The Duchess of Haverford took tea in her rooms this quiet Monday afternoon. She was alone for once; even the maid who brought the tray sent off back to the servants’ hall. Her life was such a bustle, and for the most part, that was how she liked it, but just for once, it was nice to have an afternoon to herself. No meetings. No entertainments to attend or offer. Not even any family members–her current companion had gone to visit her mother for her afternoon off, Aldridge was about his own business, Frances was at lessons, and Jessica and Matilda had been invited on an outing with Felicity Belvoir.

As to Haverford, who knew where he was? But he would not disturb her here. He had not come to her rooms since Jonathan had brought Frances to join her nursery–the little girl a greater gift than her son could ever know. The scandal of the child’s existence was a secret Haverford needed to keep from his royal cousins, and she had been able to use her knowledge of that secret to secure her wards’ future under Haverford’s reluctant and anonymous protection, and her own freedom from his intimate attentions.

It had been an unpleasant negotiation, determined on her part and rancorous on his–not that he much wanted his aging wife, but he resented having his will forced. In return for his agreement, she had promised to continue as his political hostess, and to maintain the myth of a perfect Society marriage.

Why was she spoiling a perfectly good afternoon thinking about His Grace? She came up here to explore quite different memories.

Putting down her tea, she fetched the little box of keepsakes from the back of a cupboard. The fan her long dead brother had given her before her first ball. A small bundle of musical scores, that recalled pleasant evenings in her all too brief Season. Aldridge’s cloth rabbit. She had retrieved it when Haverford had ordered it destroyed, saying his son was a future duke and should not be coddled. Aldridge had been eight months’ old. A pair of Jonathan’s bootees. She had knitted them with her own hands, and there had been a cap to match. A rose, faded and dry, that she had pulled from a bouquet James had sent her, to wear in her hair. It still bore a faint scent of the perfume he had delighted in as they danced that night.

And the letter. It was one of several she had kept; most of them brief notes about nothing in particular. ‘I saw these and thought of you’, on a card with a bouquet of sweet spring flowers. ‘Save me a dance at the Mitford’s tonight?’ ‘I saw you in the Park. You rode like a goddess.’ They did not have to be signed. They were all from James, and short because they had to be passed to her in secret. “I’m not throwing you away on a third son, Eleanor Creydon. Winderfield is a fribble; a useless pup. Haverford wants you, and I’ve accepted him.”

James was back in England, a widower, father of six sons, heir to a dying duke. “Take that, Father,” Eleanor thought. “The third son will be duke, and his sons after him.”

He had attended the ball she was at the night before last. Eleanor had looked up when the room fell silent, and there he stood on the stairs, surrounded by members of his family, whom she barely noticed. James looked wonderful. More than thirty years had passed, and no person on earth would call him a fribble or useless now. He had been a king somewhere in Central Asia, and wore his authority like an invisible garment. And he was still as handsome as he had been in his twenties.

She caught herself sighing over the man like a silly gosling. She was a married woman, and he was a virtuous man who had, by all accounts, deeply loved his wife. Besides, women did not age as well as men, as the whole world knew. She no longer had the slender waist of a maiden, her hair was beginning to grey, and her face showed the lines her mother swore she would avoid if she never smiled, laughed, frowned, or showed any other emotion. Of course, she had not followed her mother’s instruction, but those who had were no less lined than Eleanor, as far as she could see.

Gads! She was prevaricating. She had come here to reread James’s last letter; the one that had broken her heart; the one she had ignored, leaving her to a lifetime of regret.

Stealing herself, she opened it.

My dearest, dearest love

My father is in it, too. He says that Haverford is to have you, as soon as he has recovered from his wounds.

I wish I had never challenged the duke, or that I had shot to kill. I meant only to defend your honour; to show he could not speak of you as if you were his possession. Even a husband should hesitate to show such disrepect to the woman he has promised to cherish above all others, and so I told him. ‘You are not even her betrothed,’ I told him, ‘and the last man on earth to deserve her’. I am very sorry, Eleanor. I lost my temper, when I should have been thinking of the best way to press my case with your father.

Now, the devil is in it, my father insists that I must flee the country. He says Haverford will have me arrested for shooting him, and Father won’t lift a finger to stop him.

Come with me, Eleanor. I promise I can look after you. The ship my father has organised leaves in two days, but I have a friend who can get me away tomorrow night. I promise I can look after you. I’ve sold the little estate my mother left me, so I have funds. We will go to the Continent. I can find work, I know I can, and we will be together. I know it won’t be what you are used to or what you deserve, but I love you, and you love me. Is that not worth fleeing for?

Meet me by the oak near the back gate of your garden as soon as the house is quiet tomorrow evening. I will be there from 8 of the evening and will wait until 2 hours after midnight. We have to be on the ship in time to sail with the dawn, and by the time your household wakes, we shall be gone down the river, and out to sea.

Come with me, my love.

Yours forever

James