The man she once loved...

...is back—to claim her?

Rosalind is surprised to find Ash Hartfield—the man she eloped with seven years ago—on her doorstep! She’d felt betrayed by his abrupt departure to India following the revelations of their wedding night. Seeing him again still gives her butterflies—but a lot has changed...not least that he’s a duke now! What will he do when he discovers her secret—that he has an heir?

ELIZABETH BEACON has a passion for history and storytelling and, with the English West Country on her doorstep, never lacks a glorious setting for her books. Elizabeth tried horticulture, higher education as a mature student, briefly taught English and worked in an office before finally turning her daydreams about dashing piratical heroes and their stubborn and independent heroines into her dream job: writing Regency romances for Mills & Boon.

Also by Elizabeth Beacon

The Black Sheep’s Return

A Wedding for the Scandalous Heiress

A Rake to the Rescue

A Year of Scandal miniseries

The Viscount’s Frozen Heart

The Marquis’s Awakening

Lord Laughraine’s Summer Promise

Redemption of the Rake

The Winterley Scandal

The Governess Heiress

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk.

The Duchess’s Secret

Elizabeth Beacon

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-1-474-08935-7

THE DUCHESS’S SECRET

© 2019 Elizabeth Beacon

Published in Great Britain 2019

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

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Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

About the Author

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Note to Readers

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Epilogue

Extract

About the Publisher

Prologue
1811

‘I love you so much, Ash,’ Rosalind told her new husband, with such joy in her heart she wanted to say it over and over again. ‘My husband,’ she whispered to herself. ‘My one and only love.’

‘And I love you, Mrs Hartfield,’ Asher Hartfield said, with such love looking back from smoky grey eyes it was better than any love poem.

‘Enough to come all the way to Gretna to marry me when my stepfather said no,’ she agreed happily as the hired carriage headed back to England.

Travelling by mail coach had been an adventure, but Rosalind was looking forward to a leisurely trip home now they were man and wife and nobody could ever part them again.

‘I would go to the ends of the earth to marry you,’ Ash told her and when their eyes met the fire under all that smoke was plain to see.

Rosalind felt warmed and cherished and eager for the first intimate inn along the way Ash had promised her as they travelled relentlessly, snatching sleep when the roads were smooth enough, never daring to nap in warm taprooms for fear they would be left behind. It had been an odd combination of restless haste, anxiety her stepfather, the Earl of Lackbourne, would catch up and stop them and the boredom and discomfort of travelling at such a pace, but she would do it again a hundred times over in order to marry Ash.

‘Husband,’ she whispered and slipped off a soft tan glove to stare down at the gold band he had placed on her finger less than an hour ago.

‘Wife,’ he said, as if she was a fantasy he had been promising himself since they first laid eyes on one another as well. It had only taken his long, hot stare to send her spinning out of a Mayfair ballroom into this new world made only for them. Rosalind had tumbled fathoms deep in love and Ash had blinded her to other men. The wonder was he felt the same when their two worlds met and they became us two, Ros and Ash, lovers until the end of time.

Rosalind imagined she would be wary of wild young men after her experience of the man who lied to her when she was younger and a lot more naïve, but apparently she could not resist a rogue. But this one was different and Ash Hartfield really was the true love of her life.

‘How far must we travel today?’ she asked breathlessly, thinking even waiting until early nightfall at this wintry time of year would feel like riding a knife-edge when she wanted him so urgently she had no idea how they had managed to keep their hands off each other all the way to Gretna Green.

Ash would be a caring and passionate lover—the fire in his eyes when he met hers said how difficult it was for him to wait—but he had done so all the way from London. Her heart ached with the hugeness of love and she would not even think of the rogue who had lied about how impossible it was for a man to control his base passions in the presence of true beauty right now. Or remember how she had cursed her looks until she met Ash’s eyes across that ballroom. Nothing about Ash’s need for her at the heart of his life felt base or wrong. He was warmth and care and strength. Other men only wanted to possess her body and never mind the contents of her head, or her hopes and dreams—but this man was so different she wanted to pinch herself until she could believe this was really happening and he really loved her.

‘Carlisle,’ he murmured as if even the word was temptation enough for a man so close to the end of his tether.

‘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.

‘Then we have nothing to worry about,’ he told her with an only-for-her smile on his slightly stubbly face and a gleam in his eyes she simply had to resist until she had confided her silly story and got the last obstacle to their happiness out of the way.

* * *

‘What did you say?’

‘I should have told you before, but—’

‘No,’ Ash roared and leapt out of bed, ‘there is no “but” in the world important enough to stop you telling me until you had my ring on your finger. You lied; you used me,’ he added and the revulsion in his voice was straight out of her worst nightmares, but at the same time too real to hope she would wake up and find she had dreamt it.

Rosalind watched her husband throw on his clothes as if it felt wrong to be naked with her now and shock held her frozen, like an abandoned houri after a night of unimaginable sin. Her mother had been right then; she should never have told her husband what a fool she was at sixteen. She should have kept it to herself that young and silly Rosalind Feldon had let a handsome young rogue convince her she was the love of his life before she found the touchstone of true love the moment she saw Ash. She had been so blinded by the grown-up glow and glamour of her first love affair she had let that rogue convince her the punch at her first grown-up party was made with spices and lemon juice and honey and wouldn’t harm a baby. Later he told her a man like him couldn’t help himself in the company of such a beautiful girl. Rosalind had been so intoxicated with rum and dreams he had managed to seduce her while she was so dazed and loose-limbed she had hardly known her own name and thought it a strange and oddly uncomfortable dream. Waking to an appalling headache and the terrible realisation it had truly happened, Rosalind had discovered the furtive rogue had left at daybreak for his new posting at the Russian court without even a note to say sorry.

‘No, I never actually lied and I do love you. I was a fool to believe a word that man said, but I refuse to let a careless rake ruin my life, then or now. It cost a great deal of heartache to put my life back together, but I know the difference between real love and pretend—I know you love me as he never could. He was too selfish to ever love like you do, with every bit of your heart and soul. My mother was dying when he did what he did,’ Rosalind added and paused for a moment to find enough strength to carry on talking with the memory of that terrible, precious time clogging her throat with tears. Mama had urged her to be strong and not tell anyone else, ever, and she was so right. ‘She made me promise not to let him ruin my life,’ she whispered sadly now.

‘Yet he has managed it anyway,’ her Ash said bleakly and he hadn’t been listening after she told him her dark secret, had he? He had made up his own story about her fall from grace, but that would not stop her fighting for her marriage and this new, true lovers’ life they were so eager to begin.

‘No, that makes him the winner. I refuse to be used and ruined because of one foolish action when I was little more than a child, Ash. He was a cold-hearted rogue who took advantage of me, then left.’ She got out of bed at last to face his stony gaze bravely as she reached for her hastily discarded clothes and began to scramble into them.

