by Darcy Burke
He could not deny that such an event could easily have London abuzz. “It seems you’ve thought of everything.”
“I’ve tried to.” She smiled up at him.
He was dubious a single gala would snowball into a serious community, but had no doubt the opening event itself would be just as astonishing as Katherine hoped. Everything she planned turned out better than expected.
He had a longstanding distrust of change, because every time his life forked into a new direction, new troubles came with it. Inheriting a title meant the loss of his parents. Gaining a guardian meant the destruction of his home. Staying home from war to manage his dukedom meant watching his best friends return broken and bitter men.
Time had also brought them better fortune, in the end. His friends had suffered great losses, but they’d ultimately gained love and peace.
He hoped the same would eventually happen for him. That was why he was leading Katherine off the carefully cultivated public paths and along the dirt trail leading to his private garden.
She stared up in obvious awe at the great stone wall protecting his private refuge. “Is this a garden or a castle?”
“Both,” he answered simply. The moat was the dukedom surrounding the walls. The inner sanctum was where nature reigned, and he was its humble servant.
Heretical thoughts. He paused with his key in the lock. His palms were sweating. This was a terrible idea. He was giving up his privacy. His solitude. His sanctuary.
Katherine’s fingers tightened about his arm and she leaned closer in anticipation.
He twisted the key in the lock and pushed open the heavy iron door.
Happiness filled him at the familiar sight of his private garden. Enormous trees with wide, leafy branches provided plenty of shade from the morning sun. A profusion of varying flowers rippled in the breeze like colorful fish in a sea of green.
So much ivy covered the interior side of the stone walls that the garden appeared not closed off, but rather endless, as if they were surrounded only by untamed hills of grass and flowers.
Katherine’s mouth fell open in wonder. She clutched her hands to her chest and spun in a slow circle, her wide blue eyes drinking in every wild, unclipped section. The grass tugged at the lace hem of her day dress, but she seemed too entranced by the view to even notice.
She turned bright eyes toward him, her mouth parting as if he were just coming into focus. “Did you do this?”
“I did nothing,” he said. “Like many things, nature is at its most beautiful when we don’t try to control it.”
She stared at him for a heartbeat and then threw her arms about his neck and rose up on her toes. “What an incredibly poetic thing to say.”
He couldn’t help it. He kissed her.
This time was different. He wasn’t kissing her because she was his bride and therefore he was obligated to. Nor was he kissing her for base, lusty reasons—although it was true that he had never stopped wanting her.
This kiss was because she was Katherine. Because here, he was not a duke, but Lawrence Pembroke, the man. The poet. The seeker of beauty.
And he had found it.
This kiss was because Katherine loved his lawless garden that by polite standards was not a garden at all. It was a wild thing. Lush and savage. Blossoms and thorns.
This kiss was because she saw him. Saw him in the peonies and the cherry trees, in the ivy and the twisting branches.
He kissed her because he wanted to. Needed to. Yearned for her. This garden wasn’t a mere hideaway—it was an extension of himself. He was every bird, every leaf. By letting her within its walls, he had let her into his heart.
Katherine was perhaps the one person who wouldn’t find his unconventional side a detriment. She didn’t care what society thought. If life wasn’t how she wished, she simply made it so. She was free. As wild as the sea of flowers around them. And as impossible to ever truly tame.
Gasping, he pulled away before he fell so far into their kiss that he would never find his way back home.
She slid an arm about him and leaned her head against his chest. The pounding of his heart had to be deafening. He wrapped an arm about her waist and nestled his cheek against the top of her head.
“You are like a dahlia,” he said softly.
She tilted her head up slightly. “Which one is that?”
He pointed with his free hand. “The gold ones are here… The pink ones there… The orange ones over there. Dahlias are more than pretty. They’re strong and resilient. And new to my garden this year.”
“They’re beautiful,” she breathed. “And they’re all so different.”
“Just like you.” He plucked a small golden dahlia from its stem and tucked it behind her ear. She looked like a wood nymph, capable of seducing the coldest heart and then disappearing into the mist.
“Thank you.” She snuggled close. “I love your garden.”
He nodded, pleased.
She made him happy and gave him hope.
Chapter 14
Kate swept into her great-aunt’s sitting room on a cloud of giddy romance.
Aunt Havens clucked her tongue at the sight of the dahlia at Kate’s ear and the grass stains upon her hem. “Never say you left him behind to run off amongst the flowers.”
Grinning, Kate shook her head and swirled about the room. “The opposite, Aunt. He whisked me off the walking path and into his hidden paradise.”
Aunt Havens raised her brows in surprise. “That is unexpected.”
Kate clasped her hands together. Ravenwood was much more than she had dreamed.
The moment she’d realized how deeply his garden mattered to him—that he’d fully expected its unconventional wildness to fall short in her eyes, yet he’d bared it to her anyway—she had irrevocably fallen for him.
