Page 53 of Lady Emily’s Matchmaking Mishap (Merry Spinsters, Charming Rogues #5)

Chapter Twenty-Seven

It was strange to arrive at Ashbourne House not as a guest, but as a duchess. She greeted the servants with an embarrassed smile, and Mrs Smith stepped forward and said, “On behalf of all the staff, may I congratulate you on your marriage? We could not be happier with our new duchess.” There was a gleam of warmth in her eyes, and Emily knew she was speaking the truth.

Mrs Smith had prepared a warm, fire-lit suite in the smaller drawing room for their comfort.

Emily was warming her hands by the fire when the secretary entered, seeking the Duke’s attention on a matter of some urgency.

“You’ll have to excuse me, Emily,” Wolferton said with a frown. “Just for an hour, yes? Then I am all yours. Then we will talk.”

Emily waved him away. “Do what you have to do, of course, and forget about me.”

She decided to go for a walk instead, for the sun had not yet set and she longed for some fresh air.

Emily’s feet took her straight to her tree. Much to her surprise, she found the pile of stones stacked in front of it—and at the very top a single black stone, which had always been a sign that a message from Fenn was waiting for her.

She reached into the hole and, yes! Between her fingers was a folded piece of paper.

A letter from Fenn.

The first in ten years.

My Little Wren,

My Emily,

My Love,

Ten years have passed, and after all this time, I find myself writing to you once more…

Emily’s breath shook as she read the letter. He must have written and deposited the letter the day after he made the fake proposal in the library.

He’d never intended it to be fake.

He’d never ceased to love her.

Her mind in a whirl, she turned and ran back to the house.

They had eaten and talked politely about nothing of substance.

Their conversation was stilted, and Emily racked her brain for a way to turn it to the subject of the letters.

Her nerves were on edge and she pushed the glass of syllabub away. It was too sweet, and her stomach clenched. “No more of this. Let us finally talk.”

He nodded and rose. “Come with me.”

He took her hand and led her into his study. He went to the desk and took out a mahogany box from the drawer. With his other hand, he took Emily’s and pulled her towards the sofa. “Sit.”

As she sat down, he opened the box and poured the contents into her lap.

Emily gasped.

Letters.

Hundreds of them.

She recognised the childish, scrawled handwriting at once.

They were letters to Fenn—written by her.

Dear Forest Fay, will you grant me one wish...

“This is the first one,” she murmured, picking up the letter. “I wrote it right after Mama died. And you wrote back that you couldn’t bring back the dead.” She rubbed her forehead. “I must admit, I was rather disappointed. What kind of forest fay is incapable of bringing back the dead?”

He chuckled. “Your expectations of what a forest fay should be able to do were a bit too high.” He picked up the letter. “Yet I knew how you felt, for my own mother had died that summer. So I knew exactly what you’d been through.”

Emily pulled out the letter from the tree, which she had tucked up in her sleeve.

She met his gaze. “I want you to explain this.”

“So you found it.” He smiled slightly. “I wondered how long it would take you. After we left for London, I feared you never would.”

“Tell me,” Emily insisted. “Tell me everything.”

He stared thoughtfully into the fire. “Where shall I begin? From when we met at the inn?”

“Before that,” she insisted. “I want to hear your whole story.” She thought for a moment. “From the moment you were born.”

He nodded. “The very beginning. Very well, then. My parents’ union was arranged, like so many in our class. It was ill-fated. My father was cold and distant, and my mother was a romantic. They had nothing in common. I have no idea how they managed to create me, but well, by some miracle, here I am.” He shrugged. “No wonder I had no siblings, no matter how much I wished for some. After my birth, my mother declared that her duty was done, and my parents agreed to live in separate homes.I lived with Mama at Hollyton Hall, whereas my father lived at Wolferstone Abbey.

“We will have to visit both estates later, by the way, but of all the houses, Wolferstone Abbey is the one I like the least.” He pulled a face. “I grew up without ever seeing my father. I never missed him. I didn’t even know what he looked like. I had my mother and my three aunts, and that was all the family I needed. After Mama died, I became restless, especially during the summer. I visited Ashbourne House. These were rare visits, however; with reduced staff. No one knew when I was there and everyone assumed the house was deserted. I preferred it that way. I preferred the quiet, simple life away from society. That was possible at Ashbourne House, which everyone believed to be uninhabited.”

Emily nodded. The secret had been well kept, for no one in the village had even suspected that the duke’s son had visited over the summer.

