One Perfect Rose Read online

  He went to the window and gazed out over the vast, rolling acres of Ashburton Abbey. The small lake shimmered like a silver mirror. He could not remember ever being told that someday the abbey would be his; the knowledge had always been part of him. The greatest satisfactions of his life had come from this land.

  If Blackmer was right, soon his younger brother, Michael, would be the master of the estate. Stephen had long accepted that his brother or his brother’s son would probably be the next duke, but he had thought that would be years in the future. Decades.

  His brother would make a just and capable duke because he also knew his duty. But Michael hated Ashburton Abbey. Always had. Given what he had suffered here as the family scapegoat, Stephen couldn’t blame him, but it meant that Michael would surely continue to live at his much loved Welsh estate. The abbey would be silent and empty, waiting for some future generation to take pleasure in the ancient stones, in the magnificent great hall and the peaceful cloister garden.

  His anger again erupted into rage. All of his life, Stephen had done his duty, striving to master his responsibilities, to be worthy of his position. He had excelled in both athletics and academics at Harrow and Cambridge. He had consciously tempered the arrogance his father considered suitable to a Kenyon, for his own belief was that a true gentleman had no need of arrogance or boasting. He had treated his wife with consideration and respect, never reproaching her for what she was incapable of giving.

  He had always played by the rules—and for what? For what?

  Violently he swept his arm across a graceful side table, sending china ornaments and fresh flowers crashing to the floor. He had lived the life ordained for him, and it had been no life at all. Now that he was finally in a position to reach for a richer existence, his time had run out. It wasn’t fair. It bloody wasn’t fair.

  With the long wars over, he’d been planning to travel, to see Vienna and Florence and Greece. He had wanted to do foolish things for no other reason than because they gave him pleasure. He’d wanted to learn if he was capable of passion, and perhaps take another wife who would be a companion instead of merely a perfect duchess.

  He swung about, half suffocated by his anger. Though he had no intention of discussing his condition, such news would not stay secret for long. Soon there would be curiosity in people’s eyes as they studied him, wondering how much longer he would last. Worse, there would be pity. His neighbors would whisper when he entered a room. His valet, Hubble, would go around with tears in his eyes, making a bad situation worse.

  For the first time in his life, Stephen yearned to escape Ashburton Abbey and everything it represented. He paced across the room. Though he was surrounded by people, there was no one to whom he could unburden his soul. At Ashburton he was “the duke,” always calm and detached. But now he felt a desperate desire to be someplace where he was a stranger while he came to terms with Blackmer’s crushing diagnosis. He wanted to be anonymous and free, even if it was only for a few weeks.

  Well, why not? He stopped pacing and thought about it. Nothing was stopping him from leaving. He could go anywhere he chose, at any speed he wished. He could stop at village fairs and admire the pretty girls. Stay at inns that his servants would consider beneath their dignity. And August was a lovely time to ride through England.

  This might be his last summer.

  Gut twisting, he went into his bedroom and jerked open a drawer, yanking out a couple of changes of linen. Since he would go on horseback, he must travel light. How did ordinary people get their laundry done? It would be interesting to find out.

  The door opened and his valet entered. “I heard something break, Your Grace.” Hubble halted, his eyes widening at the disarray. “Your Grace?”

  Stephen straightened from the pile accumulating on the bed. Since Hubble was here, he might as well be put to work. Stephen could be on his way that much sooner. “I’m going on holiday,” he said with private irony. “Pack my saddlebags.”

  Hubble regarded the clothing doubtfully. “Yes, sir. Where are we going?”

  “We are not going anywhere. I am going alone.” Stephen added a well-worn volume of his favorite Shakespeare to the growing pile.

  The valet looked baffled. He was a competent and good-natured man, but he’d never understood Stephen’s antic streak. “But who will take care of your clothing, sir?”

  “I guess I’ll have to do it myself.” Stephen unlocked a desk drawer and took out a fistful of money, enough for several weeks. “It will be quite educational.”

  Hubble visibly winced at the thought of how badly his master would be turned out. Forestalling the inevitable protest, Stephen said sharply, “No arguments, no comments. Just pack the blasted saddlebags.”

