His Unlikely Duchess

by Amanda McCabe

  ‘Am I, indeed?’ She studied the portrait carefully. Lily could sympathise with the look of sheer panic in her eyes.

  He opened a door at the top of the stairs and she followed him into what seemed like a different time entirely. One wall was all windows, curtained in heavy tapestry fabric, looking out at the lake and a stone summer house. The other wall was panelled in dark wood, with no less than three grand fireplaces carved with fruit cornucopias and grinning theatre masks. Smoke-darkened portraits of men in ruffs and ladies in embroidered satins hung between them, along with old weapons and battle flags, and even a rusting suit of armour who kept watch.

  ‘This is the Elizabethan gallery,’ he said. ‘The oldest part of the house.’

  Lily was quite enthralled. She dashed from tapestry to tapestry, portrait to portrait, then to the views from the high windows. Through the hazy old glass she saw the gardens, but they seemed transformed, like watercolours. The stone folly shimmered in the distance, the lake beyond like aquamarines.

  ‘We visited Hardwick Hall, but I think this is even more magnificent,’ she said. ‘I feel like Mary, Queen of Scots!’

  ‘Oh, I do hope not.’ Aidan leaned against one of the old wood mantelpieces, his elbow casually perched on a carved rose, smiling at her. ‘She was so terribly unhappy. At least she never visited here, so her ghost isn’t one of the many cluttering up the place.’

  ‘You have ghosts? How wonderful!’ Lily forgot herself for a moment, and twirled—actually twirled—down the centre of the long, narrow room.

  ‘All self-respecting old English houses have a ghost or two. They probably wouldn’t let us stay here if we didn’t let them have free rein.’

  Lily collapsed, dizzy, on to a faded velvet chair. ‘And who is your ghost?’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘We have several. The obligatory Grey Lady, who once lost her lover in battle and now wanders the garden on full-moon nights, then vanishes into the lake. A Cavalier soldier who buried his jewels under a tree before fleeing the Roundheads—now he tries to dig them up every October.’

  ‘October? Why?’

  Aidan shrugged. ‘Who knows the ways of ghosts? There’s also a spaniel puppy who bounces his ball down the great staircase...’

  ‘I should love to meet that one. I do love pets and Mother never lets me have them.’

  ‘Dogs have always been welcome at Roderick, fortunately. Though I fear at the other end of our supernatural spectrum, there is an elemental.’

  Lily shivered at his ominous tone. ‘What is that?’

  ‘Some primeval creature that looks like mud and smells like decay, I believe. One of my old nannies used to say he hung about in the priest hole near the chapel.’

  ‘Are the Lennoxes Catholic?’

  ‘Not since the time of Queen Elizabeth. Too much trouble. Now I suppose we aren’t much of anything.’

  Lily thought an old chapel sounded wonderfully romantic—though without any elementals. ‘I should like to see it very much. But not any ghosts.’

  ‘So you shall. But the gallery is enough sightseeing for one afternoon, I’m sure. I don’t want to scare you away. It must be time to dress for dinner soon.’

  Lily rose from her chair, running her fingertips over its worn carving, wondering who had sat there over those many years. ‘Very well, but you must promise to show me the chapel later. And the Grey Lady’s paths. And, well, everything.’

  He smiled and nodded, his real smile back again. ‘I see you are as besotted with history as my grandfather once was! Yes, very well, everything. I will learn it along with you.’

  Lily swallowed and felt that horrid blush in her cheeks again. ‘Everything?’ she said. She dared to reach out and lightly brush her finger over his sleeve as she walked past him.

  ‘Almost everything,’ he said, a bit roughly.

  She paused to examine a cluster of silver-framed photographs displayed on a velvet-draped table. The Duchess, in trailing, fur-trimmed pale chiffon at Ascot, on the arm of an older, silk-hatted gentleman. And another, in dark velvet, in an opera box with another man, one with copious whiskers and a merry smile.

  ‘My father,’ Aidan said, gesturing to the Ascot image. ‘And my stepfather-to-be.’

