“Do you want to kill him?”
“Oh, yes. Too much.”
She suspected it was the latter statement, not the first, that caused the turmoil she sensed in him.
“Perhaps there will be no challenge.”
“He either challenges me, or he all but admits it is true. A duel will not change minds, but it will keep mouths shut.”
“Then I am sorry that you learned of that meeting and intruded. It was my hope to avoid such a confrontation. I did not want to put you in danger.”
His hand went to his eyes. He shook his head and groaned with impatience. “Have some faith, woman.
I
am in no danger. He was always a bad shot. I would have challenged him years ago if he would have stood half a fighting chance in it.” He sighed. “I should have done it anyway. It would be best to have it over, I think. His reputation is destroyed now. No honorable man will call him a friend.”
“Then perhaps killing him is unnecessary.”
He shrugged and gathered her to him. “I think we should keep that house. It is well located. Discreet.”
She steeled herself. She had hoped, in vain of course, that they would not speak of afterwards tonight, but just let it happen as it was sure to unfold now.
“I only took it for a month.”
“Then I will speak to the estate agent and extend the lease.”
“I will not be living in town. A whole house is a waste.”
He looked down at her. “But when you do come, I do not want you staying on Park Lane or with other friends. Since you will not stay with me, you need a house.”
She swallowed an uprising of emotion and caught her breath. “I do not think I can be happy as your sometimes mistress, Castleford. There are women who can do that, I know, but I am not one of them.”
He did not move. He did not speak. She waited for the objections, the arguments. They did not come.
Nor did any talk of marriage. The absence of those words hung there between them.
He was so outrageous that scandal did not bother with him anymore. But there was scandal that titillates, and then there was scandal that truly shocks. Today she had caused the latter kind, as she had known she would for weeks now.
The man in this bed did not care about that. He was prepared to kill an old friend because of today’s events if he must. He found the notion of people gossiping about her boring at worst, no doubt. He did not blame her for the past, she was sure.
But the whole world knew now what Latham had done with her, no matter how they judged it. The taint was public, and she would never escape that. The Duke of Castleford was obligated to care about such things regarding his duchess in ways Castleford the man never would.
If they could make a life out of Saturdays and Mondays, it might not matter. Unfortunately, every week had a Tuesday in it.
He did not demand that she announce that this night was the last one. He did not say it either. But he kissed her in a way that made her heart break, and his warm breath penetrated to her blood when he moved his mouth to her neck.
She gave herself over to him as she never had before. She embraced the emotions in all their sweetness and pain, and they affected every pleasure. She would not forget any of it, she promised herself. Not ever. Not the excitement and not the sadness, and especially not the love.
Chapter Twenty-six
“Y
ou are not feeling chilled, are you, Audrianna?” Verity asked.
“I am fine. Stop making me an invalid. It has been three weeks since I gave birth, and I am quite myself again.”
Verity tucked a blanket around Audrianna’s legs anyway.
“I am so glad that you thought of this, Daphne,” Celia said. “I promise not to cry.”
“In a few weeks, you can all come to the new property, once the greenhouse is completed and the plants are moved,” Daphne said. “The house is larger than the one used by The Rarest Blooms now, and the soil better, I think. The roads to London are excellent, so we can still bring the plants and flowers in one day if the wagon leaves in early morning.”
“It sounds like a fine property,” Verity said. “It will not be the same, of course, but in a year’s time it will seem as much like home to all of us as the other one does now.”
Daphne trusted so. Denouncing Latham had not stopped the sale of The Rarest Blooms’ land. Those papers had already been signed, and there was no ending it. Nor had she been as sorry as she might have been. It would perhaps be a good idea to have some distance from London for a while. And, she had to admit, eighty thousand pounds in trust put a different light on things too.
“He went to France, you must have heard,” Verity said. “Latham. Hawkeswell told me last night that it was all through the clubs yesterday.”
Everyone knew. Daphne did, because she had received a letter at Park Lane, where she had just spent a few days helping Audrianna adjust to both a new son and a new sister-in-law. The letter had a familiar scrawl, and seeing that hand had made her heart ache.
He has fled to France
was all it said.
No one had spoken to her about Castleford the days she stayed at Park Lane. As if by agreement, his name never was mentioned. She was too proud to ask if he fared well, lest her friends think she pined for him.
She did, of course. Privately. She held memories close to her heart and remembered his fun and the high emotions he provoked in her so easily.
“We are almost there,” Celia said with girlish excitement. “Will any of the others still be in residence? Have they all moved to Surrey ahead of you?”
“Mrs. Hill will be there still, so you can see her. And Margaret and a few others. Emma has returned to her home, but I think Susan may remain with us at least for a while.”
The carriage turned onto the lane leading to the house. Daphne’s own excitement built until she was breathless from it. She watched the house grow larger. Her home. Her sanctuary. The place where she had harbored and nurtured dreams that she dared not believe would come true.
She looked at her dear friends, each in turn. They had all been haunted by the past when they entered these doors, but none more than she herself. They had found their lives again, however, and their freedom from secrets. And now, finally she had too.
“There is something I must tell all of you,” she said. “There is a secret I must share with you, that I dared not tell you until today.”
They looked at her oddly, then at each other. She opened the carriage door and they all stepped down.
