When You Wish Upon a Duke Page 5

  But now that phantom had a face, and a deliciously tempting body, too, that had haunted his headachy dreams. She was beautiful in a fresh and unstudied way, and when she’d laughed, it had been the merriest enchantment he’d ever heard. He’d also realized that other gentlemen would likely feel this way about her, too. Betrothal or not, her aunt the dowager dragon would make certain she was launched into society with a grand splash. Because he was himself wealthy, he’d never paid much attention to Lady Charlotte’s portion, but her worth was sufficient to make her a prize heiress. If a more attractive suitor appeared, he’d no doubt that Lady Sanborn would contrive a way to break the engagement.

  He could not let that happen. Because when Lady Charlotte Wylder had smiled at him, her cheeks rosy and her face dappled with sunlight, he’d realized with a jolt that he didn’t wish simply to fulfill his obligation and marry her. He wanted to win her heart.

  Which was why, when March had finally risen this morning with a clear head, he had escaped the hovering doctors and come straight to London, and now, at last, was stepping down from his carriage and through the green-painted door of Mrs. Damaris Cartwright, mantua-maker to ladies.

  He hadn’t been inside a mantua-maker’s shop since he was a boy, attending his mother. It wasn’t much different from the tailor shops he visited: neat counters with cushioned stools before them; rows of shelves with goods in boxes, bolts of costly cloth, and coils of ribbon; and several artful displays of finished gowns to tempt the customers.

  What was different from his tailor’s, however, was that the shop was occupied entirely by women, both behind the counters and before them and fluttering in the open spaces as well. As soon as he entered, all conversation stopped as every last one of them turned to look at him. No, they stared at him, as if he were some curious beast in the Tower menagerie. He wasn’t imagining it, either. Almost in unison, they curtseyed to him, the soft shush of silk the only sound in the shop. Across from where he stood hung a large looking glass, and in it he saw his reflection: his tall, serious, male self, dressed in dark blue superfine with engraved silver buttons, his still-tender arm cradled in a sling contrived from a maroon silk scarf, standing like some righteous old Turk over a dozen obsequious women.

  And yet, in the way of luck, there was not a hint of the woman he wished most to see. Blast, what he’d give now to be able to make a swift and honorable retreat back to the pavement!

  “Good day, Your Grace, good day!” An older woman bustled forward from the back hall to greet him, elegant in dove-gray silk with a silver chatelaine and a worked pinball hanging from her waist. He wasn’t surprised she already knew who he was; most likely one of her stitching-spies had seen the crest on his carriage and reported back to her. “I am Mistress Cartwright, sir, your humble servant in all concerns of correct fashion. How might we serve you this day, sir? What may we offer to please a special lady? We’ve silk lutestring fresh from Paris, as well as a shipment of castor fur for trimming, direct from Quebec and the most lustrous ever I’ve seen.”

  “Ah, thank you, Mrs. Cartwright, no,” March said, clearing his throat. He wished all these women would return to their chatter and stop gawking at him as if he were some actor on the stage. “I’ve come to your shop to meet a special lady, not to, ah, please one with castor fur.”

  Mrs. Cartwright smiled and made a graceful sweeping motion with her head, offering everything to him. “Many gentlemen attend us with that express purpose, sir. Though perhaps in time you will wish to please the one you meet with a remembrance from our shelves.”

  Damnation, that sounded more like he’d come to survey the goods in a bagnio, not a mantua-maker’s shop.

  “I had hoped to converse with Lady Charlotte Wylder while you were attending her,” he said hurriedly; he was not the sort of gentleman who preyed upon humble seamstresses or milliners for diversion. “But since Lady Charlotte is not here at present, I will—”

  “But her ladyship is indeed here, sir,” Mrs. Cartwright said. “She is in one of our parlors, having the final fittings for several new gowns. Lady Sanborn is with her as well. Shall I send word to them that you are here, sir, and wish to join them?”

  “During the, ah, fitting?” he asked, startled by the prospect. Most specifically, he thought of Lady Charlotte’s scarlet stays.

  Mrs. Cartwright nodded, far too polite and too experienced a tradeswoman to show that she noticed his discomfiture.