‘So you say. That’s your version of what happened and how can I ever trust that again? You have had a lover and you didn’t tell me. This so-called rogue of yours didn’t sit by my side all the way to Scotland so we could marry in haste and repent at leisure. You were ready, willing and eager to elope with a lovesick fool. Who else was going to marry a soiled dove, Rosalind? I really thought you were an angel in human form and you look like one, on the outside.’ He must have seen her flinch at that tired description of her golden looks and his stare turned cynical. ‘You gave an exquisitely polished performance. Your unspoilt grace and sweetly hesitant manner were masterly. I suppose you already have a lover waiting to keep you in style.’

‘No. I am still the person you married. The same woman you swore you loved to the edge of madness last night.’

‘You are not a woman, but a silly little girl dressed up in fine clothes. You are a liar, though. I cannot live with one of those for the rest of my life.’

‘That means you cannot endure yourself, since you swore you loved me only a few minutes ago and it must have been a bare-faced lie.’ Even to her own ears Rosalind sounded childish. It seemed to confirm everything Ash said about her, but it was either that or sob and plead for forgiveness—miserable defiance it was then.

‘I loved someone who does not exist,’ he said stiffly, as if his pride was offended. ‘How can I love a woman who is a liar? Three whole months have passed since we met and you have never managed to find a single moment to tell me you are not what you seem? Oh, no, you made sure we were well and truly married before you told me the truth, when it was too late to escape your clutches.’

‘If that was my plan, I did not need to tell you at all. You can trust me, Ash, I swear you can. It wasn’t my fault.’ She heard her own defensive and, yes, childish response to his fury and despaired, but it was defend herself against his bitter fury or weep and she refused to when he was glaring at her as if she was his enemy.

‘It wasn’t my fault,’ he parodied cruelly. ‘That’s what she said,’ he burst out as if it hurt him to talk about the reason he felt so betrayed by her failure to tell him of her sad misadventure until now.

Wild jealousy rocked Rosalind as well as an echo of his pain. Despite sobs tearing at her throat she was too proud to let out, and a sense of injustice burning inside her, she still loved him. His hurt felt like hers. Maybe he had never cared about her as he swore he did from the moment he first laid eyes on her. Maybe he was the true liar out of the two of them, but this accusation belonged to a guiltier woman. ‘Who said it?’ she said bleakly. ‘Who was she?’

‘My mother.’

‘Your mother? I thought you must have been betrayed by a lover. I almost felt sorry for you, but, no, you turned on me because of your mother. I never expected to trail in her footsteps,’ she said, fury so strong it buoyed her up even as her world fell apart. ‘What did she do, drop you on your head as a baby?’

‘She told us she was going to be at a house party in the next county, although she was really flitting off to join her latest lover.’

‘And that’s all?’

‘Of course not, but she made it impossible to find her when our little sister was taken ill. Our mother came back a week after the funeral in her mourning weeds, telling anyone it wasn’t her fault.’

Ash’s voice sounded as if he was reliving his agony and even after all the terrible things he had said to her Rosalind pitied him. ‘Maybe it wasn’t,’ she said. ‘She might not have been able to save your sister even if she had sat at her bedside the whole time.’

‘Maybe not, but my brother Jas took it so hard you would think he had killed her himself. I hated my mother for lying over and over again and believing it. I did not go to her funeral; I did not owe her enough love.’

And there were the bleak, unsaid words between them: I would not bother to turn up for yours either.

‘I am truly sorry you lost your sister so tragically, Ash, but I promise I am not lying when I say I love you,’ Rosalind said, but felt the faith she had been clinging to until now began to fail as the dogged reason he was so angry ate it up and spat out the bones.

‘Not enough to tell me the truth,’ he said bleakly and left the room as if she was a stranger he did not care for.

Chapter One
1818

Ash stopped pacing his austerely opulent office in the sticky heat to glare between the gaps in the window screens at the lush landscape outside. It was monsoon season and most of his neighbours had departed for the hills with their families, but he had no family. He stayed to watch the relentless miracle of the rains enrich this exotic, fascinating land and to seize the odd business opportunity they were too far away to grasp.

He swung away from the view and cursed the steamy heat for sapping his energy and dulling his mind, then strode to his desk and picked up the letter to reread impossible news. Stupid to hope his eyes had deceived him and he must have imagined those dire words in neat script on hot pressed paper.

The outside of the letter was almost unmarked by its long journey, as if to prove he was now a very important man. Even his letters must be taken great care of aboard a busy merchantman. Not for this cursed thing a sack in the hold with the cargo.

He blamed the form of address the prestigious firm of London lawyers used to direct it: To A. Hartfield of Calcutta; with the words, Sixth Duke of Cherwell, Marquess of Asham and Earl Morfield added in smaller letters, as if to warn of terrible news.

It is with great regret we must carry out our sad duty as the Fifth Duke of Cherwell’s legal representatives and executors and inform you of His Grace’s untimely death.

The day before yesterday your cousin, Charles Edward Frederick Louis Hartfield, died in a terrible carriage accident on his way to spend the summer months at Brighton...

Ash could not make himself read any more, now or when the first shock of those words bit like steel. The shining young hope of the Hartfield family, his scapegrace cousin Charlie was gone. The lad could only have been four and twenty. Ash pictured the gangling seventeen-year-old youth he had last seen seven years ago and sadness beyond tears caught him by the throat. He wanted to yell defiance at the gods. Was his whole race cursed to die before their allotted span on earth? No, reason stepped in and argued—his grandfather, the Fourth Duke, had lived to be an upright, if irascible, eighty-eight and even Ash’s father, Lord John Hartfield, managed to survive into his forties before he met his end drunk on the hunting field. Yet three years after Waterloo, Ash’s mind flinched at the dreadful truth that his brother Jasper was dead, left among the piles of dead on that bloodiest of battlefields until his batman found him. All over Europe there were fathers and brothers, sons, husbands and lovers dead so many decades before their time because of the war. He was not the only one to feel this aching loss day after weary day, but he never thought Charlie would join in and make Ash feel blighted and guilty that he was alive when two better men were cold in the ground.

There was no point blaming himself for not being there to protect his little cousin from every ill wind that blew, but he still did. Charlie would have hated it after growing up under Grandfather’s stern gaze until the old man gave up his fierce grip on life five years ago. Better be glad Charlie had had a few years as a handsome young duke with the world at his feet than curse the gods for taking him so long before his time. No, why the devil not? He was right to be furious. Except stamping about the room blaspheming and trying to pretend his eyes must be deceiving him did not make him feel better and heavy tears were still aching in his throat.

