Beyond the Duke's Domain: Ducal Encounters Series 4 Book 4 Read online

  Ducal Encounters Series Four

  Beyond the Duke’s Domain

  Wendy Soliman

  Ducal Encounters Series 4 Book 4

  Beyond the Duke’s Domain

  Edited by Perry Iles

  Cover Design by Clockwork Art

  Copyright © Wendy Soliman 2020

  This e-Book is a work of fiction. While references may be made to actual places or events, the names, characters, incidents, and locations contained are from the author’s imagination and are not a resemblance of actual living or dead persons, business, or events. Any similarities are coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any method, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise without the prior written permission of

  The Author – Wendy Soliman

  This book is licensed to the original purchaser only. Duplication or distribution via any means is illegal and a violation of International Copyright Law, subject to criminal prosecution and upon conviction fines and/or imprisonment. The e-Book cannot be legally loaned or given to others. No part of this e-Book can be shared or reproduced without the express permission of the author.

  Chapter One

  Winchester Park, Summer 1827

  ‘I can see that the waiting has begun to wear on your nerves.’ Lucy Boyd spared a sympathetic glance for her friend Ariana Sanchez-Gomez. ‘I know it’s easy for me to say, but watching the drive the entire time will do nothing to hasten your brother’s arrival. We would be better advised to find something to do to take your mind off things.’

  ‘Has he come yet? Well, of course he has not, otherwise you would not be sitting here…’

  Both ladies looked up from their seats on the terrace at Winchester Park, the palatial home of the Duke of Winchester, to smile at Martina, Ariana’s sister. Martina, until her forthcoming marriage to Jared Braden, continued at her own insistence to care for Lord and Lady Vincent Sheridan’s children at Stoneleigh Manor, the estate adjoining Winchester Park. She had walked over, as she did on a daily basis, to wait with her sister to be reunited with their brother, whom they had not seen for several years and had assumed must be dead.

  Lucy had taken it upon herself to bear the sisters company on their daily vigil. Their excitement was palpable—understandably so since they had been lucky to escape from the turmoil in their native Spain and the disruption and uncertainty that had continued long after Napoleon’s rampage. Ariana had shielded Martina from the worst of their ordeal and Lucy was unsure if the younger sister understood to this day just how lucky they had been to come through relatively unscathed—physically at least.

  Lucy imagined that the mental scars must run deep, particularly for Ariana. Despite their growing friendship Ariana had not to this day told Lucy the full extent of the obstacles she had overcome in a determined show of strength to protect her sister. It was a testament, Lucy often thought, to the resilience of the human spirit.

  Now, finally, the girls’ fortunes had changed, and Lucy felt that both sisters deserved her support on this most auspicious of occasions. Besides, she had heard much about the brave and dashing Raphael, and was curious to meet him.

  Lucy knew how it felt to be torn away from family connections. Her own father had deserted her and her older sister Petra, leaving them to an uncertain future. Not that she and Petra had been obliged to suffer the indignities and uncertainties that had beset Ariana and Martina—their circumstances bore little similarity—but an affinity based on shared experience had developed between them.

  ‘No, not yet,’ Ariana replied to Martina’s enquiry, tapping her fingers restlessly against her knee.

  ‘We know he was in London as recently as a week ago. I expect he has reports to make at Whitehall given that he has continued to do the covert work he excels at for his government,’ Lucy said, adjusting the tilt of her parasol as the sun moved higher into the sky. Being fair skinned, the slightest exposure to direct sunlight caused her to freckle. It was most unfair. ‘I dare say Lord Romsey will know something about it,’ she added, referring to the duke’s sister’s husband, who held an important diplomatic post there.

  ‘I fail to see why he should have to speak to anyone at Whitehall,’ Martina muttered. ‘After all, he works for the Spanish government, not the English. I know we are supposed to be on the same side, but even so…’

  ‘You are impatient because you cannot wait to be married to your Mr Braden,’ Ariana said, squeezing her sister’s hand. ‘And you would have been by now, had you not decided to put off your nuptials once you heard that Raphael still lived.’ Ariana threw back her head and sighed. ‘If he still lives. I shall not believe it until I have seen him with my own eyes.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t mind about that the delay to the wedding.’ Martina giggled. ‘Well, actually I do. I am very anxious to discover what… However, Jared is most understanding. He accepts that I will not feel properly married if Raphael is not there to walk me down the aisle. But if he does not arrive soon, I shall lose all patience and think again. After all, Lord Amos has offered to give me away.’

