Elizabeth Beacon - The Duchess’s Secret

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When Ros reached her objective without letting her mind wander or think of the unthinkable more than once or twice, she rested against one of the lichen-covered stones in the January sun to get her breath back. The heath had a strange, secretive beauty at this time of year and she wished she could paint it and take a reminder home for times when the walls of her cottage seemed to close in. Even the pale ribbon of sea on the horizon looked serene as a millpond after weeks of storm and turmoil and only the faintest of breezes stirred the wisps of her hair escaping from its knot to tickle her flushed cheeks.

‘Would I was so calm,’ she murmured and searched the pocket no lady of fashion would dream of allowing to spoil the smooth lines of her gown. Luckily fashion was a stranger to her nowadays so she did not have to worry about such things. Here was the gold half-hunter watch she had bought for Ash as an engagement present and he later thrust back at her as if he wanted no reminders of what they had been to one another before they wed. She calculated how long it would take to walk downhill by the bridleway down to Livesey Village as her fingers ran absently over finely chased metal warm from her body. So many times she had decided to sell it, then put it back in her pocket or hung it by her bed again. Now the familiar details pulled her traitor memory back and she was eighteen again, rounding the corner of a secluded walk in Green Park with her heart hammering with eager anticipation.

Yes, there he was; impatiently waiting for her as he had promised last night when he daringly climbed up to her bedroom window at Lackbourne House to kiss her goodnight and beg her to meet him here in the morning . Here was her love, her Asher Hartfield, handsome, carelessly elegant and infinitely dear. And, wonder of wonders, he must love her back or he would never risk her stepfather’s wrath and a crashing fall just to wish her goodnight. She had been quite right to ignore all the warnings that he was too young to settle down with one woman and as wild and untameable as a feral moorland pony. One look into his warm grey eyes and she knew here was her one and only and what else was there to know?

‘You are precisely ten and a half minutes late, my darling,’ he had told her that morning, closing the watch she had given him as a secret betrothal gift and putting it away so she could run into his arms. Then he was close enough for her to feel his warm chuckle against her skin.

‘I missed you so much I—’ she said, but he stopped her mouth with hot sweet kisses until they both forgot about words for a while.

The sharp cawing of rooks nearby brought Rosalind back to now with a thump. Oh, for goodness sake! Here she was, lolling against the ancient stone with a foolish smile on her face. Cross with herself for reliving that silly, broken dream, she stood upright hastily and hoped nobody had seen her. No, the heath was as empty as usual at this time of year. Even the almost-wild heath ponies kept to lower ground and sheep were safe in winter pastures. She heaved a sigh of relief. Rosalind Feldon, one-time society beauty, was still safely hidden under Mrs Meadows’s stern disguise. Cold nipped at her fingers now so she pulled on knitted gloves, wrapped her shabby cloak closer to her chilled body and waited to feel warmer, but the cold seemed to have crept into her bones.

Hunger , she told herself practically and ate the small pie she had put in that useful pocket as she left the house. It was time she set off for home if all she could do up here was brood on the past. She soon found the bridle path that would take her back by an easier route and settled to a steady pace. She wondered why those rooks were still complaining like harsh-voiced old women discussing a scandal, but a clump of stunted pines hid the track from Dorchester so she could not see what the fuss was about. At last she heard a horse on the old pack road and wished she had worn the stark white cap after all. And why the devil had she been crying over the bittersweet memory of how much she and Ash once thought they were going to love each other for the rest of their lives?

She pulled her hood up to hide her face and hoped the rider would pass by with a brief Good day . The horse’s hooves were so close now she could actually feel the vibration of its coming through the lightly grassed-over chalk under her feet. The animal snorted as it came alongside and tried to jib at something about her it decided not to like. It was swiftly controlled and she risked a hurried sideways glance. A fine grey gelding—good, his wealthy owner would have no time for shabby countrywomen. She got ready to bob a curtsy and walk stoically on, as if she was only intent on getting home before the early dark of a winter afternoon cut her off up here with only ghosts and creatures of the night for company.

‘Is this the way to Livesey Village?’ Ash asked and Rosalind felt the earth shift under her feet as his deep voice echoed around in her reeling head and she looked up at him like a simpleton.

Had her silly dreams conjured him up then?

Idiot! she accused herself as she stood staring at him as if turned to stone. You could have said no and hidden your face.

Then she would be free to run home on paths a stranger could not know about and escape before he got there.

Aye, and pigs will grow wings and fly, a mocking inner voice argued.

She numbly added up the time it would take her to whisk Jenny into hiding and let Joan know she had been forced to run away without even a toothbrush.

‘Ah, I see it is. Well met, Wife,’ said the Sixth Duke of Cherwell, with a harsh parody of his old smile that made her heart ache.

She had to peer up at him through the black spots dancing in front of her eyes and she could hardly hear his mocking words past the thunder of her frantically pounding heart. Maybe she was still leaning on the ancient stone inside its eerie circle, dreaming impossible things. Yes, that was it; she had fallen under a malevolent spell. Local legend promised terror to anyone silly enough to dally there and her Ash had been lean and self-conscious about his height, whereas this man sat his horse like a Roman emperor posing for a triumphal statue. She had taken great pains to hide her tracks when they came here as well and had never contacted anyone from her former life, except the Hartfield family solicitor by the most devious route she could think of, so nobody could have betrayed her to him, therefore he could not really be here.

‘Go back to hell,’ she ordered the spectre and crossed her fingers under her cloak to ward off evil.

‘Only if you come with me,’ it said coolly. ‘Cat got your tongue?’ he added in a darker version of the voice she remembered so well her hopes he was an illusion were beginning to waver.

‘I have nothing to say to you.’

‘Not even “Where have you been all these years?”’

‘No.’

‘Yet I am very curious about you, Mrs Meadows. My lawyer tells me you live alone except for a maid and teach music and dancing to aspiring young ladies. Is your latest lover a wanderer, too, then? Does he have a different lovebird in every parish as a reason for not keeping you in style?’

‘You never knew me at all,’ she said distantly, silently blessing her close-mouthed neighbours for not being at all helpful to any official-looking strangers asking questions along a coast where smuggling was rife.

‘I know everything there is to know.’

Ha! her inner rebel argued. ‘You know nothing,’ she said out loud.

‘I know enough,’ he said icily. ‘And as I need a duchess rather badly now you are damnably in the way.’

‘Have you come to kill me and bury my body up here where nobody will ever find it?’ her inner idiot challenged, but somehow she still trusted him not to physically hurt her. Disconcerting, she decided, as she met his eyes without a single shudder for her safety. He was shaking her world to its core yet again and she could not bring herself to hate him wholeheartedly even now. Still, if she irritated him enough, maybe he would ride away and never get any closer to Livesey and find out she had borne him a child.