When the Duchess Said Yes (7 page)

“I can’t bear to look myself, Charlotte,” Lizzie said. “Tell me, tell me quickly! Is he truly there?”

“It would appear that he is,” Charlotte said as they walked through the garden together. “Finally! I knew we could trust Brecon to capture him. Come now, Lizzie, you’re dawdling. You don’t want Hawke to think you’re reluctant.”

“Why shouldn’t I, when he certainly has been?” Lizzie’s heart was racing so fast and her stomach was twisting into such knots that she prayed she wouldn’t expire here on the garden path beside the roses. “Does my gown look well enough? My hair hasn’t come unpinned, has it? Do I—”

“You look lovely,” Charlotte assured her for what must have been the thousandth time. “That gown becomes you most wonderfully. Hawke is sure to be enchanted. You’re like a fresh blossom in the garden.”

In any other circumstance, Lizzie, too, would have been enchanted by her gown: a pale yellow brocaded silk, strewn all over with a pattern of pink and deep red carnations, with double-flounced cuffs at the elbows and a delicate lace scarf tied loosely over her shoulders. Coral beads circled her neck, and pearl drops hung from her ears. Because they were out-of-doors, she wore a
wide-brimmed hat of Milano straw with a froth of yellow ribbons on the crown. Charlotte had pinned the hat to tip coquettishly low over Lizzie’s face to shield her from the sun, but Lizzie was more thankful that she could hide beneath the curving brim.

“That’s curious,” Charlotte said. “The gentlemen seem to be fussing about something. Now Hawke has taken off his coat and thrown it off to one side. What
is
happening, I wonder?”

“Perhaps he is mad,” Lizzie said glumly, still not daring to look up and judge for herself. “I am doomed to wed a madman.”

“Oh, he’s not mad,” Charlotte said. “But faith, he
is
handsome, and tall, and very well made. Oh, Lizzie, you are most fortunate!”

“He is all those things?” Lizzie asked, her voice squeaking upward. “Truly?”

“He is,” Charlotte said, lowering her voice to a whisper as she sank into a curtsey. “And now he has come to greet us. Your Grace, let me welcome you to our home.”

At once Lizzie, too, dropped into a deep curtsey, staring down at the crushed white oyster shells of the path. Among three dukes and a duchess, her rank was so inferior that it was likely quite appropriate for her to remain bent over this way for minutes on end. Without lifting her head, she could just see the toes of a gentleman’s well-polished shoes with gleaming silver buckles. No, her future husband’s shoes, she thought with a small thrill—here, now, finally, before her.

A second pair of men’s shoes appeared, shoes that belonged to March, and a shadow that must belong to the third cousin, Brecon.

“Charlotte, my dear, may I present my cousin, Hawke,” March said. “Hawke, my wife Charlotte.”

“Duchess, I am most honored,” he said, and Lizzie saw his shadow as he bowed in reply to her curtsey. Her
heart was beating so loudly in her ears that she scarcely heard his words—though she did hear that his voice was deep and manly.

“Good day to you, Duke,” Charlotte said, ever correct. “I am most honored to welcome you to our home.”

Lizzie knew she was next. There was no escaping now, and she prayed she’d not shame herself by doing or saying something regrettable. She felt her sister’s hand rest lightly on her shoulder, a gesture of both comfort and presentation.

“But I know this is the lady you are most eager to meet, Duke,” Charlotte continued. “May I present my younger sister Lady Elizabeth Wylder?”

“Lady Elizabeth,” he murmured, and she felt his fingers take her hand, strong and sure, to raise her up. She had practiced this with Charlotte. She knew what to do. Slowly she stood, with as much composure as could be managed when her knees felt like jelly. She straightened, made herself smile, and lifted her face to meet his gaze with what she hoped was the grace worthy of a duchess.

Her small shriek of bewilderment was not part of the plan.

He gasped, and barely bit back an oath.

Neither spoke. Neither looked away. Neither moved.

“Well, now,” Brecon said with satisfaction. “I’ve never seen a couple so instantly enchanted with each other that they were literally left without words. I should say we have a match, eh?”

“Indeed we do,” declared March, equally pleased. “I told you she was a beauty, Hawke.”

