Forever and a Duke

by Grace Burrowes

  She gazed back, feeling the perspiration trapped against her skin. “Yes.”

  “I am familiar with the project. I understand that there are two artists to be hired for the work. I also understand that the architect overseeing the project has already selected one.”

  “Yes. And I would like to be the other. My work is as good as or better than anything currently on display at the Royal Academy. But—”

  “You are a woman,” he finished for her.

  “Yes.” A woman and a lady. Slowly suffocating under the crushing limitations that both imposed.

  He turned from her to study the painting, his elegant fingers drumming slowly on the head of his walking stick again. “I would agree with you, you know. That your work is better. This copy really is quite astounding,” he said. “There are very, very few in the world who would notice the minute technical discrepancies between this and a true Van Dyck.” He paused. “It must have taken you some time to paint.”

  “Yes.” But time she had in spades. Months and months of exile to the countryside every year assured that. Yet each of those months was time that she was left alone with her pigments and oils, her turpentine and canvases. Months every year in which she continued to be ignored and was allowed to covertly perfect her craft and proficiency.

  “Your application of asphaltum is masterful,” King murmured. “So few forgers can get that last step right.” His eyes drifted back from the painting toward her, and he fell silent.

  Somewhere in the room, a clock ticked into the quiet, small noises marking the passage of time as more of Charlotte’s life slipped by her.

  “I’ll have the original,” King said suddenly as if coming to a decision. “Because I do not sell forgeries.”

  Charlotte felt a tiny ember of hope ignite amid all the trepidation. “I can get it—”

  “I don’t need you to fetch it for me, Lady Charlotte. I employ professionals for such menial tasks.” He smiled another empty smile. “You can keep your copy.”

  “Then you’ll help me in exchange for the painting?”

  “My assistance will cost you more than a single painting, Lady Charlotte.” He set his walking stick against the side of the desk.

  The tiny hairs on the back of her neck rose. She forced herself to remain still, even as she wondered just how far she would be willing to go. Just how much she would be willing to sacrifice for the opportunity to escape—

  “You look pale, my lady.” The bastard sounded like he was enjoying this.

  Charlotte forced herself to hold his gaze. “A mere trick of the light, I assure you,” she replied steadily.

  King moved silently out from behind the desk to stop before Charlotte. He raised his hand, his fingers stopping a breath away from her face. Charlotte could feel every muscle in her body go rigid. Yet she didn’t move. His fingertips descended, grazing the sharp edge of her cheekbone, a gesture that was terrifying for all its gentleness.

  “I am not for sale,” she said, her words sounding like they were coming from a great distance.

  King’s lips curled, as if he found her defiance amusing. “Everyone is for sale, my lady. For the right price.” His hand dropped, and he turned away from her.

  Charlotte remembered to breathe as King returned to the other side of his desk. He once again stopped, the fingers that had caressed her face now sliding over the top of a gilded box set on the edge of his desk. The ruby ring on his little finger glinted a macabre bloodred. “Consider my assistance a retainer for your future services, my lady. Your artistic services,” he clarified silkily. “A painting of my choosing to be executed to my satisfaction. Skilled forgers are far more difficult to procure than skilled whores.”

  Charlotte felt suddenly weak, as though she had just emerged unscathed from a reckless, dangerous battle she hadn’t been sure she would survive.

  “Do you agree to the terms, Lady Charlotte?”

  The hope that had been snuffed suddenly flared again. “Yes, of course. Whatever you need. I promise.”

  A red-gold brow rose slowly, as if measuring the sincerity of her response. “Be careful what you promise, my lady. Circumstances can change and make promises difficult to keep.”

  Charlotte swallowed hard. “Of course.”

  “I do not tolerate disloyalty. Nor do I suffer fools, or those who possess loose lips and wagging tongues. Such individuals are invariably silenced at the bottom of the Thames, and neither your gender nor your title will offer you protection.”

