that makes him the winner. I refuse to be used and ruined because of one foolish action when I was little more than a child, Ash. He was a cold-hearted rogue who took advantage of me, then left.’ She got out of bed at last to face his stony gaze bravely as she reached for her hastily discarded clothes and began to scramble into them.
‘So you say. That’s your version of what happened and how can I ever trust that again? You have had a lover and you didn’t tell me. This so-called rogue of yours didn’t sit by my side all the way to Scotland so we could marry in haste and repent at leisure. You were ready, willing and eager to elope with a lovesick fool. Who else was going to marry a soiled dove, Rosalind? I really thought you were an angel in human form and you look like one, on the outside.’ He must have seen her flinch at that tired description of her golden looks and his stare turned cynical. ‘You gave an exquisitely polished performance. Your unspoilt grace and sweetly hesitant manner were masterly. I suppose you already have a lover waiting to keep you in style.’
‘No. I am still the person you married. The same woman you swore you loved to the edge of madness last night.’
‘You are not a woman, but a silly little girl dressed up in fine clothes. You are a liar, though. I cannot live with one of those for the rest of my life.’
‘That means you cannot endure yourself, since you swore you loved me only a few minutes ago and it must have been a bare-faced lie.’ Even to her own ears Rosalind sounded childish. It seemed to confirm everything Ash said about her, but it was either that or sob and plead for forgiveness—miserable defiance it was then.
‘I loved someone who does not exist,’ he said stiffly, as if his pride was offended. ‘How can I love a woman who is a liar? Three whole months have passed since we met and you have never managed to find a single moment to tell me you are not what you seem? Oh, no, you made sure we were well and truly married before you told me the truth, when it was too late to escape your clutches.’
‘If that was my plan, I did not need to tell you at all. You can trust me, Ash, I swear you can. It wasn’t my fault.’ She heard her own defensive and, yes, childish response to his fury and despaired, but it was defend herself against his bitter fury or weep and she refused to when he was glaring at her as if she was his enemy.
‘It wasn’t my fault,’ he parodied cruelly. ‘That’s what she said,’ he burst out as if it hurt him to talk about the reason he felt so betrayed by her failure to tell him of her sad misadventure until now.
Wild jealousy rocked Rosalind as well as an echo of his pain. Despite sobs tearing at her throat she was too proud to let out, and a sense of injustice burning inside her, she still loved him. His hurt felt like hers. Maybe he had never cared about her as he swore he did from the moment he first laid eyes on her. Maybe he was the true liar out of the two of them, but this accusation belonged to a guiltier woman. ‘Who said it?’ she said bleakly. ‘Who was she?’
‘My mother.’
‘Your mother? I thought you must have been betrayed by a lover. I almost felt sorry for you, but, no, you turned on me because of your mother. I never expected to trail in her footsteps,’ she said, fury so strong it buoyed her up even as her world fell apart. ‘What did she do, drop you on your head as a baby?’
‘She told us she was going to be at a house party in the next county, although she was really flitting off to join her latest lover.’
‘And that’s all?’
‘Of course not, but she made it impossible to find her when our little sister was taken ill. Our mother came back a week after the funeral in her mourning weeds, telling anyone it wasn’t her fault.’
Ash’s voice sounded as if he was reliving his agony and even after all the terrible things he had said to her Rosalind pitied him. ‘Maybe it wasn’t,’ she said. ‘She might not have been able to save your sister even if she had sat at her bedside the whole time.’
‘Maybe not, but my brother Jas took it so hard you would think he had killed her himself. I hated my mother for lying over and over again and believing it. I did not go to her funeral; I did not owe her enough love.’
And there were the bleak, unsaid words between them: I would not bother to turn up for yours either.
‘I am truly sorry you lost your sister so tragically, Ash, but I promise I am not lying when I say I love you,’ Rosalind said, but felt the faith she had been clinging to until now began to fail as the dogged reason he was so angry ate it up and spat out the bones.
‘Not enough to tell me the truth,’ he said bleakly and left the room as if she was a stranger he did not care for.
1818
Ash stopped pacing his austerely opulent office in the sticky heat to glare between the gaps in the window screens at the lush landscape outside. It was monsoon season and most of his neighbours had departed for the hills with their families, but he had no family. He stayed to watch the relentless miracle of the rains enrich this exotic, fascinating land and to seize the odd business opportunity they were too far away to grasp.
He swung away from the view and cursed the steamy heat for sapping his energy and dulling his mind, then strode to his desk and picked up the letter to reread impossible news. Stupid to hope his eyes had deceived him and he must have imagined those dire words in neat script on hot pressed paper.
The outside of the letter was almost unmarked by its long journey, as if to prove he was now a very important man. Even his letters must be taken great care of aboard a busy merchantman. Not for this cursed thing a sack in the hold with the cargo.
He blamed the form of address the prestigious firm of London lawyers used to direct it: To A. Hartfield of Calcutta; with the words, Sixth Duke of Cherwell, Marquess of Asham and Earl Morfield added in smaller letters, as if to warn of terrible news.
It is with great regret we must carry out our sad duty as the Fifth Duke of Cherwell’s legal representatives and executors and inform you of His Grace’s untimely death.
The day before yesterday your cousin, Charles Edward Frederick Louis Hartfield, died in a terrible carriage accident on his way to spend the summer months at Brighton...
Ash could not make himself read any more, now or when the first shock of those words bit like steel. The shining young hope of the Hartfield family, his scapegrace cousin Charlie was gone. The lad could only have been four and twenty. Ash pictured the gangling seventeen-year-old youth he had last seen seven years ago and sadness beyond tears caught him by the throat. He wanted to yell defiance at the gods. Was his whole race cursed to die before their allotted span on earth? No, reason stepped in and argued—his grandfather, the Fourth Duke, had lived to be an upright, if irascible, eighty-eight and even Ash’s father, Lord John Hartfield, managed to survive into his forties before he met his end drunk on the hunting field. Yet three years after Waterloo, Ash’s mind flinched at the dreadful truth that his brother Jasper was dead, left among the piles of dead on that bloodiest of battlefields until his batman found him. All over Europe there were fathers and brothers, sons, husbands and lovers dead so many decades before their time because of the war. He was not the only one to feel this aching loss day after weary day, but he never thought Charlie would