“I was terribly lonely. I took walks in the woods, and on one of those outings I saw a little fairy flit through the forest, barefoot and with twigs and leaves in her hair. I thought I was dreaming. I followed you to that clearing where you put something in the hole in the tree. You walked away, and I was too curious not to check what you had left there.” He pointed to the letter she was still holding. “And so it began. We corresponded almost every day that first summer. Then I had to return to Eton. I had to have Jack, one of the stable boys I trusted, pick up and deliver my letters.”

She took a sharp breath. “So that’s why it took so long to reply outside the summer months.”

He nodded. “The following summer I returned, and I was able to leave the letters there myself.”

“I wanted so much to meet you, but you never did.”

“It was partly impossible because I was not there, you see, and partly because I preferred to keep the mystery of who I really was. If you had discovered that I was the duke’s son, how would you have reacted?”

“I would have become self-conscious and awkward with false reverence.”

He nodded. “That is what I thought. So I preferred to keep our friendship on paper at first. I preferred to keep my identity a secret. But Emily, my Little Wren, you have no idea how much those letters meant to me then. How much joy they brought into the life of the lonely boy I was, especially after Mama died.”

She hadn’t known, of course. “And then? What happened?” she whispered.

“And then... ” He took her hand, his thumb tracing gentle circles over her fingers. “You know what happened. We grew up, and this friendship on paper wasn’t enough anymore. You’d stolen my heart, my mind, my soul. You were all I thought about, day and night. I started dreaming of a way we could be together.”

Emily blinked, her lips parting as he continued.

“The only solution I could think of,” he said quietly, “was for us to elope.”

Emily tilted her head. “You knew I was a schoolmaster’s daughter—far beneath you socially—yet you wanted to marry me?”

“I didn’t care about duty or expectations. I had it all planned. We’d get married in Scotland and live at Ashbourne House. My father wouldn’t even notice. By the time he realised what had happened, we’d be long married. That was my plan.”

Emily’s voice trailed off, her words flat. “Except... that day, you never came.” She’d waited by the tree all day, well into the night. She’d returned the next day, and the next… In vain.

He exhaled heavily, his eyes dropping. “No. I didn’t come. My father intervened, of course. The steward, Jago again, had got wind of our correspondence, and he’d forced Jack, who delivered the letters, to give them to him first. When he read of our plans to elope, Jago acted in my father’s name. The night before we were to meet, he had three footmen grab me and bundle me into a carriage without explanation. They took me to Wolferstone Abbey. Finally, after all these years, I met my father, and it wasn’t pleasant. My father had an explosion of fury that was unprecedented, as the servants later told me. He forbade me to see you again. He could not and would not allow his only son, his heir, to make a misalliance and marry someone he considered socially inferior. I refused and marched out of the house, intending to catch the next mail coach back to Ashbourne House. If the worst came to the worst, I’d walk back. I hadn’t even reached the gates of the estate when a footman caught up with me and told me that my father had had an apoplexy. He’d fallen over—and died. Just like that.” He pulled his lips into a sneer. “So you see, I not only killed your father, but mine, too.”

She shook her head. “Nonsense.” Grasping his arm, she gave it a firm shake. “I’m sorry I ever said that. It was a cruel thing to say. Don’t ever say it again. But your father... ” Her shoulders sagged. “Trust him to die, just to spite you, at that very moment. I don’t know why it never occurred to me that, of course, something serious must have happened to keep you from coming. I was too engrossed in my own worries. I was ready to believe the worst, that you’d trifled with me or changed your mind.” Her voice broke as she looked at him. “Fenn, I waited by the tree for hours. But you know what? I wasn’t planning to elope with you. I was waiting to tell you that as much as I loved you, I couldn’t leave. I couldn’t leave Cissy and Papa. I just couldn’t.”

His eyes softened. “Of course you couldn’t. You’d never leave those you love. I’d come up with an alternative plan, one where we’d take them with us. All the plans I’d made... ” He shook his head.

Emily smiled through her tears as her heart twisted with a bittersweet pain.

“Not that it matters.” He brushed it off with a bitter laugh. “Because even as a duke, I had as much power as an earthworm. In the days that followed, I couldn’t even get a message to you. It wasn’t until much later that I discovered the truth.”

Her brow furrowed. “The truth?”

“My father had intervened again while I was at Wolferstone Abbey.”

Her head snapped up. “Your father? But he was dead!”

He nodded gravely. “Yes. Not only did he intercept our letters, piece together our plans, but he also ordered Jago to have your family evicted. It was his last act.”

Emily let out a shaky breath.

Jasper stood and took another bag and placed it in her lap.

There were dozens of letters.

Emily looked at him with wide eyes.

