When the Duchess Said Yes (26 page)

When Hawke looked back, he realized that it was on the tenth day that the first tiny crack had showed in his marriage to Lizzie. Nor was he surprised that the crack was put there by the harpies, her female relations and his own mother. If there was anyone born to sour milk, kick a priceless porcelain, or end his own idyllic honeymoon, it was without doubt those damnable harpies.

The day had begun delightfully enough. After a pleasing dalliance and a late rising, Hawke had taken Lizzie into the garden for a surprise. At one end of the garden was a long canal that had at one time connected to the Thames. Long sealed off from the river, it had been neglected, but Hawke had had the gardeners clear it of duckweed and muck. He’d added a small rowboat, and this morning he’d put Lizzie to the test, daring her to make good her claim that she could row as well as most sailors.

In their short time together, he’d learned this was exactly the sort of challenge she loved most. At once she’d hopped into the boat, set the oars in their locks, and put her back to the task. With a whoop of triumph, she’d launched, picking up speed so quickly that she almost crashed into the wall at the end of the canal. She’d deftly maneuvered her turn in the narrow space, then invited
Hawke aboard. He’d scarcely sat on the bench when she was off with the same ease and confidence as before, as if his added weight were nothing.

“Why aren’t you surprised?” she said as she pulled on the oars. She wore a pink dressing gown and a wide straw hat against the sun, and her face was freckled with tiny specks of sunlight that still managed to slip through the braided straw. “I know you arranged this just because you didn’t believe me.”

“But I did believe you, sweeting,” he said, enjoying himself thoroughly. He, too, sported a straw hat like any other country squire, his shirtsleeves rolled high and his breeches worn and comfortable. “I wished you not to fail but to display your prowess for my admiration.”

“Are you admiring me, then?” she asked, ducking her head as they passed beneath the trailing willows.

“Of course I am admiring you,” he said, lolling comfortably in the boat. “How could I not? What a pleasing way this is to travel, and how fortunate I am to possess such a talented wife. Perhaps we should take this boat out upon the river, so you might demonstrate your abilities to all the world.”

She laughed merrily. “See the Duke of Hawkesworth’s exceptional wife, plying the oars as handsomely as a Billingsgate fishwife! Only a shilling, gov’nor, only a shilling to see a peeress toil like a commoner!”

“There is nothing common about you, Lizzie,” he said. “Not one thing.”

That was not idle flattery. He meant it, just as he meant it when he told her she was the most perfect companion on earth for him. No other lover in his experience could come close to her, which was, he was certain, an exceptional accomplishment for any wife. She was clever and cheerful and she could make him laugh in any number of ways. She was as lovely as the moon in the sky and as adventuresome as Aphrodite herself in his
bed. He loved her more than he’d ever loved anyone else, and that both staggered and delighted him, all at once.

This was, of course, not to say that there might be some other lady out there who might be even more agreeable to his tastes, but for now his Lizzie was beyond compare and reproach. He could only pray she felt the same for him, and he was as grateful for his good fortune as any man could be.

The only thing lacking would, with luck, come in time, and that was a child. No matter how hard Hawke tried not to think of it, especially while they were in bed together, he could never entirely put that phantom infant heir from his mind. Producing a son was the entire reason for Lizzie and him being together, and their union would be judged an abject failure if no child appeared. No,
he
would be judged a failure, a useless, unmanly duke who couldn’t ensure his own lineage.

Worst of all, without a child, he would never be free to return to Italy.

“You look quite pensive, Hawke,” Lizzie said. “How can your thoughts be so dark on such a sunny day? Or perhaps it is the charging motion of our mighty vessel that has made you seasick?”

“I’m enjoying myself far too much to be seasick,” he said swiftly, for under no circumstances would he confess his true thoughts. “Were you still musing over rowing me clear to Richmond?”

“Oh, no,” she said. “Rather I was thinking how pleasant it would be to have you row me, so that I, too, might grow lazy and drowsy in the sun.”

“But I never declared that
I
could row a boat,” he drawled, sounding exactly as lazy and drowsy as she had accused him of being. He leaned back further, tucking his hands behind his head. “That was your doing, dearest, not mine.”

