The Autumn Duchess (A Duchess for All Seasons Book 4)

by Jillian Eaton

  If only a jaded duke was so easy to fix, Hannah thought with a wistful twist of her mouth as she climbed a spiral staircase to the second floor. She walked slowly down the hall, her gaze drawn to the faded rectangles on the wall where she could only assume portraits used to hang. But of whom, and why had they been taken down? She doubted she’d get an answer from her husband. Maybe Peterson, although he struck her as the loyal sort who wouldn’t divulge any information without his employer’s consent. She had hoped to encounter a maid prone to gossip, but aside from the cook, a Frenchman who spoke very little English, Peterson was the only servant she had met.

  Protocol dictated she receive a personal introduction to the household staff. Particularly since, as the duchess, she would be in charge of their daily tasks and schedules. But if Wycliffe had any intention of such an introduction, he had failed to mention it. A man of few words, her husband. And even fewer emotions. But like the house he had allowed to fall into neglect, he wasn’t hopeless. There was more to him than the surly façade he presented to the world. Hannah was certain of it. His past experiences had made him hard and bitter, but even the hardest clay could be softened by the right hands.

  The hall came to a dead end with one door on the left and another on the right. The door on the left opened to reveal a broom closet poorly stocked with supplies (unsurprising, given that the cleanliness of the house left much to be desired) and the door on the right refused to open at all. Wondering if it was locked or merely stuck, Hannah turned the knob and gave it a hard push. With a loud creak and a protesting groan the door swung inward to reveal a room so dark it was impossible to see more than a few inches in front of her face.

  She would have thought it was another closet, except it was much too big. Stepping back out into the hallway, she retrieved a candle from one of the sconces on the wall and returned to the mysterious room. Mindful of the dripping wax, she held the candle high above her head, sending a spill of weak light across old wooden floorboards that were covered in dust and – she shuddered at the sight of them – rodent droppings.

  There were no windows in the room and no furniture either save a single bed pushed up against the back wall. The mattress still had linens on it, although it was clear it had not been used in years, if not decades. It was also small, the size of a child’s bed, although who would put a child in such a dark room so far away from all of the other bedchambers?

  A floorboard creaked beneath the heel of her shoe as her curiosity drove her further into the room. She lifted her arm higher, sending light flickering up towards the ceiling. It was then she saw the most peculiar thing yet: two metal hooks that had been drilled into the middle of the ceiling. Spaced approximately two feet apart, each one had a small pulley with a rope attached to it.

  “What in the world…” she breathed.

  “They called it my rehabilitation room.”

  With a loud shriek Hannah spun around and nearly dropped the candle when she saw her husband looming in the doorway, his large frame casting a long rippling shadow across the floor. “You – you shouldn’t sneak up on people like that!” she cried, flattening her palm against her chest where her heart was pounding against her ribcage. Wycliffe lifted a brow.

  “And you shouldn’t be sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong. Who told you that you could come up here?”

  “No one told me I couldn’t.” She took a deep breath. “What – what do mean, this was your rehabilitation room? I don’t understand.”

  “I didn’t either, at the time. Then again, I was just a young boy.” He looked past her, the distant look in his eye revealing he wasn’t seeing the room as it was now but as it had been. “My father was determined his one and only heir would not grow up to be a cripple, so he had this room constructed. I fell off a horse,” he explained when his gaze shifted to Hannah and he saw her confusion. “One I never should have been riding, but I was an impulsive lad. The horse bolted across an open field and tripped in a hole. I would have been fine if I’d been thrown clear. A few bumps and bruises, perhaps a broken arm. But my foot caught in the stirrup iron.”

  Hannah muffled a gasp behind her hand. The corners of her husband’s mouth lifted in a grim smile before he continued speaking in the flat, monotone voice of someone who was remarking on the weather instead of recalling a terrible childhood memory.

  “I do not remember how long I was dragged. Honestly, I don’t remember very much about the incident at all. Most of my recollection has come from what others have told me. When they found me I was unconscious. My right leg had been broken in three separate places and the horse’s shoe had given me a nasty cut that eventually turned into this.” He tapped the puckered scar on the side of his face. “For a while the doctor was convinced I was going to die. I was in so much pain I wished for death.” He glanced up at the hooks. “But I didn’t know what pain was. Not yet, at least.”

  “Is this where they kept you? After – after the accident?” Hannah couldn’t imagine condemning a child to such a bleak, windowless room. Particularly one who was so severely injured. Sunshine may have not been medicine for the body, but surely it was medicine for the soul.

  “Not at first.” Wycliffe’s gaze lingered on the ceiling before it flicked to the bed. His jaw hardened. “But when my screams began to distract my father from his work, they moved me in here. It wasn’t just enough that I survived, you see. The duke did not want a cripple for his heir. He was determined I would return to the way I’d been before the fall. It did not occur to him, or perhaps he simply refused to acknowledge, that once bones have broken they can never be placed back exactly as they were. Although he did try.”

  Wycliffe looked at Hannah then, and the bleakness she saw in the depths of his eyes made her heart ache. Without thinking she reached out and took his hand. For an instant his fingers entwined with hers and she felt the steady beat of his pulse before he abruptly yanked his arm away.

