“Honestly, it’s something of a comfort to sit here and remember her,” he explained.
The Duke walked the room, fondly inspecting his mother’s favorite books, which remained on the bedside table a year after she’d last placed them upon its polished surface.He touched the late Duchess’s pretty Dresden treasures in a glass-fronted cupboard.He admired the clusters of framed photographs and miniatures upon the mantel.
“Mama was a popular hostess, even as a young woman.My parents were always giving parties and having friends stay on.”He turned to her and smiled.“We were a jolly bunch, as you can well imagine.She had a particularly dear friend called Cecile…”
His Grace plucked up an oval-framed miniature portrait and offered it to Aurelia, explaining, “I was too young to remember her face, as I was only five or six years old when last I saw her, but I’ve recalled her likeness on the mantelpiece.You see, my mother kept it here, in pride of place, for over twenty years.”
Aurelia took the small portrait in her palm and studied it in the lamplight.It showed a pretty lady, her plump cheeks brimming with youth and vitality.Her red-gold hair hung in loops and plaits about her ears in an old-fashioned style that must have been all the rage back then.
Smiling, she handed it back to the Duke.“Cecile seems lovely.I am glad your mother enjoyed such a friendship—it speaks well of them both, I’m sure.”
Yet he wouldn’t take the miniature from her.“Don’t you see, Aurelia?Can you not recognize the resemblance?Cecile Hartley was Lady Mathieson.She wasn’t only Mama’s dearest friend,” he told her.“She was your mother.”
Aurelia’s knees went as weak as gelatin.Clutching the little oval portrait to her breast, she collapsed on the hearth rug in a billow of silver and gold brocade skirts.“My mother?”
He sank before her, holding her tightly as she caught her breath.“I was so close to the truth, yet I hadn’t quite put two and two together until we met Lord Mathieson at the Embankment,” he said, hugging her shoulders.“I believe my mother hoped to shelter Cecile from Lord Mathieson, and perhaps that was why she was discovered on the Great North Road with a runaway coachman.I suspect my parents intended to meet her in York and to quietly bring her to Brantingham—though I don’t know the truth of the circumstances, as I never dared to ask Mama what happened to her friend.Yet, she never forgot Cecile, and she never forgave Mathieson for his callous treatment of her.”
She heard his story as though she were listening through a tunnel.Everything felt black, and distant, and echoey in her mind.She clung to her mother’s likeness until her knuckles ached.She blinked up into the Duke’s face and realized he was still speaking.
“Had Cecile survived,” he said, “we all would’ve been childhood playfellows.You would have grown up in the nursery alongside Margie and Fannie, and rambled the Yorkshire wolds with Perry and me.You would’ve had a home, a family, and a respectable place in the world, for Mathieson must have claimed you.You would not have been hidden away or abandoned.You would havebelongedwith us Charltons.”
Aurelia smiled weakly.“I would’ve belonged.”
His Grace kissed her temple and held her closely.He enfolded her in his arms, though he was stripped down to his shirtsleeves in the chilly room.She leaned back against his firm, warm chest, taking comfort in his solidity.
“If you stay on through the New Year,” he said, lightly, “I shall take you to meet your maternal grandparents, Lord and Lady Strensham.They will be ecstatic to know you exist, for like everyone else, they must’ve been told that you had died.”
“I have grandparents!”What a cheering thought!
“Yes, and they are charming people.They’ll love you and welcome you, and will claim you as their kin despite whatever Mathieson has to say about it.Your family resemblance is unmistakable.”
“But there will always be folk who whisper that I’m the coachman’s daughter…”
He grimaced.“To hell with them.”
Aurelia was glad to have such a staunch friend and ally.Soon she would have a family of her own relations, people who looked and possibly felt like her.
“I, for one, don’t care whether Mathieson acknowledges you,” he vowed, reverently touching the miniature portrait in her hands.“Thisis your lineage.You are your mother’s daughter, Aurelia, and she lives on in you.”
“I traveled to London believing that my life would turn out like a fairy tale,” she said, “but the harsh reality soon set in.Men like you don’t marry girls like me.Even if you don’t care where I come from, you’d never be able to show your face in society, where birth and connections mean everything.”
The Duke turned her in his arms to gaze deeply into her eyes.Warmth and light andloveshone in those brown depths, as he said, “I wager I could weather the storm.”He kissed her forehead, her powdered nose, her trembling lips.At last, he asked, “Won’t you do me the very great honor of becoming my wife, Aurelia?”
***
He feared he’d blundered by proposing, for she stiffened in his embrace.Selwyn had brought Miss Goldsworthy to his mother’s bedchamber, a place that had always conjured up fond memories of nibbling from Mama’s breakfast tray as a lad while the entire Charlton clan crawled onto the covers for snuggles and kisses.
He had told Aurelia everything he knew about her origins so that she might come to him on an equal footing, for she was a relation of the Hartleys, Strenshams, and the Mathiesons—all noble families of the English upper class, as old and as grand as his own illustrious forebears.
Yet Selwyn didn’t give a fig about whether Mathieson claimed her as his child.Truthfully, he’d rather the fellow wash his hands of her, as Selwyn would pummel anyone who caused Aurelia pain or shame, and no happiness could come from that blackguard.
“Your parentage doesn’t matter to me,” he said.“You stand on your own, regardless of the man who sired you or the man you marry—youtaught me that, Aurelia.You showed me my ignorance and exposed me for being a snob, and I deserved every word of that dressing down.
“I hope you can see past my role as the Duke of Brantingham,” he continued, “and recognize the man within, for I, too, am more than my parents’ son.I’m a country gentleman at heart, happier in the hills and dales, and farmlands along the Humber.I have experienced enough of life and death to understand what matters in the end.I love and respect my family, as I shall love and respect you, if you would only let me.”
Miss Goldsworthy sat stunned and silent as he spoke.Indeed, he’d told her many things tonight when he ought to shut his mouth and open his ears.She had a voice, a will, and a heart of her own, and it was time she expressed them.
“Do forgive my ramblings, darling,” he said while she gazed at him as if in a trance.He gave her a gentle jostling, pleading, “Tell me, Aurelia, what do you want?”