“That you did, March,” Hawke said slowly. Still he stared at Lizzie, almost as if he feared she might vanish if he looked away. “I doubt there could be another like her anywhere.”

Lizzie’s face burned, both with embarrassment and with confusion. She understood his double-edged remark,
even if no one else did. How could her stranger from the opera and from Ranelagh turn out to be the Duke of Hawkesworth? Was this some sort of hideous jest, a humorless trick on her innocence?

But if it was a trick, then clearly neither Brecon nor March was party to it. They were too busy beaming and doting to have done anything so low. Swiftly Lizzie looked to her sister, hoping to find an explanation there. But Charlotte’s face showed only delight as well.

Clearly none of her family knew, and with growing frustration she turned back to the gentleman who still held her hand. Now that his first shock had faded, she read in his face the same confusion as she felt herself, and more than a little anger. Well, let him be angry, she thought. She was angry, too, and with far more reason.

“Have you no reply to His Grace, Lizzie?” her sister prodded gently. “Faith, I’ve never known you to have not a word to say!”

Lizzie had a great deal to say, so much that she scarcely knew where to begin. But just as she opened her mouth to start, the stranger—or rather, Hawkesworth, her intended husband—spoke first.

“If you please, Duchess,” he said, smiling winningly at Charlotte. “I have a request to beg, that I might hear Lady Elizabeth’s first words to me alone, so that I shall be able to recall them forever with perfect clarity. It’s selfish of me, I know, but—”

“How could that be selfish?” exclaimed Charlotte, pressing her palms together with a rapturous sigh. “It’s vastly gallant of you, and I would not dream of denying you. March, you have no objections, do you?”

“So long as you stay within sight in this garden,” he said, “you may keep from our hearing as far as you please.”

Brecon chuckled. “What manner of mischief could
they possibly contrive, with the three of us to serve as vigilant duennas? Besides, they’ll wed soon enough.”

“I thank you,” Hawkesworth said solemnly. He waited until the three returned to the summerhouse before he turned to Lizzie.

“Shall we walk together, Lady Elizabeth?” he asked with a pleasant smile as he tightened his hold on her hand.

“I should rather walk straight into the river than walk with you,” she said with vehemence, not moving from where she stood.

“I can assure you that I share much the same preferences regarding your company, Lady Elizabeth,” he said firmly. “But I hold my cousins in the highest regard, and I would not disappoint them for the world. For their sake, you will walk, and you will smile, and you will appear to them as if there is no other place in creation you would rather be.”

“Your cousins, but my sister,” Lizzie said. Where was the sweet romance she’d dreamed of over all those long months? Where was the courtly lover she’d imagined? She took a deep breath to steady herself, then another. “None of them must ever know that we have met before.”

“No,” he said curtly. “Why the devil would there be any use in them knowing that?”

“Then walk.” She pulled her hand free of his, tucking it into the crook of his arm instead. She smiled up at him, the picture of adoration. “Make a better show of it for them, sir. It shouldn’t be difficult, considering your gift for being false.”

He lurched forward, dragging her along with him. “Hah, that is rare to hear from your lips,” he said. “Who is the duplicitous creature who led me into the bushes at Ranelagh like any other common jade?”

She gasped, outraged. “You would dare call
me
duplicitous?
Consider, sir, that you had come to Ranelagh for the express purpose of meeting your intended bride—a meeting that you, sir, had already avoided repeatedly—and yet you were so easily misled to dally with another and abandon your true lady?”

His eyes widened with equal outrage, his hair tossing around his face in the breeze. At Ranelagh she’d thought his eyes were brown, but now, in the sunlight, she could see they’d blue in them, too, an unusual combination that, in other circumstances, she would have found most intriguing.

“You make little sense, Lady Elizabeth,” he said. “You would fault me for dallying with you, because it meant that at the same time I was being unfaithful to you?”

She scowled, struggling to make sense of her own tangled argument. It was not easy, and having his thoroughly handsome self so close beside her did not make it any easier to think.

The last time she’d seen him, he’d been dressed like the night, all in dark velvet. Now, with his scarlet silk waistcoat and his linen shirtsleeves billowing about his arms, he seemed more a kind of avenging angel, though she wasn’t sure what exactly he’d be here to avenge.

“Where is your coat?” she asked. “Why did you take it off?”

