Jilting the Duke

by Rachael Miles

  He waited for her to read, then gave her the second set. “These papers extend the guardianship to Lily as Tom wished. Again, I will be guardian in name only, leaving the decisions to Luca . . . and to you.”

  She read the papers, then folded them. He couldn’t read her expression, but he could feel his heart tightening in his chest.

  “I also have a gift of sorts.” He held out a card with a name and an address on it. “It’s the address of your old governess; she teaches in a girl’s school in Cornwall. She did not choose to leave you. There’s a story there, but she’d like to tell you herself. I’d be happy to escort you to visit her, were you to wish it.”

  Silently, Sophia took up the card and the papers, then walked away from him toward her desk.

  It was his only chance. He spoke quickly to fill the silence growing between them.

  “Tom didn’t create the guardianship because he didn’t trust your judgment or because he thought Ian needed a male influence. He created the guardianship to give me a chance to make things right . . . to admit I wronged you all those years ago. To tell you I love you, that I’ve never stopped loving you.” The words came in a rush, and were not the ones he’d planned. She stilled, but did not turn toward him. “And I love our son—our son and Tom’s.”

  She placed the papers on the desk and turned toward him, her face inscrutable.

  He breathed deeply, fingering the ring in his pocket. “If you ever need me again, Sophia, for anything, this time I won’t ignore you. If it takes you another decade to trust me again, then I’ll wait. As long as it takes.”

  Her eyes searched his face, as she took his measure. Then she looked down at her hands.

  His hopes faded. Clearly she was looking for words to send him away. To the life he deserved—a life without her. Feeling stabbed in the gut, he let the ring slip into the depths of his pocket. He picked up his overcoat.

  “Before you go.”

  He stilled, his chest tight, hoping, but afraid to hope.

  “I was wondering if you would critique a painting I’ve been working on.” She gestured toward the easel.

  It wasn’t the response he’d expected. But it wasn’t a rejection. He remembered the companionable comradery of minds she and Tom had forged. Perhaps this was a chance to start anew.

  She’d finished the portrait that morning. Her intention had been to send Aidan a note inviting him to tea. But Phineas had arrived.

  It was, she thought, her best work, combining a mature hand with an old love. She hoped that Aidan could see in it the truth of her heart. His reaction would tell her, more than words, whether what was between them had a future.

  Aidan looked at the portrait with amazement. In it, he sat in the nursery with Tom and Ian, a green cloth spread out between them on the table. On it, the soldiers stood in battalions, watching as their generals declared an end to their hostilities. In the background, hanging on the wall were Sophia’s botanical drawings, and in the best detail was the one that Ian loved, the rose with the hummingbird. Even in miniature, the hummingbird was finely detailed.

  Suddenly Aidan knew what the code key was, though this was not the time for it.

  Sophia watched as Aidan examined the triple portrait with delight. His eyes focused on the drawings in the background, then his face lit with surprise and revelation. She followed his eye to the image of the rose and suddenly remembered her dream of Tom’s showing her the pages of the illustrations.

  Sophia’s eyes met Aidan’s, and they began to laugh. “The misplaced engraving of the agave—it was supposed to point us to Ian’s illustration of the rose. The code key; it was so obvious we missed it.”

  “Are you sure it’s the rose? It could be the bird that was out of place, the one that didn’t feed on roses.” Aidan pulled her against his side, smelling the lavender in her hair.

  “Hmmm. I thought the hummingbird was just a joke between Tom and Ian. So which is it: the hummingbird or the rose?”

  He held her tightly against his chest. “What should we do first? Tell the Home Office? They will want to begin testing which word is the key. It should reveal some important information, now that we know where to begin.”

  “After this long, there is no hurry.” She turned her face up to his, kissed him softly. “You offered once to show me your bedroom. But you haven’t. Perhaps that was just an insignificant promise.”

  “None of our promises were insignificant. And they never will be. Does this mean I’m forgiven?”

