A Duchess a Day

by Charis Michaels

  She ignored him. “You’ve already recorded the names. Why do the work of writing it all down only to refuse me now? Shaw—please. I’ll not trouble you again if you simply hand over the list.”

  He swore and glanced over his shoulder. The second-to-last sister was being gingerly loaded into the front carriage. There was no time for this.

  “At least listen to what I will trade,” she pleaded.

  He was shaking his head.

  “I . . . I’ll keep a prudent distance from you,” she vowed. “No more garden parties. I’ll not ask you to do anything a groom would not ordinarily do. I’ll not impose on—”

  “You’ll not impose, and you’ll not ask for more. You will keep your distance regardless.” He took her by the elbow. “This is over, my lady.”

  She sucked in an outraged breath, but Declan cut her off. “I can save my job by giving him the list. He’ll not understand it and you’ll not be punished.”

  “Except every day for the rest of my life,” she cried.

  He refused to hear. “If I hand it over now, you may let go of this madcap plan before you’ve wasted any more effort.”

  “Wasted effort? You don’t think I can manage it.”

  “Helena, please,” he gritted out. “We are not allies or collaborators, but if we make an effort to be civil, we need not be enemies.”

  “Civil?” she said. “Was that our rapport in the stable last night? Civility?”

  “You would not,” he said.

  “Would not what?”

  He dropped her arm. He took two steps back. “What am I thinking? Of course you would!”

  “Would what?” she demanded, confused. “You think I’ll tell Girdleston about the stable? Are you mad? That was a personal moment, between the two of us.”

  “I barely know you,” he gritted out.

  “Well, that is your poor choice, because I’m a lovely girl. Really. And I’ve been nothing but honest with you. Which was your idea, by the way.”

  “Too honest,” he growled. He took her elbow again. “But now you must get in the carriage. Your mother’s vehicle is ready.”

  “Give me the list.”

  “Forget the list.”

  “Oh, Shaw,” she breathed, the words coming out in a dramatic, melodious rush. He swung around, surprised by her sudden change in tone.

  She looked him in the eye and shook her head in two slow, determined shakes.

  She tugged her arm free of his grasp.

  “What is it?” he asked, letting her go.

  She took one step back, then another. Then another. She continued to shake her head.

  He should have known. In that very strange moment, he should have known. He was a fool not to know.

  When next she spoke, her voice had taken on a new quality. “You asked for this,” she said.

  “For wh—”

  Before he could finish the question, Lady Helena took two more determined steps backward, raised her eyebrows as if to say, What did you expect? and spun around to bolt down the street.

  It happened so fast, and with such unexpected fervor, Declan actually froze. He blinked at her retreating form, a streak of purple and black hair and mud.

  “Oy!” shouted another groom, spurring Declan from his trancelike state of immobilized disbelief. Reflex took over and Declan lunged, giving chase.

  A rain-soaked dog darted into the road and he hurdled over it.

  A hunched figure in a dark cloak shuffled between them, and he spun, nearly going down, but he righted himself with a hand to the mud.

  She was quick but he reached her in five yards. When he was upon her, he did not hesitate; he wrapped an arm around her waist and yanked, pulling her off her feet, legs still churning, soaked skirt fanning out in a whirl of muddy rainwater.

  “Oof,” she said, her back colliding with his chest. He braced, prepared to restrict arms and legs, biting and scratching, but she did none of these. She clung to him instead, sagging arms and legs akimbo. She was wet seaweed in his arms.

  He grunted, “What the bloody hell—”

  “Put me down, put me down!” she cried, although her voice was still strange, and she did not sound distressed so much as loud. She sounded as if her voice was purposefully pitched to resound in the street.

  In an entirely different voice, her real voice, she whispered, “Give me the list.”

  The contrast in her two demands was startling. Put me down came out in a shrill wail. Give me the list was a stone-cold threat.

  “You’re mad,” he whispered back, the only thing he fully understood in this moment.

