When You Wish Upon a Duke (6 page)

“Forgive me, my lady, but it’s come for Lady Charlotte,” the footman said. “The man who brought it said it must be given to her directly, my lady, and since he wore Marchbourne livery—”

“Charlotte!” Aunt Sophronia called. “Stop drooping by that window and come here.”

But Charlotte was already hurrying across the room. The footman held an oversized willow hamper, which he gingerly set on the carpet before her. She unfastened the top and peered inside.

“A basket of straw?” asked Aunt Sophronia, mystified. “The duke has sent you
straw
? Whatever could be the meaning of that?”

“I’ll wager there’s something buried within,” Charlotte said, plunging her hand deep into the straw. Immediately she touched something cool and round, something glass. She thrust her other hand into the straw and carefully drew the object out.

And sighed with awe.

In her hands was a glass globe, fastened to a squat vase of Chinese porcelain. Rising from the vase was a rounded arrangement of the most exquisite white roses she’d ever seen, the buds just begun to open.

Carefully she set the vase on the table and lifted away the globe. The heady scent of the roses filled the air, sweeter than any perfume, and Charlotte leaned over it, breathing deeply. She saw the card then, tucked among the blossoms, and drew it free. The pasteboard was heavy and cream-colored, and marked with a ducal coronet. But all she saw was his writing, an elegant dash across the card:

For my fair forest nymph
,
Until I might show you these roses as they bloom in our garden at Greenwood
.
Your servant
,
M
.

Charlotte read it, read it again, and then pressed the card to her breast with delight. She was his fair forest nymph, and the roses had come from
their
garden: oh, had any gentleman ever sent a more pleasing gift, or written a more perfect missive?

“I could ask you to read that aloud, Charlotte,” Aunt Sophronia said dryly. “It is not proper for you to receive correspondence from a gentleman without my permission.”

“Oh, please, no, Aunt!” Charlotte cried, dancing backward with the note clutched tight in her hands. To share
it would be to lessen its magic; the words were from him, for her, and no one else. “But I promise you that His Grace has no wish to end our betrothal, none at all.”

“That is agreeable news, I suppose.” Aunt Sophronia bent over the flowers, giving them a perfunctory sniff. “But I still maintain that the sooner the wedding, the better.”

Three days later, March sat in his carriage and cursed the snarl of wagons, coaches, and other conveyances that blocked his path to Bond Street. Ordinarily he would not be in such haste to reach a mantua-maker’s shop, and in general he avoided similar nests of swarming females as if they harbored the plague itself. Yet because he’d been told that one particular female was inside this particular shop, he could think of little else, to the point that he almost—
almost
—threw aside propriety and expectations and jumped from his carriage to walk the remainder of his journey.

But then, patience had never been one of his virtues, and these last three days had tested him greatly. The wrench to his shoulder when he’d fallen from the tree with Lady Charlotte had been nothing: an uncomfortable sprain, no worse than others he’d suffered before falling from a horse. The blow to his head, however, had been deemed sufficiently dangerous that he’d been confined to his bed with the curtains drawn and doctors hovering like vultures in his bedchamber.

So much idle time for reflection had been dangerous, too. Lying there in the dark, he’d played his first disastrous meeting with Lady Charlotte over and over in his mind, wincing at every inane word he’d uttered and every false step he’d literally taken. He’d even worried
that the roses he’d sent from the Greenwood garden—and the trial of writing the card with his aching head—was another blunder, an old-fashioned gesture that a girl such as Lady Charlotte would dismiss. He hadn’t been able to tell her true feelings from the note of thanks she’d sent the next day, the formal words so clearly dictated by her aunt.

In fact, his greatest fear had been that she’d dismiss
him
. Ever since his father had announced his betrothal, Lady Charlotte Wylder had been a comforting, convenient nonentity. When he was a boy, a distant mother and a lack of siblings had limited his opportunities to learn of female mysteries, and he hadn’t really trusted the women whose company, however pleasurable, had been purchased. It had all made him uncomfortably shy among ladies, and Lady Charlotte had become his protection.