Ash glanced at the date below the formal listing of the lawyers’ partnership and chambers. He hated the scribe who had set it out so neatly he clearly did not care about the tragedy he outlined. Ash had been Sixth Duke of Cherwell for six months of blissful ignorance. The letter had made its slow way through Biscay, past Spain and Portugal, down the coast of Africa to the Cape of Good Hope until it got to the Indian Ocean and at last to here. If he went home he would have to wear the heaviest coronet below the weight of a crown on state occasions. He shuddered; Charlie or Jasper should be there to lead what was left of the Hartfield clan.

Ash cursed again and paced and cursed a bit more. The vexing problem of what to do about the slightly smaller and lighter coronet of a duchess crept into his head like a bad fairy. He had a vision of Ros in it before he bit out a choice epithet to add to the collection echoing around this lofty room like malicious flies. He did not want to be haunted by visions of the loveliest girl he’d ever seen gloriously grown into her looks after eight years apart from her hoodwinked husband. Eight years without him to catalogue her by the changing seasons and count the lovers she was sure to have cuckolded him with by now. Only a handful of people even knew of his misbegotten marriage; two were dead and the rest had kept quiet so divorce might not be the nightmare it was for other noble cuckolds. They had been apart for so long there would be discarded lovers aplenty in Rosalind Feldon’s wake. He could take his pick of deluded fools to sue for criminal conversation with his wife, then seek a bill of divorce in the House.

No, it was foolish to delude himself it would be so easy and there could be no hiding his youthful idiocy now. The public dissolution of his marriage would be chewed over and chuckled at in every newssheet in the land. At least when they realised the sad depths of his youthful folly his peers would send his Bill of Divorce through unopposed and there was sure to be plenty of evidence; no woman as fiery, passionate and silly as his wife could have fooled her own kind she was virtuous for so long and she could hardly marry one of her lovers with a husband still alive.

The thought of Rosalind in the arms of whoever was keeping her now sent a roar of fury through him that hurt like a whip. As well he had so many weary weeks aboard ship to look forward to, then. By the time he got home and tracked down his Duchess he would be cold as ice. Neither Jas nor Charlie had lived long enough to wed and have children, so it was up to Ash to sire legitimate heirs to the family honours and next time he would make sure he picked a plain and dutiful wife. His new Duchess would not blind him to her true character with breathtaking looks and fine acting and they would enjoy a marriage of convenience. He could not be like his father, careless and wild himself and managing to ignore his wife’s parade of lovers once she had provided him with an heir and a spare. That sort of marriage was not for him and he needed a dutiful wife without a head full of silly dreams. Love and lies made a tangled trap he had no intention of ever falling into again.

Six Months Later

Ever since she had seen the notice of Charles Hartfield, Fifth Duke of Cherwell’s tragic death in a week-old copy of the Morning Post almost a year ago Mrs Rose Meadows had been waiting for trouble to strike. Charlie Hartfield’s early demise would force Ash into divorcing her now and what a harsh and humiliating business it promised to be. She had sent a letter to his family solicitor by a very roundabout route to tell their noble client she had no wish to remain a duchess by accident. If she had to go to London and set herself up as a brazen hussy to deflect attention from Livesey Village and her real life, she would do that as well. She would do anything to keep Ash away from Livesey and her dearest secret.

‘More tea?’ Joan asked when she bustled into the little parlour to clear the breakfast dishes and frowned at Rosalind’s untouched plate.

‘No, thank you.’ Rosalind had already let two cups go cold and it was a luxury they could not afford to waste.

‘Are you feeling badly?’ Joan asked her bluntly.

‘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.

* * *

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.

‘And wait another seven years before I can have you declared dead?’ he said with a cynical smile. ‘Even I am not that stupid.’

‘Do you have your next Duchess picked out and waiting, then?’ she asked just as cynically back, in order to mask the fact it had hurt her that he seemed to think disposing of her merely stupid, instead of unthinkable after what they had been to one another, once upon a time.

‘No, but I should be able to find a gentle and biddable young lady with no illusions about love and a practical mind easily enough once I am free to wed her, what with me being a duke and under the age of thirty.’

Arrogant of him to think it would be that easy even if he was right. He was also formidably handsome and obviously rich and should have no trouble finding a suitable candidate among the debutantes, even if they were secretly terrified of such an awe-inspiring aristocrat. He meant his next wife to be her very opposite. Good again—a romantic fool like Rosalind Feldon would have her heart broken and no man should be able to do that to two wives in a lifetime.

‘I wish you joy of one another,’ she said coolly, thinking it sounded as empty and joyless a union as he deserved. When she considered how deeply they had meant to love one another the day they married over the anvil, his new version of marriage sounded as frozen as an Arctic waste. She shivered at the thought of all the dash and promise he had at one and twenty turning into this cold man with a cold heart, aiming for an even colder marriage. What a relief he meant to divorce her if that was what he wanted from a wife. He might look like Ash, but this man was very different under the skin. There were still glimpses of young Ash in his smoky gaze and tawny hair and she eyed him sideways and longed for things she didn’t understand. She recognised the Ash of eight years ago under the hard shell and she wanted him, not this hard cold man he had become. That was the only reason for this thrill of attraction still so annoyingly alive under her armour against him.

Chapter Two

Ash would have been relieved to know Rosalind thought he was hard and emotionless. All it took was one look at her white, closed face and she had divided him in two again. One half was doing and saying cool and rational things while the other slid about on thin ice like the boy he was when they first met. And she was so lovely now she took his breath away. He felt his inner boy grieve for the light-hearted girl she had once been, but a beautiful face could never make up for a fickle heart and shallow nature. Yet there was something about her now that even made cynical, grown-up Ash wonder how best to describe her. She was pared down—that was as close as he could get.

Her old sidelong looks of girlish uncertainty and a puppy-like need for approval were gone. She was the woman she had not yet found room to be when he fell in love with her and he wanted her so urgently it hurt. He refused to brood over the lovers she had no doubt enjoyed, told himself he didn’t care who had enjoyed her richer curves and the privilege of exploring the sweeter, tighter hollows of her silky skin with the slavish attention of a lover. Except he did; he envied them like the devil. Temper at the thought of another man exploring her secrets would hand her victory in this battle of wills and that would never do. He had come here to do business with his wife, it was just a shame he could not remember what it was right now.

Remember, Ash, he cautioned himself and tried to see the little changes that would make him feel repelled by her shop-soiled charm.

There was a faint trail of freckles across her high cheekbones and she had the slightly gilded skin of a woman careless about wearing a hat on unladylike tramps around the countryside, but that was all.

You would have thought time would write ‘liar’ across her purely beautiful face, wouldn’t you?

No sign of it that he could see. Well, his mother could act the innocent so beautifully a saint might be taken in and he was no saint. He still eyed the high neck of Rosalind’s disreputable stuff gown and simple cotton collar and caught himself longing to trace the line of sun-exposed skin where it met whiter, even softer, Rosalind with passionate kisses. Devil take the woman; he had come here to make sure he could finally be rid of her, not to fall under her witchy spell again. His body wanted to lead him about by an organ far more wilful and troublesome than his nose and if he wasn’t careful his sex would betray him. He had come for his freedom and didn’t want his heart mangled by his confounded wife again.

