The Wyndham Legacy (Legacy 1)

He slammed the adjoining door behind him.

She stared for a long moment at that closed door. Then, slowly, she lightly touched her stomach. She was flat, but inside her womb was her child, their child.

She was lying there, staring up at the ceiling, when there was a knock on the door. She rose and unlocked it. Badger, Spears, and Maggie stood there, Maggie with a small covered plate in her hands.

They said nothing, merely came into the bedchamber when she stepped back.

“Here, Duchess, eat there,” Maggie said as she guided her to the chair in front of the fireplace.

The three of them took position about her, saying nothing until she began to nibble on one of Badger’s fresh scones.

“I made them with small apple slices,” he said. “And fresh cream. It is my Aunt Mildred’s recipe.”

“They’re delicious.”

“Your stomach is settling?” Maggie asked.

The Duchess nodded and continued to chew slowly as she stared into the fire.

Spears cleared his throat. “His lordship is a passionate man. He is a natural leader, a man of action. He despises dithering about. In all the battles he fought, his men trusted him above God. He protected them, drove them relentlessly, and they knew he would willingly die for any of them. They knew this and gave him their best.”

Badger continued, “He is hotheaded, always has been, Mr. Spears tells me, even as a boy. Besides a leader, he is a man who is loyal to his bones. Sometimes, however, he isn’t a cool thinker, not what you would call a measured scholar of philosophy. He reacts, then thinks. He can curse some of the most amazing composites I’ve ever heard. Then he’s calm again and laughing.”

“They say that we women are the ones to lose our calm and spit out whatever comes into our minds,” Maggie said, hands on her silk-covered hips, “but it isn’t necessarily true. Just look at you, Duchess, quiet and still as a clam. You never lose your head and scream foolishness. You’re just the opposite of his lordship.” Maggie frowned, then shrugged. “At least you used to be his opposite. It’s strange, you’re different, all of us have noticed it.”

Spears said, “It is true that his lordship occasionally loses his temper and thus control of his tongue, but he will come around, Duchess. Even though you appear to have lost your magnificent reticence, at least when you now choose to lose it, you can’t come near to his lordship in sheer undignified temper. He isn’t an unfair man, he’s just—”

“I know,” she said. “He’s just passionate and hotheaded and easily driven over the brink. But know this, all of you. He doesn’t want the child. He’s said that often enough, it isn’t just something he decided tonight.”

“He is a man. However, he isn’t stupid,” Maggie said, frowning. “Well yes, he is, for he is a man, after all, and all men must . . . well, that’s not important here and now, is it? Now, his lordship must realize that babes follow lovemaking. Even as he cursed and ranted, he knew it would be natural for you to become pregnant, for his lordship is a lusty man—”

“Exactly,” Badger said. “His temper, his insistence that he doesn’t want an heir doesn’t make sense. As Maggie said, he isn’t stupid.”

The Duchess became utterly white and still. “You don’t understand.”

The three of them looked baffled.

“You don’t understand,” she said again, slowly, then clamped her mouth shut.

“Well, regardless,” Maggie said, “I know men, Duchess, and his lordship may be proud to the point of you wanting to strangle him, but he will come around. He will come to understand what is right.”

“He will moderate his stand,” Badger said.

“He will moderate his stand, or we will have to take action,” Spears said, and Badger and Maggie nodded.

She looked at each of them in turn. Finally, she said, “Yes, perhaps we will have to take action.”

“You won’t run away, will you, Duchess?” Badger said.

She looked at him thoughtfully.

22

MARCUS CAME TO an abrupt halt at the bottom of the huge staircase that spilled onto the grand entrance hall of Chase Park. There in front of the front double doors were three valises and beside them stood Maggie, all trimmed out in a flaming red bonnet with a curling ostrich feather curving around to her chin and wearing a dark blue cloak. She was tapping an elegantly shod foot, tap, tap, tap. She was obviously waiting.

She was waiting for the Duchess.

He bellowed, “Where the hell is she, Maggie?”