When You Wish Upon a Duke Page 6

  She smiled, albeit a little tremulously. “I suspect your doctors cautioned you against coming to town, sir.”

  He raised his head a fraction, all brave defiance. “They could not stop me,” he declared. “They couldn’t at all.”

  “Ah,” she said, flattered, though startled by his vehemence. “I’m glad you felt sufficiently improved to make the journey, sir.”

  “That wasn’t my reason, Lady Charlotte,” he said. “I came because I didn’t want you to become so distracted by—by the amusements of the town, and forget me.”

  “Forget you, sir?” she asked, stunned. “After only three days? Oh, sir, I’m not half so faithless as that!”

  “I pray that you aren’t,” he said gravely.

  “You needn’t pray, because it’s the truth,” she said, surprised and a bit wounded that he’d believe such a thing of her. “Once you come to know me better, sir, you’ll understand.”

  He nodded, agreeing to … something. If he didn’t yet know her, then she didn’t know him, either.

  “I wish you wouldn’t call me ‘sir,’ ” he said, surprising her again. “That is, I know that ‘sir’ is considered proper, but my friends call me March, and I dare to hope that my wife will likewise be my friend.”

  My friends call me March. Surely such an informal freedom would not garner Aunt Sophronia’s approval. Her aunt had told her that, from respect, many duchesses never called their husbands anything other than “sir” for their entire wedded lives. To Charlotte’s delight, however, it seemed clear that the Duke of Marchbourne intended things to be different between them. He intended them to be friends: a daring notion indeed. She smiled, seeing her face reflected in his dark eyes.

  “Yes, March,” she whispered, feeling vastly bold. “I like to say it. March.”

  “I like to hear it on your lips, Lady Charlotte.” He smiled, too, his whole face relaxing. He looked younger when he smiled, and much less daunting. She wished he’d do it more often.

  “Now you must call me Charlotte, plain and unadorned,” she said. “It’s only fair.”

  “Charlotte, then,” he said. “Unadorned, according to your aunt’s wishes. But never plain.”

  She chuckled happily. “That’s idle flattery, the words of some low, perfidious beau.”

  “No, it’s not, Charlotte,” he said, pretending to be indignant. “It’s the truth.”

  Impulsively she stepped closer to him, her wide satin skirts rustling around her. Once more she was struck with how tall he was, and she’d a brief, foolish thought of how, again, she’d be scaling a tree.

  “In that tree, you asked me to trust you,” she said softly, “and I did, and I do. Now I must beg you to do the same. What sorry manner of wife should I make if you cannot trust me?”

  He sighed, a deep, rumbling sigh that seemed pulled from his very heart, and one that in turn touched hers.

  “How could I not trust you, Charlotte?” he asked, his voice rough. “As my wife, my duchess.”

  “My husband, and my duke.” As gently as she could, she rested her hand on his upper arm, taking great care to avoid his injured shoulder. “What a sorry pair we must make! Your arm’s in a sling, while mine has no sleeve.”

  “No sleeve at all,” he repeated. Lightly he ran his fingers up along the inside of her bare arm. It was the most featherweight of caresses, but enough to make her shiver with unexpected pleasure.

  “None,” she whispered, her heart racing. “That is, not now.”

  His caress wandered further, lingering over her shoulder for a moment before finding the line of her collarbone. His hand was warm on her bare skin, or perhaps it was her skin that warmed beneath his touch. He traced higher, over the nape of her neck, until his fingers threaded into her hair.

  She closed her eyes, relishing the feel of his hand against the back of her head. If she were Fig, she would have purred aloud, so pleasurable was his touch. Because she wasn’t a cat, the best she could do was to relax even more, letting her lips part with a breathy small sigh of contentment.

  She hadn’t meant it as an invitation, not at all, and when she felt his lips touch hers, she gasped and fluttered from the strangeness of it. He drew her closer so she couldn’t escape, nor did she wish to, not really, not when she realized that this was kissing, and that he was kissing her.

