Once Upon A Dream

by Mary Balogh, Grace Burrowes

  Sedgemere’s gaze was stricken. He dropped to the sofa beside the duchess like a rock flung into the lake.

  “Anne?”

  “Sedgemere is the first man to turn my head in more than five years. I have not behaved well, and I do apologize for abusing your hospitality, but that is the extent of the situation. I’ll leave in the morning, and you may put it about that I enticed the duke to a dalliance, for that is the truth.”

  Anne had no experience enticing anybody to do anything, though, so the truth was unlikely to be believed.

  “Sedgemere, do not try to hector the woman into becoming your wife,” the duchess said, getting to her feet. “Miss Faraday’s mother was equally resolute once her mind was made up, else she would never have married Hannibal Faraday. No family wants to see a daughter married off to an impecunious banker, but Fenecia was smitten. Miss Faraday has her mother’s pretty looks, I’m told she has her mama’s aptitude for numbers, and apparently, she has her mother’s independence too. Off to bed with you two—separate beds, if you please.”

  Her Grace swept out, a small, forceful woman, who hadn’t been surprised or even disappointed to find lovers in her linen closet kissing over a stray duck. If Anne were ever, through some miracle, to become a duchess, she’d aspire to such savoir faire.

  In the present situation, however, it was all she could do not to cry.

  “Give me the damned duck,” Sedgemere said, “and do not think to hare off in the morning, like a naughty schoolgirl. If you run, the Postlethwaite creature will set the dogs of gossip upon you, but her aspirations in Hardcastle’s direction will keep her quiet for the duration of the gathering.”

  They had a small wrestling match over the duck, mostly because Anne wanted any excuse to brush hands with Sedgemere. She’d apparently achieved the goal of rejecting his suit. Now all that remained was to survive a few more days, enduring the fruits of her victory.

  * * * * *

  After escorting Miss Faraday around the lake, Hardcastle bowed the lady on her way. This involved ignoring the despairing glance she sent toward Hardcastle’s oldest and dearest pain in the arse, for Sedgemere was on his full ducal dignity on the far side of the terrace. His Grace of Sedgemere’s excuse for spying on Miss Faraday—this time—was that most pressing of errands, accompanying a duck on its constitutional.

  “I know not which of you is the more pathetic,” Hardcastle said, crossing the terrace. “The house party ends tomorrow, and you’re reduced to taking the air with an anatine companion. Where is your courage, Sedgemere? Storm the castle walls, sing the die-away ballads beneath the lady’s window, muster a bit of derring-do.”

  Hardcastle had been introduced nearly two weeks and an eternity of tedium ago to Josephine. She waddled about in the grass below the terrace and would likely be as glad as Hardcastle to quit the party.

  “How is Anne?” Sedgemere asked.

  “Miserable. The only topics about which I can inspire her to discourse are canal projects and housing developments.” The lady was also willing to listen to anything, anything at all, related to Sedgemere. His upbringing, his antecedents, his impatience with foreign languages, which Hardcastle attempted to redress by constant references to Latin.

  “Then she and I are both miserable,” Sedgemere said, lowering himself to the top step, as if he were a small boy, willing to sit anywhere on a summer day, provided he sat outside. “The only hypothesis I’ve concocted is that Anne fears I’m seeking her hand to gain control of her dowry. This is patently false, of course, also insufficient to explain her behaviors.”

  Hardcastle’s delicate ducal ears were not equal to hearing the details of those behaviors. He’d attempted a late-night stroll around the lake several evenings ago, and had had to change his route not far from the house.

  “You might try asking Miss Faraday why she’s refused a life basking in your cherishing regard,” Hardcastle suggested. “At least on the topic of compound interest, she’s blazingly articulate.”

  “Hardcastle, have you been at the brandy this early in the day? Anne is not a solicitor, to be bored with your talk of business.”

  Josephine quacked, flapped her wings, and went strutting across the grass in the direction of another duck who’d come wandering up from the lake.

  “Anne is a banker’s daughter,” Hardcastle said. “Can you imagine what the dinner conversation with her dear papa is like? Prinny’s debts, Devonshire’s racing wagers, the latest gossip on ’Change?”