  He made a move to lower her and set her to rights, but she held on. She hooked her left hand over his shoulder and snaked her right hand down his chest. It would be impossible to put her down in her tightly held position. He didn’t restrain her so much as balanced the two of them off the ground.

  While he staggered along, Helena began to feel around his ribs and chest for pockets. Declan grunted and missed another step.

  “You’re joking,” he rasped, trying again to set her down. She climbed higher and hung on with the opposite hand. Now she searched the other side of his body with torturous attention to detail.

  “Where is it?” she demanded lowly.

  “Shaw?” Girdleston’s voice called through the rain.

  Declan swore. He could just make it to the third carriage. He dropped against the side, reaching for leverage to peel her away. He’d just managed to catch her beneath the arms when her searching hand found his pocket and dipped in, locating the damp parchment. He could feel her smile against his throat when she closed her hand around it. She retracted the list, shoved it down her own bodice, and went limp.

  “Shaw?” Girdleston called a second time. Declan rolled his head against the carriage, looking in the direction of his name.

  “Let me go!” Helena cried, invoking the loud, strange voice again.

  “I’m not holding you,” Declan hissed, “you’re holding me.” She had draped herself across him like a wet sheet.

  Girdleston was out of the second carriage, his umbrella clutched beside his face. “What in God’s name . . . ?”

  “Uncle Titus,” exclaimed Lady Helena, her head hanging upside down, loose black hair trailing nearly to the mud, “tell your great lummox of a groom to unhand me. He’s ruined my dress.”

  “Perhaps your dress deserves to be ruined,” scolded Girdleston, snapping his fingers. Two grooms rushed to peel her away.

  To Declan’s great surprise, she allowed it. They set her upright and she went about smoothing her skirt and wringing out sopping hair.

  “But what were you thinking, running down the street in a downpour?” scolded Girdleston.

  She made a dismissive gesture. “A gust of wind had blown away my . . . my—”

  “A likely story, the wind,” spat Girdleston. “And here in front of Lady Canning’s home, the carriages filled with gifts from her party. Appalling. If Shaw apprehended you, he is only doing his job.”

  “If his job is to manhandle me,” countered Lady Helena, her eyes flashing.

  And now Declan understood. His sole focus became surviving the next five minutes with his job intact.

  “Shaw’s duty,” lectured Girdleston, “is to keep you safe and looked after, which he cannot do if you are sprinting down the street. Your parents promised me that this behavior was finished, my lady.”

  Helena opened her mouth but Girdleston cut her off. “Shaw? Please escort Lady Helena to her mother and sisters. Excellent work, acting so quickly when the wind blew away her . . . item.”

  “I do not wish to ride with my mother and sisters,” Helena announced. “I will ride in this carriage. With my gifts.” She jabbed the side of the third carriage with three firm taps.

  “Very well,” said Girdleston. “The sooner you are out of the street, the better. But please be aware that you can expect to see significantly more of Mr. Shaw in your future.”

  “I’ve no n
eed of a ham-handed groom serving as my chaperon,” she said, huffing up the steps into the carriage.

  “Your behavior suggests otherwise, my lady. And for that, you will now have Mr. Shaw waiting attendance with increasing regularly. Depend upon it. This cannot happen again. Thank God the rain has obscured the worst of it and most decent people are safely inside.”

  Lady Helena, now nestled among boxes and trunks, slammed the carriage door shut.

  Girdleston made a growling noise and turned to Declan. “Well done, Huntsman. Let us pray this is the worst of it. But do not let her out of your sight. Clearly she can only be trusted when she’s locked inside her rooms at night. Let us increase your surveillance. Monitor her every waking hour. Starting now. Ride with her, walk with her, hound her every step. Make her as secure as your own prison cell.”

  The reference to Newgate made him go rigid.

  “Yes, sir,” Declan gritted out, but the older man was already stumping away.

