“But you could not want me,” she whispered back. “I will be a tedious wife to a man like you.”
“Whatever do you mean by that?”
“What about your…mistresses?”
Bloody hell.
“I have no mistresses. Not even one. You have been misinformed.”
“But… But… The women, they said…”
“None of these are things with which you must concern yourself.”
“Oh.” She turned her face against his shoulder. He felt frustration, disgust at himself that he’d made such a muck of his reputation. Curse him for his courtesans and parlors and whores. The only reason he could deny he had a mistress was because a mistress would have displeased Gwendolyn, the one-time love of his life.
“Miss Barrett, I swear to you, I will be a kind and civilized husband. I would not wish you to enter this union in a state of distress.”
She was quiet for some time, her fingers fidgeting against his. When she spoke, it was still in that small, fearful voice that troubled him. “It is only… I am afraid I will be an annoyance and a burden to you. That you will come to…to despise me or…” She hiccoughed violently. “Or feel ashamed of me whenever we are out in company. I am afraid I will make you ashamed, Your Grace. Each and every day. In fact, I’m certain I will. I wish you would not go through with this.”
His fingers tightened on hers. He continued silent because he did not trust himself to speak. He was the one with the black reputation, with the cynical soul. He was the savage and sinner who ought to feel ashamed. Now, with her trembling against him in panic, he thought he could never be worthy of her.
“You will not make me ashamed,” he said gruffly. “I do not want you to worry about such nonsense.”
“It is not nonsense.” She stood and pulled away from him, and crossed to the window. “Right now, they are laughing, you know.”
“Who?”
“Everyone. All the guests here.”
He stood with a frown but stayed where he was. “If they are, they are laughing at both of us. Not only you.”
“I am accustomed to it, but you—”
“Miss Barrett, if you are trying to talk me out of marrying you, I beseech you to stop.” He softened his voice, which had risen with his frustration. “If they are to laugh, I would rather they laugh at us together than apart.”
She turned to him, her blue eyes red-rimmed, glistening with tears. “May I ask you one thing?”
“You may ask me anything.”
“You must answer honestly!”
“I will.”
“Do you think I shall bring you any happiness, Your Grace? Any at all?”
He crossed and stood before her. He put a hand on her arm, then cupped the side of her face.
His wife…
“Because if I c-can,” she stammered, “then I will not f-feel so very—”
It was not at all proper, but he kissed her. Hard. Their first kiss ought to have been a tender sort of thing, planned and executed with the greatest care, but instead he kissed her fiercely, holding her face and pressing his lips right against her trembling mouth. Her lips parted at the slightest pressure, allowing him to delve deeper. To possess her. To quiet her. He put an arm around her to steady her, then sighed and pulled her close. How he longed to trace her curves, to fill his palms with her breasts, but he contented himself with the feel of her solid warmth against his front. He didn’t want to frighten her—he despised himself for this clumsy attack—but once he’d tasted her sweetness it was impossible to draw away.
Make a wish…
He forced himself to gentle his assault. He caressed her cheek, then slid his hand back to stroke the softness of her hair. Her innocent sigh brought his rising erection to instant, painful hardness. He held his body away from hers but still he kissed her, drunk on her loveliness.
“Your Grace,” she whispered when she surfaced for air. He waited for what must follow.
Your Grace, release me. Your Grace, how dare you?
But no such remonstrance came, only a sigh and blush as she touched her lips. Court wondered why he hadn’t done this earlier. Why he hadn’t kissed and caressed her during every one of those endless hours in the carriage, since it was always going to come to this.
This. Him and her. A marriage.
“Now please, dearest Harmony.” It was the first time he’d spoken her given name. He rather liked the feel of it. “Tell me you’ll marry me so I can be at ease.”
She turned her head a little and lifted her chin. “You still haven’t answered my question.”
“I can’t remember the question,” he said, eyeing the bee-stung fullness of her lips.
“Will I bring you happiness? Could a bufflehead like me truly bring you contentment in marriage?” Her fingers curled around his arms. “Tell me the truth.”
He searched for the right words to reassure her, to put her fears to rest. “The responsibility is not all yours. We shall bring one another contentment in marriage. I would like us to try, anyway.”
