A Duke She Can't Refuse

by Gemma Blackwood

  “Oh, my!” cried the silly lady at Daisy’s side, now using her handkerchief to dab her eyes.

  “Good morning, Your Grace!” Daisy laid a hand to her bonnet as a sudden gust of wind threatened to sweep it away. Alexander’s boat lurched sideways, but he stayed standing. “I was not expecting to see you here.”

  Asinine, perhaps, but the only thing she could think of to say. Especially considering that every passenger and sailor on deck was listening in and, in the cases of her mother and the silly lady, giving quiet sobs of delight.

  Alexander shielded his eyes against the sun as he looked up at her. In his other hand, he brandished a letter.

  The letter.

  “Your brother was kind enough to tell me you had boarded a ship for Lisbon,” he called.

  Daisy bit her lip. “I apologise. He was not supposed to tell you. Not until much later.”

  “I am glad he did!”

  “Alexander…” Daisy stretched out her arms helplessly. “My ship has set sail. What is there to do?”

  “You cannot leave without reading my letter.”

  “A letter you never intended to send!”

  “Nevertheless. Fate put it into your hands, and I have realised that I cannot let you leave England without reading it.”

  “Edith put it into my hands. Fate had nothing to do with it.”

  “All the same.” He unfolded the letter and cleared his throat. “My dearest Daisy…”

  Daisy had never thought that a heart could melt and quail at the same time. He looked so wild and reckless, stood in the bow of a rocking boat, and at the same time more vulnerable than she had ever known him. “Alexander, stop!”

  “I have just broken every promise I made to you and to myself,” he continued doggedly, “and I cannot bring myself to regret it…”

  “Stop!”

  He looked up. “You won’t hear it?”

  “Oh, you must let him read it!” cried the silly lady.

  “Daisy, please!” begged Lady Peyton.

  Alexander was looking at her with such naked longing in his eyes that it stole her breath. Daisy could hardly bear to keep him waiting, but her head was spinning, the ship was ploughing forwards, and her heart was in danger of tearing itself down the middle.

  If she heard the rest of that letter, she knew what her future would hold as certainly as though it were written in the pages of a book.

  For the second time that year, the duke was about to propose. And she knew now, as she had not done the first time, everything that proposal entailed. Public duty, private scrutiny. Luxury and sacrifice in one chaotic bundle.

  And love. Love so raw and urgent that it could no more be denied than the whirling currents of the Thames. A life spent loving someone more than her own health or happiness. Her heart beating forever in someone else’s chest.

  Once she heard him tell her that he loved her, too, just as sweetly and madly as she loved him, she would not have the strength to refuse him.

  He had been afraid of it, once, and now she had learned to fear it, too. It was a risk to give one’s heart away so completely. She had not understood quite what was at stake until she had already lost her first throw of the dice.

  “I will hear it,” she said.

  Sunshine broke over Alexander’s face. Her heart thundered.

  “But my mother will not!” Daisy’s face glowed as she glanced to either side, seeing all the eager faces leaning over the rail to listen. The gossip pages would certainly have something to talk about the next morning. “We will put in at Falmouth before sailing on to Lisbon. I will disembark there, and –”

  “No!” cried Lady Peyton. She recovered instantaneously from her half-swoon and began looking about imperiously, waving her hand in the air to catch a sailor’s attention. “No, my girl, you will hear the duke right this instant. Somebody help me! Somebody fetch a ladder for the duke!”

  “Yes, yes!” exclaimed the silly lady. “You, there! The Duke of Loxwell demands to come aboard! Fetch us a rope!”

  “He cannot climb a rope,” Daisy protested. “He is liable to fall into the Thames. Mama, I can hardly marry a duke who has drowned.”

  “I won’t drown!” Alexander called. His wherry lurched against a wave, and he stumbled a little, to gasps of shock from the onlookers.

  “Leave it to me,” said the silly lady, and she marched off to collar a nearby sailor.

  Daisy looked on helplessly as a rope ladder was found, tied to the railings, and lowered off the side of the ship. The wherryman cursed as he manoeuvred his vessel in closer.

