Kitabı oku: «The Duchess’s Secret»

Prologue
1811

‘I love you so much, Ash,’ Rosalind told her new husband, with such joy in her heart she wanted to say it over and over again. ‘My husband,’ she whispered to herself. ‘My one and only love.’

‘And I love you, Mrs Hartfield,’ Asher Hartfield said, with such love looking back from smoky grey eyes it was better than any love poem.

‘Enough to come all the way to Gretna to marry me when my stepfather said no,’ she agreed happily as the hired carriage headed back to England.

Travelling by mail coach had been an adventure, but Rosalind was looking forward to a leisurely trip home now they were man and wife and nobody could ever part them again.

‘I would go to the ends of the earth to marry you,’ Ash told her and when their eyes met the fire under all that smoke was plain to see.

Rosalind felt warmed and cherished and eager for the first intimate inn along the way Ash had promised her as they travelled relentlessly, snatching sleep when the roads were smooth enough, never daring to nap in warm taprooms for fear they would be left behind. It had been an odd combination of restless haste, anxiety her stepfather, the Earl of Lackbourne, would catch up and stop them and the boredom and discomfort of travelling at such a pace, but she would do it again a hundred times over in order to marry Ash.

‘Husband,’ she whispered and slipped off a soft tan glove to stare down at the gold band he had placed on her finger less than an hour ago.

‘Wife,’ he said, as if she was a fantasy he had been promising himself since they first laid eyes on one another as well. It had only taken his long, hot stare to send her spinning out of a Mayfair ballroom into this new world made only for them. Rosalind had tumbled fathoms deep in love and Ash had blinded her to other men. The wonder was he felt the same when their two worlds met and they became us two, Ros and Ash, lovers until the end of time.

Rosalind imagined she would be wary of wild young men after her experience of the man who lied to her when she was younger and a lot more naïve, but apparently she could not resist a rogue. But this one was different and Ash Hartfield really was the true love of her life.

‘How far must we travel today?’ she asked breathlessly, thinking even waiting until early nightfall at this wintry time of year would feel like riding a knife-edge when she wanted him so urgently she had no idea how they had managed to keep their hands off each other all the way to Gretna Green.

Ash would be a caring and passionate lover—the fire in his eyes when he met hers said how difficult it was for him to wait—but he had done so all the way from London. Her heart ached with the hugeness of love and she would not even think of the rogue who had lied about how impossible it was for a man to control his base passions in the presence of true beauty right now. Or remember how she had cursed her looks until she met Ash’s eyes across that ballroom. Nothing about Ash’s need for her at the heart of his life felt base or wrong. He was warmth and care and strength. Other men only wanted to possess her body and never mind the contents of her head, or her hopes and dreams—but this man was so different she wanted to pinch herself until she could believe this was really happening and he really loved her.

‘Carlisle,’ he murmured as if even the word was temptation enough for a man so close to the end of his tether.

‘Good,’ she said just as sparsely because she felt as if this lovely fire was eating her from the inside out as well.

* * *

By the time they got to the border between Scotland and England, crossed into that fortified and often fought-over city and found a cosy inn off the main coaching routes, it was getting dark and the fire and frustration inside her were almost out of control. Rosalind went into her husband’s arms with a hunger and sweetness only Ash could arouse in her and knew she was home. This was where she belonged, she decided foggily, as he planted a delicate mesh of kisses down her exposed throat. He filled her senses and thoughts until she had no idea when he undid her laces. As well they had got this far, though, a sane part of her cautioned, because the rest of her did not really care if they were in this private and fire-lit chamber or out in the marketplace and the freezing cold January air. Ash was all that mattered to her, all she wanted to know about in the whole wide world, and wanting this and him felt like everything to her.

‘Rosalind,’ he gasped softly and, on a long sigh, ‘My Ros...a...lind...’ He stretched out her name between gentle nips at her earlobe as he worked his way around to a place she never knew was so responsive until now. He had been saving that revelation until they were like this together, she decided, as heat shot through her and she moaned out his name in an echo of his huskier tones.

Would there was more of it, she decided as breathily she whispered, ‘Asher...’ It felt brief and insufficient ‘Asher Hart...’

‘Enough,’ he murmured as if it would be a command if he had the strictness left to make it so.

‘Yes, it is. Asher, my Heart. That’s enough for me,’ she whispered as that busy mouth of his went back to trailing urgent kisses down her throat and settled on the racing pulse at the base of her neck. So close to her that he must have felt the lurch and race of her heartbeat when he moved from one pulse to the other as if he had to reassure himself both marched to the same beat.

‘Love me, Ash,’ she boldly encouraged him as she wound her arms about his neck and tugged him further down to whisper kisses over the bared slopes of her breasts. It only took a little wriggle to slide the unlaced gown and lacy shift off her shoulders, then he did the rest. She might have found it a little too much intimacy, a little too hasty but for the tremble in his caressing hands. He had felt it, too then, the novelty and bravery of total intimacy. Knowing that, she could let go of her doubts and leap headlong into Mr and Mrs Hartfield. She left him to take the lead and know how to make this fine and good. She trusted him; she knew him. This was right.

* * *

The next morning she still thought so. Ash knew her inside and out now and they had made love so many times last night she could not recall whether it was three or four trips up that lovely road to ecstasy they had travelled before sleep finally overcame them. Now she wasn’t afraid of any thought in his head or touch of his hands, because this was love and he was her first, last and forever. Rosalind loved being his wife so much she could hardly believe it was possible to be so happy, so completely content when she woke up to see Ash watching her with such warmth and tenderness in his intent gaze her heart raced with longing for him all over again.

