“Yes, I imagine dukes must be obeyed,” murmured Mama, “no matter what the hour. Poor man, you must be weary beyond measure.”
“Mama, please,” Charlotte said, catching Mama by the arm. “About Mr. Carter, and this duke, and—”
“His Grace, Charlotte. You must call him His Grace,” Mama corrected gently, looping her arm around Charlotte’s waist and drawing her close. Her smile twisted, as if she was trying not to cry. “Mr. Carter, you have met my eldest daughter?”
“Yes, Mama, he has met me,” Charlotte said quickly, her suspicions and uneasiness rising by the second. She pressed the miniature portrait into her mother’s hand. “He brought me this as a gift.”
Mama stared at the handsome painted face, her fingers pressed to her cheek.
“Heavens, heavens,” she murmured. “Oh, how much His Grace favors his late father!”
“But who is he, Mama?” Charlotte begged. “How can you know him, while I do not?”
“Oh, my lamb, I am so sorry,” Mama said, shaking her head with a sad regret that did little to calm Charlotte. “Everything was decided so long ago by your father, you see, when you were still in the cradle. I was going to tell you tomorrow, before Mr. Carter arrived, but now he is early, and I—I didn’t.”
“Then tell me now, Mama.” Charlotte tugged the sleeves of her jersey over her hands, twisting them into the rough wool so that no one could see how her fingers shook. “What Mr. Carter says cannot possibly be true, can it?”
“Charlotte, Charlotte, my own dear.” Again Mama tried to smile, a single tear sliding down her cheek. “It is true, every word. Within the week we shall all leave Ransom Manor for London, and as soon as it can be arranged, you will wed His Grace the Duke of Marchbourne.”
Greenwood Hall
Surrey
James Augustus FitzCharles, third Duke of Marchbourne, stood in the center of the largest arched window in his bedchamber, his hands clasped behind his back. He was dressed for riding, and riding he would go, as soon as the tall French clock behind him struck eleven. That, he had calculated, would be the precise time to leave the stable, ride through the yard and the allée and across the north fields, and be near the London road when the coach passed by.
He could have waited until later next week, for the formal introductions that had been planned by his elders and their solicitors. To them his marriage was only a transaction of dynastic business, a calculated union of families and fortunes that had been blessed by His Majesty himself.
But for reasons that Marchbourne—or March, as he had been called by his friends since he’d inherited the dukedom—himself could not entirely explain, he’d no wish to wait for that chill formal introduction. Instead he’d decided that his first meeting with Lady Charlotte Wylder should appear to be by purest accident beneath the open sky, as if a whim of fate instead of their fathers had brought them together. He’d intercept her traveling party and graciously invite them to stop here at Greenwood for refreshment, as any host might. He’d already ordered tables arranged in the west garden, where his late mother’s white roses were beginning to bloom, and his cooks were busily preparing a selection of temptations for ladies. But that would be all. A chance meeting, followed by civil hospitality, white roses and sweet biscuits and tea, an accident of love contrived by an ardent bridegroom.
More likely an accident of tomfoolery, March thought with disgust as well as despair. What was he thinking, anyway? He’d always believed himself by nature far too practical for this sort of ridiculous gallantry. His history with ladies was impeccably honorable, and as far as he could tell, he’d never once fallen in love. It simply hadn’t been necessary. Lady Charlotte Wylder was already his, by right and by law, and had been betrothed to him since he’d been a boy of eight. There was no need for him to contrive a romantic folly with roses and biscuits to win her. He was twenty-six years old and a gentleman in his prime, master of all the land he could see from this window and much more besides, a peer of the realm and great-grandson of a king.
Yet here he was now, so beside himself with anticipation and dread and uncertainty that he didn’t wonder the entire household couldn’t hear his heart knocking away in his chest.