  “That’s as far as I’ll go, guv,” he announced, leaning back on his oars.

  There was still a gap between the swinging end of the rope ladder and the bow of the wherry. To Daisy’s eyes, it looked frightful.

  “Alexander, please!” she begged. “Meet me in Falmouth! What difference does a few days make?”

  He flashed her a glimpse of that hopelessly charming smile. “It makes a difference to me. I’ve waited too long to say what I should have said from the beginning.”

  He eyed the rope ladder as though it were a snake he could charm to his will and leapt from the wherry.

  Unfortunately, his feet left the wooden planks just as another wave lurched down the river in the wake of a passing schooner, and he was flung off course.

  Daisy told herself, later, that the heartrending shriek that rent the air could not possibly have come from her. She was hardly the sort to go about wailing and crying simply because her beloved had dunked himself to the waist in the Thames.

  But a shriek there was, and, unless she was mistaken, Alexander looked quite gratified as he clung to the rope ladder and hauled himself hand over hand out of the water.

  Applause broke out as he clambered up the side of the Pride of London and hopped over the railing with a grace only slightly marred by the splatter of water from his boots.

  “The letter!” wailed the silly lady. “Oh, Your Grace, the letter!”

  Alexander withdrew it from his coat. It was thoroughly soaked, blue streaks of ink beginning to run through the paper. “Still legible, with any luck.” He held it towards Daisy.

  She hesitated. She could not embrace him, not in front of all those gawping people, so she hugged her arms around herself.

  “You were due at the House of Lords today,” she said. “Ralph told me you were expected to speak.”

  “Hang the House of Lords. This is more important.”

  Daisy smiled wryly. “I wonder if I shall ever hear you say that again.”

  “You’ll hear it every day if you wish.” He glanced down at the letter. “I wrote this the day I first kissed you. I never intended for you to read it. But now I know I have never written a more important letter in my life.”

  She took a step towards him, but did not touch the letter. “Why did you write it, if it was not meant to be read?”

  “I took your advice. I felt something that day – something I could not bear to keep hidden – and I thought that if I wrote it down, it would relieve me of the need to say it.” He shook his head ruefully. “It was not the first time that I fell afoul of one of your ideas.”

  Daisy’s hand went to her reticule. “I had written a letter that day, too.”

  He cocked his head to one side. “I haven’t forgotten.”

  Daisy ducked her head, cheeks beginning to flame, and withdrew a crumpled ball of paper from the reticule. “I was going to throw it into the river as we left London. I was standing here waiting for the right moment. And then you appeared.”

  He opened his other hand. “Shall we make an exchange?”

  Daisy shook her head. “I ought to read yours first. I think I deserve that.” She managed half a smile. “Then I will still have the opportunity to throw mine overboard, if I wish to.”

  Alexander crossed the distance between them in a single stride and seized the hand that held the crumpled paper, pressing it to his lips. “Read it,” he said, exchanging her ba
lled-up letter for his damp one. “Read it now.”

  Daisy fumbled to unfold it. The ink had run so much that the white paper had turned completely blue. She knew it was almost hopeless, but made the effort to open it anyway…

  And tore it down the middle.

  The onlookers gasped. Daisy blinked and tried vainly to force the two torn edges of paper back together. It did no good. The river had turned the fragile paper to mush.

  “I’m sorry!” she gasped, holding the letter to the light to try and make out a single word. “I – I can’t read a thing!”

  Alexander tucked her letter into his coat, taking care to check that the inside pocket was dry, and then took his ruined letter from her and threw it over the side. “Then give me the chance to make my case properly. I know the words in that letter by heart, and they are not enough.” He gestured towards the paper fragments sinking into the Thames. “Those were the words of a man seeking a way to break the spell you cast on him. A man so utterly infatuated that he let his better instincts desert him. A man so blind he refused to see that you had already improved his life in every way.