  The valet swallowed. “Very good, sir. What sort of clothing will you require?”

  Stephen shrugged. “Keep it simple. I don’t intend to go to any grand balls.” He lifted his gold card case from his desk drawer, then dropped it in again. Since he wouldn’t be traveling as the Duke of Ashburton; there was no need for calling cards.

  Then he sat down and wrote brief notes to his secretary and steward, telling them to proceed as usual. He considered writing his brother and sister but decided against it. There would be time enough for that later.

  As the duke wrote, Hubble packed the saddlebags. When he finished, he asked in a subdued voice, “Where shall I send urgent messages, Your Grace?”

  Stephen scaled the last note. “Nowhere. I don’t want to receive any messages.”

  “But, sir…” Hubble started to protest, then quieted when his master gave him a gimlet stare. He settled for saying, “How long will you be gone, Your Grace?”

  “I have no idea,” Stephen said tersely. “I’ll come back when I’m ready, and not a moment before.”

  Beginning to look frantic, Hubble said, “Sir, you can’t just run off like this!”

  “I’m the most noble Duke of Ashburton,” Stephen said, a bitter edge on his voice. “I can do any damned thing I want.” Except live.

  He slid his arm under the bulging saddlebags and lifted them before remembering something else that must go. There was just enough room to add Blackmer’s jar of pills.

  Then he spun on his heel and headed for the door. He didn’t know how much time he had left, but he intended to enjoy every minute of it.

  Chapter 2

  “Rose!” Maria Fitzgerald cried. “My left wing is falling off!”

  “Just a moment, Mama,” Rosalind replied. Swiftly she pinned the end of a long swath of shimmering blue-gray fabric onto the rough boards of the barn wall. The generous folds of material had done duty as royal hangings and misty seas, and they made quite a decent magical cave. She attached the other end of the fabric twenty feet away, studied the effect, then went to help her mother.

  The barn was bustling as the Fitzgerald Theater Troupe prepared for the performance that would begin in a few minutes. Even though they were staging The Tempest in an isolated market town and half the people in the cast weren’t really actors, the members of the company took their work seriously.

  Sure enough, one of Maria’s silvery wings was drooping. Rosalind retrieved needle and thread from her kit, then ordered, “Turn around.”

  Obediently her mother pivoted so Rosalind could make repairs. Maria Fitzgerald’s lush womanly curves were not what Shakespeare had in mind when he described the delicate sprite Ariel. However, the gauzy, floating layers of her costume would win approval from male members of the audience, and her acting skill allowed her to make any role her own.

  Rosalind anchored the sagging wing to her mother’s bodice with a dozen swift stitches. “There you are, as good as new. Just don’t go flying into any trees.”

  While her mother chuckled, a clear soprano voice wailed, “Rose, I need you most desperately! I can’t find Miranda’s necklace.”

  Rosalind rolled her eyes as she responded to her younger sister’s plea. Jessica, a blood-and-bone daughter of Thomas and Maria Fitzgera
ld, had inherited her parents’ beauty and expressive nature. Her dark lashes sweeping upward, she said dramatically, “If I don’t have my glittering sea creatures around my neck, everyone will watch Edmund instead of me. It will quite upset the balance of the play.”

  Rosalind made a rude noise. “You know very well that the men who aren’t staring at Mama will be staring at you. As to your necklace, I think it’s in that box.”

  Jessica dug into the chest that doubled as furniture in Prospero’s sea cave. A moment later she pulled out a nine-foot-long silken rope with gilded shells, starfish, and sea horses dangling from it. “Yes! How do you keep everything straight?”

  “Organizational skill is the boring gift of the untalented,” Rosalind said as she draped the long rope of ornaments around her sister’s slim figure.

  Jessica laughed. “Nonsense. You’ve all sorts of talents. The company would fall apart without you.” She surveyed her sister’s tall form. “And if it weren’t for that awful costume, the men would stare at you as well.”

