He hunched forward and smacked his fist onto the table. “Damnation, Duchess, I didn’t mean that. Are you forgetting that I am your cousin? That I am the damned head of the Wyndham family and am thus responsible for you now?”
“You are my cousin, true, but I am nothing but a bastard. You owe me nothing at all, Marcus. Certainly you aren’t responsible for me. My father was, but like most men he must have believed himself immortal. Thus, he made no provision for me. However, I find now that I quite enjoy being on my own.”
“You are eighteen years old. You are a gentlewoman. You cannot be on your own.”
“I am nearly nineteen, and the fact remains that I am on my own and I am a bastard. Don’t put respectable icing on this particular cake, for it doesn’t fit.”
He felt equal parts of anger and frustration. Here he was, a perfect knight errant, and the damsel was refusing his assistance. The devil of it was she didn’t even appear to be at all in distress.
Suddenly, she laughed. “I can see exactly what you are thinking. You have gone to all this trouble to save your poor bastard cousin and she is turning you down. Goodness, she is turning you down after feeding you probably the best dinner you’ve enjoyed in many a long evening. I’m sorry, Marcus, but there it is.”
“No, it isn’t. You will pack your things and you will return with me to Chase Park. I would never serve your father and my uncle such a turn. I would like to leave tomorrow. Can Badger have everything ready?”
She didn’t appear to be paying any attention to him. She was looking off into space, her eyes narrowed in profound thought, or something. All of a sudden, she began to hum a tune he’d never heard before. “Excuse me,” she said abruptly, and rose from her chair. “Don’t go away, Marcus. I shall return very soon.”
She was gone from the small dining room, leaving the earl of Chase there with a half-eaten apple tart on his plate and a look of utter incomprehension on his face wondering how the devil she was managing. And now she’d run out on him without a by-your-leave.
“Would you like a brandy, my lord? Or perhaps port or claret?”
“Port,” he said. He sipped at the port, waiting for her to return. Fifteen minutes passed and there was no sign of her. He said to Badger, who had just come into the small dining room to clear the dishes from the table, “What is she doing?”
“I couldn’t say.”
“Of course you can but you won’t, will you? Come, Badger, how the hell does she afford this cottage? How does she afford to have you? There’s a man, isn’t there? He’s a military man and he’s footing all the bills.”
“You will speak to Miss Cochrane, my lord.”
“I wish to leave tomorrow. Can you be ready, Badger?”
Badger straightened to his full height, which would make many a short man envious. “You will discuss this with Miss Cochrane.” Then he softened, adding, “You must understand loyalty, sir. You were in the army. There is little more precious than absolute loyalty.”
Marcus sighed and set down his port. “You’re right, naturally. Do you think the Duchess would mind if I tracked her down now?”
“I believe I hear her returning. Ah, sir, it is doubtless difficult for her, just learning that her father had been dead for six months, learning that he did want her and didn’t forget her, that instead the rest of you forgot her. There has been too much death for her in the past months.”
“She has hidden it well,” Marcus said. “No tears, no sobs, nothing. No pleas, no explanations, no pleasure in seeing me or agreeing with anything I say.”
“Naturally. What would you expect from her?”
“I don’t know anymore,” Marcus said slowly, now lifting his port and swirling the dark red around in the crystal glass, a quite well-made crystal glass. Damnation, he wanted to strangle her.
“Go gently, sir.” Marcus watched Badger hold open the door to the dining room as the Duchess came back in.
“Forgive me for taking so long,” she said, adding, “Would you like to remain here or come with me into the drawing room?”
“Here is fine. What were you doing?”
“Just a bit of this and that, nothing to concern you.”
He felt frustration rising to new heights and announced with the heavy hand of a complete autocrat, “You will come home with me and that’s that.”