What was not to love? His private garden was both his secret and his heart, and he literally opened it up to let her inside.
He had the soul of a poet. She was the one who had been blind to his beauty.
Guilt assailed her as she recalled how carelessly she had dismissed him, before they had even met. She had developed a casual contempt toward him based on nothing more than his title and impeccable reputation.
She had assumed there was nothing more to him than what he presented to society, and judged him without a second thought. She had been wrong.
He lived in the same world she did. He simply confronted it a different way. Outwardly, he became the most proper duke to grace England’s soil.
Behind closed walls, he was drawn in a different direction. He did not allow society to dictate how he spent his private moments. When the world got too frustrating, he escaped into a secret jungle in his own backyard.
And he’d invited her in.
She pulled the dahlia from her ear and pressed it to her chest. “I could love him someday, Aunt.”
“Could you?” Aunt Havens’ smile brightened.
Kate gazed down at the dahlia and thought about her future.
Ravenwood was wonderful. He was smart. Romantic. She didn’t know how he felt, what he might think or say. He didn’t give his approbation lightly, which increased its value all the more.
She cared about his opinion. Everyone else liked her, but she wasn’t certain they necessarily respected her—or her ideas. His respect would mean more than anyone else’s. His love would mean the world.
“He gave me this dahlia.” She held it out for her aunt to see. “He says it reminds him of me.”
“Because you’re beautiful,” Aunt Havens guessed.
“Because I’m different.” Kate gazed at the exotic flower as she remembered the warmth in his eyes.
Debutantes were expected to adhere to the same rules, to follow the same fashions, to mimic each other in comportment and desires.
She had been complimented on her French dresses and perfect ringlets her entire life, but no one had ever told her what they most appreciated about her was that she was different from the oth
ers. Until today.
If she’d had any skill at all with watercolor, she would paint this beautiful flower to remember the moment forever.
The day she’d discovered herself falling wholly and irreversibly in love.
She might be like a dahlia, but he was like his secret garden. Tall and imposing, with great stone walls and a locked iron gate to keep others out. Wild, untamed beauty within.
A smile that felt like sunshine upon her soul.
They could not get an annulment. She would stay married to him no matter what it took. Even if that meant someday having his child. Or trying to.
She brought the dahlia to her chest and closed her eyes. Terror gripped her.
Ravenwood was not an unreasonable man. He’d invited her into his garden. Surely he would understand her need to be intimate with him for the first few times without the specter of childbirth casting its shadow over the marriage bed.
He was a duke. He had resources beyond her imagination. He would not let anything happen to her—or their baby. She opened her eyes and nodded firmly.
Next year would be soon enough to think about children.
She crossed the room to the bell pull in order to ring for a vase. Her mind was already planning where to place the dahlia so that she would see it every morning when she woke and every night before falling asleep.
Even when Ravenwood was too busy to spend time with her, she would be able to look at the dahlia and remember how it had felt to kiss him in his garden.
When she turned back around, Aunt Havens was on her knees, peering beneath the chairs and side tables.
Kate strode forward, frowning. “Did you lose something, Aunt?”
“I’m afraid so.” Aunt Havens let out a deep sigh of frustration. “I can’t find that dog anywhere!”
Kate’s smile wobbled. The blasted dog again. This was the second time in as many weeks.
There had to be something Kate could do. Playing along wasn’t working. Nor did explaining the dog had long since died. What Aunt Havens might need was a new dog. A real one.
And perhaps what Kate needed…was Ravenwood.
Chapter 15
After spending a delightful afternoon with Katherine in the garden, the last thing Ravenwood wanted to do was set off for Parliament and spend the next eight hours shuttered inside the Palace of Westminster with the House of Lords.
But he was a duke who knew his duty, so as much as he might have preferred to stay home and see what the evening might bring, his country needed him. The ridiculous Coinage Committee needed him.
As much as he hated being cooped up with so many people, so many voices, he often feared the whole system would fall apart if he were not present to herd the lordlings back into line every time they strayed off course and out of hand.
Tonight, however, instead of suffering through the usual anxiety of what to say and how to say it, his mind kept slipping back to his garden. The fear of rejection, the relief of acceptance, the joy that had filled them both so vividly that she’d thrown herself into his arms and—
“Wouldn’t you say, Ravenwood?”
“Er…” Ravenwood blinked at dozens of curious faces. Heat climbed up his neck at the unexpected attention. “I would need to…consult some figures.”
“You and your figures, Ravenwood!”
The men turned from him to begin arguing amongst themselves again.
He rubbed his face and forced himself to pay attention. Just a little while longer. These meetings rarely went later than one or two in the morning. Katherine was infamous for going out every evening. She would still be awake when he got home.
Except she wasn’t.
No light shone beneath the crack of their adjoining door. She was in bed, asleep.
Come to think of it, she hadn’t gone out a single time since becoming his wife. No theatres, no dinner parties, not even a stroll in St. James Square. He frowned.