  “I can live without that pleasure.” Rosalind pinned the trailing necklace to her sister’s costume. It wouldn’t do for her to trip over a dangling starfish, as she had that time in Leominster. She’d fallen right into the mayor’s lap, not that he’d minded. “Besides, I rather like my awful costume. You must admit that Caliban is a perfect role for me. Very little acting required.”

  Jessica looked stricken. Since acting was her life, she had never really grasped that her adoptive sister didn’t feel the same way. “You’re quite a good actress,” she said loyally. “You do well at all sorts of roles.”

  “Meaning that I speak my lines clearly and don’t fall over my feet on the stage,” Rosalind said cheerfully. “That doesn’t make me an actress, love.”

  “Rosalind!” A rich baritone voice boomed across the barn, sending pigeons flapping from the rafters. “Help me with the lights.”

  “Coming, Papa.” She crossed the improvised stage to where Thomas Fitzgerald, in full magician’s robes for his role as Prospero, was setting the footlights. Gingerly she lifted one of the reflectored oil lamps and set it a foot to the left, then moved another a bit farther to the right. “There, that should light the corners better.”

  “Right as always, darlin’,” Thomas said with a fond smile. He gestured toward the door. “Brian says there’s a good crowd gathering outside.”

  “Of course—we’re the most exciting thing to happen in Fletchfield this summer.”

  As her father moved away, Rosalind scanned the straw-strewn stage. The simple set was decorated, all the actors costumed. Outside Calvin was selling tickets in a staccato cockney voice. All was in order for the performance.

  How many such scenes had she surveyed-hundreds? Thousands? She suppressed a sigh. She had spent most of her life in similar places, creating evenings of magic for the entertainment of the locals before packing up and moving on to the next town. Perhaps at twenty-eight she was getting too old for the life, though age hadn’t dimmed the zeal of her adoptive parents. But they were actors. Rosalind Jordan, foundling, widow, and de facto stage manager, was not. Sometimes she thought wistfully of how nice it would be to have a home to call her own.

  But everyone she loved was under this roof, and that made up for the more tiresome aspects of life on the road. She raised her voice and called, “Places, please.”

  The members of the cast darted behind the flimsy panels that acted as stage wings. When Rosalind had taken her own place, she signaled to her young brother, Brian, to open the doors and admit the waiting audience.

  Let the magic begin.

  Day Eighty-three

  A week of aimless traveling had taken the edge off Stephen’s first furious reaction to the news of his impending demise. His mood had ranged from anger to fear to a fervent hope that Blackmer was wrong, though two agonizing attacks of gastric pain made the diagnosis seem increasingly plausible. Luckily both seizures had been at night, in the privacy of a rented room. He hoped to God that he wouldn’t have one in public, though it would probably happen sooner or later. He tried not to think about that.

  With bitter humor he had decided to count down the days of his life. Assuming that he would have at least three months, he’d started the count at ninety. He would go down to zero. Then, if he still lived, he would begin counting up because every day after that would be a bonus.

  With doom’s own clock ticking in the back of his head, he had wandered north from Ashburton Abbey through the Marches, the ancient borderlands where the Welsh and English had skirmished for centuries. When he crossed the old Roman road that ran west into Wales along the southern coast, he had reined in his horse and considered going to visit his brother. Michael had been a soldier, and had more than his share of firsthand knowledge of how to face inevitable death.

  But Stephen was not yet ready to reveal his grim news to his brother. Perhaps it was because he was the elder. Though they’d become friends in the last year and a half, he did not want to go to Michael as a fearful supplicant. Which proved, he supposed, that he might have renounced arrogance but pride was still very much a part of him.

  His pace leisurely, he had continued north into Herefordshire, then angled east, enjoying the scents and sights of late summer. It had been interesting to book rooms at inns for himself, to negotiate the cost of a bed or a meal. As a gentleman he was always treated politely, but without the awed deference that was usual. He enjoyed the change. Being a duke could be a flat bore sometimes.