She blinked, then blinked again. He held her gaze, thinking to himself,
all those eyelashes.
He could not guarantee her a happy marriage, but he would try if she would only agree to try along with him.
“I will marry you then, Your Grace,” she finally said. “I accept.”
She sounded resigned rather than joyous, and she did not smile. It wasn’t the way he’d imagined a lady’s acceptance of his marriage proposal, but matters being what they were, he supposed it must do.
*** *** ***
Humiliatingly, their connection was painted by the gossips as a love match, he the passion-struck fool who could not resist a young lady in such dire need of discipline. The worst of it was, they came awfully close to the point.
Miss Barrett returned to London with her brother, and Court followed a couple weeks later in the company of Mrs. Lyndon and his mother, who was not kindly inclined toward her future daughter-in-law. As the caricatures and
on-dits
hit the town papers, the duchess took to her bed in offended grief. She wailed about the sullying of the Hawthorne name, the destruction of the ducal line with “that willful hussy’s blood.” She refused to receive Miss Barrett or her brother to their house in St. James Square.
Court might have insisted on such niceties, except that Harmony was still struggling with the idea of becoming his wife. Rather than strengthen her objections by exposing her to his mother’s animosity, he called instead twice a week at the Morrow home in Brook Street.
The first few visits were nothing but ducking, stammering, and choked out apologies. She still spoke as if they could extricate themselves from their engagement, even as he tried to orient her to the ongoing plans for the wedding. As he traveled to visit her today, he wondered what he might do to move her past her self-reproach.
What she needed was a lecture and a spanking, but that wasn’t precisely courtship behavior. Too bad, since his spanking hand itched like the devil whenever she was near. Didn’t she realize most of the
ton
’s social-climbing ninnies would give their pincurls to be in her position? Her position as his betrothed, that was, not her inevitable position over his knee.
Well, today he would be firm and insist she set her mind to their union. He braced for battle while one of his footmen delivered his calling card to the door. Moments later Court emerged from the warmth of his carriage to sail into the Morrow residence, following the butler to the small, rather shabby parlor where Miss Barrett and her chaperone received him. The shabbiness of the parlor was always forgotten as soon as Miss Barrett appeared at the door.
She looked sweet as ever, feminine and fresh and possessed of such picturesque curves. Court openly ogled her. This was allowed, surely, to a man regarding his future wife. She was wearing one of the new gowns he’d commissioned from Mrs. Oliver, one of the
ton
’s top modistes. The pale blue suited her nicely and the trimmings and styling were more appropriate to a duke’s future wife.
“Your Grace,” she said with a pretty curtsy.
“Miss Barrett.” Court bowed. “I am delighted to find you so well.”
“I am very well. I have been looking forward to your visit.”
This cursed formality. She sat beside him on the sofa, leaving an appropriate amount of space between them. He would have loved to cross that polite space and draw her into his arms. How he ached to kiss her again, to feel her trembling response. Her innocent curiosity.
I wonder…
He held her hand, the hand he knew as well as his own, for he had traced every vein, every downy hair, every contour of it during their limited times together. It was the only part of her he was allowed by social convention to touch. Once they wed, a few weeks hence, he would be free to know her entire body.
Every vein, every downy hair, every contour…
Court pushed those thoughts aside and drew a bracing breath. Across the room, her dragon of a chaperone scowled.
He leaned close to Harmony’s ear. “What have you told her about me, that she glowers every time I call?”
“It’s not you, Your Grace. She’s peevish to sit with us when she has so many chores to do.”
“Can’t your lady’s maid act as chaperone?”
“I don’t have one.”
“Ah.” Amazing, that she didn’t have a lady’s maid. His mother kept four. “Before we wed, we must advertise and find you a lady’s maid, unless there is someone in this household you’re fond of?” He dared a glance over at the housekeeper and received a sour look for his trouble. “The sunny Mrs. Jenkins?”
“Goodness, no. But you needn’t advertise. I’m not used to having a lady’s maid.”
“You will need a maid to help you manage your wardrobe and your day-to-day affairs, especially as you accustom yourself to your new life.”
