After a moment, she said, “The duke is on his way to us. I cannot hide in the shadows with you all night. Where have the boys taken Teddy?”
He looked up. The duke wound his way through the crowd like a man retrieving a dropped handkerchief. A very important, very valuable handkerchief. They watched him stump toward them.
Beau said, “Tomorrow I will apply for a special license.” He held his breath.
She was silent, and he breathed again. Silence was not no.
“Evasion is converse to my usual way of doing things,” he said, “but I believe we will be better served by apologizing to the duke tonight. Tell him we lost count of the songs. Feign idiocy. You’ll bear the brunt of his outrage, I’m afraid. Will you be all right? I’ll fetch Teddy.”
“What choice do I have?” she said.
“Right.” He gritted his teeth. He hated to leave her, but he’d exhibited enough rashness tonight to last a lifetime—and that was saying a lot, considering he was Beau Courtland. Still, he could not resist one parting shot, and he leaned down, in plain view of anyone occupying the shadowy space between the pillars and windows, and kissed her—one soft, sweet, slow kiss to her cheek. He lingered there, so close he could see the small hairs at the base of her neck, pulling from the horrible hat on top of her head.
He whispered, “I cannot promise that marriage to me will be proper or easy, but, Duchess”—he breathed in the scent of her—“surely it will be better than what you now endure. I promise it will be better than that.”
He kissed her a second time on the cheek, and then he rose to stand behind her, one arm on her shoulder, another on her right hand. They faced the duke together, with Beau willing himself to be patient and genuinely surprised and contrite.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Emmaline would not allow herself to believe that the viscount’s proposal was real until she actually saw him appear, in living flesh, in the home of the duke to extract her. In the meantime, she would carry on as if the ball had never happened.
He’d been vague and evasive with the Duke of Ticking after the dancing. Certainly, he made no allusion to a proposal or matrimony. He enthused only about his delight in Emmaline’s company and meeting his daughters and what a “winning chap” Teddy had always been.
Whether Beau’s silence on the matter was a predictive omission or cunning strategy, Emmaline could not know. It had been six days since the ball, and she’d had no word from him. He could be stealthily procuring a special license or halfway to Spain, for all she knew. Considering this, Emmaline was given little choice but to carry on as if he hadn’t exploded into her little corner of misery and promised her the moon. Certainly there was endless work to be done: Meetings with her lawyer about her ownership of the books; calls to the bank for the withdrawal of the last of the generous-but-dwindling allowance her parents had left for Teddy’s care before they’d sailed. This money would have to last them until the books began to sell in America. There were provisions to buy and letters to post ahead to shop owners in New York and the landlord of the house she would let. The list was long and varied and, worst of all, must now be achieved under the rash restrictions of the duke’s fresh anger and his white-knuckled possessiveness.
It felt like a miracle, really, the myriad things she had accomplished in the week after the ball. But it wasn’t a miracle, not really, nor was it courage or confidence, and certainly it was not the misguided hope that Beau would sweep in and rescue her. She did it all because she had no choice, first and foremost, and second, because she’d fallen in love. Being in love, she discovered, used up all the time and energy she would otherwise have devoted to being unsure, of cowering before the bellowing duke, or resenting the copious Ticking children.
Who could have guessed that her preoccupation with loving Beau Courtland would make her doubt less and risk more? Love, she realized, trumped bankers and lawyers and even the Duke of Ticking in the throes of a temper fit.
It was wrong to love him, she was sure. Ill-timed and short-lived, a one-way journey to certain heartbreak, but she’d decided to embrace it, if for no other reason than thinking about Beau twelve hours a day and dreaming about him all night kept all the other anxieties at bay.
Perhaps it would not have happened if she’d known more of love, if she’d ever before been tempted, even a little, to toss in her lot—heart, mind, body—with any man.
