Page 68 of His Enemy Duchess

Rosamund poured herself more tea, and Sophia noticed now that her old hands were trembling. Sophia was afraid she had upset her and felt a pang of guilt in her chest.

“I am so sorry, Rosamund. I never intended to?—”

“There’s no need to apologize, my dear. It’s not your fault. You have been raised to believe in the perpetuation of this stupid,stupidfeud. Both the Pratts and the Kendalls are taught only to hate and despise and see each other as less than human. But…” Rosamund paused dramatically. “I know better than everyone, my dear. And no one believes me.” She left the words hanging in the air for a while. “They’ll tell you that I have an addled mind, that my memory is faulty, but it’stheirmemory that is faulty. I know!”

“You know? What do you know?” asked Sophia, curious.

“You see, my dear, I was there.Actuallythere. I am the last remaining Pratt who remembers how the feud started. It was my poor great-aunt, you see.”

Rosamund paused and placed a hand over her mouth. It looked like she was wiping tea away, or she was struggling not to choke.

“Eliza Pratt was her name…”

CHAPTER 24

“Iwas five years old, but I remember her talking to me, clear as day,” Rosamund said in a shaky voice, visibly gathering her courage. “Everyone had labeled her a spinster. Unmarriageable. The bane of her mother’s existence. She was thirty but hadn’t gotten married yet. I remember asking her about it, and she told me she hadn’t found the ideal match yet, but there was someone she liked.”

“A Kendall?” asked Sophia, hesitant.

“Yes… Edmund was his name. She told me he was a kind man who treated her right and didn’t care that she was old. She told me that… she loved him. Her whole heart loved him.”

Sophia heard her voice crack and held her hand, but Rosamund kept going.

“Around a year later, I remember it all unfolding. I remember noises and shouts at the house but only behind walls and closeddoors. They wouldn’t let me hear them, you understand. But I figured it all out by myself, eventually. Eliza was with child.”

Sophia felt her heart sink. Even if this was a story about people who had lived eighty years ago, it tugged right at the strings of her heart. She couldn’t even imagine how much worse it was for Rosamund, reliving it as a memory rather than a story.

“Unfortunately, the child was born out of wedlock. They humiliated her. I remember the family shouting with such fury that it rattled the windows. Only anger and hate. ‘I will not raise a bastard in this household!’”the old woman said, mimicking the voice of an old man. “They had to marry her off, and fast, or risk ruining the family name forever.”

“Rosamund… I’m sorry, but… why didn’t they just marry her to the Kendall fellow?”

Rosamund shook her head. “Not possible. They had… notions of what had occurred—to appease themselves, I suppose, rather than believe that their daughter had… chosen to share Edmund’s company before marriage. Not the truth, of course. In my family’s eyes, Edmund had violated her… ruined her. They never would have allowed it. She begged and cried and tried to change their mind, insisting that it was love between them, but it was for naught. And Edmund, as much as he tried, was not even permitted a moment to voice the truth.”

She sipped her tea again and took a deep breath.

“They married her off to an older man, one she didn’t love, and a few days later…” She gulped and cleared her throat. “She ended her life.”

Tears brimmed in Sophia’s ears, wetting her eyelashes. The revelation hit her like a brick.

That’s… not what I was told…

But she did not have the heart to tell Rosamund that the versionshehad heard was a story of spite and murder and betrayal, though with that same love at the center of it. There wasn’t even a hint of a hint of a lie in Rosamund’s words, and Sophia wasn’t about to doubt a testimony that seemed to be derived from a real-life experience. She had no idea what to say.

“I am… so sorry,” she choked out.

Rosamund took Sophia’s hand in her own and patted it gently. “There’s nothing to be sorry for, my dear. It’s not helping anyone. It’s a story from the past, and perhaps it will finally stay there because of you and my grandson. That is my hope and my wish. Maybe one of my last.”

“I… Forgive me if this is too forward, but why are you so certain about this?” Sophia bowed her head. “I told you, Thomas and I aren’t exactly… in love. We are barely on speaking terms, at present.”

Though thatis not a story for your ears.

Rosamund’s grim face broke into a wide, warm smile. “Because I know him. And now, I know you. That’s why I insisted on meeting you. I already know my grandson. Who do you think built this house?”

Sophia was stunned. “Thomas?”

“When his father passed and he became Duke, his first order of business was to talk to me, though his mother kicked up a fuss about it. He told me, ‘Grandmother, what would make you happy?’ I told him, seeing him happy with a wife and children. He didn’t like that.” Rosamund cackled, and Sophia laughed with her.

“Then he asked me, ‘What else would make you happy?’” Rosamund continued and looked out the window with a sigh. “I told him I always wanted a quaint house near the woods, with a small garden where I could tend to the flowers myself. Some place I can … Well, I wanted to say, ‘Not be a bother to anyone,’ but I knew if I had said that, he’d have denied me. So, instead, I said, ‘A place where no one would bother me ever again.’Then, he built this house.”

---