Eleven, and not before. He did not wish to appear too eager. Eleven, and—
The clock struck, the chimes as solemn as ever, and March nearly jumped from his boots. By the eleventh chime, he had composed himself once again and begun walking purposefully through the house, beneath the painted gazes of his long-gone ancestors in their stiff ruffs and gilded frames and before the occasional bowing servant. It took exactly nine minutes to walk from his rooms to the front door—he knew because he’d timed himself numerous times before calculating a useful average—so by a quarter past the hour, he had taken his hat and gloves from his servant and put them on, respectively, his head and his hands, had walked down the fifteen polished white stone steps, and had mounted the horse that the groom held for him. Two other grooms were also waiting, ready to ride behind as an escort. Waiting, too, was Carter, dressed in his usual gloomy black.
By trade Carter was the solicitor who oversaw all the niggling legal details that were part of every estate the size of Greenwood. But Carter had also been in the service of the Dukes of Marchbourne for so long that he’d earned March’s trust as well in other, more personal matters. When his letters to the Dowager Countess of Hervey had gone unanswered, March had naturally sent Carter to call upon the lady and flush her out from the ancient, distant pile of a house where she’d hidden herself with her daughters. And, just as naturally, it made sense to have Carter at his side now—if for no other reason than that he could make proper introductions.
They rode down the drive, cutting off across the west fields, around the lake, and past the miniature Temple of Jupiter that his father had built on a whim. It was a splendid day, full of warmth and sunshine on the green fields and trees around them, but March’s thoughts were turned so thoroughly inward that he saw none of the beauty around him. Fortunately, another of Mr. Carter’s gifts was the ability to keep a companionable silence, and he rode patiently beside March until, at last, March could no longer keep his doubts bound within.
“You are certain the party of ladies left Tensmore this morn, Carter?” he asked without preamble. “You are sure of it?”
“As certain as I can be of anything, sir,” said Carter, who was accustomed to this kind of abrupt conversation from the duke. “I had word that Lady Sanborn’s coach left Tensmore shortly before dawn.”
March shook his head. “How can you be so sure, Carter? If Lady Hervey is as—as scattered as you have portrayed her to me, then I find it difficult to believe that she would be capable of so prompt a departure.”
“You are correct, sir,” Carter said. “If arrangements had been left entirely in Lady Hervey’s hands, then I doubt she and her daughters would have yet left Ransom Manor. But because they are now being guided by the countess, I expect that promptness is the order of the day, and that they left Her Ladyship’s house exactly as planned.”
March grunted, wordless discontent. The Countess of Danbury was Lady Hervey’s fearsome aunt and Carter’s secret weapon. Once she had heard (by means of an exquisitely worded inquiry from Carter) of Lady Hervey’s procrastination, the countess had wasted no time appointing herself to bring her niece and grandnieces back into society—whether they wished it or not. It certainly wasn’t the way that March had wanted matters to fall.
“You already know my thoughts on Lady Danbury, Carter,” he said. “How you can consider letting those poor ladies be blasted by the flames of that old dragon as ‘guidance’ is beyond me.”
“I would, sir,” Carter said defensively, “so long as her flames will serve your purpose. Pray consider her ladyship as an ally in your purpose rather than a, ah, a dragon.”
March sighed. Lady Danbury would always be a dragon to him, and now, unhappily, a dragon who would be bound to him by marriage. “I pray that Lady Charlotte will not p
rove to be a dragon in training.”
“Oh, no, sir, not at all!” Carter exclaimed. “She is a young lady of the greatest beauty.”
March didn’t reply. He had steadfastly maintained that it was far more important that his duchess possess the character of an old and noble family than mere shallow beauty, and Lady Charlotte Wylder’s bloodlines were impeccable. This had been the main reason that his father had long ago agreed to this match, to “improve” their own family’s dubious heritage—that, and because his father and Lady Charlotte’s had been boyhood friends.
But while March would never be so dishonorable as to say it aloud, deep down he did wonder if her face was fair or plain, if her form would be pleasingly curved and her skin soft to his touch. He wouldn’t have been male if he hadn’t. The fact that no one in London had seen Lady Charlotte since she’d been a young girl—apparently she hadn’t even sat for a portrait—made her a complete mystery, and March was uneasy.