But she did not know more than this; in fact, she could not imagine anything quite so distinctive, and singular, and essential as the love for Beau she now felt—as if she really had no choice in the matter but to love him and certainly to marry him (if, indeed, he ever turned up to see through his genuinely unique and wholly endearing proposal).
It was a love so great, a love that had grown so quickly and unexpectedly from perhaps the first time she’d ever seen him slouching on his boat, she knew that if he did not come for her, or if he came for her but did not stay, there was a chance that she might never recover.
Oh, life would go on. She would eventually succeed enough to provide for herself. Her brother would be made safe, and she would probably even marry again. But the love that she now felt was so abstract yet also concrete, so urgent yet also spread so subtly beneath everything she did and felt that she knew she would be forever changed.
It felt as necessary as any other part of her, and she could not have stopped it if she had tried. It was a torrent, propelling her as much as pelting her in place. She marveled in the force of it and wondered how she’d managed to keep this love at bay.
And all of this, with not seeing him for six days.
And then, on the seventh day, he came, and the torrent raged in earnest.
He turned up just after breakfast. She and Teddy were seated in the drawing room with the seven or eight of the duke’s children who were too old for a morning nap, yet too young for lessons. It had become the new routine to wait here daily, assisting various nannies and nursemaids, until the duke and duchess gave some indication of their plans for the day. After that, she would slip in or out of the house, based on whatever she could glean from staff about when the duke and duchess would go out, or nap, or receive callers.
Beau walked right in with no introduction from the butler, no elaborate whip of the door or ring of a bell for tea. In fact, he veritably ambled into the room, as if he too was a resident of the ducal household and thought he might have breakfast with eight or nine children that day.
If he hadn’t been so good-looking, so golden-headed and blue-eyed and broad-shouldered, she was quite sure the nannies and maids would have sounded an alarm. But he was all of those things and more, dressed like a gentleman, albeit a little rumpled—exactly the right amount, a streak of mud on his boot, his waistcoat unbuttoned and loose—and the nursemaids paused in their work with the children and looked up, eyes open wide, breath caught.
“Hello,” he said sardonically, speaking to the room.
Emmaline’s head shot up. Their gazes locked. She drew what was surely her first real breath in seven days. Fireworks exploded in her chest.
He said casually, “There you are. This house is a warren of tiny rooms and crooked hallways. I thought I would never find you.”
Emmaline opened her mouth to answer him but realized too late that tears would thicken her voice. She ducked her head instead and shut her eyes. While every other female in the room, children included, gaped at him, Emmaline said a prayer of thanksgiving and listened to the sound of her own thudding heart.
He’d come.
Tears wet her lashes, and she squeezed her eyes more tightly shut.
He’d come.
Against all odds, just as he’d said, he’d come.
The bittersweet distraction of him these last days felt suddenly inconsequential in the face of the real him, tall and confident and standing in the doorway.
He’d come.
From the chair beside her, Teddy said, “Beau.”
“Hello, Teddy,” he answered, his voice gentl
e and strong and a little bit ironical. “I’d hoped to find you here. Egad, look at the children. There must be ten of them if there is one. However do you manage them all? Most children, in my experience, are prone to bite. Is this a particularly feral lot?”
Little Eleanor, the duke’s third-youngest daughter, answered him right away. “Teddy cannot talk, sir, but I can. I should be happy to tell you the names of all my brothers and sisters who are biters.”
He knelt to the little girl’s level and squinted at her playfully. “You have the look of a biter yourself, madam. I hope you don’t mind my saying. Can I count on you to protect me if the mood in this room turns savage?”
“But I don’t know what savage means,” Eleanor informed him, devouring his attention. Other children began to close in on him, crawling to pull up on his knee or grab his waistcoat or smear butter on his boot. The nursemaids fluttered forth, whispering apologies and casting furtive glances at him while they endeavored to pull the children back. He assured them they were no bother and reached out to pat the children’s heads or extend an index finger for the smallest one to grab.
Just when Emmaline thought her love for him had stopped her heart, it beat again and felt a little larger each time. For him. All for him.
