Duchesses in Disguise

by Grace Burrowes

  “I didn’t want to hurt that child. I couldn’t… And Jonas… I feel so horrible.” She pulled away, wiping her eyes.

  “No,” he whispered. He wanted to continue to hold her, even if what she said cut to the marrow of his bones.

  She walked to the window. The deep hues of the coming twilight gathered around the trees. She said nothing for several long seconds, leaving him to study the line of her bowed head.

  “Do you truly want to marry me?” she asked finally.

  How could he answer that question? Would yes, more than the world make the situation worse? He gripped the bedpost. “I desire you to be my wife. But more than all this, I don’t want to cause you further pain. I love you.”

  She released a hiccup-like sob, which she covered with her hand.

  “Mary Alice, I know you didn’t want to hurt Eleanor, and that is why—”

  “Don’t you understand?” she cried. “I’m falling in love with you!”

  Stratton heard her words. He saw how her scared eyes searched his face. But he couldn’t make sense of it all, like a hard blow that the mind registers before the pain floods in. Except this time, he felt no ache, only the dawning of joy.

  “Mary Alice.” Her name rushed on his breath. He stepped to take her into his embrace, but she gently pushed him away.

  “This wasn’t supposed to happen. I feel like… I’m unfaithful to my husband. But he’s…” She squeezed her eyes shut. “He’s dead.” Tears flowed from under her lashes.

  He knelt down before her and took her hands. “You still love him because you’re an honorable lady. I would never hope to replace his memory. How can I? He was a fine gentleman. I will do my best to be a good father to your children. I will love them as you have come to love Eleanor.”

  Her body convulsed with tears. “But you’re not Jonas,” she choked.

  “I know,” he whispered. “But I’ll do my best to be a good, loyal husband to you.”

  She lowered to her knees and rested her cheek on his shoulder. He was afraid to move, to do anything that would break this fragile, beautiful moment. She might love him, but she still wasn’t his. He couldn’t trap her or force her to remain. He knew that the harder he tried, the sooner she would slip from his grasp. So, he remained quiet, giving his heart’s fate over to her.

  She raised their intertwined hands to her lips and kissed his fingers. “Will you allow me time? My world has turned too fast. I need to think. I want… I want to leave with Francesca and go back to my family.”

  He tried to hide his disappointment, but she must have discerned it. She leaned in and brushed his lips. “Please,” she murmured. The innocent kiss shot straight to his sex, where the frustration of their interrupted lovemaking lingered. He didn’t want her to leave. He wanted to take her to his bed and make love through the night, and then, in the morning decide which chambers her children would occupy and how best to merge their domestic staffs. The one thing he didn’t want to do was wait. He had been waiting for years.

  “When can Eleanor and I see you again?” He knew mentioning Eleanor was underhanded because she wouldn’t refuse his daughter. “We can come to London.”

  “May I have a fortnight?”

  “Of course.”

  “Nathaniel.” She held his face between her hands, forcing him to gaze into her eyes, shiny from tears. “No… no matter what happens, please rest assured that I would never desert Eleanor. She will always find welcome in my heart and home.”

  “Bless you,” he whispered.

  Chapter Six

  * * *

  Mary Alice waved from the carriage window at Eleanor, Stratton, Olivia, and Mr. Stirling. Olivia appeared happier than Mary Alice had ever seen her. Despite the sadness of her own departure, she was thrilled for Olivia and her new match. Mary Alice wished her love for Stratton could be that uncomplicated and not so fraught with fear and guilt. Stratton kept his hand protectively on Eleanor’s shoulder as his daughter waved at the retreating carriage—her face both sad and hopeful. Mary Alice wanted to break into sobs but restrained herself in front of Francesca and Stratton’s servant, Fiona, whom he’d insisted should accompany them.

  Mary Alice continued to watch Eleanor and Stratton until the carriage drove out the gate and a brick wall separated them. She rubbed the letter in her lap from Eleanor to Caroline. The missive mentioned nothing of the impending marriage because Stratton had asked his daughter not to say anything until Mary Alice had spoken with her own children.

