‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ he said stiffly, compelled to deny her suspicion. ‘I told you, that childish infatuation was crushed by events years ago.’
‘I hope so! But even if, praise God, you are over her, I shall never forgive her for the agony and embarrassment she caused you. Nor can I forgive the fact that her betrayal turned a carefree, optimistic, joyous young man almost overnight into a bitter, angry recluse who shunned Society and did his utmost to get himself killed in battle.’
To his considerable alarm, Jane, normally the most stoic of sisters, burst into tears. Unsure what to do to stem the tide, he pulled her into a hug. ‘There, there, now, that’s a bit excessive, don’t you think? Are you increasing again? It’s not like you to be so missish.’
His bracing words had the desired effect, and she pushed him away. ‘Missish! How dare you accuse me of that! And, no, I’m not increasing. It’s beastly of you to take me to task when I’m simply concerned about you.’
‘You know I appreciate that concern,’ he said quietly.
She took an agitated turn about the room before coming back to face him. ‘Have you any idea what it was like for your friends, your family—witnessing the depths of your pain, fearing for your sanity, your very life? Hearing the stories that came back to us from the Peninsula? You volunteering to lead every “forlorn hope”, always throwing yourself into the worst of the battle, defying death, uncaring of whether or not you survived.’
‘But I did survive,’ he replied. Far too many worthy men had not, though, while he came through every battle untouched. ‘Angry Alastair’s luck’ the troops had called it. He’d discouraged the talk and turned away the eager volunteers for his command who listened to it since that famous luck never seemed to extend to the men around him.
‘Please tell me you will not see her,’ Jane said, pulling him back to the present.
‘I certainly won’t seek her out. But with Robbie having befriended her son, I imagine I won’t be able to avoid her entirely.’
‘I must think of some way to discourage the friendship. I really don’t want my son to take up with any offspring of hers. He’s probably as poisonous as she is!’
‘Come now, Jane, listen to yourself! You can’t seriously hold the poor child accountable for the failings of his mother,’ Alastair protested, uncomfortably aware that, initially, he’d done just that.
‘He’s the spawn 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