Best of all, as she’d sat before her glass after Polly had finished dressing her hair, he’d come behind her. She’d been sure he meant to admire the pearls, but instead he’d bent to kiss her on the nape of her neck, a place so sensitive that she’d gasped from surprise, and spread her fingers with pleasure against the edge of her dressing table.
He’d said nothing, nor had she, but the glances that they’d exchanged in her looking glass had been so intense that she’d blushed. She didn’t believe that such a kiss qualified as unfit for a wife by Aunt Sophronia’s rules, not after March had given her the astonishing pearls. At least she prayed it didn’t, and as she followed his broad shoulders through the crowd, she dared to hope that that single kiss might lead to much more later that night.
“Here we are at last,” March said as the usher bowed ostentatiously before the last little door in the hall. “Like fighting our way through Bedlam, that was.”
Charlotte turned sideways to squeeze her hoops and skirts through the doorway, then caught her breath as she saw the scene before her. To Charlotte the curving rows of boxes seemed like some shopkeeper’s fanciful display, with ladies and gentlemen dressed in so much finery that the crowd glittered and sparkled by the scores of candles. The stage was still empty, but below them the orchestra was already playing some spirited, exotic music that set the mood for the play to come.
“Ah, Duchess, I am honored,” said March’s cousin, the Duke of Breconridge, stepping forward to greet her. “Surely my box has never been graced by such a loveliness as yours.”
He took her hand, kissing the air over the back of it, and gave her fingers a small fond squeeze for good measure. Charlotte had already determined that Breconridge was March’s favorite cousin and his closest friend as well, and for that reason she’d resolved to like him, too. But then it was easy to like Breconridge: he was charming and droll, his eyes always full of merriment, and where March could be solemn and perhaps a bit too ducal, Breconridge’s good nature could put a stone statue at ease.
Also unlike March, Breconridge cheerfully embraced the full extravagance of the French court’s fashion, his suit embellished with winking brilliants and silver embroidery. On a lesser gentleman, the glittering effect might have dimmed the wearer, but not on Breconridge. He’d so much masculine confidence and presence that he could have been wearing the crown jewels, and all anyone would recall afterward was his intelligence, his wit, and his easy laugh. With so much grandeur about his own person, it didn’t surprise Charlotte that Breconridge noticed her new earrings at once.
“If you please, Duchess, closer to the lights, so that I might admire your jewels,” he said, peering at the earrings as he led her to one of the chairs at the front of the box. “March, are those the Medici pearls?”
“They are,” March said. “She wears them well, doesn’t she?”
Charlotte smiled and shook her head to make the heavy pearls swing. As pleased as she was by March’s gift, she was happier still to hear the pride in his voice and to see it, too, as he looked at her.
“She does indeed,” Brecon said. “Yet as extravagant as those pearls are, Duchess, they only enhance your own beauty.”
Charlotte blushed. “You are most generous, Duke.”
“Please, call me Brecon,” he said with a bow. “After all, we are cousins now, too. Come, you must show your earrings to Mrs. Shaw, while I pray she won’t crave a pair for herself.”
Belatedly Charlotte realized there was another lady in the box. She was small and round, with green eyes and red hair that gleamed, unrepentant, through the heavy white powder. She was richly though quietly dressed, a subdued dove in dark gray silk beside Breck’s gaudy male peacock. She’d also a prodigious bosom that threatened to spill forward as she curtseyed deeply to Charlotte. March had mentioned that Brecon was a widower of many years, and it made perfect sense that he’d have a lady with him for companionship.
“Duchess, this is Mrs. Harriet Shaw, a dear friend of mine,” Brecon said. “Harriet, Her Grace the Duchess of Marchbourne.”
“Your Grace,” murmured Mrs. Shaw, smiling as she rose. “May I offer my best wishes upon your recent marriage.”
“Thank you,” Charlotte said, her cheeks pinking. No matter how many times she’d heard that today, she still hadn’t wearied of being reminded that she’d married March, and she curled her fingers more tightly into his, hoping he felt the same.
