One Night to Remember: Wicked Dukes Club #5

by Ridley, Erica

  Giles took a healthy swig of ale. Along with Felicity’s brother, this was where Giles had met the deep-pursed half of his clientele. He owed the success of both his smithy and his races to the men of this tavern.

  There were women here, too, although the majority weren’t of a class high enough to afford a horse, much less a carriage to pull behind it. Despite the owners’ impressive titles, most rowdy pubs were not a place sophisticated society misses could frequent if they wished to keep their reputations intact.

  He wished Felicity could join him here. The segregation of “fine” ladies from fallen ones had nothing to do with the Wicked Duke. If anything, the pioneering tavern did its best to welcome all and sundry. The problem was society’s blatant double standard.

  That must be what Felicity’s entire life was like, he realized slowly. She disguised herself not because she was ashamed of the things she liked, but because she was never allowed to just be herself.

  Being a lady sounded bloody awful.

  A fresh tankard of ale clinked down on the table before him. “How’s my curricle?”

  Giles raised his glass to Colehaven’s. “We’ll win.”

  “I’m counting on it.”

  So was Giles. After every big race, the Wicked Duke always hosted a welcome reception for drivers and spectators alike. Keeping his reputation spotless and in the public eye was how Giles ensured future clients. He couldn’t afford to lose a race—or to lose gentlemen like Colehaven as a client. Not if he wanted to keep all his apprentices and helpers.

  “Is that Raymore?” Colehaven lifted his tankard from the table. “Excuse me for a moment. I need to talk with him about a matter for the House of Lords.”

  Giles inclined his head, but the duke was already gone. Lord business. Another reminder he didn’t need of all the reasons his name had never been on Felicity’s list.

  He set down his tankard. There was still time to finish his ale, but Giles no longer was interested. He might not be a lord, but he, too, had an important meeting. Felicity would be coming to the smithy in an hour. If he left now, he could go home, change his clothes, perhaps have a quick jaunt down to the bakery in search of lemon tarts—

  Felicity was already downstairs working on Baby when he walked through the door. His heart lightened.

  She looked absolutely ravishing in lad’s trousers.

  Come to think of it, he had also begun to think she looked positively delectable in her nondescript day gowns and that horrid floppy bonnet.

  Apparently, it was not the clothes he was attracted to, but the talented, intelligent, bullheaded woman beneath.

  He grinned at her. “You’re early.”

  “I’m early.” She smiled back. “There’s biscuits on the counter.”

  “No lemon tarts?”

  “I ate them.” She arched a brow. “The most important rule of Giles’s smithy is—”

  “—arrive first,” he finished. “No wonder you were an apprenticed smith at age twelve.”

  “Thirteen,” she demurred, and set down her apron. “Ready to go?”

  “I just got here,” he reminded her, startled. “Also… didn’t you say biscuits?”

  “The biscuits will still be here half an hour from now.”

  “Where will we be?”

  “Arriving home exhausted and exhilarated after taking the fastest curricle in London for a test drive. My brother’s carriage is finally ready.”

  Giles stared at her.

  He knew his line—anything along the lines of what makes you think your curricle is faster than my curricle would do—but his brain was still fracturing over the first words in her sentence.

  Arriving home.

  Home.

  Home was here with him.

  He swallowed hard, his heart racing too erratically to think properly. Surely that was why he replied, “I’ll get you a hat.”

  Her eyes widened.

  “A proper hat,” he added, grabbing one from a nail. “You’ll go as one of my apprentices, not as my great-aunt Melba.”

  She leaped into the interior with the agility of a fawn.

  “Remind me why I bother helping you in and out of hackneys?” he groused as he hoisted himself up into the seat beside her.

  “Misplaced chivalry,” she answered, then gestured toward the shaft tip. “I’m not the master of this smithy, but I think we might be missing a horse.”

  “I’ve got a horse,” he assured her. “Several, in fact. But I needed to see how the height and weight difference would feel from the driver’s perch.”

