The Reluctant Duchess (24 page)

“
Anna probably has hundreds of stories of the evils of men against women but the one that seems to affect her the most, is her mother. Annabelle’s father gave her syphilis, which is what is causing her to go mad.”

“Oh no,” Lavinia cried
, tears pricking her eyes. “That poor girl.”

“The irony is that I have always been careful; she is safer with me than with most other men.”

“But safer still, alone,” Lavinia noted.

“So you are on her side?” He sounded hurt.

“There are no sides no this, darling. I know that you are a good man and will be a faithful husband, but I can also understand how Annabelle must feel. You and I had good, kind, loving parents; at least I hope you feel that way too. Our natures are basically trusting, despite the evils that we see in the world. Annabelle has only seen the worst in humanity, aside from her mother whom she speaks of with affection, only to have to watch as the selfishness of one parent destroys the other.”

“So what do I do?”

“For now, nothing. She is a strong woman, Richard, and she will not be bullied into a relationship. You must give her space, at least for the time being.”

Richard leaned his head back and groaned at his own stupidity. If only he had listened to his mother and broken things off with Ada, then none of this would be happening.

The first few days after her
confrontation with Richard were relatively easy. It was as if she were numb and unable to feel anything, even pain.

She was sorry w
hen that numbness wore off though, because it left a sharp pain in her chest that no amount of distraction could help her ignore.

Everything hurt. Going to the coffee house reminded her of Richard, her bed each night reminded her of
making love to Richard; even lit candles brought Richard to mind and the night that he had lit dozens of them, just to make her smile.

Even baking didn’t hold the same appeal for her now. She did her best to make her creations taste as good as they used to but
to her, everything tasted bland now. She followed her usual recipes to the letter but she no longer had the same love or the same amount of care for her baking.

In fact she found it difficult to care very much about anything
, and only years of discipline and routine ensured that everything got done. She felt hollow, empty, as if she was missing something. She knew what was missing, of course, but she refused to contemplate it.

On the whole, s
he hid her feelings well and only those closest to her, namely her staff, even noticed that there was anything amiss. None of them said anything to her though.

Each day she prepared herself
to remain strong in case Richard came into the coffee house, but he never did. His friend, Jonathan Rhyman, came in regularly but she rarely had a natural opening to ask about Richard.

He was explaining to her about P
arliament’s plan to hastily rebuild and repair the Painted and White Chambers to be going on with, until a new palace could be designed and built. Annabelle took the opportunity to ask if Richard had thought any more about a career in politics. The answer wasn’t what she had hoped as Jonathan didn’t know and confined discussion of Richard to that specific question.

Alt
hough she thought herself weak for wishing for any news of Richard, she couldn’t help it. Unfortunately she didn’t overhear any snippets of conversation about him, which she assumed was because he was keeping to the house much more than usual following the fire. She just wanted to know how his recovery was going, that wasn’t too much to ask, was it?

Frederick
Wyatt smiled as he saw that he had a letter from ‘Old John’ and put the rest of his post aside to read the latest update.

He had met John in his youth
, whilst frequenting a whorehouse and they had remained friends, on and off, ever since. John was an unusual creature, being both educated and a criminal and Frederick had asked him for help many times over the years. Of course, he wasn’t such a good friend that he would help Frederick out of the goodness of his heart but even although his finances were tight these days, he thought that paying John to harass Annabelle was a worthwhile investment.

If only that
imbecile, Armstrong, hadn’t bought the leasehold. He’d wasted a month or more cultivating a friendship with Mrs Braithwaite, only for her husband to turn around and sell the lease to Armstrong! If it wasn’t for that, he would have evicted Annabelle by now and could get on with his life.

Most people thought that he hated Annabelle and her mother, Evelina, because he resented them taking his mother’s place in the family but his mother had died a few days after he was born, so he had no memory of her
, let alone love for her

No
, the real reason that he hated Evelina and by extension Annabelle, was because Evelina should have been his. He had met her first, he had loved her first, he had even introduced her to his father, only for the cad to set his eye on Evelina himself.

She may have been three years older than
Frederick and as his father rightly pointed out, they weren’t actually courting but Frederick knew that it was just a matter of time. Evelina was a creature of such exquisite beauty, that he simply had to possess her and would stop at nothing to make her his. He didn’t even care that she wasn’t from a noble family and didn’t have a particularly large dowry, with looks like hers, breeding counted for nought.

When he met her though, he was still in his first year of university,
although he confided in his father that as soon as he graduated, he intended to marry her. His father had advised Frederick not to declare himself yet as women didn’t like long courtships, and he had assured his son that he would keep an eye out for Evelina whilst Frederick as away.

Frederick
had been devastated to return to the estate in the summer and discover that Evelina had married his father! No one had even bothered to tell him.

He seethed with rage to the extent where it actually m
ade him ill. Finally he confronted Eveline, waiting in her bedroom until she came in alone. She had seemed shocked to hear that he had plans to marry her and claimed that she had no inkling of how he felt about her, but he knew that she was lying. She had teased him and led him on until she met a better prospect, his father.

Well to hell with that, she would be his regardless!
She had led him on and he wasn’t going to let her go without a fight!