“These letters are the ones I sent, but you never received. They were never delivered because, of course, you were long gone and I did not know.” He ran a hand through his hair. “I couldn’t get away from the deluge of duties and obligations. I was imprisoned here by lawyers, secretaries, and piles and piles of work. I kept writing letters, not knowing that they never arrived. When I returned to the Ashbourne Estate several weeks later, your cottage was deserted. I did not suspect the steward then. I thought he was loyal to me. He said you’d left, that your father wanted to return to his family in the north. No one in the village dared tell me the truth because the steward had threatened them all with eviction if they did. I searched for you, but couldn’t find a trace. You’d just disappeared, from one day to the next.

“It was the darkest time of my life. I didn’t know who to trust. Everyone seemed to be taking advantage of me. I wasn’t prepared for the responsibilities that were thrust upon me, and I had no idea what I was doing. I lived in constant fear of making a mistake.” He paused, his voice tightening. “And I grieved for you. I couldn’t understand why you’d left without a word, without even saying goodbye.”

A cold, haunted look crossed his face.

Emily raised her hand to his cheek, and he kissed her palm.

“In my darkest moments,” he continued, “I even wondered if it had all been one-sided. Maybe you’d never really loved me. Or if you did, maybe it wasn’t as much as I loved you. I told myself it was for the best that it had ended this way. Because what was it, really? A strange friendship based on letters? I told myself I was a fool for seeing more in it than there was.”

Emily’s heart tightened. She shook her head, her voice thick with emotion. “Never,” she whispered. “Never.”

He rubbed his forehead with one hand, as if the memory itself pained him. “I had to bury all those feelings. I was overwhelmed with work, and the endless duties and social obligations left me no time to breathe. I was surrounded by people I thought I could trust, but they turned out to be toad-eaters. Friends turned out to be false, and servants I thought loyal turned out to be corrupt. I forced myself to forget you, and for a time I was even proud that I had succeeded.”

He exhaled heavily, the weight of the past pressing down on him. “Then my secretary discovered irregularities in the accounts and revealed that Jago was behind it all. By the time we put it all together, he was long gone—sailing for the New World with the wealth he’d stolen. It was around that time that I learned of the eviction.”

His hand found hers, his grip firm yet pleading. “Emily, I was horrified. Desperate. I sent runners to look for you. But it was as if the earth had swallowed you whole. There was no trace of you or your family.

“You couldn’t have known that we’d changed our names and been taken in by Lady MacGregor in Scotland,” Emily said quietly.

“No,” he murmured. “But thank heavens you were looked after, even though... ” His voice broke slightly. “Even though your father did not survive that night. I will never forgive myself for that.”

Emily squeezed his hand. “But I did, Fenn,” she said, her voice steady though her eyes glistened. “I survived. So did Cissy. I have forgiven you. So has Cissy. You must forgive yourself, too.”

He bent his head and Emily put a hand on his thick hair, and he reached out and pulled her to him until she was sitting on his lap.

“Tell me what happened next,” Emily said after a while, burying her face in his neckcloth.

He looked up, a faint, tired smile on his face. “My aunts decided they’d had enough of watching me run myself into the ground and insisted on marrying me off. I decided to humour them, go to Ashbourne House, meet the ladies they’d invited, dance with one or two and then discreetly remove myself. When we stopped at the inn to change horses, an impertinent maid mistook me for the coachman and scolded me for deliberately driving my horses through the puddle to splash her. She was covered in mud, her hair blowing in the wind, and she was the most beautiful sight I’d seen in a long, long time. When she started to sing a song I thought I’d forgotten, I couldn’t believe my ears. I thought it must be a coincidence. Surely the song was well known in the area. But I knew that voice. The longer I talked to you, and the more I looked at you, the more convinced I became that you were my Little Wren. But I had to be sure.”

“So you arranged for us to be invited to Ashbourne House,” Emily said. “And here I thought I had orchestrated it so cleverly that we were invited to the house party.”

He chuckled. “You had mistaken Chippendale for the duke and me for the coachman, which I found amusing, and so I decided to use the mix-up to see if I could get more information out of you, more proof of who you really were, if you were really my Wren. But I was already certain of your identity after our first meeting.”

Emily smiled as she remembered that meeting. “I was so angry with you. I thought you were a cheeky coachman trying to take advantage of me and then blackmail me by threatening to expose me.”

“That never occurred to me, but after you mentioned it, I thought maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea if it meant I could see more of you.”

He pressed his lips into her hair for a quick kiss. “I wanted to tell you who I was. But then you told me about your father, and it became clear that you hated me to the core. I did not know what to do. I was entirely confused. It was torture to have you so close yet be unable to tell you who I really was. I confess, at first I was simply too cowardly to do so.”

