When You Wish Upon a Duke (7 page)

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 that, 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?

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.”