Chapter One
She’d only learned of the property’s existence at last week’s reading of her husband’s will.
Why Sylvester had not mentioned having purchased the beachfront property for her, she would never know.
Somehow it felt as if, from the grave, he was banishing her, doling out one last punishment for her inability to produce an heir for him.
But, perhaps, thanks to her dour mood, she was indulging in fanciful thinking. After all, Sylvester had not visited her bed for over a year before his death. Not since the incident whereby he had been unable to…perform. The moment had been exceedingly awkward for both of them.
She had gained the impression he was as relieved as she when he quietly desisted his attempts to produce an offspring with her, not that they had discussed the matter overtly. But, then, at twenty-two years her senior, he never had treated her, his wife, as his closest confident and life partner.
She had been a means to an end. A pretty consolation prize to afford him an heir following the death of his first, beloved, wife.
At forty, he’d made the hated voyage to London in search of a replacement. He’d taken one look at her, a fresh-faced debutante of barely eighteen years of age, dubbed by the royal court a diamond of the first water, and presented her father with an offer of marriage.
Her father, a mere viscount, had been overjoyed to accept.
She understood. If she had attended only one soiree—at the staid Almack’s, no less—and if she had never even gotten the chance to dance the waltz—which she’d spent a great effort mastering—she knew the honor he’d bestowed on her.
Marriage to the austerely handsome and much coveted Duke of Penrose, no matter that he was of an age with her father, was the coup of the season.
He had come to town prepared with a special license and the two were married in less than a fortnight.
She recalled traveling by coach to Cornwall, watching through the small paned windows as civilization gave way to the beautiful yet spartan landscape surrounding Penrose Abbey, the mammoth stone fortress which she’d called home for the last fifteen years.
During the journey, her husband had expounded upon the virility of his bloodline as if delivering a lecture, detailing how none of his predecessors had difficulty producing male offspring.
Indeed, his grandfather, the Third Duke of Penrose, had produced both an heir and a spare.
The heir, the fourth duke, Sylvester’s father, begot Sylvester, while said spare, Sylvester’s uncle, not only had a son, but two grandsons, one of whom was Julian.
She winced, hearing herself mentally referring to Julian by his Christian name, a habit borne of many years. His Grace, she admonished herself. She must accustom herself to thinking of him as such, now that he had ascended from the rank of land manager-apprentice to the sixth Duke of Penrose.
She imagined herself addressing him as Your Grace, and a real smile tugged at her mouth—the first she’d enjoyed all morning. It was no use. He would always be Julian to her, because he was her dear, dear friend. Arguably, her closest friend in the world.
Julian had expressed shock similar to hers when Sylvester’s long-time solicitor read Verity’s bequeathment of “funds enough to last a lifetime, and a newly constructed, fully furnished Brighton Beach villa, located on Marine Parade.”
She remembered turning toward him, stunned, and witnessing his ice-blue eyes widening, his thick, dark brows furrowing—with what she liked to think was dismay.
“You didn’t know?” she’d asked him after the solicitor departed.
He’d shaken his dark head in vehement denial.
She’d wanted to believe him. Still. “I thought he shared every detail of his accounts with you,” she’d half-accused.
“He never said a word, the wily old bastard,” he’d groused.
They had both laughed then, at the unexpected, wholly atypical behavior. Julian, casting a slur against her late husband, a man whom he’d respected and admired, and who returned that respect and admiration in equal measure, was so rare as to be unheard of.
She silently admitted now what she hadn’t—even to herself—then. She was more glad than he would ever know to learn Julian had not kept such a monumental secret from her. Especially when the solicitor implied she should vacate the abbey and relocate to her villa with all due haste.
Unaccountably dejected by the sight of Mary, her lady’s maid, and the chambermaid she’d brought in to help her, packing the last of the items on the top shelf of her bookcase, she wandered into her antechamber, dropped onto her chaise lounge and tried to work up some excitement for starting her life anew.
She imagined the cheerfully canvased bathing machines the solicitor had described, saw herself strolling alongside the ocean under sunny skies, and joining the apparently plentiful social assemblies.