‘Why are you dressed like a dowd?’ he heard himself ask even so.

‘Because I am one?’ she said cautiously, as if she didn’t understand why he was asking either.

And he had never been able to accuse her of vanity, had he? ‘Not if you wrapped yourself up in chainmail and put on a suit of armour to try and snuff out your sex altogether,’ he scoffed.

There, young Ash was even speaking for him now. He wanted to kick the immature fool where it hurt and ride away, but since that was impossible he watched her muffle her thoughts with a bland, blue stare and wondered what was going on in her head. Maybe he had put that curb on her passions when he left, but he could not afford a conscience about it now. He needed his new Duchess and his heirs and her sceptical gaze said she would rather have the poor life she lived now than bend the knee to any man and what a humbling thought that was. He eyed her rough clothing and recalled the little life his lawyer reported when he had finally found her after months of false leads and well-hidden tracks.

It really had been high time he rid himself of the man, despite that clever feat of detection. The lawyer had made little or no effort to find Mrs Asher Hartfield after Ash left for India, so the income from the tiny fortune Ash inherited at one and twenty had not gone to his wife as he had intended but into the fat lawyer’s pockets. At least news his client was the next Duke of Cherwell stirred the man into tracking Rosalind down, despite all those false leads and dead ends she scattered in his path. Ash had never meant his wife to earn her own bread and eke out a spartan existence in a cottage. When he was an angry boy he had not wanted to use the law firm his family had always employed though, because he hadn’t wanted his grandfather to find out he had eloped with Ros, then run away. That would have been the final nail in the coffin of any love they had had as grandson and grandfather and he could not have endured the old man thinking so badly of him when he was on the other side of the world. Coward, he accused that boy now. He should have known better than to have trusted an obscure lawyer he had found more or less at random with all the money he had had at the time. Given the wild races he used to ride over any terrain Ash knew he was a challenge for his grandfather to love. Little wonder Grandfather had sent him abroad with a flea in his ear and said he might as well risk death doing something useful instead of wasting his life on aimless adventures. Just one day of marriage before he had given up on Mr and Mrs Hartfield would have added contempt to Grandfather’s despair at his least important grandson’s wildness. Ash was far too cowardly to admit to the old man that he had married and deserted the Earl of Lackbourne’s stepdaughter because she had told him a lie and he thought she might grow like his mother. The thought of his grandfather’s contempt made him feel uneasy even now the man had been dead five years, but he had been right to go, hadn’t he? Once a liar, always a liar. Rosalind could never have loved him if she thought it was all right to marry him without telling the truth about her lover first.

Right; that was the past back in its rightful place then, now where was he? Ah, yes, the lawyer. Ash had dismissed the man as soon as he had told him Rosalind’s new name and humble address. Then he made himself come here himself to make sure the Mrs Meadows the man had come across living so obscurely really was the former Rosalind Feldon. A dishonest lawyer could always lay his hands on a dishonest woman, so Ash had to see for himself before he believed the man. If not for that, Ash would have been happy to do as the impudent letter she sent to his family lawyers after Charlie died suggested and divorce her in absentia.

* * *

Rosalind shifted under Ash’s coldly critical scrutiny. When he jumped down from his horse to confront her on level ground it still seemed impossible this was really was him. Standing on the same earth as he was an assault on her senses and she didn’t trust a single one as he calmly held the mighty grey’s reins and studied her like a portrait. By summoning all the strength and self-reliance the last eight years taught her, she just about managed not to flinch under his stony scrutiny.

‘You look like a duchess in disguise,’ he mocked, but there was something in his eyes that reminded her how it felt to truly be his wife, for one passionate and largely sleepless night.

‘Nonsense, I am a simple countrywoman,’ she argued. She tugged the watch from her pocket to avoid his puzzling stare. ‘One who must hurry home or be very late for an engagement,’ she lied, closing the case with a snap. There was a flicker of feeling in his eyes at the sight of the watch she had once spent all her pin money on, so he could count the hours until they were together again. He had left it behind so it could not really mean anything to him.

‘You kept it, then?’ he asked huskily.

‘I needed a timepiece and it cost nothing.’

‘A laudably practical attitude,’ he said with a frown that disagreed.

‘I am a prosaic creature.’

‘I very much doubt it,’ he argued, looked about to smile, then changed his mind.

‘Country widows need to be,’ she insisted.

‘Not when they are not widows at all they don’t.’

‘Since you must have come about a divorce I suppose the whole world will soon know I am still wed,’ she said gloomily and now he had tracked her down that was probably true, one way or another.

‘They don’t have to.’

‘The only way I shall not be notorious now is if you hire an actress to pretend to be me and I stay quiet and pretend not to be me under yet another name.’

‘A tempting idea, but lies have a habit of catching up with a person, don’t they?’

‘That’s cruel and even a little bit mean of you, my lord Duke. I don’t think we need to descend to name calling when our divorce will be humiliating enough as far as I am concerned to satisfy even you.’

‘I am not that vindictive, but you are right. I apologise,’ he said and Rosalind did not quite know what to make of him now.

‘It will be appalling,’ she said with a shudder.

‘I suppose we could always employ someone desperate to pretend to be you,’ he almost offered and it was tempting, for a moment.

‘We would be a laughing stock when she sold her story to whoever offered the most money and you might not get your divorce.’

‘True,’ he said with a disgusted shake of the head for the very idea of being tied to her for the rest of his life and that was good. As long as he was being the opposite of her dashing, charming and funny lover of long ago she could face him with indifference. It was when he reminded her of the young Ash who had loved her that he was dangerous.

‘I don’t know why you are here. I have already offered to come to London and face the mob so you can pillory me for my imagined sins—and you will have to imagine them because I never ignored my marriage vows.’ Drat, why had she let that slip? He would know she was jealous of the idea of him lying in another woman’s arms if she wasn’t careful. But if she didn’t care, how could she be jealous? Good question, Rosalind, her inner schoolmistress observed.

‘I had to make sure it was you and not some actress my former lawyer set up here to take the money I intend to settle on you after the divorce. He took what little I had when I left the country and thought I was leaving it behind to support you.’

‘Did you do that? I had no idea.’

‘I was right then, he made no effort to find you before you disappeared and I cannot help but wonder why you did that, Rosalind?’

Don’t wonder too hard, she silently urged and faced him with raised eyebrows, as if to say she thought it was too obvious to need explaining.

‘Why didn’t you tell the world about us?’ he ignored her sceptical stare to ask as if that puzzle had been plaguing him for years.

