Page 69 of His Illegitimate Duchess

“You’re not the only one who remembers our conversation about vows.

I remember you telling me that all you cared about in life was whether society approved of your actions.

Wasn’t that why you did what you did? You obtained society’s permission to marry me despite how abhorrent the idea was in light of your world-view or how wrong it seemed in the eyes of your peers? ”

“That isn’t entirely true,” he protested, but she didn’t allow him to finish.

“But it is mostly true. I’ve heard every word you said during our dances, and God knows I heard you that night in the library at the Fairchild ball. You didn’t consider me good enough to be your duchess, and you still don’t, despite being married to me!“

She pushed herself from the table, stood up, and started pacing the room.

Talbot caught her by the elbow as she walked by his chair and pleaded, “Don’t exert yourself, please. You’re still weak.”

Elizabeth yanked her arm from his grasp and said, “I’m not an invalid,” which made him smile softly and wistfully.

“I’m glad you’re feeling better,” he said conversationally, “Jane made up the bedroom across the hall from yours for me, so simply knock if you need me.”

“I want to lead separate lives.” Elizabeth tried again.

“I don’t,” he replied readily.

“Many of your set live like that.”

“I’m not like most people,” he said, predictably so.

“I don’t like you!”

“That’s not a prerequisite for marriage.”

“It is for a happy one,” Elizabeth said with both her eyebrows raised. “I have my house, you have yours, why is this an issue?”

“It’s not an issue. It doesn’t matter to me where we live, my house, your house, as long as we’re together.”

“We’re not together ! You’re a devious, arrogant liar, and this whole farce of a marriage has been a guile so you could fulfil your base desires!

” Lizzie raised her voice at the end and ran upstairs, where she threw herself on her bed, dizzy and exhausted from the ill-advised physical and emotional exertion so soon after her illness.

Mary woke her up several hours later, informing her that Doctor and Mrs. Cooper were waiting for her downstairs.

“Why is the Doctor here?” Lizzie groggily asked.

“Your husband sent for him,” Mary said with a sympathetic grimace.

Lizzie narrowed her eyes at her friend. Mary was not as upset with the duke as Lizzie wanted her to be, but she also didn’t try to convince Lizzie to just forgive and forget. She mostly listened and supported her friend without judgment, which was exactly what Lizzie needed.

After Doctor Cooper examined (and reprimanded!) her, Elizabeth invited him and Mrs. Cooper to stay for dinner.

The added company will help put distance between Talbot and me , she thought, as she walked the Doctor to her husband’s study where they would undoubtedly discuss her health in great detail.

“Mrs. Cooper is taking tea with your mother, I believe,” the older man told her when they were at the door of the study.

“I think I shall join them,” she managed a small smile and went toward the grand parlour.

It was empty, however, so she continued to the smaller drawing room. As she approached, she heard hushed voices, so she slowed down and tried to make out what they were saying.

Of course, she knew that this was a very inappropriate thing to do, but she didn’t want to interrupt them if they were having an important conversation. She also wanted to know whether they were talking about her.

Most of all, however, she wondered what her mother, who, she was startled to realise only now, had never had a friend outside of the household, was talking about with Mrs. Cooper, who seemed so different from her.

“I recall hearing a story like that one growing up,” Mrs. Cooper was saying.

“I shall never forget it. Her name was Sarah Shenston, and she was 18 when she was hanged. I was only 12 when I heard about it.”

“I cannot imagine the impact such news had on a sheltered young lady,” Mary said with sympathy in her voice.

“It was confusing, to tell you the truth. I knew she’d done a reprehensible thing – taking a child’s life, any child, let alone your own, I couldn’t even fully comprehend it.

I also had no idea what made her want to get rid of the child, and no one would tell me.

No one ever talked to me about such matters, and I’m afraid I haven’t done a much better job with my own daughter. ”

“Well, you know very well what my life has been like,” Mrs. Cooper said in a meaningful tone, and the two women were quiet for a while.

When had the two of them become so close that they conversed in such an intimate manner? Lizzie wondered. Had I been ill for that long?

“I couldn’t stop thinking about it ever since our last conversation.

Can you even fathom that I’d had no idea I was increasing?

