His Duchess for a Day

by Christi Caldwell

  The duchess and her guest reached Crispin and said something.

  A moment later, he was following the pair back up the stairs and disappearing from the ballroom.

  Unwittingly, she reached out and found purchase in Rowena’s fingers.

  “Elizabeth?” her friend urged, squeezing Elizabeth’s suddenly moist hand. “What is it?” The query came as if down a long, empty corridor.

  “It is my uncle,” she managed, her voice faint. The absentee guardian, returned from the grave and on the arm of Crispin’s mother, could only ever mean one thing, and that would never be good.

  With Rowena calling after her, Elizabeth started quickly across the room, this moment feeling very much like another night nearly ten years ago.

  Chapter 15

  His mother was smiling.

  And history had shown that nothing good could ever come from that smile. Particularly when it was issued on the heels of a directive, and in the midst of a ball, while Crispin had been in discourse with a fellow duke, no less.

  Unease tripping along his spine, he motioned the pair to enter his offices.

  “I trust whatever it is that demands my presence is of vital importance,” he drawled, a warning layered in steel.

  The dowager duchess’ lips formed a tight moue of displeasure. “You should be more pleased to see your dear mother, Crispin,” she decreed as he closed the door behind them.

  “I don’t have time for your games this evening, Mother,” he bit out, sparing a warning glance for the somehow familiar gentleman at his mother’s side.

  “No games, Crispin,” she countered, pressing an affronted hand to her chest. “You know games are beneath my dignity.”

  “Indeed.” Such had been the lesson learned firsthand as a boy when asking her to join him for a game of spillikins. He might as well have asked for the king’s head in a basket, as scandalized as she’d been. Folding his arms at his chest, he nudged his chin up. “Given that, say whatever it is that could not be said amidst polite company, but was also too vital to wait until the end of the evening’s ball,” he instructed. Striding past the still silent stranger, Crispin found a place at his desk.

  His mother’s lips curved up into the closed rendition of a smile that she’d managed in the whole of his life knowing her. Strained. Uncomfortable. And better suited for one with gas. “I’ve solved our problem.”

  Crispin perched his hip on the edge of his desk. “I wasn’t aware we had a problem.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “Very well, I’ve solved your problem.”

  Too proud to suffer so much as a wrinkle in her silk skirts, the dowager duchess would never dare to admit a weakness in front of a stranger, as she now did.

  Crispin narrowed his gaze on the painfully thin, lanky gentleman. With his shock of red hair and pale cheeks, he was of indiscriminate years. The stranger swallowed audibly and looked between mother and son. “I… might I suggest introductions are in order?” he said, struggling a bit with his intricately knotted cravat.

  “Introductions are a splendid idea,” his mother exclaimed with a buoyant clap of her hands. “May I present Mr. Dalright Terry.”

  Terry.

  Crispin sat upright.

  “You recognize the name.” It wasn’t a question spoken by his mother.

  An uncharacteristic joy glimmered in her eyes that only increased the ominous foreboding. Crispin alternated a stare between the two members of this unlikely pairing. “What is the meaning of this?” he demanded on a seething whisper.

  “That is no way to greet a gentleman who is, by order of marriage, family.”

  Mr. Terry stood up all the straighter, puffing his chest out.

  “It is when said gentleman should have proven absent for more than ten years,” Crispin snapped, deflating the other man’s inflated pride.

  His mother moved in a whir of skirts. “Tsk, tsk, Crispin. As a scholar, I expect you of all people would understand that Mr. Terry is an avid explorer who’s contributed greatly to…” Her lightly wrinkled brow furrowed as she stared expectantly over at her guest.

  Elizabeth’s uncle coughed into his hand. “The binomial naming system for animal and plant species.”

  The dowager duchess turned her nose up. “Er… yes… well… I trust you see the importance of… that.”

  No, he didn’t. Not when the other man’s exploration and studies had superseded his niece’s well-being. “You had an obligation,” Crispin clipped out.