  “I understand.” And she did. It should horrify her, this entire conversation and her willingness to embrace the shadows of a world where she understood little. And perhaps she was selling her soul to the very devil, but it was better than continuing on the way she had been for the past twenty-three years of her life. She needed to do this. Break herself out of her cage. There was no white knight thundering to her rescue, ready to sweep her away and make her dreams come true. That was on her. And no matter the cost, it would be worth it, ten times over.

  “For your sake, I hope so.” King pulled a desk drawer open and withdrew a sheet of paper. “You’ve heard of the Haverhall School for Young Ladies?” he asked without looking up.

  “Yes,” Charlotte replied. Everyone had heard of Haverhall. The most exclusive finishing school for young ladies in all of Britain. A place where only the most elite and most wealthy of families sent their daughters to prepare them for a life as a society wife. A school that had been deemed a waste of time and money for Charlotte by her parents, given her dismal prospects.

  “Then you will be familiar with the school’s headmistress? Baron Strathmore’s sister, Miss Clara Hayward?”

  “I’ve never met her.” Charlotte had only heard all the rumors that everyone else had about the obscenely wealthy Hayward family. That Clara Hayward, a woman of stunning beauty and flawless deportment, had had any chance of a good marriage destroyed by her excessive and unconventional education. That her younger sister, Rose, a gifted artist, had similarly been compromised. Though Rose had been, for a brief time, improbably engaged to the son of a viscount until he was killed at Waterloo, and Rose all but disappeared from the public eye. The baron himself, Harland Hayward, had married, though his unorthodox insistence to continue working as a physician had angered his highborn wife until the day she had met her own scandalous demise.

  Though what the Haywards or a ladies’ finishing school could do for Charlotte was beyond her comprehension.

  “Your unfamiliarity will be remedied shortly.” King finished writing after a few minutes and set his quill aside. “The baron, or more likely, Miss Hayward, will call upon you.” He folded the paper and reached for the wax. “I can’t imagine it will take longer than a few days. They will have instructions for you then, and I suggest that you go along with whatever it is that will be presented to you.”

  Charlotte frowned. “I don’t understand.”

  King sealed the letter and reached for his quill again. “The baron is not everything he seems. And he owes me a significant favor, though that bit of information will stay between us if this is to work. At no point in time should my name ever come up in conversation outside this room. You may consider that your first test of loyalty, understood?”

  Charlotte nodded.

  “Very good.” With precise movements, King wrote Dr. Hayward across the front. He reached back and pulled on a tasseled rope hanging near the wall behind the desk. In moments, a man the size of a gorilla materialized, and King handed him the letter. “Have this delivered to the good doctor, please.”

  The gorilla nodded and vanished with disconcerting speed.

  Charlotte frowned. “If the doctor—baron is to assist, won’t he need to see my work? A portfolio? How will he know that—”

  King folded his hands on the desk and fixed his pale, icy gaze on her once more. “One, the baron is only a single cog in this wheel that has now been set in motion. Second, my endorsement of you and your work will be sufficient. Unless, of cours
e, you give me a reason to withdraw it.”

  Charlotte nodded, biting her lip.

  “I hope you never give me that reason, Lady Charlotte. For I believe this arrangement has the potential to be mutually beneficial.”

  “I understand. You have my word,” she replied, ignoring the small voice in her head that was demanding her to acknowledge the enormity of what she had just done. “And my thanks,” she said instead. “For your assistance.”

  King sat back in his chair, his face expressionless. “Do not make me regret it.”

  Chapter 2

  Lady Charlotte? Are you here?”

  The question came from somewhere behind the towering rose trellises, the blooms, along with the warmth that had sustained them, now faded in the grip of fall. Charlotte shot to her feet, pulling her cloak tightly around her against the chill in the air. She’d come out to the deserted gardens in the watery sunshine because she couldn’t stand to be trapped in the house any longer, pacing and waiting and pacing some more. Three days had passed since she’d returned from her clandestine visit to King and she’d been on tenterhooks ever since, waiting for a visit she wasn’t sure would ever come from a woman she didn’t know.