  “She’s humoring you, Hardcastle,” Sedgemere snapped. “Tossing conversational lures that will tempt you away from your pettifogging Latin aphorisms. What are those ducks about?”

  The other duck was craning its neck and flapping its wings. Josephine carried on like a fellow who wanted to cut in partway through a waltz but couldn’t attract the dancers’ notice.

  “Miss Faraday was not humoring me, Sedgemere. She waxed eloquent about a gentleman’s education including the basics of finance, for hers certainly did, and she made a strong case for allowing children from a young age to—”

  A furious quacking commenced from under the tree as Sedgemere shot to his feet. “That’s it. That’s what she’s afraid of. Hardcastle, watch that duck and bring her inside with you, or Ralph will have a fit of the vapors. By God, Hardcastle you have your moments.”

  Hardcastle rose more slowly. “Whatever are you going on about, Sedgemere? Perhaps you’re having a fit of the vapors.” For which his grace was long overdue, in Hardcastle’s opinion.

  “Ryland told me Anne had explained multiplication to him, when the boy’s barely grasped addition and subtraction. He’s keen for math, though, so I thought Anne had simply humored a boy’s interests. Then there’s exponentially, and her mama marrying an impecunious banker who’s now a damned nabob. I must talk to the duchess.”

  “While I wrangle quarreling ducks.”

  “Hardcastle, I do worry about you. Those ducks are not quarreling, and we’ll have to change Josephine’s name to Joseph.”

  Hardcastle risked a glance beneath the tree. “One shudders at the company you’ve dragged me into, Sedgemere. This house party has turned into a debauch for ducks. Why I ever agreed to chaperone you here escapes my traumatized mind. Be about your wooing, and plan to quit this den of iniquity at first light.”

  * * * * *

  “I love him,” Anne said, “but Sedgemere’s a duke. His duchess will be in the public eye, and Nottinghamshire is so very far from London, where Papa must bide.”

  “Your mama would not like to see you in this state,” the Duchess of Veramoor said, passing Anne a plate of French chocolates. They were making Anne sick, these chocolates, but she could not stop eating them.

  “Mama’s the one who made me promise I’d look after Papa, no matter what.” Chocolates deserved a cold glass of milk, or perhaps a tot of fine brandy, not a pot of tepid gunpowder. “I’ve kept my promise, but Papa shows no signs of retiring, and he can’t exactly take on a partner or sell the banks.”

  Anne had hinted enough in recent years to know he wouldn’t. Papa loved the idea of leaving his little girl a stinking fortune, as if a fortune ever sent a lady on a duck hunt in the middle of the night, or loved her witless beneath the Cumbrian moon.

  A knock sounded on the door of Her Grace’s private parlor. This was the same room where Anne had rejected Sedgemere’s proposal, though by day, it was a cheery place. Sunshine poured in the west-facing windows, and beyond the windows, the green expanse of the forest marched up the hillside behind the lake.

  The knock came again, louder.

  “Enter,” the duchess said.

  Sedgemere sauntered in, breathtakingly handsome in his country gentleman’s attire, not a blond hair out of place and not a hint of warmth about his demeanor. Anne wanted to throw the entire box of chocolates at him and leave in fit of weeping.

  And she wanted to have his children.

  “Sedgemere, do stop glowering,” Her Grace said, thumping the place b
eside her on the settee. “Your timing is awful. Anne was about to explain to me why she’s being so dunderheaded, but I suppose that explanation is better given to you.”

  To Anne’s horror, the duchess rose, helping herself to a chocolate. “Your mother married for love, Anne Faraday. She would not want to see you trapped beneath a heap of money.” Her Grace departed, patting Sedgemere’s cheek and munching on her chocolate.

  “Miss Faraday, will you object if I close the door?” Sedgemere asked.

  They were alone and she was no longer Anne to him. “You can’t close the door,” she retorted. “Any passing gossip will note that I’m private with you, again, and then all of Hardcastle’s attempts to quell the rumors will be for naught. Let’s take a final walk around the lake.”

