When the Duchess Said Yes (36 page)

Lizzie guided her horse through the long row of cedars, letting her mount set a leisurely pace. She wasn’t in any particular hurry, because she’d no particular place to go.

On her first day at Halsbury Abbey, she had raced about like a madwoman, striving to see and learn everything about the house and manor as quickly as possible, and driving the manor’s small staff to distraction in the process. But after that, she’d slipped into a much more agreeable routine of rising early and riding the land, reading in the garden, and riding some more. The little mare that had been found for her was far from the elegant mount that Hawke had bought for her in London, but she was sturdy and surefooted, and in her company Lizzie had already spent hours roaming her newest home, letting her thoughts roam as well.

She could still see the house’s arched chimney stacks through the trees, sizable landmarks that in the beginning had kept her from becoming lost. This house was the opposite of the rambling Chase, for it had been built when the first duchess was flush with her royal lover’s gold. It stood square and elegant, with five bays of windows, three stories beneath a hipped roof, formal pilasters across the front, and a doorway with an elaborate
pediment that would have been more at home in London than here in the green hills of Somerset.

Mrs. Short, the housekeeper, had been eager to share old scandals and gossip about the house, all of it at least two decades old and as musty as the furnishings that had been newly freed of their dust-cloth shrouds in her honor. Lizzie had listened politely without really hearing any of it, except the few times when Mrs. Short had offered up tales of Hawke as a boy. There weren’t many, and they all seemed to involve Hawke misbehaving wickedly and causing his near-saintly father distress.

In fact, it seemed that in Mrs. Short’s eyes, Hawke had done little that was good in his entire life, the most grievous being his disgraceful neglect of the Abbey itself. He had not visited once since he’d come into the title, which was likely why Mrs. Short had been beside herself with joy when Lizzie, as the new duchess, had unceremoniously appeared. The reasons behind her visit didn’t matter. To Mrs. Short, having a Duchess of Hawkesworth in residence again made everything right.

If only the same could be said of the rest of her life, thought Lizzie for what must have been the thousandth time. She had told Mrs. Short that she’d come to the Abbey to find peace after the hectic pace of London, but the truth was that she’d run away. She’d run from London, her family, and her marriage; most of all, she’d run from Hawke.

But as she’d soon discovered, running away to Somerset was not the same as running from him through the garden with her skirts flying. She’d expected him to follow her as he always did. He hadn’t, nor had he sent so much as a message or letter.

She’d been angry at first, then hurt, but as the days slipped by, she’d become simply sad. Perhaps this was the kind of marriage Hawke had wanted from the beginning, with her here and him somewhere else. Wasn’t
that what he’d told her that last day? That when he fell out of love with her, he’d leave? In her darkest thoughts, she wondered if he’d already left not only her but England as well and was already on his way back to Naples.

Yet she wasn’t alone. At least she didn’t think she was. One night, at Margaret’s urging, she had finally sat down with a calendar and counted the days since her last courses. To both her shock and delight, she realized that more than seven weeks had passed—seven weeks, when she had always been as regular as the moon itself. There were other small signs, too, such as how weary she was, how long she slept at night, and how already her breasts felt larger and more tender, symptoms she recalled from Charlotte’s pregnancies. Hawke might have left her, but at least he’d left her with his child.

Of course she was pleased, and when she imagined holding her own baby, a small, sweet person born from love, she was overjoyed. A baby, an heir, had been the main reason she and Hawke had wed in the first place, and she was sure he’d be proud and excited, as would both their families. But the growing certainty that she carried Hawke’s child saddened her, too. He should be here with her so that she might tell him the news to his face and share her happiness with him. If he truly had left for Italy, it might be months, even years, before he returned to see their child—a possibility so melancholy that she tried not to consider it. Mama maintained that beautiful thoughts whilst with child helped produce beautiful babies, and Lizzie resolved to do exactly that.

It was easy enough when surrounded by the beauty of Halsbury’s gardens and fields, and before long Lizzie fell into the habit of conversing with her unborn child as she rode out alone each day. This was what she was doing now as she rode beneath the old cedar trees, singing sea
chanteys from her own girlhood in Dorset softly to herself and her baby.

