Seducing the Duchess

by Ashley March

  “Serious,” Philip repeated.

  “Yes, Your Grace.”

  “Did he mention whether she seemed happy or sad?”

  “No, Your Grace. Only . . . serious.”

  Philip felt his throat tighten, and he repressed the urge to growl in frustration. “Serious” could mean she was thoughtful, or that she was simply being polite. Or that she was bored because she was being polite.

  The footman should have watched her eyes. Then he would have known how she felt, because her eyes always gave her away. They would sparkle, or gleam, or twinkle. They would glitter with anger, or go soft with sadness. Philip had seen them empty of emotion only twice—once the morning after their wedding, when he’d told her he didn’t love her, and the other the day when he told her he’d never intended to grant her a divorce. It was a look which would haunt him forever.

  “Serious” was not sufficient for his curiosity. He needed to know more.

  “Bring me ink and paper, Fallon. I have a letter to write.”

  The next day, Charlotte lay curled on the window seat of one of the guest bedchambers, reading the poem Philip had given her. It had become a guilty pleasure of hers, and she refused to keep count of the number of times she’d taken it out, her eyes scanning the lines in a perfunctory movement as she recited it by heart.

  “The fierce light of her soul beckons me ...”

  She paused, closing her eyes, her fingers crumpling the edges of the paper. She imagined Philip at his desk, his head bent as he penned the line, the tips of his fingers stained—

  “What are you doing?”

  Charlotte jerked, her head banging against the windowsill behind her. Rubbing her head, she glared at Emma. “Knocking, Emma. Is it too much to ask?”

  Emma pushed Charlotte’s feet aside and sat on the window seat beside her. “But by not knocking I often discover very interesting things. For example, three days ago I found one of the housemaids and a footman locked in a rather fervent embrace when I didn’t knock upon entering the east parlor.”

  Charlotte drew her brows together. “Do you usually knock before you go into the parlor?”

  “No, but it was an example, meant to illustrate my point. If I had knocked, they would most certainly have separated before I could have seen them so.”

  Charlotte just looked at her. “Don’t you have a book to write?”

  Swinging her feet, Emma peered carefully about the room. Charlotte wondered if perhaps she thought a footman might be hiding nearby.

  At last she sighed. “I do, but I killed off my main character.”

  Charlotte tucked the poem beneath her skirts, hoping Emma wouldn’t notice what she’d been reading. “I could see how that would be a problem.”

  “Actually, no. I meant to kill him off. The problem is, however, that I still have ninety pages to go.”

  “Perhaps you could resurrect him, and then kill him off again.”

  Emma’s head swung about, her jaw agape. She leaned forward and hugged Charlotte. “I adore you,” she said. “Absolutely adore you.”

  She bounded—truly, there was no other word to describe the enthusiastic leap—off the window seat and hurried to the door.

  “Oh,” she exclaimed, turning around. “I forgot to tell you. There is a man downstairs waiting for you.”

  And with that rather vague statement, she left.

  A man. Not your estranged husband or one of your admirers or even a crazed chimney sweep who wandered in off the street, but a man.

  Of course, Charlotte immediately assumed it was Philip, her heart showing its agreement by ratcheting around in her chest.

  But if it was Philip, wouldn’t Emma have said so?

  Nevertheless, Charlotte took a moment to glance at herself in the mirror and smooth her coiffure before going downstairs.

  The man in the drawing room did not, in fact, turn out to be Philip. Swallowing her disappointment, Charlotte smiled in greeting. “Mr. Lesser! How wonderful to see you. Forgive me for asking, but . . . Why are you here?”

  “Your Grace.” The tutor bowed deeply, then adjusted his spectacles as he straightened. “His Grace sent me to continue your lessons.”

  “He . . .”

  Charlotte considered herself quite rational, though she did have her moments. Yet she couldn’t understand why Philip would bid the tutor to instruct her further when he had taken the first step to ending their relationship. If anything, he should be avoiding her, avoiding any thoughts of her. Just as she should be avoiding any thoughts of him.