  A gloomy loneliness washed over her as soon as she lost sight of the last chimneystack of Rose Heath behind a tree. Even Francesca seemed despondent. So, the ladies traveled south in silence, each lost in her own troubled thoughts.

  Francesca had decided to remain in York, so at the coaching inn near the York Minster, where they changed horses, Mary Alice kissed Francesca’s cheek and whispered as a farewell, “I’m sorry.” She didn’t know what had happened between Francesca and Sir Greyville, but whatever it was, it had broken her friend’s heart. Poor Francesca’s lovely holiday had gone awry for her. Now, instead of smiles, there were tears.

  Mary Alice and Fiona continued south. Mary Alice felt almost the same as she had in the months after the acute grief of Jonas’s death had subsided. The world lost its vibrancy and time slowed to a trickle. She missed Stratton. She missed the strength of his presence, as well as how his touch electrified her body. This love was so different from her first time with Jonas, when all she had experienced was naïve excitement. She’d had no idea what marriage meant. Now she did. She couldn’t dismiss the shame that she was betraying Jonas in the worst way, by possibly letting Stratton usurp Jonas’s role as father.

  Acknowledging that her husband was dead and wouldn’t know only plunged her deeper into sadness. She didn’t want to believe that Jonas was truly gone. She preferred to believe that he was still with her, watching over her and the children from behind an invisible curtain that divided the living from the dead. But she didn’t want to hurt Eleanor either. The girl was just learning to trust. The dear child might think Mary Alice was rejecting her, not her father. Every path Mary Alice might choose involved guilt and pain.

  Only when she opened the nursery door in her London home did her melancholy break. Caroline and Little Jonas rushed to embrace her as Anna walked in excited circles around them. Caroline and Little Jonas eagerly talked over each other, telling Mary Alice everything she had missed. She pieced together from their collective accounts that the butler had coerced Little Jonas into letting his tadpoles live in a bucket by the mews instead her son’s chamber. Now numerous, ugly toads were hopping about. But he assured her that only one had been squished by a horse. Caroline had lost another front tooth and couldn’t eat apples, and Anna had built an impressive tower from rolled pieces of newspaper.

  Mary Alice told them about her accident, showing them the plastered gash on her head. They were quite impressed.

  “And I have a special letter to Caroline from a wonderful girl I’ve met named Eleanor. She adores dolls and possesses a wonderful imagination. Sadly, she spent years and years in a dark place like the bog lord’s dungeon.”

  “Is she well?” Caroline asked, concerned. Her eldest child worried over others, as well as homeless kittens and tired hack horses.

  “A wonderful gentleman named Colonel Stratton rescued her. He is really her father, but no one knew.”

  “He’s like a prince in a story!” Caroline exclaimed.

  Mary Alice remained mum about this wonderful prince. She thought it best to settle in for a few days before she brought up the subject of her possible marriage. Normality had finally returned to her children’s lives after losing their father and witnessing their mother’s distraught mourning. She needed to be careful about how she brought up the issue of Stratton, especially if the children had formed the wrong impression of him after Anna’s episode in the park. But Eleanor was another story. “Eleanor has agreed to visit in a fortnight. Do you think you could be
Eleanor’s special friends?”

  “She can be my friend,” Caroline assured her mother. “My dearest, dearest friend.”

  “Why don’t we make special gifts for her?” Mary Alice suggested. “Maybe you can draw her one of your wonderful pictures, Anna. I know she would cherish it.”

  “I shall draw a great bridge!” Anna cried, and ran faster in her circles.

  “I’ll make her a sword for slaying ogres,” Little Jonas announced. “I’ll paint blood and innards on it and…” His face quickly fell. “But she’s a girl.”

  “I think she would like a bloody ogre sword,” Mary Alice assured him.

  Little Jonas lit up at the idea that a real girl would be impressed with a bloody ogre sword.

  “I think I’ll really like Eleanor,” he concluded. “She sounds much better than Caroline.”

