A Duchess a Day

by Charis Michaels

  Shhh, he motioned, a finger to his lips. They leaned to see around the shelf. The duke rolled to his side, mashing his doughy face against the leather, and resumed snoring.

  He whispered, “And I’m not a spy.”

  “Then what are you?”

  He paused, staring into her eyes. She stared back, relishing the opportunity to study the handsome symmetry of his face. His jaw was angled, his nose exactly the right size, his mouth full but wholly masculine. He looked confident and commanding but not petty. He did not look like he would take advantage of her simply because he was big and strong and was employed by her sworn enemy. It was something about his eyes, she thought.

  She wondered where Girdleston had found him. Most of the Lusk House servants were stiff and sour and had worked for the family for their entire lives. Her impression on previous visits had been a sort of “stoic loyalty” among the staff. This man had the bearing of someone who . . . who might be only passing through.

  Finally, Shaw spoke. “How about you tell me your purpose, and I’ll tell you mine.”

  “I beg your pardon?” The words Absolutely not shot immediately to the tip of her tongue. And yet—

  And yet she could not seem to say the words. He stood very close. So close her skirts brushed against his boot. Close enough to see a scar below his ear. She had the vague instinct to take a step back. I should run, she thought. Instead, she licked her upper lip. He stared at her mouth.

  Slowly, he repeated, “How about you tell me your—”

  “You first,” she said.

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “I proposed the deal. My rules.”

  “You are demanding,” she said, “for a groom.”

  He flashed her a look: And?

  And nothing, she thought. Everything about this exchange was inappropriate, the unconscious duke, the dim warren of shelves, the family elsewhere in the house. Years later, she would ask herself why. Why not flee the library? Why not ignore him and go about her business in silence?

  Her reason, she thought, then and now, was that she was so very weary of fleeing and silence.

  He ambled behind her, coming up close, closer than before. How close, she wondered, would he come?

  Close enough to whisper his purpose?

  Close enough to touch?

  The thought of touching him, of glancing her hand on his arm, or shoulder, or broad back, became a mesmerizing distraction in an already distracting conversation.

  Before this moment, Helena’s proximity to men had been the bouncy distance of a quadrille or the itchy distance of apple-tree shoots, but now dancing and apple trees were the furthest things from her mind. Her senses were fixed on this man in a way she could scarcely understand. Her whole consciousness seemed to reach in his direction.

  And he’d called her sweetheart.

  And he’d looked at the duke with open disgust.

  And he wanted to make a deal.

  She stopped walking and leaned against the shelf, her back resting against the books. He came up beside her, close enough to smell—wind, and horses, and man. She felt as if she was hemmed in by his body, and she liked it.

  He reached for a shelf above their heads and hooked his hand on the ledge. He looked down, and she turned her face up. They did not touch but they were nestled, like a soft chestnut inside its hard shell. They were a silent, matched pair of indecision and judgment. The air between them strummed with a strange, delicious tension. Helena felt light and twitchy and expectant.

  By sheer force of will, she began with an obvious lie. “My business is . . . I’m making the duke comfortable until pudding.”

  “Hilarious,” he said. “Try again.”

  She smothered a laugh and rolled from the shelf. She followed the aisle to the end. He was behind her in an instant, eliciting a senseless thrill. But hadn’t Gran always said that senseless thrills were the very best kind? Why risk everything to avoid the duke if not to experience thrills that made no sense?

  I want to tell him, she realized.

  The reasons were piling up. She was weary of running. She wanted to state her opposition to someone who would listen. Would Declan Shaw listen? He’d certainly asked her enough times. He was veritably begging her to tell him more.

  So he might use it against me, she thought—her last useful thought; her swan song before she revealed all the things she’d wanted to say for years.

  She stopped suddenly and spun. He was on her heels, he came up short, and they collided. He reached out and caught her. She felt his strength as if she’d bumped into a tree. She did not pull away.

  “I won’t marry the duke,” she whispered. “In case there was any doubt.”