“No, but thank you for your feelings of guilt or responsibility or whatever it is you’re feeling that engenders such a fist on the reins. Listen to me, you are absolved, Marcus, please believe me. From you I learned that my father did want me. That is important. I thank you for that. Now, I’m sorry but there is nowhere for you to sleep. In Biddenden, very near to the sign of the Biddenden Maids—”
“Who the devil are the Biddenden Maids?”
“You didn’t come through the village? No matter. They were Elizabeth and Mary Chalkhurst and they lived in the twelfth century. They were Siamese twins. In any case, the Chequers Inn is not to be despised, but it is small, but perhaps not too small for the new earl of Chase.” She rose and smiled at him, not much of a smile, but something.
He stood and strode to her, looking down at her, knowing his stance was intimidating but not caring. “I will be back tomorrow morning.” He left her without another word. Badger was waiting in the small entrance hall. He opened the door and silently ushered him out.
“The Chequers Inn will stable your horse, my lord,” he said.
“That is something,” Marcus said, shaking his head. “Siamese twins—remarkable.”
When Marcus rode to the cottage the next morning, it was to see the Duchess dressed in an outmoded gown of faded gray, the sturdy cotton coming nearly to her chin, down on her knees, her hands gloved, digging in a flower bed.
He dismounted, tied Stanley to the tethering post, and walked to her. “I didn’t know you were a gardener.”
She looked up at him. The sun was behind her, a halo around her head. Her forehead was covered with perspiration and there were two dirt smudges on her face. She looked lovely, more than lovely, damn her. “Yes, I enjoy it very much, as did my mother. Only I have more the green thumb than she did. I had the time, so why not?”
“How do you suddenly have the time? Does this mean that you won’t suddenly jump up humming and leave the roses?”
“It’s always possible.”
“I want you to give me an honest answer, Duchess.”
“If I feel like it.”
He wanted to box her ears. He came down on his haunches beside her. “How are you supporting yourself?”
“You no longer believe there is a man in the background?”
“No, and I never did. Not really. You wouldn’t do that. But God, it makes no sense, surely you must see that. You’re naught but a young girl and—”
“It has been five years, Marcus. You really have no idea as to my character or lack thereof. Of my talents or lack thereof. In short, you know nothing at all about me.”
“The Twins miss you, as does Aunt Gweneth. They want you to come home with me.”
She smiled down at her filthy gloves, at the rich black earth that nurtured her precious roses. “You have become a very handsome man, Marcus, a very eligible gentleman. Since you are the earl of Chase, you will doubtless be sought after by every single female in this fair land. You will be marrying soon so that you may go about the business of breeding an heir. I cannot imagine your wife wanting me anywhere around. I’m a bastard. It would behoove you to remember that.”
“I’m not even twenty-five yet! For God’s sake, give me a few years before I must leg-shackle myself.”
“Forgive me. I quite understand your consternation since I share the same reluctance. You must admit that my unusual upbringing could easily leave a girl with a somewhat cynical view of dealings between men and women, particularly married men and unmarried women.”
“None of this matters, dammit. Listen, Duchess, you cannot remain here, living alone with a man despite the fact that he is your se
rvant. Your reputation will be in ruins. You were raised to be a gentlewoman. It is what you’re meant to be—a gentleman’s wife, the mother of his children. I wish to give you that future. It’s what your father would have done. Please, you cannot remain here.”
She remained still and silent, her gloved hands now resting quietly in the earth. That earth was black and thick and rich.
He rose quickly, so furious with her for her damned silence, her stubbornness, he was for a moment without words. Then he bellowed at the top of his lungs, “What do you do to keep this damned snug little cottage?”
Very slowly she stood up and stripped off her gloves, tossing them to the ground beside her. “Would you like some breakfast, Marcus? It is still very early.”
“I will strangle you,” he said, looking at her throat, covered completely by that hideous faded gray gown. “Yes, I will strangle you, but after breakfast. What will Badger prepare?”
4
CHASE PARK
AUGUST 1813
TWO BLOODY MONTHS, he thought, wadding up the single sheet of paper, containing only two paragraphs to him by her grace, that damned girl he himself had christened Duchess so many years before. How dare she?