  * * *

  Mary Alice enjoyed tea in the nursery with the children and then changed into a comfortable robe and closed herself into Jonas’s chamber. She lay on her side in his bed, drawing her knees up, studying the miniature of him that she held. She had spent so many wondrous nights in this bed, when the air was sweetly perfumed and candlelight danced on their naked bodies as they made love. Now the room was silent and felt hollow. The mattress had been changed, the invalid chair and medicine bottles removed. Otherwise, the chamber remained as Jonas had kept it when he was well.

  “Help me, Jonas,” she whispered to his likeness.

  No portrait had captured the spirit of Jonas as she knew him. Like this miniature, they made him appear too regal and somber—that was the Jonas the world had seen. But she wanted to remember the man with the tender, dark eyes who’d held her in this bed.

  “I don’t know what to do. I love you, Jonas. But I love him too. And dear Eleanor. You would adore her. I could be her mother. She needs one. Tell me what I should do. Please.”

  Jonas just stared silently back from his frame.

  * * *

  Mary Alice continued to put off telling her children about Stratton. She kept finding excuses, such asOh, but they are so joyous making gifts, or But they need to concentrate on their studies. Two weeks slipped away in this manner, until it was the day before Stratton and Eleanor’s arrival. She had run out of time.

  After dreading the conversation all morning, she went to the nursery after lessons. Little Jonas and his wooden dragon, Fiery Boy, were playing with the bloody ogre sword, while Caroline finished her embroidery—the name Eleanor decorated with an ivy vine. Anna sat cross-legged, drawing on paper on a portable desk.

  Mary Alice fingered her wedding ring. Apprehension churned in her belly. The moment felt wrong. In fact, the entire idea of the marriage suddenly seemed wrong. Perhaps that was why she didn’t want to speak of it. Deep down, she knew it wouldn’t work.

  Nonetheless, the words that had been swirling in her head for two weeks finally burst forth. “How would you feel if Mama remarried?”

  The children stared at her with blank eyes, as if she had uttered something in Mandarin.

  “But you are already married,” Caroline pointed out after several seconds. “To Papa.”

  Mary Alice should have stopped then. She could tell they weren’t receptive. But she foolishly forged on. “Papa… is… Papa is dead, so I can marry again.” She tried to brighten her tone. Instead, her words came out brittle and forced. “You can have a new papa.”

  “What?” Little Jonas asked, confused.

  “If I remarry, you can have a new papa.”

  The terrible realization dawned on his young face. “No!” Jonas screamed. Tears spurted from his eyes. “I already have a papa. You can’t marry someone else! You can’t!”

  Mary Alice watched, horrified, as Jonas threw his beloved Fiery Boy at the chimneypiece. The wooden dragon shattered, and its pieces rained onto the floor. Anna, alarmed by the sound, covered her ears and started crying.

  “You can’t remarry because I hate him,” Jonas shouted.

  “You haven’t even met this new gentleman,” Mary Alice said, trying to remain calm. She sat by Anna, but her presence only seemed to agitate the upset girl.

  “I hate him!” Jonas flung himself onto the floor before her and hid his crying face.

  “Little Jonas, please look at me,” Mary Alice implored him.

  “No!”

  “Darlings, please. I haven’t agreed to marry this gentleman. I just…” How could Mary Alice explain that she hadn’t meant to fall in love? Nor had she intended to hurt her children. She rubbed her hand up and down her son’s back, trying to soothe him.

  “Don’t touch me!” he wailed and rolled away from her.

  “Why would you want another husband?” Caroline demanded.

  “Because when you’re an adult, you get lonely for another adult,” Mary Alice said. It wasn’t the best explanation, but she couldn’t tell her young children that she missed intimately knowing a man, that sometimes she needed someone to lean on and kiss her scrapes. “I… I get lonely.”

  “But you have us,” Caroline wailed. Her eyes, so like her papa’s, brimmed with tears. “How can you be lonely if you have us?”

  “Of course,” Mary Alice said, feeling broken. How could she explain to her children that, while she loved them more than herself, they weren’t enough? She was a grown woman with needs.

  She looked heavenward. Perhaps this was Jonas’s reply to her question. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I won’t marry. Come, my darlings. Stop your tears. You needn’t worry. You will have no new papa.”