  Could he tell that she’d never done this before, that he was the first man to kiss her? She didn’t believe that kissing fell beneath the black cloud of ruin—she’d often seen men and women kissing publicly without shame—but she’d no idea how enjoyable it could be. She liked how soft his lips were against hers, how the slight stubble of his shaven jaw offered a rough contrast against her cheek.

  She sighed her happiness, and he took that, too, as more invitation. He slanted his mouth to part her lips farther, deepening the kiss and the intimacy with it. She wasn’t prepared for his taste, a male mix of black coffee and tobacco, or for the plunder of his tongue against hers. She may have been unprepared, but she was not unwilling, and soon all she felt was the dizzying raw impatience of it, and a fervent hope that he wouldn’t stop, not yet.

  Clearly, kissing her had made him forget any of the lingering pain from his shoulder as well, since he pulled his arm free from the sling to slip around her waist. Once she bumped his shoulder by accident, and she heard a slight grunt of surprise, but that was all, and hardly reason for him to push her away. Far from it, for from the way he held her, molding her body to fit his, it was as if he wished to blur the boundaries between them, and become one being, as man and wife should.

  And—heaven forgive her!—that was a most thrilling thought. Instinctively she slipped her arms around the back of his neck to steady herself, the row of tiny hard buttons on his waistcoat pressing against her chest. She twisted to meet him, and knocked his hat from his head; he didn’t notice when it thumped to the floor, nor did she. His other hand left the back of her head and somehow found itself on the front of her bodice, his fingers spreading over the flat, embroidered front of her stomacher.

  Only a second more, and his hand had discovered the top of her breast where it rose from the gown’s neckline. With a groan he twisted her around and pushed her back against the wall with a small thump, his legs tangling briefly in the silk-covered cane hoops.

  The touch of his hand on her bare skin shocked her, for such a freedom would lead inevitably to ruin. Even she knew that. Yet what shocked her far more was how much her own traitorous body enjoyed his caress, and worse, how readily it seemed to know what to do next, arching against him to offer even more of herself. Her breath had quickened and her blood felt aflame, while the tatters of her conscience were unheeded and forgotten. All she could think of was kissing him more, holding him more tightly, and letting him do whatever he wished to her deliciously heated self.

  Until, that is, the sharp rap on the door interrupted everything.

  “If you please, Your Grace,” Aunt Sophronia said, sharp and clear despite the latched door that was keeping her out. “You are keeping these good women from conducting their trade. Surely your conversation with Lady Charlotte must be at an end by now.”

  March sighed heavily, and though he took his hand from her breast, he kept his other arm still around her waist.

  “I don’t want to let you go,” he murmured, his voice rough with urgency. “To leave this place and watch you go away, apart from me, will be unbearable.”

  “I have no choice, March, nor freedom to do otherwise, no matter how much I wish to stay with you.” She spoke in a swift whisper, each word tumbling over the next. Her breath was still shallow and quick, and she wasn’t sure her legs would support her when he finally set her free. “But Aunt Sophronia—”

  “The devil take your aunt,” he muttered, and kissed Charlotte once again, so fervently that she felt dizzy all over again.

  “Charlotte?” her aunt called. “Is everything well, Charlotte?”

  She twisted free of him, whimpering with frustrat
ion. “If we don’t open the door, I vow she’ll break it down herself.”

  “I wouldn’t doubt it.” He grabbed his hat from where it had fallen and jammed it onto his head. “Nor will I test her. She’s a dragon, your aunt.”

  Hastily she pulled the neckline of her gown back in place over her breasts and shoved the pins back into her hair. She glanced at her reflection in the seamstress’s looking glass. Oh, my, she did look the wanton, her lips red and full from kissing, her hair tousled, and her eyes—she knew not how to describe it, but her eyes were different. No matter what she did to tidy herself, her aunt would not be pleased, and unhappily she turned back to Marchbourne.

  His clothes were once again perfectly composed. His handsome dark face was not. She’d never seen a man simultaneously look so angry, yet so disappointed.

  “Charlotte?” her aunt called again. “Charlotte, the door, if you please.”

  “One moment, Aunt Sophronia.”

