by Lenora Bell
Charlene could tell this conversation was going to go around in circles, and she needed to leave before James returned. But she didn’t want to hurt Flor.
Why did life have to be so heartbreaking?
James made some important realizations as he rode through the early-morning mist in the gray stone jungle of London. He saw everything so clearly, as if he’d emerged from a fog after being half blind, as if his thoughts were rendered in brilliant detail.
The first realization was that he’d fallen in love with Charlene, and he didn’t give a damn that she’d been raised in a bawdy house.
The second was that this bone-deep longing would never, ever flag. It was an elemental pull, as if she’d been the north pole and he’d been a compass needle, and he’d sailed across the globe until he’d finally arrived home. Into her arms.
The third flash of blinding clarity was that he truly didn’t care where he lived, as long as she was there. He could appoint Josefa and other trusted associates to manage his affairs abroad. If he stayed in England, he could take his seat in Parliament and argue for the abolition of slavery in person, just as Charlene had suggested the first night he met her.
So wise, his future duchess. And scorchingly passionate. England would never be too cold with her arms around him.
What he didn’t know was whether she felt the same way. He couldn’t bring himself to believe that she’d been pretending last night. No one was that skillful an actress. If she loved him, if she would have him, he was going to marry her and never leave her side again, as long as he lived. He’d wanted to buy respectability by marrying the right woman. But James didn’t have to be respectable.
He could be both the renegade and the duke. That was the fourth, and final, realization. The one that made him turn his horse around and head for home. He guided his mount around a jagged hole in the paving stones. He’d rather have been in an open field, able to give the stallion a long lead, of course, but if they had to learn to navigate the narrow London streets, they would.
She would be his refuge in England or in the West Indies.
When he reached his town house, he handed the reins to a groom and hurried upstairs. There were voices coming from his room, so she had to be awake. He couldn’t wait to tell her everything he’d realized. He opened the door. Charlene was kneeling in front of Flor, who was seated in a chair by the fire.
“Sweetheart, the duke doesn’t love the foolish girl,” he heard Charlene say.
“You mean Papa doesn’t love you?” Flor’s brow wrinkled. “Why not?”
“I don’t know . . . life is complicated.”
“But you love him, don’t you? You love me?” Flor’s voice caught, and she sounded close to tears.
“I do love you, so very much,” Charlene said. “But I have to leave.”
“Because you’re not Lady Dorothea?”
“Something like that.” The hurt and frustration in Charlene’s voice was real, and it was all the proof James needed.
“I have to leave, sweetheart,” Charlene repeated.
James strode into the room. “Why?”
“Yes, why?” Flor’s eyes were ferocious.
Charlene turned from one pair of green eyes to the other.
“Because you’re a duke and I’m a . . .” She raised that sharply pointed chin and stared at him defiantly. “I will never be owned. You can’t tempt me into it. I will never be your mistress.”
“What’s a mistress?” Flor asked.
Charlene gasped. “Oh, sweetheart.” She brushed aside her skirt hem and rose. “I have to leave,” she blurted, and ran from the room.
“Charlene,” Flor called. “Don’t go!”
Her eyes narrowed, and she put her fists on her little hips. “Papa, run after her!” she commanded. “Bring her back.”
James bent to kiss his daughter’s adorable, imperious head, and then he did exactly that.
Chapter 31
“Who’s running away now, Charlene?” she heard James shout.
He caught up with her at the gate and gripped her shoulders, breathing heavily.
Charlene looked up at the gray sky, blinking away tears. It was going to rain soon.
“James, let me go.” She easily twisted out of his grasp. “You make me weak, and I can’t have that.”
“You’re the strongest person I know,” he said, with wonder in his eyes. “No one can make you weak.”
“You do,” she cried, beating on his chest with her fists. “You make me weak with wanting. And I can’t . . . I can’t be your mistress. Please don’t ask me.”
James shook his head. “Who said anything about making you my mistress? I’ve no idea where you got that notion.”
“You said you would bring me to a tavern in a scanty dress. What is that, James? What is that if not a mistress?”
He struck his forehead with the palm of his hand. “I wasn’t asking you to be my mistress, Charlene.”
“But I can’t go to the West Indies, can’t you see that? I need to stay here with Lulu, and with my mother. You can’t tear me apart like this.”
“Oh, Charlene, God, I’m an idiot.” He placed his forehead against hers. “I do want to travel with you, it would be the most amazing experience. But we can wait. We can stay in England for now. You were right. About everything. I was scared of connection, of letting myself feel love. Scared of losing Flor . . . and you. I thought if I closed my heart, I wouldn’t be hurt.”
Charlene held her breath. She reached up to touch his chin, where several days’ worth of black stubble had already appeared. “I’m so happy you’ve realized how much Flor needs you.”
“Do you need me?” he asked, his eyes vulnerable.
Charlene tilted back her head and stared at the gathering clouds. “I do,” she whispered. “But it doesn’t matter. We’re too different.”
“I’m not cut out to be a duke,” he said. “At least not the kind of duke my father was. And you’re highly unsuitable to be a duchess, but you suit me, Charlene. You’re strong, caring, and you’re not scared of me, not one bit.”
