A Lady to Desire

by Bethany M. Sefchick

  For a moment, Francis thought about bringing up the issue of the still-unknown Violet Denton but thought better of it. These men knew exactly what he did about the chit, whoever she was. But was her very existence the reason for the change in him? Perhaps. Or was he still struggling with his lost memory? That, he supposed, might also be a reason.

  Or was it something else? He didn’t want to ponder that possibility too much. Too much danger lay along that path.

  “I didn’t think I had changed that much.” Truly, Francis didn’t believe he had. Some obviously, but not to that extent.

  “You have,” said Nick. “And Charlotte knows it.”

  “Do you still want her?” Frost asked as he rubbed at his bleary, reddened eyes, indicating that he too had not slept the night before. That he, Rayne and Nick were all here in Francis’ bedchamber at this ungodly hour spoke to just how close the four men were these days.

  “Yes. I do.” Though he had never said the words aloud, Francis loved Charlotte with his whole heart. Or at least he thought he did. She was the only one who had believed in him completely when he had first returned to London. She had stood by him when another woman might have cried off. God knows he had given her more than enough reason to do so.

  He needed her. He needed her more than there were words to say. It was that simple.

  Rayne yawned again. “Do you wish to marry her?”

  “As long as I am free to do so, then yes.” Francis would have married Charlotte long ago had these niggling doubts about his past not continually crept into his brainbox. Had the visions of another woman, a woman he could not identify, not invaded his dreams for the better part of four months.

  “And you still don’t know who the mystery woman is?” Frost asked bringing up what Francis had not had the courage to do. “I mean, I know you say that you don’t, but have you really thought about it?

  Francis had come to understand that his amnesia, as Dr, Hastings referred to his missing memory, was difficult for others to comprehend at times. Then again, in reality, modern medical science knew very little about the human body, especially the brain.

  “No, I don’t,” Francis sighed. “I do think that she is likely this missing woman named Violet Denton, however. It would help if we could find her.”

  “I am working on that.” Nick looked away, obviously uncomfortable with his lack of success in this particular endeavor. “She is not in the usual places one would expect a lady of any note to be, however, whether she is a sister, wife, courtesan, servant, governess, or whatever. Though rest assured, I will find her.”

  Rayne produced a flask from his jacket and took a sip then squinted at the drapes again before shaking his head. Francis doubted that was tea, his own cup having long since gone cold. “Better be soon. My sister Miri tells me that Miss Cleary is growing restless with waiting. Could be why she is going to this house party. She probably wants a husband and we know she is tired of waiting.”

  “She is.” Francis refused to deny it, for that was the truth.

  Nick tapped the invitation with his finger. “Then I would suggest you go retrieve her from the duke and make her at least some sort of promise of marriage, before Fullbridge decides her hips are, in fact, perfect for breeding and it is his ring on her finger instead of yours.” Now it was his turn to yawn and it struck Francis that even sleepy, the duke was a rather fierce-looking man. All the better that they were on the same side, he supposed. “There are other chits at the house party who possess the attributes the man is looking for.” Another yawn. “I have made certain of it. However, I cannot guarantee that Fullbridge will not choose Miss Cleary as his new intended. Nor I can I be certain what she will decide should he make her an offer. After all, she would become a duchess. I know from my own experiences how tempting that can be for any lady.”

  That was not exactly what Francis wished to hear. “I shall depart by noon.”

  “Within the hour if I were you.” Frost stretched and rose from the chair he had been occupying in the corner of Francis’ bedchambers. “She has a day’s head start, remember.”

  “But she stopped at the Waverly dower house to pick up her mother as a chaperone, remember?” How Rayne could have known such a thing, Francis wasn’t certain, but he did not question the knowledge. “From what I am hearing, however, her mother is not well again, so there was likely a delay of several hours. Perhaps even half a day. You might be able to arrive at the party before she does if you hurry.”

  Suddenly that seemed like a very good idea. “Then I should pack. I can ride out now, my trunk and valet sent behind me.”

  Nick put his hand on Francis’ shoulder. “If you care for the lady as you say you do, then yes. Pursue her. If, however, you have doubts or have changed your mind? Then be cautious. There has been enough hurt in this family to last a lifetime. Don’t you agree?”

  As a matter of fact, Francis did agree and said as much as he ushered the three men out of his bedchamber.

  “Remember,” Nick said as he paused in the doorway, “if you no longer care for her or wish to wed her? Then let her go. Do not cling to her just because you once fancied her.” He paused. “Your sister will understand. All she wishes is for you to be happy.”

  “I understand,” Francis replied as he watched Nick and the other two men depart.

  When they were gone, Francis reached for the bell pull to summon his staff, but his hand paused, his brother in law’s words tumbling through his brain.

  Did he still care for Charlotte? Did he still wish to wed her?

  Yes, he decided, he did. He wanted a life with her and only her.

