Duchess by Design: The Gilded Age Girls Club

by Maya Rodale

  His gaze dropped to her hands. Her slightly trembling hands. His eyes widened ever so slightly when he noticed that she wasn’t joking about measuring him for a dress.

  “Adeline, I had to see you.”

  The plaintive notes of longing in his voice almost undid her. From his voice, she knew that he had been thinking about her, probably with a tortured mix of feelings: guilt, desire, unanswered questions. If they spoke honestly and openly, they would discover they liked each other, that she never meant to deceive him and he never meant to get her fired.

  And then what?

  Adeline needed the anger she harbored toward him. Otherwise she might have to admit that her hot-hearted feelings were those of lust and liking, a potentially fatal combination indeed. She had too much at stake to risk a kiss or a full-blown affair with him.

  Now, though, she had women she respected and admired counting on her to succeed.

  Busy. She would keep busy.

  He was here for a dress fitting, so she would fit him for a dress.

  She ought to focus on the task at hand.

  “You’ll need to remove your jacket.”

  “Adeline, you cannot be serious about taking my measurements. My tailor in London has them all recorded. Never mind that I do not actually wish to have a dress made.”

  “Then this appointment is over.”

  “Fine.”

  He shrugged out of his jacket.

  He wore his shirtsleeves, a vest and a smile that said two can play at this game.

  Adeline had to admit that this was probably a mistake. Not aloud, of course. But privately, to herself.

  The same spirit that had propelled her from the tenements to here urged her to brazen this out.

  She began her measurements with his chest, stretching the length of the tape across the wide expanse of linen- and silk-clad muscle and bone and skin and man. Memories of their collision were still vivid: she still knew how it felt to rest her cheek against the firm warmth of his breastbone, just above his beating heart. She still hadn’t quite recovered her equilibrium. Worse, she still yearned for that intimate touch. This was a convenient excuse for an indulgence.

  “Forty-two inches.” She paused to write it down in a small notebook for such purposes, then she slid it back into her pocket.

  “I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you, Adeline. I have been worried.”

  “As you can see, I’m quite fine.” She stretched the tape from the length of his shoulder to his elbow, then from his elbow to his wrist. Twenty-three inches in total. Concentrate on the numbers. Twenty-three inches of finely wrought muscle and bone. Twenty-three inches of strong arms that could hold a girl all night.

  Perhaps she would not concentrate on the numbers.

  “I hope you’ll forgive the intrusion, but when I saw the sign, I had to see if it was truly you. When we last spoke, your fate seemed . . .” Kingston seemed to be at a loss for words.

  “Dire? Hopeless? Desperate?”

  “I must apologize for my part in the events that transpired that day. My pride had suffered a blow, thinking I had been deceived. I so badly wanted to believe you were—”

  “An heiress who would solve all your problems? I suppose I should be flattered.”

  She was close enough to him to feel his low rumble of laughter.

  “Call it wishful thinking,” he murmured in her ear as she turned to measure his other arm.

  “You needn’t lose sleep on my account. As you can see, I have my own shop now.”

  “A remarkable state of affairs.”

  She felt his eyes on her, wondering how. How an impoverished seamstress on the verge of ruination suddenly appeared in possession of a fine establishment of her own. He would never suspect the truth: that the Ladies of Liberty had invested in her dream with their pin money and personal fortunes because no bank would lend to a woman. Especially one like Adeline, without a husband or family connections.

  The Duke would never think of that. And she had taken a solemn vow to never, ever breathe a word of it.

  “I admit I am curious as to how you have achieved this.”

  “How or who?” she said, answering the unspoken question in his eyes, the subtle accusation in his tone. He probably thought she had taken a lover, a wealthy one who set up his ladybird with a little shop to occupy her days while he occupied her nights. “Duke, I daresay you sound jealous.”

  “I might be.”

  “You have no right to be.”

  “I am well aware.”

  She could disabuse him of the notion that she had a lover but, she thought—as she took the measure of him from shoulder to waist—why? Why not let him think that she was spoken for? It would help keep some distance between them. Distance she badly needed.

  Besides, she could never tell him the real reason—the Ladies of Liberty had sworn her to secrecy.

  “It is none of your concern,” she told him.

  “I had offered to help you,” he said, and she understood him to mean, who is he? And why not me?

  She turned around to take a deep breath to cool her pulse, her temper. She had achieved something with this shop and he wanted to know whom she had dallied with to do so. He was jealous he hadn’t been the one. He was making her great achievement about his hurt feelings, his wounded masculine pride. She didn’t know whether to direct her anger at him or the state of the world that made his assumptions have some validity.

  She looped the tape around his waist. Abdomen: firm. Waist: thirty-three inches. Sense of his own self-importance: inflated.

  This whole insistence on measuring him for a dress was a spectacular failure.

  Because she had to get close to him to do it. Close enough to breathe in his scent of fresh linen and soap and man. She kept touching him, too, and savoring the feel of fine linen and wool, warm from his body, and it made her want to feel his bare skin under her palms. And his mouth! Always so close that if she just turned her head or tilted her face up, his mouth would be right there, wanting and waiting to claim hers for a kiss.

