When You Wish Upon a Duke (10 page)

Now both of Breck’s brows rose. “Is it so very different? It would seem that you’ve already visited the lady and surveyed her qualities just as you would a cottage. Tested her foundations, as it were.”

“What do you mean?” March asked defensively, though of course he knew exactly what his cousin meant. Breconridge being Breconridge, he surely would have heard by now of what had happened in Mrs. Cartwright’s shop. Brecon heard everything.

And, apparently, he read everything as well.

“Haven’t you seen this?” he asked, drawing a folded news sheet from inside his coat and handing it March. The page had been folded to highlight one particular article:

We have learned that Cupid’s DART hath struck the lofty Duke of M****b****e most keenly. With a huntsman’s fierceness he yesterday did pursue the beauteous Lady C. W. from his estate in Surrey to her
mantua-maker in Oxford Street, & in a private LAIR to the back of that establishment did keep alone with her in close & INTIMATE company for considerable time. Driven by his PASSION, did His Grace forswear the sweet promise of the HYMENEAL BOWER & instead press home his immediate advantage to seize the final PRIZE?

Too furious to speak, March read the item again before he realized he’d become too furious to breathe, too, and he let out all his breath in a single heated oath.

“You do not deny it, then?” Brecon asked.

“How can I deny what is so near to the truth?” With the paper crumpled in his hand, March rose and stalked to the window, staring unseeing at the park before him. He should have guessed this would happen, considering how many others had been in the shop with them. Yet to read the result and see his encounter with Charlotte reduced to a lurid tattle made his stomach churn. “The lady has not been in London a week, and yet in one afternoon I have destroyed her honor and her name.”

“You say this wretched scribbler has told the truth,” Brecon said. “I trust that this is some exaggeration, and that you did not in fact ravish the lady on the back counter of a mantua-maker’s shop?”

“There was no, ah, consummation, if that is what you ask,” March said, still turned to the window. “But in the warmth of our conversation, I did kiss her, and embrace her, and in her innocence she—she did not rebuff me.”

The disapproval in his cousin’s voice was clear enough. “March, she is to be your wife and your duchess. You can’t treat her like some common little strumpet. Thank the heavens that her father’s dead, else it could be swords at dawn on the misty heath after this.”

“Don’t count me fortunate yet,” March said with gloomy resignation. What if this were enough to sour Charlotte
on marrying him altogether? What if she decided she’d had enough of London and of him, and returned today to her quiet old house by the sea? “I wouldn’t put it past Lady Sanborn to send her second with a challenge.”

“No jesting, now, no jesting,” Brecon said, more concerned than disapproving. “Consider this business from your side as well. You say the lady is an innocent.”

“She is,” March said firmly, recalling the sweet breathiness of her inexperienced kiss and the wonder that had shown in her eyes. “I do not doubt her at all.”

“I’m glad of it,” Brecon said. “But what if your impatience had carried you further, and she were to be with child by the time you wed? The world counts months with great glee, and what if your son and heir should arrive as a six-month babe? There’d be plenty of whispers as to whether the child was even yours, whispers that, however false, would haunt you and your son the rest of his life. Given our peculiar shared heritage—”

“There must be no more bastards,” March said curtly. It wasn’t enough that he had publicly dishonored Charlotte. How had he not thought of this, of the inadvertent curse he could have placed on their unborn child?

“Exactly, cousin, exactly,” Brecon said. “You’re fortunate that the lady’s beauty and form inspire such desire in you. If in time you can make yourself fall in love with her and she with you, all the better. But I can assure you that a little decorum, a little restraint, before your wedding will go far toward establishing an honorable marriage.”

But for March there was another solution, and to him it was the most honorable one as well. Lady Charlotte needed the protection of his name and title, not the slander of it. He no longer saw the need for this prolonged betrothal until a Michaelmas wedding. In fact, he saw no need of a betrothal at all.

“There must be no more of this tattle about Lady Charlotte
in the papers,” he said firmly. “She doesn’t deserve another word of it.”

