When You Wish Upon a Duke Read online

  “Flagrant, wanton creature,” Willoughby sputtered behind him. “Shameless, shameless!”

  Reluctantly March could almost agree. At once he pushed his way past the others to reach Charlotte, laying his hand on her shoulder. Laughing, she turned about, and her eyes lit with obvious pleasure.

  “March!” she exclaimed happily. “You’re just in time to see me triumph. Verily, verily, I am the luckiest fisherwoman of the evening.”

  Her eyes bright and teasing, she made the two fish markers kiss once again. Surely she didn’t mean for the markers to represent themselves, did she? Newlywed fish, kissing to the delight of every last raucous soul here in Finnister’s parlor?

  “Charlotte, please,” he said, all he could think of to say in the circumstances. If she’d made a show of the lovesick fish when they were alone in her bedchamber, he would have laughed as loudly as anyone else—perhaps even more loudly. But he was a private man, and this should have been a private entertainment. He’d always prided himself on possessing a certain dignity in public company, a reserve that was part of his rank, and he’d expected the same from his duchess. Didn’t Charlotte realize that there was not one iota of dignity about kissing fish?

  Clearly she didn’t, not the way she was grinning. “I won, March,” she said proudly. “Quite monstrously, too. I told you I’d skill with gaming, didn’t I?”

  Belatedly March noticed the sizable mountain of glittering markers before Charlotte’s place. When he’d told her to play and enjoy herself, he’d imagined a discreet little game for ladies, not the kind of perilously high stakes that led to duels and ruin.

  And talk. Damnation, all London would be chortling over his bride’s boldness and daring with a wager in mixed company as well as those infernal kissing fish in her fingers. Yet here she was, still smiling up at him over her shoulder, so blithely, so innocently, that he really was at a loss for the proper words.

  So of course he said improper ones. “Shall we leave, ma’am?”

  Her brows rose sharply with surprise. “Now?”

  He took a deep breath, a breath that sounded as loud as a gust of wind in the suddenly silent room.

  “Now,” he said. “If you please.”

  “As you wish.” She slid from the chair, shaking out her skirts. “Let me gather my winnings—”

  “No, leave it,” he said, glancing at the towering pile of markers she’d won. “You’ve no need of any of it.”

  Charlotte bowed her head and nodded, outwardly agreeing as she placed the two last little fish on top of the pile. But bright red patches had appeared on her cheeks, and her lips were furiously pinched as if to bite back words that should not be said. Lady Finnister patted her arm in consolation, and the others around the table remained silent, too, not from embarrassment or shame, but from the hope that the Duke of Marchbourne would say some delicious, scolding, scandalous thing to his wife that could be repeated.

  March, however, would rather be damned than oblige them. He’d already spoken enough—more than enough, really. In silence he took Charlotte’s hand, and in silence he led her from the table.

  “I won fairly, March,” she began again. “Truly. I didn’t cheat, or cozen, or—”

  “No, Charlotte,” he said. “Not now. Not here.”

  And in silence, the Duke and Duchess of Marchbourne left the house.

  In all her life, Charlotte had never encountered anything so deep and inscrutable as March’s silence.

  Other people might refuse to talk, but his silence now was something entirely different. It reminded her of a well: she could lean over the side and peer deep into the bottomless darkness, but no matter what she said or even shouted into it, only her own words answered.

  This was the silence he kept as they left the Finnisters’ house, and the same silence that was her chilly companion on their way back to Marchbourne House. It accompanied her past the waiting servants and up the marble staircase, and when she started toward her own rooms, March wordlessly made it clear that she was to continue with him to his rooms instead.

  He sent the servants away and shut the door so that they were alone, and when he motioned for Charlotte to sit, she perched on the very edge of his settee with her hands clasped tightly together. There was a well-tended fire in the grate before her, as there was in nearly every hearth in Marchbourne House, but she felt none of its warmth, not with his silence filling the room, and she kept her cloak pulled around her shoulders. She watched as he crossed the room, poured himself a glass of wine, and drank it down with his back to her, still without a word.