  “It is often done, sir,” she murmured, “particularly during the final fittings. There is no immodesty in a gentleman witnessing the last adjustments. If you’ll excuse me, sir, I’ll speak with Lady Sanborn. I am certain she’ll be delighted to have you join them.”

  March was just as certain that nothing would delight Lady Sanborn less than to have him pursue Lady Charlotte all the way to a fitting with her mantua-maker, but now that he’d come this far, he wouldn’t back away. Besides, as Mrs. Cartwright had said, Lady Sanborn could hardly refuse to see him. It wasn’t as if she could pretend she wasn’t at home.

  He watched Mrs. Cartwright glide quickly into the back of the shop, leaving him among the shimmering little pool of women. But once again Lady Charlotte had worked her magic. As soon as he had mentioned her name, the others had lost interest in him and his doings and had returned to their own purchases and conversations. At least the fashionable world seemed to regard the lady as still belonging to him.

  “The ladies would be honored to have you join them, sir,” Mrs. Cartwright said, ushering him back through the shop. “This way, sir, if you please.”

  March followed her down the narrow hall, decorated with prints of great ladies in even greater gowns and smelling faintly of flowery powder and sweet perfumes. It all gave him the distinct and unfamiliar sensation of entering some female sanctum sanctorum; as privileges went, he realized he rather liked it, too.

  “Here, sir,” Mrs. Cartwright said, opening a door to him. “My lady, His Grace the Duke of Marchbourne.”

  “Good day, Duke.” The countess rose from her armchair and curtseyed, her smile chilly. “What an honor to discover you here, of all places.”

  “I’m the one who is honored, Lady Sanborn,” he said, his gaze already turned from her to Lady Charlotte.

  She was standing in the center of the small room, swallowed up by a gown so large it covered most of the floor. The gown was one of those outlandish silk extravaganzas worn at court and nowhere else, with yards of pale rose satin supported by the hoops that gave ladies the look of campaign tents. Two startled seamstresses had been crouched at Lady Charlotte’s feet, pinning some sort of serpentine silver frippery along the hem, while another held the ruffled sleeve that she’d been ready to attach to the gown.

  Yet all the costly display still couldn’t take away from Lady Charlotte’s own beauty. She was even more lovely than he remembered. Her cheeks had pinked and her eyes had lit as soon as he entered, and her smile was filled with such warmth and eagerness that he could scarce believe it was for him. All the doubts and misgivings that had plagued him these last days and nights vanished in an instant—or at least they would if he could speak to her alone.

  “Good day, Your Grace,” she said, her voice betraying a hint of charming shyness. “Did you come here just to see me?”

  “What a bold question to ask of a gentleman, Charlotte!” scolded the countess, rolling her eyes with a dramatic show of dismay.

  Any moment March expected the smoke and flames to spew from her dragon’s nose. What would it take to make her leave them alone? He knew it wasn’t considered proper, especially since in theory they’d not even been introduced, but damnation, he was already bound to marry the lady. He supposed he could try ordering the dragon away, but even given the differences in their rank, he wasn’t sure she’d leave Lady Charlotte unattended.

  No, it would likely take a silver sword to vanquish her, much like the one St. George had possessed. He could only imagine what the gathered ladies in the front of the store would say to th
at, too.

  “Your Grace,” the dragon said, “please be assured that you need not reply to my niece’s impertinence.”

  “But I will,” March said. “I did come here to see you, Lady Charlotte. What other reason could bring me to such a place?”

  She laughed with unabashed delight. “Perhaps you desired a lace gown? Or a new pelisse?”

  “Charlotte, please,” the countess said. “Remember yourself, and what we have discussed between us. Do not give offense.”

  But March wasn’t offended. He was enchanted. He’d liked how she’d spoken plainly to him in the tree, and he liked it even more here.

  “A pelisse,” he said, pretending to consider such a garment with the hope that she’d laugh again. “No, I do believe I’d rather see that pelisse on you.”

  But Lady Charlotte wasn’t laughing. “Oh, sir, look at your poor arm in a sling,” she said softly. “Does it grieve you much? Are you in great pain? Oh, and it’s all because of my clumsiness, too.”

