April Kihlstrom Read online

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Epilogue

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  The Dutiful Wife

  April Kihlstrom

  InterMix Books, New York

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

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  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have control over and does not have any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  THE DUTIFUL WIFE

  An InterMix Book / published by arrangement with the author

  PUBLISHING HISTORY

  InterMix eBook edition / October 2012

  Copyright © 2012 by April Kihlstrom.

  Excerpt from The Ambitious Baronet copyright © 2001 by April Kihlstrom.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  ISBN: 978-1-101-58969-4

  INTERMIX

  InterMix Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

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  Prologue

  Beatrix Trowley crouched on the rock near the boy who was visiting. His name was Edmund Hetherton and he seemed so very sad. He hadn’t seen her yet. Not that he would mind her being here, at least she didn’t think he would. Unlike her brothers, not once in the few days since he arrived had he told her to go away and leave him alone. Yet he had chosen to come to this spot and be alone. Her spot. The one where she came when she was upset and needed to think.

  “It’s all right,” he said. “You can come and sit with me, if you want. I don’t mind.”

  Beatrix hesitated. Mama had told her not to bother the boy. But he didn’t look as if he was bothered. Slowly she stood up and walked over to where he was sitting with his feet in the pond. She sat down beside him and took off her shoes so that she could dangle her own feet in the water.

  “I’m Beatrix,” she said. “I know you’ve been told all our names but, well, there are so many of us that I thought it best to remind you. In a year or two you will have to call me Miss Trowley. But not yet. At least I don’t think so. There are so many rules to remember. I am doing my best to learn them all, but I don’t always succeed.”

  He grinned then and said, “Well, if I am to call you Beatrix, you must call me Edmund. My father would be unhappy if he heard you do so. He would say you ought to call me Master Hetherton. But I should prefer Edmund, and since he isn’t here, he doesn’t get to say what we do.”

  Beatrix blinked. In one short moment he had said more than the entire family had heard in the day and a half since he’d arrived with Lady Kenrick. Something about him made her feel he was a kindred soul. She splashed the water with her feet and confided, “Mama would say I should not do this, either, but at times I cannot help myself. I shall have to follow all the rules when I am older, and indeed I shall do my best, but . . . ” Her voice trailed off.

  Edmund smiled. “But perhaps not just yet?” he hazarded. She nodded and he went on, “There are an awful lot of rules, aren’t there? When I grow up, I shall do just as I please. I won’t let anyone tell me what I must and must not do. If they try, I shan’t listen!”

  “Won’t you get in trouble?” Beatrix asked doubtfully.

  “Probably, but I shan’t care,” he said stoutly. Then, a trifle shyly, he added, “At least I hope I shall have the courage to do so. My father has lots of rules, even more than most.”

  “What about your mother?” Beatrix asked, then clapped a hand over her mouth. Slowly she took it away and said, “I’m sorry. I’m not supposed to ask you about her. S
he died last year, didn’t she?”

  He nodded. Almost immediately he wiped away a tear. Beatrix held her handkerchief out to him and angrily he waved it away. “I am not crying,” he said fiercely. “My father says men don’t cry.”

  “My father does,” Beatrix answered softly, “and he’s a man. He’s a good man, a kind man. He would tell you it’s all right to cry. And if you wish to tell me about your mother, I shall be happy to listen.”

  Edmund only shook his head. “I am not to speak of her. Had she listened to my father, she might not have gotten so wet and taken so ill and died so suddenly.”

  The words had all come out in a rush, betraying the intense emotion the boy must feel. Beatrix pulled her feet out of the water and hugged her knees to her chest as she said, “I can’t imagine what I would do if Mama died. I think I should feel lost and angry and as if there was a big, gaping hole inside of me.”

  He turned and looked at her, really looked at her. “Yes, that’s exactly how I feel,” he exclaimed. Then, recollecting himself, he looked away, out over the water of the small pond. “But I don’t want to talk about her,” he said. “My father is right about that. It doesn’t help.”

