by Eva Devon
All she knew was that Dowager Duchess Hyacinth was one of the most beautiful women she’d ever seen.
“So, I hear you’re to marry my son, Charles.”
Patience sat up straighter, though she hadn’t thought such a thing was possible. It was, she realized, an odd thing to do because the dowager duchess looked positively languid.
The dowager shrugged and smiled wider. “It’s simply that I never thought he’d wed, my dear. Granted, sons of dukes are supposed to marry but after his brother married and had a child, well. . . I thought Charles would wander the world alone. I’m glad he’s found a companion.”
“Are you?” she queried.
“Mmmmm.”
It was impossible to decide if the dowager’s pleasant tone was genuine. She felt as if she were being lured into confidence but was it the confidence of friend or foe?
As though he’d had everything waiting in a nearby servant’s corridor, Catesby re-entered. With remarkable precision, he poured the champagne into perfect crystal glasses, placed the silver serving tray between Lady Patience and the dowager, then left.
The dowager duchess took a long sip and sighed with delight. “I do rather like this sort of meeting to be without servants, though dear Catesby would never breathe a word. He knows enough about my exploits to ruin me, dear man.”
Since she had no idea how she was to respond, Patience took her own sip, a delicate one, of champagne.
The dowager leaned back and cocked her head to the side which sent her dangling, yellow diamond ear bob dancing. “Looking at you, I’m rather surprised that he asked.”
She choked on another sip of champagne. Her eyes burned as the bubbles went up her nose. “I beg your pardon?” she gassed.
“Well, you do look so very appropriate.”
“Isn’t that what mothers wish for their sons?” Patience huffed before deciding that decorum was clearly not in place at the moment and took a deep swallow.
“Oh they do! They do!” enthused the dowager. “But not my children. Appropriate is all well and good when one needs money and has to solidify breeding. Our breeding is excellent and we’ve more money that Croesus. Most vulgar of me to admit it. But I think it good we’re honest with each other. So, you see, my husband and I always fostered a genuine need for creativity, passion, and originality in our children. They are special and needn’t walk the path trodden by everyone else. If one is a part of the Hunt dukedom, one might as well take advantage and not succumb to banality.”
“I see.” And she did. This was why Cordelia had chosen Charles to rescue her.
“You’ve heard that I am in a scandal?” Patience asked.
“I have. Though, my dear, you don’t look as if you could raise an eyebrow let alone a scandal.”
“Still waters, Your Grace.”
The Dowager leaned forward, curious. “Are you claiming you’re deep Lady Patience?”
“Have you read P. Auden’s novels?”
“You mean yours?” The dowager nodded. “Yes. I’ve read all of them.”
That took Patience aback. Though by now, she wasn’t sure how anything could when it came to Charles and his family. “Then you will know I’m not what one would call shallow.”
“Ah.” The dowager lifted her glass and drank. “But perhaps you’re just a mouse scribbling in a corner desperately wishing the world not to notice her.”
It was an interesting description. Was it a true one? Patience hoped not. “I often went in disguise into the city and visited engagements a lady could not venture.”
“How did you go undetected?”
“No one would know my face in the city and, well, I wore a mask.”
“You’ve tenacity and inventiveness but I wonder. . .” The dowager rolled her glass along her lower lip. “Who are you truly? Are you the woman who wears the mask or the lady in the austere gown with a spine as stiff as a poker? I know which will make my son happy.”
“And I need your blessing,” Patience asked.
“I would never deny my son if he wishes to marry you, mostly because my denial would only hurt us both. He’d marry you even if I told him not to. I could never cause us more suffering.”
Patience shifted in her chair, unclear as to what the dowager meant. “More?”
The dowager stared at her. “Dear girl, you said you ventured out into society.”
“I daydream a great deal when in it.”
“And the papers?” the dowager asked. “Oh, don’t answer. I think you must be terribly naive in the regards of news sheets. For you clearly had no idea how they would revel in a bit of information given to them by a source.”
“I confess, I do not read them. Largely, I read only histories, dramas, and literature. News sheets have never interested me, in particular.”
Patience paused, something striking her in the dowager’s comments. “Source?”
The dowager nodded, her lips curving into a cunning smile. “Oh yes. We discovered it. A family like ours has the power to bear to bring pressure down on the publisher. He told us quite quickly.”
“Who was it?” she demanded, finding she wished to know a great deal more than she’d realized.
“Mrs. Barton’s dressmaker, Madame Celeste.”
“Madame Celeste?” she exclaimed.
“She’s made her little fortune and I suppose I can understand it, losing everything in her mad dash from Paris, but Patience, dear, one thing you will have to learn if you are to be a member of this family is discretion. Discretion is essential. We may have quite a lot of dirty linen. We may hang it out a bit. But we don’t wave it right in people’s faces.”
Patience bit her lower lip, dismayed. “I never thought. . . I never even considered.”
“Of course you didn’t. Someone like you doesn’t like to live truly in the world. You most likely never even gave a second thought to your conversations around Mrs. Barton, a woman I adore very much.” The dowager gave her a curious stare. “You float through life, Patience. . . Never really living.”
