She strode through her bedchamber to her dressing closet—a rather grand room with green-figured silk wallpaper, a great many tufted settees, and fit for a far grander duchess than she, and began to rummage among the shelves.
Goodness, she’d acquired a great many new gowns, hadn’t she? Too many to wear in a lifetime. There was more than one warm cloak among them, but they were all too fine for a damp romp in the countryside.
She pushed gowns, pelisses, capes, and shawls aside, hardly knowing what she was looking for until at last she came to the end of the row, and there, tucked behind her old navy riding habit, was the worn brown cloak she’d brought from Wiltshire when she first came to London a few weeks earlier.
A few weeks. It felt as if a lifetime had passed since then.
The cloak looked shabbier now than ever, next to its newer, more costly and fashionable sisters, but it was no less beloved for all that, not to mention much more practical, the rough wool rather like the embrace of an old friend. She seized the first hat she laid her hands on—a rather flimsy straw bonnet that would do little to protect her in a downpour—and then she was off down the stairs and out the entryway door.
The main drive that led from the public road to the entrance of Montford Park would do well for a walk. It was wide and smooth, with lovely, old growth English oak trees with broad, spreading crowns that would provide ample protection from the rain.
But it felt too public, too exposed. Anyone who happened to look out one of the front windows of the house would be able to see her, and soon enough she’d have Sarah out here following her about, or Mrs. Bingham with her tea tray.
Perhaps she’d come back that way.
For now, she skirted around the side of the house where she’d noticed a beautiful walled garden when she’d returned from her visit to the stables this morning.
She might wander there alone, without encountering a servant.
A low iron gate was set into the stone wall. She pushed it open, ducked inside, and spent some time wandering along the gravel pathways. The roses were just beginning to fade, but there were plenty of pretty blue asters, and dahlias in every shade of yellow, red, and orange.
Beyond the back of the walled garden, she could just make out what looked like an extensive fruit orchard. She couldn’t tell from here whether it was pear or apple, but there was likely another gate set into the back wall.
Perhaps she’d wander out and see.
But she never made it as far as the orchard, because hidden in the back corner of the garden she found a charming little nook with a stone bench tucked inside it, shaded by the overhanging branches of an apple tree. It was a tiny, secluded little place, a secret garden hiding within the larger garden, the soothing sound of trickling water coming from a cistern built into the wall behind it.
It seemed to beckon to her, as if it had been put there for her exclusive use.
She settled herself on the bench, drawing her cloak tighter around her. The wind had picked up, and a few drops of rain from the dark clouds she’d seen earlier plopped onto the top of her straw bonnet, but she remained where she was, her mind drifting.
She hadn’t intended to think about Jasper, but he was forever there in her mind, waiting for a silent moment to drift into her conscious thoughts. This time, she didn’t try to stop him. She let her thoughts float about as they pleased, like a butterfly flitting from flower to flower.
If anyone had asked after Franny’s ball, she would have said she didn’t have any happy memories of the past few weeks, but as she sat there listening to the water flowing into the shallow cistern, she found it wasn’t true.
There were happy memories waiting there, as surely as there were sad ones.
There’d been that wager, in the billiard room at Basingstoke House. Of course, she’d lost that wager, and with it any claim she may have had to Thornewood, but there’d been more than one moment when she’d basked in Jasper’s smile, when she’d felt warmed by it, all the way down to the very depths of her heart.
And their wedding night—oh, she’d never forget it, how sweet he’d been, how tender, and even that wager over fencing at Angelo’s . . . well, of course Jasper had behaved abominably over that—very high-handed, indeed—but then dukes did tend to be so, and he’d only been trying to protect her from theton.
Rightly so, as it turned out.
But this business with Lady Archer . . . she raised her face to the sky, blinking against the raindrops falling into her eyes.
Now she was calmer, and could think rationally, it struck her that something wasn’t quite right about it. Lady Archer’s claim, when considered with a cooler head, didn’t make much sense.
Jasper hadn’t behaved at all like a man with a mistress in those ten days before Franny’s ball. Why, he’d nearly reduced her bedchamber door to kindling just to get to her!
All this, during the same time Lady Archer claimed he’d been frolicking in her bed.
Surely, if he’d been languishing in Lady Archer’s arms, she would have noticed prolonged, unexplained absences? But that hadn’t been the case. Everywhere she’d turned, Jasper was there, watching her, his gaze hungry, the corners of his lips twitching in that wicked grin.
As for the accusation she’d made about Prue’s innocence, while she couldn’t imagine how the woman could know such intimate details about her marriage bed, wasn’t it possible there was some other explanation for it other than Jasper having told her?
He’d sworn to her Lady Archer was lying. He’d begged her to listen to him, to believe him, and now, thinking back, she recognized that his words had had the ring of truth to them. Couldn’t she simply choose to believe him, regardless of whether there was an explanation? Could it be as easy as simply choosing to trust her husband?
Oh, she didn’t know!