  His expression was so fierce that Beatrix did not even try to press the point. Instead she said, again softly, “Tell me about your dreams.”

  “My dreams?” He looked at her, confusion evident in the way his brow furrowed and in the timbre of his voice.

  “Yes. What you hope to do one day. How you want your life to be,” Beatrix persisted.

  He tilted his head as if he thought her a strange creature but in the end he did answer her. “Someday, I shall go all over the world,” he said, the fierceness back in his voice. “I shall visit places like Egypt and the former colonies in America. Perhaps I’ll sail around the world. I’ll stand up in Parliament, once I become Viscount after my father dies, and change things that aren’t right or fair.”

  He paused and looked at Beatrix as though he dared her to laugh at him. But there was no laughter in her voice as she said, seriously, “I think those are very good dreams.”

  “What are your dreams?” he asked in return.

  Now it was her turn to gaze out over the water. “I want to be happy, as Mama and Papa are happy together. I shall live in the countryside and have a husband who will be tall and handsome and take care of me. I shall look up to him and do all that I can to please him. And I shall have children. Lots of children and enough money to feed them all so that none ever has to go hungry so the younger ones can eat!”

  This last was said with a fierceness that betrayed too much of how she felt. Hastily Beatrix forced herself to smile and look at the boy. “Never mind me,” she said. “My dreams must seem very foolish compared to yours. Yours are ambitious dreams, wonderful dreams. Someday I hope you get to do all those things!”

  When had her hand crept out to cover his where it rested on the ground? When had his turned over to clasp hers so that now he could squeeze in reassurance even as he said, with utmost seriousness, “I hope you have your dreams as well. I think you will be a wonderful wife and mother when you are all grown up. I hope—”

  Whatever else he might have said was lost as her brothers suddenly appeared, whooping and calling her name, teasing her for being here, alone, with Edmund. Hastily she pulled her hand free and stood, hiding her shoes behind her back in hopes her brothers would not notice her bare feet.

  Behind her, Beatrix felt, rather than saw, Edmund retrieve his own shoes, put them on and then stand at her back, daring her brothers to voice the jests they’d been about to say.

  “Did you need us?” Edmund asked politely.

  “Er, no, that is—“

  “We came to, er, see if you wanted to play, but it’s taken so long to find you. We all ought to head back to the house. I daresay Cook will have a nice luncheon ready by now,” the most civilized of her brothers told Edmund.

  Edmund stood a head or more taller than all of them. He could have routed them with a word or well-chosen snub. Instead, he straightened up, threw back his shoulders and met their eyes squarely. Edmund smiled as he answered, “Then by all means let us return to the house. Miss Trowley, I believe I managed to get those stones out of your shoes so you may put them back on,” he added, giving her an excuse that her brothers and even her mother couldn’t argue with for the fact she was barefoot.

  In that moment, a young girl’s heart was lost to the handsome boy who had just been so kind to her, and who so desperately needed someone to believe in him. If only, she thought, there was even the merest chance that he might one day feel the same.

  Chapter 1

  Nine years later. . . .

  Edmund Hetherton, the Viscount Rothwood, stared at his glass of brandy trying to recall how many of these he had consumed. No matter, he assured himself, his thinking was as clear as it had ever been. Wasn’t it?

  “I,” he said with careful enunciation, “am getting married.”

  “The devil you say!”

  “Who is the lucky chit?”

  “I’ve not thought you fixed your interest on any of ’em. ’Pon my soul, all we hear from you is how you cannot abide the current crop of debutantes!”

  As Rothwood’s friends continued to protest, he merely smiled. When the hubbub settled down, he said, “M’father’s will was quite clear. I must marry by the time I’m twenty-five or I shall have the estate but not much else.”

  For a long moment they all pondered this patently unfair provision of the late Lord Rothwood’s will. Lord Burford, the oldest and closest of Edmund’s friends, was the first to speak.

