When You Wish Upon a Duke

by Isabella Bradford

  “Yes, ma’am,” the footman said. “His Grace arrived in the company and coach of His Grace the Duke of Breconridge, who brought him direct from the company.”

  That did make sense. It was entirely like Brecon to have fetched March back from the country, and likely, too, that Brecon would then have thrust March into the raucous company of the Finnisters as a way of improving his spirits—and hers.

  She frowned, still considering. “Parker, how long would it take to ready a carriage for me?”

  “Forgive me, ma’am,” said the other footman. “Lady Finnister sent her own carriage for your use. It waits at the door.”

  “How kind of her,” Charlotte murmured. It truly did seem as if everything had been arranged. The three servants stood in respectful silence before her, waiting for her to make up her mind. She could stay here alone, or she could join March. What kind of decision was that?

  “The blue silk with the pink ribbons, Polly,” she said. “And quickly, too. I do not wish to keep His Grace waiting.”

  March dropped heavily into the old armchair before the fire, stretching his stockinged feet before him toward the warmth. He’d two of his favorite dogs asleep before him, and another snoring lightly with her chin on his knee. Since he’d arrived at Greenwood this afternoon, he’d purposely not stopped working. With Carter at his side to take notes, he’d been everything a conscientious lord and landowner should be. He’d gone from surveying a freshly sprouted field to smiling at the foals in the stable enclosure, from viewing the new bricks relining the icehouse near the lake to inspecting the old drain near the dairy. He listened to the head gardener’s report and agreed that there should be fewer cabbages planted and more asparagus, and he’d knelt in the empty dolphin fountain to peer into the pipes with the engineer to make sure for himself that it truly did need fresh lead plumbing before it was filled for the season.

  When the sun had set, he’d moved his labors to his library, going over every ledger book and record with Carter as if they hadn’t done it only two weeks before. Only when Carter had been literally falling asleep in his chair had March released him, the tall clock in the great hall chiming two in the morning.

  Yet March himself remained restless, his thoughts still far too uneasy to give way to the peace of sleep. He’d been able to push away his memories of last night as long as he’d been occupied and around others. Now, with only the dogs and the fire before him for company, those memories came rushing back to torment him: Father and Rome, ruined temples and lewd paintings, and Father’s endless drinking and belligerence. And women: jeweled courtesans, brash actresses, or low, filthy creatures from the river, they were all the same to Father, and all used the same way, too. No matter how March had tried to bury his head in his pillow, he heard the same every night, Father’s drunken laughter and the women’s, too, and then the terrifying roars and grunts and exclamations and cries that had sounded more like animals than humans. He’d had no choice, not with Father. What he’d been forced to witness had stayed with him ever after.

  Yet why should he believe that he was any better? The old saying was that blood will tell, and it had told last night. What he’d done to Charlotte, how he’d treated her—he’d never forget that, either. No matter how he tried, he couldn’t escape.

  He was the Duke of Marchbourne, and he was his father’s son.

  Charlotte paused in the doorway to Lady Finnister’s parlor, eagerly scanning the room for her first glimpse of March. Seemingly nothing had changed from the night before, with the same elegantly dressed company engaged in much the same pursuits around the same tables.

  But everything that had seemed brilliant and exciting last night had now lost both its brilliance and excitement without March to share it, and she made her way into the crowded room, determined to find him as soon as she could.” Oh, Your Grace, how happy I am to see you!” exclaimed Lady Finnister, rushing to greet her. “I never dreamed you would come, I never thought—that is, it’s such a pleasure to have you back among us.”

  “Thank you,” Charlotte said, “and thank you for the kind use of your carriage as well. Now, if you could please tell me where I could find the duke—”

  “Oh, the carriage was nothing, nothing at all!” Lady Finnister’s laugh was shrill, and to Charlotte there seemed to be a false, nervous note to it as well. “I am most honored to have assisted you, ma’am.”