‘Hadn’t you made enough of a fool out of me without the rest of the world knowing?’ she parried. She wasn’t going to tell him she hadn’t cared about anything much at all after he left. When she had finally woken up to the new life they had made between them on their wedding night she had had good reason to slip away from the ton as if she had never existed and she definitely didn’t want him to know about that. Every time she needed or wanted to tell him about Jenny over the years she would remember him turning on her the day after their wedding and know it was impossible. Except now he was so close to their daughter panic goaded her heartbeat to a gallop again.

‘I thought the shoe was on the other foot,’ he said cynically and he would, wouldn’t he? The young man he once was had been dashing and handsome and entirely wonderful as far as young Rosalind knew, before they wed, but he was also hot-tempered and arrogantly convinced he was always right.

‘I cannot imagine how you intend to stay anonymous now I am home and you can hardly go unremarked even here looking as you do,’ he said.

‘Looks give no hint of a person’s inner life. You are handsome in a gruff sort of way on the surface, but you are not the man I fell in love with.’

‘Pah—love,’ he said with a revolted expression, as if she had said blasphemed.

‘Yes, love. It is vital to me, which is why I want a divorce every bit as fervently as you do. You have been away from me for eight years and I doubt very much you stuck to the marriage vows you thought you were deceived into making with me,’ she challenged him with a very straight look that defied him to lie. He avoided it for a moment, then met it defiantly and she knew she was right. As expected, Rosalind, as expected, she reminded herself and hoped she was managing to look scornful about it when confirmation he had been enjoying himself as if he had never married her made her want to scream and lash out at him, but that would never do, it would look as if she cared. ‘One of us has been unfaithful to our marriage promises, so that will have to do for both our consciences while you lie it was me who took lovers, since only a wife’s adultery can dissolve a marriage. Imagine that; me having to live a lie to cover up yours, after all you had to say about me being a liar when you left.’

He looked offended and defensive and ducal so she must have caught him on the raw with that barb and she really must stop sniping at him. She wrapped her arms across her shivering body at the thought of what a disaster it would be if he ever found out about Jenny. However much he had wronged her, she could not sue him for divorce since the law did not recognise her as a sentient human being, merely as her husband’s chattel. And if he was furious with her for lying by omission when he left her, how would he feel if he found out she had borne his child? Somehow she must get him to leave.

‘I am ready to do what you want because it is what I want as well. So you can go away with my promise to turn up to be insulted and defamed, now you have satisfied yourself I am really me,’ she said lightly.

She would leave Livesey first and make sure there was no trail for his bloodhound to follow this time. Then she could set out for London by an indirect route to act the adulteress for him, since that was the only way out of this prison they had made for each other all those years ago when they wed over the anvil.

‘You will bolt as soon as I turn my back,’ he said abruptly and that was annoyingly perceptive of him.

‘I agree to let you fabricate grounds for a divorce and I do not go back on my word.’

‘Hmm, we shall see about that.’

Inside she was raging at him for pretending her failure to confide in him before marriage was a deliberate lie, but that paled to nothing besides her worry his former lawyer would tell Ash the truth even if she did manage to get away without him finding out he had a daughter. The lawyer must know about Jenny, so why had he kept her secret? Blackmail, she decided. If what Ash said was true he had made provision for her before he left and someone stole it. The lawyer must be venal and lazy and if he could make money out of her to pay back what Ash would demand he returned to him he would still win, wouldn’t he? Most of that settlement, the conscience money Ash had intended to settle on her, would have to go on paying the man to keep quiet but it would be worth it, she assured herself as she shot this hard-faced stranger a sideways look. The headache she had come up here to cure thundered in her temples now as a new hazard was added to her list and how she wished Ash would leave her in peace to try to work out a way around them.

‘They expect me at the inn in Livesey, by the way, before you try to tell me the place is full to the rafters with benighted travellers.’

‘Why? What more can you want from me than a promise to go quietly?’ she asked rather desperately.

‘Nothing, but I knew I would be cold and weary after riding from London as fast as my horse can carry me. My former lawyer told me the inn at Livesey is comfortable and clean and Peg needs a rest even more than I do.’

‘Peg?’ she echoed hollowly and shock could make the strangest things seem important. It sounded a very odd name for such a noble steed.

‘Short for Pegasus—his last owner had high-flying ideas to go with his huge debts.’

‘Oh, I see,’ she replied vaguely and she wasn’t really interested in him or his horse, was she? ‘You could get stuck there and you would not want that, would you?’ she said as she fought those silly tears back and focused on the yellowish band of cloud now creeping across the sea and realised what it meant.

‘Why?’

‘Have you been away from England so long you have forgotten what yonder sky means?’

He followed her pointing finger as if he didn’t trust her to know snow clouds from a hole in her shoe. ‘Aye, you’re right,’ he finally had to admit. ‘There is a goodly fall of snow on its way.’

‘Best hurry back to Dorchester and be comfortable there for however long it lasts, then. I promise to be on my way as soon as the roads allow travel again,’ she urged, hoping she could escape while his back was turned and she wasn’t exactly lying, was she? She did plan to scoop Jenny up and run as fast as she could go in the opposite direction. She had not said where she would be on the road to—how could she when she had no idea herself?

‘I am not the soft aristocrat you seem to think me. A village inn will do me very well,’ he argued with a suspicious look that asked why she was so determined to get him away from her humble home.

She managed to shrug as if she didn’t care what he did. ‘Well, I am going home anyway. I have a great deal to do before it snows,’ she said with a warning glare as if to say Don’t even think about hauling me on to that great horse and making us ride double.

‘Chickens and things, I suppose,’ he said, Duke to peasant.

The old, impulsive Rosalind would have smacked his smug face for that taunt, but this one gave him a look of icy contempt and marched away from the bridle path he would have to follow as a stranger to the heath.

‘Don’t get bogged down, Your Grace,’ he shouted after her and she strode on even faster to stop herself turning around and sticking her tongue out like a street urchin.

* * *

What a fool—what a lunatic he was. Why not do as she said and avoid her until he had to see her again for whatever reason the lawyers dictated? He had this stupid, boyish impulse to break through her determined serenity because his body wanted her, so his tongue had said things he cursed it for even when he was saying them. Ash urged his horse along the track to Livesey someone told him was shorter than the toll road and with a fine view—nowhere near as fine as the one he found at the top of it. If only he had been prepared for the sight of Rosalind there he might not have sniped at her and given himself away as far less calm and cold about this divorce business than he thought he was until he saw her again. It was that silly boy talking; the one who wanted to jump off the grey and chase his wife down the snaky track he had not even seen until she bolted down it as if the devil was on her tail. A little bit of logic survived and wondered why was she so intent on getting back to the village so fast she was prepared to risk a sprained ankle as well as very muddy legs and torn skirts. He stared after her as she neatly twisted and turned to avoid hazards until she was lost to his sight. Then he shook his head to try to settle some sense back into it and sighed.