  “Every matchmaking mama in London has tried to take advantage of that fact,” he said shrewdly. “More young ladies have been thrown at your head than at any other eligible fellow this Season. And you’ve spurned them all. So who is the paragon who has drawn your interest and how has she done so?”

  How could he tell them the truth? That whenever he thought of marrying all he could see was a young girl who had once looked at him with worship in her eyes, put a gentle hand on his arm and spoken words of admiration for his hopes and dreams? That she had been kind, and he had had far too little kindness in his life? That by contrast every young lady he’d met in London had seemed shallow or obsessed with his title and wealth? Was it folly to believe that the girl he remembered even existed?

  Rothwood inwardly sighed. If he said any of this aloud, his friends would think him mad. And perhaps he was. His father would certainly have said so. All he knew was that when he thought of marrying, folly or not, it was always her face that came to mind.

  Instead he said what he had said so often before, “I am determined my wife shall be a quiet and dutiful woman, content to remain in the countryside and able to provide me with several children so that I shall have an heir and several spares. I’ll not be caught out like my father with only one son.”

  “Yes, but who is this paragon you have in mind?” Burford repeated. “Or do you even have one in mind? For I tell you plainly that I do not think there are many such chits around. You have said so yourself more than once. Sworn there was no girl in all of London you would wed. Even talked of letting the deadline pass and making do on your own without the inheritance. So what has changed?”

  Rothwood smiled. “I find I am not willing to be a pauper, after all, so I set my mind to the matter and recalled a girl I met some nine or ten years ago. My aunt’s goddaughter, in point of fact. She lives in the country and is one of many siblings. Hence the odds for several offspring seem good. Her name,” he paused for effect, “is Beatrix. Anyone named Beatrix must be docile and retiring, don’t you think?”

  His friends hesitated.

  “It does seem likely,” Totham said, a hint of doubt in his voice.

  “Not a fashionable name,” Hawthorne chimed in. “Not likely to be a fashionable girl.”

  “Yes, but what will you do if she isn’t what you expect?” Lord Burford demanded. “Or if she doesn’t
want to marry you? Dash it all, Rothwood, you deserve to be happy!”

  Rothwood blinked. Why the devil was it so hard to think? “My aunt approves of her,” he said, after a moment, a hint of triumph in his voice as he recalled his reasoning. “That ought to be enough to assure me that she is a compliant girl and one not altogether wanting in wits. And why wouldn’t she want to marry me?”

  That silenced the group of young men. All of them knew Rothwood’s aunt. Indeed, the entire ton knew his aunt and most feared her. She was known not to tolerate the company of any woman who was not willing to be subservient to her will. Nor was she one to tolerate the company of fools. Yes, one could safely assume that any female of whom Lady Kenrick approved would be meek and submissive, just as Rothwood wished, and yet not altogether a ninny. This was a good thing for he had no more patience for fools than did his aunt. Most important of all, if Lady Kenrick approved of the match, the girl’s breeding would be impeccable, no matter what her current circumstances. As for the notion that any such girl would turn him down, well, that was absurd!

  Still, they worried. Rothwood was the best of friends and had pulled each of them out of trouble when they needed it the most, regardless of the cost to himself. He was unfailingly kind to children and animals, had never been known to gamble excessively or treat with contempt anyone whose circumstances had taken an unfortunate turn. Rather, he was always there with a kind word and often an offer of help. Dash it all, the man was practically a saint! At least in the eyes of his friends. What had his father been thinking treating him in such a shabby way as to demand he marry upon cue or lose the greater part of his inheritance?

  Rothwood smiled yet again as he watched the play of emotions across the faces of his friends. He called for another round for all of them to celebrate his impending good fortune. Maybe that would silence the doubts he felt. His father would have scorned him for needing such Dutch courage but then his father would have scorned him for a great many reasons, this being the least of them.

  “When do you leave?”

  “Straight after I inform my aunt.”

  “Inform your aunt? Why the devil would you do that?” Burford asked.