Chapter 1 #2
“I am not the type to be so strongly resembled,” said the duke dryly and the duchess had to agree.
His hair was dark brown and straight, a little thin now and dusted with gray; his features and build were even and without any remarkable point; his eyes were blue-gray.
Even if the girl was his image, it would scarcely be noticed.
With little hope, she tried again to dissuade him. “William, this will not work. What will the world say if our son marries a nobody?”
He smiled bitterly. “One thing about your son, madam,”—the duchess caught her breath at the pronoun—“is that no one will be surprised at anything he does.”
“And if he refuses?” she asked bleakly.
The duke sat even straighter and resolve hardened his features. “Then I will disinherit him of all but the entailed property.”
“No, William. You cannot!”
The large part of the family fortune was not entailed to the oldest son. The duchess knew that without it Lucien would never be able to maintain the great houses, the multitude of servants and dependents, the state expected of a duke.
“I can and I will.” The duke rose to his feet. “I inherited a faultless bloodline and I will pass it on. If Arden does not understand this obligation, then he is unworthy of his position.”
The duchess rose to her feet in alarm. “You will tell him?”
The duke raised his chin. “Of course I will tell him.”
Tears glimmered in her eyes. It was the first time in years the duke had seen her cry. He turned suddenly away. “I have no choice, Yolande,” he said softly.
“How he will hate us.”
“You should have thought of that,” the duke said coldly, “before you took Guy de St. Briac to your bed.” With that he left the room.
The duchess groped for her chair and collapsed into it. Fumbling, she found her handkerchief to stem her tears. Indeed, if she had been gifted with foresight, she would have avoided St. Briac like the plague.
Guy de St. Briac had been her first love though, so gay, so charming, in the pre-Revolutionary gardens and ballrooms of France.
Quite ineligible of course, but a heart-stealer all the same.
When the duke—then the Marquess of Arden himself—had offered for her hand, Yolande de Ferrand had responded to her family’s urging and accepted him.
She had not been in love with him, for he was not dashing or handsome and his manner was reserved, but she had been happy with her parents’ choice.
She had come, quite soon, to love him in a mild sort of way; she had happily borne him four children, two of them healthy boys, William and John.
Throughout those contented early years in England she had never given St. Briac a thought.
But then, as France began to disintegrate, she had met St. Briac again …
Ah, he had been so distraught by what was happening to their homeland; she scarcely less so by the shadows gathering over the golden world of her youth.
He had needed her so and she had still nurtured a trace of her girlhood dreams. William’s absence in Scotland shooting grouse had provided opportunity.
It had only been the once, for Guy had been en route to a new life in the Americas.
Only once. And it had served to show her that her feelings for her husband were not mild at all.
She had thought for a while that her sin had been a blessing and had waited impatiently for William’s return to express her newfound passion for him.
If only he had not broken his leg, then perhaps he need never have known. She would not have been sure herself. By the time they could share a bed again, however, she had been forced to confess to him her action and the consequences.
He had been so kind, she remembered as she swallowed back a new flood of tears. Hurt, but kind, and moved by her declaration of the deepest kind of love. He had accepted the unborn child as others had in such a position. It was not as if the child, if a boy, would be his heir…
Then there had been that dreadful accident. A nurse grown careless, two naughty boys playing with a boat, the three-year-old slavishly following the five-year-old.
Drowned. Both gone.
The tears were flowing again now as she remembered that tragedy, so much greater than the death of those two darling children. It had been the death of her marriage and all happiness.
She had been in her seventh month and had prayed that in her grief she would lose the baby. When that did not happen, she had prayed throughout her labor that she would bear a daughter. To no avail.
She had wondered what she would feel when she held such a misbegotten child, but she had found only the most overwhelming love.
Perhaps it was the recent tragedy, perhaps the estrangement between herself and the duke.
She was certain the bond she formed instantly with her last and most beautiful baby was nothing to do with St. Briac, though the duke may not have believed that.
She had suckled him herself, the only one of her children to have taken milk from her breasts, and wished desperately that she had felt this closeness with the others. She had resolved to suckle any future children, but there had been none. From that day on the duke had never come to her bed again.
The duchess shook her head as the old ache trembled inside her.
She had thought age would have solved at least this problem.
Every time she saw William, however, her love swelled up inside her.
Even the sound of his voice could cause her heart to race.
At least he had not put her aside, though the awesome formality he had built into their lives was a monstrous barrier.
One day, she told herself, his presence a few hours of every day would be enough.
One day.
She forced herself to stop that line of thought.
The duke cast no doubt on the child’s parentage, but he would not give him the family names. The babe had been christened Lucien Philippe Louis after her father, her uncle and the King of France. It had been considered a touching gesture of support for the embattled French aristocracy.
She remembered how everyone had commented on God’s kindness to so quickly replace what they had lost. She remembered William stonily accepting all the muted congratulations.
They had been so young. She had been twenty-seven, the duke only thirty-one. Perhaps that was why they had been unable to handle the ruin of their lives.
Once the fuss was over, he had fled to Hartwell, the lovely small house in Surrey in which they had lived before he acceded to the title. There he had apparently sought comfort in the arms of an “honest” woman.
The duchess sighed. It was far too late to feel pain at that betrayal. Quite ridiculous too. Was the result, this Elizabeth Armitage, a blessing or a curse?
What William had hit upon was a solution, she supposed, but at what cost? Lucien would know what she had done. It would drive a greater wedge between him and his father. It would tie two people together in a marriage without love.
She must at least warn him.
She hurried over to her elegant escritoire and wrote a hasty explanation to her beloved son: to prepare him, to ask him to agree if at all possible, to beg his forgiveness. She rang the silver bell and a footman entered.
“I wish this note to go to the marquess in London,” she said. Then, as the man turned to leave she added, “Has the duke sent a letter also, do you know?”
“I believe the duke is leaving for London at this minute, Your Grace.”
The duchess turned to the window. Clear sunlight showed her the picture perfectly. A crested coach drawn by the six fastest horses in the stables was bowling down the driveway. She sighed.
“I do not think my letter is necessary after all,” she said and took it back. When the man had withdrawn she tore it into pieces and threw it into the fire.
What would be, would be. The past twenty-five years, years without her husband’s love and without hope of it, had taught her a certain resignation.