  ‘He probably cannot wait to be rid of you,’ Lucy said with a mischievous smile. ‘Then Ariana will have to cede responsibility for your welfare to Mr Braden, leaving Lord Amos with Ariana’s undivided attention.’ She waggled her brows suggestively. ‘And who knows where that might lead…’

  Ariana let out an impatient sigh. ‘You have a vivid imagination, Lucy. I help to look after Lord Amos’s poor motherless children, nothing more. It is the least I can do to repay him for saving our lives.’

  Lucy and Martina exchanged a complicit look.

  ‘Of course that is all there is to it,’ Lucy said for them both.

  ‘Oh, you two!’

  Lucy’s unrepentant smile widened. ‘Well, you have to admit that he has a certain way of looking at you as though he is resisting the urge to devour you whole, for which one can’t blame him. You are far too beautiful for your own good, and I still cannot decide why you are not engaged to be married too. The only conclusion I have been able to come up with is that you are waiting for Lord Amos to propose.’

  ‘Lord Amos is still grieving the loss of his wife, and no one will ever take her place in his affections,’ Ariana said, glancing away from Lucy. ‘Besides, why would I marry and find myself having to put up with a man telling me what to do and expecting me to do it?’ She threw up her hands as if the very idea was ludicrous. Lucy conceded that in Ariana’s case it very likely seemed that way. After all she had endured, the obstacles she had overcome that would have defeated most men, she had earned the right to be her own mistress. ‘Anyway, I have no interest in matrimony.’

  ‘A gentleman can be brought to heel easily enough if the lady who holds his affections goes about it in the right way,’ Lucy replied. ‘I have seen the way that Petra runs rings around Cal—who you must admit is ordinarily formidable. Be that as it may, Petra can get him to do absolutely anything.’

  All three girls glanced in the direction of a distant paddock where Cal Harrison—who ran the Duke of Winchester’s stud farm under the auspices of his friend and the duke’s brother, the aforementioned Lord Amos—was schooling a near-wild horse with patience and an indomitable will. Cal had incurred a debilitating injury to his right leg at Waterloo, which left him walking with a limp. But he could make any horse dance to his tune in a manner that even Lord Amos, a highly proficient horseman in his own right, was unable to replicate. The girls watched with admiration as Cal fought a battle of wills with a horse that fail
ed to unseat him, gradually ceding to his calm authority.

  ‘True, I suppose,’ Martina conceded. ‘But Petra manages it by not making allowances for Mr Harrison’s disability, and—’

  ‘And using her feminine wiles to get her own way,’ Lucy finished. ‘I have observed her do it time and again. Besides, she has already borne him a son and a daughter and they are totally besotted parents. Sometimes I feel as though I am in the way at Hayward House for all the time they can spare away from each other and their babies. Not that I am complaining, you understand,’ Lucy added, with a mischievous grin, ‘although it probably sounds as though I am.’

  ‘The resolution to that difficulty is within your grasp, Lucy,’ Ariana replied with asperity. ‘Simply find yourself a husband. It will not be a difficult ambition for you to achieve if you set your heart on it. I have seen the way many of the single gentlemen who dine here look at you, and I cannot blame them for it. You are very pretty and well situated, which I am told is an important consideration when it comes to the complexities of the marriage mart.’

  ‘My father certainly left me financially independent, which is about the only point in his favour as far as Petra and I are concerned. We would both have preferred to secure his affection,’ Lucy said bitterly, ‘but it transpires that he had none to spare for his own daughters. We are a disappointment to him simply because we are not boys, which is hardly our fault.’

