A maid came forward. At first Livia thought John would refuse to go with her, but when Mickey took his hand, he went with him. “I want to know where they are,” she said.
The maid curtseyed.
“I’ll show you,” Adrian promised. “But I want to see your needs attended to first.”
Finch stood by the doors, but he addressed the woman waiting for his attention first. “My dear, this is Miss Conway, a distant cousin and my mother’s constant companion.”
“She’s heard of your arrival, your grace,” the woman said in a gravelly tone, low for a woman. “She’s agitated. Wants to know who is here and did they come to see her.”
“We did. But I would see her tomorrow, when we have rested.”
Miss Conway sighed. “She’ll make a fuss.”
The words appeared more ominous than Livia had thought, because Adrian closed his eyes briefly and echoed Miss Conway’s sigh. “I see.” He turned to Livia and took both her hands. “Would you mind meeting my mother now? Are you too tired for this?”
“Won’t she think it impertinent of me to visit her in all my dirt?” Livia longed for a bath and her bed, not to mention a decent meal, but she would not let Adrian down. What dowager duchess received a person straight off a long journey? True, she was not particularly grubby, thanks to Finch, but she felt it.
Adrian removed her cloak with his own hands, and then her hat, handing them both to a maid. “She will not object, or denigrate you, I swear it.”
The heaviness in his tone made her look up from removing her gloves. But she could find nothing to say when she became aware of the bleak expression on his face. This mattered to him. And she was no nearer knowing why.
She had to go with him and trust him to know best, because she certainly didn’t.
Consequently, when he held his arm at an angle, she placed her hand on it in the proper manner. The grand staircase leading up from the center of the hall proved more than adequate to take both of them.
They said nothing, all but oblivious to the chatter going on in the hall as they left. Finch was making herself busy instructing the maid on the distribution of the luggage and ordering a hot meal for her mistress. Adrian had traveled without a valet. Only Loomis, who strode into the hall as if he owned it, was there for him.
And her. Without a doubt Livia would always stand by his side.
He took her up another flight of stairs, and turned left, along a corridor decorated tastefully but in an old-fashioned way, that of a generation earlier. Heavier, darker furniture, and paintings that were covered with a thin layer of yellowing varnish. She would examine them later. This was her domain now, and she needed to take charge of it.
Adrian said nothing until they neared a door at the end, where they paused and waited for Miss Conway. “My mother has been ill for some time. I want you to see her as she is and understand. You are brave, Livia. I know you can face this.”
Livia swallowed, but nodded her agreement. The dowager had contracted the pox. Rumors abounded about what the illness had done to her, but nobody had seen her since she’d fallen ill. The disease could render people blind, deaf and hideously disfigured. Either that or left its victim relatively untouched. The threatened tantrum Miss Conway had talked about indicated petulance, but the dowager had been notorious for that in her time.
“Very well.” She tightened her grip on him before she released him and pasted a smile on her face. “Lead on.”
Miss Conway tapped on the door but did not wait for a summons. She led the way into a pleasant room, with a sofa and a set of shelves holding books. It was empty but for a footman, who sprang up and bowed to them. He did not leave as Miss Conway opened an inner door.
The room inside was warm and welcoming. Comfortable, modern furniture was laid out here, but more sparsely. A fire blazed in the grate, and a woman sat next to it, a tea dish in her hand.
She was lovely. Breathtakingly so. Livia sank into a curtsy.
“Mama, this is my bride, Livia, the new Duchess of Preston. She is the daughter of the Marquess of Strenshall. Livia, my mother, the Duchess of Preston.”
The woman sighed. “Conway says I’m a dowager.” She spoke slowly, in a musical voice that charmed as the words dropped into the space between them.
She watched Livia dip and rise. Deeper than she should have, the curtsy she should give a queen, but this woman seemed to silently demand it.
“Pretty,” the duchess observed.