  “Shall we begin? His Grace told me you brought the harp with you?”

  “Er . . . yes. Right this way.” She led him from the drawing room to the Severlys’ music room. “Although I must tell you I haven’t played much recently,” she said.

  In truth, she hadn’t touched the instrument at all since she’d left Ruthven Manor. She had tried to play. One night when she’d been unable to sleep, she had tiptoed downstairs and sat at the harp, positioned her hands as Mr. Lesser had showed her, and taken a deep breath.

  And that’s all she’d done. She couldn’t make herself actually draw music from the strings. She’d just sat there for a long time—it might have been over an hour—thinking of Philip, and the petition, and of Philip again.

  No matter how she tried to redirect her thoughts, somehow they always came back to him.

  The early-afternoon sun spilled into the room in four neat little rectangles. It was a lovely room, royal blue and cream, trimmed with gold accents. Its beauty should have inspired her; instead, her stomach twisted into knots upon seeing the harp.

  Mr. Lesser either didn’t notice her discomfort or chose to ignore it, motioning her to take a seat. “First we shall begin with your scales. I trust you remember?”

  Charlotte nodded and lifted her hands.

  She haltingly made her way through the first scale, her fingers stumbling halfway through when she remembered how Philip had watched her at her lessons, prowling around the room, his gaze prickling her skin and causing her pulse to race.

  She heard Mr. Lesser’s exasperated sigh behind her.

  “You aren’t concentrating,” he said.

  “No,” she admitted, letting her hands fall away to clasp together in her lap.

  He paced toward the window, his head bent at a forty-five-degree angle, then spun on his heel and paced back to her. “Your Grace, I must ask you a question. Why do you wish to play the harp? Are you planning a grand recital where you would like to impress your friends?”

  Charlotte stared at him. It was such a ludicrous idea. “No.”

  “Is it for your husband’s pleasure, then?” Before she could answer, he shook his head. “Surely not, since you are here and he is”—he waved his hand toward the windows—“there.”

  She pressed her lips together.

  Mr. Lesser continued, pacing away once more. “If it isn’t for your friends, and not for your husband, then may I assume it is for yourself, Your Grace?” He pivoted toward her, his brows lifted high above the rims of his spectacles.

  Charlotte arched a brow at him in return. “I believe I see your point, Mr. Lesser.”

  He inclined his head. “Very good, Your Grace. The scales. Again.”

  She strummed her fingers over the strings, back and forth, again and again, moving from one scale to the next. She was still not perfect, as she accidentally plucked the wrong note at times, but she took it as a sign of improvement that Mr. Lesser didn’t halt her, nor did she hear his voice lifted in supplication to heaven.

  And though she continued to think of Philip, she thought instead of the way his eyes lit with pleasure when he gave her the harp, of how he encouraged her to continue despite the blisters on her fingertips.

  He’d asked her to forgive him at the Boughan musicale. But her defenses had begun crumbling even before he’d posed the question, and she feared she’d already forgiven him. It frightened her, how she couldn’t hold on to her bitterness as easily as she had in
the past when he’d been cruel and indifferent.

  As she finished the last scale, she turned toward her instructor. “Do you know why he sent you here? Did he tell you how much longer he wished you to teach me?”

  Mr. Lesser shrugged, the sun glinting off his lenses. “I only received a note requesting that I come to you today. I am to see him tomorrow, when he returns to London.”

  Charlotte straightened. “You mean he isn’t here now?”

  “No, I believe he returned to the estate in Warwickshire.” He hesitated for a long moment. “I heard a rumor he is intending to sell it off.”

  “Sell it? But why?”

  Mr. Lesser averted his gaze, as if he regretted telling her. Finally, he said, “It’s only speculation. As you must know, there are many rumors going around since he made his petition.”

  Charlotte exhaled. “Then it isn’t true.”