  “Always. Always forgiven.” She touched her hand to his face. “I’ve never stopped loving you.”

  “Nor I you.” He held her to him, and she turned her head to lay her cheek on his chest. “I know a path through the garden; it goes through the mews. I could show it to you.”

  “I’d like to see it—and my garden; I’ve been wanting to see how my designs turned out. It will be our new start.”

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Charters sat in his study, his antiquities arranged as he’d wished. But their quiet history did not calm his mind. Instead, he couldn’t forget what he could not have seen in the conservatory. It couldn’t have been Tom. It was only an illusion: Lady Wilmot wearing her husband’s clothes. But it had been Tom’s face, his eyes offering recrimination. Tom protecting his wife. Charters had known the man his whole life. He hadn’t made a mistake.

  He wouldn’t act against Lady Wilmot again. Even if she had the list of peers who had betrayed England, he wouldn’t risk it. Besides, he had received another letter from Octavia—this one some twenty names long. His name had not been on it, though he still did not know if it had been on Tom’s.

  And he had other ventures to pursue. Other possibilities.

  He’d raised more than ample funds with his forgeries. He was now a significant shareholder in a shipping firm. The first of his investments were now at sea in good weather. If only half of his ships came back safely, his return would be strong. And he’d made inroads into the criminal gangs.

  He even had money left from the banknote robberies. The tutor had been wise not to mention his part in those, though he was still being transported for his part in the blackmail. To mollify the young tutor for shooting him, Charters had given him a substantial portion of cash, but not his full part. It was not kindness. It was forethought. Paying against a time when Charters’s enterprises might lead into colonial markets.

  Eventually he would have the power he deserved. But for now he was satisfied with the money.

  He turned to his companion, who was carving another piece of wood. Flute had filled out over the last month. He was now once more the strong man he’d been when Charters had first known him. And completely loyal.

  “Mr. Flute, what do you think about gambling hells?”

  “I don’t gamble. Or at least not with money.”

  “Then I think we have a new venture. What do you think of calling it the Blue Heron?”

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Walgrave entered the inner office to give his summary report on the Wilmot affair. But first he’d lost a bet with the men in the division, and it was time to pay.

  Benjamin put down his pencil and motioned for Walgrave to take a seat. Joseph, as always, was close at hand.

  “I’d prefer to stand, sir. I’ve been tasked by the men to press an issue of some importance.” Walgrave felt more ill at ease than he’d imagined possible.

  “Then speak. What’s troubling the men?”

  “It’s the issue of your new name, sir. Eventually one of us will slip up, say your name, and then all your sacrifices will be for naught. Your brother Aidan will step down in your favor. You will have to marry.”

  Walgrave ignored the glances between Benjamin and Joseph.

  “I’m listening.”

  “Our recent investigations into the Methodist revivalists have led us to consider Biblical names that convey the . . . unique nature . . . of your situation.” Walgrave found himself unaccountably nervous.

  “
Unique?”

  “Yes, sir. In a sense you have died and are now raised from the dead. So, Lazarus would be appropriate, or Jonah—he was trapped in the belly of a whale, sir. . . .”

  “I’m familiar with the story.”

  “Or there’s Enoch and Elijah, who never died. Or we could look to other sources: King Arthur is the once and future king. Romeo is believed dead, then isn’t. Of course he does die in fairly short order.”

  “I take your . . . somewhat obvious point.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “How about James?”

  “James, sir?”

  “Yes. I’m a version of my former self. Benjamin leads somewhat easily to James. As opposed to the other names you suggest, I might actually answer to it.”

  “Mr. James,” Walgrave repeated. “Very good, sir. I’ll inform the men.”

  “I believe you have a report for me.”

  Walgrave nodded. “We have been able to trace neither the paper nor the plates. The barn was rented through the mails, and the agent never met the man, a Mr. MacDonald.”

  “If that’s even a real name.”

  “We think it’s unlikely. The tutor indicated that his accomplice never appeared to him without a disguise.”

