Dukes Prefer Bluestockings (Wedding Trouble, #2)

by Blythe, Bianca

  The duke’s lips turned up.

  The duke bowed deeply, with a flourish to which Charlotte was not accustomed.

  Georgiana peeked her head over Charlotte’s shoulder, and then gasped.

  Charlotte glanced at Georgiana. Georgiana’s eyes widened, and she seemed to even somewhat quiver, even though Georgiana was decidedly not the quivering type.

  Georgiana had been a debutante two years ago and had been attending balls ever since.

  She would recognize the duke. She knew who was in the room, and how utterly unlikely it was that he was there.

  Papa might imagine his girls were merrily dancing at balls, but he didn’t know that was far from the truth. They were lucky when some of their favorite wallflower friends were in attendance at the balls.

  “Well, let’s all go in,” Mama said, giving Georgiana and Charlotte a slight push.

  “Your Grace?” Georgiana stammered.

  “Miss Butterworth,” the duke said smoothly. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

  Georgiana gave a wide-eyed look to Charlotte. She was probably wondering why no one else was speaking.

  Charlotte knew English.

  She had been taught.

  In fact she’d read many books written entirely in English, but right now she wasn’t certain if she’d ever learned an approximation of the order in which words were supposed to be spoken.

  Unfortunately, spewing words without any context was unideal in making her be comprehended.

  The duke’s eyes still twinkled, though he did look a bit uncertain.

  “Your Grace?” Mama asked behind her.

  “Mrs. Butterworth,” the duke said again, bowing.

  “Mama, may I present the Duke of Vernon,” Charlotte said.

  Mama blinked.

  “Is it a nickname?” Papa said casually, flipping through his Plato.

  “No,” Georgiana said.

  Papa jumped to his feet, and his book toppled to the floor and gave a mighty echo. The quality of the vellum should not be in any question. “If you are a duke, what are you doing here?”

  “Well, obviously the dear boy must know my relatives,” Mama said. “Now please, have a seat, Your Grace.”

  The duke settled into the chair opposite Papa.

  He was handsome, far more handsome than anyone had the right to be, as if he’d stolen the handsomeness from other people. Could there be enough beauty left in the world for others?

  Her mother’s shoulders relaxed, and Charlotte tried to summon a similar sense of calm.

  “My dear daughter made this,” Mama said quickly, perhaps sensing Charlotte’s embarrassment, and pointed at some embroidery.

  The embroidery was horrid. The art of using needles to pierce fabric and malign it with bright thread in various shapes had always been beyond Charlotte.

  “How delightful,” the duke said, with such enthusiasm that he soon entered into a conversation with her mother on her own embroidery skills. “Do you embroider as well?”

  Mama beamed. “I do!”

  “You must show me your work,” the duke said, glancing at Charlotte.

  “You find it interesting?”

  “Most,” he said.

  Mama shoved some embroideries of flowers in his face, and he expressed admiration for each one.

  “You know all the years I’ve lived,” the duke said, “I’ve never done any embroidery. It seems most complex.”

  “I’ve been doing it since I was a little girl,” Mama said, still beaming.

  Charlotte smiled. It was nice to see her parents so entertained.

  “You’re reading Plato,” the duke remarked to Papa.

  “Oh, indeed,” Papa said. “Are you an admirer?”

  “How could I not be?” the duke asked, obviously assessing from the great many books on the philosopher of a safe answer.

  “Now who is your favorite continental philosopher?” Papa asked.

  “They all have their admirable traits.”

  Papa frowned and shook his head. “Oh, that won’t do. That won’t do at all. They’re all different, you see. And the differences are most important.”

  “The differences make each philosophy more unique.”

  Papa tilted his head. “Oh, I suppose that’s true. Good point.”

  “To what do we owe the pleasure of your visit?” Mama asked the duke.

  “I came to call on your younger daughter,” the duke said.

  “It’s the blond hair.” Mama pointed to Charlotte’s hair proudly. “My eldest daughter is quite lovely, but she has red hair. Much more difficult to marry off.”

  “Perhaps I’ll become an old maid,” Georgiana said.