“Thank you, your grace.” Livia refused to seek help from the duke, who stood silently by his mother’s side. He had bowed but said nothing.
The duchess nodded and turned her attention to Miss Conway. “May I have more tea?”
Livia blinked. The lack of manners astounded her.
Nobody else seemed to think anything amiss. Nodding, the companion stepped forward and poured a thin liquid from the teapot standing on a side table. The tea set was not as delicate or fashionable as Livia would have expected. Rather, it was pottery instead of porcelain, the thick stuff generally used in kitchens.
The duchess did not appear to notice, but took the dish, the brew an unhealthy pale color, and took a sip. No steam rose from the surface. On the whole, Livia was glad she had not been offered any. No refreshments accompanied the tea, no bread and butter, or dainty cakes and biscuits. Nothing.
This was strange. Perhaps the duchess preferred her tea unaccompanied. But in kitchen pottery?
The dowager wore a silk gown without a hoop. Ladies always wore hoops unless, like Livia, they were wearing riding clothes for traveling. She put her dish back in its saucer with great care, as if it were Meissen.
The duchess looked up at Livia. She had not yet asked her to sit. Her eyes were empty. “Who are you?” Before Livia could answer, she went on. “I feel sure I must know you. Did I see you at the Duchess of Mountsorrel’s last week? You’re very pretty, in a common kind of way.” Glancing away, she noticed her tea and picked it up. “Dear me, this will not do.”
Without warning, she tossed the dish at Conway, who dodged neatly to one side. The dish smashed against the wall. Now Livia understood why they were using cheap pottery. The sound made her start, but she held her ground, watching the woman carefully. Shock raked her as the dowager babbled on, darting from one topic to another.
“My husband will be home soon, will he not? With another whore, I’ll be bound. They think I don’t know, but they don’t know anything about it. Not the servants, anyhow. I’ll creep into bed with them later. Scare the woman half to death. Then I’ll…” She lost interest, turned her head and met her son’s eyes. “Oh, now you’re a handsome one. I feel sure I know you. It will come to me later. But you will do.”
Livia had never heard Adrian sigh so deeply. “Come,” he murmured to Livia. “She will work herself into a frenzy soon. Let Miss Conway take care of her.”
Numbly, numb realization striking her to the core, Livia let Adrian lead her out of the pretty set of rooms. They did not bid the dowager farewell.
Adrian took her to the top of the house, to a long gallery, ranked with portraits on both walls, interspersed with windows on one side. He sat her down. Livia tried not to shiver, but she wasn’t cold. She took his hands, strong and capable, but trembling. “She’s mad, isn’t she?”
“Yes.” He spoke quietly. “Her brain is eaten away.” The bitter words horrified Livia, but she kept silent. She had to hear this, whatever it was, and Adrian was finding difficulty in telling her. He wouldn’t look at her, but stared at their joined hands. Adrian closed his eyes and sucked in a deep breath. “I’m sorry. I’ve never told anyone this before. People either knew or they didn’t.” He got to his feet. “Come. I need to show you something.”
Guessing that he needed time, she stood and went with him, slowly walking down the line of portraits. People dressed in clothes of ages gone by stared haughtily
down at her. Whatever came of today her portrait would appear here, beside Adrian’s. A housekeeper might lead visitors down the serried row, telling them, “After the first week of their marriage, the duke and duchess lived entirely separate lives.”
She shuddered. That would not happen to them.
He stopped in front of a portrait of a man. He wore the full-bottomed wig men favored at the turn of the century, and robes of crimson and ermine. Coronation robes, which put the painting about thirty years old. “This is the last duke,” Adrian murmured.
The painter had captured an excellent likeness. A man in the prime of life, with velvety brown eyes and olive skin. He gazed down his long nose at her, his haughtiness frozen in time.
She had seen someone like him before.
Gasping, she turned to Adrian, then back to the portrait. “How can that be?” Because except for the outdated clothes, she could be looking at her husband.