She stopped her oars and frowned. “You would not do this for me, as I would do for you?”

“You offered, sweeting,” he said. “I did not.”

The truth was that he was not particularly adept at a mariner’s skills, and being male, he’d no wish to display his ineptitude before her. Thus he intended his observation as wry teasing, a jest.

Alas, she did not interpret it that way.

“Then perhaps you will
offer
to row yourself the rest of the way, and straight to the devil, too,” she said, spinning the oars in their locks as she shoved them toward him. Before he could stop her, she bunched up her skirts and nimbly hopped to the bank, making him and the boat glide out to the middle of the canal.

“Lizzie, wait, forgive me,” he called, but she’d already disappeared into the garden toward the house.

With a muttered oath, he tried to use one of the oars to push the drifting boat back to shore. Instead the oar slipped from his hand and into the water beyond his reach. Swearing again, he grabbed the second oar. He’d more success with this one, pushing the boat to the shore. But as he stood to climb out, the boat rocked and pitched him forward. One foot landed on the grass, while the other went into the water along with his hat. He stumbled forward onto the grass, pulling his foot free of the muck with a sucking sound, and tried to follow her. Water and mud squelched inside his shoe with each step, and his well-soaked stocking drooped around his calf. By the time he reached the house, his oaths had progressed to a colorful blend of English, Italian, and French and were fiery enough to scald the very leaves from the nearby trees.

“Lizzie!” he roared as he came close to the garden door. “Damnation, Lizzie, where the devil are you?”

“I’m here, you great swearing oaf,” she said mildly. She was sitting cross-legged on the stone balustrade beside
the door, her knees tucked inside her skirts and her hat next to her, in delectable disarray. “Where else would I have gone?”

Her anger seemed to have vanished, which only made his irritation grow, along with the blister from the wet shoe and stocking.

“You were not with me, madam,” he said crossly. “That was all I knew with surety.”

“Oh, yes, surety.” She frowned, looking down at his legs. “Goodness, Hawke. Look at you. What has happened? Did you tumble into the canal?”

“Yes,” he said. “It was your fault.”

“
My
fault?” she repeated in disbelief, slipping down from the balustrade. She shook her skirts out over her bare legs, and bare feet, too, for somewhere between here and the canal she seemed to have shed her mules. “How can I be blamed for you falling into the water?”

“Because you rocked the boat,” he explained, finding it increasingly difficult to remain angry with her when she confronted him with her bare, grass-stained toes. “Because you left the oars in an awkward position, and they fell out of the locks. Because—damnation, Lizzie, because it was.”

He should have guessed what was coming from the wicked gleam in her eyes. “Because I was being vastly generous, and you were selfish.”

He tipped his head to one side, intending to appear conciliatory without having to outright apologize. “Lizzie, please. Please.”

“Because I was right,” she continued, backing away from him and into the house. “And you, Hawke, were
wrong
.”

He lunged for her, and with a yelp she darted away, running through the house. He followed, of course, though she’d the undeniable advantage over him slogging away in the wet shoe. As he passed through the library
and into the main hall, he resolved that the one thing he’d wish otherwise about her was that she was too fast for him to catch.

But as he came around the staircase, he stopped dead. Instead of the pleasing prospect of trapping Lizzie somewhere in the house and kissing her until she accepted his apology, he saw Lizzie standing stock-still before him, her skirts bunched in her hands above her bare legs and a horrified look on her face.

Because standing with her with a hapless footman were the harpies: Lady Sanborn, Lady Hervey, and the most harpy-ish of them all, his own mother. They looked at him, decided he was unworthy of their collective regard, and turned back to Lizzie.

“My dear,” his mother said, frosty as usual, “surely there is some more agreeable place for us to converse than this hall.”

“Of course, Lady Allred,” Lizzie said quickly, motioning to one side. “The drawing room. This way, if you please.”

Anxiously smoothing her palms over her skirts, she turned to the footman. “Please bring us tea in the drawing room,” she said. “And some biscuits, or whatever else Cook thinks is proper.”

The footman bowed and left, and as he did, Lady Hervey placed her hand gently on her daughter’s arm.

“Oh, Lizzie,” she said unhappily. “So what I’ve heard must be true. You haven’t any notion at all what that footman’s name might be, do you?”

