Scandal And The Duchess

But what place was it? “Where are we?” Steven asked the lad.

“We call it the cottage,” the boy said, studying it. “Been here forever, my dad says. A lover’s nest from two hundred years ago. My dad says.”

The architecture put it in the very early Georgian period. Palladian, Steven thought it was called, when classic architecture was revived and Capability Brown had been sought to plan gardens.

The place wasn’t a ruin. The garden was neatly trimmed, the house painted, the roof tight.

“No one seems to be home,” Rose said. “I knocked, but had no answer. I didn’t like to simply go in.”

The boy shrugged. “No one lives here. There’s always a door open in the back.”

He led them around the side, Rose and Steven hand in hand, the dog trotting beside them.

The back was no less a palace than the front, but a short wing stuck out from it like an afterthought. A double Dutch door, with the bottom half opening independently of the upper, as might be found in any of the older cottages around here, opened as the boy raised the latch.

Rose and Steven stepped into a neat kitchen with a flagstone floor, and Rose let out a breath of relief. It was warm here, with a fire in the hearth, and tea things set out on the table. Stranger and stranger.

“I thought you said no one lived here,” Rose said to the boy.

The lad shook his head. “They don’t. But there’s caretakers.” He opened the door that led to the main house.

Whoever the caretakers were, they had kept the place very nicely. The architecture might be old, but the furniture was new, chair and sofas strewn with cushions and looking comfortable. The fireplace was stoked, andirons polished, and soft carpets covered the floor. The rose motif continued in the moldings at the top of the walls, in the medallions on the ceiling and above the fireplace, in the patterns on the carpets, and on the embroidered cushions.

The room beyond the sitting room one was a dining room, likewise tidy, and a stair at the far end of that presumably went up to bedrooms above.

“Lucky woman,” Rose said, returning to the sitting room and looking around in wonder.

“What woman?” Steven, now out of the wind, his panic dissipated, started to grow angry. “Why the devil did you run off like that, lass? And who shut you in the summerhouse? It was Albert, wasn’t it? I’m going to kill him—slowly.”

“I didn’t fancy staying in there,” Rose said. “The dog found the secret passage, and when I got to the other end and saw the roof of this house through the trees, I admit to curiosity.”

“Bloody hell, Rose.”

Steven caught her hand between his, he still needing to reassure himself that she was all right.

“I meant that the woman this house was built for was lucky.” Rose glanced around the sitting room again. “Whoever commissioned it for her must have loved her very much.”

Steven slid his arm around her. “I wonder if she was called Rose,” he said. “This place suits you.”

Rose met his gaze, showing no remorse that she’d led him on a merry chase. Perhaps she didn’t realize how much the bottom had dropped from Steven’s world when he’d found her gone.

“I like it very much,” Rose said, giving him the little smile that turned over his heart. “Who does it belong to, I wonder?”

“It belongs to you, Your Grace.”

Rose tried to spring apart from Steven at the woman’s voice, but Steven wasn’t letting her go. Not again.

The woman who’d entered looked like any other in these parts, plump and a bit worn by time, dressed in a plain gown with an apron, her graying hair in a neat bun. She looked like any housekeeper or cook in a country home.

“I beg your pardon?” Rose asked her, flushing.

“We’ve been waiting for you a long time, dear,” she said. “I mean, Your Grace. We’ve been keeping the place, just like he asked. Thought you’d never arrive.”

Maybe Steven had stepped into a fairy tale, like the ones he read to Sinclair’s children on occasion. Eight-year-old Andrew liked the gory and gruesome ones the best.

Rose stared at the woman, as nonplussed as Steven. “Arrive? From where? Who asked you to keep it?”

“The duke, of course. The one who’s passed on, I mean. Young Lord Charles, as my mum knew him when he was a boy, and she his nanny.”

“Oh, I see. Then you are Mrs. . . .”

“Winters, dear. I married Mr. Winters, who was steward before our son took over. Our son tried to tell us matters were bad for you, but we thought that after the will was sorted you’d come. You didn’t, not until now, but we kept on being paid to keep the place, and we saw no reason not to. Lord Charles was always a kind man.”

“Yes, he was . . . but. . . .”

Steven broke in. “What Rose—Her Grace—means is that there was no mention of this house in the will.”

Rose laughed a little. “If there had been, I’m certain the new duke would have heard of it.”

“And come to turn the Winterses out and raze the place,” Steven finished darkly.

Mrs. Winters opened her hands. “I only know the instructions we received in a letter after Lord Charles had passed. We was to keep the house for you, but when you take possession, you can do with it as you please. Now, I’ve got tea almost ready. Would you like me to bring it in here for you? Or will you take it in the kitchen, where it’s a mite warmer?”