  ‘I do not like the sound of your father,’ Ariana said, wrinkling her pert nose disdainfully and expressing her view in a forthright manner that Lucy found refreshing. ‘It seems to me that you are better off without him.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Lucy agreed. ‘Anyway, I will not marry a man who is attracted to me for my fortune.’ She sighed. ‘That is the downside of being surrounded by marital bliss at every turn. Cal and Petra still behave like newlyweds, the duke and duchess are just as bad, as are Lord and Lady Vincent…’ Lucy pouted. ‘The list is endless. It is grossly unfair.’

  Ariana and Martina nodded in unison.

  ‘True,’ Martina said, ‘and much as it grieves me to disappoint you, Lucy, Jared and I fully intend to follow their example.’

  ‘I shall have something to say on the matter if his affections wane and he disappoints you,’ Ariana said, the light of battle flashing in the depths of her lovely green eyes.

  ‘Your protective duties are at an end,’ Martina replied, squeezing her sister’s hand gently. ‘Jared is my soulmate. I knew it almost as soon as we were introduced.’

  ‘Is that possible?’ Lucy asked curiously.

  ‘Oh yes.’ Martina nodded emphatically. ‘Ask your sister, or Lady Vincent, if you doubt my word.’

  ‘In that case, I am envious and doubly determined not to consider matrimony until such time as a gentleman comes along who stirs my passions, or whatever it is that the discovery of one’s soulmate is supposed to stir,’ Lucy said. ‘How shall I know when I meet that person?’

  ‘You will know,’ Martina assured her with all the authority of a nineteen-year-old expert on the subject.

  Lucy and Ariana turned their combined attention towards Martina, seeking further clarification on the point.

  ‘Oh no!’ Martina laughed and shook her head. ‘I will not deprive either of you of the pleasure of finding out for yourselves, even though I suspect that Ariana already has a fair idea.’

  ‘You mistake the matter, my love. Just because you want something to be so, it doesn’t necessarily follow that it will be,’ Ariana said.

  Lucy wondered at the ambiguity of the statement but didn’t seek clarification. ‘Well for my part,’ she said, sighing, ‘I am resigned to a very long wait.’

  ‘A long wait for what?’ the duchess asked, smiling as she joined them on the terrace. ‘It is only two more days until your birthday, Lucy, which is not so very long.’

  ‘We were discussing affairs of the heart, your grace, which is a subject that I believe is supposed to occupy the minds of young women to the exclusion of all else.’

  ‘Which would explain the fact that you were engaged in such intense conversation,’ the duchess replied, smiling. ‘I have been watching you from the window.’

  Frankie Sheridan took a chair, her movements unconsciously elegant, and smiled her understanding. She was fifteen years or so older than Lucy and a mother four times over, yet Lucy suspected that her beauty had barely waned over the years. A few fine lines around her eyes when she smiled were the only indication that she was no longer in the first flush of youth.

  She was one of those rare people, Lucy had long since decided, whose disposition matched her lovely appearance. Being a great beauty and a duchess had not made her feel the need to put on airs. She was quite simply one of the kindest, most compassionate people of Lucy’s acquaintance. A lady whom she had looked up to and admired since being made to feel welcome when she first set foot onto this dauntingly impressive estate at the tender age of fifteen.

  ‘May I ask which gentleman has engaged your interest?’ the duchess asked.

  ‘We were speaking hypothetically, if that is the right word to use.’ The duchess smiled and nodded. They were all accustomed to Ariana’s determination to improve her near faultless English, which she delivered in an exotic, lilting accent. ‘Lucy insists that she will not marry until she finds a man who stirs her passions,’ Ariana explained with an elaborate eye-roll, ‘and we were attempting to explain to her how she will know when it happens.’

  ‘Oh, she will know,’ the duchess replied playfully.

  ‘You are partly to blame for my decision not to marry until that situation arises, your grace,’ Lucy added, biting her lip to prevent a smile from escaping. If she allowed herself to think about it, she would feel daunted by the fact that she was sitting in this lovely garden, speaking to a duchess on equal terms and having her opinion listened to. ‘You and all the duke’s family are so very happily married that I am quite determined not to settle for anything less.’

