The Wallflower Duchess

by Liz Tyner

  She waved a hand. ‘We finally enlisted the groom who had had six children and told him he must take them to the country for a bit and teach them to be boys—but it never quite worked for Edge as it did for the others.’

  Lily wondered if the Duchess knew about the ring with the lily on it and couldn’t figure out if the older woman was trying to encourage or discourage her.

  ‘He’s the perfect son. The perfect Duke. The perfect man.’ A smile drifted across the Duchess’s face. ‘Is that an imperfection? I admit I enjoy being a duchess,’ his mother said, smiling into the distance. Then her eyes rested on Lily and she took a sip of the tea. She’d once sent a parcel of it to the Hightower house with Lily and Abigail.

  ‘Not that there’s anything not to enjoy about being a duchess,’ the older woman said, ‘except sometimes I feel my family is scrutinised a little closer than others. It’s the cost of the privilege, I suppose.’ She held her head perfectly in line with her body. ‘You can’t walk away from being a duchess.’ She frowned. ‘At first, I was a little unsure, but I accepted the task.’

  The cup clattered when the Duchess put it on the saucer—the most un-peerlike movement Lily had ever seen from her.

  ‘You have to know,’ she added. ‘Those moments—in the past—my husband’s problems—were the most difficult of my life. I still had to be a duchess every moment I stepped out of my bedchamber, and it’s much harder to remain in a position of example when your life is being portrayed as a farce and you are in the centre of the jest. You have to carry your head high and you feel it is only raising you above the ranks so you can be targeted easier.’ She moved the handle of the tea cup, aligning it with something only she saw. ‘I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.’

  She laughed, leaning forward. ‘Forgive me for talking about the past. I’ve just thought about it a lot since Edgeworth was ill. He’s seemed different since he recovered. And I wanted to thank you for visiting me on his birthday and telling me he would survive.’ She shook her head, the earrings bobbing, and she touched one, steadying it. ‘I didn’t really believe he would make it to another day, but it was glorious to be wrong.’

  The Duchess chattered on about her grandchildren, the completeness of motherhood and other things that gave Lily the opportunity to smile and nod, and smile more and nod more. But her thoughts never completely returned to the conversation. She kept seeing Edge in her mind’s eye and feeling disappointment that he’d not been in the room and wondering how she’d let herself get so close to the spider’s web.

  Boot heels thudded in the hallway.

  And the Duchess’s eyes suddenly held the same innocence as Foxworthy’s.

  Edge walked into the room, even though he didn’t move outwardly, his eyes studied the situation.

  She’d not known how much she hoped to see him.

  His mother stood. ‘Well, Edgeworth... You’re late.’

  ‘Because I did not receive an invitation,’ he said.

  His mother walked towards the door, giving him a pat on the elbow as she left. ‘A written invitation works better than a white scrap of cloth.’

  Chapter Eight

  Lily met his eyes after the Duchess left the room, fighting both irritation and attraction at the same time. ‘Stop looking at me like that.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Just like your father did. As if I am beneath you.’

  ‘I am just irritated that you did not—’ The ice didn’t stop at his eyes.

  ‘That I did not jump to your bidding at first summons.’

  ‘You didn’t.’

  ‘I am here now. So be happy.’ He stood broad and angry, yet she felt no intimidation from him.

  ‘I don’t want you to be unhappy and from the way you are looking at me—’ he leaned closer ‘which I must say is remarkably like my father used to stare when I displeased him—shows your annoyance.’

  ‘I am not annoyed. I am summoned. I am here.’ She pursed her lips and gave the most forceful whistle in her repertoire, a little bird chirp of a sound instead of the one the groom used to call the horses.

  ‘Could I hear that again?’

  ‘Why did you—?’ She stopped. She smiled. ‘You put a handkerchief out. A white one.’

  His eyes darkened. ‘Yes. That worked.’

  ‘And then your mother’s note...’

  He held up a palm. ‘I had nothing to do with that. I just returned from your father’s house and he had plenty to say on the subject of understanding, tolerance and how much he would like us to get along. He finally sent for you and discovered you not at home. He went to your room to make certain.’

  ‘He can be thorough.’

  ‘Lily.’ His chest moved with the breath he took in. ‘I appreciate your helping me understand what it is like to be in a different world. People are more irritating than I realised.’

  ‘Yes. Isn’t it grand?’ She stood and moved closer, pulled by the force of his presence.

  ‘I didn’t expect it to be completely enjoyable.’ His tone lightened and flowed around her, luring her closer. ‘I expected it to be much like observing a raindrop running down the window pane on the other side. I didn’t plan to feel that I was standing in the midst of the rain. But, I have been observing from the outside all my life. I need more. I stopped at the tavern again last night. The men at first appearance seem a bit dull, however their jests are sharp.’

  ‘You wanted to see if you could handle the hardships of someone else.’

  ‘I’ve endured listening to the variety of aches, pains and complaints of the men. I would have thought they visited the tavern for enjoyment.’ He put a palm to the back of his neck.

  ‘Is that different than the clubs you frequent?’