  “No more perishing perambulations around the lake, if you please. Hardcastle is at this moment presiding over a duck orgy, though a brush with debauchery will do the old boy good. We’ll visit the stable.”

  A duck orgy? Had Anne’s rejection cost Sedgemere his reason?

  “Come along,” Sedgemere said, pulling Anne to her feet. “We have much to discuss, such as your mendacity, and your lamentable tendency to protect the fellows who give their hearts into your keeping.”

  That comment made no sense, for Anne had been telling the absolute miserable truth: She loved Sedgemere, and she could not become his duchess. Not ever.

  * * * * *

  The puzzle pieces added up, so to speak, the longer Sedgemere rearranged them in his mind. Anne came along quietly as Sedgemere escorted her to the Veramoor horse palace—many tenant cottages were not so comfortable, even on Sedgemere’s estates—and then beyond, to a winding path through the trees.

  “If you need privacy to berate me,” Anne said, “the stable would have sufficed, Your Grace.”

  “I would needlessly upset the livestock, did we tarry in the stable, though I do need privacy for what must be said.”

  “You’re a duke, sir. You understand about duty, and your duty is to find a duchess who can look the part and dance the part. She must host your political dinners, endure court functions with you, socialize at the very highest levels, while I’ve merely been propositioned at the very highest levels, and—Sedgemere, stop.”

  She untangled her arm from his and stood in a slanting beam of light like some fairy creature who’d disappear if Sedgemere blinked.

  “I love you,” Sedgemere said quietly, though he wanted to bellow the words to every corner of the realm. “And because I love you, madam, you will do me the courtesy of granting me a fair hearing.”

  His words were intended to capture the lady’s attention, but she turned away.

  “Unfair, Your Grace. Mortally unfair.” Her shoulders were rigid with emotion—also graceful and pale.

  Sedgemere wanted to shake her by those elegant, sturdy shoulders. Instead he stepped closer and spoke close to her ear.

  “Give me five minutes, Anne Faraday. If after five minutes, you never want to see me again, I will do my utmost to oblige you.”

  She turned abruptly and gave him such kisses as ought to have set the woods ablaze. Even when they’d made love, Anne hadn’t surrendered herself into his embrace with quite this much abandon, this much desperation. She kissed Sedgemere as if she would, indeed, send him packing.

  Which would not do. Sedgemere picked his lady up and carried her to a fallen tree, one at the perfect height for a passionate embrace. Anne hauled him closer by the lapels of his coat and spread her knees so Sedgemere could stand between them.

  They needed to talk, to sort their future out, but what they needed must, for a few moments, yield to what Anne needed.

  “Anne, we needn’t rush,” Sedgemere whispered as she started unbuttoning his falls.

  “We have no more time,” she retorted. “I will miss you until the day I die, but we still have these moments, and Sedgemere, you must not make me beg.”

  Anne’s kisses rather prevented anybody from begging for anything, at least verbally, so Sedgemere pleaded his case with warm caresses to those shoulders he’d admired earlier, and soft murmurs of appreciation for the turn of her knee, the elegant curve of her throat.

  “You expect me to make love with you here and now?” Sedgemere whispered before she finished with his falls. “In the forest primeval, not ten yards from—God save me.”

  Anne’s hands went diving beneath layers of expensive Bond Street tailoring, her grip both careful and determined.

  “I want you,” she said. “If this is all I can have of you, then please oblige me.”

  “I’m not the condemned prisoner’s last meal,” Sedgemere said, frothing skirts and petticoats up around the lady’s waist. “I’m your intended, and the man who loves you.”

  He settled the argument with one sure thrust—or at least silenced Anne’s reply—and then desire took over, until the far branches of the fallen tree upon which Anne perched were swaying to the give and take of Sedgemere’s passion.

  With Anne so desperate and silent, Sedgemere’s desire became driven by a need to relieve her fears for their future. He slowed the pace and gentled his kisses, until the quiet of the woods, the stillness of the lake became a part of his lovemaking.

  “I do love you,” he said. “I will always love you.”

  “Elias, you must not—” Anne didn’t finish that thought, which was prudent of her, because Sedgemere would, all afternoon if necessary. He’d caress her lovely breasts, kiss her beautiful shoulders, and silence her remonstrations with pleasure.