  Finally she could bear it no more.

  “Clearly I have erred in some fashion, March,” she began, speaking to his back, “and I am sorry for distressing you. But until you tell me exactly where I have misstepped or given offense, I can neither explain nor apologize any further. Nor will I beg forgiveness for sins I have not committed, nor—”

  “Stop, Charlotte,” he said without turning. “You’re not making sense.”

  “Hah,” she said. “And here I thought that was your specialty this evening.”

  “Mine?” He wheeled around to face her. “You would tell me that I am the one lacking sense?”

  “Yes,” she said as evenly as she could. She did not wish to quarrel with him again, but she didn’t wish to be trapped into being a meek little mouse of a wife for the rest of their lives together, either. “I will tell you so, because it is true. You encouraged me to divert myself by joining the play at the gaming tables while you spoke to your associates, and I did exactly that. You told me to do that, March.”

  “I didn’t tell you to act like a professional gamester and win so extravagantly.”

  “But the entire point of playing is to win!” she exclaimed. “Fortune smiled on me tonight, true, but I also warned you that I was a good player. Yet you didn’t believe me, did you?”

  “I didn’t say that,” he protested. “Not at all.”

  “You expected me to lose,” she said, unable to hide her disappointment. “It’s just like the riding, isn’t it? You do not believe me to be accomplished in any way. Or is that what a duchess is supposed to do? Not try to excel? Would you rather I were an unaccomplished dullard, unable to do anything for myself?”

  “Not at all,” he said quickly. “It’s more that a peeress shouldn’t, ah, call attention to herself quite so boldly. You had every eye in the room watching you play.”

  “You would rather I’d lost?” she asked. “You’d rather I’d been one of those ladies who fuss and fluster at a gaming table, and cannot even keep the cards in their fingers?”

  He didn’t answer, which was answer enough.

  “Very well, March,” she said. “But why stop at that? If you do not wish me to be noticed, then I will cease to follow fashions, and dress instead in the plainest of Quaker gray. I will give up my stays, and cut my hair short. I’ll wear an untrimmed cap that ties beneath my chin, and cover my bosom with a thick coarse kerchief.”

  He frowned. “There’s no need to be so dramatic, Charlotte.”

  “It will be the last time, I promise you that.” She pulled the black plume from her hair and tossed it aside, then unhooked the heavy pearls from her ears. “And you had better take these, too. They cause too much notice, you see.”

  He ignored her outstretched hand with the earrings. “It wasn’t just how much you won, Charlotte,” he said. “It was that business with the markers, pretending that the fish were, ah, kissing.”

  She flushed, and let her hand with the earrings slowly drop to her side. “I did that to make you laugh,” she said. “I thought you’d be entertained. I realize now that I was woefully mistaken.”

  “I was entertained, Charlotte, or at least I would have been if you hadn’t chosen to entertain everyone else in the room as well. They were laughing at us instead of the fish, Charlotte, picturing us as—as besotted newlyweds.”

  “Which I rather thought we were,” she said, her voice brittle with disappoi
ntment. “How foolish of me!”

  “We are the newlywed Duke and Duchess of Marchbourne,” he said. “We are not some newlywed Darby and Joan, frolicking in the hay to amuse the rest of the village.”

  He set the empty glass back down, tapping it lightly on the table before he finally left it. Wearily he crossed the room, finally coming to stand before her. “What am I to do, Charlotte? Can you tell me that?”

  With one hand she pulled the cloak more closely about her shoulders. “What should you do with me?”

  “Of course with you,” he said. “What other meaning could I have?”

