“No,” she said calmly. “No, I don’t want marriage. This is my home now. It is kind of you to search me out, but a long time has passed and I find that I am become self-sufficient. I have no need of a Season or a dowry. Or a husband. There are things for a lady, Marcus, other than marriage.”
“How have you become self-sufficient? Is there a soldier you met after your mother’s death? Is it he who has told you—” Marcus shrugged then, his mouth shutting, but his meaning was quite clear, appallingly clear.
She smiled at him, but it was a cold smile, one that held infinite secrets and a serious level of anger. But as usual, there was no sound of anger in her cool voice. “That, sir, is none of your business. Your line of reasoning is interesting, however. My knowledge of military matters or my interest in such occurrences as Napoleon’s failure to survive in Russia obviously can’t spring from my own brain, but it has to come, rather, from another—specifically, from a military man who is doubtless keeping me in this charming cottage, just as your uncle kept my mother in Rosebud Cottage.”
He hunched forward and smacked his fist onto the table. “Damnation, Duchess, I didn’t mean that. Are you forgetting that I am your cousin? That I am the damned head of the Wyndham family and am thus responsible for you now?”
“You are my cousin, true, but I am nothing but a bastard. You owe me nothing at all, Marcus. Certainly you aren’t responsible for me. My father was, but like most men he must have believed himself immortal. Thus, he made no provision for me. However, I find now that I quite enjoy being on my own.”
“You are eighteen years old. You are a gentlewoman. You cannot be on your own.”
“I am nearly nineteen, and the fact remains that I am on my own and I am a bastard. Don’t put respectable icing on this particular cake, for it doesn’t fit.”
He felt equal parts of anger and frustration. Here he was, a perfect knight errant, and the damsel was refusing his assistance. The devil of it was she didn’t even appear to be at all in distress.
Suddenly, she laughed. “I can see exactly what you are thinking. You have gone to all this trouble to save your poor bastard cousin and she is turning you down. Goodness, she is turning you down after feeding you probably the best dinner you’ve enjoyed in many a long evening. I’m sorry, Marcus, but there it is.”
“No, it isn’t. You will pack your things and you will return with me to Chase Park. I would never serve your father and my uncle such a turn. I would like to leave tomorrow. Can Badger have everything ready?”
She didn’t appear to be paying any attention to him. She was looking off into space, her eyes narrowed in profound thought, or something. All of a sudden, she began to hum a tune he’d never heard before. “Excuse me,” she said abruptly, and rose from her chair. “Don’t go away, Marcus. I shall return very soon.”
She was gone from the small dining room, leaving the earl of Chase there with a half-eaten apple tart on his plate and a look of utter incomprehension on his face wondering how the devil she was managing. And now she’d run out on him without a by-your-leave.
“Would you like a brandy, my lord? Or perhaps port or claret?”
“Port,” he said. He sipped at the port, waiting for her to return. Fifteen minutes passed and there was no sign of her. He said to Badger, who had just come into the small dining room to clear the dishes from the table, “What is she doing?”
“I couldn’t say.”
“Of course you can but you won’t, will you? Come, Badger, how the hell does she afford this cottage? How does she afford to have you? There’s a man, isn’t there? He’s a military man and he’s footing all the bills.”
“You will speak to Miss Cochrane, my lord.”
“I wish to leave tomorrow. Can you be ready, Badger?”
Badger straightened to his full height, which would make many a short man envious. “You will discuss this with Miss Cochrane.” Then he softened, adding, “You must understand loyalty, sir. You were in the army. There is little more precious than absolute loyalty.”
Marcus sighed and set down his port. “You’re right, naturally. Do you think the Duchess would mind if I tracked her down now?”
“I believe I hear her returning. Ah, sir, it is doubtless difficult for her, just learning that her father had been dead for six months, learning that he did want her and didn’t forget her, that instead the rest of you forgot her. There has been too much death for her in the past months.”
“She has hidden it well,” Marcus said. “No tears, no sobs, nothing. No pleas, no explanations, no pleasure in seeing me or agreeing with anything I say.”
“Naturally. What would you expect from her?”
“I don’t know anymore,” Marcus said slowly, now lifting his port and swirling the dark red around in the crystal glass, a quite well-made crystal glass. Damnation, he wanted to strangle her.
“Go gently, sir.” Marcus watched Badger hold open the door to the dining room as the Duchess came back in.
“Forgive me for taking so long,” she said, adding, “Would you like to remain here or come with me into the drawing room?”
“Here is fine. What were you doing?”
“Just a bit of this and that, nothing to concern you.”
He felt frustration rising to new heights and announced with the heavy hand of a complete autocrat, “You will come home with me and that’s that.”
“No, but thank you for your feelings of guilt or responsibility or whatever it is you’re feeling that engenders such a fist on the reins. Listen to me, you are absolved, Marcus, please believe me. From you I learned that my father did want me. That is important. I thank you for that. Now, I’m sorry but there is nowhere for you to sleep. In Biddenden, very near to the sign of the Biddenden Maids—”