The boy he once was still wanted her mercilessly, but it was the man who said stupid things then stuck to them as if taking it back would be a sign of weakness. He didn’t really want to go to Livesey Village in the middle of nowhere and risk seeing her every time he walked down a road or looked out of the taproom windows. One look at the fine gold curls that had escaped the severe knot she had skewered it into and shining like a halo in the winter sun, those deep blue eyes and that glorious feminine mouth and he wanted her nearly as badly as he had on their wedding night. He should never have come here alone; better still he should have found another lawyer and sent him to bargain with the Duke of Cherwell’s unwanted wife. Instead he recalled her extraordinary beauty and decided not to trust even the most staid lawyer with the task, but he didn’t appear to be that trustworthy in the face of it either.

Despite his impatience with himself Ash managed to ride down to the village as if he was not in a hurry. Even running recklessly over rough ground and jumping streams and walls Rosalind could not beat him there by many minutes. He had been lucky to find this fine beast for sale at a livery stable to pay the bill his last owner could not afford and he had no intention of ruining the gelding’s legs by galloping on unfamiliar ground. Time for the Duke of Cherwell to pretend he was just a modestly well off gentleman with business in the area, except why on earth had he booked that room in the name of Meadows? Rosalind seemed to be pretending to be a widow and a snowstorm ought to stop her grabbing whatever treasures she had and bolting off into the blue to hide under another name in another obscure place for reasons best known to herself.

Chapter Three

‘Joan, Joan—where on earth are you?’

‘Here, Miss Rosalind.’ Joan emerged from the little bakehouse-cum-scullery with the delicious smell wafting out behind her. ‘Heavens above, just look at the state of you,’ the maid gasped and took in Rosalind’s torn and muddied petticoats and wild-looking hair half-up and half-down after she had lost most of her hairpins on her reckless dash home.

‘He’s here; we have to leave before it snows and we are stranded in this village with him for goodness knows how long until it melts again.’

‘We can’t risk being snowbound out in the open.’

‘Yes, we can; we have to. We must leave this place now he has come here. He cannot be allowed to find out about Jenny; he will take her away from me.’

‘If he’s putting up at the Duck and Feathers it won’t take five minutes for someone to tell him about her. Since he’s sixpence short of a shilling it could take ten for him to work out the lamb is his, but that’s not long enough for us to get out of here before the snow starts.’

‘But once he knows he will take her away from me,’ Rosalind said numbly, wondering if every penny she had could buy Seth Paxton’s neat cob and a light cart. There was the gold watch; it was worth a fair bit and she had often told herself that was why she kept it—to barter when she was desperate and heaven knew she was desperate now.

‘It’s too late if he is already in the village, but are you sure it’s him?’

‘Yes, I met him up on the heath. We spoke.’

‘Then you are well and truly caught and I should have told you about the fat ferret who stayed at the Duck and Feathers and asked a lot of questions a couple of months ago.’

‘You knew an investigator was looking for me?’

‘No, I would have told you if I was sure he was after you, but the ferret asked about half the village. Luckily Seth Paxton and his dad don’t like outcomers who ask too many questions and they didn’t say much.’

‘Yes, and I can imagine why,’ Rosalind said absently, wondering again what the lawyer’s motives were for concealing Jenny’s existence.

Never mind the lawyer now; she had more urgent problems. Jenny was quite small for her age so she might convince Ash she was not his. Why had she told him she had stayed faithful to her marriage vows when they were up on the heath? Idiot, she condemned herself, even as jealousy shot through her again at the thought of the mistresses he must have had since the night he made love to her as if she was the only woman on earth who would ever matter to him.

‘Rogues, the lot of them,’ Joan condemned most of the south coast. ‘But never mind them now. Somebody is sure to tell the Duke about your daughter and there’s no use pretending they won’t.’

‘A fine Job’s comforter you are,’ Rosalind said grumpily. ‘I am going to run across to the Vicarage to fetch Jenny and you can pack a couple of bags and put out the fires so we can leave the moment we get back.’

‘Very well, Miss Ros,’ Joan said with a shrug that said she thought Rosalind was wasting her time, but that she had promised her late mistress she would look after her child as best she could and a promise was a promise.

* * *

Ash approved his neat and spotless bedchamber at the inn. After the neat and spotless landlady went away he had a very necessary wash after his ride through the Dorsetshire hills in midwinter. He shivered in this confoundedly cold climate as he rubbed himself dry and hurried into clean clothes, then went to make sure his horse was being looked after.

‘A fine beast, sir,’ the groom told him and jarred him out of yet another daydream of Rosalind looking breathtakingly beautiful against a blue sky.

‘Aye, I only bought him last week, but he’s already proved a trooper.’

‘Cavalry man, sir?’

‘No, but my brother was.’

‘Ah, a sad business the Great War,’ the groom said with a shake of his head at Ash’s use of the past tense.

‘God send we never suffer the like again,’ he agreed soberly.

Grief made his heart twist every time he thought of Jas dead at the end of that terrible conflict and he wanted to remember his brother with a smile and a See you again one day, big brother salute, instead of this aching gap in his life now he was back in England to feel it even more.

‘I’ll not argue with—Whatever are you three little devils doing up there?’ the middle-aged groom broke off to admonish a pair of unlikely looking cherubs peering down at them from the hayloft and taking in every word.

Ash narrowed his eyes to see exactly who was giggling and shuffling about up there in order to spy on the latest stranger at the inn. As his eyes adjusted to the gloom he picked out what looked like a brother and sister, as both had brownish hair and dark eyes, currently wide with curiosity and apprehension. He was about to grin and reassure them he was not going to give them away, if they could persuade the groom not to either, when the third little demon pushed her way to the front as if she had to know what was going on even if it cost her a scold as well.

He thought seeing Rosalind again was shock enough, but Ash felt his head spin with the sheer impossibility of what his eyes were telling him now. He was looking up into his dead sister’s face. Amanda had looked just so when caught out in mischief—a little bit wary of the consequences underneath, but as bold and uncaring as a baby lioness on the surface. He was mad, then. Or sick. Yes, sick—he didn’t want to be mad. He blinked hard to try to clear his wandering senses. She was still there, looking back at him with puzzled grey eyes so like his own he wondered briefly if his father had strayed around these parts and she was his grandchild, or maybe Jas had left his mark on the world after all?

‘He’s gone ever so pale,’ the older girl whispered as if she was almost as worried about his health as he was.

‘Hard to tell when the sun has turned him so brown,’ her brother said critically.

‘Are you a sailor?’ the girl with his little sister’s face demanded and leaned over her friend’s shoulder to peer down at him more closely.

