret all these years. And hidden her tracks so well his lawyer admitted it took him six months to find her, when he eventually made the effort. Ash felt his fingers tighten yet again as he realised how much that lawyer cost him. Never mind the little fortune he thought he secured on his wife, the man lost him seven years of his daughter’s life. He would have sailed right back to England if a letter from his lawyer had come by the next ship to say his brief night of marriage had led to more than the collapse of his hopes and dreams of a happily passionate marriage. He imagined getting back home in time to see his baby walk and talk, even if he would have been too late for the birth. He recalled helping to foal his favourite mare when he was a boy and the effort and fear and joy of it all. Being deprived of the pitfalls and glory of birth with his own child made him feel so furious with a hasty youth who ran away from the mess he had made of his life he had to get up and pace or release it by punching a hole in the wall. Since he could only stand up properly at the centre of the room where his head did not brush the beams holding up the room above, it did not take him long to stop.

  ‘Confound this rabbit hutch,’ he barked.

  ‘You are very welcome to go back to the Duck and Feathers and rail about their timbers instead,’ Rosalind told him huffily from the doorway.

  ‘Later,’ he snapped.

  ‘If you are going to storm about the place complaining I would far rather it was now,’ she said sharply.

  ‘Lord knows how you can claim to be humble when you sound like an offended princess when someone crosses you.’

  ‘I don’t have to pretend it, I am,’ she said as if it was true.

  ‘But you must have got your air of touch-me-not royalty from your father, since I cannot recall ever noticing it in your mother.’

  ‘You remember her?’ she said, warmth in her blue eyes that made him envy a good woman dead for nearly a decade.

  ‘Of course, she was one of the most famous beauties of her day.’

  ‘She was, wasn’t she?’ Ros said wistfully and threatened to make a fatal hole in his defences. Here was the Ros he first knew, a vulnerable and sometimes needy half woman, half girl. She had felled him with one look, then walked straight into his heart with the second one as if to say, ‘What, you mean me?’ when he had stared back at her like a mooncalf.

  ‘And a kindly soul with rather simple tastes under the fine clothes and exquisite society manners she was, too. She was very kind to my little cousin and even had patience to play a game or two with my brother and me when she came to stay at Edenhope with your stepfather. I suppose you were deemed too young to travel with them at the time.’

  ‘Probably. And the Earl was always afraid one of us would make a mistake and reveal what he considered to be our humble background, so he kept me out of the way. He even made Mama take lessons in etiquette after they were married, in case she disgraced him by not knowing how deeply to curtsy to a prince or when to look down her nose at a mere mister. She was a lady to her very bones and he had the impudence to think he had married beneath him, because my father was only a poor scholar, then a teacher.’

  ‘I am beginning to see why you dislike Lord Lackbourne so much,’ he joked to try to relax the frown almost knitting her slender brows together.

  ‘As if she needed anything of the sort,’ she carried on darkly. ‘Mama was a lady. He begged her to marry him even though Grandfather Whitbourne was a cathedral canon the Earl consulted about an obscure point of ecclesiastical law for one of the churches on the Lackbourne estate. He could hardly claim Mama was anything but a lady even if she did wed my father and live a simple life with him until he died.’

  ‘And so are you, wherever you were born.’

  ‘Apparently not,’ she replied shortly.

  The Earl of Lackbourne had done such a good job convincing his stepchild her birth was inferior that Ash would have a deal to say to him next time they met.

  ‘Aren’t you warm yet?’ she said like a scolding wife.

  He knew a change of subject when he heard one, but even so it felt more of a blessing than a curse to be nagged for his own good again. His grand house in Calcutta had been full of willing servants and busy clerks ran round at his bidding. Then there was the succession of willing beauties kept in luxury to supply feminine company and sensuality when he needed it. They had left him with some fond memories and slightly lighter pockets, but he had never loved one of them.

  Just as well—you are done with love, remember?

  Ah, yes... This Ash took the reminder from the old, bitter one and turned a more cynical eye on his wife. How could I forget?

  ‘I have come from a hot and verdant country to midwinter,’ he said.

  ‘I think you had best go back again if you dislike it so much, then. I hear Yorkshire has even colder winters and at least we have the south westerlies here to keep us warm.’

  ‘Not noticeably.’

  ‘It will be far colder at Edenhope,’ she pointed out.

  ‘How would you cope with rougher winters and later springs?’ he asked. He still loved the place, despite years away and always knowing it was going to be Charlie’s one day, but Rosalind had never even set eyes on it, so he wondered how she and their daughter would cope with the severe weather.

  ‘I would manage, but you are softer than I am so we might have to come back south for the winter.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ he said moodily, because it seemed a sign of weakness to admit he felt as if he would never adjust to the cold after all those years in a hotter climate. And that we of hers sounded tempting and intimate; he wanted to be tempted and intimate with her all the way up her crooked staircase and into her bed right now and she was not persuaded their rematch would be a good idea yet. The longer he spent in her company, the more he wanted everything and the less likely she would ever give it to him. ‘Is dinner nearly ready?’ he asked, an image of this far more acerbic Rosalind loving him despite his sins still beckoning.

