“He wants to visit me next Monday.”
“Aye, rightfully so.” Badger patted her hands then rose, sniffing like a hound on the scent. “My ham Galatine smells too potent. It is beyond what is gratifying. Perhaps the grated black pepper wasn’t of the best quality as old shark-fin Freeman assured me. Well, I can add more basil and perhaps just another pinch of rosemary, then it will be perfect. I am pleased, Duchess, that your father didn’t forget you. He did well. I will remember him more easily now.”
“I wonder if there is more,” she said.
“We will see when this Mr. Wicks person arrives,” Badger said and left her alone to return to his ham.
Mr. Wicks was very old and very thin and had an unmistakable gleam of kindness in his rheumy eyes. His smile, with its half complement of teeth, was also kind and it robbed her of much of her wariness.
“How do you do,” he said and gallantly bowed over her hand. “How pleased I am to have finally found you. I must say you have a charming property. My, how I should like some tea, and you, I imagine, young lady, wish to hear all about this unusual, but highly gratifying, situation.”
The Duchess invited him in, gave him tea, and sat forward in her chair, her hands clasped in her lap.
“Your name, as I told you in my letter, is now Miss Wyndham. Your father married your mother last November, two months before he was killed. He immediately hired me to have you legitimized. It was finalized at last in May. I couldn’t contact you before then since it wasn’t yet completed, for one of the Wyndham family could have stopped it, thus ensuring that you would remain dispossessed. But it was completed and now you are a true Wyndham. Then in May, my dear Miss Wyndham, I couldn’t find you. I hired a Bow Street runner and he managed, finally, to track you here to Smarden.”
She was looking utterly shocked, something he well understood. “My mother told me nothing of this, sir, nor did my father. I thought your address to me as Miss Wyndham was just a kindness, perhaps even a misapprehension on your part.”
“Actually, my dear, you are now a lady, right and tight, but I thought that would make only more confusion than necessary. You are an earl’s daughter and
thus a lady, just as are his other daughters, Lady Fanny and Lady Antonia. No, your father told me that he was holding it all a secret from you until you were finally his legitimate daughter. I’m so very sorry that your parents died so suddenly, leaving you alone and unprotected and unaware of what they had done to make things right for you. They both loved you very much.”
“Yes,” she said slowly, staring beyond his left shoulder, “they did make things aright for me.” Had her father really loved her? Yes, she supposed now, yes he had. She lowered her head and cried. For the first time since Marcus had told her of her father’s death, tears rolled down her cheeks to drop onto her folded hands. She made no sound, just cried and cried. It was Badger who came into the drawing room and handed her a handkerchief, saying to Mr. Wicks as he did so, “She is always forgetting to carry a handkerchief with her. I tell her to just stuff one in her pocket, but she never remembers. That’s right, Duchess, cry all you want to. The handkerchief has been waiting years for just this occasion.”
“Thank you, Badger,” she said. Her face was pale, her nose red, her eyes watery, and Mr. Wicks thought she was quite the loveliest young lady he’d seen in many a year. He said, “You have your father’s eyes and hair. I met your mother but one time. She seemed a remarkable woman, so bright, just as are you, and so very beautiful that I stared at her, I fear, stared and stared, and your father just chuckled and said that it was all right, that every man who had ever laid eyes on her stared. And you are at least her equal in beauty. Now you will take your rightful place in society, Lady Duchess. Lady Duchess—how odd that sounds, but your father insisted that was your name even when I questioned it. He said, if I remember correctly, ‘Yes, Wicks, it’s Lady Duchess she is and nothing else. She’s a young woman of great charm and character who will change things around her if she is given the chance, and I intend that she have her chance.’ Thus, my lady, you are no longer a bastard, you will no longer be expected to live in retirement. In short, you will now do just as you wish.” Mr. Wicks sat back and beamed at her.
“But I am quite content as I am,” she said. “I’m pleased that my parents married, truly I am, but I don’t see how it will change my situation, which, in any case, doesn’t need changing. Let me assure you that the current earl, my cousin, Marcus Wyndham, also tracked me down and invited me to come and live at Chase Park. He also offered me a Season and a dowry. It was I who refused his offer. I do appreciate all the precautions you took, Mr. Wicks, but Marcus would have been pleased about what my father had done. He wouldn’t have tried to stop it. You should have told him.”
“Possibly,” Mr. Wicks said, and sipped delicately at his tea. “However, when it comes to my fellow man, I’ve learned, my dear, always to tread on eggshells. Now, there is more to tell you, much more. The current earl is an honorable man from what I’ve learned about him. I’ve heard he’s also a trusted friend, a brave soldier, intelligent and loyal, but he is no longer an army man. He has new responsibilities, new expectations, new modes of behavior required of a gentleman of his class. Perhaps he is still a man to admire, a man to trust. However, it doesn’t matter now because even if he were so inclined, there is now nothing he can do about it. As I said, there is more.” He coughed lightly into his hand, then raised his head and smiled widely at her. “Allow me to congratulate you, ma’am. You are now an heiress.”
CHASE PARK
DECEMBER 1813
Marcus pulled Stanley to a halt, dismounted quickly and tossed the reins to Lambkin, his favorite stable lad, who worshipped the ground Stanley trod his hooves upon. “Rub him down well, Lambkin. I’ve tested his mettle today. He’s blowing hard.”
“Aye, milord,” Lambkin said, already patting Stanley’s nose and crooning unrecognizable sounds and words to the stallion. “Aye, my handsome beast, ye’ve given ’is lordship a fine ride, ’aven’t ye?”
Marcus smiled and left the stable. It was a warm day, the sun bright overhead, and here it was the middle of December. There was much work for him to do, but he’d seen the sun shining into his bedchamber and known the work could wait, for being England, being Yorkshire, the beautiful weather wouldn’t. He’d said as much to Spears, who had merely nodded and said, “I have laid out your riding clothes, my lord. The tan riding breeches, I believe, would be most stylish this morning. And the blue superfine jacket. Your Hessians are more discerning of your facial features than that mirror.”
“How did you know I would go riding?” Marcus shrugged into his dressing gown, a relic of his winters in Portugal, the elbows so shiny with wear that any day now the material would split.
Spears merely smiled and said, “I have already ordered your bath, my lord. Would you like me to shave you?”
“You ask me that every morning and the answer is still no, Spears. I refuse to become so lazy that I cannot even wield my own razor.”
“Very well, sir, I have sharpened it for you, as usual. I found with your late uncle—he wouldn’t allow me to shave him either—that when finally he hit his cups with too much vigor, he was blessedly thankful that I was here to wield the razor for him.”
“Thank you for telling me. I will, as my uncle did, wait for the overindulgence before I give over my throat for the razor. Incidentally, Spears, I heard you singing a song—I thought at first it was in my sleep, I was just on the edge of awakening, you know. I don’t believe I’ve heard it before.”
“It’s a clever ditty indeed, my lord.” Spears smiled, then sang out in a rich baritone:
“Napoleon gave us thirty days
To bag our men and go away
But he misjudged the soldiers’ guns
And now he gives us thirty-one.”