  “That man does not exist today. I stand in his place. I am no longer a slave to my misguided ideas of morality. I am no longer able to pretend that I am not deeply in love with you. No more falsehoods. No more ersatz engagement. I want you to marry me, Daisy, and do it with all your heart, and if you cannot do that, you may as well fling me into the river along with both our letters.”

  A brisk wind was starting to blow, but Daisy had never felt so warm in all her life. A bright spark had been lit within her as Alexander spoke, growing stronger with every word.

  She had never felt radiant before. But today, she sparkled like a glittering chandelier. She glowed like firelight. She gleamed like the diamonds on his mother’s necklace.

  “Yes!” exclaimed Lady Peyton, who looked as though she could not choose whether to faint dramatically or burst into joyful tears. “She says yes! Don’t you, Daisy? For goodness’ sake, give him an answer!”

  Daisy bit the inside of her cheek to stop herself from smiling. “I always hoped to marry for love.”

  “You have no idea how well and how long I will love you, my Daisy.” Alexander put his arms around her and pulled her close. “I won’t kiss you until you say yes, you know. Your poor mother would be scandalised.”

  “Daisy!” Lady Peyton was oscillating ever more violently between hysteria and an outright swoon.

  Daisy let her eyes fall closed for a moment. The pressure of Alexander’s arms, strong and warm around her, was the most delicious sensation she had ever felt.

  She could not bear for it to end.

  She knew that it would never have to.

  “The last thing I want to do is cause a scandal,” she said, looking up again into the misty depths of Alexander’s eyes. “I suppose I’ll have to say yes.”

  The smile he gave was not meant for the eyes of the crowd erupting into joyous cheers around them. Lady Peyton, collapsing back onto her husband’s shoulder, certainly did not see it.

  It was a smile for Daisy, and Daisy alone.

  The secret, teasing, ever so slightly self-satisfied smile he always wore just before a kiss.

  Epilogue

  Daisy stood in the centre of a bedroom bigger than the entire dining room at Morton House. There were more maids bustling around than she knew what to do with, but fortunately they did not need much direction. The door to the dressing room stood open, revealing an intricate ballet of dresses being unfolded from protective sheets of linen, boots unwrapped from paper packaging, bonnets lifted from boxes and carefully re-shaped. A maid was flinging open the curtains while another was on her knees, tending the fire.

  Daisy wandered to the window, feeling as though she were in a dream, and looked out at the formal gardens laid out in geometric perfection beneath her.

  She had walked through those gardens on many occasions, of course, with Edith on one arm and Anthea or Isobel on the other. But it was one thing to run laughing through a friend’s topiary maze, and quite another to be its mistress.

  “Your Grace?”

  It took Daisy a moment to remember that the housekeeper was speaking to her. She turned around, attempting a gracious smile. “Yes, Mrs Franklin?”

  The housekeeper was drawn up as stiff and prim as the starch on her collar. “Is everything to your satisfaction, Your Grace? I would have hoped the maids would finish their work before you came upstairs.”

  “Oh, it isn’t their fault. I couldn’t wait to see my new room.” Daisy wondered how the stern little housekeeper had pictured the future duchess. Doubtless she had hoped for someone terribly grand.

  Well, Daisy was good enough for Alexander. She ought to be good enough for the housekeeper, too.

  “I’ll leave them to it,” said Daisy, leaving the room behind to Mrs Franklin’s visible relief. “They are doing a wonderful job.”

  “Thank you, Your Grace. I do hope you will be satisfied with the way this house is run.”

  Since Selina had, until very recently, been its mistress, Daisy could not imagine that she would ever find anything to be dissatisfied with. With any luck, Selina’s guidance would help her take up the reins of household management smoothly.

  Edith came tearing up the stairs two at a time, careening to a halt under the housekeeper’s scandalised eye. Daisy was glad to see she was not the only one to find Mrs Franklin a little intimidating.

  “What do you think?” Edith asked. “Do you like the room?”

  “Of course I like it.” Alexander had insisted that she chose the bedroom she most liked out of the seventeen available, after all. It would be rather silly if she were not happy with her selection now.

