“Forgive me, Lady Sanborn, but we must decline,” he said. “The duchess and I will be returning to Marchbourne House.”
The words came out perhaps more curtly than he’d intended, so curt that they managed to crush every bit of the goodwill around him as surely as a boot heel on a violet. The cheerful, chattering conversation stopped. Her weeping mother seemed stricken, and the sisters stared. The bishop and the other clergy looked down at the floor. Even Brecon seemed discomfited.
“But you cannot mean to take her away so soon, sir,” Lady Sanborn protested, the only one who dared to speak what everyone else was evidently thinking. “Surely you cannot object to a small celebration to honor the nuptials. Her mother and sisters are set to leave town tomorrow at dawn, and this will be the last they will see of one another for a good while.”
“The duchess and I already have plans for the evening, Lady Sanborn.” Damnation, had he always sounded like such a fatuous ass, or was it only because he was now a we? He didn’t dare look at Charlotte, not with the grim possibility that she might prefer her family’s company over his. “We could, however, consider another celebration in the future.”
“Thank you, Aunt Sophronia, but my place is with my husband,” Charlotte said softly. There wasn’t a breath of doubt or hesitation in her voice, and to make it even better, she gave a small, private squeeze to March’s hand as well. “If the duke intends us to go home now to Marchbourne House, then we shall go.”
“Yes,” he said, returning the pressure on her fingers. He didn’t know which pleased him more: that she’d taken his side as if it were the most natural, rightful thing in the world, or that she’d called Marchbourne House her home. “Good-bye, then.”
It was, he thought, the most supremely awkward moment of his life. Perhaps if he’d family of his own, it wouldn’t have seemed so, but he didn’t, and their obvious disapproval of his decision was not pleasant to bear. There was more kissing from her aunt and her mother and more tears from the sisters, who now sobbed and wailed like professional mourners, and so much resentment from all of them that it hung in the air of the chapel like a heavy, wet fog. Yet through it all, Charlotte remained steadfast at his side, and if she, too, longed to weep, she bravely kept her tears unshed.
Hours passed, or so it felt to March. More likely it was five minutes, and their cloaks were retrieved and his hat was brought and then they were finally on the porch, her silvery skirts billowing around them both as she clung to his arm.
Suddenly Charlotte stopped and turned her face up toward the sky.
“Look, March,” she said. “The rain has stopped, and the sun is out. What a pretty sign for us!”
He didn’t look up because he couldn’t look away from her face. She was smiling and she was squinting, and her cheeks were pink and the little curls around her forehead were tangling in the blowing lace, and he’d never seen anything as beautiful.
“A pretty sign, yes,” he said. “A very pretty sign indeed.”
Charlotte grinned up at her tall new husband. It had been terribly hard to part with Mama and her sisters, but now that she’d said her farewells, she could look ahead to her future. She was happy, as happy as any bride should be, at least a bride who barely knew her groom.
“You say that as if you meant me, March, rather than the omen,” she said, daring to be flirtatious now that they were safely wed. “I wasn’t fishing for praise for myself, you know. I meant that our future would be as bright as the sun, and you turned my words around.”
“But you are pretty, Charlotte, as is the omen,” he said. “I didn’t have to twist your words around.”
He brushed the tangle of blowing lace from her face, leaning forward just enough that he blocked the sun. She didn’t have to squint now. She could see his face clearly, and marveled again at how fortunate she was to be given such a handsome gentleman for a husband. But those handsome features were still solemnly composed, as if he hadn’t realized she’d been teasing him, and she felt a small pang of disappointment.
But perhaps dukes didn’t tease and flirt in public, she thought, swiftly excusing him, or perhaps this was his way of being nervous. Heaven knows she’d felt that way in the chapel, with the bishop intoning such serious prayers for them. Yes, that must be it. March likely was still feeling the solemnity of the occasion. Once they were alone, he was sure to relax.