  She darted over to Marchbourne. “Trust me in this, too, I beg of you,” she said softly. “Don’t fear that I’ll forget you, Marchbourne. I never could, and I never will.”

  She touched her fingers to her lips and then to his as a pledge. He seized her wrist and kissed her open palm, his gaze not leaving hers.

  Her head spun. Could there be anything more perfect than this gentleman?

  “Charlotte!”

  She pulled her hand free and hurried to unlatch the door. Her aunt swept inside, furiously studying Charlotte, then the duke, then Charlotte again.

  The duke nodded to the countess as if nothing were amiss. Perhaps to him there wasn’t.

  “I’ll leave you ladies to conclude your business,” he said. “It has been my pleasure to share your company. Good day, Lady Sanborn, Lady Charlotte.”

  Charlotte curtseyed beside her aunt, watching sadly as the duke left. She considered what might happen if she ran after him in the hall. She’d seen plenty of girls in their old village running after sailor-sweethearts who were bound for their boats and ships, and begging (and receiving) one last kiss had always struck her as tragically romantic. But she wasn’t a village girl and he was a duke, not a sailor, and besides, he was only bound for his carriage, not for sea, and her aunt—ah, Charlotte was quite sure her aunt would not approve.

  Certainly her aunt was close to expiring now as she shut the door to the room against the seamstresses who still hovered waiting outside.

  “You shame me, Charlotte,” she said in a furious whisper so that the others would not overhear her. “You shame our entire family, and your dear father’s memory as well. But most of all, you shame His Grace and yourself.”

  “But he came to me, Aunt Sophronia,” Charlotte said, clinging to whatever scraps of a defense she could muster in the circumstances. “He wished to see me, that was all, and to ascertain for himself that I’d not been hurt when we fell from the tree.”

  “No tales, Charlotte, no lies.” Her aunt’s face was so flushed with anger that the red showed through her face powder in ruddy blotches. “Not when the guilt’s written so plainly over your face.”

  Her cheeks hot, Charlotte self-consciously smoothed her palms again and again across her untidy hair. “Forgive me, Aunt Sophronia, but where is the harm in conversation with the gentleman I am to wed?”

  “A conversation,” repeated her aunt with disgust. “I’d vow far more than words alone were exchanged between you two. Look at you!”

  She reached out to pull Charlotte’s bodice square across her chest, tucking the frill of her shift back inside.

  “How long do you think it will take before word of your conversation with the duke flies from this shop?” she demanded. “Before the sun sets, you two will be the talk of every supper table, high and low, in London, and by midnight your name will be common in every rum shop and alehouse as well. Surely the duke must have been aware of that when he shut this door. Surely he must have been aware of the consequences, even if you are so woefully, foolishly ignorant.”

  She groaned and shook her head, and then took Charlotte’s chin in her fingers so that she could not look away.

  “Oh, my dear Charlotte,” she began, her face softening as her first anger turned to dismay. “Why must you insist you know what is best? Why won’t you heed what I say? Yes, yes, you are to wed His Grace. But he is expecting an honorable wife, not a sluttish mistress who is discussed by all his friends. No gentleman will refuse what’s freely offered, but they will turn away with disgust from such a freedom in a wife.”

  Troubled, Charlotte remembered every pleasing freedom she’d just granted to her duke. She wished to be contrite, for she did not doubt that Aunt Sophronia’s intentions were only the best, despite her sharpness. Nor did Charlotte doubt the wisdom of her words. When she’d considered the cost of ruin, she hadn’t thought of a scandal of a London-sized magnitude, and she still couldn’t comprehend the interest that the rest of the world took in the actions of the Duke of Marchbourne, and by connection to him, hers as well.

  Yet the harder she tried to repent of March’s kisses, the more she recalled their delight instead. Instead of the danger of a possible scandal, she recalled his caresses, his fingers in her hair and his palm on her breast. She remembered them so vividly that she felt herself begin to grow warm all over again, and she had to lower her lashes to shield her eyes from her aunt and keep those recollections to herself.

  But to Charlotte’s good fortune, Aunt Sophronia misread her downcast gaze.