  Charlotte smiled and tried to ease past her, but Lady Finnister abruptly seized her by the arm. It was a bold, improper familiarity, but what startled Charlotte more was the anxiety she saw in the other woman’s eyes.

  “I could not help it, ma’am,” Lady Finnister confided in a swift, urgent whisper. “How could I? I pray you might understand, one lady to another. His rank is so much greater than mine, and when he asked, I could not refuse.”

  Charlotte drew back with surprise. She couldn’t imagine March imperiously demanding the use of the Finnister carriage, not the way Lady Finnister was making it sound.

  “Please don’t distress yourself,” she said as kindly as she could. “I’m sure he never intended to impose in any way.”

  But Lady Finnister only shook her head, her painted eyes watery with unshed tears. “He waits for you down that passage, in Sir Henry’s library.”

  “Then I must go.” Charlotte’s heart raced with anticipation as she made her way through the crowded rooms, past the gaming tables, and down a short hall to the library. Clearly this was Sir Henry’s male domain in a house dominated by his wife, with manly leather armchairs and bronzes of fighting gladiators, and the overbearing reek of tobacco, even with the two windows open over the garden.

  But to her sorrowful disappointment, there was no sign of the one male she wished most to see.

  “March?” she called uncertainly as she walked deeper into the room, hoping against hope that he’d suddenly pop out from behind a tall-backed armchair, or perhaps that Chinese screen. She glanced from the open window, wondering if he’d gone to the garden. “March? Are you here?”

  “Alas, dear lady, I fear he is not,” Lord Andover said, the latch on the door closing shut with an ominous click. “That is, alas for you, but most fortunate for me.”

  Charlotte turned to face him, so swiftly that her silk skirts swung whispering around her ankles. “Lord Andover!”

  “Your servant, Your Grace,” he said, bowing deeply, though still somehow managing to leer at her. “I cannot tell you how pleased and honored I am to have your company to myself.”

  “And I cannot tell you how displeased I am by it,” she sputtered indignantly. “Now please open that door at once, so that I may pass. I came here to meet my husband, not you, and when he learns of your—your presumption, he will surely have strong words for you.”

  “Oh, I’ve no doubt of that, ma’am,” he said, sauntering slowly toward her instead of opening the door. “But you needn’t fear me. I have only the highest regard both for your honor and for your husband’s temper.”

  “I am glad of that, Lord Andover,” Charlotte said, backing away. Where was March, anyway? “Because you do not wish to discover which is the more fierce.”

  He showed too many of his teeth when he laughed. “Your honor is fierce, ma’am?”

  “If necessary, my honor can be as fierce as any tigress’s,” she said, striving to sound as fierce as she claimed, and not as uneasy as she felt. “Now let me pass, else when the duke joins us—”

  “Alas again, ma’am, but His Grace will not be joining us,” he said, relentlessly closing the distance between them, “not unless he has sprouted angel’s wings to carry him here from Greenwood.”

  “But he sent for me himself,” Charlotte protested, and even as she spoke, she realized the appalling truth. The Finnister carriage, the footman with his verbal message instead of a written one, Lady Finnister’s halting apology—it all made dreadful sense to her now. The marquess had learned March had left town from her at Sir Lucas’s studio, and her trust and eagerness had made her
gullible. March wasn’t here and never had been, and she was the greater fool for believing the lies.

  “You—you lured me here,” she said, not hiding her disgust. “You say you respect me and my honor, and then you act in this vile, deceitful fashion!”

  Lord Andover’s smile was more of a smirk. “There is no deceit in the game of love, Duchess. Now that we are alone, I hope you will put aside these tedious scruples so we might explore more … more enjoyable pleasures together, yes?”

  He reached to touch her cheek, and she swatted his hand away. He wasn’t as tall as March, not much taller than she herself, but he was as broad-chested as a bull, and she’d no wish to test her strength against his.

  “Might I remind you that you promised to respect me, Lord Andover?” she said, trying to sound haughty and aloof. “And my husband, the duke, as well?”