  Chapter Seven

  * * *

  Stratton pulled the bell at Mary Alice’s door. Eleanor gazed up nervously at the enormous mansion on Grosvenor Square, with its massive columns and numerous rows of windows. The building rose so high that the top windows were lost in the low London clouds.

  “Does… does Mrs. Mary Alice live here?” She held Helandria to her chest, as she did whenever she was afraid. The child had been happy for the entire trip and had taken great delight in her grand hotel chamber adjacent to her father’s. But his heart sank as apprehension and fear returned to her features.

  He couldn’t admit it, but his nerves were on edge too. He feared this visit as much as he anticipated it. Had Mary Alice changed her mind? Had her passion been the product of a holiday fever?

  “Do you want to know a secret?” He bent until he could whisper in Eleanor’s ear. “Mrs. Mary Alice is truly a duchess.”

  Eleanor’s eyes widened with alarm. “They won’t like me.” She tried to edge away, but he kept his hand firmly on her back.

  “You know Mrs. Mary Alice adores you. Remember, don’t mention the marriage to her children. It’s supposed to be a surprise to them.” He had kept up the little lie he and Mary Alice devised to shield Eleanor from the truth that Mary Alice might not become her mother after all.

  The door opened, and a regal butler peered down his nose at them. Eleanor tried to bolt, but Stratton picked her up and swung her onto his hip.

  “Colonel Stratton and his daughter, Eleanor, wish to wait upon Her Grace and her family,” Stratton said.

  The butler studied Eleanor and then winked at her, all the while maintaining his imperious countenance. “I believe your visit has been the cause of much excitement and anticipation. Please come in.” He stepped aside and let them enter.

  “Eleanor!” Mary Alice hurried down the grand curving staircase.

  Stratton knew he loved Mary Alice, but he hadn’t been prepared for the boyish excitement that rushed through him at seeing her again. When she wrapped her arms around both him and Eleanor, it felt akin to returning home from a long journey.

  “Come, the children are upstairs,” Mary Alice said. “They are so glad you’ve come, Eleanor. They’ve spoken of little else since I told them you were coming.” Still holding Eleanor, Stratton followed Mary Alice up the stairs. In her own home, her warm personality flowed forth. He loved how, when she glanced over her shoulder to talk to Eleanor, her smile ap
peared to glow like it had its own light, radiating in her eyes and throughout her whole body. At the same time, he realized that he couldn’t possibly have won this amazing lady’s love.

  She opened the door to the nursery. “My darlings,” she announced. “Eleanor is here.”

  Mary Alice’s children didn’t form a quiet line to wait and be introduced, as Stratton’s nurse had posed him and his siblings when visitors called. Little Jonas ran forward without a greeting, wielding a sword with painted blood. “I made you a sword to kill ogres,” he shouted excitedly at Eleanor.

  The eldest, Caroline, bumped the boy out of the way. “You’re scaring her,” she told her brother. “She doesn’t want a stupid sword.” She performed an elegant curtsey. “I’m Caroline. It’s so wonderful to meet you. Is that Helandria? Mama told me many wonderful things about her.”

  Stratton was grateful that Caroline made no note of Helandria’s ragged appearance.

  As all this transpired, the younger daughter, Anna, circled them, holding a picture. “I drew a bridge,” she said over and over.

  Stratton set Eleanor down and Caroline took her hand. “Come, let me show you and Helandria my dollhouse. I readied it for you.”

  Eleanor glanced nervously over her shoulder at Stratton. He smiled and nodded his encouragement.

  Caroline shot her brother a nasty look when he tried to follow the girls. “We don’t want to play with your ugly sword.”

  The boy appeared crestfallen. “But you said that she would like an ogre sword,” he told his mother.

  Stratton repressed his smile. Life must be trying for the only son in a house of females. “That’s a fine sword, young man,” Stratton declared.

  Little Jonas’s face lit up. “I know! I—wait!” His eyes narrowed. “Aren’t you the man in the park who upset Mama?”

  “It was a misunderstanding,” Mary Alice quickly interceded. “I believe you and your sister have a few of those. I recall one earlier this morning concerning the outcome of a certain card game.”