Elizabeth Beacon - The Duchess’s Secret

‘I am perfectly well, thank you.’

‘You ain’t been right for months, my girl,’ she thought she heard Joan murmur as she went back to the kitchen bearing cold tea and limp toast.

They lived a spartan life in the cottage Rosalind had bought with a small legacy from her paternal grandmother. Considering Grandmother Feldon was a clergyman’s widow whose schoolmaster son had to attend a famous charity school after her husband died, it was a wonder she had managed to leave anything at all to her only grandchild. Mama once whispered Grandmama Feldon ran a lodging house in a not-very-respectable part of town to pay for her son to go to Cambridge, but least said soonest mended. There were a lot of small secrets in the late Lady Lackbourne’s life and Rosalind wondered now if growing up keeping the mesh of little white lies that held up her mother’s splendid second marriage had caused her to take a cavalier attitude to the truth as well. Perhaps Ash was right to call her a liar.

And perhaps not, Rosalind, her inner critic argued sternly. No point forgiving him for what he did when he is about to divorce you .

She sighed and recalled Mama telling her about how she was going to have a new stepfather to distract herself from the horrid prospect before her. Apparently his lordship fell in love when he called on a canon of his local cathedral and met the canon’s beautiful widowed daughter. Mama thought his lordship had a good heart under the cool reserve he showed the world, but that sounded like another comfortable lie to Rosalind now. The women of her family did not have much luck with love and marriage, did they? At least, thanks to Grandmother Feldon, there was enough money to buy Furze Cottage with a little left over for emergencies. Ash’s return as Duke of Cherwell was one of those in anyone’s book and she had no intention of letting him ruin her new life. Even the thought of Ash in the same country again, walking the same earth and breathing the same air, felt disturbing, but at least when their marriage was officially ended she would finally be able to forget him.

‘Mama, Mama, please can I go to the vicarage to play with Hal and Ally?’ Miss Imogen Meadows, known as Jenny, burst into the parlour to ask her mother. ‘Mrs Belstone sent you a note.’

‘Oh, and Mrs Belstone addressed it to me , did she?’ Rosalind asked her daughter, raising her eyebrows since Jenny seemed to know the contents of it already.

‘Yes, and she would have sealed it if she didn’t want me to know.’

‘Maybe she thought you such a good little girl you would not dream of reading your mother’s letters,’ Rosalind said, but the irony went over her daughter’s head and this did not feel like a good time to drill some manners into her.

Rosalind read her good friend Judith’s account of Christmas at the vicarage with three lively children, another baby on the way and a hard-working husband to support at one of his busiest time of year, then smiled at her friend’s invitation to please allow Jenny to come and divert her darlings from trying to kill one another for a few hours.

‘Promise you will do as Miss Galvestone, the Vicar and Mrs Belstone say and try to be a good girl?’ Rosalind said warily, having learnt to add conditions before rather than after agreeing to anything, since Jenny’s ears seemed to go deaf as soon as she got what she wanted.

‘Of course, Mama.’

‘Ah, but what sort of a promise is that?’

‘I promise to be good and do as I am bid,’ Jenny parroted with the usual martyred sigh.

‘Then I will try to believe you, but please don’t break anything.’

‘As if I would,’ Jenny said with a cheeky grin and a glint of mischief in grey eyes that looked too much like her father’s. Jenny had dark hair and was built like a sprite instead of a lanky Hartfield, but her smoky gaze was pure Ash.

‘You should respect your aged mother, Imogen Meadows,’ Rosalind told her headstrong daughter, who grinned happily, held up her face for a kiss, then ran off to meet her next adventure.

Now the silence in the spotless little house felt oppressive and Rosalind decided a good walk was what she needed. Her pupils were absorbed in family life or absent from home at this time of year so she had nothing much to do, for once. Joan kept the house clean and neat as a new pin and digging over the neat vegetable plot behind the house ready for spring crops would not distract her from the treadmill of her thoughts long enough. A ramble up on to the high heath above Furze Cottage was what she needed to help her forget Ash until he was actually home and even more eager for his freedom than her.

The ancient stuff gown she kept for rough chores was good enough for rough exercise. Rosalind plaited her corn-gold hair tightly and wound it around her head, then sighed and let it down again. This time she twisted it in a loose knot and pinned it more gently to take the pressure off the headache that had become all too familiar since she read about Charlie Hartfield’s tragic demise. She eyed the reflection of her pure oval face, finely moulded features and deep blue eyes in the mirror with a frown, then turned away before she could change her mind about the cap she usually hid behind. The stark white linen would stand out against the heath and she preferred not to be seen.

‘You look like a tramping woman,’ Joan said when she saw Rosalind standing at the back door scanning the lane for onlookers.

‘I’m going out,’ she replied absently.

‘Where to and why?’

‘Just out,’ Rosalind said stubbornly. ‘You have no respect.’

‘You don’t deserve any dressed like that, Your Grace .’

‘I am Mrs Meadows, plain and simple.’

‘Nothing plain or simple about you, my girl. Easier if there was.’

‘And you could not keep up, even if I was willing to wait while you put on your boots and fuss for half an hour about fires and pots.’

‘At least I know my duty and you are a lady born, like it or not.’

‘I don’t—a lady is not supposed to have opinions or lift anything heavier than a teapot or embroidery frame. I would rather be a quiz than endure such idleness ever again.’

‘You are still young and beautiful, despite all those dull clothes and that daft cap you think makes you look invisible. A girl like you should not be flitting about the countryside alone just because you need to think about them as don’t deserve it,’ Joan said with a significant glance at Rosalind’s left hand.

Rosalind had kept Ash’s ring to give her story weight when she came here with his baby growing in her belly. ‘I cannot help but think about him now,’ she snapped disgustedly, then strode up the grassy lane so fast that her russet countrywoman’s cloak swung out behind her like a banner.

She had to stop and draw breath as soon as she was out of sight of the cottage and now she had a stitch and must stand still until it went.

Look where intemperate feelings get you and learn your lesson, Rose Meadows , her inner schoolmistress nagged.

It was only fury that made Ash seem close enough to feel her rage today. Only a man could make a divorce and even then he had to be an aristocrat. Ash had always been one of those to his very fingertips and she dreaded to think how arrogant he must be now. Eight years ago he had turned his back on her as if she were dross and then left the country to avoid her. She would not let him fill her life now as she had for so long after he left her. There, that was him recalled, dismissed and done with. Now she could turn her thoughts to gallant winter sunshine and a clear blue sky.

The wind had dropped after weeks of storm and tempest and she was tired of feeling hollow inside when Ash must have forgotten he even had a wife until the dukedom landed in his lap. There now, drat the man, but she was thinking about him again. It would not do; she had time to walk to the old stone circle at the highest point on the heath and be home again before dark and she must watch her step. If her thoughts wandered to him on that rough path she might blunder into a foul-smelling bog or tangle herself in a sneaky thicket of brambles. So this was exactly the sort of vigorous exercise she needed until she reached the brow of the hill and could stand in awe of the wide view across the heath and out to the distant sea before she strolled on and reached the stone circle.