of the devil, whatever you say,’ Jane flung back. ‘You don’t know all the things that have been said about her! I never mentioned her when I wrote you, feeling you’d been hurt enough, but there were always rumours swirling. How she defied the Duke in public, showing no deference to his friends or family. Turned her back on her own friends, too, once she became his Duchess—the few who remained after she jilted you. They say she became so unmanageable the Duke had to remove her to his country estate. I know she’s not been in London in all the years since my marriage. I’ve even heard that, as soon as the Duke fell seriously ill, she took herself off to Bath, refusing to nurse him or even to remain to see him properly buried!’
‘Enough, Jane. I’ve no interest in gossip, nor have I any intention of being more than politely civil to the woman, if and when the need arises. So you see, there’s nothing to upset yourself about.’
At that moment, a discreet knock sounded and the housekeeper appeared, bearing news of some minor disaster in the kitchen that required her mistress’s immediate attention. After giving his sister another quick hug, Alastair gently pushed her towards the door. ‘I’ll be fine. Go re-establish order in your domain.’
After Jane had followed the housekeeper out, Alastair walked back to his room, trapped by his still-unsettled thoughts. It was sad, really, that the girl he remembered being so vivacious, a magnet who drew people to her, had, if what Jane reported was true, ended up a recluse hidden away in the country, the subject of speculation and rumour.
Did she deserve it? Had she duped him, cleverly encouraging his infatuation so he might trumpet her beauty to the world in fulsome poetry, drawing to her the attention of wealthier, more prestigious suitors? Whether or not she’d deliberately led him on, she had obsessed him completely, inducing him to lay his foolish, naive, adoring heart at her feet.
He ought to thank her for having burned out of him early so unrealistic an expectation as eternal love. Still, something of that long-ago heartbreak vibrated up from deep within, the pain sharp enough to make him clench his teeth.
As before, anger followed. He would offer her nothing except perhaps a well-deserved snub.
Though even as he thought it, his heart whispered that he lied.
Entering the modest lodgings in Laura Place she’d hired two days previous, her son and his nursery maid trailing obediently behind her, Diana, Dowager Duchess of Graveston, mounted the stairs to the sitting room. ‘You may take Mannington to the nursery to rest now,’ she told the girl as she handed her bonnet and cloak to the maid-of-all-work.
‘Will you come up for tea later, Mama?’ the child asked, looking up at her, hope shining in his eyes.
‘Perhaps. Run along now.’ Inured to the disappointment on the boy’s face, she turned away and walked to the sideboard by the window, removing her gloves and placing them precisely on the centre of the chest. Only after the softly closing door confirmed she was alone, did she release a long, slow breath.
She should have hugged Mannington. He would have clung to her, probably. Like any little boy, he needed a mama he could cling to. And she could hug him now, without having to worry over the consequences—for him or for her.
Could she find her way back to how it had once been? A memory bubbled up: the awe and tenderness she’d felt as she held her newborn son, a miracle regardless of her feelings about his father.
The father who, little by little, had forced her to bury all affection for her child.
She remembered what had happened later that first day, Graveston standing over the bed as she held the infant to her breast. Plucking him away, telling her he’d summon a wet nurse, as a duchess did not suckle her own child. He’d cut off her arguments against it, informing her that if she meant to be difficult, he’d have a wet nurse found from among one of his tenant farmers and send the child away.
So she’d turned his feedings over to a wet nurse, consoling herself that she could still watch him in his cradle.
A week later, she’d returned to her rooms to find the cradle gone. The child belonged in the nursery wing, Graveston told her when she’d protested. It wasn’t fitting for a woman as lowly born as the wet nurse to spend time in the Duchess’s suite. If she insisted on having the child with her, he’d end up hungry, waiting for his supper while he was dispatched to the servant’s quarters.
Of course, she hadn’t wanted her son to go hungry. Or to have his balls taken away, as Graveston had done months later when she’d tarried in the nursery, rolling them to him, and been late for dinner.
Though for the first and only time in their marriage, she had tried to please her husband, nothing she did was enough. The day she’d learned her toddler son had been beaten because their laughter, as she played with him in the garden under the library window, had disturbed the Duke, she’d realised the only way she could protect him was to avoid him.
And the only way she could do that was to harden her heart against him as thoroughly as she’d hardened herself to every other instinct save endurance.
She remembered the final incident, when having noticed, as he noticed everything, that she’d had little to do with the boy of late, Graveston threatened to have the child whipped again when she’d not worn the new dress he’d ordered for her to dinner. He’d watched her with the intensity of an owl honing in on a mouse as she shrugged and told him to do as he liked with his son.
She’d lost her meal and been unable to eat for three days until she’d known for certain that, no longer believing the boy a tool to control her, he’d left the child alone.
Only then had she known he was safe.
She sighed again. Having worked so hard to banish all affection, she’d not yet figured out how to re-animate the long-repressed instincts to mother her child. Now that he was older, it didn’t help that she couldn’t look at the dark hair curling over his brow or the square-jawed face without seeing Graveston reflected in them.
With a shudder, she repressed her husband’s image.
Her late husband, she reminded herself. That liberation was so recent, she still had trouble believing she was finally free.
Living under his rule had perfected her mask of imperturbability, though. Lifting her eyes to the mirror over the sideboard, she studied the pale, calm, expressionless countenance staring back at her. Despite unexpectedly encountering Alastair Ransleigh after all these years, she’d not gasped, or trembled, or felt heat flame her face. No, she was quite sure the shock that had rocked her from head to toe had been undetectable in her outward appearance and manner.
The shock had almost been enough to pry free, from the vault deep within where she’d locked them away, some images from that halcyon spring they’d met and fallen in love. Had she truly once been unreserved, adoring him with wholehearted abandon, thrilling to his presence, ravenous for his touch? She winced, the memories still too painful to bear examining.
She took a deep breath and held it until the ache subsided. Sealing her mind against the possibility of allowing any more memories to escape, she turned her mind to the more practical implications of their unexpected meeting.
She supposed she should have expected to run into him eventually, but not this soon—or here. What
