Elizabeth Beacon - The Duchess’s Secret

‘Good,’ she said just as sparsely because she felt as if this lovely fire was eating her from the inside out as well.

* * *

By the time they got to the border between Scotland and England, crossed into that fortified and often fought-over city and found a cosy inn off the main coaching routes, it was getting dark and the fire and frustration inside her were almost out of control. Rosalind went into her husband’s arms with a hunger and sweetness only Ash could arouse in her and knew she was home. This was where she belonged, she decided foggily, as he planted a delicate mesh of kisses down her exposed throat. He filled her senses and thoughts until she had no idea when he undid her laces. As well they had got this far, though, a sane part of her cautioned, because the rest of her did not really care if they were in this private and fire-lit chamber or out in the marketplace and the freezing cold January air. Ash was all that mattered to her, all she wanted to know about in the whole wide world, and wanting this and him felt like everything to her.

‘Rosalind,’ he gasped softly and, on a long sigh, ‘My Ros...a...lind...’ He stretched out her name between gentle nips at her earlobe as he worked his way around to a place she never knew was so responsive until now. He had been saving that revelation until they were like this together, she decided, as heat shot through her and she moaned out his name in an echo of his huskier tones.

Would there was more of it, she decided as breathily she whispered, ‘Asher...’ It felt brief and insufficient ‘Asher Hart...’

‘Enough,’ he murmured as if it would be a command if he had the strictness left to make it so.

‘Yes, it is. Asher, my Heart. That’s enough for me,’ she whispered as that busy mouth of his went back to trailing urgent kisses down her throat and settled on the racing pulse at the base of her neck. So close to her that he must have felt the lurch and race of her heartbeat when he moved from one pulse to the other as if he had to reassure himself both marched to the same beat.

‘Love me, Ash,’ she boldly encouraged him as she wound her arms about his neck and tugged him further down to whisper kisses over the bared slopes of her breasts. It only took a little wriggle to slide the unlaced gown and lacy shift off her shoulders, then he did the rest. She might have found it a little too much intimacy, a little too hasty but for the tremble in his caressing hands. He had felt it, too then, the novelty and bravery of total intimacy. Knowing that, she could let go of her doubts and leap headlong into Mr and Mrs Hartfield. She left him to take the lead and know how to make this fine and good. She trusted him; she knew him. This was right.

* * *

The next morning she still thought so. Ash knew her inside and out now and they had made love so many times last night she could not recall whether it was three or four trips up that lovely road to ecstasy they had travelled before sleep finally overcame them. Now she wasn’t afraid of any thought in his head or touch of his hands, because this was love and he was her first, last and forever. Rosalind loved being his wife so much she could hardly believe it was possible to be so happy, so completely content when she woke up to see Ash watching her with such warmth and tenderness in his intent gaze her heart raced with longing for him all over again.

‘We still have to face our families,’ she reminded them both, feeling some of her blissful joy tumble back to earth. ‘Your grandfather the Duke and my stepfather the Earl will not be very pleased about our elopement. They are sure to look down their long noses and threaten to cut us out of their lives,’ she added and shivered against Ash’s bare shoulder at the thought of those two arrogant old men making their displeasure plain to them and then the rest of the world.

‘My grandfather threatens to do so at regular intervals, but he never does it. They will pretend it was their idea all along and inform the world what a fine match it is when they see I am a reformed man. I don’t know why your stepfather was so against our marriage when I did promise him I would settle down and help Grandfather manage the estates during Charlie’s minority. Now we are wed they will admit we are a well-matched pair and not to be put asunder by a couple of jealous old fools,’ Ash drawled lazily, as if he could not see any need to worry now the deed was well and truly done.

Rosalind felt a superstitious shiver run through her like ice. A wicked old god might be listening and blight this glorious love of theirs if they were too bold and rash with it. ‘It seems like tempting fate to take anything for granted,’ she told him carefully, turning to look up at him and very ready to be distracted if he was not quite done with being her new husband yet.

‘Nothing can part us now, my love,’ he told her and ran a soothing hand down her bare back as if he had felt that shiver of apprehension run down it and was fascinated by where that shiver could take them.

‘Truly? Nothing I could tell you would stop you loving me?’

‘What could? I love you; you love me. There’s nothing a couple of bitter old men and a pack of gawping fools can do about it now.’

Rosalind thought about the nasty little secret her stepfather had held over her for the last two years to keep her obedient and half-heartedly attracting the best offer her looks could draw in while a shadow loomed over her happiness. What would the Earl do now his hopes of arranging a profitable marriage for his penniless stepdaughter were ruined? She ought to tell Ash in order to draw the sting out of the story Lord Lackbourne would tell him with relish when he found out what they had done. His lordship’s price for housing her since her mother had died could not be paid by the second son of a second son, even if Ash was the grandson of a duke. Ash had warned her from the start that his father had gambled and caroused most of his fortune away before breaking his neck on the hunting field. Ash had gone on to admit his own misdeeds and his wild ways, but he did not gamble and that seemed a very good thing to his future wife. But the fact remained Lord Lackbourne would not squeeze much in the way of settlements out of Rosalind’s husband. The thought of his frustrated fury when he had been expecting the golden good looks she had inherited from her famously beautiful late mother to attract fortune and influence instead of a rackety young man made her shiver again.

‘What is it? Why are you so worried about admitting we are married?’ Ash said, pushing himself further up in the bed so he could look down at her face in a shaft of midwinter sunshine peeking nosily in through a gap in the innkeeper’s best bed hangings.

It wasn’t a tale Rosalind wanted to tell, but did she dare keep it to herself? What if the Earl and Ash’s military brother caught up with them today? Any chance she might have to explain her folly two years ago would fly out of the window under their critical eyes and her stepfather had never loved her, so what was to stop him telling Ash about her youthful stupidity? Even the thought of Ash looking at her with horror instead of love made her flinch from saying anything, though. Maybe the Earl would be struck by lightning and so changed he became her kind and gentle protector instead of the impatient and penny-pinching autocrat she knew him to be.

‘Are you really sure nothing could part us?’ she asked, sitting up in bed as well and turning her face up to meet his gaze again with every ounce of sincerity she had in her while she tried to gauge his inner thoughts.

‘Do you mean to be faithful to me?’ he demanded with a hard note under his usually flexible deep voice and in his smoke-grey eyes.

‘Of course I do, to my dying day,’ she swore as ardently as if they were in front of an archbishop, because anything less than total fidelity to this fine and brilliant young man felt unthinkable.