“Yet, later, you denied it. When I asked you directly. When I asked you if you were Fenn, you said you were not. Why?”

He rubbed his brow wearily. “That was because I suspected you’d idealised Fenn in the same way you’d demonised the duke. I was afraid you’d be disappointed when you realised who I really was, that I was nothing like you’d imagined. You’d created an image of Fenn in your mind that never existed. Fenn seemed to be all that was good, pure, wonderful in your life. And Wolferton, the duke, was demonic and evil. Don’t you see? I’m neither.”

Emily worried at her lower lip. He might have a point.

“I lied because I was afraid. Afraid that if you knew the truth—that I was Fenn, that I’m the duke who wronged you—you’d hate me even more. I couldn’t bear that.” His eyes were troubled. “I didn’t tell you because I needed to know if you could care for me, the man standing before you now, not the memory of a boy who existed in your letters. I feared I could never measure up to the Fenn I’d created on paper.” He pulled a frustrated hand through his hair. “Dash it all. I’m not good at this. I'm not good at talking about my feelings. I just wanted to know whether you could learn to care about me as I am right now. Right here. I’m just a flawed man who loves you. That is partly why I preferred to keep our relationship on paper, and why I have kept up the pretense as long as I have. I’m an intolerable coward. It just seemed safer that way.”

“Fenn,” Emily whispered, tears entering her eyes.

He shook his head. “Fenn is what my mother called me. Everyone else called me Jasper, or just Wolferton. I’m not a good man. I have learned to be ruthless to get what I want. I wanted you, so I did it. I’m well aware that I tricked you into this marriage. I won’t apologise for that. It was all planned. If you find that you cannot bear this union, then I will not force you to live with me.”

“Fenn,” Emily said sharply. “You’re such a fool.”

The ghost of a smile crossed his face. “That too.”

“You’re talking nonsense. First of all, you did not trick me into this marriage. If I hadn’t wanted to marry you, I wouldn’t have done it. In the end, it was my choice to go ahead with it. I could have just taken Cissy by the hand and walked out, and by now we’d be living under a different name with someone else. Give me some agency. Secondly, although you’d denied it so vehemently that afternoon, I only believed it for a moment. I knew you were Fenn, deep down, even though I didn’t see the proof until I finally saw your signature on the marriage register.” She made a loop with one hand. “The W gave it away. If you hadn’t dragged me to the altar, I would have dragged you there. Duke or not, you’ve owed me a marriage since I was seventeen, and I would have hounded you and held you to that promise.” She thought for a moment, her lips quirking upwards. “Although I must add that it’s a nice touch that you turned out to be a wealthy duke and not a poor blacksmith. Though Meadowview Cottage is lovely and will always be the home of my childhood, I find it infinitely preferable to live here. It’s a bit bigger and more comfortable, you see.”

His fingers tightened around her waist.

“As for me idealising Fenn,” Emily continued, “I suppose you’re right. I suppose you really aren’t the wonderful, delightful boy I imagined you to be. Kind and generous to a fault. Sweet and kind and sensitive.” She shook her head sadly. “How cruelly you’ve deceived me.”

He shifted uncomfortably.

She placed one hand on his cheek. “The Duke of Wolferton is hard, cynical, ruthless, and infuriating. He is most off-putting.” Then she placed her other hand on his opposite cheek, framing his face, and stared at him intently. “Until one realises it’s the outer shell. The sad truth, I’m afraid, is that you’re an onion.”

He blinked. “An onion? You mean I make you cry?”

“That too. I mean the layers. You’ve obviously never peeled an onion in your life, have you, Your Grace? It has layers and layers, one on top of the other. Until you get to the core.” She smiled. “And the core is sweet. Shocking, isn’t it? Wolferton and sweet. It seems such a paradox. But there it is.”

“Are you saying you don’t mind being married to me? That you love me back, just a little? You never answered my letter.” There was a catch in his voice.

“What a fool you are, Fenn. You have confused me so. First, I loved Fenn, a sad, innocent, hopeless kind of love. Then I fell head over heels in love with that scallywag George. How could it be that all you had to do was drench me in mud and I would fall in love? And then the scowling Wolferton began to make all these demands on my heart. He made me want to kiss off that frown between his eyebrows, like this,”—she pressed her lips to his frown—“ever since he first entered the drawing-room. Oh, to confuse me so! I haven’t stopped loving you in all these incarnations.” She planted a second kiss on the tip of his nose. “Not for a minute.”

She drew his face down further and finally, finally, kissed him fully on the lips.