She came to the end of the cedar row and followed the narrowing path down into the ruins of the old abbey that had given the newer house its name. Not much remained of the abbey now beyond crumbling stone walls and a few empty windows, their arched frames still pointing toward the heavens. Mrs. Short had told her that the monks had set fire to the abbey rather than have it claimed by Henry VIII’s men, and she’d hinted darkly that the ruins were haunted by several of the monks who’d perished in the smoke and flames. Lizzie liked the ruins because they were romantic, with flowering vines climbing through the broken stone tracery.

But she’d ridden only halfway through the ruin when her mare shied, skittishly pulling to one side.

“What is it, Chestnut?” Lizzie said, drawing hard on the reins to control the horse’s nervousness. Likely it was only a squirrel or rabbit, though it was uncharacteristic of the mare to be uneasy. “There’s nothing here worth being startled over.”

Still the horse refused to go forward, her ears swiveling nervously as she backed away. To Lizzie’s eyes and ears, there was nothing, yet she couldn’t help sharing the horse’s fear.

“What is it, Chestnut?” she asked again, more loudly this time, as if bravado alone could conquer her misgivings. “Do you see those ghostly old monks, come to haunt us?”

Suddenly a small white dog with a face like a gargoyle came racing through the doorway and toward the horse. The mare rose, neighing with shrill surprise as she flailed at the dog with her hooves. Lizzie struggled to keep her seat, holding tightly, and if she’d been any less of a rider she would have been thrown for sure. Shaken, she did her best to calm the horse and herself, too. The white
dog had vanished as mysteriously as it had appeared—almost, in fact, as if it had been a ghost or demon.

“Best we head for home, Chestnut,” she said, her voice quavering. She’d refused the company of a groom, confident enough in her own skill to ride alone, but now she thought only of how close she and her unborn child had come to disaster. “That’s sufficient excitement for both of us.”

But as she turned the mare’s head to return the way they’d come, she heard another noise from the far side of the wall, someone crashing through the brush on horseback. Swiftly she looked back over her shoulder, just in time to see a large man on a larger horse come through the arch. She gasped and very nearly shrieked, tightly reining in poor Chestnut to keep her from bolting.

“Forgive me, ma’am,” said the gentleman—for so he seemed from his dress and accent, if not his behavior—“but have you seen a small white bulldog come traipsing through here?”

“Indeed, sir, I have,” she said, indignation replacing fear in an instant. “That dog scared my horse, just as you have done again, and both of you should be thrashed for it.”

“I am most heartily sorry to have inconvenienced you, ma’am,” he said, gallantly sweeping his dark cocked hat from his head. He was not much older than Lizzie herself, and as irritated as she was, she still could not ignore that he was exceptionally handsome.

“To redeem myself I would hand you the cudgel myself, ma’am,” he continued, “so that you might thrash me yourself to your satisfaction.”

He smiled broadly, determined to charm, but Lizzie wanted none of it. “Do you not realize that you’re trespassing on the lands of the Duke of Hawkesworth?”

“Hawke won’t mind,” he said blithely, “for he’ll never know. The duke departed for the Continent over a decade
ago, and he is so far entrenched in his foreign ways that he has completely thrown over the care of his properties here. I ride through here whenever I am in this neighborhood. I’ve always had a liking for the splendid melancholy of this place. Ah, Fantôme, here you are, you ugly little rogue.”

The white dog raced across the grass, leaping on its short legs from one broken stone to another until he could make the final jump to his master’s saddle, settling comfortably in the open leather saddlebag that appeared designed to hold him. He
was
an ugly little rogue, with a bulldog’s crumpled muzzle and large, pointed ears like a bat, and as he sat there snuffling and panting, his pink tongue hanging forward, he seemed to be grinning at Lizzie.

But Lizzie was not about to be distracted by either grinning white dogs or their handsome owners.

“You are still trespassing, sir, whether His Grace is in residence or not,” she said sternly. “Let me know your name, sir, so that I might tell him of your presence on his land.”

“Sheffield, ma’am,” he said, bowing as far as he could over the dog. “That will be name enough for the duke. Now will you honor me with your name, too, so that I might know his lovely champion?”