  For some reason, the thought of Philip selling Ruthven Manor made everything seem more permanent, more settled. Besides the London town house, it was the only place they had ever lived together, never having visited any of the other estates strewn across the English countryside. Ruthven Manor contained memories of their history—playing as children, his courtship of her, that awful time after the wedding, and then his most recent betrayal. And if she were ever to completely reconcile with her parents, it would be strange to visit Sheffield House and realize Philip no longer lived on the other side of the woods.

  Not that it mattered whether he sold it, in the end. A divorce was as permanent as one could get.

  Mr. Lesser adjusted his spectacles. “However, there is also the rumor that he is planning to renounce the dukedom.”

  “What?” Charlotte surged to her feet. “Where did you hear this?”

  “Lady Beatrice Pierson. I give lessons to her on the violin, and she said yesterday that she heard it from—”

  “Oh, never mind.” The exact chain of who had told whom was of little importance. Her mind raced, her heart thudded furiously as she strode to the door, stopping halfway only when she realized she had no idea where she was going. Philip wouldn’t return to London until tomorrow.

  Not only that, but she wasn’t quite sure what she would say when she saw him.

  She stared at the door.

  “To be honest, Your Grace, I am surprised you haven’t heard of it. No less than five people—”

  The door crashed open, and Emma burst in. “Charlotte! You will not believe—Oh, hello.” She made a proper curtsy to Mr. Lesser, then continued on in a lowered voice which nonetheless carried to every corner of the room. “Mother just told me that Lord Dabney was riding along Rotten Row this morning, and he told her that the Duke of Rutherford is planning to—”

  “Renounce his title?” Charlotte finished for her, feeling as if all the air had been squeezed out of her lungs.

  Emma’s lips remained parted for a few seconds longer; then she wrinkled her brow. “How did you know?”

  Charlotte gestured to Mr. Lesser wordlessly, not even bothering to introduce Emma, or to tell her she needn’t have curtsied.

  She looked toward the door again.

  Even if the Severlys allowed her to borrow their carriage and she left now for Ruthven Manor, by the time she arrived Philip would probably have already departed again for London.

  Tomorrow, however, she would see him and demand to know whether the rumors were true.

  Chapter 21

  Charlotte stood upon the front steps to the Rutherford town house, her arms folded across her chest. Even though she wore gloves, her fingertips tingled from the early-November cold. A feathered snowflake floated down through her field of vision. She glanced up past the eaves of the house. The early-winter snow danced in the gray morning light, soft flurries whirling upon the air playfully as they fell.

  As another snowflake dusted her cheek, Charlotte breathed a resolute sigh, the action forming a frothy white puff of air.

  Lifting her hand, she grabbed the brass knocker and—

  The door swung open, the knocker pulled from her grasp.

  Fallon appeared in the entryway, his usual impassive countenance giving way to relief when he saw her. “Oh, thank God.”

  Charlotte blinked. “I beg your pardon?” she murmured. She couldn’t have heard him correctly.

  “Forgive me, Your Grace. It’s just—it is so good to see you.”

  He stepped forward, and for an instant Charlotte thought he might try to hug her. Her arms rose slightly from her sides, her legs stiffening to prepare for his embrace—actions which she could only attribute to a momentary bewilderment. But he stuttered to a halt at the threshold and instead moved aside, sweeping his arm in a gesture for her to enter.

  She edged past him, unable to find her voice. In three years, she had never heard the butler speak in anything but a monotone. To hear him speak otherwise now—and so freely—was tantamount to seeing the four horsemen of the apocalypse descending from heaven.

  She cleared her throat, wondering if he might be ill. Consumed with a fever, perhaps. “Fallon, er . . . Yes, thank you.” She allowed him to take her coat and hat.

  He leaned in toward her, his voice a hoarse whisper. “I fear His Grace has gone mad. I considered writing and asking you to come, but I—” He shook his head. “Ever since you left, he’s not been the same. After you returned to London ...”

  Fallon’s eyes gleamed brightly as he continued speaking, and though she tried to concentrate on what he said, the words “he’s not been the same” kept echoing in her head.

  She frowned. Philip had certainly seemed normal at the Hysell ball and the musicale. Contrite, perhaps, but otherwise as normal as he could be. He hadn’t appeared tormented, mad, or ill. Then again, he had so many masks that sometimes even she was fooled.