  ‘The Earl? I see.’ Lily trailed her fingertip over the other photos. Prince Bertie in his royal orders, signed to the Duchess. Princess Alexandra, beautiful in low-cut lace and tiara. Princess Louise. The old Queen herself in an open carriage, swathed in widow’s veils. Babies in lacy christening gowns, two sturdy toddlers hugging their mother—Aidan and his brother, surely. The Duke and Duchess in velvet and ermine mantles and coronets for some state occasion. Two lanky boys fishing at the Roderick lake, the summer house behind them.

  She picked it up to examine it closer, to see the real boys behind the portrait in the Yellow Drawing Room. Both tall and skinny with youth, waves of golden hair flopping in their eyes. But she could see which was which: Edward frowning in serious concentration, Aidan whooping with laughter as he flung his line back. Aidan—always free.

  ‘You were both very handsome lads,’ she said.

  ‘My mother always said Edward had the more refined nature, like her own family. She claims she has an artist uncle somewhere on her family tree, though she isn’t sure who he was exactly. When we were children, she would talk vaguely of how she might have been a great Shakespearean actress, if she had only the chance. Then she would drape herself over a chaise with copious chiffon scarves to wave and call for sherry.’

  Lily laughed at the image. ‘I find it hard to imagine that.’

  Aidan took the photo from her and placed it carefully back on the table, his expression very far away. ‘Eddie and I were sometimes recruited to be in her famous tableaux vivant at parties. Arabian Nights. Medieval troubadours. Cupids in white draperies. A garden scene from the Petit Trianon, in satin knee breeches dancing a minuet with ladies in flower-draped panniers. Terribly embarrassing for a young boy.’

  He showed her another photo, of a group of young adults clad in those antiquated costumes, dancing to a background of pillars and flowers. The girl who held Aidan’s hand looked familiar, though younger, her lovely face a bit rounder, her curls paler. One graceful hand held high a wreath of roses, while the other was held tightly in Aidan’s. They stared into each other’s faces with besotted smiles.

  Lady Rannock. So she had known, had adored, Aidan. And had broken apart two brothers. It sounded much too sad to be borne.

  Lily glanced away from the image. Aidan put it back down, a crooked, wistful smile on his face as he stared down at the fanciful, happy image. The pretty girl who held his hand. ‘I did have such a tantrum about that costume.’

  ‘But you look so adorable,’ she said. ‘And Lady Rannock looks very beautiful.’

  ‘Melisande always did. Does.’ He nudged the frame into place with his fingertip and Lily saw it was next to another image. Lady Rannock standing on the Roderick terrace with Edward. She smiled at the camera, but he looked only at her.

  ‘Do you miss her?’ Lily blurted out. ‘Lady Rannock. You must have been good friends.’

  He frowned. ‘Melisande? I just saw her at Lady Crewe’s ball.’

  ‘I mean—I did hear—I thought...’ Lily faltered, wishing she had not said anything at all. She turned away to face a rusting suit of armour with battle flags draped behind him, tatters of red and blue and gold. She longed to crawl inside and lower the visor. ‘I just heard you were once friends.’

  ‘We were, once. Her mother and mine were at school together. When her mother died, mine took Melisande under her wing a bit. Poor Melisande.’

  ‘And did the Duchess try to matchmake, too?’

  Aidan gave her a puzzled glance. ‘Perhaps with my brother, until Melisande’s dowry proved to be much smaller than expected. Edward was qui
te disappointed.’

  By the dowry? Or by Aidan’s rumoured attentions to Melisande Rannock? Lily remembered the gossip she’d overheard between her mother and Lady Heath, and wished she had never lingered behind that door. Such pain it must have caused.

  Aidan’s smile faded. ‘You shouldn’t listen to London tittle-tattle, Miss Wilkins.’

  ‘Because it’s so seldom true?’ she whispered.

  ‘Because it is impossible to know the difference. None of us remember only what was real and what is not.’ He offered his arm, his smile fading entirely, leaving him looking so serious again. ‘Shall we take a shortcut through the gardens before we have to change for dinner?’