Relieved, she took a small dancing step to one side, into the sun again and out of March’s shadow. She looked back up the steps of St. Paul’s to where Mama stood with her arms around Lizzie and Diana to comfort them, and a lump of longing and regret rose in her throat. She’d never been apart from her mother and sisters, not once, and now she was to be separated from them for weeks, even months.
“Come, Charlotte,” March said. “It’s unwise to keep the horses waiting.”
She nodded, and gave one final wave of her posy to her sisters, blowing them a kiss for good measure. She would be brave. She hadn’t cried yet, and she was determined not to do so now. As Mama had said, life was always changing, whether she wished it to or not. She swallowed the lump in her throat and forced herself to smile at March as he led her the rest of the way to his carriage, a huge, splendid affair with red-spoked wheels picked out in gold and his crest painted in more gold on the door.
“Goodness, look at the horses,” she exclaimed. The team of matched dappled grays had elaborate rosettes of white silk ribbon on their bridles and harnesses, and the footmen, too, had white ribbons and sprigs of white sweet pea pinned to the breasts of their livery coats. “Oh, and the men, too!”
“I ordered everything in your honor,” March said. “I’m glad it pleases you.”
“It does, March. How can it not?” She considered kissing him, there at the carriage door, just to show how pleased she was. But in the instant she hesitated, he’d already begun to hand her into the carriage, and the moment for impulsive kisses was lost. She sat on one red-cushioned seat, her skirts spilling around her, and he sat on the other side, facing her and trying to place his feet without stepping on her petticoats. The footman folded up the carriage steps and latched the door, and the driver started the horses. Ragged cheering rose from the street, and curious, Charlotte leaned forward to the window.
“Who are they?” she asked. On the far side of the street stood throngs of people, waving and cheering, as a group of strong-armed men kept them from rushing forward. She waved her posy in acknowledgment, and they cheered all the harder. “Did you arrange for them to be there, too?”
“Hardly,” March said, sitting back from view and clearly embarrassed by the cheering crowd. “They’re here on their own, to gawk and sigh and use our marriage as an excuse for drinking in the street. I apologize for the nuisance.”
“But it’s not a nuisance,” she said. “Whoever they are, I think it’s vastly nice of them to wish us well.”
He sighed. “You think that now, but in time it will indeed seem a nuisance. There’s a great deal of curiosity about you, you see. My great-grandfather was a popular fellow with his people, and the Dukes of Marchbourne receive a bit of that old popularity whether we wish it or not. A new duchess is a rare occurrence. There hasn’t been one since my mother. People feared I’d never marry, and that our line would end.”
Charlotte nodded, equally solemn now. She well understood the importance of marriages and male heirs. Her own family had been tested by entail and inheritance, and nearly broken because of it. “You didn’t know me. You could have wed another.”
“You were chosen for me,” he said. “By my father, and by fate. I never wished to marry anyone else. I waited for you.”
“Oh, March.” It was a simple explanation, honest and direct, but to her it seemed like the most romantic declaration imaginable. Forgetting her finery, she crossed from her seat to his to sit beside him, squeezing her hoops against the side of the carriage. From the street came another burst of cheers; though most likely the cheers were in honor of their ribbon-decorated coa
ch, she preferred to think they were cheering her onward.
“I know I promised before God to be your wife,” she said breathlessly, “but I want you to know that I wish above all things to make you happy, and make you glad that you waited to wed me, and—and give you an heir so your line doesn’t end.”
For the first time since they’d left St. Paul’s, he smiled. “As much as we both might wish that, Charlotte, it’s not something we can control.”
“I know,” she said, blushing furiously. “But I understand how important it is to us. My mother bore three daughters and no sons, and when my father was killed, his title and our houses and everything in them all went to some distant cousin that we’d never met who wasn’t even named Wylder. That’s why Mama—my mother, I mean—took us to Ransom, which came to her through her family, not Father’s. She could have lived in the Earl of Hervey’s dower house, but she wished to be as far from that disappointment as she could be. She was brokenhearted, you see. In some ways, she still is.”