  After all, in the year since he had returned to Society, various temptations to stray had been placed in his path on a regular basis. There were willing widows eager to meet a man who knew nothing of their penchants for hopping from one lord’s bed to another. There were courtesans who were seeking new protectors. There were mere misses and sophisticated debutantes hoping to land a title for themselves. There were spinsters hoping that he might be the one to finally notice them. There were also those women who wanted nothing more than to say they had bedded the man behind one of the greatest scandals London had ever known.

  However, no matter what woman flung themselves at his feet, Francis had never been tempted. Never once. For him, there had only ever been Charlotte.

  Francis had never even been tempted to take a mistress or even a lover, though he was also certain he was not an innocent himself. He had experience at bedsport and plenty of it. How he knew this, he could not say, but he knew that truth just the same.

  He also understood that his lack of desire for a bed partner made him peculiar among his peers, but then, Francis was hardly a normal man.

  He had a shadowy past at best, a past that he could not remember and, according to Dr. Hastings, at this point likely never would. He had a somewhat scarred body with no memory of how he had received the injuries, including a partially lame leg with an injury so old that it had to have happened in his youth – not in a wartime incident as some had first thought.

  Francis Deaver had been thought dead, so he had not gone to Eton or any of the other prestigious boarding schools for young gentlemen of the peerage. Nor had any inquiries at those schools turned up any information on a Lord William Denton – the name he had apparently gone by for the first eight and twenty years of his life. Yet for all that he didn’t know about himself, he knew a great deal about just about everything else in the world, indicating that he had been well educated by someone at some point in his life.

  Over time, Francis had come to the realization that he could speak several languages including French, Spanish, Italian, Greek, Latin, and Portuguese. He enjoyed Shakespeare as much as he did history tomes and knew a great deal about the history of ancient Greece. He was good at maths, but did not care for them. He had moderate skill in sketching, oddly enough, and seemed to know something about gardening as well.

  He possessed estate management skills,
indicating that someone, likely the man he had once called his father, had taught him how to be a lord and peer of the Realm. After all, it stood to reason that, had his head injury not happened, he would have likely returned to the Denton country seat of Cross Hill none the wiser about who he really was.

  He would have simply gone on being Lord William Denton and Lord Francis Deaver would have stayed dead.

  Between his unique eyes and his peculiar hair, how no one had ever suspected he was actually a Deaver was beyond him, but then, no one had actually been looking for the “lost” Framingham heir. Until the night of the ball a year ago, no one had even known he had an identical brother, either.

  In short, there was very little about him that was “normal” in the way Society preferred a gentleman to be. And despite all of that, Charlotte hadn’t cared. Not one whit.

  She liked him – and wanted him, as he well knew – just as he was.

  Which was, he supposed one of the many reasons he wanted her in return.

  He had cared for her, been infatuated with her, for over a year and while perhaps her feelings had changed, his had not. He still desired her and he wanted her back. Therefore, he would fight for her. She was not Fullbridge’s to have. She was his.

  His friends were also correct when they said he had become more timid in recent months. For the truth was, he was afraid. He was afraid of the man he might have once been. It was, after all, a very disconcerting thing to not remember who one was after nearly thirty years of walking the earth. And if nothing could be found about his past, did it not follow that perhaps there was a reason for that? Perhaps because he had not been a good man and had taken pains to hide his very existence? And if he hadn’t been a good man, should he not now be leading the most exemplary life possible? Just in case?

  Perhaps. Or perhaps Francis had simply allowed his fears to rule his life – because it was easier than facing his past, should it ever surface, directly.

  Because Francis was too careful with Charlotte these days. He held himself back from her – from everyone really. They were right. All of his friends were. He was not the man who had arrived in London a year ago. That man was fearless. Now? He was fearful.

  But no more.

  As Francis rang the bell pull, the same old thoughts from the past several months began niggling at his brain again, but he pushed them aside. Whoever Violet Denton was or was not, the truth would be revealed in time.

  What was more important was finding Charlotte and stopping her from marrying Fullbridge or any other of the eligible young men certain to be at the house party. For something that his friends had said had struck deep into Francis’ heart. His feelings had not changed, but what if Charlotte’s had? What if her pleas for marriage were really just a way to test her feelings for him, to discover if she still wished to wed him at all?

  No matter what she felt, Francis had come to the conclusion that he at least owed Charlotte the truth about his feelings and about the mysterious Violet. But first, he had to arrive at the house party if he had any hope of explaining himself before it was too late.

  With a firm tug on the bell pull, Francis rang for his staff. There was packing to see to before the sun rose any further. After all, he was going to a house party – where he would reclaim the lady he desired.

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Five

  Charlotte watched her mother doze, sprawled out across the carriage seat as if she hadn’t a care in the world. Given how much laudanum Lady Agnes Cleary had ingested over the past day or so, she likely didn’t.

  The morning that Charlotte and her maid had planned to set out for the duke’s country estate, Charlotte’s father had demanded that the Cleary family coach stop at a small estate on the way to Havenhurst that the family referred to as “the dower house” and pick up Charlotte’s mother to serve as an appropriate chaperone.