  He wasn’t impressed. Instead he pushed closer, his arms arching out on either side to corner her. His ruddy face had grown even more red, his expression so determined that the first flutterings of real fear rose in her chest.

  “Your husband, you say,” he said, his eyes gleaming with desire. “If Marchbourne’s not man enough for you, Duchess, then I’m happy to serve you in his stead.”

  “You!” she exclaimed, holding her hands out to keep him back. It wasn’t much use; she’d backed away so far that she’d almost reached the wall, and now she was cornered with no further retreat. “You’re not a tenth of my gentleman-husband—nay, not a hundredth. Away with you, sir, before I make a row and disgrace you!”

  “No, you won’t,” he countered, breathing hard. “You’d be the one disgraced, ma’am, not I. Anyone you summon will see that you are here with me of your own will.”

  He was almost right. To be discovered in an unseemly tussle with Lord Andover would shame both her and March. What she did in the next few moments could bring more scandal crashing into his exemplary life than he’d ever experienced, and she loved him too much to do that to him. She couldn’t.

  “Come now, Duchess, let’s amuse ourselves,” Lord Andover coaxed, inching ever closer. “Show me this tigress in you. Yes, yes, show your Wylder blood! Show your claws, ma’am, and by God, I’ll tame you.”

  “You will not, sir, not at all.” She jerked to one side and remembered the open window, there like a gift from Providence. Without a second’s hesitation she sat on the sill and swung her legs over, the same as she’d done thousands of times at Ransom Manor. She reached for the thick branch of the oak tree that stood obligingly nearby and pulled herself onto the branch, her hooped skirts fluttering and tangling around her legs. Desperately she tried to find her footing, the leather soles and high heels of her mules slipping on the smooth bark, until she kicked them off and they fell to the garden path below. Her feet in silk stockings were better, much better, and with a small sigh of concentration she sidled down the branch to the trunk and away from Lord Andover, her skirts rustling along with the oak leaves.

  “What in blazes are you doing, Duchess?” the marquess demanded furiously from the window. “Are you mad? Come back here at once, before you fall and break your empty skull!”

  “I’d sooner fall than return to you, Lord Andover,” she shouted back. “I’d sooner remain here all the night long.”

  “You’re a teasing, taunting bitch, that’s what you are,” he roared back, his anger and frustration spilling over. “Come back here at once, I say. Come back here now!”

  But Charlotte had no intention of leaving her branch, and tucking her skirts around her legs, she crouched on her new perch. She looked down and saw the astonished, upturned faces of guests who’d been strolling in the garden, with more people streaming from the house to gawk at the rare sight of a duchess in a tree.

  “Good friends, you see my plight,” she called down to them. “To preserve my virtue and my husband’s honor from this rogue who pretends to be a gentleman, I was forced to flee here. Nor shall I come down until I know I’ll be safe.”

  “Shame on you, Lord Andover,” scolded a lady from the gathering crowd. “To chase a poor lady like that!”

  “You’ll be next, Andover,” called a gentleman. “March will dangle you over a branch when he hears you’ve dragged his lady into your scandal, see if he won’t.”

  The bystanders laughed, and Charlotte cringed, horrified. The last thing she wished was for March to feel he must defend her honor. But if she was being regarded as the victim, then there wasn’t truly a scandal, was there?

  “There is nothing scandalous about me,” she called down. “It’s all Lord Andover’s fault, not mine, nor my husband’s.”

  But to Charlotte’s mortification, there was laughter and applause in reply, not the understanding or sympathy she’d hoped for. Oh, why wasn’t March here to rescue her again from this tree, the way he had the first time they’d met?

  “Charlotte?”

  She leaned around the branch to see who’d called her by her given name.

  “Charlotte,” the gentleman said again. “Good evening, my dear.”

  It wasn’t March, but it was his favorite cousin, the Duke of Breconridge. Nothing shocked or scandalized Brecon, and even now he was smiling at her as genially as if he were addressing her in her carriage, instead of speaking to her as she swayed barefoot in a tree.

