She merely nodded and said, “Yes, Uncle James. I am a bastard. I have known that for many years now. Please do not let it worry you, for I am well used to it now.”
He’d started at her calm words sounding so disinterested and flat, but he said nothing more. He was relieved. What more was there for him to say? He looked into his own very dark blue eyes, at his own ink-black hair, the shining braids thick and smooth on her small head. But her mother hadn’t been forgotten in the daughter. There were errant curls loose from the braids that curled around her small ears, and he loved to wind his fingers around the mother’s curls, so very soft and sweet-smelling. Ah, and she had Bess’s mouth, full and beautifully shaped, and her elegant nose, thin and straight. He shook his head and regarded his daughter sitting quietly across from him. He thought fancifully that she was so still, so utterly self-contained, like a statue. She was disconcerting, this daughter of his, not filled with laughter and mischief, not teasing and bounding about as the Twins always were.
It was hard to remember now that he’d not wanted her at first, that he’d ordered Bess to get rid of the brat. But Bess had told him plain out that she would birth the child and he could do what he pleased. What he’d pleased was to keep both of them, for he wanted Bess more than he’d ever wanted any other woman in his life. And now here was his daughter, staring back at him with his eyes, and she looked indeed serene and aloof as a duchess, this once unwanted child of his loins.
The Duchess remembered the two weeks of 1808 very clearly. Her cousin Marcus had made her withdraw even more with his mocking words that had, really, been born of mischief only, nothing more, but the pain of them had made her tremble. Then, on that second Wednesday, her only other two male cousins, Charlie and Mark, were both drowned in a boat race when two sailboats collided on the River Derwent with more than two hundred horrified people looking on from shore and at least a dozen other boys leaping into the river from their own sailboats to help. But no one had come to their rescue in time. When Charlie was struck in the head by the wildly slamming boom, he was killed instantly and hurled overboard. His younger brother, Mark, had tried to find him beneath the wreckage of the other sailboat along with several other boys. He’d drowned as well when the jib halyard had twisted about him, holding him under the water.
The boys were buried in the Wyndham family cemetery. Chase Park was in despair. The Duchess’s father locked himself in the library. The countess could be heard crying throughout the night. Marcus was white and drawn, speaking to no one, for he’d survived and his cousins hadn’t. He’d not even been on the sailboat with them. He’d been buying a hunter at the Rothermere stud. The Duchess went back to Winchelsea to her mother.
Over the next five years, the countess of Chase was pregnant every year in an attempt to produce another male heir for the earldom of Chase, but alas, none of the babes born to the countess survived their first year. All of them were boy children. The earl of Chase brooded, becoming more solitary as time passed, and bedded his wife endlessly, no pleasure in it for either of them, just grim duty, made more grim by the year, and he began to look upon his nephew Marcus differently, of his blood, certainly, but not his own son, not the blood of his own blood, and he wanted his line to go through his own flesh, not through his brother’s.
He came more often to Rosebud Cottage. He was quiet, his laughter becoming as rare as his daughter’s. It was as if he clung to her mother, and she kept him close, loving and gentle and undemanding.
But when the earl returned to Chase Park, as he ultimately had to, there was nothing he could do except watch his wife produce one child after another and watch each of them die.
Marcus Wyndham was the heir to Chase.
1
ROSEBUD COTTAGE, WINCHELSEA
JANUARY 1813
“I’M VERY SORRY to tell you this, Miss Cochrane, but there is more and it isn’t good.”