  “. . . burned them all. Burned them! He wanted a great big bonfire, he said, to—”

  “Wait.” Charlotte held up her hand. “What did he burn?”

  “The portraits of his grandfather, every last one. He’d already smashed the bust outside the library. And he ordered the portraits here to be taken down, too.”

  He pointed across the entryway, and Charlotte followed his gaze to a large blank rectangle on the wall.

  “He removed the portrait from my bedchamber at Ruthven, but I thought that was only for my sake,” she said, glancing back at Fallon.

  “It was. He instructed me to have the footmen take it elsewhere so it wouldn’t bother you. But then, when you left, he ...” His voice trailed off, and he looked at Charlotte with a guarded expression before he continued. “He wasn’t well.”

  Her heart thumped hard against her ribs. Was it cruel of her to be so happy at his words, to want to ask for each explicit detail of Philip’s misery? She opened her mouth to ask what he meant, but he went on before she could speak.

  “The day the bust was broken, he decided to take down the portraits—all forty-three of them—”

  “Forty-three?” Charlotte repeated incredulously.

  Fallon nodded. “It took us all night to locate all of them and move them to various storage closets. Then the next day His Grace decided to burn them.”

  “That is strange,” she said softly. Indeed, it was wholly unlike Philip. Though he’d admitted being scared of his grandfather as a child, she’d thought he’d always loved the elderly duke. And it was certainly odd to burn them, when he could have just left them out of sight.

  “But that isn’t the strangest part,” Fallon said. He peered down the corridor, as if to make sure Philip wasn’t nearby.

  Then he turned to Charlotte. “He’s started thanking me, Your Grace.” His beetled eyebrows pulled low. “When I iron the paper, he thanks me. When I announce a visitor, he thanks me. Why, he even thanked me the other day for opening the door. ‘Thank you, Fallon,’ he says.”

  His impression of Philip was spot-on, his voice deep and his syllables clipped, and Charlotte nearly smiled. But why would he be thanking his servants? It was almost
as if he were still trying to change . . . Except he had already petitioned for the divorce. He knew she wouldn’t return to him, so it couldn’t be for her benefit.

  Fallon stared at her, his expression deeply chagrined. “I’ve never been thanked before for doing my duties. Not by His Grace, and not by the old duke before him.” He shook his head ruefully. “I don’t know what to do, Your Grace.”

  Something flared inside her at that moment, something small and dim, but significant nonetheless. Hope. Immediately, Charlotte quashed the feeling. She might have forgiven him, but trusting him with her heart again was a much larger step, one she didn’t know whether she would ever be prepared for.

  “I’m not sure I can do anything,” she said. “And truly, it doesn’t seem that terrible. It seems he is acting better than ever before.”

  “That’s just it, Your Grace,” Fallon replied. “His Grace has never been nice before.”

  “I understand, but—”

  At that moment, a door opened down the corridor, and Mr. Lesser emerged. As he neared, Fallon returned to the front door.

  After she and Mr. Lesser exchanged greetings, Charlotte gestured past him to the corridor. “Did he tell you how much longer our lessons would go on, or why he bid you to continue them?”

  Mr. Lesser’s eyes shifted behind her, then back again. “Ah, no. I fear I neglected to ask ...”

  Charlotte inclined her head. “I will be sure to inquire, then,” she said. “Good day, Mr. Lesser. And don’t worry,” she added, “I am practicing.”

  He smiled. “Very good, Your Grace.”

  As she walked to Philip’s study, she counted her steps, measuring her breath with each even footfall. The door was halfway open, but she knocked anyway, needing those last few moments.

  “Enter.”

  He was standing at the window, his hands clasped behind his back. Before she could speak, she saw his shoulders tense. “Charlotte,” he said, and turned around. His eyes raked her from head to toe, and she felt heat steal into her cheeks. It wasn’t a seductive look, but it was intimate nonetheless, almost as if he could bind her to him with his gaze.