“So that is why you were hidden away in Dorset?”
She nodded. “Because my parents had no sons,” she said. “I understand why my father needed one, and why you must have them, and why I will do my duty to you to provide one as well as I can, but I am so vastly glad that your parents did have a son, because now you’re here, and you’re my husband.”
“Charlotte,” he said, and that was all. Though he was still smiling, he was also studying her closely, his dark eyes betraying either concentration, or confusion.
“I did not say that very well, did I?” Frustrated, she looked down at her lap and the brilliant new ring on her finger, and sighed deeply. “I know what I wished to say, but sometimes when a matter is important, I speak too fast, and babble like a fool.”
“You made perfect and complete sense to me.” He eased his arm around her shoulders, and she slipped against his chest as readily as if she’d always found comfort there.
Yet despite that proffered arm, she wasn’t sure if he was teasing her or not. She hoped he meant to kiss her instead, which would be infinitely more agreeable than teasing. She looked up at him through her lashes, without lifting her chin.
“If that is true, March,” she said, “then you are the first person on this earth that has admitted to the ability to understand me in trying circumstances.”
“Then that, Charlotte,” he said, leaning closer, “must be why I was chosen for you.”
“Yes,” she murmured, reaching up to run her fingers along his cheek. “A good thing you were, too.”
He turned his head just far enough to kiss her fingertips. She realized he was going to kiss her next upon the mouth, and she smiled. He’d kissed her twice before, in the mantua-maker’s shop and just after they’d been married. While she knew that two kisses hardly qualified her as knowledgeable, she thought she knew what to expect as she settled back into his arm and closed her eyes in readiness.
She was wrong.
This time when he kissed her, there was none of the impulsiveness of the first time, or the genteel pledge of the second. Oh, it began the same way, his lips on hers, but it quickly changed to something more. This kiss was about capture and possession and fire, dark, masculine things that she’d no name for. He was voracious, his hunger raw and demanding and unexpected. Yet the harder he kissed her, the more she felt a similar fire grow within herself. She clung to his shoulders as she answered his kiss, striving to match the warmth and urgency of what he was giving her.
She didn’t care that they’d slipped to the seat of the carriage, or that he was as much as lying across her, or that it was possible that they were being glimpsed by others through the carriage windows. She ignored how her beautiful silver gown was being crushed, and how the twinkling brilliants were catching and snagging against his clothes, and even the ominous crack as his weight bowed and broke the caning in one side of her hoops.
All that mattered was kissing March, and being kissed by him. She understood that this was a kiss with a purpose, and that there was but one way that it was meant to end.
Unfortunately, that one way was not the carriage stopping, nor the telltale creaking of the springs as the footman jumped from the box to prepare to open the door.
March heard it first and broke away with a growl of frustration, pulling Charlotte upright on the seat beside him.
“We’re home,” he said gruffly, turning his body to shield her from the footman. The servant was wise enough to knock on the door before unlatching it, and to wait, too, for a response from within. As quickly as she could, Charlotte began putting her clothes to rights. Already she’d learned that March seemed to be very good at disarranging her clothing while he was kissing her, and that a certain amount of restoration was always going to be necessary afterward.
“That was fast,” she said breathlessly, pushing pins back into place and smoothing her bodice.
“Too fast,” he agreed, watching her dress with the same hunger he’d just demonstrated while kissing her. She liked it, too. It wasn’t the way that he looked at her when he admired her gown or was happy to see her. Instead it was rather a wolfish look, as if he longed to devour her, and in turn it made her feel wantonly warm and wolfish, too. She leaned forward and kissed him quickly, just to let him know how sorry she also was that they’d had to stop.
“Much too fast,” she whispered ruefully, picking up her posy. “I suppose I’m ready.”
