The Dissolute Duke(25)

She wondered where the accident in the carriage had occurred when they had come this way all those years ago. She had been told the name of the place, of course, but with no little memory left of the time, she could be certain of nothing. Still she felt a familiarity, a knowledge of having passed this way before and she was glad that the journey would be only a few hours in length.

Taylen Ellesmere had ceased to make any effort at conversation at all, his glance drawn by the views outside, his face a blank mask of indifference. If he remembered the accident, he did not show it.

Over the past week she thought she might have been getting closer to him, but this morning they sat opposite each other like strangers hurtling towards a new life together and one it seemed that neither of them wanted. When her fingers closed around the jade talisman of happiness that Emerald had bequeathed her, she frowned.

She wished she might ask him to explain more of his surprising confession from yesterday and that this time instead of anger there could be dialogue. But his expression stopped her from such an action and so she turned to look out at the countryside.

Alderworth was a substantial mansion built of stone and wood, the wings around a large central edifice a matching image of each other. The parkland it sat in was extensive, rows of old trees stretching as far as the eye could see. A lake of some proportion lay at the bottom of a rise, the old stone walls radiating out from the driveway alluding to another, more ancient dwelling.

Lucinda had come last time under the cover of darkness. She knew because Posy had filled in many of the details of the visit that she had forgotten. She hoped that the servants would not remember her and that enough time had passed for the incident to be consigned to history and to never be recalled.

‘When my parents were alive they used to line the servants up around the front driveway every time a guest came to stay in a sort of skewed sense of importance. I have never been so formal.’

‘It looks …’ She could not quite voice what she meant to say.

‘Less than well cared for?’ His eyes took in the lines of the house. ‘Much of the money at the moment is going into increasing the production of the agricultural yields.’

‘Cristo has been doing the same at Graveson.’

‘Then perhaps we have more in common than I thought.’

‘So there are no more parties here?’

He turned towards her and Lucinda felt breathless. ‘The shallow follies of youth have much to be accountable for. I spend money on far more important things now.’

Like the production of an heir?

She almost said it. Almost blurted it out, so that it was there in the open instead of seething underneath each and every word, a contract penned in pragmatism and shame. Instead she smiled, in a tight and vapid way, the movement taking the humour from his eyes.

‘You will have your own set of rooms and a maid to see to your needs. The house has suffered across the years from inattention but I am aiming to see it restored.’

‘You love Alderworth, then?’

‘History is to be valued,’ he answered in a measured way. ‘If too much of it is left to waste, there will be no lessons to be learnt by those who come after us.’

The topic of the heir again, winding into conversation and strangling any hope of accord. Best to remember that she was not here as the cherished new wife of a Duke who would love her, but as the sole hope of ensuring that a questionable family name might march into yet another decade of unbroken lineage.

When the carriage stopped and Lucinda was helped out by a servant who welcomed her, she was achingly aware that Taylen Ellesmere neither took her arm nor gave her the courtesy of any introduction as they walked inside.

Not quite the wife he wanted, but at least the country air made her feel stronger and more in control.

Everything here was in need of attention: the flaky stone, the gardens, the few servants in their old and faded uniforms. Ellesmere had not lied when he had proclaimed the finances of Alderworth had suffered.

But beneath the lack of care, peeling paint and rotten woodwork was a beauty that lay in the very bones of the place, the house’s roofline raised to the sky in a proud exclamation of old wealth.

The quality of the timber was undeniable, the ornate cornices alluding to a time where such frippery was the vogue. She vaguely remembered parts of it from the last time she had been here and did her best to recollect more, but to no avail. Darkly fashioned paintings of ancestors stared down from the walls in every room, sombre harsh people whose eyes seemed to follow this new generation with a disapproval that was tangible.

Two large portraits of his parents had pride of place above the fire surround in the main salon and Lucinda saw the small holes a dart might fashion in both of them before she had looked away, not wishing to pry further. A green chaise-longue with carved mahogany feet took up the space in a bay window, the sun lightening the fabric in all the places that it had touched, leaving the seams dark.