“Truly, sir, you need have no concerns,” Carter said earnestly, correctly reading March’s silence—though what else could he say of the future Duchess of Marchbourne? “Lady Charlotte is quite beautiful, as are the dowager countess and the younger ladies as well. To be sure, she has been raised in the country—”
“That is to the good, Carter,” March said. “I admire the simplicity of the country.”
“Oh, Lady Charlotte does have that,” Carter agreed, with a little too much enthusiasm. “She is no lady of fashion. She is completely untainted by London’s false airs, with no—”
“That’s enough, Carter,” March said sharply. “We will not speak of her ladyship further.”
Carter looked away, and bowed his head with contrition. “Forgive me, sir.”
“Damnation, man, I didn’t intend a reprimand,” March said, more annoyed with himself than with Carter. The solicitor had only been answering the question, and besides, it was hardly Carter’s fault that he’d met Lady Charlotte Wylder before March himself had. If he bumbled so badly with old Carter, how the devil could he be expected to do before Lady Charlotte?
With a muttered oath, March wrapped the reins more tightly around his gloved hand and dug his heels into his horse’s sides. Beneath him the horse lunged forward, and March bent low, giving himself over to the animal’s speed, carrying him to his fate. Lady Charlotte could be directly over that next hill, and they’d meet at last, and all the dreaming and dreading would finally be done. Dutifully Carter and the two grooms followed, but their horses were not equal to March’s, and he was soon ahead of them. He raced up the last hill, knowing that on the other side lay the road to London, and upon it, if the saints did smile upon him, would be his bride.
He reached the crest and paused, drawing the horse’s head to one side.
And swore again. Softly, under his breath, as befit a duke, but swearing nonetheless, for the scene that lay before him made less sense than a Covent Garden comedy.
An enormous, old-fashioned traveling coach had drawn to a halt near a copse of spreading trees, not far from the road. The coach was a distinctive shade of mulberry, like a giant glistening beetle, and even without being able to read the crest on the door, March knew it belonged to the countess. Though stopped, the coach did not seem to be in any distress; the driver had climbed down from the box, and the footmen who rode behind the coach were helping him loosen the team so they might graze. The baggage cart had also halted and the outriders had dismounted as well, standing in the shade of the trees. All this masculine activity seemed uneventful enough, but the ladies—the ladies had all, it seemed, lost their wits entirely.
A beautiful gold-haired woman in a feathered hat stood beneath the broadest of the trees, staring upward into the branches. On either side of her were two younger girls that must be her daughters, both dressed in matching white gowns with pink sashes. The girls also stared up into the tree, wailing and sobbing as if their very hearts were breaking, and though their mother tried to comfort them by holding them close, they remained inconsolable, wringing and thrashing their hands about like bedlamites. Two small white fluffs of dogs on long leashes raced around and around these three, wrapping the leashes around their legs like a maypole ribbon, and barking, too, as if they hoped to outdo the girls’ wailing.
The final touch of madness came from the countess herself. An angular woman laced too tightly, she tottered on high, unsteady heels through the waving grasses, leaning on the arm of a footman while she waved her ruffled parasol like a general’s baton. She, too, stared upward, and because she shouted the loudest of all, March could hear her from the hill.
“Come down here at once!” she ordered. “No lowly mongrel beast is worth this sort of performance, and I will not have it. Come down, I say, come down directly! Directly!”
At once March urged his horse down the hill to join them. So long as they were on his land, they were his responsibility, and he would do what he must to calm them and bring order. It was only when he was twenty paces away that he realized Lady Charlotte—his Lady Charlotte—seemed not to be of the party.
“Good day, Lady Sanborn,” he said, drawing up before the countess. “Might I be of service to you? If there is some distress, some—”
“Distress, Duke!” She managed the slightest possible curtsey to him before she popped up again, her quivering cheeks pink with indignation. “That is, good day, good day. Pray forgive me, Duke, but my greatest distress must come from your very presence here. You must be gone directly. You cannot stay another moment in this place.”