“That’s the spirit,” said Brecon with hearty approval. “Lead with your head, not your cock.”

“Yes,” said March. “There will no betrothal, nor a period of waiting. Instead I intend to marry Lady Charlotte at once.”

Charlotte stood in the center of the stone-paved path in the garden behind her aunt’s house. After the wild gardens and fields of the old manor in Dorset, this city garden seemed oppressively small and restrained, with tall brick walls on three sides and the house on the other. Everything was bound by geometric precision, with the neat stone paths crossing one another at perfect right angles, and every raised bed of flowers was so neatly trimmed that no leaves or tendril vines dared curl beyond their boundaries. Even the small lady apple trees that were her aunt’s special pride were forced to grow to please her, their branches pinned to low fences in strict espalier and their miniature fruit at a level for Aunt Sophronia to pluck for herself.

Most of all, there were no tall trees for shade, nor trees fit for climbing, either, which was likely why Charlotte was permitted to be here by herself, unattended and unwatched. She’d come here now in this early hour purposely to be alone, the shadows of the walls long across the paths as she stood with her arms out at her sides and her knees slightly bent. With the paths as her ballroom, she began to count the rhythm of the minuet, striving to recall the steps that the Parisian dancing master had taught her yesterday.

One-two, one-two-three, one-two, one
. She’d never
danced a minuet before, and the steps were wickedly complex, without any comforting pattern or reason. Monsieur La Farge had patiently explained that she must try her best because minuets were always danced by one couple at a time, while the rest of the company stood by to watch with respect. More shocking still was learning that the lady of highest rank in a room traditionally opened a ball by dancing the first minuet, and in many cases that would mean her as Duchess of Marchbourne.

As difficult as the dance might be, she was determined that March would be proud of her, not shamed by a clumsy, awkward wife before his friends. The one saving grace was that their wedding was still months away, and for that time she’d only be an earl’s lowly daughter, safe from minuets. But still, here she was, practicing alone in the garden and trying to recall all the niceties of Monsieur La Farge’s lesson.

She turned to her right and smiled, imagining March beside her. She remembered how he’d looked at her when they’d been together at the mantua-maker’s, and how his expression had appeared almost bewitched, as if she’d cast some sort of magical spell over his wits: a thoroughly lovely moment.

“What in blazes are you doing, Charlotte?” Diana called as she and Lizzie came bounding through the garden from the house. With them was Fig, miserably tugging and nipping at her new leash of pink braided leather.

The leash wasn’t the only alteration. Just as Charlotte herself had changed, her two sisters were now dressed neatly to follow London fashion (and Aunt Sophronia’s expectations), Lizzie in a yellow-striped gown with a wide green sash at the waist and Diana in nearly the same gown except with blue stripes and a yellow sash. Instead of the haphazard plaits that they’d usually worn in Dorset, they
now had their dark hair brushed and pinned neatly beneath ruffled linen caps.

But while their appearance might have changed for town, their manners clearly reflected what they’d left behind on the Dorset beach.

“Is this what Aunt Sophronia’s French fop has taught you?” Lizzie said. She began taking tiny mincing steps with her back at an exaggerated arch to mimic Monsieur La Farge, while Diana waved her handkerchief like a flag and giggled. “Are you practicing how to shake your hands about and talk to yourself like a madwoman from Bedlam?”

“You hush, Lizzie,” Charlotte said, crossing her arms over her chest. “You too, Di. Before long, Aunt Sophronia will find husbands for you, or at least she’ll try to. If you’d any sense, you’d be joining me in Monsieur La Farge’s lessons, so you’ll be prepared when it’s your turn.”

“Why in blazes would I wish to do that?” Lizzie flapped her arms at her sides in a mockery of Charlotte’s minuet. “We’re only staying in London until you’re married.”

“That will likely be weeks and weeks,” Charlotte said. “Aunt Sophronia thinks it won’t be until autumn at the earliest. Plenty of time.”

