“You’re a tart and always will be. You’ll never be the real duchess ’round here. She were a lady.” The last was from an older woman who stood in her front garden opposite the station, her hands wrapped around a cane. A few other women stood near her, nodding agreement.
“Ignore them,” Steven said under his breath as he handed Rose up into a dogcart, the only vehicle available.
“She’s been saying such things since the first time I arrived.” Rose gave the elderly woman a gracious nod, which the woman and her cronies returned with sullen glares. “Her husband treats her poorly—Charles always had trouble with him. I’ll speak to His Grace, Mrs. Harrison,” she called to the woman who ran the shop. “As soon as he lifts himself from the floor after the shock of seeing me back here. Drive on, Mr. Gains.”
A dozen or so children followed after the cart, waving and yelling, clearly curious about Steven. They gave up as the road bent around a corner from the village and drifted away.
“Thank you for coming with me,” Rose said, hanging on to the seat in the rocking cart as they rolled between hedgerows. “I didn’t realize how shaky I’d be coming out of the station. I had no idea how they’d receive me.”
“I wasn’t about to make you face dear Albert alone,” Steven said.
He screwed up his eyes against the sunlight on snow, his head pounding. The thought of himself lying randy and uncomfortable in his hotel bed, knowing Rose lay on the other side of the wall, had sent him out last night. He’d met up with friends he hadn’t seen in donkey’s years, drank too much, dragged himself back at four, and then was up a few hours later to catch a train.
Steven had successfully avoided lying in bed wishing Rose was in it with him, but now his head was punishing him, and all this light hurt. It hadn’t been as bad in the train, but the dogcart was open to the world, nothing to mute the white glare.
“I know,” Rose said, her contralto like a balm on his raw nerves. “But this isn’t your fight.”
“It is now.” Steven put his hand over his eyes. Helped, and also shut out his need to see her smile. “My impetuousness put me in this right up to my neck.”
“Still, I am grateful.”
Don’t make me out to be a hero. Steven’s words inside his head were impatient, almost savage. I’m a frivolous, drunken rake, not a benevolent philanthropist. I’m helping you to make up for the fact that I couldn’t help someone else.
The dogcart jerked, making Steven’s headache stab at him. He had to stop seeking out his friends. Perhaps stop even having friends.
The cart rumbled over a bridge, a half-frozen stream trickling in the bed below it, and the house came into view. Steven sat up and sucked in a breath.
The place was bloody enormous. Built in the early Georgian style, the house was perched on a wide green hill. It was composed of three huge, boxlike wings, each crowned with a giant triangular pediment. Flat columns marched across the house between tall, many-paned windows and more columns flanked a massive front double door. The structure had been built of golden stone, and when sunshine broke through the clouds, the house took on a bright hue, painfully so.
“Good God,” Steven said. He’d spent the past few Christmases at Kilmorgan Castle in Scotland, a pile even larger than this, but it was different somehow. Kilmorgan was always overflowing with families, children, dogs, and horses when Steven visited, and never seemed too large.
This monstrosity had an empty look, as though knowing its master had gone, never to return. Not literally true, because a Duke of Southdown was still master here—he was just a different man. The house seemed to feel its emptiness, however, and mourn.
“I loved this house the moment I saw it,” Rose said with a sigh. “My stay in it as a wife was brief, but I consoled myself with the fact that I’d least continue living on the estate. But that wasn’t meant to be.”
She looked so sorrowful that Steven wanted to move to her seat and gather her into his arms. He held on to the sides of the cart to keep from doing it.
The drive took them past the dower house, a much smaller version of the main mansion. It too had been built of golden stone, and its three-story, one-winged splendor looked a bit more cheerful than its parent.
As they rolled by, Steven heard barking—a lot of barking. A man came out the front door of the dower house, followed by three hounds, and stopped to stare at the cart.
“That’s Mr. Hartley, the steward,” Rose said. She lifted her hand in greeting, and Mr. Hartley’s mouth popped open. The dogs stared as well, but wagged tails. “Albert has turned the dower house into a kennel for his dogs. Albert loves to hunt, you see.”
The steward belatedly bowed, but his eyes gaze remained fixed as the dogcart rattled by.
The driver took them around the last curve of the drive and pulled to a halt in front of the main door. Steven stepped off the back of the cart, slipped the man a few coins, and then helped Rose descend.
Steven shouldn’t suddenly feel better with her warm weight against him, shouldn’t want to stop in the act of helping her down to press a kiss to her lips. Then again, that was what an engaged couple in love might do. Wouldn’t be odd at all.
Steven knew that his kiss wouldn’t stop with a light touch. Not by a long way. He had to content himself with a caress to her waist, or else he’d lose control. Regretful, but there it was.
The front door was locked, but Rose had a key. Even as she turned it, the door was wrenched open from the inside, making her lose hold of the key. “Ma’am!” the footman who stood on the threshold exclaimed. “I mean, Your Grace.”
The footman was a tall lad, dapper and good-looking in his kit, as the footmen of great houses were meant to be. Many were hired more for their looks than their wit, Steven had learned by experience. His brother Patrick had tended to hire impoverished but well-schooled young men to help in his household—they’d been terrible footmen but had regularly discussed mathematics and classical thought with the brothers, which had been the point.
This footman seemed to be of the decorative but dim variety. He stared at Rose as hard as the steward had done, but with less guilt in his eyes.
“Tell the duke Her Grace has arrived,” Steven said to him in his commanding-officer voice.
The young man dragged his gaze from Rose, blinked at Steven, then snapped to attention. “His Grace is not at home. Sir.”
“It’s all right, John,” Rose said. “I’ve only come for a few things I left behind.”