The Duchess's Secret (HQR Historical)

by Elizabeth Beacon

  ‘Maybe you should have been more careful how you spent your seed, then, Your Grace,’ she said coldly as her news fell sadly flat and she wished she had kept it to herself all the way to Edenhope now.

  She recalled this urge to cry for no reason from last time she was with child, so it could not be because Ash seemed less than delighted that his plans for putting his Duchess to work filling the ducal nurseries were turning out so perfectly they had not even got to Edenhope and she was already pregnant.

  ‘I could not stop myself making love to you, Ros. I can’t seem to keep my hands off you; I’m sorry,’ he said.

  She narrowed her eyes and argued silently with that statement as she felt her gorge rise even before she had got out of bed this morning. He had obviously had plenty of lovers under those magical, sensuous hands of his before he came back to her. Her mental picture of him in bed with another woman before he came home to her was too much for her. She dashed off to the dressing room just in time to retch into the bowl as if her poor stomach was being turned inside out.

  He surprised her by appearing in the quaint old powdering room in this ancient inn despite her nausea and tears as she was repeatedly even more wretchedly ill than usual. This morning it was her husband who held her hair back from her face for her while she was horribly sick. Ash must have taken a quick lesson in what to do for her from Joan when he came back into the room a few moments later with a fresh bowl and a small jug and bowl. He washed her face with a cloth soaked in honey water, then folded her shivering body back against his strong one while they waited to see if her stomach had done cramping for the day. The blessed warmth and contact with him made her feel cherished as she sighed a great sigh and closed her eyes in relief because it felt as if her ordeal was finally over, for today.

  ‘Dry toast and warm tea,’ he told her with a nod as if he intended to be sure she had everything she needed to cope with this daily ordeal from now on, even if he had to make it himself.

  ‘Joan will have ordered it by now,’ she told him wearily.

  ‘Is it like this all the time?’ he asked. He had coped well today, but he was a man and they did so hate drama and illnesses.

  ‘Not if this one is the same as Jenny, but I have no idea if it will be yet. I suppose we will just have to wait and see.’

  ‘How long did you feel like this with her then?’

  ‘Until the third month, then it was only now and again and once I felt her quicken in my womb I was never sick again until the day she was born.’

  ‘I have only been back three months,’ he said as if the thought of several more weeks or months of this might make him take to his bed every morning until she felt well enough to get up as well.

  It might be a novel cure for morning sickness, but she would be willing to try if only Judith sent a swift reply to her questions about making love when you were with child. So now she knew what she would be doing while she waited for him to come back from his ride and supposed she ought to have written to Judith as soon as she suspected she was pregnant again. She had not, though, and they did not abstain from enjoying themselves in the meantime and it had done no harm, a thought that cheered her up quite wonderfully. ‘But we have been very busy about my duchessly duty, Your Grace,’ she joked.

  ‘It never feels like a duty to me, Ros,’ he said very seriously indeed and she twisted round to look up at his face now she was fairly certain she could do so without ending up back where they started.

  ‘Nor me,’ she agreed and that was as close as either of them got to admitting the endless need between them was more than lust and a duke’s convenient desire for this outcome. It was enough, she told herself as they made an even more leisurely journey from Selby to Edenhope and Ash was as attentive as a doting husband could be until they had that letter from her friend to tell them if it was safe to make love with one’s much-desired and desiring husband during pregnancy.

  Chapter Twelve

  ‘Is this really where we are going to live, Papa?’

  ‘Yes, my Lady Imogen. Don’t worry though, Jenny—with a little bit of love and a lot of work it will make a very fine home for us all, I promise you,’ Ash told his awestruck daughter. ‘I loved visiting my grandfather as a boy. It is a beautiful place and there is so much to do even when it’s raining.’

  Rosalind’s heart had been in her mouth ever since the coach turned in through the grand gateway between two Tudor lodges that looked more like small fortresses than a warm welcome to the Duke of Cherwell’s grand country house. Now she watched the huge old house grow ever larger and more imposing on the horizon and wondered how this could ever be home. It was built to overpower anyone foolish enough to question the might of the Dukes of Cherwell on their own land. Yet although it looked very grand from afar it was weather-worn and close to down-at-heel. Many of the windows were shuttered, as if the house had its eyes closed in a long sleep, and some were even boarded up to keep out rain and wind.

  ‘Your late cousin’s trustees did a poor job of maintaining his house,’ she murmured to Ash since Jenny was so fascinated by her palatial new home she was obviously not listening.

  ‘Yes, Charlie was always writing to tell me how they disagreed over every little detail so nothing ever got done. I should have come home and made them attend to their duties instead of enjoying their battles so much they forgot what they were entrusted with. I failed my cousin as well as you, Ros.’

  ‘Stop feeling guilty and put it right, then,’ she said brusquely, because she refused to be a sore spot on his conscience. She was his wife and they had to live with what they had, not what might have been. ‘And at least you are fully of age, even for a duke. Now those trustees must account for their neglect and you will be able to terrify them far more than your cousin would have been able to if he had only lived to take up the reins of this place.’