  “Carry on,” Girdleston called, waving to the assembled grooms. “We have devoted enough time and spectacle to this street.” He mumbled to himself and climbed into the middle carriage, shaking his head.

  Declan, now stunned, angry, and soaking wet, jerked open the door to the carriage and climbed inside.

  Chapter Nine

  Helena squeezed herself on the carriage seat between a stained-glass lantern and a portrait of a Labrador retriever. With hands that shook, she peeled off wet gloves and pulled Shaw’s list from her bodice. She could hear Girdleston’s voice droning on outside the carriage, but she ignored it. She scanned the list, holding it gingerly away from her wet dress and dripping hair.

  It was all there, only a little smeared from the rain. Thank God.

  The door to the carriage swung open and she jerked her head up. Declan Shaw climbed into the vehicle and sat heavily on a closed trunk at her feet. Glaring at her, he slammed the door.

  The Lusk carriages were generous in size and lavishly appointed, but Shaw’s great height and breadth transformed it into a hatbox. He was dripping wet, and his greatcoat sluiced rainwater onto the floor. The carriage filled with the overheated scent of angry, wet, windblown male.

  Helena’s pounding heart affected a tight flip and set off racing again. She kept her expression neutral. She said, “You cannot seriously expect to ride in this carriage?”

  “Me?” he asked, peeling off his wet hat and tossing it in a crystal dish. “Here?” He bit off a glove and ran a hand through his wet hair. “Yes. I can expect it.”

  She made a nervous laugh. “You’re joking.”

  “I’m joking?” he asked. “I’m joking? I’m not the one running down the street like a lunatic. I’m not searching a man’s body for a document that does not belong to me—”

  “It does belong to me.”

  “. . . while strangling him . . .”

  “I wasn’t strangling you, I was—”

  “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “You may have won this round, but the rules have changed.”

  He began to shrug from his wet coat. His movements were irritated and jerky. He snagged his collar loose. He stomped mud from his boots.

  Helena watched him, fascinated by the simple rituals. He was a giant in a carriage designed for a small man and his smaller uncle.

  I want more of him, she thought.

  More often.

  I want more of him all the time.

  She wanted him like a busy person who forgets to eat and realizes she’s starving to death.

  It was wrong, she knew—this want. How had her very essential and very tenuous fight been waylaid by something so self-indulgent and impossible?

  She glanced at him. How indeed?

  Forcing herself to do anything productive, she felt around her for her soggy hat, jerking it free. She told him, “I’m not sure what you mean by ‘changed rules,’ but I don’t want to fight you.”

  Shaw didn’t reply. The carriage lurched into motion and he nudged the curtain with a finger, studying the wet street outside.

  “I assume Girdleston installed you in the carriage to restrict me?” she asked, taking up a handful of hair and squeezing it into a vase.

  He let the curtain fall. “Behold: the new rules. Isn’t that what you wanted?”

  “Look, it was not my initial goal to bind you to me, but you gave me no choice. I offered a simple truce and trade that would serve us both, but you would not cooperate.”

  “I do not,” he said slowly, emphatically, “have the freedom to cooperate.” His voice was too loud for the small carriage. It should have frightened her. She should feel chastened and chagrined. Instead, she wanted to challenge him.

  “Why?” she demanded. “Why can you not cooperate? You adore the Lusk dukedom? You detest me? What is it?”

  He said something under his breath, an oath, a curse. He opened his mouth and then closed it, clearly choosing his words. Finally, he said, “I cannot cooperate because I need Girdleston’s money to provide for my family.”

  “Your wife and children?” she asked, her heart drumming. Oh God, did Declan Shaw have a wife and children?

  “No. My father and my two sisters. I am not married.”

  Helena’s heart did another flip. She thought for a moment and asked, “Are they . . . destitute?”

  “No, not destitute, but they rely on me for survival. Not the kind of survival you describe, which involves marrying a bloke you don’t fancy, and living in one mansion instead of another.”