  Mr. Terry bristled. “I was traveling.”

  “Your niece was an orphan.”

  The gent wisely took a step back.

  Crispin’s mother placed herself between them. “Do cease this instant, Crispin. You are not a bully.” Nay, he’d been the one bullied. As such, he’d never beaten, bloodied, or mocked a single soul. But this, this man, who’d abandoned Elizabeth and hadn’t bothered to show his damned face when she’d found herself grief-stricken and alone in the world, reemerged more than a decade later.

  “Get out.”

  “Crispin!” his mother exclaimed. “I expect more from you than that.”

  A growl worked its way up his chest. “Very well,” he said in measured tones that challenged the thin grasp of his control. “Get out, before I have you thrown out on your arse.”

  Except, Elizabeth’s uncle proved far braver than he’d credited, or than his nervous Adam’s apple bobbing up and down made him out to be. “I-I cannot do that.” He glanced over at Crispin’s mother in the quickest of exchanges that, had he blinked, Crispin would have missed. But he saw it.

  The warning bells roared in his ears. “And why is that, Mr. Terry?”

  “Because I do not approve of the union.”

  “Pfft,” Crispin scoffed. “Your time for approving or disapproving was ten years ago.” He started quickly across the room and reached for the door handle.

  “You misunderstand,” Elizabeth’s uncle said quickly. “As her guardian, my approval was necessary.”

  Crispin abruptly stopped, and he stared, his eyes locked on the paneled oak door.

  “Valid unions between wards who haven’t yet reached their majority require the approval of a guardian.” Terry’s words were delivered as if he’d been hand-fed them in a stage production.

  And in this… he had.

  His heart knocking against his rib cage, Crispin turned around. “What are you saying?” He winged a brow up, fighting to retain calm. “And I would advise you to proceed very carefully, Mr. Terry,” he suggested, lending an icy frost to the warning.

  Mr. Terry faltered, but then he looked at the dowager duchess. She gave a slight nod.

  Elizabeth’s uncle spoke on a rush. “I am saying that Lillibet—”

  “Elizabeth,” Crispin corrected. His wife had always despised the moniker assigned to her by her family.

  “—could not have legally wed without my consent. As such, the union is… the union can be challenged and an annulment granted.”

  The silence between the three of them lengthened. The clock ticked. The faint rumble of carriages sounded in the streets below.

  Crispin’s mother preened. “I have managed what your father could not.” Her nostrils flared. “What your father wouldn’t. You made him feel such guilt over your actions that he could not bring himself to end it.” She gave a flounce of her ringlets. “Well, I’ve managed what your father did not.”

  “And what is that?” he asked impatiently, tired of her ramblings and Elizabeth’s uncle’s presence.

  “Why, I’ve secured peace between our family and the Langleys.”

  “That is an impossible feat,” he muttered. The Langleys had burned with their hatred of the Ferguson’s since Crispin’s marriage, and Lady Dorinda’s subsequent one shortly thereafter to a cad who’d drank, whored his money away, and then found himself shot dead by an irate husband across a dueling field at dawn. Familiar guilt sat like a pit in his gut.

  “An impossible feat for some.” His mother swatted his a
rm. “But not for your mother.”

  “And how have you managed that?” he asked tiredly.

  The place between her brows puckered. “You are usually far more clever than this. Your marriage is invalid, Crispin. Don’t you see? You are free.” She beamed. “Free to right a past wrong…and finally marry Lady Dorinda.”

  *

  Long ago, Elizabeth had learned the perils of listening at keyholes.

  More than ten years earlier, she’d had her heart broken for it.

  Now, she had it broken all over again.

  “You are free. Free to marry Lady Dorinda…”

  Elizabeth gripped the edges of the door, curling her fingers so tight into the wood that she left crescent marks upon it. And she focused on breathing.