  But his journey was a lonely one. He’d always been detached from the turbulent, often childish emotions that controlled most of humankind. Now he felt sometimes that he was already a ghost, watching the activities of mortal men but not participating. It was time to turn his horse for home and become the duke again. He must fulfill his responsibilities: update his will, notify those who had a right to know of his condition, decide what actions he wanted accomplished before the estate passed to his brother.

  He must also visit his elder sister, Claudia. In recent years they had not been close, but he would like to see her again before he died. Perhaps they might find common ground before it was too late.

  Storm clouds were gathering as he rode into the small town of Fletchfield. Since there was no good reason to continue riding and get soaked, he scanned the facades of the two inns on opposite sides of the high street, choosing the Red Lion because of its flower-filled window boxes.

  Stephen engaged a room and was about to go upstairs when he noticed a playbill posted on the wall. The “Renowned Fitzgerald Theater Troupe” was going to present Shakespeare’s The Tempest; or, The Enchanted Island that very evening. Stephen had always enjoyed the theater, and the tale of the magician duke who lived in island exile with his young daughter was a particular favorite. Heaven only knew what a cast of fourth-rate actors would do to the play, though.

  Glancing at the innkeeper, he asked, “Is this company any good?”

  “Well, I don’t know what a gentleman such as yourself would think,” the innkeeper said cautiously, “but we like ’em. They come through every summer. Always put on a rousing good show. Action, excitement.” He grinned. “And some very attractive ladies givin’ a glimpse of their ankles, and sometimes a bit more.”

  It didn’t sound like great art, but it would be a diversion. After Stephen had rested and dined, he went out to the high street. The air was heavy with August heat, but a distant rumble of thunder gave promise of cooling rain.

  The temporary playhouse on the outskirts of town was easy to find, since a good part of the population of Fletchfield was going in the same direction. A few glanced curiously at the stranger, but most were too excited by the prospect of the play.

  Outside the barn where the performance was to be held, fifty or sixty people were milling about while a foxy little man with a cockney accent sold tickets. A shilling bought a wooden disk stamped with an F that would be collected when the doors opened. No nonsense about box seats versus the pit h
ere.

  Stephen was waiting in line to buy his ticket when he saw two elderly ladies, clearly sisters. Their clothing was shabby but almost painfully clean. The smaller one said briskly, “’Twould be fun and no denying, but we simply can’t afford two shillings.”

  Her sister, tall and sweet faced, said wistfully, “I know, Fanny, I know. ’Tis better to eat than watch a play. But Romeo and Juliet was ever so lovely that time five years ago when the hens were laying well and we had a bit of money to spare.”

  “No use thinking about it.” Clearly the leader, Fanny took her sister’s arm and started to lead her away. “Let’s go home and have a nice cup of raspberry leaf tea.”

  It was Stephen’s turn to buy a ticket. On impulse he handed the seller three shillings and received three disks. Then he circled around and made his way through the crowd to the elderly sisters. Bowing politely, he said, “Excuse me, ladies, but could you do a service for a stranger?”

  Fanny surveyed him skeptically. “Are you in need of directions?”

  He shook his head. “I was to meet two friends here to see the play, but I’ve just learned that they will be unable to come. Would you take these?” He held out two disks.

  The tall sister’s eyes lit up. “Oh, Fanny.”

  Her sister said gruffly, “Can’t you return them?”

  “The chap selling the tickets looks like a stubborn sort to me,” Stephen said earnestly. “I’d rather not get into an argument with him.”

  As Fanny debated the morality of accepting his offer, her gaze went from Stephen to her sister’s hopeful face. Understanding flickered in her eyes. “Thank you, sir. You are most kind.” She put out her hand. Though she might not accept charity for herself, she would not deny her sister the pleasure of the play.

  “It is you who are kind, ma’am.” He handed over the tokens, then bowed and moved away, feeling a warm glow. Each year he gave literally thousands of pounds to the local parish and charities for everything from supporting military widows to establishing schools for the children of laborers. But those things were done from a distance; he didn’t even write the bank drafts himself. Spending two shillings from his pocket to give a treat to a pair of elderly ladies brought him more satisfaction than all of the money he had given away in the past. Perhaps he should become more involved with the results of his philanthropy.