  “It’s not my arm but my shoulder, and it’s mending well enough,” he said with what he hoped with was gallant nonchalance. “You’re hardly to blame for it, Lady Charlotte, and I’d never think of you as clumsy. Not at all.”

  “Yes, yes, sir, and the less said of that little event, the better,” the countess said, putting an unarguable end to the subject. “So how would you judge this gown, sir? Doesn’t Lady Charlotte look the very picture of a peeress in it?”

  Lady Charlotte grinned, holding her arm out for the seamstress to slip the sleeve onto it and slide it up to her shoulder. Most of her arm was bare below the sleeve of her shift, a slender, creamy expanse of seldom glimpsed skin, and March thought how ridiculously more seductive such glimpses could be than a score of oversized court gowns. To make things worse—or better—the seamstress was having some manner of difficulty attaching the sleeve, and pushed Lady Charlotte’s white linen neckerchief aside, baring even more of her.

  “Is the neckerchief in your way?” Lady Charlotte asked. “There’s no trouble removing it.”

  Without waiting for the seamstress’s answer, Lady Charlotte pulled the neckerchief from her shoulders, reminding March of how she’d likewise pulled off her neckerchief to wrap around the errant cat in the tree. Now, to oblige the seamstress, she tossed the kerchief on the bench to one side, leaving the deep, wide neck of her gown uncovered. Even March knew that this was how a court gown was meant to be worn, just as he’d observed such gowns on countless other ladies in his life. Observed, and approved; he wouldn’t have been male if he hadn’t.

  But those other ladies had not been Lady Charlotte, and those countless other half-bared breasts paraded before him had not been hers. Raised up like an offering by her stays, her breasts were round and plump, more satiny than the silk below them, and so impossibly tempting that it took all his ducal willpower to drag his gaze back to her face, where it belonged.

  If only the dragon could be driven away …

  “You do like the gown, sir, don’t you?” Lady Charlotte asked disingenuously. “I’ve never had any half as fine and I know nothing, nothing, of the fashions, but Mrs. Cartwright said this was exactly what every lady wished to wear to the palace.”

  “With the proper additions, Charlotte,” Lady Sanborn said promptly. “The correct plumes in your hair, and of course jewels when you have them.”

  Jewels. Of course. And of course the mercenary dragon meant his mother’s and grandmother’s jewels, a not very subtle reminder that his wife would be entitled to wear them. March knew all this well enough, and he had in fact already asked Carter to retrieve the family’s jewel boxes from safekeeping so he might decide which pieces to have cleaned and refurbished as wedding gifts for Lady Charlotte. He wanted to slip the rings on her fingers himself, and he wanted to fasten the necklaces around her throat and watch the pearls and other gems slip into that shadowy valley between her breasts.

  But it should all be his choice, not Lady Sanborn’s, and it irritated him that the dragon would dare think otherwise.

  “There was a pair of pearl drops, sir, droplets crowned with diamonds,” the countess was saying, “that I especially recall the late duchess wearing. I believe the tale was that the pearls were Italian.”

  “They were Italian, Lady Sanborn,” he said, his voice dropping low. As all his friends knew, he seldom spoke of his mother in conversation, and he didn’t want to discuss her, her jewels, or how or why or where she’d come by them—especially not with Lady Sanborn. “I believe they still are, too.”

  “Of course, sir, of course,” she continued, ignoring the unmistakable warning in his voice. “Yet as handsomely as your mother wore those earrings, I can’t but imagine them now on Charlotte, and how—”

  “Leave us, please, Lady Sanborn,” he said curtly. “Leave me with Lady Charlotte. Leave us alone.”

  The countess rose swiftly. “Sir, I cannot—”

  “Now,” March said. “All of you go.”

  The countess sputtered with wordless indignation, standing so righteously straight that she nearly bent backward. Biting back her anger, she waited until the three seamstresses had scurried from the room. She then made a stiff, self-righteous curtsey to March, and at the door paused to look back to Lady Charlotte.

  “Recall who you are, niece, and what is at stake,” she intoned, so loudly March was sure everyone in the shop must have heard her, and likely in the next shop as well. “Recall all that I have taught you, I beg you, and do not forget. I shall be directly outside if you desire me.”