  “I’m sure you’ll have proposals,” the duke said awkwardly.

  “And yet she has no prospects,” Mama said.

  “Well, I didn’t meet your eldest daughter. Perhaps if I’d met her things would be different,” the duke said in an effort of perhaps politeness. “I mean, perhaps I did see her at balls—”

  “Yes, that hair color is quite distinctive,” Mama sighed. “It really is a shame we’re not in the last century anymore. Than we could just slap a wig on her, pat her face with chalk, and no one would be the least bit wiser that her hair is red and her nose is speckled with freckles.”

  “I believe speckled is not quite the right word,” Papa said. “Speckled implies a minute amount of freckles when—”

  “In my case there is a lot,” Georgiana said, rolling her eyes to the heavens. “I know. Believe me, I know.”

  “So you just met my dear daughter yesterday and you are already calling on her,” Mama said, with a pleased expression on her face.

  “Quite.”

  There was an awkward silence. Though Mama had often mused aloud about what might happen when one of her daughters received a gentleman caller, with the exception of a curate who was fond of calling on Georgiana, though everyone suspected that his presence was mostly because of Cook’s superb sweet-making abilities, the fact was that until now, gentleman callers had always been rather abstract, like one of the mathematics problems in the sort of books women were not supposed to read.

  “Well, I suppose now is as good a time as any.” The duke patted his purse. “Busy night at the club.”

  Charlotte stiffened. Papa was unlikely to condone the fact the duke was involved in running a gaming hell, but since Papa stayed far away from the gossip broadsheets and Plato was unlikely to have foretold the duke’s not-so-wonderful business habits, Charlotte supposed that the duke was safe from being preached to.

  The duke cleared his throat and patted his purse again, and a strange flush rippled through Charlotte’s body.

  It’s not possible.

  And yet, he had come here. That was odd.

  It’s not that, Charlotte thought. It can’t be that. It certainly can’t be—

  “Oh, my Lord!” Mama shrieked. “He’s kneeling.”

  The duke was kneeling.

  Mama clapped her hands. “It’s happening. Oh, my dear! It’s happening. Where are my smelling salts? My dear Mr. Butterworth, I must get my smelling salts!”

  Mama sprang up, even though sudden movement seemed to indicate Mama didn’t seem in danger of fainting. “My dear! Perhaps I should ring for a servant. Flora? Flora?”

  Flora poked her head into the room. “Madam?”

  Papa stretched his arm toward Mama and placed a hand on her leg. “My dear Mrs. Butterworth—”

  “Be quiet,” Mama said.

  “I only meant,” Papa said, “that you should perhaps let the duke finish.”

  “In truth, he hasn’t even started,” Georgiana said.

  “You are not helping,” Papa said sternly. He turned to the duke. “Now, my dear boy, what were you saying?”

  “Probably nothing,” Charlotte said quickly. “He probably lost something. A handkerchief perhaps.” She looked down on the floor and left her chair. “Perhaps I should help him—”

  “No, no.” Mama
moved across the room, hauled Charlotte up and set her back into her seat.

  Mama seemed quite athletic today.

  “I only wanted to say,” the duke said. “Will you, Miss Charlotte Butter—er—”

  “Worth!” Mama said brightly. “It’s Butterworth.”

  The duke nodded and he seemed even more pleased. He hadn’t seemed to mind her parents’ multiple breaches of etiquette, and Charlotte narrowed her eyes. Most men did not seem pleased at the ridiculous sound of her last name, but it seemed to cause the duke to veritably beam.

  “Will you do me the honor of being my wife?”

  “Of course she will,” Mama said enthusiastically, clapping her hands together. “My dear, I am so happy to have witnessed this lovely proposal.”

  “It was quite standard,” Georgiana said.

  Mama glared at her. “It was the most romantic thing I have ever heard.”

  “More romantic than Papa’s proposal?” Georgiana asked.

  Charlotte couldn’t marry anyone. Not with a doctor’s death sentence. She couldn’t be a wife. She would never live long enough to have children and secure her husband’s heir. One couldn’t marry a man and die six months later.