  “I’m here,” she replied, trying her best to arrange her features into normalcy.

  The housekeeper rounded the garden path, her usually pinched face looking unusually befuddled, her arms wrapped around her middle against the cold. “You have a caller,” the woman said, sounding perplexed. “She’s been shown into the orange drawing room. Your aunt is already there.”

  Charlotte felt her heart skip, and she willed her expression to remain serene, as though callers for her were regular fixtures. In truth, the housekeeper had every right to be perplexed. Charlotte never had callers. Of any sort. The only time that she supposed there were visitors to their London home was when her parents were in residence, and Charlotte hadn’t seen her parents in almost three years. They never came to Aysgarth and spent little time in London. Currently, they were wintering somewhere on the sunny shores of Spain, leaving Charlotte in the temporary company of an aunt who rarely left her rooms and never had even a passing interest in her niece.

  Charlotte spun and hurried through the gardens and into the house, tossing her cloak aside and stopping just outside the door to the drawing room. She could see her aunt installed on the orange-and-yellow settee, the lace trim of her cap drooping over her gaunt face, a woolen blanket folded over her lap.

  A soft, melodic voice that Charlotte didn’t recognize drifted from the room, but from her vantage, she could not see the owner. She smoothed the flyaway hair back from her face as best she could and brushed a dead leaf from her skirts. She squared her shoulders and stepped through the doorway.

  Her aunt gazed up at her and blinked, as though she couldn’t understand where Charlotte had come from or why she was here. “I thought you were already gone to Aysgarth,” she said, and it sounded more like an accusation, as though she found Charlotte’s continued presence offensive.

  “Not yet, Aunt,” Charlotte replied absently, her attention already fixed on the other woman in the room.

  She was clad in a simple day dress the color of claret, which made her flawless skin glow. She had rich mahogany hair and dark eyes that met Charlotte’s with frank directness. Confidence and poise positively radiated from her, transforming her classical beauty into something far more striking.

  Clara Hayward. Baron Strathmore’s sister and headmistress of Haverhall. She could be no other.

  Excitement crackled through her.

  “Lady Charlotte, it is lovely to see you again,” Miss Hayward greeted with an ease that made it sound like they were old acquaintances, simply picking up a conversation that they had failed to finish earlier that morning.

  “Indeed,” Charlotte offered, a polite smile plastered on her face.

  “I knew nothing about these plans of yours, Charlotte,” her aunt warbled from where she sat, sounding grieved. “Someone should have told me. Nobody tells me anything.”

  “My plans?” she asked carefully.

  “Don’t be coy, Charlotte. It’s not attractive.” Her aunt sniffed. “I was not advised that you had applied to Haverhall. Your parents mentioned nothing of this to me before they left me here.”

  Charlotte gazed at her aunt. “An unfortunate oversight, I’m sure,” she murmured.

  “I must take the blame for any confusion,” Miss Hayward interrupted smoothly. “For it was I who belatedly recommended that Lady Charlotte apply to our program.”

  “Isn’t she a little long in the tooth for a finishing school?” her aunt muttered waspishly, the lace on her cap drooping farther over her eyes.

  “Not at all,” Miss Hayward replied, her pleasant smile not wavering. “Lady Charlotte’s artistic skill is highly regarded. She has come recommended to us through numerous society channels as a young lady who possesses the maturity and poise to act as a mentor of sorts to our younger students. A very enviable position, I assure you.”

  Charlotte blinked at her polished delivery. Her aunt seemed unsure what to do.

  “This specialized term will run over the next twelve weeks,” Miss Hayward had continued, without giving anyone a chance to respond. “It is, of course, similar to our exclusive summer program. And like our summer program, it will also be hosted in Dover, at Avondale House. Aside from art, our curriculum will further develop skills that are equally as refined as the young ladies who take part.” Miss Hayward directed another smile at her aunt. “These specialized terms get so many worthy applicants, and as such, we must take great care to select only those most suitable.” She paused. “In fact, earlier today, I explained the exact same thing to the Duke of Holloway’s sister, Lady Anne.”