“I had no choice,” he said defensively. “March’s infernal brat puked down the front of it.”

“Little Georgie?” Oh, prize baby, she thought. Clever little fellow for having displayed such judgment! “He did that to you?”

“Yes, he did,” he said. “Now answer my question, if you can. Do you believe I’ve betrayed you with yourself?”

She sighed, because it didn’t make any more sense that way than it had before.

“Yes,” she said at last. “That is precisely what I meant.
You’d no notion of who I was, so you were being false to me, even as you paid your attentions to me.”

“Why would you tempt me into such a trap?” he demanded. “What was your purpose?”

“What purpose could I possibly have?” she asked. “What could I have hoped to achieve by pretending I was other than who I am?”

“You tell me, Lady Elizabeth,” he said. “I’m sure you’d planned some deceitful female trickery, some cunning way to dishonor me. Why else were you, a lady, alone and unprotected?”

“Because I didn’t believe I’d need any protection,” she retorted, “especially not from the man I am supposed to marry.”

He made a grumbling noise deep in his chest. “There is no supposing about it. You will marry me, Lady Elizabeth, and by God, I’ll marry you. Our meddlesome dead fathers have seen to that, reaching up from the grave to bind us together.”

That shocked Lizzie. Her father had died in a riding accident when she was very young, so she’d only the haziest memories of him, but she still respected those memories, and him with them. “Do not speak of my father that way.”

“Why not, when I speak only the truth?” he said. “Neither of us would be here now if those selfish old men hadn’t made this devil’s bargain between them.”

Somehow they’d fallen into step together as they’d walked the paths. Lizzie noticed, and purposely broke stride, not wanting to accommodate him in any fashion. Betrothal or no, how could she possibly marry such a man?

“I wish you to the devil, sir,” she said bitterly, “and a devil’s pox on you, too, to rot your carcass for all eternity.”

He looked at her sharply. “Now those are pretty words for a lady.”

“Why shouldn’t I use them, and worse, toward you, when you’ve not behaved like a gentleman?” she said. “You tricked me, sir. You must have known who I was.”

“How could I have known?” he said, stopping to throw his hands out in exasperation. “It wasn’t as if you wore a lettered placard about your neck, proclaiming your identity to the world. ‘Lady Elizabeth Wylder, a teasing little baggage.’ ”

Lizzie gasped again, fairly seething. He’d stopped at the corner of the path, where a large mulberry bush hid them from the sight of the summerhouse. Not that it mattered. She was too furious to restrain herself, even if they’d been standing before every last one of her relatives.

She drew back her arm, and with all her force swung around and struck her palm across his cheek.

“There,” she declared. “
That
is what you deserve, sir, that and more!”

She expected him to grab his cheek, swear, stamp off, or do some other typical mannish thing. It would have been gallant of him to have realized his errors and apologize, though she doubted very much he’d do that. He might have been gallant in the moonlight at Ranelagh, but in the light of the sun, he hadn’t a shred of gallantry anywhere about his handsome person.

Which, really, explained what he did next.

He grabbed her by the wrist and jerked her close against his chest, circling his arm around her waist to hold her fast. She sputtered with surprise, but before she realized what was happening, he had bent her back over his arm and was kissing her.

She tried to break free, struggling and twisting against him, but succeeded only in knocking her hat off her
head. Hawkesworth wasn’t about to let her go. This kiss was purposeful and relentless, with none of the sweetness she remembered from the last time. But to her consternation, the more she fought against him, the more arousing the kiss became. It was almost as if he’d magically taken her anger and turned it against her, changing it into something equally fiery but very different. Soon she realized she’d not only stopped fighting but had curled her hands possessively over his shoulders. She liked how he tasted, how he smelled, how he kissed, and how his body felt pressed against hers. She liked all that a great deal.

What she didn’t like, however, was
him
, and with that as a reminder, she finally broke free, though she remained rocked back against his arm, her hands resting peacefully upon his red-silk-covered chest.

“Why did you do that?” she demanded, though as demands went, it was quite pathetic, and more a breathy whisper.

He smiled down at her with pure male triumph and happiness, the first real smile she’d seen from him that day.

“I wasn’t sure you were the same woman I’d kissed before,” he said. “And thank God, you are.”