But clearly what he was feeling at that moment had nothing to do with Charlotte.
“Mrs. Shaw,” he said curtly, then devoted himself to settling Charlotte in her chair. He moved his closer to hers, possessively claiming her hand again. Though Charlotte smiled happily up at him and he smiled back, she couldn’t help but sense that something was amiss.
“I hope my box pleases you, Duchess,” Brecon said, taking the chair on her other side. “They say the best boxes are to the center of the ring, as close as can be arranged to the royal box. But I much prefer to be here at the farthest end.”
“I can see why you do, Duke,” Charlotte said, leaning over the edge of the box for a better view. “You can see the stage perfectly.”
He laughed. “Oh, what occurs on the stage is of little interest to me, Duchess. The real drama takes place in the audience. From this seat, I can watch all around me without the trouble of craning my neck. But more important, they can watch me.”
He smiled winningly, but on her other side, March grumbled in disagreement.
“You’re mistaken, Brecon,” he said. “It’s not you they’re ogling. It is my divine duchess, born of the star-filled firmament, that draws their eye and holds it.”
Swiftly Charlotte looked up at him. In the short time they’d known each other, he’d never made her that kind of pretty compliment. She liked it, liked it very much, and liked it all the more because she suspected he’d likely written it out and practiced it carefully beforehand. She knew because his smile was lopsided and more than a little self-conscious. She knew, too, that he’d done it solely to please her, and that pleased her most of all.
Impulsively she reached up and kissed him, her lips brushing lightly over his. To her surprise—and delight—he slipped his fingers around her jaw and held her there, kissing her in warm return.
“There you are, cousin,” Brecon said dryly. “You see how much wifely goodwill you’ve earned for yourself by giving her those pearls.”
“Forgive me, but I am not so shallow as that,” Charlotte declared warmly. “My regard for my husband has nothing to do with the pearls, and everything to do with the duke himself.”
“Then you are wise beyond your years, Duchess, and your husband is fortunate among men.” Brecon smiled in concession and swept his hand through the air to include the rest of the theater. “But there, didn’t I tell you? The best show is to be found not on the stage but in my box, and the rest of these folk agree.”
She looked back at the rest of the audience and realized that he hadn’t exaggerated. Nearly every pale face was turned toward her, eagerly watching and waiting for her to kiss March again.
“Enough, Brecon,” March said, defending her just as she had him. “My duchess doesn’t know you as I do, and she’s far too generous in her nature to understand that what you say is teasing and nothing more.”
“Very well, cousin, very well,” Brecon said with an affected sigh. “But I meant what I said about your good fortune.”
Before March could answer, the curtain rose, and the play began with a thundering of drums. Charlotte sat back in her chair, prepared to enjoy herself. The only plays she had seen before were the ones presented on a makeshift stage by traveling companies at the midsummer fairs, and she couldn’t wait to see one performed properly.
But while she was sure the acting was most excellent and the actors and actresses all knew their lines properly (which could not have been said of those plays at the fair), Charlotte found the play difficult to follow. The language of the play was old-fashioned, the lady who was s
upposed to be some sort of beautiful queen wasn’t beautiful at all, and the story, as much as she could make sense of it, was all politics and murder and betrayals that weren’t very interesting.
Before long her attention began to wander. Brecon was right. The dramas in the audience were much more interesting than the one on the stage. In the boxes across the theater and in the pit below people were quarreling, flirting, eating, drinking, playing with pet dogs, falling asleep, and making love, and the clothes they were wearing were better than the costumes on the stage, too.
Their own box was no exception. Not long after the play began, March had rested his arm across the back of her chair. When Charlotte didn’t rebuff him—which of course she wouldn’t—he let his arm gradually slip forward until it rested against her back. She smiled and forgot the resolutions she’d made to her aunt about being the perfect, reserved lady. Instead she leaned against March’s side, pretending as he had that it had happened by accident, and he finished things by curling his arm around her entirely to hold her close. With a happy sigh, she rested her head against his shoulder, and thought it the most pleasant place in the world to be.