Taylen Ellesmere had disappeared almost immediately, leaving her in the hands of a middle-aged housekeeper, Mrs Berwick, who had hurried her up to the first floor and finally to her bedchamber, a room nearly at the very end of a long corridor. She had pointed out a pile of bath cloths and two decanters with brandy and whisky, equally filled on a table by the bedside.

An evening tipple? The single glass provided looked spotlessly clean.

‘There is a light meal set out for your lunch in the small dining room, your Grace, and dinner will be served at six. When you require a maid to help you dress you only have to ring the bell and she will come.’

The bed was tiny, a child’s cot that gladdened her heart, for there was no possible way her large husband could share it with her.

After the accompanying luggage was lifted into place she thanked the two men with a smile. Around the edge of the room stood many tallboys and wardrobes, the array of old furniture giving the impression that many of the unwanted accoutrements of the Ellesmere lineage had been dumped here, a last resting place before being disposed of or burnt.

When the woman didn’t leave, Lucinda knew there was something important that she wished to impart to her. ‘The master has brought new life to Alderworth, your Grace. The house may not be as magnificent as it once was, but the farm cottages have been refurbished and the people here appreciate his endeavours. He is a good man despite all that might be said of him in London.’

The woman hurried out after she had delivered her words, a swish of skirt and then gone.

A good master who was appreciated here? Lucinda turned the words on her tongue, liking the endorsement.

Nerves had taken away hunger, so she walked to the window to gaze down upon the gardens, the formal lines of hedges lost in the march of time. No one had tended to anything, it seemed, the wild and rambling roses climbing in a tangled heap of runners with the occasional misshaped flower blooming amidst green. The hand of good fortune had disappeared a long time ago from the estate of Alderworth, leaving disorder in its place. Her mind dwelled on the fact that her husband was a Duke who would make sure others were well housed before he turned his attention to his own living quarters and she smiled.

A movement caught her eye in the very far corner of her view. Ellesmere was hurrying towards the stable courtyard a little way off, his demeanour brisk. He had dispensed with his jacket and his hat and the white linen of his shirt stretched across the muscles of his back, his dark hair trailing across it. Another came out to meet him, a small round man waving his arms madly as if in some important explanation. The Duke in contrast stood perfectly still, a quiet centre in the midst of all that moved about him.

Taylen Ellesmere did that often, she thought, as though testing the air, like a deer might in the high hills of some undisturbed place just to make certain of safety.

Then a horse came forth, a stallion of a height Lucinda had not seen before, the lines of Arabia in its form. She saw her husband run his hands across its flanks, quiet and gentle, before he mounted, easily managing the skittish response of the animal. The Duke of Alderworth looked as though he had been born there, the flow of man and beast joined in a languid and perfect balance as he turned towards the hills beyond the gardens and disappeared.

Then there was nothing, only trees and leaves and the scudding clouds across the afternoon sky wending towards a dark forest in the distance.

She wished she could open the doors that led out on to a balcony to see if she might catch more of a glimpse of them, but they were nailed shut—another oddity in a house full of neglect. Lifting her hand, she wrote her initials on the inside of the window. With a flourish she surrounded her name with the shape of a heart and then rubbed the whole thing out, her fingers made dirty by the dust on the glass.

Falder, her family home, had the lines of love running through it, generations of Wellinghams enjoying the promise. Each day a legion of staff cleaned it from top to toe until it was polished and gleaming, the small decay of everyday living repaired before any damage had the chance to spread further.

The sun broke out quite suddenly, enhancing the green in the fields behind. Here in the rolling hills of Bedfordshire and far from the expectations of London there was a certain peace and freedom she had not felt in years. It lay, she supposed, in the march of time drawn across a fading splendour. Once Alderworth would have boasted grandeur and sumptuousness, but there was a mellow truth about its present-day meagreness that was beguiling.