  Quiet, even breaths that wouldn’t reveal her place outside, while mother and son, and now Elizabeth’s errant guardian, discussed Crispin’s future—without Elizabeth in it.

  She squeezed her eyes tightly shut.

  He loves me.

  He always has.

  He’d missed Elizabeth when she’d gone.

  But their marriage had also broken a familial alliance between him and his parents’ godchild. A ducal daughter. Groomed to be a ducal bride. And that relationship had been severed with Crispin’s marriage to Elizabeth.

  And now, what his mother and Elizabeth’s guardian presented made something that had once been impossible possible.

  Elizabeth forced her eyes open, and perhaps she was a glutton for her own self-misery. She strained her ears, searching for any hint of reply, or sound, or discourse from the trio behind the panel.

  There was something so very much worse in Crispin’s silence.

  Say something, she silently pleaded. Tell her that your love for me is far greater than any obligation you have to the Huntington line.

  When still no reply was forthcoming, Elizabeth reached for the handle, intending to let herself in and this time force her presence upon the room, an interloper in a discussion they’d not have her be a part of. As she hadn’t done in the past.

  To what end? To influence… whatever Crispin would, or would not, say?

  She lowered her arm back to her middle and hugged herself to keep from throwing the door open.

  She’d not have him. Not that way. Elizabeth wanted him, but she would not insert herself into the midst of the offer with which his mother had presented him.

  Freedom.

  She scrabbled with her lower lip.

  How she wished she could be selfish enough.

  Elizabeth had turned to go when Crispin’s low baritone shattered the quiet and froze her in her tracks.

  “Get out.”

  Her heart stalled.

  “Crispin?”

  “You enter my household on the evening I’m presenting my wife before Polite Society and threaten me with the dissolution of our marriage.”

  Elizabeth’s heart resumed beating, pounding a frantic beat against her rib cage. She pressed a hand to her chest, certain the arguing pair in that room could hear it. That she’d reveal her presence on the fringe as she listened in.

  “You yourself said it was a mistake, Crispin,” the dowager duchess exclaimed, exasperation rich in that reminder. “You indicated that if you could do things differently to preserve the connection with Lady Dorinda, you would.” There was a pause. “And now you can.”

  “You’d have me do that, without a thought of what it would mean for Elizabeth’s future?”

  “Bah, the girl is resourceful. She’s managed just fine without you, Crispin, and she will continue to be fine when she leaves.”

  It was the closest his mother had ever come to paying Elizabeth a compliment. How very ironic that it should be given only with the hopes of sending her on her way.

  “Do you require assistance, Your Grace?”

  Elizabeth cringed at the unexpected interruption and looked to the butler.

  He stared back, a question in his eyes.

  Elizabeth gave her head a jerky shake and, with careful steps, strode over to the waiting servant. “There is something you can do.” He inclined his head. “Will you see that a carriage is readied?”

  “Now?” His brown eyebrows shot to his receding hairline and then swiftly descended.

  Yes, it was certainly in bad form to flee one’s own ball, leaving the household altogether in the dead of night with a houseful of guests expected to remain for another six hours at the least. “Yes, as quickly as you are able.”

  The servant dropped a brow. “As you wish, Your Grace.” As he took himself off, rushing in the opposite direction, Elizabeth continued briskly onward, not breaking stride until she reached her rooms.

  Her lady’s maid glanced up. Her already wide eyes went round. “Your Grace,” she exclaimed, rushing over.

  “Calista.” Elizabeth started over to her dressing room, and bending down, she grabbed the handles of the trunk crafted by her father and dragged it from storage.

  It scraped noisily along the floor as she went.

  The girl glanced at the trunk, following Elizabeth’s every move as she wandered to the armoire, tossed the doors open, and pulled out an armful of her garments.

  “Your Grace?” the girl croaked.

  “I don’t require any assistance,” she assured, not taking her eyes off her task.

  Elizabeth dropped the neatly folded undergarments into the bottom and then returned to the rose-inlaid armoire and fetched her dresses. Nay. Dragon skirts were what they were.