He read again, feeling his face grow red:
My lord,
It was kind of you to send grapes from your succession house. Badger has quite delighted in preparing them in various dishes.
Give my regards to Aunt Gweneth and the Twins.
And she’d signed it, “Your servant”—nothing more, not Duchess, not her name, nothing. Not even obedient servant, which she wasn’t, damn her eyes.
He looked up to see Crittaker standing in the doorway, obviously afraid to say anything until Marcus recognized him.
“What is Miss Cochrane’s name?”
“The Duchess, my lord.”
“No, no, her real name. It was I who named her Duchess when she was nine years old, but I have no memory at all of her real name.”
Crittaker looked nonplussed. “I don’t know. Shall I ask Lady Gweneth?”
“Don’t bother. It really isn’t important. I just received a letter from her. She received the grapes. Badger is cooking with them. She is fine, I assume. She says nothing more. I suppose I will write her back, but I would rather kill her, or at least maim her, or strangle her just a little bit, to get her attention.”
Crittaker backed out of the door. “We can review your other correspondence later, my lord.”
Marcus grunted, picked up a piece of foolscap, and dipped his pen into the onyx inkwell atop the desk. He wrote:
Dear Duchess:
I am more pleased than I can tell you about Badger’s pleasure with the damned grapes.
I trust you are well though you didn’t say. I am well, Aunt Gweneth is well, the Twins are well, though Antonia is ordering novels from Hookhams in London and telling me that she has developed a fondness for sermons and that is what comprises her orders. Fanny is gaining flesh and Aunt Gweneth has told her that no gentleman will want to speak to her if she has more than one chin. I don’t suppose you will tell me what you are doing to earn sufficient funds for the cottage and food and Badger—
Your servant, Marcus Wyndham
He’d written too much, he thought, she didn’t deserve all the words he’d bothered to write her, but nonetheless he carefully folded the paper and slipped it into an envelope, writing her direction in a neat hand. He dipped his signet ring into the hot wax he’d prepared, and pressed it on the envelope.
He turned back to the London Gazette and read the latest war news. Schwarzenberg had crossed the Bohemian Mountains and tried to storm Dresden. However, the French had turned the city into a fortified camp and they’d beaten off the poorly coordinated allied attack. Of course then Napoleon had arrived with more French corps and Schwarzenberg ended up losing thirty-eight thousand men and retreating to Bohemia. Thirty-eight thousand! Marcus couldn’t take it in. Good God, so many soldiers, slaughtered through incompetence, men now dead who shouldn’t be. He ached to return to action but he knew that until he married and produced an heir that he couldn’t take that kind of risk. He owed it to the four-hundred-year direct line of Wyndhams.
Damn.
He turned in his chair and yanked the bell pull. Crittaker showed his face around the door within two minutes. Marcus sighed and allowed himself to be drowned in estate business for the next three hours. At least he knew enough now about his uncle’s various business dealings not to make a complete ass of himself.
PIPWELL COTTAGE
NOVEMBER 1813
The Duchess simply stared at the letter. She couldn’t take it in. She read it again and then once more. She called out faintly, not realizing that she’d yelled, “Badger, please come here, quickly.”
She heard him crashing through the kitchen, through the hallway, and into the drawing room. He was breathing hard and obviously alarmed.
“I’m sorry, please, come here and read this. I can’t believe it. It is absurd, surely a jest. It is—” She fell to a stop and thrust out the letter to Badger.
He looked from her white face to the letter. He read it through, whistled softly, then read it again, and yet one more time.
He seated himself beside her on the settee and took her hands in his. He said quietly, “Well, this is a shock. It seems that everyone was looking for you. It took the earl only two months to find you, but this gentleman took considerably longer. He claims he’s been searching since last May. Well, now he’s found you.”
“Marcus doesn’t know about any of this.”