Was she unhappy? Was it his fault?
Pensive, he maintained his habitual silence as his valet removed his boots and dress clothes and prepared his bed.
Until that afternoon, he had never explicitly given Katherine permission to do as she pleased, in or out of Ravenwood House. In all honesty, it had never occurred to him that explicit permission would be necessary. She was his duchess. A duchess could do as she liked.
More to the point: she was Katherine. Katherine always did as she pleased.
Or did she?
He sat on the edge of his bed and cast a long, speculative gaze at the closed door standing between them.
This union had not been in either of their plans. However, in Ravenwood’s case, he had always wanted to get married. To have a wife, children, a family. To find love.
On their wedding night, Katherine had made it perfectly clear that she did not share those sentiments. She had not longed for a husband, least of all Ravenwood. And she certainly wasn’t delighted to bear his children. She wasn’t willing to entertain the idea at all.
Which left them with what? He leaned back onto his bed and stared up at the tester.
The one thing he wasn’t willing to risk was a chance at love. Their wedding night had proven that she felt physical desire for him. This afternoon in the garden had proven that they could connect at a deeper level.
She might not have chosen him at first—but if he gave her time and space, there was still a chance that she might.
He didn’t want her to simply accept his presence in her bedchamber. He wanted her to want him. All of him. His mind, his body, his heart. He wanted her to want to create a family together just as badly as he did. He wanted them to be a family. Partners in life and love.
He also wasn’t a saint…or a fool. It was possible that their marriage might become the sort of union he’d always yearned for—and it was just as possible that it would not.
He rolled on his side to face away from the adjoining door.
For the next several weeks, he would be too busy with the House of Lords to do much courting, even in his own home. He could afford to give Katherine a month to adjust to her new role, but he would not pine for his wife from no more than a few feet away. The dukedom required an heir.
If she was not ready to come to him by the time the Season ended, he would go to her.
They would either become a family…or end their marriage for good.
Chapter 16
Kate awoke exhausted, due to a fitful night.
Her pillows were the most comfortable she’d ever experienced, her mattress and blankets luxurious, but all she could think about was Ravenwood. Once again, he hadn’t come to her bedchamber.
He was either too busy with the House of Lords…or too uninterested. She tried not to think about that possibility. Until Parliament adjourned, the best thing she could do to stay sane was to keep herself occupied.
She had the Society of Creative and Performing Arts to plan. An aunt to look after.
A husband to yearn for.
She refreshed the water for the vase on her windowsill and bent her head to the dahlia. It smelled like sunshine and secret gardens. Its golden petals made her long to relive every one of his kisses.
To bolster her spirits, she forced her mind away from her absent husband and onto planning her final event of the Season. She was excited to pick a date and a venue and work on creating an opening night grander than any other theatre had ever managed. Ravenwood had promised to attend. It had to be perfect.
She hurried with her morning ablution, intending to pause for nothing more than a quick bite of toasted bread before being on her way. If she dallied any longer, Aunt Havens might decide to accompany her.
While Kate loved her great-aunt more dearly than anyone else in the world, Aunt Havens was more of a distraction than help. Kate needed to use every ounce of charisma she possessed to convince the caliber of performers she had in mind to put on a free show…and then to convince the ton to respond the way she had in mind.
Debutantes could sing in music
ales, but not in operas—and why not? At least they should be able to speak to one another. A lady was expected to be competent in watercolor and embroidery, but to leave set painting and costume design to the vulgar masses. Nonsense! Singers were singers and artists were artists.
The Society for Creative and Performing Arts was a wonderful opportunity for the beau monde to explore their interests and passions with the people who had the most experience with them.
And then they could open their pocketbooks to enable emerging artists to live their dreams.
Kate dashed into the breakfast room and drew up short when she realized the table was currently occupied.
Not by Aunt Havens.
Ravenwood.
Just the sight of him brought back the scent of flowers and fresh grass, the sun on her face, the feel of his arm nestled about her to hold her close.
And their kiss.
“Good morning.” He rose to his feet and bowed.
She curtsied and slid into the chair opposite him, her earlier haste forgotten.
“You’re up early.” His words were casual, but his green eyes drank her in as if he’d been prepared to wait for her all morning.
Her stomach flipped. She hadn’t stopped thinking of him for a single moment. “I’m to make progress on my project today. Or at least, I had been. If you’re home today, we could…”
He was already shaking his head. “I’ve meetings all day, I’m afraid. Go ahead and do as you please. I won’t have much free time until Parliament ends.”
Until Parliament ends. She nodded dully. That was weeks away.
“Tell me about your project,” he said. “It sounds…fun. How will you begin?”
Her mouth quirked as she realized that no part of planning, executing, or attending an intricate, crowded event would sound like fun to Ravenwood.
She was lucky he would be present at all. He would no doubt have preferred to spend the entirety of the night locked in his garden, had she not begged him to lend his support by being the first to offer patronage. She smiled at him.