  “And did the students leave your tutelage with that same strength?”

  Elizabeth jerked to a stop and clenched and unclenched the fabric in her arms. She drew the garments close. How many years had she spent justifying the work she’d done at Mrs. Belden’s? She’d been… surviving. Only, it wasn’t until Crispin had challenged her existence that she’d acknowledged the harm she’d done to others, all in the name of… survival.

  Securing her own future didn’t pardon the lessons she’d doled out. The spirits she’d crushed. The dreams she’d quashed.

  Gritting her teeth, Elizabeth tossed the dresses into the bottom of the trunk and stalked over to gather the remaining garments, burying her head in the armoire. At her back, there was the faint click of the door opening.

  Calista quit her position at the armoire and hurried from the room.

  A moment later, the door closed behind her.

  “My mother arrived a short while ago,” Crispin said quietly from the front of the room. “With… a guest. Your uncle.”

  “I am aware,” Elizabeth acknowledged, yanking at her cloak with its shredded collar. The mangled article remained caught on a gold hook. A loud rending filled the room as she at last managed to free the wool garment.

  “You are aware,” he echoed.

  Elizabeth carried her cloak over to the trunk and dropped it inside. She made to turn, when Crispin said, “You overheard”—he grimaced—“what was said, then.”

  Finally, Elizabeth stopped and met his veiled stare across the room. Eyes that had seared her with unrestrained passion and love last evening now revealed nothing.

  “I heard enough,” she said quietly.

  Chapter 16

  Crispin had believed there wasn’t a greater pain than what he’d suffered after finding Elizabeth gone all those years earlier.

  Just as he’d been wrong about so much, he found himself proved wrong once more.

  With a hollow numbness, he took in the frenetic movements with which she collected those heinous garments and stormed across the room, stuffing her belongings into the trunk made by her father.

  I am losing her all over again.

  Only this time, it would rip his heart apart in ways it hadn’t before.

  Because this time, when she left, the thread that held them together would be severed by their families… and as his mother had said, Crispin would be free.

  Nay, Elizabeth would be free.

  A cinch tightened about his lungs,
squeezing off air flow, straining the muscles until they ached.

  “Your uncle is contesting our marriage,” he said, not recognizing the strained quality of his own hoarse voice.

  “I heard as much,” she muttered and resumed her packing.

  How in blazes was she so collected? How could she be so bloody casual when his existence had been yanked out from under him?

  Crispin took several steps and then stopped. And then took another, and another, until he stood at the edge of her trunk. He stared down at the contents she’d already piled inside.

  “I told my mother I love you.” As he should have told both of his parents when he and Elizabeth had eloped. She’d deserved a husband who’d been unafraid for her. Who’d battled the world and hadn’t sought to mollify those unwilling to accept their union. “I told her that I’ve always loved you.”

  Elizabeth hovered at the armoire. “Did you?”

  God, how he despised the hesitant surprise in those two short syllables. He nodded once. “I explained that you’ve always had my heart and that I admire you above all others. That your spirit and strength and intelligence mark you greater than any other woman she’d have me wed—regardless of station.”

  The long column of Elizabeth’s throat moved up and down.

  Encouraged, he took a step closer. “I made a mistake in rejecting my feelings for you before, Elizabeth,” he said softly, the avowal echoing around the room. “It is a mistake I’ll always carry, but I own every feeling I carry for you now.” He crossed to her and took her hands in his, and the gray dress she’d been holding fluttered into a forgotten, whispery-soft pile at their feet. “And I don’t care about familial alliances or the scandal that will follow when your uncle disputes our marriage.” His throat worked painfully. “I want you, Elizabeth.” He slashed a hand at the trunk. “And I’ll be damned if I let you run this time”—his chest rose and fell—“unless that is what you wish.” Because even as it would shatter him to let her go, he loved her that much, where her happiness and her future meant more than his own.