The door to the house opened. Margaret waved and came out. Then another figure appeared and sprinted past Margaret and flew into Daphne’s arms.
She stroked the fair hair nestled against her, and bent down to kiss the soft face. She turned to the others. “I want all of you to meet Estelle. She is my daughter.”
E
stelle reveled in the attention the ladies gave. Her eyes grew wide on hearing one was a countess.
In the joy and admiration that followed the first astonishment, none of her friends asked any questions. Perhaps they just guessed most of it. Estelle’s apparent age told most of the tale. Despite her fairness, she was not only her mother’s child in appearance too.
Celia began a little game of flipping Estelle’s curls on the back of her head. Estelle squealed and pivoted and turned to try to escape Celia’s hand.
“She is beautiful, Daphne,” Audrianna said quietly. “It breaks my heart that you felt you had to keep her a secret from everyone, even us.”
“I will explain why tonight, after she is in bed. It was not lack of trust in you, Audrianna. Rather a fear that if anyone learned of her, I would lose her forever.”
Audrianna watched those pale curls spin. “Does her father not even know about her?”
“Latham? Thank heavens, no. The father spared the son’s conscience in all things, especially this.”
Estelle had gotten so dizzy that she fell to the ground, laughing. She sat herself up, giggling still, and brushed her skirt. Then she stilled and looked down the lane, distracted from her fun.
She pointed. “Who is that, Mama?”
Daphne turned her head. Audrianna inhaled sharply.
A man on horseback had stopped halfway up the lane. He watched them intently. Noticed now, he moved his horse forward.
Daphne held out her hand for Estelle. She drew her close while Castleford approached. Finally he was right in front of them, looking down, appearing every inch the duke he was.
“Your Grace,” Daphne said. “Estelle, this is the Duke of Castleford, another of Mama’s friends.”
He swung off his horse and walked around. He looked down at Estelle a good long while, then made a bow. Estelle wobbled through a clumsy curtsy.
“Estelle, come with me,” Celia said. “We will go inside, and I will dress your hair like a lady does for a ball.”
Castleford and his big horse could not hold a child’s attention when such fun waited. Estelle ran away, leading a string of women to the door.
Finally there were no sounds surrounding her and Castleford except the blowing leaves and the horse’s occasional snort. Castleford quirked a half smile, but there was no mischief in his eyes.
“No wonder you did not want me to kill him. It would be a hell of a thing explaining that to her five years from now.”
“Yes. It might be best if I did not have that to admit along with the rest.”
He tied his horse to a tree. “Every day that you were at Park Lane I waited for you. I was sure that you would come to me. When I learned today that you had left and had no plans to return—” He faced her squarely. “I composed a very fine speech as I rode down here. I impressed myself with my eloquence. However, seeing that child—I find that I would rather not talk but listen, if you are willing to tell me about her.”
“You are very sure that he has gone to France?”
“Very sure.”
“Then I will tell you about her.”
T
hey walked down the lane at the slowest pace. The breeze conspired to dishevel Daphne’s hair quickly. A tendril here, another there, and soon she looked for all the world like a woman rising from a bed of pleasure.
He tucked that observation away into the place in his heart where he kept the other memories.
“I was with child when I went to old Becksbridge and told him about his son,” she said. “I stupidly thought he would tell Latham to do the right thing by me. Instead he accused me of trying to trap his son. He insulted my character and my virtue until I was in tears.” Her expression firmed at the memory. “Then, when I was in despair, he offered to help me if I obeyed his instructions.”
“He sent you north, to live with another woman whom his son had misused.”
“Margaret was beholden to him, of course. He believed he could count on her making sure that I did as he commanded.” She paced on. “He was not correct there, and I am thankful to this day for that.”
“How did you disobey him?”
She stopped walking. “I was to live with her and give the child over to a family he had chosen after my lying in. I was too sinful to raise a child with his blood, you see. My bad character would poison her. As the months passed, however, my heart mourned the very thought of that day. Margaret saw my melancholy. She guessed the reason and proposed that we deceive him.”
“I am liking her more all the time.”
“She wrote to the duke that I had lost the child during an illness. During my last months we moved to a cottage outside Eccles. After Estelle was born, I stayed there alone for some months. I could not keep her with me forever, I felt. If the duke found out, he would cast out Margaret from her home, and me too. Mostly I feared he would take Estelle and I would never see her again.”
Some of that fear was in her voice as she said it. He took her hand and pressed his lips to it. “Do you fear that still? With Latham now? Is that why you wanted to be sure he had gone to France before admitting even to me who she is? Daphne, a father has no rights to a child if he is not married to the mother.”
She moved closer, so she looked in his eyes over her raised hand. “You cannot know what it is like, to be a woman alone, with no means of support except the largesse of a family that has wronged you. If either took her, father or son, I could never find the means to fight them. Do not tell me about the law, Castleford. For a woman alone, with no money, a duke’s power is a fearful thing.”
He wanted to say this was not true, and that no man had such power. Except he knew all too well that he could have a child torn from a mother’s arms and arrange it so no one would ever find the men who did it or the child again.
“There is a good family near Eccles, the Foresters, who had befriended me. I left her with them. I sent money, and I visited when I could. I would take the stagecoaches there, hold my child for an hour or so, then travel right back by stage again. Only once did I stay longer, when Estelle was ill.”