The Duchess’s Secret. Elizabeth Beacon
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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,’