She got the sick, worried look on her face he was coming to know all too well. “My day-to-day affairs?”
“As the Duchess of Courtland,” he reminded her gently. “There will be dinners, parties, social events and calls to make. Which reminds me, Mrs. Oliver will be returning this week.”
“Why?”
“You will need more gowns for the upcoming season, and a bridal trousseau. I did not know if you had someone to manage it.” He slid a look at the dragon. No, never her.
“I don’t know a great deal about fashion,” Harmony said. “I—I believe I have quite enough to wear already. Your Grace—”
He cut off her protests before they could be voiced. “Mrs. Oliver is a respected couturier. She knows exactly what a duchess needs to complete her wardrobe. You need only be available for the fittings.”
Harmony seemed to shrink within herself, staring at the floor.
“Are her visits so tedious?” he asked. “Don’t you wish for pretty things?”
“I— Well, I am grateful—ever so grateful for your generosity—”
“It is hardly generosity. Every husband clothes his wife.”
“You ought to have had a better wife,” she burst out, taking her hand from his. “Please, Your Grace, I don’t wish for all these…” She gestured down at her new gown. “All these stylish and fanciful things. Really, a plain style will do better for me.”
“So you might disappear at my side? Become invisible?” He seized her hand again, turning to face her on the patterned divan. “Look at me if you please.” After a hesitant moment, she complied. “You cannot believe that this marriage shall be averted now, at this late date?”
Her eyes skimmed away, but he tightened his hand and she drew them back again.
“There are but weeks until our nuptials. Workers have been hired, orders have been placed. Whole blocks of rooms at St. James and Courtland Manor are being refurbished for your use. The engagement has been announced in the papers and spread in whispers through every salon in town. You must set your mind to the things you cannot change.”
She held his gaze a long moment. He tried to impart a sense of authority and kindness in the face of her fears. He understood she didn’t want this marriage, as insulting as that was. He didn’t want it either in an abstract sense, but more practically, he enjoyed her and was prepared to make the best of things.
“You are speechless,” he said when the silence spun out.
He saw a spark of rebellion in her eyes. “There is not much I am allowed to say, is there? Except that I will go along with what you and everyone else insists I must do?”
“I insist because you will be irreparably harmed otherwise.”
“My reputation will be harmed. I will be fine and you will do much better without me.”
“We shall be married,” he countered. “And all will be well.”
His fiancée gave a great shuddering sigh as if she were being forced to marry a mollusk. “My father has written. He will arrive in town soon to stay until the wedding. He will contribute what he can to the preparations.”
“He needn’t contribute anything.” Court wished she would smile again, as she had when he first arrived. “Why are you so cross?”
“A porter has delivered forty gowns so far,” she said grimly. “Actually, forty-two.”
“You will need twice that or more for an entire season.”
“But the expense—”
“It is nothing.”
Her gaze fell to his lips, then up again. Torment. She fretted over gowns when all he wanted to do was kiss her.
“Lady Darlington said you knew.” She looked at his lips again, the little tease, before her gaze meandered back to his. “She said the whole time we were at the wall, you knew you would have to marry me.”
“Yes.”
Her brows drew together, tiny thinking lines. “Why didn’t you say anything? Why didn’t you…”
“Warn you?” he asked. “You weren’t of a mind to listen. You wanted to go to Newcastle and wouldn’t be persuaded otherwise. Once I took you into the carriage, I accepted that I would have to marry you. You left me no other choice.”
“You could have let me walk,” she said stubbornly.
“No, I couldn’t.” Now he was the one to stare at her lips as he gathered his thoughts. “You spoke to me once of fate, and how we might grasp at chances. I wonder if I wasn’t doing that, now that I look back.”
“I think you were doing what you felt you ought to do.”
“What I had to do. You were my fate. An inescapable consequence.” She looked stricken at that idea. He ran the tip of one finger down her delicate cheekbone, ignoring the chaperone’s faint tsk. “Either way, the outcome is the same. You are going to be my wife. Fate or chance, it makes no matter now. Things will seem strange between us for a while but it won’t be so forever. I am fond of you and you seem to have no great aversion to me, as much as it galls you to become my wife.”