  Chapter Eleven

  She’s not going to accept.

  Miss Butterworth’s eyes were decidedly dry. They managed to even appear...angry. At least, the manner in which they bored into him seemed decidedly unromantic. Her body seemed rigid. Wasn’t a woman of her position supposed to swoon?

  His ancestral home might be in Scotland, a fact that might wrongly give some women the impression of a lifetime condemned to consume haggis and endure perpetual precipitation, but that didn’t change the fact he was a duke, and her lineage was decidedly less impressive.

  What if she refuses me?

  He shuddered.

  He didn’t want to consider the scandal of proposing to someone who rejected his advances. This whole endeavor had been to tarnish the McIntyre reputation. His goal had not been to tarnish his own.

  “I’m gaining a son!” Mrs. Butterworth shrieked, and with a happy sigh, Callum realized it didn’t matter what Miss Charlotte Butterworth might say—her mother considered the proposal accepted.

  “Indeed you are,” he said amiably, before Miss Charlotte Butterworth might interject with any unfestive statements.

  Her face darkened, and he decided it would be more enjoyable to direct his attention to his new relatives rather than his new betrothed.

  “When I saw you last night, I did not realize we would be spending every Christmas and Easter together for the rest of our lives,” Mrs. Butterworth said.

  “His Grace has not extended an invitation,” said his new betrothed’s sister.

  Mrs. Butterworth waved her hand in an impatient gesture. “It is implied.” Then her face grew more solemn. “I do hope they burn Yule logs in Scotland. That is quite the nicest thing about Christmas.” She directed her attention to him. “Tell me, Your Grace. Are you a Yule-log burning enthusiast?”

  “I’m sure I could be,” Callum said.

  Mrs. Butterworth’s eyes widened. “You mean you don’t know?”

  “I’ve never given it much thought.” He paused, trying to remember if he’d experienced a Yule log before, but then shook his head. “My parents died when I was seven, and my guardians—” He winced at the word. “—expressed a fear that placing a burning log in the house might lead to the manor house burning.”

  “Such nonsense,” Mrs. Butterworth said. “We will come for Christmas, and we will have a Yule log. Or dearest Charlotte and you can come to the vicarage in Norfolk.”

  He might have proposed, but that did not mean he intended to make uncomfortable journeys across the country to stay in likely dreary vicarages. Norfolk was infamous for its general provincialism. Most English aristocrats favored the area that stretched from Hampshire to Kent, and provided them occasional glimpses of sloping verdant fields and blue water. Some Northern aristocrats prided themselves on the rugged landscape in which they found themselves, though Callum suspected they delighted less in the steepness of the slopes and the picturesque qualities rendered than by the ample supply of coal mines underneath that same rugged landscape and the equally ample supply of workers whom they could force to toil there. No one though seemed to give much thought to Norfolk. It was generally seen as too flat.

  “Please forgive my mother,” Miss Charlotte Butterworth said. “She is enthusiastic. I’m certain His Grace has spoken too quickly.”

  “I did not,” he said.

  “Of course he didn’t, my dear. Men don’t wander into people’s homes and accidentally propose. When they do it, they do it with intention. Now you two must kiss.”

  “Kiss?” Callum asked weakly.

  “You’re engaged.” Mrs. Butterworth beamed.

  “The man is a gentleman,” Mr. Butterworth said. “He does not need to kiss anyone.”

  “The man is a duke,” Mrs. Butterworth said. “No gentleman at all.”

  “I-I.” Callum glanced at Miss Butterworth.

  Kissing her had not been part of the plan. Proposing to her had not even been part of Miss Charlotte Butterworth’s plan, and he shifted his legs. The thin worn carpet was not a proper barrier from the floorboards, and they groaned beneath him, like a whistle to signal distress.

  Perhaps he’d miscalculated. Perhaps, despite all the ways a union between them made sense, she did not see the benefits.

  “Of course I accept,” Miss Charlotte Butterworth said finally. “But a kiss is unnecessary.”