Mr. Jollis, her mother’s solicitor, didn’t sound sorry at all. He sounded unaccountably pleased, which was strange, surely, but she held silent, not only because of her grief over her mother’s death but because she was used to holding herself silent. It was a habit of many years. Over time, she’d learned a lot about people, simply listening and watching them as they spoke. She realized in that moment, in Mr. Jollis’s meaningful pause, that her father didn’t yet know of her mother’s death. She’d forgotten him in the suddenness of it, in the numbness it had instilled in her. Now, there was no one else to tell him. She had to write to him herself. She could see him reading her words, see his disbelief, his bowing pain when he finally realized it was true. She closed her eyes a moment against the pain she knew he would feel. He would feel endless pain, for he loved her mother more than he loved any other human being. But her mother, alive and laughing one moment, was dead the next. Her death was so needless, so stupid really: a wretched carriage accident, the shaft snapping for no apparent reason, sending the carriage hurtling off the winding road that ran too close above on the chalk South Downs cliffs, near Ditchling Beacon. Those cliffs rose eight hundred and thirteen feet into the air, then plunged to the deserted beach below. Her mother was killed instantly, but her body was washed out with the tide and never recovered. At least it hadn’t been recovered yet, and it had already been a day and a half. She looked up when Mr. Jollis cleared his throat, evidently prepared to finish his thought.
“As I said, Miss Cochrane,” Mr. Jollis continued, that smug tone coming more to the surface now, “I am very sorry about this but Rosebud Cottage is leased and the lessor is your, er, father, Lord Chase.”
“I didn’t know that.” Indeed, she’d always assumed that her mother owned the cottage. But then again, perhaps that was the way of it when a man supported and kept a woman. All remained his, thus he retained his power and all his prerogatives. It was merely another unexpected blow that she didn’t feel at the moment. She waited, silent, her body utterly still. His face changed then, and he was looking at her differently, not as a man feigning sympathy for a bereaved daughter, but as a man assessing a woman for his own uses.
She’d seen the look before, but not that many times on that many male faces. She’d been protected, but now, she realized, she was unprotected. Her father was in Yorkshire and she was here, quite alone, except for dear Badger.
“I must write my father,” she said then, her voice curt, colder than it would normally be, but she wanted him to go away. “I imagine that since the lease will run out soon that I will have to go to Chase Park.”
“There is another option, perhaps,” Mr. Jollis said, and he leaned toward her, like a hound on a scent, she thought, eyeing him with more hostility than she’d eyed anyone in her entire life.
“No, there isn’t,” she said, her voice as cold as the ice shards hanging from the cottage eaves outside.
“Perhaps,” he said, still sitting forward, his right hand outstretched toward her now, “just perhaps his lordship won’t want you to live at Chase Park.”
“His wife died seven months ago, just before my yearly visit. I cannot imagine that he wouldn’t want me there. She was the only one who didn’t care for my presence, and that, I suppose, is very understandable. She held him as her husband, but she didn’t have his regard. I have long understood her bitterness. However, now she is dead.”
“Ah, but now his lordship must be very careful, you understand, Miss Cochrane. His lordship is in mourning, very deep mourning. All his neighbors will be watching him closely, indeed, all society, all those whose opinions are important to him, will be watching him closely.”
“Why? Surely he won’t wed again, at least not anytime soon. I am merely his bastard daughter. Who would care if I lived at Chase Park or not?”
“People would care and they would find out very quickly. It shows the ultimate disrespect for his dead wife, Miss Cochrane. You must believe me, for I know the ways of society and you do not.”
She didn’t believe him, but she didn’t wish to argue with him anymore. “I do not beli
eve men are watched all that closely, only women,” she said, her voice remote. “Nor do I believe that men mourn anything all that deeply for all that long a time.” Her body became even more still, even though she could feel herself shrinking back from his still outstretched hand.
She remembered when her father’s wife had died. His reaction, she’d thought during her visit, when the countess had finally died birthing another babe, had been one of profound relief. When tears had wet his eyes, she knew it was from the death of the small infant boy, dead two hours after its birth, not from his wife’s expiration.
“That is possible,” he said. “But you have no one to look after you now, Miss Cochrane. Perhaps you should consider looking for someone well circumstanced who would protect you and keep you in this lovely little cottage.”
She smiled at him. Mr. Jollis, like everyone else who knew her for a long time, was startled at the smile. It was beautiful and it made him feel warm all the way to the bunions on his toes. She had two dimples and her teeth were small and white and as perfect as her smile. He could not recall ever seeing her smile before. “If I choose to remain here at the cottage, will you tell me who owns it?”