  She allowed him enough time that his thighs eventually burned, the discomfort a small testament to a lover’s devotion, and then his heart ached, when Anne seized the initiative and surrendered to satisfaction.

  “You think I’ll leave you now?” he said, stroking a hand over her hair. “You think I’ll withdraw and abandon you, because your place is running your father’s households as a dutiful spinster daughter?”

  “You must,” she said, though her arms remained lashed about his waist. “Tomorrow morning, Elias, you must return to Nottinghamshire, and I’ll away to York.”

  Tonight, he’d announce their engagement, but first, Sedgemere undertook to give his lady the rest of the pleasure due her. He let his love for her fly free, let it show in every caress and thrust and kiss and moan, until Anne was again clinging to him, and whispering his name. He held off long enough to be sure she’d found satisfaction, and then he joined her in that place where nothing—not duty, not time, not fear or even worry—could crowd past the love he shared with her.

  * * * * *

  Love and hate were not opposites, they were… close cousins, for the more Anne loved Sedgemere, the more she hated what her life had become.

  A fortune in lies and deceptions, a wearying farce that had no end. She loved her papa, of course, and she understood that a banker had obligations, a sacred duty based on trust. Far more depended on the trust placed in Papa than Anne’s mere happiness.

  A bank’s good health could uphold that of a nation or a monarchy. A bank failing could be the ruin of many innocent lives. Her mother had taught her that almost before Anne could stitch a straight seam.

  “Your bottom cannot be comfortable,” Sedgemere said, scooping Anne off the tree trunk and setting her on her feet. “The rest of you is woefully unmussed.”

  Her mind was mussed. In moments, Sedgemere was buttoned up, his shirt tails tucked in, every evidence of their recent lovemaking gone, while Anne…

  “I need your handkerchief, Your Grace.”

  A square of white linen appeared on Sedgemere’s palm, held out to Anne as if on a tray. “So you do.”

  She didn’t bother turning her back, but reached under her skirts and made use of the handkerchief, while Sedgemere hiked himself to sit on the fallen tree, an oak, from the looks of the wilting leaves.

  “I’ll take that,” Sedgemere said, when Anne had finished.

  He was so matter-of-fact about such earthy intimacies. Anne wo
uld not have predicted this about him, any more than she would have predicted his abilities as a steward of sheep races.

  “I’ll miss you,” she said, folding the cloth carefully to hide evidence of its use. “I’ll miss the boys too, but I think Hardcastle has been largely effective quelling any gossip about our kiss in the linen closet.”

  “You were right, you know,” Sedgemere replied, tucking the handkerchief into a jacket pocket. “Josephine is a drake. You’re also quite wrong, about missing me. You will have little occasion to miss me, when we’re married. You might, however, miss very much being the brains behind your papa’s vast financial empire. As your husband, I’ll see that you remain at the helm of his fortune to the extent that’s where you’d like to be.”

  * * * * *

  Sedgemere cursed himself for a henwit when Anne silently braced herself against the tree trunk, as if she’d been informed of a great loss. He slid to his feet and pulled her into his embrace rather than risk her leaving him alone in the forest.

  “Your mother had the same gift, I’d guess,” he said. “It is a gift, you know, to be able to grasp finances, to see possibilities where others see only boring figures and limitations.”

  She was light in his arms, no more leaning on him than a beam of sunshine would lean on a breeze.

  “From a young age,” Sedgemere went on, “probably before your mama died, you’ve carried the burden of your father’s banking enterprises on your own shoulders. You’ve chosen the investments, the projects, the risks, while he’s gossiped at the clubs and signed the documents.”

  She shook her head, a curl coming loose from her bun. “You must not say such things. Papa is the banker. His grandfather started the bank, and Papa knows every customer, every account, every balance.”

  “But he doesn’t grasp money,” Sedgemere said. “He was struggling badly when your mother took him in hand, and he’d have lost several fortunes by now if you hadn’t kept him from unwise investments. You read the papers voraciously, you correspond with him several times a day, and you’ve advised Hardcastle on his finances without His Grace even realizing it.”