  The dower house was really little more than a small, unentailed estate named Bramblewood that had once been owned by a poverty-stricken viscount in need of quick coin. At the time, Charlotte’s father had plenty of money and had purchased Bramblewood so that he had a place to ensconce his wife when she “became overwrought by the travails of London.” Or so the family always said if anyone asked after the frequently absent Marchioness of Waverly. Really, however, it was a place for her mother to flee to when she had ingested too much drink or medication and needed quiet to recover. Which was often, especially lately.

  In truth, Charlotte hadn’t seen her mother in nearly a fortnight, so she was a bit apprehensive about the request. However until she could manage to free herself from her family’s control, she had little choice but to agree. While Charlotte was in something of a hurry to reach Havenhurst, one of the duke’s smaller estates where the house party was being held, the delay of a few hours would likely not make much difference. After all, her father wanted her to convince Lord Snowly to agree to the plan regarding her marriage to Springford – and his part in it. Her father would not risk any harm coming to the man until he was certain she had failed – not before.

  It also occurred to Charlotte that it might not be a bad idea to remove her mother from London completely for a time. Though Agnes had been residing in the dower house for only a few days, there were rumors already swirling that Charlotte’s mother was falling back into her old vices once again.

  Several times over the last week, Lady Waverly had been seen at Iniquity, a gaming hell owned by the notorious – and notoriously dangerous – Mr. James Kirkland wearing a scandalous dress and gambling at a high stakes table that some people of the ton were beginning to suspect the family could not afford. Also often seen in the company of an unknown man who looked like a gentleman – but likely wasn’t – Charlotte’s father was growing increasingly concerned that his wife might “embarrass” him again.

  The last time Lady Waverly had “embarrassed” her husband, there had been more broken china in the house than Charlotte had even believed they owned. There had also been shrieking and screaming, the sounds of hands meeting flesh, and growled insults hurled about the dining room. And that had only been from her mother. Her father had behaved far worse.

  So Charlotte had done as her father had requested and stopped by Bramblewood to collect her mother. Except that her mother had ignored the directive her husband had sent by courier the night before and was on her second bottle of laudanum for the day when the family coach had pulled up just before noon. There was not a single packed trunk to be found.

  Which meant that Charlotte had been in charge of not only sobering up her mother enough so that the older woman could travel but overseeing the packing of her mother’s trunks as well. In truth, the marchioness had more gowns, jewels, and fripperies than any ten Society ladies combined strewn across the family’s various estates. A servant could have likely pulled out a traveling trunk and found it stuffed to the brim with clothing that had not been unpacked from the last time, mostly because her mother had forgotten she owned those things. Not to mention that the household staff tended to be a little careless when it was only Lady Waverly in residence.

  However, Charlotte was determined to put her best face forward at this house party, and her mother’s as well. Even though she no longer had any intentions of seeking a union with Lord Fullbridge. Instead, she only wanted to warn Lord Snowly about her father and his uncle and then, after staying on for a day or so, make some excuse to depart early before someone, probably Fullbridge, got the wrong impression regarding her presence there.

  The truth of the matter was, Charlotte had forgiven Francis for his hesitation by the time the dawn had broken the morning after their spat in the garden. He was a damaged man, for lack of a better word. Not physically, really, though he did have old, unexplained injuries. No, his wounds were more mental and try as she might, Charlotte could not quite imagine what it must be like for him to have no memory of the first nine and twenty years of his life. To wake up and suddenly not know who you are, only to find that whoever you once th
ought you might have been was not who you really were at all. Which was all very confusing, but it was what it was.

  It was also a complex situation, and it was little wonder that Francis was hesitating over marrying her. He might care for her. In fact, she was certain that he did. However, if one could not remember one’s past, were they truly free to give their future to another? Charlotte didn’t know, so she had decided to grant Francis a little more time to make his decision. But not too much time for she did not have that time to spare.

  She also wished he would tell her the truth about why he was pulling away from her. Though as she sat there watching her mother sleep and pondering their own fractured relationship, Charlotte had to wonder if she was guilty of the same things she had accused Francis of doing. Was she pulling away from him as well?

  Charlotte had concluded that she might be. For the longer this courtship – if that was even what it was – dragged on, the more nervous she became about Francis’ feelings for her, and when she was nervous, she often backed away in order to protect herself. She had been doing so since childhood, though it was hard not to do so given the way her parents behaved.

  That, of course, led to the bigger question, at least in her mind. Did she still wish to wed Francis? Or had she remained with him out of habit and security? Was she begging for marriage simply as a way to escape her family? Or did she still truly care for him as she had a year ago?

  Those were questions she could not answer just then, so Charlotte had decided, as her carriage rolled westward, that she would take the next few days at the house party to see if she could answer those questions with both time and distance from London. After all, this party would be full of available gentlemen and just because she had not seriously entertained any of them as a suitor in nearly a year did not mean that she could not do so now, even if it were only for the length of the dance. Perhaps if she did that, tested herself to see if she felt that same flare of attraction for another man as she did for Francis, she could decide if it was truly Francis she desired or simply the marriage as a means of escape.