I was worried I was dying! And my nausea wasn’t going away, so I went to my employer’s wife, Lady Isolde, and explained to her what was happening to me, and she got frighteningly mad.

She informed me I was in the family way and accused me of seducing her husband. It was both mortifying and terrifying.”

“Did you ever hire a governess for your daughter?” Mrs. Cooper asked after a while.

“No proper, young woman from a respectable gentry family would ever even enter my home, let alone live and work there, not for all the money the late duke had. However, now that I am thinking about it, I don’t know if I could have handled having one.

I’d always worry about leaving her alone with him… ”

Elizabeth, who was holding her breath as she listened to her mother’s response, slowly crept back to her room after hearing that last sentence and leaned her back against the door after she closed it.

She’d never talked to her mother about the circumstances of her conception (or much else, really), but the resentment she’d carried from her childhood coupled with the memory of her mother’s preening whenever her father had been around had given her young brain enough reason to paint a picture of scandal, intrigue, and forbidden love.

She remembered when cousin Andrew had given in to her pleas and answered some of her questions regarding her legal status as an illegitimate child, which was when he’d told her about the Bastardy Act , under which every unmarried pregnant woman could be forced, on oath, to name her child’s father, who would then have to marry her or (in the case of men like Elizabeth’s father, who were already married), pay for the expense of raising said child.

Upon learning that, Elizabeth had deduced that her father and his sister had most likely been trying to avoid the public scandal associated with such a proceeding, and that was why they had sent her mother to London, where she knew no one, and had kept her secluded in the house the duke had paid for, with a staff he had selected, to waste her life away hidden from the world like the shameful secret that she was.

Elizabeth was certain by now that the shame for a man of her father’s standing wasn’t the infidelity or the illegitimate child, but fathering the child with a governess, who was almost a servant in the eyes of the Ton , a nobody from the countryside.

Only the most sophisticated ladies were worthy of being his paramours , she thought with disgust, and only God knows how many of them he had.

She pictured her mother as the clueless, inexperienced, terrified eighteen-year-old governess that she’d actually been, then the little girl whose only idea of illegitimate children was tied to a cautionary tale of an unknown woman’s execution.

Elizabeth shuddered. She feared that her fever was returning.

She slid under the covers and spent a whole hour trying to make sense of the two conflicting images she had of her mother, who now felt less like only her maman and more like Catherine, a woman, a complete, separate person with an inner life – dreams, hopes, trials, and disappointments of her own.

“Are you awake?” Mary whispered from the doorway, and Lizzie sat up. “How are you feeling?” Mary asked as she smoothed Lizzie’s hair, which must have been ruffled from tossing and turning in bed.

Lizzie took a moment to properly look over her friend for the first time in days, if not weeks. She seemed plumper all over, and her face, although strained by something that looked like fatigue, was radiant. Her complexion had never looked better.

“Being with child suits you, Mary, you look lovely,” she said sincerely, making a mental note to consult Doctor Cooper about her friend’s health.

Mary smiled with delight and started showing off her face, “Look! All cleared up! It’s like magic, Lizzie!”

Lizzie felt her eyes and nose sting. She knew how hard it had been for her friend all her life, and how ugly she had always felt (despite all of the reassurances her loved ones continuously gave her) and how much she’d suffered because of her blemished skin.

And yet Robert has always looked at her like she’s the most beautiful woman in the world.

The tears were now flowing freely as pain and jealousy warred against overwhelming joy and pride in Lizzie’s heart.

“I’m so happy for you, Mary, you deserve all the best things in the world,” she managed to croak out between sobs.

“So do you,” her friend said sternly as they hugged. She then pulled back from the hug, grabbed Lizzie by the shoulders, and stared into her face intently. “You’re going to survive this. I know you. I don’t know how yet, but you will overcome this.”

“I hope you’re right,” Lizzie said sadly.

“Fiend seize it,” Mary cursed under her breath and stood up. “I came up to tell you that Lady Burnham is downstairs, and instead I’m nattering about.”

Lizzie got up as well, “I’ll be down quickly.”

“Do you want me to help you dress?”

“I’d rather you go apologise to her for me. I’ll manage the dress.”

Mary looked at her hair doubtfully but didn’t argue.

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