  “Do not come in here again.” Any softness she might have glimpsed was gone, replaced with an icy indifference so cold she felt the chill of it beneath her clothes. He turned on his heel and limped away, leaving the door open behind him. After a few moments she followed and watched from the bannister as he walked stiffly down the stairs, her expression thoughtful.

  For all his bristle and bluster, her husband had just revealed something that filled her with hope.

  A crack in the ice around his heart.

  Chapter Six

  Wycliffe could not remember the last time he’d spoken about his accident, and it infuriated him that he had revealed so much to Hannah. Particularly when he’d glanced up and seen the pity in those quiet gray eyes.

  He did not want her pity. He did not want anything from her.

  Except another kiss.

  He stopped short, hands curling into fists as he closed his eyes and tried to banish any memory of their kiss from his mind.

  It was a futile endeavor.

  Try as he might (and he had tried) he could not forget the taste of her lips, or the satiny velvet of her skin, or the raspy mewling sound she’d made in the back of her throat when she came. Just thinking about it – the sight of her head thrown back in wild abandon, the sound of her desperate cries, the sweet scent of her desire – was enough to give him a bloody cockstand right there in the middle of the foyer. His raging arousal wasn’t helped by the fact that he hadn’t touched a woman in five years, and he’d never touched one he wanted as much as Hannah.

  His gray-eyed, mousy little wife had gotten under his skin like no other woman since Lady Portia, and the knowledge both thrilled and terrified him.

  Before Hannah showed up on his doorstep he’d been content in his life of solitude. Not happy – who needed happiness? – but content. Then she’d come barging in with her ridiculous proposal and instead of sending her away as he should have done, he’d invited her into the parlor. A fatal mistake, it seemed, for the instant she had revealed that if he did not marry her she would simply find someone els
e he’d been overcome with jealousy.

  Marry someone else? He still bristled at the thought. Lord knew he hadn’t been keen on the idea himself, but he’d be damned if he let another man have her. The foolish chit would have ended up getting herself hurt or worse going from door to door like some sort of common gypsy.

  A chill racing down his spine as he imagined what might have happened if she’d knocked on the wrong one, Evan crossed the foyer and went into his study, closing the door firmly behind him.

  He’d saved her. And how did she repay him? By stirring up old memories and feelings long believed dead.

  Sitting behind his desk, a twin pedestal mahogany piece that had once belonged to his father, he began to blindly flip through a stack of unopened letters, many of them dated months earlier. Peterson knew he never responded to mail, but the stubborn valet kept bringing it to him anyways in the hopes that the right correspondence might spark a renewed interest in returning to London. Evan snorted at the thought. He may have taken a bride, but if there was one thing he never had any intention of doing it was wading back into the swamp of high society.

  “Tell the groom I will be there in a minute, Peterson,” he said without looking up when he heard the door open. He’d planned a morning ride on his trusty old gelding (the only horse he knew with absolute certainty would never throw him, and one of only a few that tolerated his stiffness in the saddle), and had nearly been out the door when he’d heard the soft pitter-patter of footsteps in the east wing and had gone to investigate.

  “Get off your lazy arse and tell him yourself.” Sauntering into the study as if it were his own, the Duke of Colebrook winked one bright blue eye before collapsing onto an oversized leather chair and kicking his heels up on a corner table. “Darker than a witch’s tit in here. Would it kill you to open a curtain and let in a little light?”

  “You’re welcome to leave if my choice of décor offends you,” Evan growled. Colebrook’s impromptu visits had long been a point of aggravation, but short of keeping the exterior doors locked at all times he had no way of preventing the duke from dropping in whenever he pleased.

  “I came to offer my congratulations.” Colebrook gave a winning smile. As fair as Evan was dark, his sandy blond hair was always expertly combed away from a face that could have made an angel swoon. Side by side, the two dukes could not have been more different. Colebrook was handsome, charismatic, and sociable. Evan was…none of those things. And yet for reasons that baffled Colebrook continued to stop by, seemingly determined to create a friendship that, if Evan had his way, would never exist.

  “You’ve offered them.” Shoving the stack of letters aside, Evan fixed his fellow duke with a frosty glare. “Now go away.”

  Still smarting from the last prank Colebrook had pulled – the one that had resulted in being awoken in the middle of the night by three drunken sailors belting out a lewd tune about a mermaid – he had no interest in playing the part of charitable host. Or any host, for that matter. As a man who valued his privacy, he did not take kindly to visitors. Particularly visitors who showed up whenever they pleased and refused to leave.

  “Where is this lovely wife of yours I have heard so much about? You’ve got the entire village buzzing like a swarm of hornets.” Colebrook’s smile widened. “Won’t be long before the ton catches word that the reclusive Duke of Wycliffe has finally tied the knot.”

  “And I’m sure you won’t have anything to do with spreading the news,” Evan said sourly.

  “Moi?” Colebrook spread his fingers over his chest. “Wouldn’t dream of it, old chap. Which is why I told my cousin not to breathe a word of it when he returned to London.”