  ‘Aye, he would have been five and twenty in July.’

  ‘Then I cannot imagine why the whole place is not seething with workmen and covered in scaffolding. They could hardly have thought you would be pleased by all they have failed to do during your cousin’s minority, even if they did not fear his fury. They had a legal duty of care for your cousin’s inheritance, so you could always sue them for damages I suppose.’

  ‘I am so glad to be shot of them I don’t care what they do as long as they never come near the place again. I am astonished how much damage has been done in the five years since Grandfather died.’

  ‘A place this old must take continuous maintenance and I doubt your grandfather was up to scrambling about on the roof or peering into drains and gutters during the last few years of his life.’

  ‘Where were his agent and clerk of the works, then?’

  ‘I have no idea,’ she said with a raised eyebrow to warn him not to get any more furious over the state of his huge old house in front of Jenny.

  ‘You’re right,’ he admitted. ‘Confound it!’ he snapped as the carriage wheels seemed to lurch along the edge of a huge pothole and they were almost thrown across the carriage. ‘Are you all right?’ Ash demanded, pale under his slightly fading suntan when he released her from the iron hold he had clamped around her to prevent a painful tumble.

  ‘Yes, you were very quick. Thank you,’ she said, her heartbeat settling after a few moments of panic at the thought of plunging headlong into the seat opposite and harming her baby.

  ‘What about you, Jenny?’ he said, letting her out from under his other arm and relaxing the long legs he had braced against the seat opposite to keep them all safe.

  ‘I banged my elbow,’ Jenny said a little bit tearfully, rubbing her sore place as she squirmed across him to get closer to Rosalind and it was quite wrong to feel almost relieved her child still wanted her comfort at times like this.

  ‘Looks like you hit your funny bone, love, keep rubbing and the pain will fade in a few moments.’

  ‘B
ut it hurts, Mama.’

  ‘I know, love. I never could work out why people call it a funny bone when there’s nothing funny about it when you hit it.’

  ‘It’s a naughty bone,’ Jenny said with a fierce frown at the place she had forgotten to keep rubbing so Rosalind concluded the pain must be fading already.

  ‘Bradley!’ Ash shouted up to the coachman. ‘What the devil were you thinking of?’

  ‘Sorry, Your Grace. I thought we was past the worst, then half the drive fell into a great hole the rains must have worn under the gravel.’

  Ash took a long hard look at the runnel at the side of the drive and even from here Rosalind could see half the roadway had been undermined so the weight of a carriage and four made the rest collapse into the gap. ‘It’s a miracle he didn’t upend us all,’ she murmured, still shocked how close they had come to disaster.

  ‘Not your fault,’ Ash shouted back. ‘Best stop here, though. We will be safer walking the rest of the way. I don’t want to risk another pitfall with Her Grace and Lady Imogen aboard and neither should you,’ he called up to the coachman, who was in a precarious position on the swaying box at the best of times. The poor man must have thought he would be thrown off as he struggled to guide his frightened team around such a sudden hazard.

  ‘You did well not to overturn the whole carriage and do terrible damage to us or the horses, Bradley,’ Rosalind called past Ash’s shoulder. ‘I am very grateful, even if His Grace is still too shocked to thank you for preserving us at the moment.’

  ‘Thank you, Your Grace,’ the coachman said, sounding as if he thought his job might be safe after all if the Duchess thought he was competent.

  Surprised to agree and thoughtful about her own influence on the husband she had thought about as easy to sway as a granite mountain at first sight up on that Dorset heath, Rosalind sat back in her seat and let herself be a little bit shocked by their near miss.

  ‘Aye, well done, man. Unharness the team now and have them led to the stables rather than risk their legs and yours on another pothole.’

  Ash drew his head back in and waited grimly for the team to calm after that unnerving collapse, then jumped down. ‘I will have someone’s head for this,’ he murmured to Rosalind as he glared at the evidence of damage done by heavy rain and nothing done to mend it. She could hardly argue it was not dangerous and if the baby was harmed she might never forgive them either.

  ‘Powerful though you may be here, my lord Duke, I really don’t think such summary justice would be approved of,’ she managed to say lightly. If they dwelt on what might have been she would never leave the house again until this child was safely delivered.

  ‘Just their job, then,’ Ash said grimly and Rosalind did not protest because they had come all the way from London without encountering a trap like that and someone had been criminally neglectful.

  ‘I like it better from the ground. Poor old house,’ Jenny said when Ash had lifted her from the stranded vehicle. Rosalind felt the easy power in his broad shoulders as she grabbed them when his hands closed around her still-slim waist and she was airborne before she knew it. At least being flustered by his strength took her mind off the baby and how easily they could have lost it, but for Bradley’s skill and Ash’s quick thinking in bracing his legs and grabbing a wife and a daughter under each arm. There was always the looming task of becoming the Duchess in power to divert her from fantasising about his rather magnificent body, but she wasn’t sure she wanted diverting that badly.