  “That is not—”

  “I am not unsympathetic to what you want for yourself, but I must put my own family first. I must do the job I was hired to do. I cannot . . . cooperate with you.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said softly, the honest truth. She wanted to reach out, to make some physical connection, but she dared not. This was not the library or barn. They were not trading barbs about his inaccurate title of groom. He did not appear open to her touch.

  She paused, hoping to diffuse the tension. It was her fault, of course. She’d pushed him, and marched him about, and forced him to drag her down the street. Now they were soaked to the bone and he was—

  Well, the look of desperation on his face made a tear in her heart.

  She’d wanted desperately to know what drove him. What of this father and the sisters? Was his mother deceased? And how had he come to work—

  The carriage bounced to a stop. The clatter of cross traffic could be heard outside. Helena took a deep breath. “Why didn’t you tell me about your family?” she asked quietly. “I’ve wanted you to tell me thei—”

  “Here’s the long and short of it, my lady,” he said curtly. “Girdleston’s money will be the difference between an easy life for my family or hardship. My father is old and frail. London is expensive and competitive and the smoke is damaging to his lungs. My sisters work as seamstresses, but they do not enjoy it, and they’re bored and restless. This attitude, combined with how pretty they are, has already led to trouble. I want to move all of them to a sunny country village with decent people. I would wager that I want this more than you want not to be the Duchess of Lusk. I’m sorry.” He leveled his brown eyes at her. “That is why I cannot cooperate.”

  “Declan,” she said softly, “I’m so sorry.”

  “It doesn’t matter.” He ran a hand through his wet hair.

  “It does matter,” she countered. “Any gesture made in love for the good of people who struggle? That matters very much indeed. One might say it’s all that matters.”

  “It doesn’t matter for you,” he corrected.

  “Do not tell me what matters to me and what does not,” she said. He didn’t answer, and she sat a moment, lost in thought.

  After several beats, she said, “I . . . I actually believe I can solve this.”

  “You cannot.”

  “I can. I live in a forest. It’s beautiful and fresh and peaceful. The village of Winscombe is not far by wagon. I walk the distance myself, twice a week. The River
Brue, assuming it is not destroyed by Lusk’s limestone barges, runs cool and clear, through the center of the wood. Crofters make their homes along the bank. I live in the summerhouse formerly occupied by my grandmother, but there are outbuildings that you might find suitable for your father and sisters. A falconry. A caretaker’s cottage. A stable with a coachman’s flat above it.”

  He stared at her.

  “What? You don’t believe me?”

  “I don’t believe that you may invite an old man and two young women to simply build a new life on the corner of an estate owned by an earl and inhabited by his highly disobedient daughter.”

  “I am not disobedient. I’m so very compliant. I am here, in London, jumping through every hoop.”

  “Except the last, most important one.”

  “Yes, but when my plan is realized, the lack of a wedding will not be my fault. If Lusk jilts me, what can I do? I will be given little choice but to return to Castle Wood.”

  “I can think of any number of impositions that a disappointed earl might level on a daughter who causes Lusk to marry someone else.”

  “He will not know,” she said slowly, emphasizing each word. “And the summerhouse in Castle Wood belongs to me, don’t you see?” She scooted to the end of the seat. Her knees bumped his arm and she almost, almost, grabbed him by the sleeve. She wanted him to reach for her. His palm on her thigh. His fingers around her ankle. How could he sit so close and not touch her?

  “My grandmother,” she went on, “left me the summerhouse and all the outbuildings. My parents live in Castlereagh mansion, but it is more than a mile away. They’ve no use for the ‘ruins in the forest’ as they call us. They’ve no use for the forest at all, except during hunting season. Otherwise, they leave me alone. When Lusk jilts me, I may do what I like. I may grow my apples. And I may invite a new family to move onto the estate.”

  She threw up her hands. “Let me help you.”

  He said nothing, staring at her with his deep brown eyes.

  She tried again. “Your family may take any building they would like. There may be work to repair it, but I will help them.”