  “Then, we’ll have to wait. I fear we have a new player on the board. And we have no idea what he might want.”

  Dear Reader,

  If you love history as much as I do, I thought you might like a little more information on the background to Aidan and Sophia’s story. Whenever possible, I use period magazines and newspapers for background over current history books. Sometimes with the benefit of hindsight, we understand events differently than a person living at the time would have, and I want to create a nineteenth-century world as the characters—had they been living then—might have experienced it. For the most part, this context comes up in small ways: Aidan is right when he says that the Wilmots in Naples were out of harm’s way.

  So, for those of you who want to know more about a book’s historical events, here are some juicy details.

  The Chelsea Physic Garden, botany, and Linnaeus

  Still nestled alongside the Thames, the Chelsea Apothecaries’ Garden, sometimes called the Physic Garden, was founded in 1673 by the Society of Apothecaries. Physic at the time meant “of the natural world,” and the apothecaries used the four-acre plot to train their apprentices in the healing properties of plants. The garden gained world renown, receiving plants and seeds from botanists around the world, during the fifty-year curatorship of Philip Miller (1691–1771). Miller also authored The Gardener’s Dictionary, a comprehensive guide to plants that went through eight editions in his lifetime and quickly became the standard reference work. Sophia inherits Miller’s Dictionary from her father and uses it to investigate Tom’s proofs. William Anderson, the Scottish curator Sophia meets during her visit, is also a real historical figure: Anderson served as the garden’s curator from 1815 to 1846. The description of the physic garden’s buildings and beds comes from contemporary engravings and other notices.

  During Miller’s curatorship, a number of botanical classification systems for identifying plants vied for prominence. The one that eventually gained widespread acceptance was Carl Linnaeus’s sexual system, which places all living things into hierarchic groups by genus and species. (We use Linnaeus’s system when we identify human beings as genus homo and species sapiens.) Linnaeus even visited the Chelsea Physic Garden several times in the 1730s, and it is his bust that rests above Tom’s books.

  One well-known follower of Linnaeus’s system was the beloved Queen Charlotte, George III’s wife, an avid botanist. The queen’s interest in the emerging science made it a popular and accepted pastime for girls and young women. As a result, the Regency book market was filled with books on botany geared to every segment of the market: children, students, dabblers, and specialists. Some books like the one that Sophia completes for Tom were hand-watercolored by women specially hired for the purpose (machine-colored illustrations are decades away). Purchasers really could choose how they wished their book to look, from the type of binding to the number and quality of the illustrations—and each option changed the cost of the book itself. The children’s botany book Sophia reads—Priscilla Wakefield’s—was first published in the late eighteenth century and frequently reprinted throughout the nineteenth as was Philip Miller’s Gardener’s Dictionary.

  For Sophia’s nom de plume, I’ve stolen the name Mrs. Teachwell from Lady Ellenor Fenn, a prolific children’s author who wrote from the 1780s to 1809. Contrary to popular belief, works by women writers filled the bookshelves during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In fact, more than four-hundred female authors published between 1789 and 1824, though today most people can’t name more than a handful of them. (For my list of the hundred best books written by women prior to 1900, check out my website.) In fact, between 1780 and 1830, the cost of novels differed based on the gender of the author! Women’s novels cost the most, followed by books authored by anonymous authors (by a lady, by a gentleman, etcetera), and finally, books authored by men, which earned the very least.

  Words and their uses

  I love words—and as much as I can, I use them as they would have been used in the period. So, even though I would have loved to have Aidan empathize with Sophia, the best he can do is sympathize. Empathy as a concept originated much later in the century with Sigmund Freud. I’m keeping a list of words characters can’t use in 1819 on my website . . . for other word-nerds like me.

