The Duchess’s Secret. Elizabeth Beacon

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