He looked up at her, and he caught her gaze. The force of that look made her feel as if the two of them shared all the secrets of the world, past and present. That they were one, they knew, and that everything would be all right.
But now she heard footsteps in the hallway, and a glance, however forceful, did little to alleviate the impending confrontation, whatever it may be. They both rose—Teddy too—with Beau shoving up from the floor.
A shout echoed in the hallway. “He was warned, Your Grace. Wait in the front hall, I told him, until I learned your preference.” This was Neils, the butler.
Next came scrambling footfalls, the sight of a footman dashing past the open doors, and the indiscernible bluster of the Duke of Ticking, already in a full-blown rage from one floor above.
Teddy tensed at the sound, and Emmaline asked the kindest and most reasonable of the nursemaids, Becky, if she might take Teddy and the older children to the garden.
“I’ve brought Miss Breedlowe in the carriage,” Beau told her instead. “Teddy only need reach her in the entryway. She’s disappointed me, I must say, by refusing to wander the halls without the duke’s or duchess’s ‘express invitation’ or some such. I was given no choice but to abandon her by the door.”
“Oh, thank God,” whispered Emmaline, and she entreated Becky to take Teddy to Jocelyn, just three rooms away. The girl nodded and quickly gathered up the youngest of the Crumbley children, beckoned to Teddy, and slipped with them from the room.
When Teddy was safely gone, she looked at Beau.
“Sorry for the delay, Duchess,” he told her with a wink, “but special licenses are not as easy to procure as one would think. Took some doing, but I have it.” He patted his lapel. “It all came together in the eleventh hour. One of Elisabeth’s vicars has agreed to manage the thing this afternoon, if you can believe it.”
Emmaline took a small step forward, trying to comprehend what he’d said. “Today?”
The footsteps in the hallway grew louder, and Beau leaned from the door to look. “Unless you have other plans.” He glanced around the toy- and child-filled room.
“But . . . but whatever can we say to the duke and duchess?”
Surely it would not be this easy. Surely he could not simply wave a paper and free her and Teddy from the duke’s avaricious clutches.
“The less, the better, I think,” he said, “under the circumstances. Although it sounds as if he might be keen for some word.”
“Quite so.” She took another step forward. “But how will we—”
“To be honest,” he said, cutting her off, “I don’t relish the idea of speaking plainly to him or anyone. The longer we linger, the greater chance that I will muck it up. We can send for your and Teddy’s things, or you can run up and fetch them now. Either way, make haste. I’d rather not stand around and pretend I’m equipped to debate a bloody duke.”
Now the butler’s voice rang down the hall. “You, sir, have not been admitted to the family rooms of this house!”
She winced and took another step toward him. “But is it real?” she whispered.
“Quite real, Duchess,” he said, but he made a gesture of hurry up, hurry up. “God help you, it is real.” His blue eyes bore straight into her heart. “Will you come with me?”
Emmaline allowed only two seconds for the words to sink in, and then she nodded, backed away from him, and ran for her and Teddy’s rooms at the very top of the stairs.
After the stabbing fear of Emmaline’s potential rejection, Beau needed only to manage his anxiety about confronting the bloody Duke of Ticking. Beau wasn’t afraid of the man, certainly, but he could hardly fight him hand to hand, here in his own home. Here, he’d be expected to argue with him. He’d played dumb at the ball and slipped away but not now. Now he should say something strident and lasting and authoritative.
His brother had tried to advise him on how to respectfully but firmly appeal to the duke, beginning with a purposeful stride into Ticking’s foyer, and ending in an imposing pose behind the closed door of Ticking’s library.
Bollocks. Beau’s nightmares rolled out in exactly this fashion, and he would not relive the scene in the light of day with a living, breathing tyrant like the Duke of Ticking.
Instead, Beau had approached the ducal townhome in much the same way he approached a brothel he targeted for a raid—make no warning, explain nothing, don’t linger. In and out before they fully grasped that they’d been hit.