  She looked up at him. With the fire behind him, his face was in shadow, and she couldn’t make out enough of it to tell his mood. His voice was resigned, which frightened her. What if, after tonight, he’d decided that he was done with her? A husband—especially one who was a duke—could do that with a wife who didn’t please him. What if he sent her away to live alone in one of his distant houses, so she’d never trouble him again?

  If he banished her, her heart would break.

  She bowed her head, staring down at her wedding ring, the firelight dancing off the clustered diamonds.

  “Are you that unhappy?” he asked.

  Surprised, she looked up swiftly. “Unhappy? You believe that I’m unhappy?”

  “It’s the reason for your discontent, isn’t it?” he said, his voice heavy with sadness of his own. “If you were happy being wed to me, then you wouldn’t be so restless.”

  “But I am neither restless nor unhappy, March, not at all!”

  “Then why do you cry when I come to you at night?”

  She caught her breath. “I—I did not know you noticed.”

  “How the devil could I not notice?” he asked, his frustration clear. “I try to treat you with every respect and courtesy, every kindness, and yet still you weep.”

  “I—I can’t help it,” she confessed miserably. “I don’t know why. You are gentle and courteous, as kind a husband as can be, and yet—”

  “I love you.”

  She looked up sharply. She wasn’t sure that she’d heard the words from him, or only imagined them.

  “I love you, Charlotte,” he said again, more strongly this time. “I love you, and I cannot imagine my life without you in it.”

  “Oh, March.” She let her cloak slip from her shoulders to the settee and quickly came to stand close before him. Now she could see his face clearly, and his emotions as well, writ achingly plain across his handsome face.

  He loved her.

  She could see it in his eyes even more clearly than she’d heard the words, and for the first time since they’d been wed, he’d lowered his guard of ducal propriety and let her peek inside. It hadn’t been easy for him, but that made it all the more special. Bravely he loved her; he cherished her, he wanted her above all other women. In that single, heart-stopping moment, it was all there for her to see and relish.

  But there was more to see, too, in the tension in his mouth and the tightness of his jaw. To her shock, she realized from the sadness and resignation in his face that as glorious as his declaration was to her, he also feared, even expected, that she wouldn’t return it.

  She wasted no time in correcting him.

  “I love you, too, March,” she whispered, her voice breaking with the perfection of saying it aloud. She reached up and held his face in her hands, making sure he’d never doubt her again. His stubbled jaw was rough against her palms, and she could feel the beating of his heart beneath her fingers. “I love you, and I do believe I was always meant to love you.”

  He smiled, and she felt that, too, with her fingers, his mouth curling up at the corners against her thumbs.

  “I believe it so for me as well,” he said softly. “I love you, Charlotte. Do you know I’ve never said that to any other?”

  She smiled, too, the joy so tight in her breast that she feared she’d weep from it.

  “Nor I,” she said. “Nor should you, ever, ever, except to me.”

  As if to prove it, he took one of her hands in his own and turned his face toward her palm, kissing her there on the softest part. She shivered with delight, and with remembering.

  “You kissed my hand like that the first time we were alone together,” she said. “In the back room at the mantua-maker’s. I didn’t want you to stop.”

  “I wouldn’t have,” he said, kissing the inside of her wrist. “Except that your Aunt Dragon was thumping on the door outside, determined to protect your virtue.”

  She chuckled. “I vow she would have broken it down if we hadn’t opened it.”

  “She’s not here now, is she?” Using her hand to reel her in closer, he kissed her mouth. From the way he kissed her, Charlotte knew that even if Aunt Sophronia had somehow appeared at that very moment in her dragon guise, he would have ignored her, even if she had broken down the door. But what was a mere dragon before her duke? If only he would always be like this!

  No, there was more than that. They both must change. If only they could forget the others crowding round their marriage, offering advice and suggestions and criticisms. If only they could simply be March and Charlotte as lovers, and not the imposing duke and duchess.

  “Oh, March,” she pleaded softly. “Why can we not always be like this, without a thought for what others think or say? What does our rank or station matter if we love each other?”