  There. She’d said it. The first damning thing.

  “Why not?”

  “No one asks me that.”

  “I’m asking.”

  She felt a shimmer inside of her. She looked up. “Because you are a spy.”

  “I am a groom.”

  “Neither spy nor groom would be privy to this answer.”

  “Tell me anyway,” he whispered, tipping his head. He broadened his stance, giving her room. He did not let go.

  The answer, she realized, was bursting to come out.

  “I won’t marry him because he is ridiculous. And drunk most of the time. Because he’s made no effort to know me. Because the very little he does know about me, he doesn’t like—a sentiment I share. Furthermore, the Somerset estates that will merge because of our marriage will represent a giant financial windfall for both families. His family’s mines and my family’s river will mean more efficient transport of limestone to the Bay of Bristol. Apparently, this arrangement has needed only a wedding to be realized. Two families who are already so very rich will become richer—but at the cost of an ancient forest very dear to me, and the crofters who currently call the forest home. I cultivate a very rare variety of apples, you see—”

  “The apple you offered me?”

  “Yes, and how unfortunate you refused it. I gave it to a footman. They are delicious. And the season is over.”

  “I wanted to take it.”

  She paused at this, studying his face. He was so very handsome.

  Slowly, she finished her admission. “Lastly, I will not marry him because my life is my own, and I value my right to choose a husband, not someone arranged by my parents. Or Titus Girdleston.” She made a face of disgust.

  Shaw looked away and blew out a weary breath.

  “If you are a spy, and you expected me to be impulsive or recalcitrant or daft, you were wrong,” she said.

  He looked at the floor and then to her. His face was a complicated mix of concern and . . . conflict. Looking into his brown eyes was like reading a language she almost knew, like when she could almost read Spanish because she spoke Italian. The words were different but the roots were the same.

  “How do you intend to get out of it?” Shaw asked.

  “Out of what?”

  “The marriage.”

  She laughed. “How utterly reckless would I be to reveal that?”

  “Forgive me if you strike me as the reckless sort.”

  She sniffed, edging backward and slipping from his grasp. The loss of heat and touch was immediate, like pulling a shade against the sun. She tried, “But why does it matter how?”

  “If it explains your purpose in this library, well then we had a deal, didn’t we? And honestly, I’m . . . intrigued.”

  Something about those words elicited the oddest little flip in her belly, like she’d jumped a fence on horseback. She considered the notion of intriguing him. She thought of the months and years she’d schemed, working alone. No one else cared, except to oppose her.

  If he is a spy, she thought, his entire purpose is to oppose and thwart me. She glanced up at him. He raised his eyebrows. He did not seem like an opponent.

  He is the soul of opposition, she thought, but she heard herself say, “I’m going to find some other
, more suitable girl for the duke to marry. I’m going to haul her in front of him and have her somehow . . . enchant him.”

  She swallowed hard. When she said it out loud, with Shaw staring so intently at her, with the unconscious duke just steps away, the plan sounded . . . ambitious.

  She plowed on. “After he is enchanted by this . . . better girl, he will defy his uncle for the first time in his life, and he will throw me over for her. The girl he really wants. That is my plan.”

  Shaw’s brown eyes narrowed, searching her face. She thought again of how long it had been since anyone had considered what she said. Even the crofters in the forest, her closest allies, listened only to comply or revere. There was no consideration, they simply followed.

  She could see him struggling to comprehend the plan—the finding, the hauling, the enchanting, the jilting. If he dismissed it, would she care? Would she lose heart if he naysayed or laughed?

  “And how,” he asked, “do you intend to realize this plan?”

  “Well . . .” she said cautiously, acknowledging that he had not dismissed or laughed, acknowledging that he had asked for more. “First I must locate a group of suitable potential duchesses to tempt him.” She glanced at the slumbering duke. “Five or six, perhaps seven—if so many potential duchesses exist.”

  He exhaled wearily. “And then?”