  “Can you return to the window?” he asked. “Or must I send a footman to bring you down?”

  He met her in the library, holding her shoes—retrieved from the bushes by a servant—in one hand. Lord Andover was gone, nor was there any sign of Lady Finnister, either. Brecon didn’t shout or rail or do anything else to cause a scene, leastwise a greater scene than Charlotte had already managed on her own. With a pleasant half smile on his face, he escorted her from the house and to his own coach waiting at the door.

  “I trust you won’t object to riding with me,” Brecon said. “I thought this way we could talk, just the two of us.”

  He handed her into the coach, and the footman shut the door. He placed his hat on the seat next to him, settled back against the squabs, and sighed deeply.

  “My dear Charlotte,” he said. “I’ve heard a great peck of nonsense regarding my cousin this evening, but I’d rather hear the truth from you. Where is March?”

  Charlotte sighed, too. “He was called to the country on—”

  “No,” Brecon said. “We both know that’s an excuse, not the truth. Why isn’t he with you?”

  It was the one question she could not answer: not to Brecon, not to herself. Without a word, she burst into tears.

  “I thought as much,” Brecon said, handing her his handkerchief. “Weep as long as you please, if it makes you feel better. I’ll wait.”

  “No, no, crying accomplishes nothing,” she sobbed, struggling to control herself. “I—I know I shouldn’t have climbed into that tree—”

  “Do you truly think I give a fig about that?” he asked. “Andover is a boor, but you served him exactly as he merited. There’s no lasting harm, and besides, you’ve entertained a good many folk this evening. Pray recall that I’m not your husband. You may dance among the treetops at the palace for all I care. But if you’ve made March suffer—ah, that is altogether different.”

  “He suffers, yes,” she said, “but so do I, and I can’t begin to know what is wrong.”

  Now that she’d started crying, she couldn’t stop. Already Breck’s handkerchief was sodden, and still the hot tears streamed down her face, fueled by her frustration and misery.

  “I love March and I would swear by all that’s holy that he loves me, too,” she said, her voice choked with emotion. “Yet each time that I feel we’ve become closer, closer still, he draws back and away. He always blames himself, but he never explains why, so I am sure it must be my fault instead, and oh, Brecon, I am so, so unhappy without him!”

  Brecon drew another handkerchief from his coat pocket. “You can tell I spend much time in the company of ladies,” he said as he handed it to her. “Is this the f
irst time March has actually left you?”

  She took the fresh handkerchief and blew her nose. “If you mean leave London, then yes. But he—we have never spent the entire night together. He—he finishes, and leaves me for his own rooms. Oh, I am being most wretchedly disloyal to him by telling you that, but it saddens me terribly.”

  “You’re not being disloyal, Charlotte, not at all,” he said, sadness of his own in his voice. “I wish you both to be happy, and to be happy together.”

  “Most times we are,” she said wistfully. “Last night we were most wonderfully happy, or so I believed. I tried my best to please him, and he pleased me very much.”

  “Then he has pleased you,” he said with great delicacy, “as a husband should please a wife?”

  Charlotte blushed and looked down at the tight, teary ball she’d made of the handkerchiefs. She doubted she could speak to her own mother of such a private, personal matter, and here she was discussing it with Brecon.

  “When he forgets he is a duke,” she said with care, “then he pleases me, oh, above everything in this world. But when he—and I, too, for I wished to be a lady for him—when we think more of our duty than of making love, then there is no joy for either of us. Last night I believed we had finally found our way, but then he was gone when I woke, with—with only apologies.”

  “Apologies,” Brecon repeated, shaking his head. “I feared that was so. He has done that since he was a child, you see, apologizing for things that did not require an apology, at least not from him. If he cannot make it right, by will or by order, then he must apologize.”

  “Yes, yes,” Charlotte said, marveling at how precisely this described March. “That’s him exactly, though I wish it weren’t.”