When You Wish Upon a Duke (23 page)

She could faintly hear March calling to her. Of course he’d follow, and she’d a pang of remorse when she remembered how he hadn’t wanted her to race in the park. Yet she didn’t want to be caught, not yet, and besides, it was exciting to have him chasing after her.

Just ahead of her was a thick copse of trees and mulberry bushes, and she swiftly guided the mare away from the open grass, over a shallow gully, and into the shadows of the trees. She didn’t exactly intend to hide from March, but she wouldn’t mind if he had to do a bit of hunting to find her, either. What better way to prove that she was at ease on horseback?

Breathing hard, Charlotte reached forward to pat the mare fondly on her shoulder. She was delighted with the horse for both her speed and her spirit, and she had
to admit that despite all his worry and concern, March had found her an excellent mount. She leaned forward across the horse, craning her neck to look for her husband. She’d expected him to be here by now; she hadn’t had that much of a head start on him. Uneasily she hoped he hadn’t fallen or suffered some other mishap because of her.

“Have you escaped the villain, sweetheart?”

Charlotte gasped and twisted around in her saddle. How had she not heard the man come up behind her? He was thickset and ruddy-faced with sandy hair, and from the way he effortlessly controlled his large black gelding, he was clearly as strong as he appeared. At least from his dress—a dark blue coat with silver buttons and fawn-colored leather breeches, much the same as March’s—he must be a gentleman, though true gentlemen would not come creeping up behind ladies in the park.

“I beg your pardon?” she said in as frosty a voice as she could muster.

“Come now, don’t play coy with me,” he said, smiling warmly. “I saw how you came racing through the trees there. You’d only do that if the devil himself were after your soul. That, or your husband.”

She flushed. “My reasons are none of your affair, sir.”

He laughed. “So it was the husband. Pity. I’d rather it were the devil, with some interesting reason for desiring your soul. Though who could blame him, when there is so much of you worth desiring?”

She gasped again, this time with indignation. “You’ve no right to speak so boldly to me,” she said. “You wouldn’t dare if you knew who I was.”

“You’re a lady who likes to take risks,” he said, sweeping his black cocked hat from his head, “and that’s sufficient for me. John Tinderson, Marquess of Andover, your servant, and your savior, if you’ve need of one.”

“I am the Duchess of Marchbourne,” she said, borrowing
Aunt Sophronia’s haughtiness, “and I need nothing from you, Lord Andover.”

“Marchbourne’s bride?” For a moment he stared in astonishment before he quickly recalled himself, and he bowed as much as he could from his saddle. “Forgive me, Your Grace, I’d no idea. His Grace should take better care of such a prize.”

“He does,” she admitted, not wanting March to be faulted. “Or rather, he tried to. I’m the one who ran away.”

“A runaway bride.” His respectful smile became much friendlier. “If you’re ever in need of a sanctuary, ma’am, please consider my home as yours. I wouldn’t want to think of a lady like yourself wandering about London like a lost lamb.”

“Charlotte!” March appeared around the bushes, and sharply wheeled his horse to a halt to come to her. “Damnation, I’ve been hunting all over for you!”

In the short time Charlotte had known March, she’d judged him to be a temperate man, even mild-mannered, but not now. She’d never seen him so angry, his face flushed and his dark eyes flashing, and at once she realized that absolute contrition was her best—no, her only—course.

“I’m sorry if I caused you trouble, March,” she began, “very sorry, but I only wished—”

“Have you any idea of how I feared for you?” he thundered. “This isn’t Dorset, Charlotte. This is London, and you can’t begin to understand the perils that wait for a woman alone.”

“But I wasn’t alone,” she protested. “At least, not for long. Lord Andover has been with me.”

March stared at the marquess as if seeing him for the first time. “Andover. Good day.”

“Good day, Your Grace,” the marquess said, his expression
cordial. “May I offer my congratulations upon your marriage to this beautiful lady?”

“No, Andover, you may not,” March said curtly. “The last thing I wish is to have my wife dallying in the park with you.”

“Dallying!”
Charlotte exclaimed. She wasn’t sure which was more shocking: his suspicion, or his rudeness toward Andover. “March, I was not dallying. I was waiting for you, and Lord Andover greeted me while I waited. That scarce constitutes
dallying
.”

