‘Lucinda is the sweetest creature I have ever met,’ Justin said and the look he gave Andrew was one of despair. ‘I cannot believe she would hurt me like this—yet perhaps you are right, maybe there is more to this story than meets the eye.’
‘If you will permit me, I shall find an agent for you. I think we should give him Lucinda’s maiden name. She will hardly be using yours, Avonlea.’
‘Lucinda Seymour,’ Justin said. ‘She was such a quiet girl, but her smile attracted me from the beginning. When her aunt brought her to Harrogate I knew she was the one I wanted as my wife from the first moment I saw her—but she resisted me. She was polite but reserved, keeping me at a distance. It was not until she came to stay with Jane and we met again at your home that she let down her guard enough for me to have hope.’ His eyes reflected his anguish. ‘She told me she was very fond of me just before we parted. Why did she say that and then leave me? What could she hope to gain?’
‘My guess is that there is some mystery here,’ Andrew said. ‘I cannot solve it, but I am certain that when Lucinda is ready she will return and explain everything.’
‘If she cared for me even a little, she could have told me what distressed her so very much.’
‘Forgive me, Avonlea—are you in love with her?’
‘Naturally, I care for her…but I am not certain I know what love is in the sense you mean—there was precious little of it in our house when I was a lad.’
‘Then it was not a love match.’ Andrew looked thoughtful. ‘Perhaps she felt that you might wish her gone if you knew the truth about her.’
Avonlea stiffened. ‘What do you mean, pray?’
‘How well did you know her? Was there some secret in her past, perhaps?’
‘Nothing that she could not tell me. I would have listened and helped her if I could.’ Justin frowned. ‘Do you know of something?’
Andrew hesitated, then, ‘I remember she left school quite suddenly and Jane did not hear from her for some years. She was very distressed about it at the time.’
‘You do not know why she left?’
‘I have no idea. Of course, it may have no bearing on this matter.’
‘I do not see how it could.’
‘Then perhaps she will return when she is ready.’
‘I pray that you are right. I fear for her. I think she has very little money with her. I gave her some guineas for use while we travelled, but it was hardly enough to live on for the past two months, though she may have some jewels and a little money of her own, I suppose.’
Justin’s mind was torn between distress, anger and bewilderment. He had searched every day for the past few weeks, but there was no sign of his duchess. In his heart he had begun to think that she might be dead—why else had she not told him where she was or why she had gone? Had someone abducted her—or, worse, murdered her to be revenged on him? He could not think of anyone who hated him that much—but why else would she have been taken?
‘So, you would take her back—no matter the reasons for her disappearance?’
‘She is my wife,’ Justin said and looked at his friend, as if surprised at the question. He was a gentleman and a man of honour—what else could he do but take his wife back if she came to him in trouble? ‘I’ve been in hell these past weeks. Besides, it is my duty to care for her. If she is in distress, I shall help her, no matter what. I should thank God for her safe return and pray that I could make her happy.’
‘Then I shall go to London in the morning and employ an agent for you,’ Andrew said. He reached out to lay a hand on Justin’s shoulder. ‘Do not give up hope yet, my friend.’
Lucinda looked around the small kitchen and sighed. She had scrubbed the floor that morning before it was light; it was much cleaner than it had been when she first arrived, but nothing would make this hovel the kind of home in which she could bear to live. However, it was all she could afford, because she had spent the guineas her husband had given her as pin money.
If she had not run away, she might have been at Avonlea now. Lucinda felt her throat catch and a tear slid down her cheek. She brushed it away impatiently. Her husband must be so angry with her. When she’d discovered the blackmail letter lying on her dressing chest on her return from the church, she had fled in panic, taking only a few things rolled into a paisley shawl. How could anyone know her secret? It was more than five years since that terrible time when the shame had come upon her.
Her first thought had been for her husband’s good name. Avonlea was such a well-respected man and the realisation that she had brought a stain of dishonour to that proud family had almost overpowered her. She knew that he had married her because he’d believed her a girl of blameless past, modest, her reputation beyond reproach.
How she had deceived him! What a wicked thing she had done by marrying him without confessing the truth. She ought to have been resolute in refusing his obliging offer; at first, she had managed to keep a distance between them, but, as she became more attracted to him, she had found it too hard to resist the prompting of her heart. In the end she had fallen so desperately in love that she could no longer refuse Avonlea—yet she sensed he did not love her as she loved him. He spoke easily of love, but she thought it merely liking: the kind of feeling that might grow to warm affection with the years and the coming of children—but the spiteful letter would destroy his respect for her. He would hate her, wish to be free of the burden she must become to him when he learned the terrible truth.
Lucinda closed her eyes and sat down in the rocking chair by the kitchen fire, trying to control her thoughts. She had tried to block out the memory of that evil night when as a young girl she had been raped in her own room by a man she had thought her father’s trusted friend.
Warned that unless she kept silent her father would be ruined, Lucinda had said nothing until her condition had become noticed. It was a terrible misfortune that she had fallen with child so easily. When she tried to explain that she had been raped, but would not give the name of her seducer, her father had refused to listen. He had banished her to live with her strict grandmother in seclusion; when her child was stillborn, she had remained in seclusion until her father died. It was her punishment and he would not allow her to return home. Her mother had relented after her father’s death and allowed her to visit Harrogate with an aunt. It was there she had met Avonlea and begun to fall in love. She had kept her distance, because her shame was so terrible that no decent man would wish to marry her if he guessed that she had borne an illegitimate child.
‘Your father told you that you had forfeited the right to happiness,’ Mrs Seymour had told her when she mentioned the duke’s attentions. ‘I do not wish to deny you all the pleasures of life, Lucinda, but you must surely see that you can never marry?’
Because of her late father’s strictures and her mother’s doubts, Lucinda had kept Avonlea at a distance in Harrogate, but then, when they met again at the home of her great friend Jane Lanchester, she had taken the bold step of confiding in Jane, who had advised her that she must follow her heart and marry him.
Lucinda sighed as she looked around the cottage. It had hurt her so very much these past weeks to stay away from Avonlea, but the blackmail letter had told her something she had needed to confirm. Now she knew the truth and she was going to do something so daring that it frightened her.
She had fled from Avonlea in panic, not knowing what she meant to do, conscious only that she was not ready to confess the truth to a husband who had married her believing her beyond reproach.
In a state of absolute shock, she’d hardly known what to believe. Not only had the blackmailer known all of her intimate secrets, but also surprised her with the revelation that her infant hadn’t perished at birth, but was in fact even this day alive.
The blackmailer had threatened to reveal her shameful secret