“Because he is not my grandfather. He’s my father.”
* * * *
Adrian caught Livia when she reeled. He should have waited to tell her. The shock of meeting his mother had been too much for her. On top of the journey through the freezing countryside, he’d given her the shock of her life.
Swinging her into his arms, he carried her downstairs and into his suite of rooms. He blessed whoever had lit the fire and left a tray of tea things by the window. Nobody was in evidence. He laid her gently on the bed, grateful that he didn’t have to handle a hooped skirt. He came down next to her, lying on his side. Perhaps he’d better go. But when he went to roll out of bed, she grasped his arm. “No, stay. Tell me.”
“Are you sure? You know it all now.” She could work it out if she wanted to. “You can leave whenever you want to.”
“Don’t say that! Tell me the rest, Adrian, please!”
How could he leave her so confused? He owed her the full story, sordid though it was. “The contract between my parents was arranged before the last duke, the man I knew as my grandfather, knew that his son had the pox. He’d caught it in Rome, on the Grand Tour. But before the wedding he went and confessed to the duke, who insisted he go ahead with the ceremony. The duke wanted an heir, and he was determined to have one. The pox can be passed on to the children, so he refused to allow his son near his new wife. Instead, he took her.”
His mouth settled into a grim line. His grandfather had been a hard, unforgiving man. “He made her pregnant. After I was born, the duke no longer cared what my mother did. He had the heir of his body.”
He chose his words carefully, keeping his story as impartial as he could, but for all that, Livia’s eyes filled with dawning horror.
Relentlessly he continued with his story. “My mother and—her husband went to London. That was when she caught the illness from him. Before that, the duke had refused to let him touch her. My mother adored her husband, especially his kindness after my grandfather had used her. I do not know who did the seducing, but she returned here with the chancres and the rash, and forced the duke to take care of her. She recovered, and her husband did not. But the disease lies dormant in some people, and that is what happened here. All those years it must have been eating away at her.”
Tears filled Livia’s heavenly blue eyes, making wet trails down either side of her face. “Oh, how terrible! What about his wife?”
“My grandmother? She died young. I never knew her.” From all accounts she was a gentle soul. She’d never have survived this horror. “I didn’t know my true parentage until I was nine years old, and the duke heard some visiting children taunting me about being the son of a blackamoor. After that how could I reveal the true story? Legally I was the child of incest, illegitimate, since my grandfather did not marry my mother. He put the fear of God—or the devil—into me. I always said nothing, but I never acknowledged the story of the blackamoor as a lie. It’s far better than the truth.”
“What happened to the page?”
A reluctant smile curved his lips. “My mother adored him. She kept him until he grew too big to be a page, then asked him what he wanted. He worked as her footman for a while, then left. He has a chandler’s shop at London docks, a wife and a brood of children. None of them my siblings. Although I wish they were.”
“Yes.” Her grip on his arm was like the clutch of death. “Adrian, none of this is your fault. Poor boy, to have suffered so much! And you were a scandal from birth.”
“I feel guilty every time I take the Eucharist.” That confession just slipped out. He’d never admitted that to a soul before.
“Do not!” She would make a bruise. He would cherish it. “It’s not wrong, Adrian. You are not wrong. You have borne so much.”
She made him sound like a martyr. With a harsh laugh, he waved his free arm around, indicating the large room with its brocade hangings and luxurious furnishings. “I have suffered in comfort. Many more people are worse off. But my only living parent is a woman who does not know my name half the time, and on the occasions she does recognize me, I distress her.”
“That is not your fault. Or hers.”
No, it was not. But she was hardly an innocent. “Having her so ill makes it easier for me to leave her here.”
He bit his lip. He’d never told this to anyone before. Who would he tell? “When I was little, she coddled me, used me to bait my father. Now I know why she was so bitter. He had given her the illness that would kill her. Eventually. She’d always had wild changes of mood. Now she’s completely unpredictable.”