  “I suppose a modest demeanor is better now than never, Charlotte,” she said with a smidgeon of approval. “But I have already resolved that you won’t be coming with your mother and sisters to the playhouse tonight. Far better for you to spend the evening in solitary reflection, considering how to change your behavior in the future.”

  “Yes, Aunt Sophronia,” Charlotte said as obediently as she could. She was sorry she wouldn’t go with the others to the play, but if that was the worst punishment that her aunt could muster, then she knew she’d escaped. There’d be other plays to see; even better, there’d be plays to see with the duke.

  No, with March. Her March. How vastly fine that sounded!

  “I’ve brought the rings as you requested, Your Grace,” said Mr. Boyce, the jeweler. “An exquisite selection indeed.”

  Boyce stood on one side of the small table, while Carter, ever vigilant, stood on the other. For the best light for viewing the jewels, the table had been set before the tall window overlooking the park and its surface covered with the same dark green velvet cloth that was found in Boyce’s shop. A dozen small dome-shaped boxes, some covered in silk and others in leather, were lined up awaiting individual presentation, their lids still hooked shut. It was as if Boyce had set up shop here in the front parlor of Marchbourne House, thought March wryly, except that it was a shop where everything already belonged to him.

  “Well, then, let’s see what there is,” he said, sitting in the tall-backed armchair placed for him before the table. “I’m sure we’ll find something to suit.”

  Yet March wasn’t sure what to expect. Although the contents of these little boxes (and a good deal more, according to Carter) were technically his property, he’d never been much interested in jewels. The jewels had always reminded him a little too much of the baser origins of his family’s nobility, and it was uncomfortably easy for him to imagine his round-faced great-grandmother, Nan Lilly, the king’s mistress, covered with the glittering stones that her royal lover had given her. It wasn’t that he was ashamed of Nan. Her portraits were hung proudly in all his houses—even the one reputed to be the king’s favorite, with her as a barefoot shepherdess with one shamelessly naked breast slipping free of her gauzy classical chiton.

  No, it was more that March didn’t wish to think too closely of how his great-grandmother had pleased the king to be rewarded with this ring or that bracelet in those bawdy old days. He didn’t want to imagine his grandmother, either, who had been as famous for the quality of her diamonds a
s for her liaison with a French ambassador, nor his own mother, who, even in the country, had always worn so many jewels that she’d sparkled from afar like some distant heathen idol.

  No. Much better instead to imagine Lady Charlotte wearing the jewels and bringing much-needed respectability to them. Her family was so venerable that they’d likely been the ones to offer a hospitable welcome to the Conqueror himself. There were no royal mistresses or French ambassadors lurking among the Wylders’ skeletons. Just as March had done his best to make people forget his father’s profligate drinking, gaming, and whoring, so he was sure Charlotte would make them think only of her as the new Duchess of Marchbourne.

  He smiled with pleasure, remembering Charlotte’s fresh, eager face and the innocence of her kiss, and how earnestly she’d asked for his trust. How could he not trust a lady like her? How could he not—

  “Sir?” asked Carter. “Is there, ah, a problem I might address for you?”

  Carter’s face bore such perplexed anxiety that March realized he must have been thinking of kissing Charlotte longer than he’d realized.

  “Thank you, no,” he said quickly as he pulled his chair closer to the table. “Pray show me what you’ve discovered for me, Mr. Boyce.”

  “Of course, sir, of course,” the jeweler said. With practiced grace, he took the nearest box, unlatched and opened it, and displayed the ring inside. “This first is a whimsy that might please a younger lady. It is in the shape of a pomegranate, sir, with rubies, emeralds, and diamonds in gold.”

  March took the ring from the box, carefully, as if it might melt in his fingers. He studied it with what he hoped would seem a critical eye, wondering what the devil he should be seeing.

  “Constancy, marriage, fertility, birth, sir, all are qualities ascribed to the pomegranate,” the jeweler explained, watching March over the tops of his wire-framed spectacles. “A most suitable choice for a betrothal ring, sir.”