  She nodded. The ancient room, so enchanting before, had grown stifling. She laid her fingers lightly on his sleeve and let him lead her away. At the doorway, she glanced back and imagined all those Dukes and Duchesses, a long line of them in their ruffs and panniers and pearls, trapped there for ever. She turned sharply away, and followed Aidan down a narrow, twisting back staircase.

  Even there Lennox history lurked. At the foot of the stairs was a portrait of his mother, much younger, on horseback, elegant in silk, a veiled hat and black broadcloth, the Elizabethan towers of the house behind her. She looked as if she had always been there and would always be there.

  ‘It’s a fine likeness of the Duchess,’ she murmured.

  Aidan tilted his head, as if he had never studied it before. ‘Indeed. Perhaps one day you should have your portrait done on horseback, Lily? It would suit you.’

  To be hung on the wall as one of the line of Duchesses? Lily didn’t know what he really meant, or how she felt about that. But she just nodded and followed him out of a side door just beyond the portrait.

  They crossed a gravel courtyard, past a series of old brick outbuildings, and turned towards a long, low red brick stable block. It was quiet at that time of day, the sun sinking low in the sky and work having finished, but she could still smell that comforting, familiar, lovely smell of hay and horses.

  ‘I fear we have few riding horses, or my father’s old pride, the Lennox racehorses,’ Aidan said, swinging open a wooden door. ‘Mostly just farm horses now.’

  Lily strolled slowly past the empty boxes, stopping to pat an old plough cob and coo over an adorable Shetland pony.

  ‘Yours, I imagine?’ she teased.

  Aidan laughed. ‘Decades ago, maybe. He does look rather like my old friend Strawberry. He belongs to a tenant’s lad, but boards here sometimes.’

  Lily smoothed his coarse mane, making the pony snort. She laughed and looked towards a glass case at the end of the aisle. It was filled with tarnished silver bowls and faded green and gold racing silks. Photographs of horses wreathed in roses, all with a beaming, bearded man beside them. In one image, he accepted a trophy from Princess Alexandra—the same man she had seen in the Ascot photo with the Duchess.

  ‘Your father?’ she said.

  ‘Yes. He adored racing. Poured all of himself into it.’

  Lily looked at a portrait of a gleaming bay, no doubt painted by Abraham Cooper. She wondered if that was where Roderick’s roof had gone, those pale, empty squares on the walls, the cracked windows, into race horses.

  ‘Impressive,’ she said and turned away to hurry back into the fresh air.

  ‘Don’t worry, Miss Wilkins, you’ll be able to ride while you’re here,’ Aidan said. ‘Mother’s hired a mare from some neighbours. Young and fiery, they say, but I told her you could more than handle it.’

  Lily laughed. Worried about the fatted goose breaking her neck, was the Duchess? She remembered the gallop across the park, the freedom of it. ‘I can’t wait. Roderick does look like a beautiful place for riding.’

  ‘Do you really think so?’ he said. He sounded uncharacteristically uncertain, as if he really wanted her to like it.

  She turned to study him, his hair gleaming streaked gold in the setting sun. ‘Yes, very much.’

  He nodded slowly, as if musing on something. ‘I am very glad, Miss Wilkins, that you’re here at Roderick now. I look forward to rediscovering it at your side.’

  Chapter Eleven

  Aidan ducked deep into his lukewarm bath, letting the water close over his head. The plasterwork flower wreaths high above looked blurry and pale. He wished he was in some jungle river rather than this old tin bath, warm expanses where he could kick free, swim to wherever his fancy took him.

  But he was trapped. He sat up in a great geyser of sandalwood-scented bath salts and shoved the heavy, sodden locks of hair back with both hands. If Roderick had an American mistress, there would surely be a state-of-the-art bathroom, running hot and cold water, fluffy towels. He laughed to imagine the changes that might sweep over the ancient castle and its unsuspecting staff.

  Not that Lily seemed the sort to swan in and demand change. But she deserved it. She deserved the best. And he wished he could give it to her, more than he had ever wished for anything before.

  A footman stepped forward with a pile of towels. The linen had worn thin, but it was still embroidered with the coronet and initials of the Lennoxes. It was surely almost time for dinner and he couldn’t be late. Sherry in the Green Room, nine courses in the Red Dining Room, coffee and cards and music after, like clockwork. For all his years away, nothing had changed.