  ‘If you are so very hungry, Mrs Paxton at the Duck and Feathers is accounted a very fine cook.’

  He had laid himself open to that one, hadn’t he? ‘I shall try to be patient.’

  ‘I can see what an effort it will be,’ she mocked him and he turned to watch her with all he really wanted in his eyes and hoped it would warn her to stop teasing before his self-control broke completely.

  * * *

  Rosalind had to take that hot and explicit glare of Ash’s and force food past the lump it put in her throat then pretend she didn’t know he wanted her for the rest of the evening.

  ‘How did a lady’s maid learn to be such an excellent cook?’ Ash asked as the two of them sat at the little gate-legged table and Joan waited on them as if the line between mistress and servant had grown back the moment he walked through the door.

  ‘Because she had to,’ Joan said gruffly.

  At least she wasn’t going to respect Ash without a lot more effort on his part, so some of the certainties in Rosalind’s life had not melted away. ‘I tried,’ Rosalind said. She had to smile at Joan’s wry expression. ‘When we first came here I could not work and Joan used to do fine sewing in order to earn some money until Jenny was born, then be old enough to be left for a few hours so I could work. We were both relieved when I could earn more by teaching ladylike accomplishments to reluctant young ladies while Joan took over the house and cared for Jenny when I was out. She is a far better cook than I am. I could not seem to keep my attention on food and the fire and managed to burn most things I tried to cook.’

  ‘So it was learn to cook or starve?’ Ash guessed.

 
‘Most things are better than that,’ Joan said dourly and left the room with his empty dinner plate and Rosalind’s half-finished food.

  ‘Was there ever a danger of it?’ Ash queried sharply.

  ‘Not really, I would have sold the watch if things got that bad, but we had to be careful until I was fit to work.’

  ‘The fat scoundrel who pocketed the money I meant for you had better get out of town before I get back,’ he snapped. Rosalind wondered if he could light fires without a flint by simply staring at them long enough with such scorching fury in his eyes.

  ‘We survived, Ash. No, we thrived and he probably did us a favour. You would have stormed back if you knew I was having a baby and accused me of cuckolding you while your back was turned.’

  ‘I might not have done,’ he said, but she could see the truth in his quickly averted eyes and slight, giveaway flush.

  ‘You might have learned to hide your feelings from business rivals, Ash, but it doesn’t work with me.’

  ‘No, confound it,’ he muttered into his cider mug and downed the rest unwarily.

  ‘There, there,’ she said not very sympathetically and got up to thump him on the back as the strength of it caught at his throat. ‘I dare say you will soon learn to take your liquor again.’

  ‘I am accounted to have a very hard head.’

  ‘Not something I would be proud of, but there is no accounting for masculine vanity.’

  ‘Or the feminine superiority,’ he countered grumpily.

  ‘Are you two quarrelling again? What sort of example is that to Miss Jenny when she gets back in the morning?’ Joan asked as she came back in with apple pie and the cream jug. ‘There’s some rum left over from the Figgy Pudding or a piece of Twelfth Night Cake they sent round from the vicarage if you don’t fancy the pie, Your Grace,’ she added, with a stern look at Ash to say if His Dukeliness did not like any of those alternatives he could go without.

  ‘Apple pie will do very well and I developed a taste for rum at sea.’

  ‘Let’s hope you’re better at it than Dorset cider, then,’ Rosalind muttered into her own small helping of apple pie and wondered why sniping at him was so irresistible.

  ‘For your sake if not my own,’ he replied smoothly.

  That was enough of a warning to make her hope he really did have the hard head he was boasting about. He must have, because after an awkward half-hour sitting opposite each other while she drank tea and he brooded, he informed her it was high time he went back to the inn.

  ‘No doubt you have been up since before the nearest cockerel thought about crowing and I have had all the shocks one man can stand in one day to mull over before I can stand any chance of getting to sleep.’

  ‘It has been a long day,’ she said and what an understatement that was.

  ‘You had a walk that would tire an elephant,’ he added with another of the frowns she had a feeling she was going to have to get used to. ‘You must have run most of the way back down that hill as well and it’s a wonder you didn’t break your neck, Ros.’

  Ros was Ash’s name for her during their secret, thrilling courtship and it called back a side of her she wanted to forget. ‘I am used to rough country. I never really was a delicate society miss.’

  ‘No, you always had an adventurous spirit under the society manners and faux obedience to Lackbourne’s orders.’

  ‘I certainly wasn’t very obedient about you.’

  ‘No, but you would have been married off to a nabob if you were that well behaved, so thank goodness you were not.’

  ‘You are a nabob now, are you not?’ she said.