“That is—” before she could say terrible she stopped. “You’re right, of course.”
And her own indiscretion had nearly ruined her. She recalled it now, mentioning her research and P. Auden when Madame Celeste was there for the selection of fabric. What a fool she’d been. Was she truly so absentminded? Yes. She supposed she was for she wasn’t much in company.
She weighed what to say next then admitted, “I’ve never had the opportunity to do anything else but float through it. My family would not have been supportive of my masked alter ego. My Uncle Reginald knew I was a writer, but he had no idea that my trips to London included visits to an actress who led me astray, so to speak.”
“Do you even know who you truly are?” the dowager suddenly asked, her gaze direct. “Because if you don’t, taking on Charles could be a vast mistake.”
The intensity of the other woman took her aback. “I know there’s a darkness to him—”
“He killed his own father,” cut in the dowager, not mincing words.
“What?” Her stomach tightened with dismay.
“Oh, not murder, dear girl,” the dowager suddenly said lightly as if she had not just made such a shocking declaration a moment before. “It was a hunting accident. But things were very terrible for quite some time. I quite feared for his well-being. He’s done better these last months. But his father. . .Well, his father suffered black spells and I fear Charles might have inherited them. Are you prepared for a husband like that?”
“I don’t know.”
The dowager smiled sadly. “I appreciate your honesty. And I appreciate that you didn’t recoil in horror.”
“I like Charles and, while at first, I was ready to judge him hopeless, I know he is more than he wishes the world to know.”
“I think Charles had the kindest heart of all my children and he was hurt the most as he grew because of it.” The dowager’s face softened with sadness and obvious love for her son. “Now, he’s
the most distant of them all.”
“Protection,” Patience observed.
Blinking, the dowager stared at her with fresh eyes. “Yes. I think you know a little bit about that yourself.”
“I do.”
“You know, if you wish it, I’m happy to help you find out who you truly are.” Charles’ mother leaned back and proclaimed quietly but firmly, “For better or worse, we should know ourselves.”
The offer stole her ability to speak for a good long moment. No one, not even Cordelia, had ever said anything like that to her in her entire life. In general, people weren’t concerned with knowing themselves as far as she could see. Quite the contrary. Most people seemed to lie to themselves with more skill than to others and, generally, people spent a great deal of time more concerned with what society knew about them rather than what they, themselves, knew.
She’d always thought she’d had a rather good sense of self but then again she’d never been in the position she was in now where she actually had to decide which of her two selves was the dominate one. . . Or how to unify them. Could they be?
“Your Grace, I’m not entirely sure what that entails.”
The dowager smiled again. “Let me take you about society.”
“Your daughter-in-law and her friends have already offered to assist me in society.”
“Not my society.”
The meaning was fairly clear. She’d heard of the scandalous Dowager Duchess Hyacinth Eversleigh.
“You see, I adore my daughter-in-law but Cordelia and her friends are not particularly wild.” The dowager gesticulated with her free hand, jeweled bracelets clinking. “Oh, they’re intellectual and passionate, and gems of the first water. The ton adores them but that is all.”
“And you?” prompted Patience.
“I operate in the worlds Mrs. Barton, your teacher, operates. In the ones you’ve been spying on. Now, you can be more than observer and you won’t have to wear a mask.”
How the devil did she know about Mrs. Barton? Patience had a feeling that her soon-to-be mother-in-law knew a great many things. “What will Charles say?”
“I’d rather think Charles would approve. He may wish to join us.”
“That sounds. . . Very. . .”
There must have been a slightly horrified look upon her face.
“My dear,” she laughed. “I’m not proposing to launch you at any man who will have you. My son would murder me if I did. Of that, I’m certain. For now, he seems very possessive.”
“For now?” Charles’ mother’s words rang like a warning bell.
“Some rakes do reform of course, but Charles. . . It’s hard to say what will happen to you two. You’re not marrying for love are you?”
“No.”
The dowager gave a polite shrug. “Well then, it is very possible that you, yourself, will wish to seek out love in a few years’ time.”
While that thought would have been abhorrent to Lady Patience, she understood it. Many ton wives found love in the arms of men who were not their husbands. It was a bit odd to hear it from her soon-to-be husband’s mother. All the more evidence that the family she was marrying into was not normal.
Truthfully, the idea of being in anyone but Charles’ arms felt absolutely wrong.
But she wasn’t going to argue with the dowager. She didn’t wish to appear terribly naive.
She wasn’t after all, hence her promise from Charles that he wouldn’t lie to her about his rakish ways. But the real question came down to how was she truly willing to live? “I’ve never been anything more than observer of those events before.”
“I thought not but clearly a part of you wishes to participate.”
Patience hesitated then nodded. “I would prefer Charles to attend with us.”
“I’m sure he’ll insist and we’ll protect you from any fool who thinks to push.”
“Thank you, but that is one thing I’m good at,” Patience replied with pride. “Dealing with pushers. One has to learn to very quickly if one doesn’t wish to participate.”