  They would not stop at a kiss.

  Not when she felt desire coursing through her veins like electricity coursing through the city. Hot, potent, new. Combining her arousal with her still simmering anger was a dangerous combination.

  “Step up on the box, please.”

  He did.

  It was a mistake.

  She had wanted to avoid kneeling in front of him. But his navel was practically at her eye level which meant that a certain portion of his anatomy was now close to her mouth. The air in the dressing room became heavy and thick. Comforted by the knowledge that he was as tortured by this as she was, she quickly took the measure of his inseam.

  He was either excited at the prospect of a dress of his own or he still wanted her. When her hand accidentally brushed against his arousal, she heard a quick hiss of breath. It was her. He wanted her. Their desire was mutual and that was all the more arousing. Damn.

  “Step down, please.”

  “As you wish.”

  She turned away to write down his measurements for no purpose other than to maintain the pretense of a fitting and, frankly, to take a moment to compose herself.

  It was just the way he took up so much of this small intimate space and made it impossible for any thoughts to remain in her head. Correction: any decent thoughts. She had plenty of wanton ideas that would involve discarded clothes and fevered kisses and skin against skin. Given the way he was looking at her, his thoughts were straying into the same wicked territory.

  “Did you land your heiress yet?” she asked, desperate to introduce a subject that would cool this fevered state between them. “Are you still deciding between Miss Watson and Miss Pennypacker?”

  “Those damned newspapers. What does one have to do for some privacy in this town?”

  “Be a nobody.”

  “Either one would make a fine duchess,” he said. “But . . .”

  The remainder of his senten
ce was left unsaid. It hung in the air between them for a moment. His eyes locked with hers and she feared she knew which words were on the tip of his tongue. Pretty ones like, but they are not you. But I want you. Or bittersweet ones like but I am not in love.

  Adeline thought that if he wasn’t going to marry for love, then he damn well better marry for heaps and heaps of money. And so she finished his sentence for him:

  “But only one of them is actually an heiress.”

  Not actually an heiress?

  This was news to Kingston. If it were true, this was information worth enduring an oddly erotic and utterly torturous dress fitting for. This was information that cooled his blood enough for him to resume thinking with his brain instead of something else.

  “That was not how I was going to finish that sentence, but I’ll admit, I’m now intrigued. Not an heiress? Explain yourself, Miss Black, before my entire future is wrecked.”

  She smiled devilishly. “Like you wrecked mine?”

  “Clearly, given that you are now proprietress of this very fine shop in a fashionable neighborhood. A dictionary definition of dire straits and a hopeless case. Tell me what I need to know. Please.”

  “I happen to know that Miss Pennypacker—or rather, her father—is often late paying bills, if they are paid at all. However, she receives so much attention in the papers for what she wears that it still behooves the dressmakers to attire her. And those are just the dressmaker’s debts. One can only imagine what other bills are left unpaid.”

  “If that is true, then I shall be in a worse position than I am currently, should I marry her and assume her debts. Why in that case, I might as well marry you, Miss Black.”

  “There you go again with the marriage proposals.”

  Their eyes met. Lips parted. His heart slammed against his breastbone.

  “I suppose Miss Watson is the future duchess of Kingston then.” There was no joy in making the announcement.

  “I wouldn’t count on it. She just did a large order of traveling dresses and plain day dresses from Madame Chalfont. A friend who still works there told Rachel, who told me.”

  “So? What is the point of such information?”

  “That suggests a simple lifestyle, one quite at odds with her current one as a Park Avenue Princess. Or future duchess.”

  “A woman with simple tastes who won’t deluge me with bills from dressmakers and milliners. Splendid. I feel an increasing fondness for her already.”

  “My hunch is that she is planning to elope. Probably with someone her parents will never approve of, especially when she has a duke nipping at her heels and sniffing at her skirts. You’ll want to act quickly with your proposal if you intend to make one. Though you will certainly risk a runaway heiress if you do. Her parents would never allow her to refuse you.”

  “Bloody hell.” Kingston pushed his fingers through his hair in a gesture of frustration. Weeks of late nights in ballrooms, long evenings enduring the opera, endless afternoon social calls and polite walks in the park were all for nothing.

  All that wasted time and effort.

  The clock was ticking.

  Kingston was inclined to believe Adeline, because she kept refusing him and she clearly didn’t need him. This shop was testament to that. And it burned, oh it burned, to think that he hadn’t been able to provide for her. He did not want to think of what arrangements she had entered into to get this shop. Honestly, he did not know what was worse: the feeling of jealousy that she was with another man or the feeling of failure that he had been unable to provide for her.

  Or was it the fact that she didn’t need him at all?

  He should be thinking about his own dire circumstances. Although, if Adeline spoke the truth, then she had just saved him.

  “I do wonder which newspapers you are reading. They are certainly not the same as the ones I have read. Nor has this information been shared with me at the club. I have all the stock tips in the world and can tell you about all the best haunts for women of negotiable affection, but I haven’t overheard anything like this. I had no idea.”

