He felt a frown gathering. ‘If I remain in Harrogate, it will be for Fred’s sake and yours. But I did want to ask you about Mrs Furnell.’ He saw the sudden lift of her brows and said quickly, ‘Please—ask me no questions, Georgie, not yet. Just tell me what you know of her.’
‘I cannot tell you a great deal. She was here when Frederick and I arrived and has been in Harrogate a number of years, I believe. We became acquainted almost immediately, because of the children.’ She smiled. ‘I like her very much, she has been so kind to Fred and me. Oh, I know they call her the golden widow, which sounds so very frivolous, but she is very well respected. Truly, she is admired by everyone and gives generously to good causes.’
‘A paragon, then.’
‘You sound disapproving, but I assure you I have never seen any evidence of artifice or ill breeding in her. Since we have been in Harrogate, Ellen has been a very good friend and heaven knows I have needed one.’
‘Yes of course, I beg your pardon,’ said Max. ‘Do you know anything of her husband?’
‘Ellen was already a widow when she first came here, I believe, and her little boy was born here. He is a little older than my Charlotte and will be four in the autumn.’
Her little boy. His son. Something unfamiliar slammed into Max’s gut, surprising him with its violence.
‘Your Grace? Is anything wrong?’
Max saw the innocent enquiry in Georgie’s eyes and knew it was time to tell the truth.
* * *
Ellen waved away the freshly baked muffins that Snow was offering to her. She had no appetite for breakfast, having spent a sleepless night trying to find a solution to the horrors that pressed upon her. Max’s arrival had turned her world upside down. She would set her lawyers to look again at the army records, but in her heart she had no doubt that what Max had told her was true and he was as unhappy as she about the situation.
She felt physically sick with regret. If she had trusted him, they might now be living very happily together, but it was too late for that. She had killed his love, she must face up to the fact and to the future. It did not look very bright, but many couples entered into loveless marriages. She would survive. And at least he was not going to take Jamie away from her—that must be her consolation.
Ellen glanced at the clock. He would be here soon and then she would learn her fate. Most likely she and Jamie would be whisked away to one of his estates, where they would live in seclusion while the shocking news was announced. It would cause uproar, she had no doubt. At some point she must be presented at Court as the new Duchess of Rossenhall and she would have to face the sly remarks and tittle-tattle, but she knew enough of her world to be sure that her story would eventually be eclipsed by another scandal and she would be able to get on with her life.
But what life? Max had been her first, her only love. There had been so many suitors, most of them concerned only with her fortune, but none had ever touched her heart. She had grown up hedged about by warnings that gentlemen would court her for her fortune and she had never found it difficult to keep them at bay. She had developed a protective shell, always laughing, always smiling, until she had fallen in love with Major Max Colnebrooke and let down her defences. She had thought he loved her for herself. She had not told him of her immense fortune, and, although he had said he was the younger brother of a duke, their respective backgrounds had seemed unimportant, a world away from the reality of love under a desert sky. Ellen loved Max from the first moment she saw him and married him without a second thought. If the marriage was legal then everything she owned now belonged to her husband. Even her son. She must make her peace with the Duke, for Jamie’s sake.
She heard the thud of the knocker and carefully put down her half-empty coffee cup. It was time. Snow had instructions to show the Duke into the drawing room and she went there to join him, pausing momentarily outside the door to smooth down her gown and take a deep, steadying breath.
Max was standing before the fireplace when she went in. He was staring moodily at the carpet and when he looked up his expression did not change. Formality and good manners dictated how she should behave. She sank into a deep curtsy.
‘Your Grace.’ Silence. ‘Will you not sit down?’ Ellen perched on the edge of a chair and folded her hands in her lap, trying to look composed. ‘I must tell you how much I...regret...the misunderstandings that have occurred between us.’
‘Ha! Regret, you call it? Treachery, more like.’
She ignored this. ‘I wish to be plain with you, Your Grace. To tell you the truth.’
‘No doubt that will be a novelty for you, madam.’
Ellen winced at his sarcasm.
‘I never lied to you and I will not do so now,’ she said quietly. ‘There never was a Mr Furnell. I never married. When I discovered I was carrying your—our—child, I decided to pose as a widow.’
He looked at her hands. ‘Where is the ring I bought you—did you discard it, sell it, perhaps?’
‘No. It is in my jewel box.’
Ellen thought of the heavy gold ring he had given her, engraved with Arabic characters she could not read but that he had told her said ‘I love you’. Crossing the Mediterranean in the French frigate she had more than once wanted to throw the ring into the sea, but she had kept it, clinging on to the hope that when she was back in England she might be able to prove he had not lied to her, that he really was the man he purported to be. By the time her enquiries were concluded, and her lawyers had told her that Major Max Colnebrooke could not have been in Egypt that winter, she knew she was pregnant and she had put the ring carefully away. It was the only token she had of the child’s father. Now she glanced at the plain gold band on her finger.
‘I thought this was more in keeping for a respectable English widow.’
‘A very rich English widow.’ Her eyes flew to his face and he continued. ‘You say you never lied to me, but you will admit you omitted to tell me the extent of your fortune. I only discovered it once I set about looking for you in England.’
She could not resist saying bitterly, ‘Yet for all my wealth I am not considered a suitable consort for a duke.’
‘A man wants a wife he can trust!’
She winced at that and said quietly, ‘I hurt you very badly, did I not, Max?’
‘More than you can ever know, madam.’
She bowed her head and for a moment there was only silence.
‘And your family,’ he said at last, ‘are they complicit in this subterfuge?’
‘My step-mama knows of it, but she is sworn to secrecy.’
‘She is married to an Arrandale, so no doubt she is accustomed to scandal and intrigue.’
Ellen’s head went up at that. ‘You forget, sir, that until yesterday I thought you had tricked me, that my child would be born out of wedlock. Lady Phyllida understood immediately that I would wish to make a new life for myself. As for my father’s family, when they learned of my disgrace, they immediately cut all connection with me.’
‘Yes, I sent my people to the Tathams in an attempt to find you and they were met with nothing but silence. Of course, they did not know the Duke of Rossenhall was behind the enquiry.’
‘It would have made no difference. I have never told them where to find me.’
‘And is that why you chose Harrogate, to be as far away as possible from everyone you know?’