From the abbey grounds, she could only gaze out over clifftops, frequently under roiling skies, toward a churning sea whose relentless waves crashed over the rocky outcroppings below.
Thanks to the remoteness of the abbey, there were no social gatherings or clubs or assemblies to speak of; she should be looking forward to the changes her move to the other side of the country would herald, yet she found herself unable to feel anything but gloom.
She could blame her sad state on mourning her husband, of course. Though he had never romanced her, nor treated her as a true partner, he had never been cruel, and he had been a constant in her life for fifteen plus years.
But it was not Sylvester whose face kept materializing before her mind’s eye. Instead, Julian, whom Sylvester had lured here to live with them for the last ten years—with a land manager apprenticeship, of all things—kept invading her thoughts.
Chances were, once she left in less than one week’s time, she would never see him again. She could hardly imagine passing a day without him.
She smiled a misty smile thinking of him.
She couldn’t, not. Tall and broad and lean with a contagious vitality, and a habit of allowing his wavy, dark hair to grow overlong so he was forced to swipe the stubborn, curling lock off his forehead with a rake of his hand.
Either that, or he’d shake his head to clear a path for the stunning pale blue eyes he’d been born with.
It was he who should be leaving, for a time, to travel and mix in society. He was yet young, five years her junior, and unwed. How else would he choose a wife, if he did not venture away from Penrose Abbey?
Before even considering what her living situation might entail following Sylvester’s demise, Verity had told Julian as much. Just because he had inherited the dukedom, she’d said, it did not follow he must sequester himself here as Sylvester had opted to do.
But Julian made it clear he had no intention of leaving.
It occurred to her, and not for the first time, he had never complained about living here. He had never in her hearing bemoaned the abbey’s relative isolation. Not even when she’d broached the subject of his unmarried, unattached status.
“A wife is not going to materialize out of thin air, Julian,” she’d chided more than once.
Each and every time, he’d brushed off her concern like so much lint, usually with a lighthearted laugh that never failed to coax a smile out of her.
But that was Julian. Charm personified. Indeed, from the moment he and his father had stepped foot in Penrose Abbey on that fateful visit that had inspired her husband’s offer of an apprenticeship for Julian, she’d noted not only his magnetic appeal, but his apparent intelligent and ever-curious nature which extended even to her.
From the first, Julian not only asked her questions, he bothered to listen to her answers in a way that made her feel seen, heard, cared for—and all while making her laugh.
He had a dry wit and a naughty habit of murmuring off-the-cuff comments for her ears only that caused her to snort in a most unladylike manner and usually at a most inopportune time.
What would he do when she left? Who would he tease?
His wife. He would take a wife.
A sob caught in her throat, as, for the first time, it dawned on her that her leaving was for the best. Julian was a young man, ascended to the title of duke. He would no doubt soon be set upon by marriage-minded mamas—even here.
Imaging the stampede that was sure to follow when society perceived that such an eminently marriageable bachelor, boasting his extraordinary looks, and charm, and wealth, had inherited such a prestigious title, she loosed a shaky laugh.
He would certainly hate being hunted like a desperate fox, but eventually some lucky girl would catch him—and she would not welcome the presence of his predecessor’s widow in her household.
For some odd reason, the thought of residing here with Julian, newly married, left a sour taste in her mouth.
A knock on her door sounded from the corridor, pulling her from her reverie.
“Come,” she called.
The door opened to reveal Harold, the aged butler who had presided over the abbey since well before her time here.
She sent him a warm, questioning smile.
“His Grace bids you attend him in his den, milady.”
For no good reason, her heart kicked into a gallop. Putting on a happy face, she set out to join him.
*
Julian Attwell, the newly ennobled Duke of Penrose, sat behind the familiar massive desk he’d inherited along with the rest of the estate, and re-scanned the letter he held detailing the state of the villa which his predecessor, the recently demised Penrose, had purchased with the sole intent of bequeathing said property to his wife, Lady Verity Frost. He had never breathed a word of this to Julian, whom he had groomed to manage all of the ducal estate’s properties, starting some ten years ago when Julian was a mere greenhorn lad of eighteen.