When You Wish Upon a Duke (31 page)

“What in blazes are you doing, Duchess?” the marquess demanded furiously from the window. “Are you mad? Come back here at once, before you fall and break your empty skull!”

“I’d sooner fall than return to you, Lord Andover,” she shouted back. “I’d sooner remain here all the night long.”

“You’re a teasing, taunting bitch, that’s what you are,” he roared back, his anger and frustration spilling over. “Come back here at once, I say. Come back here now!”

But Charlotte had no intention of leaving her branch, and tucking her skirts around her legs, she crouched on her new perch. She looked down and saw the astonished, upturned faces of guests who’d been strolling in
the garden, with more people streaming from the house to gawk at the rare sight of a duchess in a tree.

“Good friends, you see my plight,” she called down to them. “To preserve my virtue and my husband’s honor from this rogue who pretends to be a gentleman, I was forced to flee here. Nor shall I come down until I know I’ll be safe.”

“Shame on you, Lord Andover,” scolded a lady from the gathering crowd. “To chase a poor lady like that!”

“You’ll be next, Andover,” called a gentleman. “March will dangle you over a branch when he hears you’ve dragged his lady into your scandal, see if he won’t.”

The bystanders laughed, and Charlotte cringed, horrified. The last thing she wished was for March to feel he must defend her honor. But if she was being regarded as the victim, then there wasn’t truly a scandal, was there?

“There is nothing scandalous about me,” she called down. “It’s all Lord Andover’s fault, not mine, nor my husband’s.”

But to Charlotte’s mortification, there was laughter and applause in reply, not the understanding or sympathy she’d hoped for. Oh, why wasn’t March here to rescue her again from this tree, the way he had the first time they’d met?

“Charlotte?”

She leaned around the branch to see who’d called her by her given name.

“Charlotte,” the gentleman said again. “Good evening, my dear.”

It wasn’t March, but it was his favorite cousin, the Duke of Breconridge. Nothing shocked or scandalized Brecon, and even now he was smiling at her as genially as if he were addressing her in her carriage, instead of speaking to her as she swayed barefoot in a tree.

“Can you return to the window?” he asked. “Or must I send a footman to bring you down?”

He met her in the library, holding her shoes—retrieved from the bushes by a servant—in one hand. Lord Andover was gone, nor was there any sign of Lady Finnister, either. Brecon didn’t shout or rail or do anything else to cause a scene, leastwise a greater scene than Charlotte had already managed on her own. With a pleasant half smile on his face, he escorted her from the house and to his own coach waiting at the door.

“I trust you won’t object to riding with me,” Brecon said. “I thought this way we could talk, just the two of us.”

He handed her into the coach, and the footman shut the door. He placed his hat on the seat next to him, settled back against the squabs, and sighed deeply.

“My dear Charlotte,” he said. “I’ve heard a great peck of nonsense regarding my cousin this evening, but I’d rather hear the truth from you. Where is March?”

Charlotte sighed, too. “He was called to the country on—”

“No,” Brecon said. “We both know that’s an excuse, not the truth. Why isn’t he with you?”

It was the one question she could not answer: not to Brecon, not to herself. Without a word, she burst into tears.

“I thought as much,” Brecon said, handing her his handkerchief. “Weep as long as you please, if it makes you feel better. I’ll wait.”

“No, no, crying accomplishes nothing,” she sobbed, struggling to control herself. “I—I know I shouldn’t have climbed into that tree—”

“Do you truly think I give a fig about that?” he asked. “Andover is a boor, but you served him exactly as he merited. There’s no lasting harm, and besides, you’ve entertained a good many folk this evening. Pray recall that I’m not your husband. You may dance among the
treetops at the palace for all I care. But if you’ve made March suffer—ah, that is altogether different.”

“He suffers, yes,” she said, “but so do I, and I can’t begin to know what is wrong.”

Now that she’d started crying, she couldn’t stop. Already Breck’s handkerchief was sodden, and still the hot tears streamed down her face, fueled by her frustration and misery.

“I love March and I would swear by all that’s holy that he loves me, too,” she said, her voice choked with emotion. “Yet each time that I feel we’ve become closer, closer still, he draws back and away. He always blames himself, but he never explains why, so I am sure it must be my fault instead, and oh, Brecon, I am so, so unhappy without him!”

Brecon drew another handkerchief from his coat pocket. “You can tell I spend much time in the company of ladies,” he said as he handed it to her. “Is this the first time March has actually left you?”

She took the fresh handkerchief and blew her nose. “If you mean leave London, then yes. But he—we have never spent the entire night together. He—he finishes, and leaves me for his own rooms. Oh, I am being most wretchedly disloyal to him by telling you that, but it saddens me terribly.”

“You’re not being disloyal, Charlotte, not at all,” he said, sadness of his own in his voice. “I wish you both to be happy, and to be happy together.”

“Most times we are,” she said wistfully. “Last night we were most wonderfully happy, or so I believed. I tried my best to please him, and he pleased me very much.”

“Then he has pleased you,” he said with great delicacy, “as a husband should please a wife?”

Charlotte blushed and looked down at the tight, teary ball she’d made of the handkerchiefs. She doubted she
could speak to her own mother of such a private, personal matter, and here she was discussing it with Brecon.

“When he forgets he is a duke,” she said with care, “then he pleases me, oh, above everything in this world. But when he—and I, too, for I wished to be a lady for him—when we think more of our duty than of making love, then there is no joy for either of us. Last night I believed we had finally found our way, but then he was gone when I woke, with—with only apologies.”

“Apologies,” Brecon repeated, shaking his head. “I feared that was so. He has done that since he was a child, you see, apologizing for things that did not require an apology, at least not from him. If he cannot make it right, by will or by order, then he must apologize.”