His first blow stunned her and he was on her within seconds. She struggled against him but he was far stronger than she and easily subdued. His only difficulty had been the voluminous clothes that she wore, which proved tricky to get past, especially with
only one hand since the other held her wrists. If it hadn’t been for that inconvenience, Jones wouldn’t have had time to discover them.

Unconsciously one hand we
nt to the back of his head, where the little witch had clobbered him with a jewellery box. There were still two dents in the bone from where she had struck him that day. He was dazed and Jones had almost screeched the place down, until the other servants and his father came running.

And so he, the rightful heir to the estate, had been thrown out of his own home! The indignity of it still stung.

His father had been a liar and a cheat but the old man was wily and had used his money (and the threat of being cut off) to keep Frederick away.

Over the next 16 years
his anger festered, growing stronger when Annabelle became so very popular among his father’s friends. He was always hearing stories about her marvellous singing, or her beautiful playing, or her wonderful French, or how intelligent and bright she was, or how her beauty would one day rival her mother's.

Frederick
was the rightful heir but no one had ever complimented his intelligence. His father had never proudly shown him off to his friends.

W
hen the old man finally died, Frederick had his chance to reclaim what should rightfully have been his from the start, only Evelina had grown older and was no longer quite the beauty that he remembered. Annabelle however, her beauty was worthy of someone like him, except that she constantly looked down her nose at him. She called his drinking boorish and him a drunkard; said he had the table manners of a pig and even had the gall to tell him how to treat his own servants! The girl’s attitude excited him to new heights of fury. Who did she think she was to tell him how to behave in his own home? She was the interloper; she was the one who didn’t belong.

Frederick
was of noble blood but Annabelle’s mother’s parents had been in trade, which made them little more than peasants in Frederick’s opinion.

Still, he took pleasure in the fact that she and her mother would be under his care for the remainder of their lives. Annabelle
couldn’t even marry if he didn’t give her his permission and a dowry.

When he discovered that his father had
left Evelina a small annuity in his will, he was upset but reasoned that it wasn’t enough for her to live on, so she would still be unable to leave his house, even if she did have a little pocket money of her own.

When he discovered a little later in the will, that Annabelle had been left
what would have been her dowry, Frederick was incensed. He had looked at her with desire before that day, but she was his sister and he knew where to draw the line. Suddenly his anger overpowered his reason though and if he couldn’t possess Annabelle as a parent would, then he was going to possess her as a man possesses a woman, and taint her forever for all future suitors.

Unlike her mother though, Annabelle was a fighter. She bit, clawed, scratched, kicked and yelled, until she finally managed to hit him with something that made his
head bleed. The blood ran into his eyes and he could hardly see her but that didn’t stop him, until he was pulled off her. Under her orders, the servants even had the audacity to tie him up. The indignity was too much to bear and he had ranted and raved, as she and her loyal servants quickly packed up their most important belongings and stole his coach to take them into town.

He intended to take her to court for stealing his horses and carriage but she even
managed to thwart him in that, having given the possession of them to the local inn keeper in the next town, and paid him a few shillings to return them to Frederick the next day.

He had no idea what happe
ned to them after that, how they got about but the next time he heard of them was through his father’s lawyer, who informed him that Annabelle was using her inheritance to buy a house in London.

That had been the
first time that Frederick had asked ‘Old John’ for help, wanting him to keep an eye on his sister and what she was up to.

When he learned that she was to enter trade with her coffee house, he
was thrilled; she was being forced to go back to her trade roots and after that (and especially being a woman in trade) no aristocrat in his right mind would ever agree to marry her. She had been forced back to where she belonged and her only chances of marriage now was to another tradesman, although the successful ones preferred to marry up, not down.

He had stopped by a few times when the
coffee house first opened, to taunt her but as his debts in London mounted, he had been forced to stay away for a while and since her situation didn’t change, he found himself content to stay away. Not least because Frank had given him a rather nasty black eye the last time he’d visited.

His life moved on and his debts mounted up. He began to charge his tenants more, which worked for a while but now he found himself with almost half of his farms empty
, as the tenants were unable to afford the exorbitant rent and most of the others were in arrears.

Now he was facing
threats to attend the Court of Chancery and there was even talk of bankruptcy.

On two occasions he had tried to propose to less than beautiful but wealthy women
, in the hopes of securing their dowries but in both cases, her parents had objected to the match. It had taken him two months to woo each woman and still he had nothing to show for it, so he decided that wasn’t a very productive use of his time. Besides, he enjoyed spending his time gambling, or in the company of women who would do anything for a few shillings. In his opinion, being all prim and proper whilst courting one of these horse-faced frumps, was simply inhumane.

H
e had been feeling desperate, until he got the invitation to the Duke of Hampshire’s shooting party. He and James Armstrong had never been friendly, but he was hopeful that he could ingratiate himself with the son. One thing that he had learned early on was that once you were the friend of a wealthy, popular or well-connected aristocrat, people were much more willing to open up new lines of credit for you.

Seeing Annabelle
at the shooting party had come as a total surprise. At first he had simply admired her beauty and envied the Duke his luck, for she was so far removed from his last memory of her in the coffee house, that he didn’t recognise her.