Because of her, he didn’t have to hear how, even as a duke, he was an unsuitable match for young ladies from older, more noble families because his great-grandmother had been Nan Lilly, an actress and a whore. Lady Charlotte’s impeccable name had protected him against the less discerning women, too. It had spared him from dancing with his friends’ sisters on school holidays, and delivered him from having to make the dreary bachelor rounds of balls and routs in London and Bath. Ambitious mothers with daughters to marry off avoided him, and the daughters themselves ignored him. He owed a sizable debt of gratitude to Lady Charlotte for this, and had always considered himself fortunate to have such a useful phantom in his life.

But now that phantom had a face, and a deliciously tempting body, too, that had haunted his headachy dreams. She
was
beautiful in a fresh and unstudied way, and when she’d laughed, it had been the merriest enchantment he’d ever heard. He’d also realized that other
gentlemen would likely feel this way about her, too. Betrothal or not, her aunt the dowager dragon would make certain she was launched into society with a grand splash. Because he was himself wealthy, he’d never paid much attention to Lady Charlotte’s portion, but her worth was sufficient to make her a prize heiress. If a more attractive suitor appeared, he’d no doubt that Lady Sanborn would contrive a way to break the engagement.

He could not let that happen. Because when Lady Charlotte Wylder had smiled at him, her cheeks rosy and her face dappled with sunlight, he’d realized with a jolt that he didn’t wish simply to fulfill his obligation and marry her. He wanted to win her heart.

Which was why, when March had finally risen this morning with a clear head, he had escaped the hovering doctors and come straight to London, and now, at last, was stepping down from his carriage and through the green-painted door of Mrs. Damaris Cartwright, mantua-maker to ladies.

He hadn’t been inside a mantua-maker’s shop since he was a boy, attending his mother. It wasn’t much different from the tailor shops he visited: neat counters with cushioned stools before them; rows of shelves with goods in boxes, bolts of costly cloth, and coils of ribbon; and several artful displays of finished gowns to tempt the customers.

What was different from his tailor’s, however, was that the shop was occupied entirely by women, both behind the counters and before them and fluttering in the open spaces as well. As soon as he entered, all conversation stopped as every last one of them turned to look at him. No, they
stared
at him, as if he were some curious beast in the Tower menagerie. He wasn’t imagining it, either. Almost in unison, they curtseyed to him, the soft
shush
of silk the only sound in the shop. Across from where he stood hung a large looking glass, and in it he
saw his reflection: his tall, serious, male self, dressed in dark blue superfine with engraved silver buttons, his still-tender arm cradled in a sling contrived from a maroon silk scarf, standing like some righteous old Turk over a dozen obsequious women.

And yet, in the way of luck, there was not a hint of the woman he wished most to see. Blast, what he’d give now to be able to make a swift and honorable retreat back to the pavement!

“Good day, Your Grace, good day!” An older woman bustled forward from the back hall to greet him, elegant in dove-gray silk with a silver chatelaine and a worked pinball hanging from her waist. He wasn’t surprised she already knew who he was; most likely one of her stitching-spies had seen the crest on his carriage and reported back to her. “I am Mistress Cartwright, sir, your humble servant in all concerns of correct fashion. How might we serve you this day, sir? What may we offer to please a special lady? We’ve silk lutestring fresh from Paris, as well as a shipment of castor fur for trimming, direct from Quebec and the most lustrous ever I’ve seen.”

“Ah, thank you, Mrs. Cartwright, no,” March said, clearing his throat. He wished all these women would return to their chatter and stop gawking at him as if he were some actor on the stage. “I’ve come to your shop to meet a special lady, not to, ah, please one with castor fur.”

Mrs. Cartwright smiled and made a graceful sweeping motion with her head, offering everything to him. “Many gentlemen attend us with that express purpose, sir. Though perhaps in time you will wish to please the one you meet with a remembrance from our shelves.”