“No, and that’s appropriate, I think. This solicitor fellow is a realist. He knows that your position is automatically precarious, that everything rests upon his speaking to you and not allowing the earl or any of the family to get to you first. He is a wise man.”
“He wants to visit me next Monday.”
“Aye, rightfully so.” Badger patted her hands then rose, sniffing like a hound on the scent. “My ham Galatine smells too potent. It is beyond what is gratifying. Perhaps the grated black pepper wasn’t of the best quality as old shark-fin Freeman assured me. Well, I can add more basil and perhaps just another pinch of rosemary, then it will be perfect. I am pleased, Duchess, that your father didn’t forget you. He did well. I will remember him more easily now.”
“I wonder if there is more,” she said.
“We will see when this Mr. Wicks person arrives,” Badger said and left her alone to return to his ham.
Mr. Wicks was very old and very thin and had an unmistakable gleam of kindness in his rheumy eyes. His smile, with its half complement of teeth, was also kind and it robbed her of much of her wariness.
“How do you do,” he said and gallantly bowed over her hand. “How pleased I am to have finally found you. I must say you have a charming property. My, how I should like some tea, and you, I imagine, young lady, wish to hear all about this unusual, but highly gratifying, situation.”
The Duchess invited him in, gave him tea, and sat forward in her chair, her hands clasped in her lap.
“Your name, as I told you in my letter, is now Miss Wyndham. Your father married your mother last November, two months before he was killed. He immediately hired me to have you legitimized. It was finalized at last in May. I couldn’t contact you before then since it wasn’t yet completed, for one of the Wyndham family could have stopped it, thus ensuring that you would remain dispossessed. But it was completed and now you are a true Wyndham. Then in May, my dear Miss Wyndham, I couldn’t find you. I hired a Bow Street runner and he managed, finally, to track you here to Smarden.”
She was looking utterly shocked, something he well understood. “My mother told me nothing of this, sir, nor did my father. I thought your address to me as Miss Wyndham was just a kindness, perhaps even a misapprehension on your part.”
“Actually, my dear, you are now a lady, right and tight, but I thought that would make only more confusion than necessary. You are an earl’s daughter and
thus a lady, just as are his other daughters, Lady Fanny and Lady Antonia. No, your father told me that he was holding it all a secret from you until you were finally his legitimate daughter. I’m so very sorry that your parents died so suddenly, leaving you alone and unprotected and unaware of what they had done to make things right for you. They both loved you very much.”
“Yes,” she said slowly, staring beyond his left shoulder, “they did make things aright for me.” Had her father really loved her? Yes, she supposed now, yes he had. She lowered her head and cried. For the first time since Marcus had told her of her father’s death, tears rolled down her cheeks to drop onto her folded hands. She made no sound, just cried and cried. It was Badger who came into the drawing room and handed her a handkerchief, saying to Mr. Wicks as he did so, “She is always forgetting to carry a handkerchief with her. I tell her to just stuff one in her pocket, but she never remembers. That’s right, Duchess, cry all you want to. The handkerchief has been waiting years for just this occasion.”
“Thank you, Badger,” she said. Her face was pale, her nose red, her eyes watery, and Mr. Wicks thought she was quite the loveliest young lady he’d seen in many a year. He said, “You have your father’s eyes and hair. I met your mother but one time. She seemed a remarkable woman, so bright, just as are you, and so very beautiful that I stared at her, I fear, stared and stared, and your father just chuckled and said that it was all right, that every man who had ever laid eyes on her stared. And you are at least her equal in beauty. Now you will take your rightful place in society, Lady Duchess. Lady Duchess—how odd that sounds, but your father insisted that was your name even when I questioned it. He said, if I remember correctly, ‘Yes, Wicks, it’s Lady Duchess she is and nothing else. She’s a young woman of great charm and character who will change things around her if she is given the chance, and I intend that she have her chance.’ Thus, my lady, you are no longer a bastard, you will no longer be expected to live in retirement. In short, you will now do just as you wish.” Mr. Wicks sat back and beamed at her.