The truth clicked into place like a perfectly timed mechanism. Not the ghost of his little sister Amanda, or Lord John, or Captain Jasper Hartfield’s by-blow then—she was his child! His daughter. God forgive him, but he wanted to kill Rosalind as soon as that frozen moment of recognition relaxed its grip enough for him to think at all. His wife had kept him in ignorance of this perfect little miracle for seven years. He revised the perfect bit when his imp wrinkled her brow at his silence and gave him a very haughty look, but he still wasn’t letting his wife off the hook for making him a stranger to his own child. Rosalind would have to pay for this somehow. As if anyone could repay him seven and a quarter years of his daughter’s life in this world. He was a rich man now, but the whole of his fortune could not cover that loss, no amount of money ever could.

‘You are very rude not to answer a direct question,’ his imp informed him as if she had been born a queen instead of a pretend Meadows.

‘It ain’t rude to spy on your elders and betters and ask this gentleman a mort of nosy questions, then, Miss Jenny?’ the groom demanded since Ash showed no signs of doing it.

‘He is very brown for a gentleman. Mr Wentmore from the Towers is pale as a ghost and his sister told me only seamen and labourers ruin their complexions out in the sun and wind in all weathers.’

The groom muttered something uncomplimentary about the pale and interesting Mr Wentmore while Ash tried to gather his senses.

‘I only got back to England last week,’ he defended himself, as if his unfashionable suntan mattered a jot. So her name was Jenny, was it? Lady Jenny Hartfield did not have a very stately ring to it, but he liked the name anyway. He badly wanted to tell her what he was to her and she to him. He imagined Rosalind’s version of where her child’s father had got off to and bit back an oath his daughter should never have to hear, especially from him. He could rage at Rosalind later, after he had made it clear she and his child were not going far without him ever again, unless she wanted to relinquish all rights to her child as well as a duchess’s responsibilities. There was no question of a divorce now; he would make sure his child stayed under one of his roofs from now on and whatever plans his wife was making to whisk Jenny away again would be stopped by the coming snow, so he had time to convince her she was not parting him from his child ever again. Jenny changed everything. In an instant he had learned the lesson most parents had months to get used to—this little life was far more important than his own and whatever plans he had about the future without any trace of Rosalind in it must now be forgotten.

‘Where have you come from?’ his imp demanded.

‘India,’ he said and waited in vain for her to say, Oh, yes, my papa lives there, so there was not even that much cover for his absence from his daughter’s life. Ash wondered how Rosalind would get around the fact he was staying here as Mr Meadows, since being a duke would have caused an even bigger sensation and some strange impulse had made him sign himself so when he was still furious with Rosalind for hiding in the middle of nowhere to pretend he didn’t exist. He still wondered why he had done it, but at least it would make removing his daughter from this backwater a lot easier. Not even Rosalind could deny they were man and wife with this child between them to prove it. He felt sure she would go wherever her child went, even if she loathed the girl’s father and she must do so to have done this to him for the last eight years.

‘Are your saddlebags stuffed with rubies and pearls?’ the boy asked as if he thought such jewels must be scattered on the ground in exotic countries for anyone to pick up and bring home.

‘No, I keep them in a bank vault,’ he joked to stop himself promising his child the run of his treasury if she would only love him as her father. Adorning her with diamonds and pearls and all the riches he had gained in eight driven years of hard work could not buy a child’s loyalty. He only wished he did not have to make her Lady Jenny before he had much of a chance to get to know his own child. I have a child, he whispered it in his head—as if someone might leap in and take her away again if he dared to say it out loud.

‘Did you catch a fever while you were out there?’ she asked as if that might explain his dazzled silence and make him a bit more interesting.

‘Not that I know of,’ he said feebly, still not quite sure this was really happening even now.

‘My father says India is too dangerous for English women and children because fevers are rife. He was going to live there until he met Mama, but he agreed to come here instead so Grandpapa Waters would let them marry one another and have us. Grandpapa says he would rather put a knife in Mama than send her out there to die in all that heat and—’ The girl must have given her talkative little brother a sharp elbow in the ribs since he grunted a startled breath then glared at her.

‘He might like it, Hal, since he didn’t take a fever there and you should not have been listening when Grandpapa thought we weren’t there,’ she lectured from the advantage of what looked like a couple of years’ seniority.

‘You were there as well, so neither should you.’

Obviously thinking the siblings were about to forget all about Ash and his fine horse and everything else except their latest quarrel, Jenny ignored them and continued to stare down at Ash as if she knew he was important to her somehow. ‘When I grow up I am going to be a sultana,’ she told him solemnly.

Even Ash could not quite hide a grin and the boy forgot to fight with his sister to laugh so hard he began to cough and splutter, until his sister thumped him on the back so hard he begged for mercy. ‘You’ll kill me,’ he accused her breathlessly, then recalled the reason why he had been laughing in the first place. ‘Raisins are nicer than sultanas, Jenny, so why not be one of those instead?’ he taunted Jenny.

Ash had to bite back a stern rebuke to stop the lad teasing his child, even if she didn’t know she was instantly precious to this tongue-tied stranger.

‘She’s been reading that book about Aladdin and whoever else is in there again,’ the older girl told her brother with a shrug. ‘Anyway, you’re the fool for not knowing a sultan’s wife is called a sultana. Not that you can marry one, Jenny, because your mother wouldn’t want you to live so far away.’

‘I could if he loved me and I loved him,’ Jenny said stubbornly.

Ash silently cursed Rosalind for putting such nonsense in her head when she ought to know better by now. Love was not real; had she learnt nothing from their fiasco of a marriage?

Yes, how to lie even better than she did before it, an inner voice whispered sternly in his ear.

‘Yuk, what soppy stuff and I thought you knew better,’ the boy said, pulling a revolted face. Ash almost nodded his agreement before he met his daughter’s reproachful gaze. She could not even be eight years old for months, so he had years and years to fight that battle before she was old enough to marry anyone, let alone a sultan.

‘Be quiet, you two, someone’s coming,’ the older girl hushed the fight about to break out between her brother and their friend as Jenny took exception to the boy’s scornful superiority.

‘Hide,’ the boy ordered and there was a great deal of wriggling and whispering as the trio drew back into the loft and Ash wanted to shout a protest and call them back. This was not the right time. He must make himself wait to claim his child until he had confronted her mother with her latest sins and got her to admit the truth. Then they could find a way to tell Jenny who she really was and get ready to leave for Edenhope as soon as the weather was right for such a long journey.

‘Seth said he thought those two eldest demons of the Vicar’s had been sneaking around the yard again and I won’t have it, Enoch. If they was to tumble into a stall and get themselves trampled half to death after scaring the horses, that Mrs Belstone would be on our tails sharpish and we’d never hear the last of it. Vicar might have his head in the clouds when it ain’t in a book, but his missus’s tongue’s sharp enough to cut a duke down to size if she was to turn her mind to it.’