  Head high, she stalked from the room, and the latch of the door clicked shut behind her.

  And finally, inevitably, March was alone with Lady Charlotte.

  Charlotte stood in the center of the mantua-maker’s small dressing room, exactly where the seamstresses had left her, and tried desperately to remember whatever it was that Aunt Sophronia had implored her to recall. Doubtless it was something to do with ruined opportunities and blighted futures, for both were favorite cautionary topics of her aunt. Or it might have been simply ruin, as it pertained to men. Ruin and men were always linked together. Mama had also warned her and her sisters about ruin during lengthy talks about how babies were created, especially after one of their kitchen maids at Ransom Manor had met her ruin with a sailor on leave from his ship in Portsmouth. Ruin, it seemed, lurked everywhere.

  But when Charlotte looked across the narrow room at the duke, she thought not of ruin but only of him.

  The first time she’d seen him, he’d appeared like magic to climb from his horse up the tree, determined to rescue her. It didn’t matter that she hadn’t needed rescuing. He’d still seemed like some fanciful prince from a ballad, with his hair tousled and his white linen shirt billowing in the breeze. When he’d asked her to trust him, she’d instantly agreed, mostly because she’d wanted to, but also because none of it had seemed quite real—at least until they’d fallen from the tree.

  But here in this room, the duke seemed very, very real. He was taller than she’d realized in the tree, his shoulders broad and all of him powerfully male. He was dressed as elegantly as a man could possibly be, in a dark blue suit of clothes with a waistcoat covered in cream-colored Marseilles work. His dark hair was clubbed sleekly back beneath his black cocked hat, and there was no unseemly balladlike billowing to his immaculate Holland linen beyond lace ruffles at his cuffs. He wore a dress sword in a silver scabbard beneath his coat, and from his manner she’d no doubt that he could use it, too. He’d just bravely banished Aunt Sophronia, hadn’t he?

  In fact, he appeared entirely invincible except for two important exceptions, two chinks in his manly armor that Charlotte had noticed at once. First, of course, was his arm in the sling: a silk sling, artfully contrived, but an undeniable sign of a graver injury than he’d wished to admit, one that caused him to wince when he moved.

  The second sign of vulnerability was not nearly as obvious. When the duke had ordered the countess to leave, his expression
had been hard with anger that she’d dared to speak so to him, his dark eyes flashing and his jaw squared. But as soon as the door closed, the anger had drained his face, replaced by something so different that it shocked Charlotte. She wasn’t sure if what she saw was sadness, melancholy, or simply pain from the effort of latching the door, and in her youth and inexperience, she accepted what was easiest to understand.

  “Your shoulder, sir,” she said softly. “I know my aunt wishes me not to speak of that day again, but I would have you know how sorry I am that you were hurt. Because of me. I know it was because of me, so please don’t say otherwise.”

  He looked at her, and whatever she’d seen before in his face was gone. Now his eyes seemed only to focus on her, just as they had earlier.

  “And I told you that my shoulder will mend and be well enough, Lady Charlotte, and so it shall.” He smiled to prove it, but the smile seemed weary, a little worn.

  “Oh, sir,” she said. She felt silly standing here in this plain room in the lavish yet unfinished court gown, and woefully unsure of herself with him. How could she not, when he was so much older and more worldly than she?

  “I know in time your shoulder will be well, sir,” she said, “but I will be sorry until it does. Does that suffice?”

  “It will,” he said gruffly. “If you wish it so, then how could I want otherwise?”

  “You’re very kind, sir,” she said, willing herself to stand still, hands clasped loosely at her waist as a lady should, and not fuss with her skirts or hair. “Most kind.”

  She could hear the others in the hall outside, bustling and rustling and whispering back and forth, and she could imagine her aunt there, too, just beyond the door, listening. She wasn’t sure how long she’d have here alone with him before Aunt Safronia conceived of some reason for returning, and she desperately wished to make the most of that time. In the duke’s presence, she felt uncharacteristically shy, and all the more awkward because of the importance of this moment. What was proper to say to him, this imposing lord she was contracted to marry, and yet right for the man whose bed she would share?