“It does with Andover.” March continued to glare at the other man, and it was almost as if he’d inexplicably redirected his initial anger at Charlotte toward the marquess. She could sense it like a wall between the two men, so thick that Charlotte wondered if some longheld rivalry existed between them, some ancient, bitter insult that had nothing to do with her.

“I assure you, sir, that there is absolutely no cause for concern on your part,” Lord Andover said, and Charlotte was sure that the marquess’s knowing little smile was not helping his case with March, or hers, either. “Even I can stand before you in perfect innocence, and your lady as well. But I will say that Her Grace rides most splendidly. Perhaps you both would honor my hunt this season.”

“We must decline,” Marchbourne said. “My wife does not hunt.”

“But I’ve always wished to try it,” Charlotte said, hoping that the notion of hunting might distract March into a better humor. “It sounds most exciting.”

“I have declined, madam,” he said, his words brisk and clipped. “Now let us return home, if you please. Good day, Andover.”

Again Lord Andover raised his hat, his smile so winning that Charlotte couldn’t help but smile in return. If there was in fact some bad blood between her husband
and the marquess, then it must be entirely on March’s side, because Lord Andover didn’t seem at all disturbed.

“Now that you reside here in London, ma’am,” he said, “I’ll look forward to the frequent pleasure of your company.”

“That, Andover, will be a pleasure I reserve entirely for myself,” March said, already turning away. “Come, madam.”

The sun had risen high enough to dry the dew and lift the mist, and bright beams slanted through the trees. There were more riders in the park now, as well as babies with their nursemaids and older children tossing bread to the ducks in the canal and flying bright paper kites. From the parade ground in the distance came the martial sound of drums and shouted orders as the Horse Guards held their morning review, and closer by a man trundled his hurdy-gurdy to a prime place beneath a shady tree and began to crank his wheezing, rattling instrument, his hat on the grass for coins.

But despite so much gaiety around them, March rode beside Charlotte in stony silence, a silence Charlotte didn’t dare break until they’d nearly reached Marchbourne House. Mama had always maintained that disagreements were much better dealt with at once, rather than being allowed to fester and grow worse. Although Charlotte was certain that applying the lancet to this particular disagreement was going to be painful, she was determined not to let it poison her marriage any more than it already had.

“I have told you I am sorry for riding off as I did,” she began, “and I’m sorry to have worried you.”

Still his steadfast silence remained, but Charlotte plunged onward.

“I’ve told you, too, that I was innocent of anything beyond a handful of words with Lord Andover. What more do you wish me to say, March?”

He didn’t look at her, but continued to stare resolutely ahead. “Not now, madam. I will not have us observed and gossip spread that we are quarreling already.”

“Why not, when it is true?” she said tartly. “And please do not call me ‘madam,’ as if I were Aunt Sophronia.”

“What else would you have me call you?”

“You could begin with my name,” she said. “Then you could progress to the kinds of things ordinary men call their wives, such as ‘sweetheart,’ or ‘dearest,’ or—”

He drew his horse up sharply, forcing her to do so as well. “Would you like to know what you’ll be called if you insist on familiarity with men like Andover? A strumpet, and a harlot, and a whore, because that is how he treats married women, seducing them and destroying their names so thoroughly that their husbands and children disown them.”

“Did he do that to you, March?” she demanded. “Did he steal away some other lady you fancied?”

He stared at her, appalled. “No, Charlotte, he did not. There has never been any other lady but you.”

“Then why can you not believe that it’s like that for me as well, March? That you are the only gentleman for me?” The curling plume on her hat fluttered forward over her face, and furiously she batted it aside. “If I speak a handful of words to Lord Andover or to your cousin’s mistress, Mrs. Shaw, no harm will come to me. Riding my horse fast will only give me pleasure, not magically transform me into some dreadful, debauched woman.”

“You’re my duchess, Charlotte,” he insisted doggedly. “I can only treat you one way.”

“Why can’t you treat me less like a duchess and more like a woman?” she pleaded. “Why can’t you trust me enough to act for myself? Consider your great-grandmother Nan. She managed to be a woman, a mistress, a mother, an actress,
and
a duchess, and quite nicely, too.”