But as distracted as she was by March, she didn’t miss what was happening on her other side. Brecon and Mrs. Shaw appeared engrossed in the play, their gazes never leaving the stage. Below the edge of the box, however, Mrs. Shaw’s plump little hand made speedy progress from his knee to the inside of his thigh and finally vanished beneath his coat and into the fall of his breeches. Nor was Brecon idle, either, his own hand finding the pocket-opening on the side of Mrs. Shaw’s petticoats.
Curious, Charlotte leaned forward, wondering how far matters would progress.
“For God’s sake, Charlotte, don’t watch them,” March whispered. “At least act as if you don’t notice.”
She looked up at him and flashed a conspirator’s grin. He frowned, trying to look stern, but his mouth kept twitching as he tried not to smile in return.
Charlotte hadn’t that much self-control. Instead she snapped open her fan and used it to hide the lower half of her face. But still her quaking shoulders betrayed her as she struggled to swallow a wave of inappropriate giggles, even as Mrs. Shaw’s ministrations were making Brecon shift restlessly in his chair.
“Charlotte, stop,” March whispered again. “Please. Pay them no heed.”
But beneath her shoulder she felt the telltale tremors of his own suppressed laughter, which made it all the harder to keep her own back. It didn’t help that the scene on the stage was a quiet one, with much whispered plotting and conniving, and if she and March laughed aloud, the whole theater would have known it, too. She rather wished he would. To her mind, he didn’t laugh nearly enough.
But the playhouse perhaps wasn’t the best place for that. Purposefully she sat upright, apart from March, and it was only by thinking the saddest thoughts—and not looking once at March—that she was able to recover.
But later, when the play was done and she and March were finally alone in their carriage with the footman latching the door, it was another story altogether.
“Oh, goodness!” she exclaimed gleefully, bubbling with laughter. “Your cousin and Mrs. Shaw! What were they doing during the play?”
“You know perfectly well what they were doing, Charlotte,” March said as he tossed his hat on the seat beside him.
“No, I don’t,” she protested. “That is, not exactly. That was why I was so interested.”
March groaned. “I suppose you don’t, which is much to your credit as a lady. Which is considerably more than can be said of Mrs. Shaw.”
“Why?” Intrigued, Charlotte’s eyes widened. “I thought she was some manner of respectable widow, a friend of your cousin’s.”
“Widow?” March said with a disgusted snort. “If there ever was a Mr. Shaw, then I pity the wretch. Mrs. Shaw is my cousin’s mistress, Charlotte, and has been for over a year.”
“She is?” Charlotte’s mouth dropped open. “Oh, March! I’ve never been in the company of a true ruined woman!”
“You shouldn’t have been in the company of one tonight,” he said. “I would never have accepted Breck’s invitation if I’d known she’d be there, too. Nor would I have brought you to that play if I’d known it would feature a Venetian courtesan for the heroine.”
“She was?” Charlotte laughed uproariously. “March, I am such a noddy! I thought she was some sort of noble lady. A duchess like me.”
“That was Belvidera,” he said. “Aquillina was the courtesan, and she is in no ways like you. I love and respect my cousin as I would a brother, but there are times when he entirely forgets himself. I do not know what devil possessed him to suggest I bring you here this night.”
Still grinning, Charlotte looked slyly at him.
“Perhaps, March, Brecon judged the evening to be a good way to make you laugh, and be a little less stern.”
He stared at her, genuinely shocked. “I am not stern,” he said. “I am responsible, but not stern. You don’t truly believe I’m stern, do you?”
Too late she realized she’d wandered into dangerous territory, but now that she’d dared this far, she couldn’t exactly turn back.
“You are not stern to me, no,” she said carefully. “But there are other times when I fear the world must see you that way.”