  Adeline laughed. “Oh, this information you won’t find in any one of the city papers. No, this information is exchanged exclusively between ladies, their dearest friends and their maids during dress fittings. Because seamstresses are little more than servants, we’re considered invisible, yet we are privy to so much of a woman’s secret life.”

  “I had never considered it.”

  “Of course you haven’t. Think of what you unwittingly share with your valet, for example. Consider what your chambermaids might have observed.”

  Though they never once had a conversation about it, his valet always ensured that Kingston was sufficiently stocked with rubber shields, for example. In order to do so, he must take note of when they were in need of replacement. He had never paused to consider what attention was paid to his personal habits.

  And so Kingston believed her. He believed her because she alone was not impressed by him and his title. Because her ambitions were incompatible with being a duchess, and so he trusted that she was not sabotaging the competition. He trusted her because he suspected that she did like him, as inconvenient as such feelings were for them both.

  “How quickly and expertly you have ruined my prospects.”

  “Now we’re even.”

  “Bloody hell. Now I must go back to the start—the introductions, the flirtations, the courtship.” He rubbed his jaw, wearily, like this was all a great trial, which he did find it to be. Oh, he was happy enough to charm and enjoy the company of all the young women. But he was painfully aware of each day that passed in which he was no closer to solving the problems of his estate or honoring his legacy. The pleasures of courtship tended to wither when under such unrelenting pressure. “I am eager to return to London. My sisters need guidance. My mother needs . . . management. To say nothing of my estates.”

  “You’ll find someone,” she said consolingly. “How hard can it be for a duke to find a duchess in New York City?” Adeline now held up a swatch of fabric near his face—he caught a flash of lavender. “Honestly, you’d think she’d just trip and fall into your arms,” she teased, and he couldn’t help but laugh a little.

  “It is harder than I had anticipated. To think, I thought I had met the girl on the first day.”

  Adeline held his gaze for a moment, then looked away.

  “Lavender doesn’t suit you.”

  “Try a blue. It goes with my eyes,” he said. And as she rummaged through her swatches—were they still maintaining this charade?—he said, “Now my two candidates are revealed to be all wrong.”

  “You have problems, Duke. Real problems.”

  He gazed into her eyes and said, “I do.”

  He could only hope that when he returned to the cool, gray shores of England with his bride, he would forget about Adeline. Perhaps in time he would think of her the way he thought of the barmaid who had divested him of his virginity—with a genuine warmth and fondness for what they shared, but with no bearing upon his present.

  But until then . . .

  It seemed impossible to forget her now that he knew where to find her. How could he put her out of mind when there was a chance that he might turn the corner and run into her? Manhattan was a small island, after all. Inevitably Fifth Avenue ballrooms would be filled with women wearing her gowns. She was talented; he had no doubt she would succeed. Just as he had no doubt that whatever he felt with her wasn’t finished. Yet.

  But they would have no reason to see each other again after this farce of a dress fitting concluded. Unless . . .

  “I have an idea how you might solve all my problems,” he said the split second that the idea occurred to him.

  “Oh? Do tell. I’ve been in want of a hobby. Solving the problems of dukes might be just the thing to do in all my free time.”

  He sighed with mock impatience. She grinned.

  “Obviously, I must continue on my quest for the perfect bride—an h
eiress with impeccable manners and a sterling reputation. A woman who will restore Kingston to its rightful glory. It seems that I need you and your intelligence network to help me choose the right woman to be my future duchess.”

  “I can hardly spill all my customers’ secrets. What kind of business practice would that be to betray their confidence and potentially wreck my chances of dressing the best women in society? I think not. It violates the sacred trust between women and serves no one.”

  Her chin tipped up, resolutely. Adorably.

  “You’re right. You cannot betray any of your customers’ secrets.” He paused, about to say something that might hurt. But his intentions were noble. “However, I do not see any customers. I have not heard the trill of the bell on the shop door. I did not see a full calendar of appointments in Miss Abrams’s book. In fact, I daresay I didn’t see any at all.”

  “I believe you are here for a dress fitting,” she replied icily.

  “Which brings us to another problem we could solve together. You require customers. High-quality, fashionable customers. This, I can help you with. Come with me to the opera and wear one of your stunning creations. You’ll be a sensation. The ladies will come in droves and your appointment book will be full for weeks.”

  She was tempted. He could see it in her eyes.

  “And then tell you all their secrets? No.”

  “Don’t tell me any of their secrets. Simply give a shake of your head if I indicate an interest in a woman who would not make a fitting duchess. Or better yet, indicate which ones I ought to pursue. Please. I owe this to my family. While I will sacrifice my own opportunity to marry for love, I cannot ask the same for my sisters.”

  She was really tempted now. He could see it. She had stopped holding up fabric swatches and was now thinking. Kingston kept going.

  “My sister, Nora, has fallen for an impoverished scholar and I should like to see her kept in a manner at least somewhat befitting her station. My other sister, Clara, has my mother in an uproar because she refused a wealthy husband because she doesn’t love him. And who can blame her? He is old enough to be her father. If I seek an heiress, it is not so that I might redecorate my houses, it is so my sisters may have a chance to marry for love, not money.”