  “Decide faster,” she begged as she clutched her hands to her chest and wriggled like a puppy. “I’ve been waiting a fortnight for this.”

  ‘You have not waited a fortnight,” he said with a laugh. “You finished whatever you were just doing a scant moment ago, despite having begun this project a mere—”

  Oh.

  She didn’t mean Project Curricle. She meant Project Giles-and-Felicity.

  They’d met a fortnight ago. Colehaven’s upcoming race was morning after next. This was their last chance for stolen moments of freedom like these. Giles swallowed hard.

  “I’ll summon the horses.” He jumped to the floor. “Don’t make any other modifications while I’m gone.”

  “Just my disguise,” she promised, and began arranging a woolen scarf about the collar of a lad’s jacket.

  In no time at all, they were flying down Rotten Row with the wind in their faces and huge, silly smiles as each of them sent the other a See? I told you so! glance.

  They could not have asked for a better day. The sky was cloudy enough to provide cover from the sun, yet clear enough to keep all threat of rain away. The hour was not late enough for the ton promenade to begin, nor so early as to interfere with other races.

  It was as if Rotten Row was their own private Eden, a racing track made for no one else but Giles and Felicity.

  …and a few assorted riders and pedestrians whose faces passed in such a blur as to be completely unrecognizable.

  “Let me drive,” she panted when they reached the other end.

  He tightened his hold on the reins. “Not a chance.”

  “This is my brother’s carriage. I’ve driven it a thousand times. You’ll let me take it apart and rearrange Baby as I see fit, but you won’t relinquish control of my family’s curricle for a single moment, even on a wide, closed track with no other carriages?”

  “You are a quick study,” he said in awe. “It’s like you can peer inside my mind.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “I know what you’re thinking.”

  “Do you?” He hoped not.

  Because what he was thinking was that the next time he was on this track, he’d be alone in this carriage… and after that, he’d never lay eyes on her again. They had less than forty-eight hours. He couldn’t risk anything happening to her.

  “It’s just a test ride,” she wheedled, batting her eyelashes with alarming velocity.

  “Apprentices don’t bat their eyelashes,” he hissed.

  “Don’t they?” Her eyes widened. “Perhaps you don’t know as many as you think you do.”

  “You’re not driving,” he said firmly. “I need this curricle to win a race. I’ll buy you some other carriage and you can test ride in that. A nice, solid, coach-and-four. I’ll have it here by tomorrow.”

  “I don’t want something boring,” she said in exasperation. “I want excitement. I could build my own chariot, just as fast and light on her wheels as Baby, if I wanted to.”

  “Go do it then,” he suggested with amusement. “I’ll wait here.”

  “I just want ten minutes,” she begged. “I want to know what it feels like to be fast and free and… happy. Not on my countless midnight rides alone. I want to feel that way with you.”

  How was he supposed to say no to that?

  He handed over the reins. “One minute. A single second more, and I’ll snatch those reins from your greedy hands.”

&nbs
p; “Pocket watches don’t track seconds,” she reminded him, and then they were off.

  The expression of unadulterated joy on her face brought an equally irrepressible grin to his own. His heart gave a little dance.

  Flying down this track made him feel indescribably alive. Truly present in the curricle, in the race, in the universe. It was power and powerlessness, freedom and holding on tight. No other feeling could ever compare.

  He’d never had someone he could share that magic with before. Someone who would understand. Someone who felt it, too.

  Felicity was every inch as much a daredevil as he was. She was confident and unexcitable, fearless and strong.

  And she was right. There was no one else he wished to have beside him.

  He was supposed to be the best in the game, but all he could think about was changing his sole proprietorship to a partnership. He and Felicity would make an unstoppable team. Privately and publicly.

  Only when they reached the opposite end of the track did she hand back the reins. Her eyes were shining, her breath was shaky, her face was flushed—she was feeling energized. Exactly like Giles felt after every big race.