  He was listening closely, watching her with such intensity that it gave her courage to continue.

  “My own husband,” she said, reaching up to run her fingertips over his lips. “I only wish to please you, you know. I don’t give a tinker’s dam for what anyone else might think or say. You’re all that matters to me, March. All.”

  “All?” he repeated, the single word full of wonder.

  “All,” she said. “And I—”

  But what she said was lost between them as he swept her back into his arms to kiss her with astonishing purpose, deepening the kiss until she melted against him. What choice did she have, truly? She loved being kissed like this, until her head grew dizzy and her bones dissolved inside her, and she was happy to yield to him in any way that she could. He tasted of the wine he’d just drunk, but it was his own masculine taste that made her giddy and robbed her of her sense. Really, it was just as well he kept his arm around her waist. If he let go now, she’d likely sink to the floor at his feet.

  He must have sensed how weak she’d become, because his hand slid lower, his fingers spreading to fondle and squeeze her bottom even as he pushed her belly more tightly against him. Countless layers of clothing separated them, but she could still feel how hard and hot his cock had become as it pressed against her. She sighed raggedly into his mouth as they kissed. Excitement was gathering within her, too, that irresistible, unladylike heat that she’d felt only on their wedding night, when they’d both had too much to drink.

  Aunt Sophronia had told her it was unseemly to feel so, unseemly and slatternly and unbefitting a lady of her rank and station. But where was the sin in it if she and March loved each other? How could any pleasure that felt as fine and right as this be wrong?

  She tightened her arms around his broad back because she needed his support, but more because she wanted to. He was tugging at the back of her skirts, tangling in the cloth as he struggled to reach her within all that linen and silk and the cane of her hoops. Abruptly he stepped back, and she gasped in disappointment.

  “Go to your maid, Charlotte,” he said, breathing hard. He clenched his hands tightly at his sides as he willed himself not to touch her further. “Have her undress you and prepare you for bed, and in a quarter hour’s time, I’ll come to you.”

  On any other night she would have done as he’d asked, returning to Polly and her own bed to wait in misery for his bleak, empty visit. But tonight she knew he loved her, and that changed everything. She glanced up beyond March to the portrait of his great-grandmother behind him, and Charlotte could have sworn that Nan Lilly’s s
mile was for her.

  No one should ever call the Duchess of Marchbourne a coward.

  “I believe, March,” she said, her breathing rapid, “that I’d rather stay here with you.”

  She retrieved her pearls from the table where she’d tossed them, and slowly hooked them back into her ears, the only things she intended to put back on. Slowly, too, she untied the lace kerchief from her shoulders and let it drift behind her. At once his gaze left her face to stare at her mostly bare breasts, raised and presented to him by her tight-laced stays. In the French fashion, of course.

  He was either scowling or simply concentrating very hard on her breasts.

  She sighed deeply, making sure that his concentration was well rewarded.

  “Forgive me, March, but I no longer care what is appropriate and what is not,” she said, lifting her arms to begin pulling the pins from her hair. “I told you that before.”

  “You did,” March said, but with a decided lack of conviction—or rather, his conviction was more completely focused on her breasts. “That is, ah, true.”

  “Of course it’s true,” she said. “You’re March and I am Charlotte, and I love you, and you love me.”

  She drew the last pin from her hair and shook it free, combing her fingers through the heavy waves so that they rippled over her shoulders. March didn’t say anything, but she was quite sure she hadn’t lost his attention. This was an interested silence, nothing like the one he’d used before to keep her away. Lightly she rested her hands on his chest.

  “I’ll act as your servant tonight,” she said, already unfastening the heart-shaped shirt buckle. The buckle pinned the opening of his shirt closed, and to free the prong she had to slip her fingers inside his shirt, brushing against his chest. “There will be no more need for you to summon Giroux than for me to call Polly. If you’ll let me, that is.”