“It is Squire Archibald, but surely since you have so little money, you cannot consider keeping the lease. Why it’s absurd, it’s—”
She rose, her hands by her sides. “I should like you to leave now, Mr. Jollis. If there is more I need to know, please write me a letter.”
He rose then as well, for he had no choice, at least not at the moment, and stared down at her, her beautiful smile forgotten. “You think to be above yourself, Miss Cochrane. No matter, you’re a bastard, nothing more, and that’s what you will always be. You cannot remain here. The lease on the cottage ends on the fifteenth of next month, and you will have no money to renew it. Squire Archibald is all of seventy and certainly not a candidate for your wiles. No, it is money he would require, not you warming his ancient bed. You will leave then. If your esteemed father wants you, then, he will give you a home, but for how long? Don’t forget, your beautiful mother is dead. Do you truly believe he ever wanted you? No, it was your mother he wanted, no other, certainly not you. I would consider becoming your protector, Miss Cochrane—”
Her face was very pale now, her eyes dulling in her rage, but he saw only the dullness, not the fury, for she just stared at him, then turned on her heel and left the small drawing room without a word.
Mr. Jollis didn’t know what to do. Would she consider his well-phrased proposal? He thought her uppity, arrogant, but that would change. He wondered if she was a virgin. He wasn’t left to wonder anything then, for Badger, the servant who had stood as protector to both Mrs. Cochrane and the Duchess, appeared in the doorway. He was a large man, well muscled, ugly as a fence post, his hair white and thick as a prophet’s, and at this moment, there was blood in his eye.
Mr. Jollis backed up a step.
“Sir,” Badger said gently, too gently, “it is time to remove your carcass from the premises. If your carcass isn’t absent within a very few number of seconds, I will have to see that his lordship learns of your most regrettable behavior. He won’t be pleased.”
“Ha,” Mr. Jollis said, for he knew that this man didn’t know what he was talking about. “His lordship would be glad to get the little bastard off his hands and no mistake about that. Soon, Badger, you will be without money yourself, for she has none to pay you. Then, I daresay, you won’t speak to your betters like this. It doesn’t matter that you have more wits than you should, that you have excellent speech—who taught you to speak like a gentleman?—no matter, you’re still here and you’re nothing but a servant, of no account at all.”
Badger just smiled at him, shook his head, was on him in an instant, lifting him bodily, and tucked him under his mighty arm. He carried him to the front door, and dumped him out onto the frozen ground, that would, in five months, bloom wildly with the Duchess’s red, yellow, and white roses. He turned back into the cottage, saw the Duchess, and grinned, showing a goodly-sized space between his front teeth. “He’ll rest a bit in the snow, but he’s all right, don’t you worry.” He picked up her hand and made it into a fist. “Now, Duchess, I’ve told you how to swing and strike and keep your thumb tucked under. Why didn’t you knock him over the flower box?”
She tried to smile, she truly did, but her face seemed as frozen as the earth outside. “I just didn’t want to see him anymore, Badger.”
“No wonder,” he said and gave her back her hand. “But don’t forget now, if a fellow goes beyond the line, you shove his choppers down his throat, that or you slam your knee upward as hard as you can.”
“I will. I promise. Thank you, Badger.”
He grunted and took himself off to the kitchen to prepare the curry sauce for the chicken, currently roasting gently over the open grate. The cook and maid—Miss Priss, Badger had always called her—had left for Welford-on-Avon to see her ailing auntie some two years before. Badger had taken over her duties. He was an excellent cook. He just wished the Duchess ate more of his wonderful concoctions.
Mrs. Cochrane had told him many years before that when the Duchess visited Chase Park, everyone pretended—at least outwardly—that she was some distant cousin from Holland or from Italy, though her Dutch was nonexistent and her Italian was singularly bad. But no one ever said anything because she was, after all, the Duchess, and she was so very beautiful and so glorious in her pride and arrogance that all simply stood in awe of her, striving to please her, to make her give them one of her rare smiles. Mrs. Cochrane had smiled her beautiful smile at that, saying that she’d been positively terrified to let her go to Chase Park, and just look what had happened. She’d come back the Duchess and that was what she’d remained.