  ‘I think that very wise of you,’ the duchess replied. ‘If one has to marry at all, it might as well be for love.’

  ‘Which, unlike me, Lucy can do,’ Ariana said in a practical tone. ‘She has plenty of money, which affords her the luxury of pleasing herself. I, on the other hand…’

  ‘We do not know that, dearest. Everything we left behind in Spain may not be gone,’ Martina said on a note of anxiety. ‘Raphael, when he gets here, if he ever does, will be able to tell us, I am absolutely sure of it.’

  ‘You don’t have anything to worry about either way, Ariana,’ the duchess replied. ‘You are exquisitely beautiful and already have half the young men in the county pining for the privilege of your smile.’

  Ariana laughed. ‘Hardly.’

  ‘Well, Lord Amos’s children will be very pleased if you defer marriage indefinitely,’ Lucy said. ‘They adore you and depend upon you so much.’

  ‘Speaking of whom,’ the duchess said, ‘the children will be down momentarily. Perhaps we should order tea now, and enjoy it before our peace is disturbed.’

  Lucy knew that the duchess was a devoted mother who wouldn’t mind the chaotic presence of her children in the least. She was tormented by the thought of her eldest son, the duke’s heir, being sent away to school in just over a year’s time. Seven seemed so very young to leave everything familiar behind, Lucy privately agreed, but it was the accepted way with the sons of the aristocracy. Leo would be disadvantaged in later life if he didn’t follow the same path, forging friendships and connections that would last his lifetime.

  The duchess rang the bell and Faraday, the Park’s butler, responded to the summons with stately alacrity, no doubt having anticipated the requirement for tea—a request that the duchess politely made, asking for rather than ordering it to be served on the terrace.

  ‘Petra has gone to call on Mia,’ her grace said, referring to her niece, now Mrs Adler, married to the duke’s emissary, ‘but they will both be here shortly. As will Nia,’ she added, looking up an
d smiling as Lord and Lady Vincent came into view with their three children in tow. James, the youngest, rode on his father’s shoulders. The infants squealed when they saw Martina, and Bethany, an inquisitive five-year-old, ran up to her with a barrage of questions.

  ‘Let Martina be,’ Lady Vince said, smiling an apology. ‘It is her afternoon off and she has quite enough of you three the rest of the time.’

  ‘But, Mama, Martina will want to play with us,’ Patrick said, making it sound like the most logical request in the universe.

  ‘You two should consider taking your time off elsewhere if you require a respite,’ the duchess said, smiling.

  ‘Normally we would,’ Ariana replied, ‘but these are not ordinary circumstances.’

  ‘Ah, of course, your brother is due to arrive,’ Lady Vince said, taking a chair. ‘No sign of him yet?’

  ‘That wretched boy is trying my patience,’ Ariana said, scowling in the direction of the driveway.

  Lucy bit her lip, aware that the boy in question was several years Ariana’s senior. Yet the horrors of war, which had forced her to witness her mother being raped and both of her parents murdered when she was but a child herself, had required Ariana to grow up overnight. She’d had the presence of mind to hide herself and her sister away, helpless to intervene as she concentrated upon protecting Martina from the distressing sight.

  The duke and Lord Amos joined them at that point, as did Mia, the duchess’s niece, and Petra too. Lucy noticed Ariana’s glance go immediately to Lord Amos, who smiled and held her gaze for a protracted moment. Lucy stifled a sigh. Lord Amos was as ruggedly handsome as his brother the duke, but there was an air of tragedy about him. He had changed in many subtle ways since the premature death of his wife, which was hardly to be wondered at.

  His had been yet another love match, and Lucy wondered whether he would ever dare to completely open his heart again, even though it must be obvious to anyone seeing them together that Ariana’s presence at the Park had provided him with a reason to live. Lucy’s soft heart quailed at the possibility of two damaged people never trusting their instincts and taking a chance on finding happiness. Lord Amos’s heart was probably too scarred to risk it, and Ariana had her own demons to conquer. Lucy clung to the belief that Raphael’s arrival would eventually convince Ariana to leave the past behind and concentrate on living.