  “Oh, I suppose you have a lifetime for that,” Mrs. Butterworth said, sinking back into her pillows, and a sadness appeared in Miss Butterworth’s eyes.

  I’m going to kiss her.

  Callum narrowed the short distance between them and clasped her face in his hands. Her cheeks were softer than velvet, and the shade of her blue eyes exceeded any color that the sea might conjure.

  “You needn’t,” she said.

  “I want to,” he said, realizing it was true, and he brushed his lips against hers.

  He’d experienced many first kisses with women before. He’d kissed women on balconies, ballroom music wafting to them and stars above them; he’d kissed women in rose gardens, inhaling the floral scent carefully cultivated by expert gardeners, and he’d kissed women in palatial bedrooms, over the finest imported sheets. None of his prior kisses had involved crouching near a too small chair in a sparsely decorated parlor, before a bevy of the woman’s relatives.

  The kiss shouldn’t cause him any delight, and certainly no heart swelling, and yet a thrill of something very like excitement cascaded through him, and when his lips touched hers, he was unwilling to let go, delighting in their soft succulence.

  “How romantic,” Mrs. Butterworth pronounced, fluttering her hands. “How very splendid.”

  Much as he welcomed a positive reaction, the only reaction he cared about was Miss Butterworth’s, and he gazed at her. Her eyes had a glazed look to them.

  “Are you quite well?” he asked quickly. Perhaps kissing was not recommended. He shouldn’t have forgotten her frailty. The doctor had said she should experience no excitement. “Your eyes appear dilated, and your cheeks are flushed.”

  “Are they?” Miss Butterworth pushed her hand to her cheeks, as if to ascertain the temperature, but Callum added a dry throat to his list of concerns. Her voice had seemed most normal only two minutes before.

  “I should go,” Callum said abruptly. “Enough excitement.”

  “I’ll see you to the door,” Miss Butterworth said, springing up in a manner that did not necessarily convey her impending invalid state.

  They rounded the corner.

  “What are you doing?” Miss Butterworth demanded.

  “I thought it was obvious.”

  “You just proposed,” she wailed.

  “Indeed.”

  “My parents think we’re going to marry!”

  “We are.”


  She narrowed her eyes. “But why—? You don’t know me—”

  “My dear Miss Butterworth,” he said airily. “Or should I call you Charlotte now?”

  “Call me anything you like. Just explain it to me.”

  “You gave me the idea. Last night.”

  She peered around her, and her face whitened. “You mustn’t mention my visit.”

  He shrugged. “I won’t. Not that it would matter. We are getting married.”

  “But why? You know I can’t give you what traditional wives can—”

  “I know,” he said gently. “But you gave me the idea.”

  “Me!” Her eyes widened, and then she blinked. “You mean... I’m someone inappropriate.”

  He frowned. He didn’t like hearing those words on her tongue.

  “Because of my parents. My mother’s too talkative, and my father is too scholarly, isn’t that correct?”

  The room seemed to have become warmer.

  “And we don’t have any money, and I’m not a Lady Charlotte. I’m just a Miss Butterworth.”

  “Soon you will be a Your Grace,” he promised. “Soon you will be a duchess.”

  “Is this because you feel sorry for me?” she asked.

  He averted his eyes. He did feel sorry for her. She was dying. He wouldn’t be much of a person if he didn’t feel the slightest twinge of sorrow.

  “Perhaps,” he admitted, and she stiffened. He despised himself for causing her distress. “But that doesn’t mean I would marry just anyone who was sick.”

  “Well, that’s discerning of you.”

  “I mean—I like spending time with you,” he said, realizing that it was true.

  And that kiss—

  He could desire more than spending time with her. He shook his head.

  “Obviously you cannot have any excitement,” he said. “Obviously we wouldn’t have a traditional marriage.” The words felt false in his mouth, and he wondered if perhaps there was not really so very much obvious about the statement. “But that doesn’t mean I can’t marry you, if you’ll have me.”

  “I can’t give you an heir,” she said.

  “Fortunately I have a twin brother filled with responsibility.” He frowned. Hamish better not learn of the wedding. “Besides, given your situation—”