Badger heard the door to the drawing room close. He could see her going to the small writing desk, seating herself gracefully, her movements slow and elegant, and writing his lordship of their mutual loss.
The earl of Chase read of her mother’s death before she could write to him of it, and he informed her through his secretary, Mr. Crittaker, that she was to pack her things and be ready for the carriage that would bring her to Chase Park. She was to bring Badger along for protection. He gave her two weeks to comply with his wishes.
The two weeks came and passed. No one came to fetch her. She didn’t know what to do. She stood by the window of the small parlor and waited. She wondered if she should write to her father and remind him of his instruction to her, but no, she couldn’t bring herself to do that. It was too humiliating. She would wait. Four more days passed. And she thought: He grieves for my mother and he no longer wants me. He has forgotten me. I’m alone now. What will I do?
Then she realized that she’d always dreaded going to Chase Park on her yearly jaunts. Just stepping into that impossibly grand Italianate entrance hall with all its half-millennium-old dark wainscoting and equally old paintings with their heavy gold-encrusted frames, and that huge, utterly overpowering central staircase with still more ancestral paintings climbing the wall along it made her freeze inside and gave her stomach cramps. She had walked through the great oak doors every year and immediately begun to count down the fourteen days she had to remain there, to pretend as though all these noble people and all the children of these noble people and all these servants of the noble people liked her and truly welcomed her, when they all wished she had never been conceived.
At least this year the countess of Chase hadn’t been there to shrivel her into herself with her cold looks and the bitter disdain that radiated from her like a living thing. The countess had died just the week before, and the mansion was draped with black crepe and every female wore black gowns, and all the males wore black arm bands. She’d heard the servants whisper that the countess had been too old for childbearing and look what had come of it—the poor dear had died, cursing her husband, for he had forced her this final and last time, forced himself upon her until she conceived—at least that’s what all the serv
ants believed—forced her and forced her and look what had come of it. And, after all, she had managed to provide the earl with two healthy boys and twin girls, and it wasn’t her fault that both boys had drowned in that boat race and left only the Twins. All waited for the earl to take a new wife, a very young new wife who would breed a child every year until the earl was satisfied that no matter how many accidents occurred there would still be a boy left to succeed to the title and all the Wyndham lands. A man need only wait six months and it was past that time now. That’s what she’d heard and then she’d repeated to Mr. Jollis, the miserable creature.
She frowned. Perhaps that’s why he didn’t want her now at Chase Park. He’d found his next countess and he didn’t want to have his bastard there with his new wife. Yes, that was it. He naturally wanted to please a new wife and bringing a bastard into her new home and parading the bastard under her nose wouldn’t accomplish pleasure, much less bring any harmony to the new union. But why didn’t he simply write and tell her? She believed her father to be many things, but never a coward. It made no sense.
It began to rain, now just a drizzle, but the Duchess knew the signs. Before long, the drizzle would become sheets of slamming slate-gray water, driven against the windows by a fierce wind blowing off the Channel.
Even though he had deserted her now, she had to admit that her father had supported her mother and her for eighteen years, and her mother two years before she’d been born even. She had been like his wife, only, of course, she wasn’t, she was just his mistress, with no legal rights, no recourse, nothing. But now that her mother was dead, she supposed she might as well be dead too, for he no longer felt any responsibility toward her, no longer had to pretend liking toward her. He’d probably decided that since she was eighteen, it was now her responsibility to see to herself. But why had he bothered to lie to her? Why had he told her that she was coming to Chase Park? It had been a lie, but why, she couldn’t begin to imagine. All she knew was that she was utterly alone. Mama had no one, as far as she knew, at least there were never any letters, never any presents at Christmas from relatives of her mother’s. She assumed they were Cochranes, surely that was her mother’s name after all and not some tawdry made-up name. No, there couldn’t be any brothers or sisters or aunts. It had always been just the two of them and the frequent visits from the earl.