She was scared of him right now. Because he was saying the exact script she’d written for him, word for word.
“James, please, I know you think you mean what you’re saying, but it’s only this wild attraction we have. In a few weeks you’ll thank me for releasing you. Nothing has changed. I’m still illegitimate, born in a bawdy house.”
“Everything has changed,” he said. “I’ve changed. I’m never going to be the duke my father was. Or the duke my brother would have been. But you’ve shown me the path to becoming something new.”
She looked up into the green archway of his eyes.
“The manufactory is nearly finished,” he said. “I want it to serve as a refuge and a school for vulnerable young girls, exactly as you described.”
“That’s wonderful, James.”
“I want you to oversee it.”
“How could I? When you were gone this morning, I thought how it would be when you left me. When you tired of me. I will never be owned.”
“I left because I needed to think, Charlene. It was a lot to take in. Finding that you had lied to me, and that you would have let me marry Dorothea. I had to be sure, I had to be sure that you loved me. Because I love you. With all my heart.”
“Oh, please don’t say that.”
She tried to leave, but he pulled her back, held her against his chest.
“Why not?” he asked.
“Because I lied to you. How can you love me?”
“What if I thank God that you lied? That it was Charlene, not Dorothea, who stormed into my life, threw me on my arse, and captured my heart?”
His heartbeat was steady under her hand. Could he be telling the truth?
“Can you forgive me?” he asked, stroking he
r hair. “I wasn’t ready to find you. No one could be ready for the force of nature that is Charlene.”
“I’m a force of nature? I’m . . .” Charlene blinked her eyes. “You’re the one who always looks like you’re standing on the prow of a ship, heading into a squall.”
“Then picture me shouting into the gathering wind, trying to find the words that will save us both from despair. Listen, please listen.”
He touched the tips of his fingers to her fingers where they lay on his chest. That gentle contact unloosened her moorings and set her adrift in a sea of possibilities.
What she heard.
Carriage wheels creaking outside the gate.
Her mother saying that hate had a strange way of feeling like love.
Kyuzo telling her not to give up on love. Telling her to breathe.
Wait.
Listen.
She closed her eyes. Inside the still center of her heart, there it was. So new it could be easily missed. A tiny tendril of hope. Pushing up through the cracks of the brick and mortar she’d used to wall off her heart.
“I hear it.” She opened her eyes. “But I still have to leave.” She wrenched away. “Please, let me leave. You can’t marry me. You’re a duke.”
“You’re right.”
Blast. Charlene didn’t want to be right. “Then . . . I should leave.”
James tilted her chin up. “You’re right,” he said. “And you’re wrong. Dukes don’t marry illegitimate women raised in bawdy houses. Fact. However, I’m hardly a duke. I’m His Disgrace, a degenerate, uncivilized excuse for a duke. And I’m also a man who’s terrified of losing you.”
He cupped her cheek. “I could ask you this question that I’m about to ask, and you could say no. And that would kill me.”
Charlene stopped fighting. If he thought she could ever say no to him, he was wrong.
“I don’t want to own you or control you,” he said. “I’m proud of your strength. You’ll make a thoroughly disgraceful duchess, and a challenging, exacting business partner.”
Charlene laughed, because if she didn’t laugh, she was going to sob. “I don’t suppose we’ll be invited to many parties.”
“No, I don’t suppose so.”
Charlene sobered. “Poor Dorothea. She’ll be ruined.”
“Not necessarily. No one has to know that it was you at my estate. They can think that I met you at the Pink Feather. Let them think I’m being monstrous, that I jilted her at the altar. I’ll be even more disgraceful, and she’ll be the injured party. I’m quite sure the countess will never set anyone straight.”
“You’re right. I hadn’t thought of it that way. So when people ask us how we met . . .”
“We’ll say we met at a Cyprian’s ball, and I threw you over my shoulder and carried you outside and gave you a thorough tupping.”
She swatted his shoulder. “But Flor . . . she won’t be able to enter society with a mother like me.”
“Are you still inventing obstacles? I want Flor to have every advantage, I want her to be a fine lady, but what would all that be without a mother who truly loves her? Nothing. Life is nothing without love. That’s what you’ve taught me.”
“They will cut us, ostracize us.”
“I have friends. And so do you. I’m willing to stay here in England with you until our children are grown enough to travel.”
“Oh, so now there are children?” Charlene laughed.
He nodded. “They’ll have my green eyes, and your stubborn chin.”
“James.”
“Yes, my love?”
“You haven’t asked me any questions yet.”
“Damn it! You’re right.”
He dropped to one knee, on the hard paving stones.
“Charlene Beckett of Covent Garden, will you be the most disgraceful duchess London has ever seen? Will you toss anyone who cuts you to the ground, and place them in a stranglehold? Will you be Flor’s champion and love her no matter what?”
Her heart threatened to spill over along with the clouds. “Sometimes I’m sad, James, and I can’t hide it. Things make me angry. Girls abused, thrown out, beaten. Such a harsh, difficult world, and I want to do something about it, but I can’t save them all. And it weighs on me.”