“Yes, yes,” Charlotte said, marveling at how precisely this described March. “That’s him exactly, though I wish it weren’t.”

“He’s reason enough for it, I suppose,” Brecon said. “You Wylders were always a cheerful family. I know you lost your father at an early age, my dear, but surely you recall the love your parents shared?”

“Oh, yes,” she said, smiling as she remembered that long-ago happiness. “They loved each other and us, too, very much. Mama misses Father still, and it’s been years and years. That is what I wish to have with March: that happiness, that trust, and that passion.”

“But you see, you have the memory of your parents to guide you, that knowledge of how a marriage should be,” Brecon said with an understanding that surprised her. “March does not.”

“But his parents—”

“His parents were not like yours,” he said firmly. “That is all I’ll say of them. March must tell you the rest himself, Charlotte, when he is ready. As his wife, you must know his past before you can make your shared future. I can see no other way.”

Charlotte listened thoughtfully. When she wondered what haunted March, she’d never once thought of his parents. Why would she, when her own parents had only shown her love and the fondest indulgence?

Brecon leaned across the aisle toward her. “Go to him, Charlotte,” he said. “You need to be together, not apart. Go to him at Greenwood.”

“To Greenwood?” She gave her head an anxious little shake. “I can’t, Brecon. I can’t. What if I go to him and he leaves me again?”

“He won’t,” Brecon said firmly. “I know him well enough to give you my word on that. If you go to him, he’ll stay with you.”

She tried to smile, but failed. “I do not know if I’m that certain. Or that brave.”

“If you’re brave enough to climb that tree as nimbly as a cat, then you’ve the courage to go to Greenwood after your husband.” He smiled and reached out to cover her hand with his own. “Go to March, Charlotte. Talk, and listen, and hear whatever he tells you. Above all, love him. Love him, and the rest will mend itself.”

Washed, shaved, and dressed to meet the new day, March sat at his breakfast table with the London papers spread before him and tried very hard to pretend that he’d slept in his bed instead of slumped awkwardly to one side in an armchair, and only an hour or so at that. His humor was foul and his neck was stiff, and his eyes felt as if sand had been rubbed beneath his lids.

Yet in that short, restless sleep, he had dreamed of Charlotte, and she had been the first thing he’d thought of when he’d awakened as well. Charlotte, safe in London and safe from him. How fine to dream and think of what he could not have, he thought as he irritably sawed his knife across his toast, damning the very crust that would confound him this day.

“The midsummer rents will fall due at the end of the week, sir,” Carter was saying, cradling in his arms yet another gloomy account book with all the fondness of a mother for her firstborn. “When you have returned from your survey of the north fields later this morning, sir, I might suggest that we review the accountings together, as is your usual practice.”

But for once, March wasn’t listening. Instead he was leaning back in his armchair, the better to see the hired cart that was drawing before the front door. No one called at Greenwood at this hour of the morning, especially
not in a cart with London markings on the side. Curiosity overcame propriety, and he left his napkin beside his plate and went striding into the front hall to see for himself. Two men were carrying in a large, flat package, wrapped and tied in brown paper, while his butler hovered beside the open door.

“What the devil is this?” March demanded. “I’ve ordered nothing from London, and if it’s meant for below stairs, then it should be brought to the back, not to the front hall.”

“It appears to be a gift for you, sir,” his butler said apologetically. “These men are from the workshop of the painter Sir Lucas Rowell.”

“Aye, Y’Grace.” The first man balanced his share of the parcel’s weight against his hip and carefully drew a letter for March from inside his waistcoat. “This be for you, Y’Grace. From Her Grace the Duchess o’ Marchbourne.”

Swiftly March glanced from the sealed letter to the parcel, regarding it now with considerably more interest. He felt a fool for how fast his heart had begun to beat, simply because his wife had sent him some manner of gift.

From Charlotte, from Charlotte
, beat his heart.
From Charlotte
.

“Bring it to the back parlor,” he said gruffly. “You may set it against the bench in there.”

He followed the men and the package, Charlotte’s unread letter clutched in his hand. With care the man unwrapped the parcel, setting it gently on the bench to lean against the wall, and then stepped away.

March stared, speechless. How in blazes had Charlotte persuaded Sir Lucas to make such a beautiful portrait of her in so little time? There was an immediacy to the drawing that March had never seen in more finished paintings. To see Charlotte smiling at him, her face so full of eager
longing and hope, tore at his heart, and when he began to realize other things about the picture—his ruby-studded shirt buckle in her open hand, how the pose mimicked his favorite portrait of the first duchess—he was overwhelmed. People did things for him because he ordered them or paid for them, or because he was a duke.

But only Charlotte acted from love.

Without looking away from the picture, he sent Sir Lucas’s men to the kitchen to fortify themselves for the journey back to London, and he dismissed Carter, too. Finally he was alone, and at last he opened Charlotte’s letter.

My own dearest darling March
,

Please might this
TOKEN
remind you of me & demonstrate the regard I have for my place in your heart & as the
FOURTH
duchess, tho’ not so far removed from the
FIRST.
O my dearest husband, pray return! There can be nothing in that infernal country to compare to the
LOVE
I have waiting for you if only you would come back to

Yr. most loving wife in
ALL WAYS,
Charlotte

He read it again, and again after that, hearing each breathless word in her voice. It was as if she were here with him, tormenting and comforting him at the same time, and he wondered if she’d any notion of what a blessed torture that would be. No matter that it was morning, he poured himself a glass of brandy and squared his chair before the picture. The rest of his day could wait. He must sit here now, before Charlotte. Her love for him—and his for her—had so much power that he’d no choice.