  “I thought you were supposed to be London,” Evan grumbled. Resigning himself to the fact that Colebrook had no intention of leaving anytime soon, he clasped his hands behind his head and leaned back in his chair. If he was going to be miserable for the undeterminable future then he might as well be comfortable.

  “Had to return early.” Colebrook’s smile faded. “Some of the renovations with the estate went awry. Turns out one of the so-called architects I hired knew less about roof support than he let on. I won’t bore you with the details–”

  “Thank God for that.”

  “–but suffice it to say the entire bloody house is unlivable until new beams can be put up. Which is why we’re going to be roommates, old chap.”

  Evan leaned forward so quickly his teeth snapped together and he bit his tongue. Sucking furiously on the tiny cut, he stared at Colebrook in horrified disbelief. “The hell we are.”

  “I prefer a west-facing bedchamber. Sunsets are pretty enough, but sunrises?” The duke shook his head. “Those I prefer to sleep through. I’ve put up the majority of my staff in the village inn, but I’ll need accommodations for my personal valet, footman, and cook. No offense intended, Wycliffe, but I’ve tasted that over-sauced rubbish your French chef dares to call food and I must say he’s about as good at his job as my architect.”

  “You’re not staying here and neither is your valet, your footman, or your bloody cook!” Evan rose out of his chair and leaned forward, knuckles gleaming white in the dim lighting as he braced his fingers on his desk. “This is not a damn hotel.”

  Colebrook frowned. “That’s not very hospitable of you, Wycliffe. It is not as if you don’t have the room. Why, this place is so big and empty you would hardly now I was even here.”

  “My answer is no,” he said flatly. “Now kindly take your feet off my furniture and sod off.”

  “Sorry, old chap, but I can’t do that.” While Colebrook’s tone was vaguely apologetic, his blue eyes glittered with amusement. “Two carriages are on their way here as we speak. Just a few personal belongings, you understand. I can hardly be expected to live out of a single trunk now, can I?”

  Evan grinded his teeth together with so much force he felt a distinctive pop in his jaw. Short of engaging Colebrook in fisticuffs (a fight he would almost certainly lose given his physical impairment) or shooting him outright (a compelling choice, although he feared he didn’t have the temperament for prison) there was nothing he could do but allow Colebrook to stay.

  But he didn’t have to like it.

  “I’ll direct my butler to have your things delivered to the third floor when they arrive.”

  “Is there a west-facing bedchamber?”

  For the first time since Colebrook had entered his study, Evan smiled. “There are several.” There were also mice, cobwebs, and a leaky roof which was why the third floor had been sealed off for the better part of half a decade. “Take your pick. And please, if there is anything you need, do not hesitate to let my valet Peterson know.”

  Colebrook gave an approving nod. “Now that’s more like it, Wycliffe. You know, I think this time together will be good for us. Strengthen our friendship and all that.”

  “Oh most definitely,” Evan said gravely. “If you’ll excuse me, I have a horse waiting.”

  “Going for a ride?” Jumping to his feet with surprising quickness given his leisurely nature, Colebrook followed Evan to the door, the heels of his boots echoing on the wooden floor. “I’ll join you.”

  “No. You won’t.” And without another word Evan walked through the door and shut it soundly in Colebrook’s face.

  Chapter Seven

  Hannah spent the rest of the day making lists. An organized person by nature, she had relied on lists from a very young age, first to catalog her doll collection and then to keep a running tally on all of her sister’s extravagant purchases. Needless to say those lists had been quite long, but they were nothing compared to the one she was currently working on.

  Remove and replace drapes in every room, it began in her neat, tidy handwriting.

  Wash windows, repair cracked panes

  New shutters – iron or wood?

  Wash and polish floors

  Beeswax!!

  Dust all sconces and chandeliers everything

  Replace candles


  New furniture

  New rugs

  New paintings

  And so the list went. On and on and on until it began to feel less like a list and more like a small novel.

  Exhausted from climbing up and down countless flights of stairs (not to mention the sheer enormity of the tasks that laid ahead), she collapsed onto her bed and started to close her eyes, but no sooner had she drifted off to sleep than she was jolted awake by Elsbeth.

  “You’re not wearing that to dinner, are you? It’s filthy.” Charging into the room with all the discretion of a small but determined rhinoceros, the maid took one look at Hannah’s dirt-streaked dress before she promptly went to the closet and pulled out a blue gown overlaid with sheer white muslin. “Quickly,” she said when Hannah groaned and dragged a pillow over her head. “It wouldn’t due to be late. You’re a duchess now, you know.”

  Hannah did know, mostly because Elsbeth wouldn’t let her forget. Being the personal maid of a gentlewoman was one thing, but being the maid of a duchess…well, that was something else entirely and Elsbeth was taking her elevated position very seriously. So seriously, in fact, that Hannah was tempted to offer Elsbeth the title if only to give herself a moment’s peace and quiet.

  “I believe I’ll take supper in my room. I’m very tired.”

  Elsbeth clucked her tongue. “Don’t be ridiculous. You have a guest!”

  “A guest?” The pillow tumbled to the floor as Hannah sat up and frowned. “What sort of guest?”