  “I will determine the most suitable ones. I don’t want to pass on my terrible future to an unsuspecting girl. It must be a young woman who can tolerate him, obviously. Who aspires to be the Duchess of Lusk so intensely she can abide all the rest. For life.” She made a horrified face. “When I find this person, I will acquaint them. The duke seems most interested in provocative, sort of . . . er, festive women. I mentioned that he must be enchanted. Obviously.”

  “Obviously,” Shaw repeated. “And what role does the library play in this plan?” He looked at the shelves around them.

  “Oh,” she said, glancing at the books, “I’d hoped to discover a little more about him—beyond his interests in provocation and festivities. If I understood his passions or what type of girls he enjoys—I mean, besides buxom and giggly and, er, half-dressed, traits he has mentioned to me on more than one occasion—I could better seek out the correct, most tempting girl. I thought his library might hold some insight into his soul.”

  “You’ve asked me if I could bloody read and then comb through a library looking for the passions of this person?” He cocked a thumb at the snoring duke.

  Lusk stretched and scratched his crotch with an idle hand. He belched softly and flopped over, snoring at the ceiling.

  Helena glanced at Shaw, checking his reaction. He looked at the duke with unmasked irritation, like a man looking at rainwater as it drips through his roof.

  “Now you,” she said, turning to him. “Who are you and why have you been assigned to me?”

  Chapter Five

  At least he had not told her.

  “At the very bloody least,” Declan said to himself, making a noise of disgust. Three hours had passed since the library, and he stood in the dark stables, brushing the golden coat of a gelding by the light of a single lantern.

  Lady Helena had known he was a spy; she’d known within five minutes of their first stilted conversation. She didn’t know he was, in fact, more than a spy, but she was a clever girl. It was only a matter of time. Declan had no reason to gloat about not telling her. He hadn’t prevailed, he’d run out of time.

  Girdleston had turned up in the library, interrupting their confessions. The snoring duke had been hauled away by his valet and Helena had been marched back to the dining room. Declan was given no choice but to follow.

  He paused now, rubbing a hand over the horse’s coat. Speaking softly to the gelding, he lifted his hoof to inspect a shoe. Lusk’s horses were meticulously cared for, and this animal was no exception.

  Lady Helena will be meticulously cared for, he thought.

  Lady Helena is not a horse.

  And this was his problem.

  He’d not expected to feel sympathy for Lady Helena Lark. She was a client, and a nobleman’s daughter, a class apart. Her unhappiness had nothing to do with himself or his family.

  There had been no time for Declan to look in on his father and sisters when he left Newgate. He’d hurried to Lusk House and sent word by private messenger, an expense he could hardly afford. His father would be relieved by his freedom, and Declan prayed his anguish over his son’s incarceration had not damaged his already frail health.

  Peter Shaw had served King and Country for forty years in his role of tailor to the Royal Marines. He was a craftsman of the highest order, but years of squinting at a tiny needle in the candlelight had left him nearly blind and riddled with headaches. Lifting heavy bolts of wool and stooping over a worktable had crippled his back. Peter Shaw’s uniforms leant warmth and polish to British soldiers, but tailor services never made anyone rich. Declan’s father’s pension barely kept him in food and fuel. He was old before his time, unwell, and struggling.

  This was the year he’d planned to move Peter from London to the countryside. They’d been searching for a cottage, someplace with a warm hearth and a bed on the ground floor. Declan envisioned a temperate, peaceful shire, where he could walk to a nearby village, read in the sunshine, breathe clean air.

  The plan would also benefit his two sisters, who would thrive in gentler, slower country lives and have the opportunity to marry decent men away from the crime of London.

  All of it had languished when Declan was arrested, and now it could only be realized if he earned Girdleston’s payout. Meanwhile, Helena Lark would enjoy an aristocrat’s life of luxury, whether she married the Duke of Lusk or not.