  “The Duke of Holloway?” Her aunt sat up a little straighter, and Charlotte shot Miss Hayward a surreptitious glance from under her lashes. Had the baron’s sister done that on purpose? she wondered. Dropped the Holloway name because the bachelor duke had become a symbol of the sort of wealth and power that was coveted in all corners of Britain?

  “Indeed. The Lady Anne has expressed interest in our Dover programs. As have the daughters of both the Marquess of Pevendel and the Earl of Marchant. An illustrious group of young women, one in which the Edgerton name fits well, don’t you agree?”

  “Yes,” her aunt managed, looking a little overwhelmed.

  “We are holding the last spot in this upcoming term for Lady Charlotte,” Miss Hayward said briskly. “If she wants it. But I must have a decision, for we will be departing almost immediately. And there are dozens of other young ladies vying for—”

  “Of course she wants it.” Her aunt stopped, her colorless lips thinning, a look of utter distaste crossing her face. “Wait. Do I have to go with her?”

  “No. Haverhall’s students are, as always, impeccably chaperoned. We also employ skilled lady’s maids to assist the students, and Avondale House has a sterling staff at our disposal.”

  “Well, I suppose that’s something then.” Charlotte’s aunt sat back against the settee, looking appeased. “I despise traveling, you know.” She smoothed the wool over her legs and glanced sourly at Charlotte.

  Miss Hayward stood. “Can you be ready to depart to Dover this afternoon, Lady Charlotte?”

  Charlotte recognized that it wasn’t really a question, even though Dover was nowhere close to where she needed to be.

  Go along with whatever it is that will be presented to you, King’s voice echoed in her head. “Yes.”

  “Very good.” Miss Hayward nodded. “You may bring a single trunk of clothing and toiletries. I would strongly suggest that you pack any and all art supplies that you feel you may need in another.”

  “I understand,” Charlotte replied, not really understanding anything.

  “Please present yourself at Haverhall by three o’clock, Lady Charlotte,” Miss Hayward said, moving past her. “We will travel to Dover from there. I do hope you will enjoy your experience w
ith us.”

  * * *

  Haverhall School for Young Ladies had once been a grand manor home before it had been converted into a school. It sat on a lush parcel of land just beyond the northwest corner of London, complete with gently rolling hills, fish-filled ponds, expansive gardens, and a handful of cottages. Charlotte looked around her at the pretty blue drawing room she had been deposited in, holding on to the pretty rose-patterned teacup a pretty maid had provided her with, and wondered how any of this prettiness fit into what she was about to undertake.

  “Lady Charlotte.”

  Charlotte started, almost splashing tea over the edge of her cup. She set the cup aside and looked up to find Clara Hayward standing just inside the door, a petite, copper-haired woman at her side, a leather-wrapped bundle in her arms.

  “Welcome to Haverhall,” Miss Hayward said. “Allow me to introduce my sister, Rose. Rose, this is Lady Charlotte. Rose will be helping you with your transformation. She’s got quite the eye for…appearances, shall we say.”

  Charlotte scrambled to her feet, stepping around her trunk and feeling like a bloody Amazon warrior next to the slight form of Rose Hayward. And a dull witted one at that. For nothing that had come out of Clara Hayward’s mouth after her introduction had made any sense.

  Rose was studying Charlotte thoughtfully with the same dark eyes that her sibling possessed. “My brother tells me you’re a very accomplished artist. A Renaissance specialist, as it were.”

  “Yes,” Charlotte replied simply, remembering that this was the Hayward sister known for her own artistic ability.

  “You must be for him to go to such lengths on your behalf. There was no lack of competition for the St. Michael’s commission.” Rose’s eyes lingered on her, considering, though not unkind. “I would like to see your work sometime,” she said.

  “I would like that, Miss Hayward.”