  Maybe he could at least persuade Lily to play duets with him. Brighten the evening with her smile.

  Lily. He closed his eyes and pictured her as she was in the empty stables, cooing softly as she patted the old pony, her face soft and unguarded for once. He had wondered what she would think of Roderick, of Monty, the rusted suit of armour, the crowds of portraits and photographs and battle flags that constantly watched, constantly whispered of the past. Of constant needs and expectations.

  Her eyes, those dark stars, glowed so brightly as she dashed from tapestry to vase to window, full of questions and curiosity. Most rich young American girls would surely recoil from the damp and chill, the old hip baths. But not her. Curious, kind Lily.

  Could it work after all? Could he really save Roderick and be happy, too? It seemed too good to be true. Since the terrible events with Melisande, he had given up on romantic happiness altogether. He dared not hope again just yet. Lily hadn’t even seen Roderick at its worst yet, seen what life as a duchess really meant. She might still run away, dashing off like the trembling, wide-eyed fairy she seemed.

  He shrugged into his brocade dressing gown and smoothed his damp hair back from his face. The sun was sinking low beyond the window, pale pink and lavender and orange, washing over the park and turning the distant summer house to gold. The summer house where once he had given in to his terrible passion and dared to kiss Melisande.

  He ruthlessly pushed that memory away. Melisande, and the bad things that had happened after that kiss were gone now. The summer house was just that—a pretty stone folly. The sunset light was so beautiful it made his eyes ache, almost as if he wanted to cry. He’d seen so many beautiful things—vast mountain ranges, white deserts, ancient temples—yet none was quite so lovely as Roderick. There had been so many times he had wanted to see it again. And times he had never wanted to see it again. He’d run across the world to get away from it. Now it was in his charge for ever. It was his responsibility when it should have been Edward’s.

  As he stared across the lawns of Roderick, the pale pink and white roses of his grandmother’s famous garden, he saw a figure move slowly across the raked, striped gravel pathways. For an instant, he wondered if he had accidentally drunk cana, the vile, bitter South American concoction more intoxicating than anything England could offer. But then he blinked and laughed. It was Lily.

  He had no idea how she had escaped their mothers and the army of Roderick maids, but she seemed quite alone. She hadn’t yet dressed for dinner and wore a pale tea gown that trailed across the roses and caught in flutte
rs on the breeze. Her hair was loose, a cloud of dark curls tumbling over her shoulders. She tilted her head back and laughed at something, her heart-shaped face golden and alight in the sunset, filled with delight. He pressed his fingertips to the cold glass of the window and a desperate longing washed over him, the longing to reach for her, touch her, take her in his arms and make her joy his own.

  But they were so far apart, kept that way not just by glass and bricks. He knew too well that Roderick Castle was a stern taskmaster—could he let sweet Lily be closed within it? See her smile smothered, as so many Duchesses before her had been?

  As he watched, she gave a little twirl, as she had in the gallery, her arms spread wide as if to take everything in. Maybe, just maybe, Roderick had met its match in the delicate American fairy girl. Maybe it needed a little laughter and tenderness.

  Perhaps he did, too. But did he deserve it? Deserve Lily? After the way he had hurt Edward and run away from his duties? He was not sure.

  Someone seemed to call her and she spun around to face a girl in a black dress, a gown of frothy sea-green draped over her arms. The girl in black shook her head and pointed back at the house, as if telling Lily she had to go inside. Lily laughed, but she nodded and followed on meekly enough. At the edge of the rose garden, she glanced back, her expression wistful, and Aidan wondered if she saw him there. He willed her to see him there, to wave, to smile, only at him.

  She tilted her head back, the pink light glowing on her skin, and finally, finally, she raised her hand to wave. He waved back and she laughed and moved gracefully away.

  Aidan laughed, too, feeling lighter than he had in...well, ever. Certainly ever at Roderick.

  As he turned away from the gathering night and reached for his hairbrush, he remembered those photographs Lily had examined in the gallery. Bits of his past caught in silver nitrate. Edward.

  Melisande. When the three of them had been inseparable.