  And every time he kissed Felicity.

  “Come on,” he said. “There’s someone I want you to meet.”

  In minutes, they were back at the smithy.

  Felicity laughed. “I met your mother yesterday, so you must mean…”

  “The best father in all the world?” Giles asked. “The rumors are true. Walter Langford sets the standard.”

  Felicity raised a playful finger. “Don’t you find it a teeny bit selfish to have the best mother in the world and the best father?”

  I’ll share them with you, Giles wanted to say, but didn’t.

  First, they needed to meet.

  And then they needed to choose each other.

  Felicity paused by the folding screen as they crossed through the smithy to the rear door.

  “Just a moment,” she said. “Let me change into a dress first.”

  He shook his head.

  “No time?” she asked in surprise.

  “No need for costumes,” he answered. “He wants to meet you, not your disguise.”

  She swallowed visibly. “Don’t you think it’s a teeny bit selfish to have the best mother, the best father, and also be the best person I have ever met?”

  He blinked. “For letting you wear trousers?”

  “For letting me be me,” she whispered.

  Before he could answer, Mother swung open the door with enthusiasm. “Could you smell biscuits baking all the way from the street?”

  “I thought you didn’t bake,” Felicity stammered.

  “True.” Mother hauled her into the apartment. “There are no biscuits. Which means you two are here to see me.”

  “And Father,” Giles added.

  Mother paused for such a slight moment, no one would have noticed it but him.

  “And Father,” she agreed. “He’s in the sitting room. Come.”

  Father was always in the sitting room. Staring out the window at the people passing below was one of the few pastimes he had left. He rarely allowed himself to be wheeled anywhere else while he was awake.

  “Good God,” Felicity said in shock when she entered the room. “You didn’t tell me your father was even more handsome than you.”

  “You’re the first one he’s brought over,” Father said in his low, shaky voice. He clucked his tongue. “Can you stay for a minute?”

  “I can stay for hours.” Ignoring the wingback chairs, she dragged a footstool next to Father’s wheeled chair so she could sit next to him at the window. “Giles really hasn’t brought friends up to meet you before?”

  “Oh, friends,” Father scoffed. “Sure, plenty of them. Giles has more friends than a dog has fleas. But he’s never before brought a…” Father lowered his voice. “Forgive me. Was it Lord Felix or Lady Felicity?”

  She burst out laughing and glared over her shoulder at Giles. “You are the very worst.”

  “You said I was the best!” he protested.

  “I changed my mind,” she said. “Female prerogative.”

  “Then it’s Lady Felicity,” his father said with a smile. “I’m very pleased to meet you.”

  “Believe me,” she answered. “The pleasure is mine.”

  Over his father’s trembling shoulder, Felicity’s gaze met Giles’s. He understood the questions in her eyes.

  She didn’t wonder why her father was in a wheeled chair. The rhythmic muscle contractions and palsied hands, the soft, slurred speech, the bit of drool on his stiff jaw—Father’s ill health was unmistakable.

  Nor was she wondering why all of Giles’s friends were familiar sights in this parlor. Giles was proud of his mother and father, and with good reason. His parents were clever and droll, and caring and friendly. Who wouldn’t wish to take tea with them?

  The question in Felicity’s eyes was why he had brought her to meet them.

  “She wants embarrassing stories,” Giles’s mother prompted her husband.

  Giles closed his eyes. “Mother—"

  “We have so many stories,” came his father’s quavery voice. “There was the time you drank too much sherry when the rector was over for supper, and you started to sing that bawdy ditty—”

  “Not embarrassing stories about me,” Mother interrupted quickly. “Embarrassing stories about our son.”

  “I like all stories.” Felicity leaned back against the windowsill as though she had first row seats at the theater. “I can be here all night.”

  “I wish you would.” Mother held a hand to her mouth to block her lips from Giles’s view. “There really are biscuits, but Giles can’t be trusted not to eat them all. Once we get him to go back to his quarters—”

  “I’m standing right here,” he said dryly. “And I know where you hide the biscuits.”