It was unrealistic, he’d predicted, to expect to make no excuse to the duke, but he’d be damned if he would sit politely across from him in a bloody library and beg his bloody pardon. Beau had a special license—the acquisition of which was easily the most official and binding thing he’d ever bothered to do—and Bryson’s solicitor assured him he was on solid ground, marrying her. She was a widow, and her late husband had not imposed a legal guardian over her. All the heavy-handed control had been the presumption of the duke.
Beau had intended to tell this to His Grace in as few words as possible and then be gone. Hopefully, Emmaline would not linger. Certainly the fewer gray or black garments she elected to bring along, the better.
But now the moment of reckoning was upon him, and an incensed butler had intercepted him as he slipped from the drawing door to herd him, with the help of a contingent of footmen, to the front door. The Duke of Ticking stomped down a grand staircase at the same time, still tugging on a brocade morning jacket. A harried valet fussed behind him like a moth.
“What is the meaning of this, sir?” bellowed Ticking. “Charging into my home uninvited and demanding an audience with a widow in deep mourning? After the spectacle you made at the ball on New Year’s Eve?”
Beau decided this was more of a rhetorical question, and he elected not to answer. He allowed the duke’s outrage to reach center stage instead. The older man marched up to him with his chest puffed out like one of Teddy’s birds.
“You will leave at once,” the duke hissed.
“Careful,” Beau warned, standing his ground.
“How dare you come into my home without so much as a word to me?”
“Oh, I’ve asked to come in.” Beau kept an eye on the stairs. Come on, Emma; come on, Emma . . .
“The hell you have,” said Ticking. “I’d never heard of you in my life, and then you turn up at that bloody ball and dupe my wife and daughters into believing you are a gentleman.”
“I see the confusion,” said Beau. “You mean, how dare I not ask you? This point is well taken. I didn’t ask you.”
The duke was turning an odd shade of purple. “Whom did you ask?”
Beau chuckled, dropping his hat on his head. “Why, Teddy Holt, of course.”
“The idiot Teddy H
olt?” bellowed Ticking. “He gave you permission to call on my home?”
Beau glanced at the staircase again and saw Emmaline, thank God. He stepped to the side to extend a hand to her. She hurried down the staircase with two bags and a case.
“No, not that,” Beau answered. “Of course I’d never bother Teddy with a permission to call. I asked Teddy for his sister’s hand in marriage.”
Emmaline was upon them now, her hand outstretched. Beau took the largest bag, lodged it beneath his arm, and then grabbed hold of her hand. She looked more determined than afraid, and Beau was bolstered by her courage.
The duke shouted, “Marry her? Absolutely not! That’s preposterous! And indecent! I forbid it.”
Beau dropped Emmaline’s hand long enough to pull a copy of the special license from his coat pocket. He slapped it flat against the duke’s brocade morning jacket. “Not yours to forbid, Your Grace. I would thank you for these last eighteen months of her life in your care, but thinly veiled captivity did not really suit her.”
And while the duke scrambled to unseal the license, Beau reclaimed Emmaline’s hand, reached for the door handle, told the butler, “Stand aside, or you will regret it,” and pulled the two of them through the door.
They were gone in the next moment. He gestured to Miss Breedlowe and Teddy and whistled to his brother’s coachman. The carriage door shut behind them, the team of horses lurched forward, and they clattered from Portman Square before the Duke of Ticking—the copy of the marriage license trembling in his hands—had even read the first line.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
The notion of getting married with only two hours’ notice had never occurred to Emmaline, nor had a Thursday afternoon wedding, in the near-empty sanctuary of a modest church in Watford.
She’d been married to the late Duke of Ticking in St. Paul’s, of course, in front of three hundred guests, in a ceremony that had taken her mother nearly a year to plan. The cost of her wedding gown alone had exceeded fifty pounds, with semiprecious stones sewn into the neckline and a coronet on her head that twinkled with real diamonds.
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