‘We still have to face our families,’ she reminded them both, feeling some of her blissful joy tumble back to earth. ‘Your grandfather the Duke and my stepfather the Earl will not be very pleased about our elopement. They are sure to look down their long noses and threaten to cut us out of their lives,’ she added and shivered against Ash’s bare shoulder at the thought of those two arrogant old men making their displeasure plain to them and then the rest of the world.

‘My grandfather threatens to do so at regular intervals, but he never does it. They will pretend it was their idea all along and inform the world what a fine match it is when they see I am a reformed man. I don’t know why your stepfather was so against our marriage when I did promise him I would settle down and help Grandfather manage the estates during Charlie’s minority. Now we are wed they will admit we are a well-matched pair and not to be put asunder by a couple of jealous old fools,’ Ash drawled lazily, as if he could not see any need to worry now the deed was well and truly done.

Rosalind felt a superstitious shiver run through her like ice. A wicked old god might be listening and blight this glorious love of theirs if they were too bold and rash with it. ‘It seems like tempting fate to take anything for granted,’ she told him carefully, turning to look up at him and very ready to be distracted if he was not quite done with being her new husband yet.

‘Nothing can part us now, my love,’ he told her and ran a soothing hand down her bare back as if he had felt that shiver of apprehension run down it and was fascinated by where that shiver could take them.

‘Truly? Nothing I could tell you would stop you loving me?’

‘What could? I love you; you love me. There’s nothing a couple of bitter old men and a pack of gawping fools can do about it now.’

Rosalind thought about the nasty little secret her stepfather had held over her for the last two years to keep her obedient and half-heartedly attracting the best offer her looks could draw in while a shadow loomed over her happiness. What would the Earl do now his hopes of arranging a profitable marriage for his penniless stepdaughter were ruined? She ought to tell Ash in order to draw the sting out of the story Lord Lackbourne would tell him with relish when he found out what they had done. His lordship’s price for housing her since her mother had died could not be paid by the second son of a second son, even if Ash was the grandson of a duke. Ash had warned her from the start that his father had gambled and caroused most of his fortune away before breaking his neck on the hunting field. Ash had gone on to admit his own misdeeds and his wild ways, but he did not gamble and that seemed a very good thing to his future wife. But the fact remained Lord Lackbourne would not squeeze much in the way of settlements out of Rosalind’s husband. The thought of his frustrated fury when he had been expecting the golden good looks she had inherited from her famously beautiful late mother to attract fortune and influence instead of a rackety young man made her shiver again.

‘What is it? Why are you so worried about admitting we are married?’ Ash said, pushing himself further up in the bed so he could look down at her face in a shaft of midwinter sunshine peeking nosily in through a gap in the innkeeper’s best bed hangings.

It wasn’t a tale Rosalind wanted to tell, but did she dare keep it to herself? What if the Earl and Ash’s military brother caught up with them today? Any chance she might have to explain her folly two years ago would fly out of the window under their critical eyes and her stepfather had never loved her, so what was to stop him telling Ash about her youthful stupidity? Even the thought of Ash looking at her with horror instead of love made her flinch from saying anything, though. Maybe the Earl would be struck by lightning and so changed he became her kind and gentle protector instead of the impatient and penny-pinching autocrat she knew him to be.

‘Are you really sure nothing could part us?’ she asked, sitting up in bed as well and turning her face up to meet his gaze again with every ounce of sincerity she had in her while she tried to gauge his inner thoughts.

‘Do you mean to be faithful to me?’ he demanded with a hard note under his usually flexible deep voice and in his smoke-grey eyes.

‘Of course I do, to my dying day,’ she swore as ardently as if they were in front of an archbishop, because anything less than total fidelity to this fine and brilliant young man felt unthinkable.

‘Then we have nothing to worry about,’ he told her with an only-for-her smile on his slightly stubbly face and a gleam in his eyes she simply had to resist until she had confided her silly story and got the last obstacle to their happiness out of the way.

* * *

‘What did you say?’

‘I should have told you before, but—’

‘No,’ Ash roared and leapt out of bed, ‘there is no “but” in the world important enough to stop you telling me until you had my ring on your finger. You lied; you used me,’ he added and the revulsion in his voice was straight out of her worst nightmares, but at the same time too real to hope she would wake up and find she had dreamt it.

Rosalind watched her husband throw on his clothes as if it felt wrong to be naked with her now and shock held her frozen, like an abandoned houri after a night of unimaginable sin. Her mother had been right then; she should never have told her husband what a fool she was at sixteen. She should have kept it to herself that young and silly Rosalind Feldon had let a handsome young rogue convince her she was the love of his life before she found the touchstone of true love the moment she saw Ash. She had been so blinded by the grown-up glow and glamour of her first love affair she had let that rogue convince her the punch at her first grown-up party was made with spices and lemon juice and honey and wouldn’t harm a baby. Later he told her a man like him couldn’t help himself in the company of such a beautiful girl. Rosalind had been so intoxicated with rum and dreams he had managed to seduce her while she was so dazed and loose-limbed she had hardly known her own name and thought it a strange and oddly uncomfortable dream. Waking to an appalling headache and the terrible realisation it had truly happened, Rosalind had discovered the furtive rogue had left at daybreak for his new posting at the Russian court without even a note to say sorry.

‘No, I never actually lied and I do love you. I was a fool to believe a word that man said, but I refuse to let a careless rake ruin my life, then or now. It cost a great deal of heartache to put my life back together, but I know the difference between real love and pretend—I know you love me as he never could. He was too selfish to ever love like you do, with every bit of your heart and soul. My mother was dying when he did what he did,’ Rosalind added and paused for a moment to find enough strength to carry on talking with the memory of that terrible, precious time clogging her throat with tears. Mama had urged her to be strong and not tell anyone else, ever, and she was so right. ‘She made me promise not to let him ruin my life,’ she whispered sadly now.

‘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.