For another long moment, he did nothing but study her, then sighed.
“Oh, yes, we’re ready,” he said. With obvious reluctance, he called to the footman to open the door, climbed out, and turned to offer his hand to Charlotte.
In the full splash of late afternoon sun, her skirts were even more mussed and crushed than she’d guessed, the rumpled silk loudly proclaiming what she’d been doing with the Duke of Marchbourne.
No, with her husband. Surely that would make a difference. They were wed now, and after all, they’d only been doing what married people were supposed to do. There couldn’t be anything shameful or scandalous about that.
Yet when she stepped down before the footman, she couldn’t miss the startled surprise that showed in his eyes for the instant before he recomposed his features. She glanced up at March to find his face every bit as impassive as the footman’s.
Well, then, if that was how he wished this to be, then she would oblige, and pretend along with him that nothing untoward had happened during the short journey from St. Paul’s. In her head, she could hear Aunt Sophronia’s scolding reminder that a gentleman like March expected his wife to behave with honorable decorum, not act like a sluttish mistress. She raised her chin and, with one hand in March’s and the other holding her posy at her waist, she stepped forward exactly as a duchess should.
Or she would have if she could. As soon as she began to walk, she felt oddly unbalanced. Suddenly she remembered that moment when March had crushed and broken the canes in her left hoop. She glanced down, and saw that while the skirts over her right hip floated gracefully outward, the ones on her left did not, but hung limply, like a sparrow’s broken wing. Without the hoop’s support, the silk drooped and trailed forlornly, and the scattered brilliants stitched to her skirt seemed more to wink slyly than to sparkle.
But she would be a duchess. She would ignore it, and as best she could she sailed bravely at March’s side.
She needed to be brave, too. In the short time she’d been in London, she’d never seen Marchbourne House. It rose before them now, dauntingly impressive, an enormous long building of red brick enclosed from the street by tall black and gold fences and gates. Here at the portico, she’d only a hasty impression of more chimneys than she could see and more windows than she could count. Ransom Manor could have been dropped here whole into the courtyard and not be missed, and Aunt Sophronia’s house in St. James’s would have been no more than one of the wings. She could just remember the splendor of her parents’ old London house, but even that paled beside this.
> “Goodness,” she murmured, holding on more tightly to March’s hand. “This is all very grand.”
“Grand?” He looked up at the house as if seeing it for the first time himself. “Why, I suppose it is. I never give it much thought.”
“But it’s your house.”
“One of them, yes,” he said evenly. “I’ve four others besides. You’ll see them all in time. As duchess, you’ll oversee them now as the new mistress.”
Charlotte stared upward, her lace kerchief drifting back from her head as she leaned back to try to see the roof. Aunt Sophronia had explained to her that her new responsibilities would include running the duke’s vast household, and that in addition to making sure things were arranged to the duke’s tastes, she’d also have dozens of servants who would look to her for supervision and guidance, and that wasn’t including all the tenants and their families who lived and worked the duke’s properties. Charlotte had believed herself eager for the challenge. She’d often helped Mama with the housekeeping books at Ransom, and their few servants had always seemed more like family than staff to be managed. To be sure, that was because of Mama’s tender heart, and a ducal household would be much larger, but the basics surely must be the same. Yet how could she ever have imagined anything on this scale?
“You lived here alone?” she asked incredulously, staring up at the vast house. “All this just for you?”
“I’m never alone,” March said. “There are the servants, and I often have friends visiting. But if one considers this as my home, then yes, I suppose I do live alone. Or did. Now it will be your home as well.”
She didn’t answer, not aloud. How could such an enormous, chilly place ever be her home? It wasn’t even a house. It was a palace, and wistfully she remembered the comfortably rambling and slightly shabby scale of Ransom Manor.
“Come inside,” March said, unaware of her misgivings as he led her up the white stone steps. “The staff will be waiting to meet you.”
When You Wish Upon a Duke Page 10