“That’s why her rooms are so bare,” Livia said.
He nodded. “She breaks things. I know people call me heartless for abandoning her, but what else can I do? She doesn’t know me, takes no comfort in my presence.” God, he’d never been so open. Confession hurt. He swung off the bed and strode to the door. “I should leave you to rest.”
“Adrian, don’t go.”
Her forlorn tones made him return to her, cup her face in his hands as he always loved to do. The touch of her silky skin soothed him, the magic of her presence calmed him. She reached up, touched his cheek. “Adrian, I’m so sorry about your childhood. You’ve overcome so much. And yet you are you, not some warped, twisted person. Still the man I love—”
He could bear it no more. Instead of letting her finish, he brought his mouth down to hers and kissed her. Her lips clung to his as if she would never let him go. He didn’t want to go. But how could she bear him near her, now she knew all the sordid secrets about him?
“You must not,” he told her when their lips separated. “You cannot. I’m not worthy of you—” But he couldn’t push her away.
“You’re more than worthy,” she assured him. “You’re my husband and I love you.”
Tears pricked at his eyes. He couldn’t remember the last time he shed them, but if any situation deserved it, this was the time. He swallowed. “You shouldn’t.”
“I do,” she insisted, banding her arms around him.
“You know I love you. Adore you. That’s why you must not say these things.”
“I knew no such thing until you told me just now. A normal husband would reject me, send me away for what I’ve done. You’ve never even shown repulsion. Adrian, I took a lover. I bore a child.”
A smile curved his lips. “But I have done much the same. I don’t have a child, but believe me, my love, I took more than one mistress. I was prepared to marry a woman who would go and find her own amusements after she’s done her duty.” He kissed her forehead. “I confess, I cannot bear the idea of you doing that. You have far too much power over me, but I would not have it any other way.”
“Adrian, don’t go. Ever. Make love to me.”
How could he resist that request from the woman he loved, respected, adored more than anyone else on earth?
Considering they both wore so many clothes, the task of getting undressed should have taken much l
onger than it did. He could hardly recall it. But he did not want to take her that way. He wanted nothing between them. They had dropped every barrier, revealed all their truths. This act of lovemaking needed to be achieved naked. Skin to skin.
He blessed the servant who had thought to light a fire in here when they arrived. They could lie on top of the covers and gaze at each other while he kissed her, and told her the final truth. “I love you, Livia. Now and for always.”
Her laughter rang around the room as she tugged him down to kiss her. “Then prove it,” she said breathlessly when they came up for air.
Thoroughly. He would leave her in no doubt of his adoration. He worshiped every inch of her body, lavishing kisses and caresses on every curve, every delicious fold. The textures of her fascinated him—the way her nipples crinkled when he touched them and became rosy red when he took them into his mouth and sucked. The soft, wet flesh between her thighs, and how wet it became when he slid a finger inside her and teased her with his mouth. He craved the taste of her, the rising scent of her arousal, mingling with his as finally, he joined their bodies.
Adrian pushed himself up on his hands, so he could gaze at her, and the place where they became one. “This is mine.”
Boldly, she touched herself and him, making him smile. His Livia was becoming adventurous in love. “And this is mine,” she said. “Only mine.”
“Only yours,” he repeated, and proceeded to prove it.
Epilogue
Three years later
Sitting at her desk, Livia looked up, startled, as a whirlwind burst through the study door. Her son was proving a complete handful. He’d walked early, talked early and now he was escaping his nurse at regular intervals. Far too easily for Livia’s liking. But at least he came to her. “Mama, John says I must learn my catechism. But why?”
Patient, careful John had turned out to be most unlike any Shaw she had ever known before. Even her oldest brother, Marcus, the staidest of them all, had his wild side. But John loved nothing more than his books and learning. She was already seeking a place at Oxford for him, when he felt ready. He would most likely become a bishop in the fullness of time.
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