Damnation, that sounded more like he’d come to survey the goods in a bagnio, not a mantua-maker’s shop.

“I had hoped to converse with Lady Charlotte Wylder while you were attending her,” he said hurriedly; he was not the sort of gentleman who preyed upon humble
seamstresses or milliners for diversion. “But since Lady Charlotte is not here at present, I will—”

“But her ladyship is indeed here, sir,” Mrs. Cartwright said. “She is in one of our parlors, having the final fittings for several new gowns. Lady Sanborn is with her as well. Shall I send word to them that you are here, sir, and wish to join them?”

“During the, ah, fitting?” he asked, startled by the prospect. Most specifically, he thought of Lady Charlotte’s scarlet stays.

Mrs. Cartwright nodded, far too polite and too experienced a tradeswoman to show that she noticed his discomfiture.

“It is often done, sir,” she murmured, “particularly during the final fittings. There is no immodesty in a gentleman witnessing the last adjustments. If you’ll excuse me, sir, I’ll speak with Lady Sanborn. I am certain she’ll be delighted to have you join them.”

March was just as certain that nothing would delight Lady Sanborn less than to have him pursue Lady Charlotte all the way to a fitting with her mantua-maker, but now that he’d come this far, he wouldn’t back away. Besides, as Mrs. Cartwright had said, Lady Sanborn could hardly refuse to see him. It wasn’t as if she could pretend she wasn’t at home.

He watched Mrs. Cartwright glide quickly into the back of the shop, leaving him among the shimmering little pool of women. But once again Lady Charlotte had worked her magic. As soon as he had mentioned her name, the others had lost interest in him and his doings and had returned to their own purchases and conversations. At least the fashionable world seemed to regard the lady as still belonging to him.

“The ladies would be honored to have you join them, sir,” Mrs. Cartwright said, ushering him back through the shop. “This way, sir, if you please.”

March followed her down the narrow hall, decorated with prints of great ladies in even greater gowns and smelling faintly of flowery powder and sweet perfumes. It all gave him the distinct and unfamiliar sensation of entering some female sanctum sanctorum; as privileges went, he realized he rather liked it, too.

“Here, sir,” Mrs. Cartwright said, opening a door to him. “My lady, His Grace the Duke of Marchbourne.”

“Good day, Duke.” The countess rose from her armchair and curtseyed, her smile chilly. “What an honor to discover you here, of all places.”

“I’m the one who is honored, Lady Sanborn,” he said, his gaze already turned from her to Lady Charlotte.

She was standing in the center of the small room, swallowed up by a gown so large it covered most of the floor. The gown was one of those outlandish silk extravaganzas worn at court and nowhere else, with yards of pale rose satin supported by the hoops that gave ladies the look of campaign tents. Two startled seamstresses had been crouched at Lady Charlotte’s feet, pinning some sort of serpentine silver frippery along the hem, while another held the ruffled sleeve that she’d been ready to attach to the gown.

Yet all the costly display still couldn’t take away from Lady Charlotte’s own beauty. She was even more lovely than he remembered. Her cheeks had pinked and her eyes had lit as soon as he entered, and her smile was filled with such warmth and eagerness that he could scarce believe it was for him. All the doubts and misgivings that had plagued him these last days and nights vanished in an instant—or at least they would if he could speak to her alone.

“Good day, Your Grace,” she said, her voice betraying a hint of charming shyness. “Did you come here just to see me?”

“What a bold question to ask of a gentleman, Charlotte!”
scolded the countess, rolling her eyes with a dramatic show of dismay.

Any moment March expected the smoke and flames to spew from her dragon’s nose. What would it take to make her leave them alone? He knew it wasn’t considered proper, especially since in theory they’d not even been introduced, but damnation, he was already bound to marry the lady. He supposed he could try ordering the dragon away, but even given the differences in their rank, he wasn’t sure she’d leave Lady Charlotte unattended.