  Having said that, I have chosen clarity over accuracy when I use the word croquet. As a game where one strikes a ball through a series of hoops in a particular order, croquet wasn’t part of British culture until the 1850s. However, an earlier game similar to croquet called variously Palle-Maille, Pell-Mell, or Pall-Mall was popular in England from at least the seventeenth century. In that game, a hoop is placed at either end of the playing field. But for the purpose of conveying quickly and precisely what sort of game Sophia plays, I decided croquet was the word readers would understand best.

  I hope you enjoyed Sophia and Aidan’s story, and that you are looking forward to the next installment in Charters’s villainy.

  I’m always happy to hear from readers; you can e-mail me at rachael@rachaelmiles.com. For more historical notes on JILTING THE DUKE, or to connect with me on social media, go to my website—rachaelmiles.com—which provides links to Twitter, Facebook, etcetera. While you’re there, sign up for my mailing list, and I’ll send you an announcement when the next book is coming out.

  I’m happy to talk to book clubs and community groups. Drop me a line to set something up.

  Happy Reading!

  Rachael Miles

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  Colin Somerville woke, heart pounding, the heavy thud of cannon fire fading with his nightmare. Heavy brocaded curtains hung over the carriage windows to his left. Feeling suffocated, he shoved the curtains apart and breathed in gulps of crisp September air. Beyond the window, the sun fell gently on the green rolling hills of Shropshire. In the near distance, open pastures with grazing sheep gave way to enclosed land growing turnips. He fell back against the seat. He was in England, not Belgium. It was only a dream.

  Judging from the position of the sun, they should reach Shrewsbury by dusk. He rubbed his face with his hands, pressing his fingertips into the tight muscles at his forehead and temples. To calm his heart, he used an old trick his brother Benjamin had taught him. He focused on naming the various scents in the air—wool, newly harvested wheat, dirt loosened to pull the turnips, and water. Likely the Severn.

  His companion Marietta grew restless in her sleep. He stilled. She curled her hand under her chin and nestled further into the thick, down-filled pallet tucked into the well betw
een the two carriage seats. Colin had bought her the pallet that morning at Wrexham. The gift had cost him more than he could easily afford, but her widening smile had been worth the cost. Since then, she had spent the day sleeping, her back to one seat riser, her swollen belly pressed against the other.

  A line of bright sunlight from beneath the window curtains shone above Marietta’s head like a nimbus. But unlike the Madonnas he had seen in Rome or Venice, whose faces were lit with an internal glow, Marietta—even in rest—looked weary. The dark hollows in her cheeks, the deep circles under her eyes, the blueish undertone to her lips, all reminded him of the El Grecos he’d seen at Toledo. He thought of his sister Judith’s confinements—she had never looked so ill, not with any of her four boys. If the Home Office had sent him to bury another woman . . . He pushed the thought away.

  It had taken Colin two days to travel to Holywell, two days in which he had steeled himself to smile and be charming. But ultimately the princess had charmed him. Heiress to a mining magnate, Marietta had caught the eye of a visiting (and impoverished) member of the Habsburg royal family. Though she had been impeccably trained at the best finishing school in Paris, when Colin arrived, he found her teaching the housekeeper’s parrot to curse in five European languages. “Don’t call me princess,” she whispered, casting a grim eye to the housekeeper, hovering at the edge of the terrace. “Or she will raise my rate.”

  It had taken two more days to separate Marietta’s possessions into two groups: those which the carriage could carry and those which would have to be shipped from Liverpool around the coast to London. Most difficult had been determining exactly which clothes she could (and could not) do without for her first week at court. Then, just when he had thought that they might set out, she had grown anxious that her belongings would miscarry, and she had insisted that his coachman Fletcher accompany her trunks across the inlet to ensure they were well stowed for their London journey. All told, he had been gone from London for more than a week before he bundled Marietta, her paints, embroidery, knitting, books, and a handful of magazines into the carriage and set off on their trip. But somehow he had not minded. Marietta was sweet, resilient, and companionable, anticipating the birth of her child with real joy. And Colin was already fond of her, treating her as a sort of younger sister.