Page 13 of The Duke's List
“What, man? For God’s sakes, let it out.” Bourne fairly exploded with frustration.
“I accused her of not being an innocent, of not being…a virgin.”
A great, empty silence filled the cottage like a foggy green miasma rising from one of the bogs on the moors.
With his eyes revealing more than he was saying, Bourne finally spoke. “Since she’s taken over the cottageandthe position of your stable master, I assume she’s also an experienced horse woman.”
Sidmouth hung his head again. If he kept this up, the blood rushing there would clog his already dense senses. He followed the line of the old infantryman’s thinking. Zeus’s cod, he’d thought of the same thing himself a thousand times since his stupidity that night.
Jane was a very strong young woman who exercised her horses daily. He’d bolloxed up everything. Her lack of proof of virginity might have a simple, logical explanation. Of course his beautiful, sensuous duchess was an innocent. And he was a complete arse.
Chapter Ten
Jane and her maid,Elsie, added a fichu at the neckline of the Beatrice costume made by Mrs. Algernon. The dress must have been designed for a much flatter-bosomed actress in past productions.
“Your Grace, you, um, seem to have put on a bit of weight.” Elsie pulled hard to tighten the laces at the back of the bodice on the costume.
Jane grinned and sucked in a breath. “Yes, I have. It must be the wonderful food from Bocollyn’s kitchen.” When she’d first arrived at the estate, she’d been exceedingly thin, pale, and a very unhappy young woman. The changes in her body over the few months of her marriage had taken her by surprise.
She stood in her bare feet at the mirror in the stable master’s cottage and looked at what she’d become. Her cheeks had a tinge of roses from her work with the filly earlier in the morning, even though she’d worn a straw hat with a sweeping brim to keep the sun at bay.
She’d also put on a bit of weight since she’d returned from Venice, and there were tiny crinkles of laugh lines at the corners of her mouth. That she attributed to the time she’d spent with Sidmouth’s ward, Nicholas. The boy made her laugh too much. She giggled at the memory of all the adventures they’d had since he joined them on the yacht and then had come to stay with her at the cottage until his mother returned.
A sudden knowledge took her by surprise. She was happy. Bocollyn made her happy. This was her home. Now if only she could come to a peaceful agreement with her husband, her happiness would be complete. She wanted Sidmouth, that much she couldn’t deny. But she wanted him on her own terms.
She refused to spend the rest of her life sharing cool, cordial marital relations with a man who came to her bed only to get an heir. She wanted all of Sidmouth. She wanted to share his bed every night. When she looked at him across the table, she wanted to see love in his eyes, not suspicion and distrust. What she wanted sounded so simple. If only she could convince her stubborn husband.
When she was satisfied she looked the part of “Beatrice,” she pulled on woolen stockings and shoved her feet into her slippers before racing out into the garden to find her “Benedick.”
Jane saton a stone bench in the middle of the kitchen garden with the young actor, Joseph Hawley, who would be playing “Benedick.” She was so excited to work with the theater troupe, she’d asked him to go over her lines with her. Years before, she’d appeared in a student production ofMuch Ado About Nothingat her all-girls boarding school, but that was not nearly so much fun as helping with the production at Bocollyn.
She awaited the cue for the end of his speech while listening to the bees flying in lazy arcs to and from the line of hives at the end of the rows of herbs. They were taking advantage of the still mild November weather to gather nectar from the gorse.
Jane fed Hawley his next line with “I wonder that you still be talking, Signior Benedick: nobody marks you.”
The actor leaned close and breathed deeply as if taking in her scent before answering, “What! My dear Lady Disdain, are you yet living?”
She was momentarily taken aback. The tenant farmer cum actor had a true gift. The mellifluous and deep tone of his voice transported her into the mood of the play. She could almost pretend he was the man with whom she currently battled wits. She plucked a ripe pear from a bowl on the table and continued.
“Is it possible disdain should die while she hath such meet food to feed it as Signior Benedick? Courtesy itself must convert to disdain, if you come in her presence.” She punctuated the end of her speech with a bite of the pear which oozed juice down her bottom lip onto her chin.
Hawley leaned back in the garden chair, his dark hair falling across his forehead, and replied, “Then is courtesy a turncoat. But it is certain I am loved of all ladies, only you excepted; and I would I could find in my heart that I had not a hard heart; for truly, I love none.”
Jane’s breathing quickened as if she were fencing with the man. “A dear happiness to women: they would else have been troubled with a pernicious suitor. I thank God and my cold blood, I am of your humor for that: I had rather hear my dog bark at a crow than a man swear he loves me.” She straightened, her blood thrumming.
Hawley briefly brushed one of her fingers still clutching the half-eaten peach. “You put all of your heart into that last passage. I would hope there is no man who actually makes you feel that way. If so, tell me who he is. I’ll carve him like a pig for roasting at the Yule celebration.”
Jane started at his touch as if scalded. “No. No, of course not. It’s just…it’s just that this is my favorite work by the bard.” With that, she sprang to her feet. “Thank you so much for your help with my lines, but there’s…um…something I have to attend to in the kitchen. Cook wants to go over the menu for tonight’s supper for your troupe.” When she strode purposefully toward the house, the footman who’d accompanied her to the rehearsal fell in step behind her.
Sidmouth stoodin the shadows of the grapevine-covered trellis at the entrance to the herb garden at the side of the kitchen entrance. He’d been on his way back from the stables after returning from the visit to Rose Cottage.
This time he’d wisely spent the night at the hunting lodge before riding back to Bocollyn House. Thorne and Bourne had convinced him an hour’s ride in the dark along the bluffs might not be wise after three drams of Bourne’s whiskey.
He’d been full of great intentions to discuss the “list” again with his duchess when he’d accidentally happened on Jane practicing her lines with the actor, Joseph Hawley, who considered himself God’s gift to the fair sex.
Although he tried to tell himself their conversation was innocent, his blood still boiled over at the memory of what Hawley had said which prompted her to flee to the kitchen. The worthless sod had had the temerity to suggest someone was not treating the Duchess of Sidmouth properly.
If Sidmouth thought Hawley had been hinting that he was mistreating his duchess, he’d have had him drawn and quartered and his remains dragged through Falmouth. Zeus, but sometimes he wished he could behave like his medieval forbears.