  Now she was down and already forgetting her bruise Jenny reached out a hand to each of them in silent demand. The new Duke and Duchess of Cherwell jumped their daughter over the lesser pitfalls on their way to their new home and Rosalind decided this was exactly how they should be—the three of them hand in hand as they walked towards their new home and never mind stateliness and protocol. She shook her head at Ash to tell him not to fuss, the baby was fine and she was enjoying the walk after being cooped up in a carriage for hours. She was a healthy and still fairly young woman and had seen far too much of real life in Livesey Village to cosset herself for the next six or seven months just to make her ducal husband feel better.

  ‘You are quite right, Jenny, the house looks much nicer from here,’ she said as the sun came out at the very moment the vast door creaked open, as if even Mother Nature wanted to make them feel welcome. The indoor staff must have realised their new Duke and his family really were walking up the drive like ordinary folk. As many as were in sight of the windows or in earshot of those who were came piling out of the house to bid them welcome, but it was not the vast army of servants Rosalind had been dreading—more a gaggle than a regiment. Another sign of the neglect now so obvious in weed-strewn flower beds and unkempt lawns.

  ‘We had best hurry up,’ she said with a wry grimace at Ash over Jenny’s dark head. ‘The servants will catch their deaths in this sharp breeze and I really don’t want to have to get down on my knees and scrub your splendid floors if they are all laid up,’ she said, their joke about those floors before he had his wicked way with her again back in London so warm this sharp breeze only felt chilly around the edges of her splendid new travelling gown and fine pelisse.

  The servants were so delighted to see Ash and his ready-made family they made them welcome with only a hint of scepticism, as if to say, We’re glad to see you again, lad, but you’d best make a good fist of things here or we’ll soon change our minds.

  ‘The second carriage is not far behind,’ Ash said as a depleted trickle of outdoor staff began scurrying from stables and gardens to get in on the act. ‘A shilling for any lad who warns them the main drive is unsafe.’

  ‘Tell them the road down from the North Gate ain’t too bad and show them where it is,’ one of the grooms called after the eager stable boy now racing the gardener’s boy to the South Gate.

  ‘Who is going to explain to me why there is a hole in the main drive you could lose a plough horse in?’ Ash added with a chilly look around the group scattered over the shallow stone steps.

  ‘Mr Grange told us to mend it, so Sir Henry said we was not to,’ a middle-aged man finally stepped forward to say dourly.

  ‘I remember you—Dawkins, isn’t it?’

  The man nodded and looked almost gratified.

  ‘Why would anyone ask stable hands to do work estate workers are supposed to be here for?’ Ash asked him with a puzzled frown.

  Dawkins shrugged. ‘Nowt makes much sense here since the old Duke died, Master Ash,’ he said and Rosalind tried not to smile and ruin Ash’s ‘Grand Duke’ act. ‘I mean, Your Grace,’ Dawkins added after a hasty elbow in the side from a minion.

  ‘Sense or not, is there enough hardcore and hoggin on the estate to fill the holes and make good?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘Then why the devil hasn’t someone got on and done it?’

  ‘Good question, Your Grace.’

  ‘The rest of our luggage should arrive in a couple of days and I won’t have any visitors who come to pay their respects to my Duchess upended on their way to the house either. I hope you weren’t trying to break our necks before we got here?’

  That caused a flood of denials and a few furious accusations about folk who did as they were told rather than what any fool could see needed doing. Rosalind decided Ash had done enough to make the staff they did have eager to obey while he hammered his house and estates into good order again.

  ‘All very well, Husband,’ she said not very loudly so those trying to explain all at the same time had to stop or risk drowning out their new Duchess, ‘but Lady Imogen and I would like to see the inside of your grand mansion before we freeze on the steps like Lot’s wife and daughter.’

  ‘I didn’t know he had a frozen daughter,’ Ash said, his usual humour reviving as he smiled at them both and shrugged to admit he still felt as if his fur had been rubbed the wrong way after the
ir near miss.

  ‘Of course not, Papa, but you might have soon if we don’t get in the warm soon,’ Jenny said with a theatrical shudder.

  ‘Very well, back inside everyone who belongs inside. You can show us what hasn’t been done in there instead,’ Ash said and took Jenny and Rosalind’s hands so they entered the vast marble hall together, the inside staff following them like very well-trained sheep.

  ‘I don’t think we will linger in here,’ Ash said with a shiver.

  Rosalind hoped this barn-like entrance hall was only used on state occasions or they would spend half Ash’s fortune on coal, or whole trees if that was what they burned to warm this huge space when the Duke of Cherwell was officially at home.

  ‘Most of these rooms have been shut up since the old Duke died, Your Grace,’ a flustered-looking housemaid informed them.

  Rosalind was relieved to see far less fuss and gilding than there was at Cherwell House, although she did glimpse ornate plasterwork ceilings and venerable oak panelling as Ash loped along beside her as if he could hardly bear to look.

  ‘Where is Mrs Porter?’ he asked at last.

  ‘Dead, Your Grace. A year or so after the old Duke died,’ the most forward of the following pack said breathlessly.

  ‘And Whipple?’ he asked, seeming to realise he was going at a gallop and slowing down with an apologetic look at Rosalind.