Page 66 of The Duke’s Suspicion

Sometime later, when they were collapsed together on the bench and he’d tidied their clothes as best he could, he let a wry laugh escape. “Wild, did Sturgess say?”

She snuggled closer. “Don’t forget dirty.”

“Oh, I hadn’t.” With one hand, he smoothed her tumbled hair. A hum of pleasure vibrated through her. “He was wrong about one important thing, though.”

“What was that?” she asked absently, distracted by his touch.

“I love it here.” At Hawesdale. In the conservatory. With Erica.

Like a cat, she tipped her head into his soothing stroke. “And I love you.”

Chapter 20

Three days later, after bidding adieu to the Lydgates and Newsomes, Erica found herself standing in the high-ceilinged entry hall, arm in arm with the Duchess of Raynham, the sole remaining guest at Hawesdale Chase.

“Though a guest,” the duchess reminded her, patting her hand, “you will not be much longer. We shall switch places, you and I.”

“You mustn’t say such things, Your Grace,” Erica insisted. Despite her general state of elation at discovering herself loved and in love, she’d also experienced a corresponding increase in anxiety. At times, she still wondered whether she had made a mistake by agreeing to this rapid and radical change of circumstances. Because all Tristan’s reassurances did not change the essential truth of the matter: once she’d spoken her vows and signed the register, she would be the Duchess of Raynham. “Surely your stepson has warned you, and you have seen with your own eyes, how ill-prepared I am to fill your shoes?”

The duchess tipped her head, studying Erica as she considered her words. “Then don’t,” she said at last with a shrug. “You must make the title, and the role, your own. Who could fail to be charmed by your delightfully easy manner?”

“Delightfully easy manner?” Erica couldn’t prevent the chortle that rose to her lips. “You needn’t persist in claiming my faults are virtues, Your Grace. We all know I haven’t the first notion how to act like a duchess.”

Her lips curved in a knowing smile. “But you have every notion how to make Tristan happy. I’ve seen more smiles on his face in the last week than I have in the last ten years. His happiness—and yours—matter far more than anyone else’s stuff-and-nonsense idea of what a duchess must be.” At Erica’s skeptical expression, the duchess’ face settled into more serious lines. “I will not pretend that everyone shares my philosophy of the matter. I wish, however, that you would consider adopting it all the same. Hold your head up—I’ve seen you do it—and you will have mastered the essentials, my dear. After all, if a duchess is not permitted her eccentricities, who is?”

“But Hawesdale is so vast, and…” Erica could feel the familiar panic rising in her chest.

“I will help and advise you as long as you wish it, in the management of the household and whatever other assistance you believe you require. If,” she added, fixing Erica with a firm look, “you will promise me two things.”

“Yes?”

“You must do me this courtesy: treat me as a friend and tell me honestly when you are ready to stand on your own—and you will be one day,” she added pointedly when Erica opened her mouth to protest, “so you may say your breath.”

Erica managed a wobbly nod of agreement. “And the second?”

“Be true to yourself. Do not judge yourself against some imagined, and imaginary, paragon. It is you Tristan loves, not—forgive me—that rather dull person you’ve set up in your mind for an ideal.”

It was, she recalled with a blush, not unlike the promise Tristan had extracted. If he had learned to love her for who she was, then surely she could learn to love herself. “Yes, Your Gr—Guin,” she agreed, forcing herself to shape the name by which she’d been invited to address her future mother-in-law. “I can be forgetful, sometimes, but I do try to keep my promises.”

“I’ll attest to that,” Tristan said with a wink as he reentered the hall.

“Are the Lydgates and the Newsomes safely away?”

Erica had expected Lady Lydgate to be mournful today. Lord Beresford had departed early the day before, without ceremony, and also without settling his debts of honor to the other gentlemen. But in the earl’s absence, the baronet himself seemed once more to have claimed his wife’s affection. The two had left arm in arm, smiling at one another. Sir Thomas had even forgone any mention of prolonging their visit for another day’s shooting, although the weather continued fine.

“Happily away, I’d say, as I overheard Mrs. Newsome tell her husband more than once how glad she was to be leaving ‘this den of iniquity.’ But I cannot vouch for their continued safety. I greatly fear she may yet climb upon the coachman’s box and insist on taking up the reins herself.”

It was, all in all, a considerably merrier leave-taking than the day before, when Miss Pilkington and her mother, both pale and silent, had set off in one direction, while Captain Whitby and Lord Easton, accompanied by the magistrate and several members of the Endmoor militia, headed in another. But the captain had announced his intention to be with Caroline again in a fortnight, Lady Easton had given her heartfelt blessing to the match, and Erica had hope that the promise of future joy would overcome their present misery.

At that moment, Lady Viviane burst through the door that had only moments before been closed behind her brother. Since the night on which all had been revealed, she had been alternating in her moods between disconsolate and jubilant—in the way of all girls who are almost thirteen, perhaps. Disconsolate when she remembered the danger into which she had unwittingly put her brother and so many others, jubilant when she learned that Tristan would be home until spring and that she would have a sister at last, “and one whose bonnet is not stuffed with straw,” as she was fond of saying.

“Shouldn’t you be in the schoolroom, Viv?” Tristan asked with a mock frown.

Viviane tossed her head. “You dismissed my governess, Tris—if I turn out ignorant and ill-mannered, you’ll have only yourself to blame.”

“I declare, Viviane, you are sadly near it already,” said her mother. “Come along and I’ll hear your geography lesson.”

“But there’s a carriage on the drive…”