The Duchess of Haverford examined her two sons as they waited for her to pour them a cup of tea each. To an outsider, they would seem totally at ease — Aldridge relaxed on the sofa, an amused twist to his lips and his cynical eyes fond as he teased his brother about the horse the boy had bought on a jaunt into Somerset; Jon laughing as he defended his purchase, suggesting warmly that the marquis’s eye for a filly blinded him to the virtues of a colt.

To their fond Mama, they appeared worried. Eleanor saw strain around the younger man’s eyes, and quick darting glances at her and then at his brother when Jon thought she wasn’t watching. Aldridge had that almost imperceptible air of being ready to leap to Jon’s defence in an instant; a watchfulness, a vague tension.

Aldridge’s cup was prepared as he liked it, and he came to fetch it from her hands, thanking her with a smile.

She would let them raise the subject, if that was their plan, but she did not intend to let them leave this room without knowing about the new addition to her nursery: a nervous withdraw little girl of three or four years old. “If she was a bumptious little lordling and not a poor trembling mouse,” Nanny said, “she could be one of my lads come again. Same shaped face and eyes. Same colour hair with the curls that won’t brush out. Their lordships have your eyes, Your Grace, and this wee sprite doesn’t, but I’ll tell you who has eyes just that colour: so close to green as never so.” Not that Nanny did tell the duchess. She did not need to. Those eyes were more familiar to Eleanor than her own.

She handed a cup to the younger son of the man with those eyes.

The child came from Somerset. Jon had brought her home in his curricle, leaving his groom to ride Jon’s horse and manage the colt. On finding out about the little girl, and learning that Jon had deposited her in the nursery and then gone straight out to search town for his older brother, Eleanor had been tempted to question the groom.

However, she wanted Jon to tell her the story.  Or Aldridge, perhaps. It was more likely to be his story than Jon’s, given the age of the child. Jon was only 19. Furthermore, it was in Somerset that a certain outrageous scandal blew up five years ago, resulting in the exile of the sons of two dukes: Aldridge to a remote Haverford estate in northern Scotland, and his accomplice overseas.

Nanny didn’t think the little girl was old enough to be a souvenir of Aldridge’s visit to the Somerset town, but her size might be a result of neglect. She had been half-starved, poor little mite. The bruises might be from falls or other childhood accidents. Nanny suspected beatings, which made Eleanor feel ill to think about.

She sat back with her own cup, and took a sip. As if it were a signal, Jon gave Aldridge another of those darting glances and spoke.

“Mama, I expect you’ve heard about Frances.”

Ah. Good. She was to be told the story. “Is that her name, Jon? Nanny didn’t know it, and little Frances isn’t talking.”

Jon nodded, and smiled. There was a sweetness to the boy that the elder never had, perhaps because he was a ducal heir from the moment of his birth. “She is a little shy, Mama.” His smile vanished and he frowned. “She has been hardly used, and for no fault of her own. I could not leave her there, Mama. You must see that.”

Eleanor arched one brow, amusement colouring her voice as she answered. “If you tell me her story, my son, we will find out.”

It was much as Eleanor already suspected, though the villain in the piece was neither of her sons. Lord Jonathan Grenford, arriving in Fickleton Wells to inspect and pay for the offspring of a horse pairing that he coveted, found that the whole town, except for the owner of the horse, gave him a cold shoulder, and no one would tell him or his groom why.

Only on the last night of his stay did he hear the story. He came back to his hotel room to find a woman waiting for him. “A gentlewoman, Mama, but with a ring on her finger, and quite old — maybe 30. I thought… well, never mind that.”

Aldridge gave a snort of laughter, either at Jon’s perspective on the woman’s age or at his assumption about her purpose.

Jon ignored him. “Anyway, I soon realised I was wrong, for there on the bed was a little girl, fast asleep. The woman said she belonged to Haverford, and I could take her. I argued, Mama, but I could see for myself she was one of us, and that was the problem. The woman’s husband had accepted Frances when she was born, but as she grew she looked more and more like her father.”

“He resented being cuckolded, I suppose,” Eleanor said, “Men do, my sons, and I trust you will remember it.”

Both boys flushed, the younger one nodding, the older inclining his head in acknowledgement, the glitter in his eyes hinting he did not at all appreciate the gentle rebuke.

“He took his frustrations out on Mrs Meecham, which she surely didn’t deserve after all this time when I daresay he has sins of his own, and on little Frances too, which was entirely unfair. Mrs Meecham said that if Frances remained as a reminder, the Meechams could never repair their marriage, and that she feared one day he would go too far and seriously hurt or even kill the baby. So I brought her home. Can we keep her, Mama?”

Eleanor looked at Aldridge, considering.

“She is not mine, if that is what you are thinking, Mama,” her eldest son told her. “She might have been, I must admit, but she was born fifteen months after I was last in Fickleton Wells. I’d been in Scotland for six months when Mrs Meecham strayed outside of her pastures again.”

Six months after the scandal, His Grace the duke had travelled back to Somerset, to pay damages to the gentlemen of Fickleton Wells who claimed that their females had been debauched. He had greatly resented being made a message-boy, and had been angry with his son and the females he had shamed for their indiscretions and beyond furious at the cuckolded gentlemen of the town for imposing on his ducal magnificence with their indignation. The mystery of Frances’s patrimony was solved.

“She is so sweet, Mama, and has been through so much. She needs tenderness and love. Don’t tell me I must give her to foster parents or an orphan asylum. I know His Grace will not be pleased, but…”

Eleanor smiled. “The problem with Fickleton Wells, Jon, as I’m sure Aldridge is aware, is that it is a Royal estate. Wales was mightily annoyed at what he saw as an offence against his dignity. He insisted on Haverford making all right.”

Jon’s shoulders slumped. He clearly thought this presaged a refusal.

Aldridge was seven years more sophisticated and had been more devious from his cradle. His eyes lit again with that wicked glint of amusement. Eleanor nodded to him. “Yes, Aldridge, precisely.”

Aldridge put down his cup. “Wales is not best pleased with His Grace at the moment. A matter of a loss at cards.”

Eleanor and her elder son grinned at one another, and her younger son perked up, looking from one to the other.

“Should one be grieved by the loss of a fostering,” Eleanor mused, “and take one’s sorrows to, let us say, a Royal princess who might be depended on to scold her brother for the behaviour of one of his favourites…” Eleanor stopped at that. Jonathan did not need the entire picture painted for him. He gazed at her, his eyes wide with awe.

“His Grace will not dare make a fuss. If His Royal Highness finds out that the very man he sent to save him from the offended citizens left a cuckoo in the nest of an esteemed leader of the community…”

“Precisely,” Aldridge agreed. “Mama, you are brilliant, as always.”

The duchess stood, leaving her cup on the table, and both boys . “Let us, then, go up to the nursery, and make sure all is well with your new baby sister.”

***

The foster-daughters of the Duchess of Haverford appear as secondary characters in the Children of the Mountain King series. The eldest, Matilda, is also to be the heroine of an associated (as yet unnamed) novella that is coming out early next year. The Fickleton Wells story was co-written with Mariana Gabrielle, and Aldridge’s co-rogue is her hero Nick Northope, later the Duke of Wellbridge and the hero of Royal Regard.

Aldridge, once he is Duke of Haverford, and Wellbridge continue to be friends and appear in Never Kiss a Toad, a co-written novel starring Sally Grenford and David Northope. We’re publishing it on Wattpad, and will be finished soon. Then back to the drafting board to lose more than half the words.