  ‘Oh, yes, my Duchess, I most certainly am. And you are definitely my Duchess.’

  ‘Not until I agree to be and we leave here. And we still have yet to tell Jenny who she really is.’

  ‘The sooner the better,’ he said dourly and she had to hope there was some of the old devil may care Ash left under all the ducal frowns to get them through the next few days or they would have a hard time explaining themselves to their daughter and living with the past.

  Chapter Seven

  Joan had made herself scarce again and Rosalind could hear pots being vigorously washed in the scullery when they passed the half-open kitchen door on Ash’s way out. ‘Here, you will need a lantern,’ she told Ash and grabbed one, then led him to the back door. She refused to struggle with the heavy bolts and unused timbers of the front one on such a damp night and the sight and sound of him shouldering it open would have tongues wagging even harder than they must be already. Even with the rush light to lighten the darkness it felt too intimate in the gloom and enough heat had escaped to warm the little hallway so they did not have to shudder from cold. Yet there was still a fine tremor in her hand when she reached for the lantern’s candle and put it to the rush light so he could leave safely. She wanted to pretend it was from the cold, but it wasn’t and the waver in the light must have told him about her disturbed feelings because when she tried to pass him the lighted lantern he stared down at her as if fascinated by the play of candlelight on her unruly golden hair. She should have found time to take it down, tame it and re-do the knot that held most of it in place or, better still, put on the concealing cap so he could not look into her eyes like this or glance at her slightly parted lips as if he was starving for a taste of them.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said and stared at it almost as if he had forgotten what a lantern was for. ‘I would rather stay,’ he told her huskily.

  ‘It is too soon,’ she said after she had cleared her throat to force the words past the lump in it at saying no to him when she had every right to be wary of him. She still had this stupid urge to step aside and invite him right into her home as if he really was the lost wanderer miraculously returned.

  ‘Not for me it’s not,’ he told her in a sensual murmur that added fire to the fine shiver of need already afflicting her. He sounded wistful about her wild zest for his rangy body last time they were this close to a bedroom and he wasn’t accusing her of being a foul liar. She made herself step back and eye him warily, despite the tension of wanting and needing so alive now how could she ever have thought it was comfortably dead and done with? Obviously it was only sleeping until he stood before her even more potent and promising as a lover.

  ‘If you really want me to be your Duchess, it will take more than you have said or done so far to get me to share your bed again, my lord Duke. I am certainly not jumping back into it the very day you ride back into my life after years away and everything you said before you left.’

  ‘I will persuade you to want me again somehow,’ he said with a silky challenge in his deep voice that did unfair things to the whole of her body and even made her fingers and toes tingle.

  No need for persuasion she decided ruefully. Not when this longing for him whispered temptations she had tried so hard to forget about during her years without him. Look what passion had done to her last time, though, and he certainly didn’t love her now. She stiffened her backbone and opened the back door, silently inviting him to leave. Instead he lingered in the tiny add-on she was surprised they both managed to fit inside without one of the doors open to the inside or outside to make enough space and they were far too close again.

  ‘Now I am supposed to walk into the local taproom and admit my wife threw me out after all these years apart?’

  ‘I only said you were missing because I had no husband and a baby on the way. What did you expect me to say?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said with a sigh. ‘I admit you have sailed as close to the truth as you dared.’

  ‘Good for me,’ she said with bitter irony. ‘I will not change my mind about letting you stay because you don’t want to cross the taproom of the local inn, Ash,’ Rosalind managed to tell him calmly, although her insides were threatening to turn cartwheels and her heartbeat was so loud in her ears she wonder
ed he could not hear it. The very thought of a night of unrestrained passion in his newly mighty arms made her knees go weak, but she wasn’t going to let him know it.

  ‘I wager you will let me into your bed soon,’ he murmured softly.

  ‘You don’t wager, remember?’

  ‘For you I could make an exception.’

  ‘No, I won’t be a bet you have to win.’

  ‘Now I think we would both win,’ he said so softly she told herself that was why she was standing on tiptoe and staring up at him as if he had put a spell on her.

  It sounded more of a promise than a threat when he kissed her in the close confines of the porch she never thought had a romantic plank in it until now. How could she let him do this to her? And what was so special about him that she still wanted him so ridiculously when she ought to push him away and slam the back door? His kiss was hungry and, for a long, giddy moment, she felt sweet fire stir again deep inside. Eagerness hardened her nipples as memories of her wild young lover tore at her certainty she did not want this. She heard herself moan with need when he pulled her inside his heavy coat and ran a wicked hand over her tightly fitted bodice to find the fullness of her ridiculously aroused breasts. He must be gloating over the frustrated needs she could not hide and his heavy-lidded eyes told her he knew about the sweetest of tortures at her secret feminine core as well. Despite all her layers of wool and cotton and flannel he had still managed to spread havoc through her body like wildfire and he knew it, the smug wretch.