“Then let’s do something about it together. If you imagine it, I’ll make it happen. All this ill-gotten fortune can be good for something.”
She closed her eyes. A raindrop splattered against her cheek. A teardrop followed.
When she opened her eyes, James had opened a velvet box. He held out his mother’s ring. “Marry me, and polite society can go drown.”
More raindrops skittered across diamonds.
Charlene’s heart stopped. And then it started again, with a new, galloping rhythm.
“Yes, oh, James. Yes.”
He rose and swept her into his arms, kissing her as the heavens opened and the rain baptized their promise.
It was a gale-force kiss.
The first kiss of the rest of their lives.
Epilogue
Three months later
The bell rang on the east side door at the cocoa factory near Guildford at noon. Charlene answered. Outside shivered a girl with frightened brown eyes and cold-chapped nose and cheeks. Her coat was woefully thin, and she had no trunk with her. They rarely did.
“I ’eard I might come ’ere if I didn’t ’ave nowhere else to go,” the girl whispered, her teeth chattering.
“Come in.” Charlene put an arm around her slight shoulders and brought her into the newly completed parlor, with its blazing fire. “What’s your name, dear?”
The girl ducked her head, staring shyly at her mud-crusted boots. “Mary, miss.”
“Where did you come from?”
“I walked from Bramley, miss.”
“You must be freezing. Here, sit down, I’ll fetch you some hot cocoa.”
Charlene left the girl on a sofa near the hearth. “We’ve a new one,” she called.
A few minutes later, Diane ran down the steps carrying a warm woolen shawl, and Linnet arrived with a tray laden with biscuits and cocoa in a silver pot with a wooden handle and a long, slender spout.
The three women stopped for a whispered conference.
“Her name’s Mary,” Charlene said. “She looks between fifteen and seventeen.”
“Obvious bruises?” Diane asked.
“Thank heaven, no. But she’s afraid of something.”
“We’ll soon fix that,” Linnet said with a determined nod.
In the parlor, Diane draped the shawl around Mary’s shoulders. “How did you find us, Mary?”
“I ’eard from a working girl at the Angel Posting House. I’ve nowhere else to go.” Her shoulders hunched under the cheerful yellow shawl. “Papa died, sudden like, and they sold the farm. I’ll be on my way to try my luck in London if . . . if there’s no work ’ere.” She bit her lip.
“You have no family to turn to?” Charlene asked.
“None, miss. Papa was all I had . . .” Mary grabbed handfuls of her coarse homespun skirts, obviously staving off tears.
She would be easy prey on the wintry streets of London. A naïve country girl, sweet-faced and alone.
Charlene would have to tell James they needed more beds. The girls kept coming. Running from danger, poverty, abuse. There were fifteen now. Wary at first, they soon learned that the cocoa factory offered them shelter, training in useful skills, wages, and some very unusual lessons in the art of defending themselves.
“And who’s this, then?” Charlene’s mother entered the room swathed in a red wool shawl. Her cough was nearly gone. Charlene smiled with satisfaction every time she noted a new improvement. Sharp cheekbones disappearing. Silver-blonde hair regaining its shine. Steady hands and brighter eyes.
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“This is Mary.” Charlene smiled at the girl encouragingly. “She’ll be staying with us tonight, and as many nights as she needs.”
Mary visibly relaxed as they chatted and drank chocolate, but her eyes retained the hunted look of any girl who had faced hopelessness and couldn’t quite believe there was such a thing as a free cup of chocolate.
Charlene left Mary warm and fed and in the care of Diane and her mother. As she walked toward the experimentation chamber to find James, Lulu and Flor barreling down the corridor to meet her.
“Charlene,” they cried in unison.
“Come quick,” Flor said, her dark eyes dancing.
They tugged at her hands, dragging her with them. Laughing, Charlene surrendered to the tide of their excitement. They complemented each other so well, as she’d known they would, Flor’s impulsive headlong rush to experience life balancing Lulu’s inclination to escape into her imagination.
At the door to the experimentation chamber, the two girls exchanged anticipatory glances.
“What’s all this about?” Charlene asked.
They only smiled, opening the door with a flourish and standing with arms extended, ushering her into the room.
For a moment, Charlene couldn’t see anything in the steamy, cocoa-scented air. Then a tall, imposing figure emerged.
“Charlene,” James said, drawing out the shh sound in his deep, seductive voice.
White linen clung damply to a formidable chest, and dark eyebrows arched over green eyes. He’d shamelessly rolled up his shirtsleeves and undone the top buttons of his shirt.
Because he knew what that did to her.
Charlene swallowed. “Duke.” She inclined her head demurely, but her stomach performed somersaults.
“Show her, show her,” Lulu cried, darting around his legs.
Charlene noticed for the first time that he stood next to a red-velvet-draped easel. She never would be able to see anything except him when he said her name in that wicked way.
James caught Flor by the skirt and dropped a kiss on the top of her head. He was so much more loving with her now. And for her part, Flor was learning to control her temper and use more subtle means of persuasion to make the world dance to her tune.