“I am the Duchess of Hawkesworth, Master Sheffield,” Lizzie said, making her voice as frosty as possible. The name was vaguely familiar to her, but she couldn’t recall how or why she knew it. “I am His Grace’s champion, yes, because I am also his wife.”

But instead of being aghast, or even contrite, the gentlemen grinned with rascally content.

“Truly, ma’am?” he asked. “Then I must congratulate my aged cousin for marrying so fair and young a lady.”

Now it was Lizzie’s turn to be shocked. This young
man was perhaps twenty, while Hawke was only twenty-eight.

“Your
aged
cousin?” she exclaimed. “I will assure you, sir, that while His Grace may be your cousin, he is not aged, not in the least!”

“Hawke was done with school before I’d begun,” he explained carelessly, “which made him seem aged to me, and then he left England. In all honesty, I’ve really never given him much thought, for all that we are cousins.”

“Perhaps you should,” Lizzie said, striving still to sound solemn. She could see the man’s resemblance to Hawke, Brecon, and even March, and a likeness, too, in the same abundant charm that her husband possessed. Now she remembered Hawke mentioning the last of his cousins, another duke likewise descended from the old kin and yet one more mistress. Sheffield had been vaguely described as finishing his education abroad, and it was her own fault that she’d assumed him to be a young boy instead of the entirely full-grown man before her—just as he’d assumed Hawke was a doddering graybeard.

“Yes, cousin,” he said, so obediently that she couldn’t help but smile. “For we are now cousins, too, Duchess, aren’t we?”

“Then you must call me Lizzie,” she said, “as cousins should.”

He swept his hat grandly from his head, over the white dog. “I am honored, Duchess Lizzie.”

Despite how he’d frightened her earlier, she couldn’t help but like him: with his dark hair and wide grin, he reminded her too much of Hawke for her not to. By the time they reached the house, they were laughing and chatting as if they’d known each other all their lives, not just a handful of minutes. They had entered the yard as Sheffield had finished telling an uproarious story, and Lizzie was laughing still as the grooms ran up to hold
their horses. Lizzie disentangled the skirts of her habit from the saddle’s horn while Sheffield dismounted and Fantôme ran looping circles of reconnaissance around the yard. As soon as she prepared to climb down, Sheffield stepped forward to help her, clasping her securely around the waist until her boots had safely reached the ground.

But at the exact moment that Lizzie was sliding down from her mare, they heard another rider arrive in the yard, hooves ringing out on cobblestones. From curiosity, both she and Sheffield turned in unison toward the sound, and that was how they were standing still when Hawke rode slowly into the yard.

“Hawke!”
cried Lizzie, a week’s worth of relief and joy in the single syllable of his name. She slipped free of Sheffield, grabbed her skirts in one hand, and ran across the yard to meet him. She had never been happier to see anyone, and the love she felt for him washed over her so intensely that she almost felt weak from it.

But even before she’d reached him, she saw that he did not feel the same. His face was tight, forcibly without expression as he looked down at her.

“Good day, Duchess,” he said, turning her title into a formal rebuke instead of the playful endearment it once had been between them. “I believed you would be here at home alone. I did not expect you to be entertaining company.”

His gaze shifted sharply to Sheffield, who’d come to stand beside her,

“Your Grace,” Sheffield said, wisely realizing that a formal greeting might be best in the circumstances, even between long-parted cousins. He removed his hat to bow low to Hawke, or rather to Hawke’s horse. “Your servant, sir.”

“You must bloody well be that and no more, sir,” Hawke said, his voice taut with scarcely controlled fury.
“Who are you, sir? Why are you here with my wife? By God, I should send my seconds to call on you, sir!”

“Hawke!” Lizzie called, mortified. She realized what Hawke had seen—Sheffield with his hands at her waist, and both of them laughing together—and she knew what he must have thought, however innocent everything was. “Hawke, please, it’s not—”

“I shall speak to you in private, Duchess,” he said, his words as harsh as if they’d struck her. “Now I wish to know how this knave dares comes into my home to dally with my wife.”

She sensed Sheffield’s anger now, too, the air around her crackling with male hostility and foolishness. Even Fantôme growled beside his master.