He flushed. “She had no choice, Charlotte. She was a
base-born wench. You’re a Wylder, from an ancient and honorable family, and your father was an earl.”

“Which only means I have no choices, either.” She couldn’t keep the despair from creeping into her voice. “You want me to be your own precious, fragile version of a duchess, bound so tightly by—by
respectability
that I can scarce breathe.”

“But I wish you to be happy, Charlotte,” he insisted. “Without respectability and honor and regard, no lady can be truly happy.”

She shook her head, wishing more than anything that she could make him understand. He could talk all the day long of being happy, but she was positive that he was no happier than she. Now that his anger had faded, his dark eyes were full of sorrow and confusion. She wished that they could return to that afternoon when they’d been together in the tree, when he’d been gallant and she hadn’t had a care beyond rescuing Fig.

She thought again of her mother, and how, whenever Charlotte and her sisters had quarreled, Mama had always insisted that they pretend they were one another, and see the quarrel through the others’ eyes.

Perhaps that was her difficulty with March. Perhaps she had become so wrapped in her own unhappiness that she hadn’t bothered to see his.

She shifted the mare closer to his horse, both so her hat’s plume would stop blowing and tickling her cheek and so she could reach across to lay her hand lightly on his arm.

“My own husband,” she said softly, though there were no others within hearing. “I’ve never been a duchess, and neither, for that matter, have you. Yet between us lies this saintly, noble ideal of a lady that I doubt I’ll ever match. Was your own mother like that, March? You’ve never spoken of her. Is that whom you wish me to be more like?”

She thought she couldn’t have phrased her question with more gentleness. It was true, too. March had never spoken of his mother, and all Charlotte knew of the previous duchess was how she’d decorated the rooms that now belonged to her.

But while she’d hoped that her question might help her better to understand her husband, it was clear from the stricken look on his face that she’d asked too much.

“My mother was far from anyone’s ideal, Charlotte,” he said, each word clipped sharp by sorrow, “nor was she happy in her married life, not for a day, not for a minute. I would never wish you to be like her. I would never wish that lot on anyone.”

Though surprised, Charlotte didn’t back away, nor did she lift her hand from his arm.

“I’m sorry, March,” she said. “For her, and for you, too.”

He looked away, down at her hand on his sleeve. “I am sorry, too,” he said. “For her. For her.”

Awkwardly he placed his own hand over Charlotte’s—only for a moment, but long enough. Then he turned his horse and began back toward the house.

It was not exactly the answer Charlotte had looked for, but at least it was a beginning, and a beginning was always better than an end.

Later that afternoon, March sat on a narrow, uncomfortable chair in the drawing room of Lady Barbara Finnister, barely listening as Lady Finnister offered an interminable telling of how her husband, Sir Henry, had won five hundred pounds on the turn of a single card at the faro table. The room was stuffy and close with the windows shut, and made stuffier still by the enormous amount of French scent that wafted from Lady Finnister’s person.

The baronet was an old acquaintance and popular at court as well, but this was the first time March had met
this particular Lady Finnister. She was the third wife of twice-widowed Sir Henry, who, to complete the mathematical equation, must be at least three times his young wife’s age. But Lady Finnister was very close in age to Charlotte, which was likely why the two of them were chattering away so freely.

March couldn’t think that they’d have much in common besides their youth, for where Charlotte was as fresh as country cream from Dorset, Lady Finnister was London bred, and so thickly painted and powdered that March couldn’t begin to guess her true colors. He much preferred his Charlotte, and as if sensing his approval, she glanced at him and smiled.

After this morning, he should be thankful that she’d ever smile at him again. When she’d raced away from him in the park, he’d thought the worst he could imagine was finding her lifeless in the grass. Then he’d come across Andover grinning at her like some rakehell wolf with a lamb, and he’d realized that the worst was beyond imagining. To find her with another man, even innocently, had not only shocked him but also wounded him to the core.

No: if he was honest, it had wounded his heart. Because though he’d yet to admit it to Charlotte herself, he was slowly realizing he was falling in love with his wife. He could think of no place he’d rather be than in her company, and when they were apart, all he thought of was how swiftly he could be with her again. When she smiled, he smiled. When she was sad, he felt her unhappiness as keenly as if it were his own. In a few short days, she’d become the centerpiece of his world.