  ‘Not much.’ His hand fell to his side. ‘I’m not comfortable with the men at the alehouse, though.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘They have known each other from birth and I can see them regarding me from the corner of their eyes. I could have stepped from a moonbeam and I doubt they would regard me any less suspiciously.’

  ‘You do look a bit—’ she frowned ‘—suspicious.’ He would to men outside his world. His cravat looped exactly right. He could have been presented to any member of royalty without so much as a comb being brushed across his hair.

  ‘You’ve taken your whole lifetime to become who you are. Wearing a less costly shirt isn’t going to take away that toss of your head.’

  He moved a bit.

  ‘Yes. That one.’ She laughed, studying him openly.

  Nothing about his face was particularly handsome and yet his eyes could make him so. With just one glance he could send pinpoints of light into her body, or shoot sparks of command. Yet the command never seemed forceful to her.

  He snorted, but their eyes joined in the way of two clouds melding into one.

  ‘Trust isn’t easy to gain,’ he said. ‘Distrust is even harder to overcome.’

  She pulled herself back from his eyes. ‘You wanted to know how people are when a peer isn’t present. You know now and you don’t particularly like it.’

  ‘Lily.’ He reached out, trailing his forefinger over the back of her hand, filling her with a flash of that cosy unstable feeling she wasn’t sure of.

  ‘The blacksmith wants to meet you.’

  The words hit her with the force of a hammer. She jerked, dodging.

  He examined her face, not retreating.

  ‘How dare you speak to him?’ she said. She moved to the window, pushing the open curtains even further back.

  ‘I had no trouble with it—after a short while.’ His voice softened. ‘He won’t speak of the past with me. But he said he’ll talk with you.’

  She put her head down. All her life she’d tried to forget about the man. She’d only wonde
red why her mother had been swayed—she’d not wondered much about the blacksmith. A man who’d stained her in a way she could never undo. It didn’t matter who he was. It truly didn’t. He’d merely appeared on the scene long enough to cause grief and then move on.

  ‘I don’t want to know anything about him.’

  She looked out over the gardens and heard a bird singing in the distance. A horse neighed. Everything in front of her appeared as perfect as nature and man combined could make it. Everything inside her felt as jumbled as nature and man could make.

  Edge moved beside her, stopping to look through the panes. They were as close as if they posed for a portrait, yet not touching until the wool of his coat brushed her arm, sending pinpoints of light into her body.

  ‘I met him once. That was enough.’ She pulled the words from the most secret part of her mind.

  Edge turned to her and, with the gentleness of touching fragility, moved her to face him.

  He pulled her fingertips to his face and brushed a kiss against the back of her hand, then pulled it to his cheek, and a roughness tingled her fingers that she’d not noticed on his face.

  ‘He asked to meet you,’ Edge repeated. He lowered her hand, but still kept her fingers clasped. ‘The decision is yours.’

  ‘Life was simpler when other people made my decisions for me.’

  Edge shook his head. ‘They never did. You only let them think they did.’

  * * *

  Sitting on her bed, Lily wove the handkerchief around her fingers, the aroma of the lavender sachet it had been stored with floating in the air. She stopped, studying her own precise initials on the cloth. She had a handkerchief to match the colour of every dress she owned.

  Abigail and Aunt Mary were visiting a distant cousin who had a new baby and Lily had pleaded a distressed feeling in her stomach which wasn’t a lie. The unease flared in her every time she thought of Edgeworth.

  The blacksmith wanted to see her. Her curiosity had doubled each day since she’d discovered he wanted to talk with her. She couldn’t remember anything about him but the hammer and how she’d wanted to hide behind her mother, but she’d known not to.

  If something happened to the blacksmith before she ever spoke to him, she’d never know him.

  But Edge could take her to the forge and no one would have to know. She could keep it a secret. A real one. Not the usual kind of secret which meant everyone knew and no one talked openly about it—they just whispered or talked around it.

  She spread the handkerchief, and examined the size. It wasn’t too small to be viewed from a distance. She walked to Abigail’s room. It faced the Duke’s.

  The window was open to let in the fresh breeze. She draped the cloth over the window sill and closed the window, trapping the cloth mostly outside. Then she moved where she could see the door of his house.

  * * *

  The handkerchief had hung from the frame less than an hour when Edge stepped outside. She opened the window and retrieved the cloth, completely aware he’d watched her take the cloth back inside.

  Then she clasped the handkerchief into a ball and proceeded down the stairs.

  When she stepped outside, his impassive glance greeted her and jolted alive the fluttering things in her stomach. She tensed. He wasn’t even smiling and her body reacted to him. The instant he caught her regard, warmth reflected from the azure before a shutter passed over his thoughts. But she stored that half-moment of intensity into her memory.

  ‘I’m ready to see the blacksmith,’ she said. ‘I don’t want Abigail or anyone in my family to know about my seeing my father. You’re the only one I trust to keep it a true secret.’

  ‘Lily. You’re aware there’s no guarantee of anything remaining private. In fact, it is best to expect everyone to know and be surprised when something doesn’t become public knowledge.’

  ‘Will you help me or not?’ Exasperation tinged her words and it wasn’t wholly directed at him.

  ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘If you doubted it, the handkerchief wouldn’t have been in the window.’

  Edge looked to the front of her house. A hackney pulled into view, stopping precisely between the two residences. ‘I sent someone for a carriage as soon as I saw the handkerchief. I can’t use my vehicle or it would be recognised.’

  He led her to the carriage and helped her up the steps. The leather gave a soft creak as she became comfortable. When he stepped inside, the springs hardly moved and the seats accepted him without protest. She wondered if a tutor had taught him how to sit without stirring anything, or if it came naturally to him.

  When the vehicle left, she stared at the cloth in her hand and asked, ‘Did you ask your mother what we spoke of?’

  ‘No.’ His face emotionless and with no flicker visible, he said, ‘I assumed the two of you spent the entire time talking about—not me.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘As I thought.’

  ‘I half expected her to warn me away from you.’

  ‘Why?’

  She raised her brows.

  ‘Lily, you weren’t the only child with parents who didn’t spend their nights together. You need to forget about what you think...’ he paused on the word ‘...others are thinking of you. Society as a whole has given you hardly any notice. Your mother kept their attention. Not you. You only attended the minimum of events—enough so that people noticed how demure you are, but drew no negative thoughts for yourself. If anything, you gathered sympathy because you struggled under the weight of your mother’s...’

  ‘You said you have walls around yourself and can’t see the way others thought, so don’t expect to convince me no one noticed my mother’s indiscretions.’ The steady pace of the horses’ hooves reached her ears.

  ‘They noticed, but I’m sure they didn’t dwell on it as much as you did. You had to maintain the calmness in yours and your sister’s life. Your mother’s actions burdened you, but a few moments of bantering tales was all the time those indiscretions meant to others.’ His shoulders moved. ‘It’s a little hard to escape that kind of talk in this life. Even for the peerage.’

  ‘Especially for the peerage.’

  She let the words fall away and chose her next words carefully. ‘So you just rose above the whispers when your father’s secrets became known?’

  ‘No. Not at all. In those moments, I was the same as you when you tried to hold your mother’s life together, only older. I cleaned up my father’s mess and moved on.’

  ‘Did you really?’

  ‘I will carry those moments with me for ever. Knowing I have a half-brother that—’ His voice stopped. ‘I did what I did to make things the best I knew how for my family. Just as you did.’

  She didn’t speak.

  ‘When I saw you in the sitting room, I realised the Duchess knows of our conversations,’ he said. ‘If she does, then it is spreading about. I need to think of you, Lily. I don’t want your reputation harmed.’

  ‘I don’t either.’ She had no plans to marry so her reputation wasn’t important for that reason. But she didn’t want to cause problems for Abigail or be considered the same as her mother. The thought made her ache. ‘I don’t want to be like her.’

  ‘You aren’t.’

  But he couldn’t feel what was going on inside her body and she didn’t know if she could control it. She wanted to change the direction of her thoughts.

  She rested the handkerchief on her lap and turned closer to Edge. ‘What is he like? The blacksmith?’

  Edge thought. ‘A man toughened by the metals he shapes. He’s not educated. He’s not many things I’m used to seeing. But he’s genuine and good-hearted, for the most part. The friends he has at the tavern think highly of him.

  ‘You’re doing the right thing,’ he said.

  Lily r
emembered the agonies of her mother’s tears and tried to recount the men that her mother had believed herself in love with. On occasion, she wasn’t even sure they were being more than polite, but if one looked her mother’s way, her mother claimed him in love.

  ‘It’s odd that I feel unsettled,’ she said. ‘I owe the man nothing. Less than nothing. I’ve reconciled with it long ago. I’m the person I was born to be. Births are not an accident. We are somehow planned to be alive and who we are. It’s that simple.’

  ‘Life is never that simple.’

  ‘As the first-born you should believe what I said. Otherwise, why are you entitled to be the Duke more than your brothers?’

  ‘I don’t know sometimes that I am. If something should happen to me, Steven could easily take over where I’ve left off. But I’ve been trained to lead the family. If he’d been trained from birth to do the duties, then the role should fall to him.’

  ‘Would you have minded?’

  ‘I doubt it. We were given our roles—my brothers and I—almost from the beginning. Mine was to lead. Steven lives in the countryside and has a quiet life, except for the three sons, and now he’s taking in two orphans. Architecture calls to my brother Andrew and he buys structures needing work and after he makes them new again, he rents or sells them. We all do as we are meant.’

  ‘I was fortunate to be born in a world above the station I should have been in. I shouldn’t complain at all and yet I feel wronged. I was born into a wealthy nest when I could have been born in the back of a shop. I’m not sure if I’m a hypocrite with myself or not. Life is unfair and I received a bigger portion.’

  ‘Lily. If life were precisely fair, then we could all look exactly the same. We would all be the same height, have the same muscles and the same straightness in our teeth.’

  ‘I was very fortunate.’ She straightened the handkerchief as she talked. ‘If given a choice, do you think I would have chosen to be the blacksmith’s daughter and live in a small home and wash my own clothing? My surroundings aren’t so different from yours. Except you were heralded. I was whispered.’