  Daisy took Edith’s arm, nodded to dismiss Mrs Franklin, and led her back down the sweeping staircase. “Now, remember that I am your sister and chaperone now, and you must do as I say. No more tearing off about the place when you should be waiting quietly to receive our guests.”

  It was very strange to call her mother and Lord Peyton guests, but Daisy supposed that was what they would be from then on. Lord and Lady Peyton were expected for tea to bid the Duke and Duchess of Loxwell goodbye before finally departing for their already delayed trip to the continent, and the whole affair was turning out much grander than Daisy had expected. She had only left Morton House two weeks earlier, after all. A wedding ceremony an hour long and a fortnight spent on the Cornish coast did not seem enough to transform her from Miss Daisy Morton to Her Grace the Duchess of Loxwell.

  But it had happened. It had all happened, as wonderful as a dream but real all the same.

  And the man who had made it happen was waiting for her in the hallway, his slate-grey eyes upturned with an unmistakable light of mischief in them.

  “I hope the pair of you didn’t knock over any more vases,” he said, offering Daisy his arm. She placed her hand upon it with an innocent smile.

  “Would you have been terribly scandalised to find me hiding in your bedroom again, Alexander?”

  “Oh, please!” gasped Edith, jamming her fingers into her ears. “Too much! Too much!” She trotted off to join her sisters in the drawing room, closing the door behind her.

  Daisy laughed as Alexander swept her up in his arms. Just before he kissed her, he hesitated and sent a quizzical glance towards the drawing room door.

  “I wish you would tell me how much of that letter you read to Edith all those weeks ago.”

  “Only the racy parts,” she teased. Alexander’s eyes widened.

  “There were racy parts? I’ll have to read it again.” He patted his breast pocket, where Daisy knew he always carried a letter that had been carefully smoothed out from its crumpled ball and read many times over.

  Daisy fastened her fingers in the dark curls of hair brushing his neck. “You don’t have to merely read about them, Alexander.”

  “I suppose not. I’m a lucky man.”

  She let her eyes fall closed as hi
s lips met hers.

  Several delicious moments later, a pounding knock at the door broke them apart. They let each other go just in time to avoid shocking old Mr Wilton as he came upstairs to answer it.

  “Brace yourself,” said Daisy. “That will be my mother.” She stood on tiptoe to un-muss Alexander’s hair and stole a quick kiss of his cheek before the door opened.

  To their amazement, Mr Wilton did not open the door to Lord and Lady Peyton.

  Lady Shrewsbury was standing there, fist upraised to hammer on the door again. She did not look at all pleased to find the new duchess ready to greet her.

  “Lady Shrewsbury,” said Daisy, smiling all the more widely to match Lady Shrewsbury’s frown. “How lovely to see you. Do join us for tea.”

  “How kind.” Lady Shrewsbury pressed her lips together into their lemon-sour pout. “Unfortunately, I cannot stay. I am running an errand on behalf of the Duchess of Loxwell. That is,” she glared at Daisy, “the dowager duchess.” She held out a small package. “We could not entrust this to a servant, you understand.”

  Daisy took the package, mystified, and unwrapped the brown paper to reveal a rather familiar vase.

  The pattern on it was unmistakable. Blue flowers, orange fish.

  “The duchess gave it to me while I was visiting her at Loxwell Park and asked me to send it back to you. She thanks His Grace for taking the trouble to find it, but thought you might like to keep it. Apparently, she cannot now remember why it held any sentimental value for her.”

  Daisy met Alexander’s eyes, struggling not to laugh. The replica the potter had made of the late duke’s vase was truly wonderful. It resembled the original in every detail.

  Except, apparently, for some ineffable way that truly mattered.

  “That’s very kind of her,” said Daisy. “I hope she was not upset to find that it no longer held any meaning.”

  “Not in the least. She asked that you should consider it a wedding gift.”

  Daisy clutched the vase to her chest. “What a happy coincidence. This vase happens to mean something very special to me and the duke. I must write and thank her.”

  “Very good.” Lady Shrewsbury gave a disdainful sniff. “Well, I bid you good day.”