  And yet—

  And yet, he hadn’t been able to get her out of his head. He saw her in his mind’s eye, a series of hot, candlelit flashes. Lady Helena, leaning against a bookshelf, looking up with pale green eyes, her lips slightly parted. Lady Helena, moving through the library as if she was already mistress of the house, beckoning him, disappearing around the next aisle of books.

  Declan swore and stepped back from the horse. He was just about to move to the sorrel in the next stall when he heard rustling in the doorway. He glanced up, expecting another groom. “Hello?” he called, stepping into the center aisle.

  The door was empty. The night was dark, and he could just make out loose hay and autumn leaves swirling in the alley.

  “Hel—”

  “Shhh!” someone whispered, cutting him off. The sound was close. Distinctly feminine. Heart-poundingly familiar.

  Declan went still. Surely not. Surely, surely not.

  “Who’s there?” he tried.

  Instead of answering, Lady Helena Lark stepped from the shadows.

  Declan could not have been more shocked if she’d drifted from the rafters like a feather. He blinked twice, took a step forward, stopped. Words tumbled inside his head, too many to choose. His mouth was locked half-open.

  She wore white. A night rail so profuse with billowing fabric, the very whiteness and fluffy volume seemed to reflect the moonlight like snow. She appeared almost strangled by the high white neck, her chin tickled by a veritable tide of frothy lace. The hem swamped her feet. Her hair had been braided into a single, thick plait, which hung heavily over her shoulder. She looked young and celestial and a little bit suffocated. She looked—

  “Do not be alarmed,” she said matter-of-factly.

  “Too late,” he rasped. He spoke haltingly. His voice cracked. “What are you doing?”

  “Our conversation was cut short.”

  “What are you wearing?”

  “A nightgown.”

  Declan took a moment to allow the answer to penetrate. Did she wish to shock him? To provoke?

  “Fine,” she said, letting out an exasperated sigh. “It is a night rail and robe. My grandmother had it made for me before she died. I pull it out when I require a bit of costumed embellishment. It was exceedingl
y useful during the madwoman phase of my Resistance.”

  “What does that mean?”

  She rolled her shoulders as if burdened by retelling a tedious bit of boring family lore. “One of the ways I’ve tried to avoid this wedding was to feign madness.”

  “Naturally,” he sighed.

  “I know the gown is ridiculous,” she pronounced, “but I rather like it. Especially because Girdleston does not. He caught sight of me sailing down a corridor one night and cried out, dropping a glass. It’s a powerful tool actually. I haul it out whenever I wish to appear ghostly or unhinged. It is particularly effective when combined with a pantomime of sleepwalking. And then there is Lusk’s reaction.” She took up a billowy swath of fabric and fluffed it. “It’s the virginal sort of . . . density of it, I believe. So, there’s an added benefit.”

  Declan wondered what sort of man thought to run away when he saw this woman. In any garment. “So you’ve come alone? To the stables? Dressed like . . . like that. On purpose?” he asked.

  She nodded. “In case I encountered anyone. This nightgown is a sort of shorthand for my intermittent madness. It unnerves people. No one likes the bother.”

  “I am not unnerved,” he said. “Just to be clear.”

  He scanned the alley through the open door behind her. She had to go back, of course. She had to conceal herself and go back.

  “We had a deal, Mr. Shaw.”

  “Lady Helena. Stop,” he said. “Turn around. Go back into the house.”

  “Not until we’ve spoken,” she said breezily. She gathered up handfuls of her gown and trudged closer. Beneath her hem, she wore leather boots and drooping stockings. Her legs were bare above the ankles. His mind frosted over with desire.

  “Where can we speak?” she asked, coming up to the first stall.

  “We cannot speak,” he said.

  She stepped in front of a lantern, and the thick layers of white went magically translucent. He could make out the outline of her body as if she stood naked.

  Explanations failed him. She was perfectly formed. Thin and long-legged, with small, pert breasts. So lovely and natural and unexpected. Declan couldn’t remember ever seeing anything quite as lovely.