  Mother crossed her arms and let out an exaggerated sigh. “Foiled.”

  Too late, Giles realized the trap he’d set for himself. When he’d brought Felicity here, he’d been worried about her reaction, not his parents’. Of course it was love at first sight. Now that his parents had met her, they would want him to keep her. Giles wanted to keep her.

  And Lady Felicity wasn’t the keeping kind.

  Chapter 10

  The Everett ball was the biggest crush of the season, but Felicity’s mind was a mile away. Specifically, the beautiful little clearing Giles had taken her to have their first waltz. It was hard to concentrate on chandeliers and orchestras when all she could think about was dancing in the grass with no music but their own and the scent of flowers in the air.

  Her pulse fluttered. That day in the park had been perfect. Dappled sun, light breeze, Giles’s delectable kisses that made her tingle all the way to her toes. Every kiss, every caress, made her wish the moment could last forever. As though his arms were where she had been born to stay.

  But it wasn’t just his romantic inclination to waltz anywhere they happened to be. She could show up at Giles’s smithy as who she was, dressed how she pleased, and he would just smile that seductive smile and hand her a lathe. Or perhaps a lemon tart and a fresh cup of tea.

  And racing! Handling the curricle with him at her side instead of sneaking out for lonesome midnight rides had been the most free, joyful, exhilarating moments of her life. They had felt like a team. Like they belonged together.

  Of course his parents were perfect. She’d assumed as much after getting to know Giles, but they’d confirmed her suspicions in the best way possible.

  The idea of never seeing them again, of never finding out exactly how bawdy the ditty was that Mrs. Langford sang to the rector after too much sherry, was almost more than Felicity could bear.

  She would miss them. And she already missed Giles. Tomorrow morning was the big curricle race. There was no time to see him before, no chance of running into him after…

  Unless…

  What if there was some way s
he could keep him? Not as a carriage consultant or secret friend, but as something more? Her heart thumped. What was she saying? Marriage? Giles hadn’t asked, likely because they both knew Cole would never approve a match between his sister and a coach smith.

  Nor would running off to Gretna Green solve all their problems. Marrying Giles would sacrifice more than her relationship with her brother. It would limit future charitable works. Although she wouldn’t be rescinding her vow altogether, a non-peer marriage would compromise how much she was able to achieve.

  She could still help children at the smithy, but without the backing of a well-funded charitable foundation, she wouldn’t be able to save as many.

  Would doing her best be enough?

  “Here he comes,” Cole murmured.

  For a dizzy, unreal moment, Felicity half-expected to see Giles emerge from the Everett’s crowded dance floor.

  Instead, her eyes met across the room with Lord Raymore, who smiled just before being waylaid by some friends.

  A reprieve. Felicity’s shoulders relaxed. Perhaps he hadn’t been heading this way after all.

  But wasn’t that what she wanted? Wasn’t he the answer to a lifelong prayer?

  “He’s a good man,” Cole said gruffly.

  She nodded. “I know.”

  He ticked all the boxes on both their lists. Wealthy and titled enough for Cole to believe he was making the best possible match for his sister. Kindhearted and socially empathetic enough for Felicity to be know he’d make a wonderful ally in her plans to divert the ton’s resources toward the people who needed it most.

  A dream come true. She swallowed hard.

  “We’re on the child labor reform committee together,” Cole continued.

  Felicity nodded again. She didn’t trust herself to speak.

  “When I saw him yesterday at the Wicked Duke, I thought he wanted to talk about the new initiatives he’d proposed in the House of Lords.” Cole gave Felicity a conspiratorial wink. “He wanted me to know he held you in the highest regard and wanted my blessing to find out if you felt the same.”

  Her heart stopped.

  “You did it,” Cole whispered. “I could not be prouder of you. He’s a lowly marquess, rather than a duke—"