Lizzie flushed with misery, her hands clasped at her waist.

“I—I disremember it at present, Mama,” she said, a wretched dissembling that fooled no one. “There are so many to learn.”

Hawke hadn’t seen Lizzie clasp her hands like that since their wedding day, and at once he came to her rescue.

“Good day to you, Lady Hervey,” he said, coming to stand at Lizzie’s side. He bowed, and if the leg he extended as part of that elegant bow was covered by a sagging stocking, splattered with mud, well then, so be it. “Good day, Lady Carbery. Mother, good day to you, too.”

“All the ‘good days’ in Christendom are not going to sweeten my humor, Hawke,” his mother said severely. “Besides, we have come here to see the duchess, not you.”

“You cannot banish me from my own house, Mother.” He smiled and slipped his arm around Lizzie’s waist. “I doubt that anything you wish to say to her is unfit to be said to me as well.”

Lady Sanborn sighed dramatically, tapping the ferrule of her parasol with growing impatience on the tiled floor “You might as well let His Grace remain, Lady Allred. We all agree that he is as much a part of the problem as Her Grace.”

“If you please,” Lizzie said, raising her chin more bravely. “To the drawing room,
if
you please.”

Somehow Hawke helped herd the ladies into the drawing room, making sure they were all suitably seated.

Seated, but hardly calmed.

“It is concern that has brought us here, ma’am,” his mother began. “Grave concern for you and the duke.”

“Here in our house, you may call her Lizzie, Mother, nor would it harm you to refer to me as your son, rather than ‘the duke,’ ” Hawke said, not exactly calm himself, either. “We’re all of us family now, whether you wish it or not.”

His mother swiveled to face him. “That is exactly the problem, Hawke. You continue to think of her as ‘Lizzie’—such an intolerably common name!—rather than as Her Grace the Duchess of Hawkesworth.”

Lady Hervey made a small, half-smothered cry of protest.
“But she has always been Lizzie, ever since she was small. I see no harm—”

“Elizabeth is the name of our most illustrious queen,” Lady Allred said with authority. “Lizzie is the name of a costard-monger in the street, or worse.”

“It’s also the name of my wife, Mother,” Hawke said, “and I’ll call her whatever pleases her.”

Beside him Lizzie shook her head. Her first surprise at the older ladies’ arrival had passed, and now she sat very straight and with her jaw set, determined and ready to stand for herself.

“Elizabeth is my given name,” she said, “but I have always been called Lizzie by those who care for me most, and I see no reason for them to change.”

Hawke smiled and silently marked a victory for Lizzie. Several footmen and maids appeared with tea and enough sugary accoutrements to supply a phalanx of females, enough to momentarily distract the ladies.

But only for a moment.

“The real concern, Lizzie, is the talk,” her mother said anxiously. “You’ve quite disappeared from sight, and people are beginning to make all sorts of dreadful speculations about you and His Grace.”

“They may speculate all they wish, Mama,” Lizzie said. “If we had gone on a wedding trip and left the town entirely, then they would have speculated, too. The truth is that we are newly wed and wish to spend time alone, in our own company, to accustom ourselves to married life.”

Lady Allred gave a small, derisive sniff, sweeping her glance over them both. “Apparently accustoming yourselves to behaving like heathenish Gypsies as well.”

“Forgive me, Lady Allred, but we were pleasing each other, as a husband and wife should.” Pointedly Lizzie rested her hand on Hawke’s knee, a scandalous gesture even between wife and husband. “If we had been expecting
your call, I assure you that you would not have discovered us in this manner.”

Proudly Hawke covered her hand with his own. How splendidly she was now defending herself against the harpies!

“ ‘We’ are not important, Duchess,” said her great-aunt, Lady Carbery. “It is the rest of the world that must see and know you as the Duchess of Hawkesworth, not only for the sake of His Grace but for that of your children as well.”

“Ah, our children,” Hawke said, unable to resist. “You should be pleased, Mother, by how assiduously Lizzie and I have been applying ourselves to our marital obligations. I vow we’ve been like veritable rabbits in the spring. I know how much you long for an heir, and I’ve been doing my concerted best to provide you with one as quickly as possible.”