But Lizzie was too occupied in flapping her arms to care. “Look, Charlotte, I’m a flying Frog!”

“In London ladies don’t say ‘Frog’ for French people,” Charlotte said with exasperation, “and they don’t say ‘in blazes,’ either. That’s close to swearing, and gentlemen don’t like ladies who swear like fishermen.”

“You used to swear the worst of any of us.” Diana gathered Fig up into her arms, trying to untangle the unwanted leash from the little cat’s leg. “You used to hate lessons, too, and you were the one who behaved the worst with governesses, so they’d leave.”

“Perhaps I’ve found a reason to pay heed,” Charlotte said. She sat on one of the white-painted benches, taking care to keep her back straight and to arrange her skirts so they’d fall becomingly over her legs. At the last she remembered to cross her ankles, too, so the tips of her shoes peeped from her petticoats at a pleasing angle. These were more suggestions from Monsieur Le Farge, and every bit as frustrating to remember as the minuet. “Perhaps I’ve now an inclination, one that I didn’t have before, to behave as becomes our rank.”

“Because of your
duke
,” Lizzie said, not bothering to hide her disgust. “You think because you’re going to marry him and have people curtseying to you because you’re a duchess that you’re better than Diana and me, and Mama, too.”

“I don’t think of myself as any better at all,” Charlotte said defensively. What she did think was how much older she suddenly felt than her sisters. “But becoming His Grace’s wife is like any other task that I must learn. You wouldn’t go off to sea without first learning to follow the currents and steer a course and trim the sails to match the wind, would you?”

“I suppose not,” Lizzie said grudgingly. “Unless I were in a rowboat, and then all you’d need to do was fit the oars to the locks and row, which I can already do perfectly well.”

Charlotte sighed, wishing this new life before her could be that uncomplicated. “His Grace isn’t a dinghy, Lizzie, and learning to be an acceptable duchess is going to be much more difficult than keeping the oarlocks straight. If I am to be of any use to His Grace and not an embarrassment, I have a great deal of things to learn before our wedding.”

Diana’s expression remained stubbornly skeptical as she petted the cat in her lap. “I wish you didn’t have to
marry anyone, Charlotte. I wish you were coming back to Ransom with us, where you belong.”

“Oh, Di.” Charlotte sat on the bench beside Diana and hugged her close, striving to keep back the tears that suddenly stung her eyes. As exciting as these last days had been, part of her couldn’t help but agree with Diana, and long to be returning to her familiar old life with her mother and sisters. “You know how much I’ll miss you once you leave with Mama, but my place now will be with the duke. It will be the same for you one day, too, once you’re married.”

Lizzie wriggled in beside her on the bench, and Charlotte pulled her close, too.

“My two little geese,” she whispered, overwhelmed. “You must promise to visit me at Marchbourne House, or Greenwood.”

“Mama says we’ll visit you as soon as you have a baby,” Diana said. “Then we’ll be aunts.”

“You can be godmothers, too,” Charlotte said. She knew that an heir was the main reason the duke was marrying her, and that everyone else knew it, too, but it somehow was disconcerting to hear her younger sister speaking so blithely of her producing a baby, as if it were not more involved than baking a cake. “You can come for the christening.”

“Babies,” said Lizzie with unrepentant disgust. “I’d rather come see the duke’s stables and his horses than any
baby
.”

Charlotte smiled. Not everything was changing, at least not where her sisters were concerned. “I expect His Grace has many, many horses, Lizzie, and likely a few ponies as well. He seems to have a great deal of everything.”

Diana frowned. “You’re having to learn so many new things to please the duke, Charlotte. But what is
he
learning that will make him any use to you?”

“I don’t know,” Charlotte confessed, surprised by the question. She’d been so busy worrying about her own preparations that she really hadn’t considered what he might be doing for their wedding. “I expect because His Grace is older and has been a duke since he was a boy, he doesn’t have much to learn. I doubt he’s half so worried about blundering and shaming me.”