“That is because the world expects me to be a worthless, drunken, whoring rake,” he said, his voice suddenly both bitter and weary. “The world will say that it’s in my blood, that I cannot help it. The world has the lowest of expectations for me, Charlotte, and would like nothing better than to see me fulfill them.”
“Oh, March.” She came to sit beside him, taking his hand in hers. She remembered that lascivious old king who was his great-grandfather, but she’d never dreamed it would weigh so heavily on March after a century. “The world is quite an ass if it believes that of you.”
He didn’t smile as she’d hoped, but stared down at their linked hands.
“The world will believe what it pleases, Charlotte,” he said in the same weary voice. “I can only do and say what I believe to be honorable and right, as a gentleman, a peer, a husband, and, God willing, as a father as well.”
“You are all those things to me, March,” she said fervently. “And we will be blessed with children. I know we will.”
He did not answer, leaving the sounds of their horses’ hooves on the cobbles and the creaking of the carriage’s springs to fill the silence. She leaned her head on his shoulder, the same way she had in the theater.
“I should like it above all things if you came to me tonight,” she said softly. “So we might, ah, begin again. If it pleases you, that is.”
And at last he smiled. “My own Charlotte,” he said. “Nothing could ever please me more.”
“You look most lovely, ma’am,” Polly said, folding the coverlet neatly over Charlotte’s lap. “Forgive me for speaking plain, ma’am, but I’m sure His Grace will be enchanted.”
“Thank you,” Charlotte murmured, too anxious to say more. She wanted March to be enchanted. She wanted him to forget last night and remember only this. She wanted everything to be perfect. Most of all, she wanted to be loved.
Because, heaven help her, she was already more than a little in love with him.
As soon as they’d returned home from the theater, he had gone to his rooms, and she had come here to hers. Polly had undressed her, replacing the elaborate gown with the embroidered white nightshift that she’d planned to wear last night. Charlotte herself unhooked the pearl earrings from her ears and put them back in their shagreen case for safekeeping. She’d been tempted to wear the pearls to bed, but somehow she doubted that Aunt Sophronia would approve.
Polly had unpinned her hair and brushed it out over her shoulders and down her back, and then had helped her into the bed. Charlotte sat in the exact center, propped against the mounded pillows that Polly had carefully arranged, just as now she was arranging the sheets and coverlets and smoo
thing everything over Charlotte’s legs so there wasn’t so much as a wrinkle in all that sea of cloth. Finally she twisted a few locks of Charlotte’s hair over her shoulders, coaxing them into curls. With a satisfied nod, she stepped back.
“Will there be anything else, ma’am?” she asked.
Charlotte shook her head, but carefully, so as not to disturb any of Polly’s careful arranging. She glanced down at her hands, flat on the edge of the coverlet because she hadn’t known what else to do with them, the heavy diamond wedding ring winking on her finger. She’d done everything that Aunt Sophronia had advised to be the model duchess to receive her duke, and she prayed March would find it all agreeable.
She felt like a precious doll, placed on a high shelf so she’d not be mussed.
At least she didn’t have to wait long. Soon after Polly left, March tapped at her door and entered.
“Good evening, Charlotte,” he said solemnly, pausing at the door. He, too, was properly ready for bed, and over his white nightshirt wore a long black silk banyan embroidered with fierce red dragons. He looked very tall and very imposing, like some sort of mysterious ancient lord. He also looked very handsome and manly, and as he crossed the room toward her, she felt a warm flutter of excited anticipation gathering low in her belly.
“You’re beautiful,” he said, sitting on the edge of the bed beside her. “That is, you are always beautiful, but like this—it’s for me.”
“It is.” She smiled shyly, and touched her fingers to the edge of the banyan. “I like the dragons.”
He smiled crookedly. “I’d rather hoped you’d like the man inside them.”
“I do.” She reached up to lay her hand across his jaw. He’d shaved again: a small favor for her that she appreciated. “Will you join me?”
When You Wish Upon a Duke Page 15