The dowager laughed. “I’d never considered that before.”
“Then you are willing to approve our marriage?”
“Are you willing to allow your marriage to unfold as it will?”
“What else can one do?” Patience said. Clearly, Charles had not told his mother of the promise she had extracted from him.
“A surprising answer, my dear. . . And one that definitely suggests you belong in this family. You are welcome to it. I’ll tell Charles to set the date for as soon as possible. I think we should have a very, very big affair to hush all the sheep ready to pull you into their mud.”
Patience smiled. Once, she’d been one of those very sheep. Now what the devil was she?
Chapter 16
One inarguable fact remained with Patience as she swayed down the hall, a pleased smile on her face: the dowager was not your typical mother-in-law.
After several glasses of champagne, she felt atop the world despite being the subject of London’s discourse. Hyacinth, the dowager had insisted upon the familiarity, had confessed that once she had been a very shy girl and that her marriage had been the saving of her.
It was vastly difficult imagining Hyacinth as shy. But there it was and with each glass of champagne the dowager had poured, she’d shared another story, another on dit about the ducal family.
Thank goodness there had been cake. If there had not, she would have been well and truly three sheets to the wind but it had seemed rude to refuse a glass when her mother-in-law to be kept insisting and, really, the champagne had been quite excellent. The best she had ever tasted.
She was uncertain now as to why she had never been so fond of it. Most probably because she had never indulged in such an expensive wine before. It was like heaven in a glass. Her whole afternoon had been as if from another world.
In just a few days, she’d gone from an outsider, a member of the ton who was barely, barely allowed admittance to being the soon-to-be daughter-in-law of a key player, friends with several others, and related to a duke.
It was daunting and strange. She felt a bit like a puzzle piece that didn’t quite fit into its picture.
“Lady Patience.”
She stopped mid-step and swung towards that familiar voice. A voice she adored. A voice she adored more and more with each passing hour of their acquaintance. She turned and peered through the open doorway.
Charles stood in what appeared to be the library. A massive, sprawling, glorious library with three levels and ladders on rollers so that one might be able to traverse the whole chamber on them.
She virtually skipped into the room.
Skipped!
Charles was standing near the desk, his blue coat hugging his beautiful shoulders.
Without thinking, she flung herself into his arms. “I’ve met your mother,” she declared.
His brows drew together and he gave her an odd smile. “So, I see.”
“We got on famously,” she added, feeling as though she could conquer the world.
“I can see that, too.”
She grinned. “So, we can be wed! Imagine! I mean, I barely allowed you to have tea upon our first acquaintance.”
Charles’ brows drew together quizzically before he said, “Congratulations.”
She leaned back, her arms looped about his neck. “To us both.”
His mouth opened ever so slightly. “You haven’t been told have you?”
She waggled her brows, holding on tightly to his strong physique. My goodness. She felt a bit unsteady on her feet. How much champagne had Hyacinth poured down her throat?
“Told me what,” she breathed. There was really only one thing that could make this afternoon more perfect.
“That—”
“Before any more news,” she cut it, determined to celebrate to the full the shocking but surprisingly welcome turn of events. “I’d like you to kiss me.”
More than anything she wante
d to feel his lips on hers and any strangeness she felt, for this did feel a trifle strange, was surely down to the champagne and unusual afternoon.
“That would be very unwise,” he said seriously which was quite unlike Charles.
“Why? You’ve been most enthusiastic in the past.”
The man groaned. “Of course Charles has.”
She frowned.
“I’m not Charles, Lady Patience.”
She tensed. “That’s not amusing, Charles.”
“No. Indeed.” He smiled ruefully. “It can be deuced inconvenient.”
“Then stop being absurd.” She pulled back, feeling rather disappointed.
As she stepped back her foot caught on the desk and Charles grabbed her, cradling her in his arms.
She smiled. “That’s better.”
“Lady Patience,” he began.
She looped her arms around his neck again but this time she hesitated before embracing him so fully. Wait a moment. . . Wasn’t Charles a trifle taller than—
“Jack, get your hands off my wife.”
Charles. . . Winced.
Patience’s head spun as she heard that voice.
How could she have heard it again? The man who was holding her, her Charles, wasn’t speaking.
Slowly, she turned towards the sound.
Her mouth dropped open. Charles stood in the doorway, his face dark as thunder.
She looked from Charles to. . . Charles. . . And then back again.
There were two of them? Was this why women were so satisfied all around?
Her muddled mind suddenly grasped the truth of it!
Jack, as Charles had called him, said, “She’s not your wife yet.”
She pulled herself up, using Jack’s arms and whirled on Charles. “You bloody well never told me you have a twin.”
Charles coughed.
Jack sighed. “Why does this always seem to happen with the women who are our wives?”
“I’m not his wife as you pointed out.”
“But you will be,” Charles said from the doorway.
“I’m not sure,” she couldn’t help huffing. “You’re terribly deceitful!”
“Madam, let us not start a list of our deceits,” pointed out Charles. “Between us, we could fill a bible and I did not lie about Jack. I simply never found reason to mention he was my twin.”