The only Duke available managed to look too modest to need a trimming while he listened to those three furtive children creeping down from their perch by whatever means they got up there in the first place. A few moments later there were delighted squeals outside and he looked through the door the innkeeper’s elderly father had left open when he came in here and saw a fat flake of snow drifting to earth like down. He didn’t want to be snowbound in a village that thought his wife’s husband must have died before his daughter was born, but it looked as if he would be staying here until the snow was gone whether he liked it or not.

By the time he stepped outside with directions to Furze Cottage and a frown from Enoch to wonder what this stranger wanted with a respectable widow, Jenny and her not very saintly friends were long gone. Ash jammed his expensive beaver hat on his head, pulled his collar up around his ears and hoped those three scamps were safely back at the vicarage having nursery tea by the time he got to Rosalind’s house, because he didn’t think he could wait to talk about their past, present and future until his daughter was supposed to be asleep tonight.

* * *

Now the snow had actually arrived Rosalind had to accept it was ridiculous to even try to travel, so she almost welcomed the cool slide of a fat snowflake against her flushed cheek. She scurried away from the vicarage with a promise from the Belstones and a delighted Jenny happy to stay the night while Rosalind attended to unexpected business. Judith Belstone shot Rosalind a sharp look, as if she could see how agitated she was under the pretend calm, but she agreed the children would be happy to play together in the heavy fall of snow it looked as if they would have by morning.

Now her daughter was safe with the Belstones she could hope against hope Ash would make a hasty retreat to Dorchester after all, so she and Jenny could sneak off in the opposite direction as soon as the coast was clear. If this desultory snow was all they were going to get he might even be able to leave first thing in the morning. So there was still a slim chance he might never find out about Jenny, if she kept her fingers crossed and a myriad of small chances all went her way. She rushed across the churchyard and out on to the lane leading to Furze Cottage, eager to grasp a last straw of hope.

‘Ah, there you are.’ Ash’s deep voice rumbled on the still air. What a giveaway to put a hand to her racing heart to stop it leaping clean out of her ribcage. She blinked at him and thought he looked stonier than ever.

‘Yes,’ she agreed warily, ‘here I am.’

‘On the way home?’

‘Yes,’ she said, deciding it would be silly to deny it when anyone in the village could have directed him there. He loomed over her in this murky half-light as snowflakes began a slow dance around them. Earlier there was still a hint of the old humour in his voice, but now it sounded so hard and stern she wanted to shiver. A moment ago she felt almost too warm from hurrying down the hill, then dashing about the village to find Jenny, but now cold was nipping at her fingers and toes and she was shivering.

‘Good, I was on my way to see you,’ he said grimly.

‘Why? It will only stir up gossip.’

‘Your neighbours will be even more interested if I throw you over my shoulder and carry you there, if that’s the only way we can talk out of the cold.’

‘I didn’t make you turn up here like a bad penny. I will struggle and cry out if you even try it and they will all come to my aid.’

‘If you prefer us to have an open and honest discussion of the past and the state of our marriage right here and now, where anyone can listen who cares to risk frostbite, then let’s get on with it. I don’t care what a pack of strangers think of me, but I suspect you do.’

‘I don’t want my friends to think ill of me.’

‘They don’t really know you, though, do they?’

She shivered at his implied threat to say who she really was and gave in. Jenny wasn’t there, so did it matter if Ash was inside her home? Except it had been her sanctuary for so long and he would look down his aristocratic nose at its humble proportions and low-beamed ceilings. Telling herself his contempt for her humble home was the least of her worries, Rosalind led the way. The snow was still only an odd flake of feathery whiteness, but heavy clouds were cutting out more and more daylight. They walked in silence, but she was conscious of every muscle and sinew of this newly powerful man loping alongside her. He even felt furious, as if suppressed rage might keep winter at bay. A familiar ache deep inside shocked her with stupid fantasies of his newly powerful body intimately entwined with her own and how could it betray her at a time like this? Maybe she had longed for him so much it hurt at times during the last eight years, but she was only six and twenty and she still had the usual womanly needs. She dreamt of him as well—warm and loving again as he was for one glorious night all those years ago. Then she would wake up with tears on her cheeks and feel so terribly lonely it hurt. Now here he was, about to rip her whole world apart again and those eight years of longing felt like a traitor force inside her defences. She frowned up at him before she tapped on her own back door to warn Joan she was back. She opened it just wide enough for him to follow her in before even more warmth escaped.

‘It’s only me, Joan,’ she called out as they stood in the narrow hallway shaking snowflakes off their outer wrappings. Through the half-open door to the kitchen she could see a fire still burning and there was no sign of hasty preparations for a reckless journey. Rosalind sighed at her own idiocy—fancy her believing there was any chance of getting away in such weather.

‘There’s going to be far too much snow for us to go anywhere until—’ Joan stopped on the stairs as soon as she was far enough down them to see Ash’s towering figure in the tiny hall where the shadows cast by the rush light burning in its holder made him look even more alien. Joan glared at him before descending the rest of the way in tight-lipped silence.

‘Do continue,’ he invited so smoothly Rosalind glared at him as well.

‘I have nothing good to say to you, young man,’ Joan said sharply.

‘You used to like me,’ he said, a half-smile smoothing away the thunderclouds for a moment as if he was pleased to see her.

‘I used to be a fool then.’

‘No, I think Rosalind and I were those,’ he said with a hint of regret in his voice to make Rosalind think so as well, until she remembered why he was here and hardened her heart.

Joan glanced warily at Rosalind, who shrugged and could not say where Jenny was in front of Ash, since there was still the faintest chance he would not find out about her.

‘I know I have a child,’ he announced as if he could read their hastily exchanged looks far too easily. ‘I presume you left her at the local vicarage to keep her out of my way?’

‘Yes, and my daughter is very happy at the thought of snowball fights and sledging before breakfast in the morning before you accuse me of neglecting her or being a bad mother,’ Rosalind said defensively. Not only had she almost agreed Jenny was his, but they were back on the treadmill of accusation and defence she remembered so clearly from the time they travelled back to London together, yet so very far apart.

‘Did I do anything of the sort?’ he asked Joan.

‘Don’t drag me into your arguments. You two must talk through your differences for the sake of the child now you have finally arrived home. I am going out now, but if you ever hurt Miss Rosalind again you will have me to deal with. And the child will never take to anyone who makes her mother miserable, so think on that as you pick over your grievances.’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ Ash said to Joan’s back as she seized Ros’s russet cloak from where it was drying in front of the fire in the kitchen and marched past them and out of the back door. Her grand exit fell flat when she came back for her boots, but she pushed her feet into them without doing up the laces and stamped out without another word. ‘Where will she go?’ he asked Rosalind and she tried not to like him for sounding anxious about her oldest friend.

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