“But this is my place, Lady Sanborn,” March said, thinking again of dragons. He wished she’d stop brandishing her parasol at him, too. All those shaking ruffles were upsetting his horse. “You are at present on my land and are therefore my guest. It’s my pleasure and my duty to put you at your ease.”
“This is not about my ease, Duke,” she declared vehemently. “You know that as well as I. It is about you attempting to glimpse your bride before the time we agreed, and I will not permit it.”
“It is your welfare that concerns me most at present, Lady Sanborn,” he declared, sidestepping her accusation, which was, of course, exactly what he had been planning. “And how could I hope to glimpse Lady Charlotte Wylder when she is clearly not of your party today?”
“But Charlotte is here.” The younger of the girls with the pink sashes darted toward March, her earlier tears forgotten. “She’s the entire reason we must go to London.”
At once Lady Sanborn swung her parasol down before the girl like a tollman’s bar, blocking her path.
“You forget yourself, Lady Diana,” she warned ominously as the gold-haired lady rushed forward, settling her hands on the girl’s shoulders.
“Oh, Diana, this is a grievous mistake,” the lady said hurriedly, mortified for her daughter’s sake, “and I know I’ve explained this to you before, over and over. You are never to address anyone of His Grace’s rank. You must wait until His Grace has first honored you with his notice.”
“But he’s noticed me now, Mama,” the girl said, cheerfully undaunted as she gazed up at March on the horse. “He’ll notice Charlotte, too. She’s up there, sir, over your head.”
The girl pointed upward. With a certain amount of reluctance—or was it dread?—March slowly looked up into the tree.
There sat his bride, perched like some silk-clad nymph on a wide branch, with one arm loosely around the trunk for balance. At least she’d looped and tied her skirts to one side of her legs for decency’s sake, but as he gazed up from the back of his horse March still had a provocative view of frothy lace around bright green stockings on delicate, perfectly shaped ankles. The gauzy linen kerchief around her shoulders had slipped to one side, and the plump curves of her breasts rose above the neckline of her gown, all the more obvious above the boned bodice. Her skin was creamy and fair, her cheeks prettily flushed, her dark hair tousled beneath a small lace cap.
His first coherent thought was that Carter had been absolutely right: L
ady Charlotte was a beauty, the kind of beauty destined to turn heads in every ballroom in London.
His second was pure amazement that such a lady was intended for him.
But his third and most urgent thought was why in blazes the soon-to-be third Duchess of Marchbourne—his duchess—was stranded in the lofty branches of a tree.
“Good day, Lady Charlotte,” he said briskly, already determining a plan for rescuing her. “We shall make our formal acquaintance soon enough, I am sure, but more pressing now is that I save you.”
“Save me?” she repeated, her eyes widening with charming astonishment. “But I do not require saving, Your Grace, not at all.”
As if to prove it, she swung toward him with only the single arm around the tree’s trunk for security, then swayed back again, almost as if she were dancing. It was gracefully done, to be sure, but it worried him to see her be so cavalier with her safety.
“No more of that,” he ordered, swiftly guiding his horse to stand beside the base of the tree. “If you fall, I’ll never forgive myself.”
To his amazement, she laughed, a merry, rippling laugh. “But I won’t fall, sir. Ask my sisters if you doubt me. I’ve been climbing in and out of trees for as long as I can remember, and this one is no challenge at all.”
She balanced on one foot, raising and pointing the other elegantly before her.
The baser, male part of March’s brain marveled at how fine her ankles appeared in those bright green stockings and how pretty her feet were in pink flower-patterned shoes with silver buckles, and wondered if she tied her garters below her knees or above them.
Fortunately, the more responsible part of that same brain stepped forward and reminded March of his duty.
“Take care, Lady Charlotte, take care,” he cautioned, striving to concentrate on her safety rather than her knees. “Nothing will be gained, and everything may be lost.”
When You Wish Upon a Duke Page 2