When You Wish Upon a Duke (15 page)

But what Charlotte noticed most was the openness in his face, how as a boy he hadn’t had the guarded reserve that he stood behind now. What had happened between the boy and the man to put that guard into place? What had changed him so dramatically?

“That’s His Grace’s Roman picture, ma’am,” Polly said. “He went all the way to Italy when he was a boy like that, with his father, the late duke.”

Charlotte turned to face her. “What else have you heard in the servants’ hall, Polly? Does this seem like a happy house?”

“Happy enough, ma’am,” Polly said, choosing her words carefully. “It’s a proud house, that’s for certain, but then it would be the same with any duke. His Grace likes things done most particular, they do say that, yet they’re fierce loyal to him. And they’re very happy he’s wed you, ma’am, very happy.”

Charlotte smiled. At least that was good news. Her role as the new duchess was going to be difficult enough without having to face a mutinous household. She glanced back at March’s portrait.

“Have you seen any pictures of His Grace’s parents?” she asked. “His mother who had these rooms, or his father?”

“No, ma’am, I haven’t,” Polly said quickly, so quickly that Charlotte suspected there was more that she wasn’t
telling. “But oh, ma’am, mark the time! If I am to have you dressed to sup with His Grace, then we have not a moment to spare.”

Charlotte let herself be shepherded into the dressing room, and stood in the center while Polly efficiently unpinned and removed her wedding gown.

“Is the duke coming here to join me?” she asked shyly. “That is, to dine?”

Through the open door, she could see her enormous new bed. Aunt Sophronia had told her that few titled couples shared a bedchamber, but that the husband would visit the wife’s. She knew, too, what happened once he arrived. Growing up in the country among animals had put an end to that mystery. Mama had long ago explained the details where men and women were concerned, with Aunt Sophronia contributing a few more blunt instructions during the last few days.

But it was a considerable leap from knowledge in theory to knowledge in practice. Charlotte tried to imagine kissing March and then imagined the rest, all happening upon that very bed: having him undress her and touch and caress her as he pleased, and then finally take her maidenhead, and perhaps make their first child, too.

It wasn’t that she was exactly frightened about tonight. March was a gentleman, and she trusted him too much for that. But she
was
uneasy, and worried that she would somehow not do things as a lady should to please her husband.

Wistfully she looked from the bed to the table beneath the window. She seldom thought of how her life could be otherwise than what it was, but oh, how much less complicated her wedding night would be if she and March were ordinary newlyweds!

“Perhaps His Grace and I could dine here,” she suggested. “Things could be brought upstairs, and we could dine in our dressing gowns.”

“His Grace sup here, ma’am? In your bedchamber?” asked Polly with surprise. “Forgive me, ma’am, but His Grace always takes his meals in the dining room, dressed properly as a duke should dress, as befits his station.”

Now Charlotte was surprised. “He dines by himself in full dress for evening?”

“Yes, ma’am, he does, and he will expect you to join him there,” Polly said, briskly pulling out one of Charlotte’s new gowns. “I’m told the duke is a very particular gentleman about time, and he won’t like to be kept waiting. Will this yellow silk polonaise please you, ma’am?”

Bewildered, Charlotte nodded. “That will do, yes.”

“Very well, ma’am,” Polly said, swiftly beginning to dress her. “I will be waiting for you here to help you undress, ma’am, whenever you and His Grace are done with your supper and return upstairs, and I’ll take care that the maids turn down your bed.”

Again Charlotte nodded, and wondered glumly if she was to be permitted ever to do anything for herself again.

Fifteen minutes later, the tall case clock in the hall was chiming the hour as she hurried through the long hallways and down the staircase to the dining room. She was flustered and flushed, but at least she was dressed as March expected and she was on time.

Or she had been until the footman at the door of the dining room informed her that His Grace was already within, and then insisted on announcing her as if there were a hundred guests waiting.

Blast, blast, blast, so now she
was
late! She raised her chin and struggled to compose herself, the way everyone else in Marchbourne House seemed perfectly able to do. She thought of Mama and reminded herself that she had always been a lady, the eldest daughter of the Earl of Hervey. Becoming a duchess would never change that. She was still who she’d always been, and with one final deep breath, she entered the dining room.

Another large, beautiful room—she was becoming numb to them now—with white walls covered with swirls of plaster garlands and more paintings. The endless mahogany dining table, covered in a damask cloth, could have seated sixty, with fifty-eight chairs pushed in close to the table. Branched silver candelabra marched the length of the table, their candles fluttering. At the distant end of the table, in an armchair that looked almost like a throne, sat March.

As soon as he saw her, he rose, and his face lit with such open pleasure that she was instantly relieved.

“My dear Charlotte,” he said, coming forward to take her hand. “As foolish as it sounds, I cannot tell you how much I’ve missed you.”

It was the first endearment he’d spoken to her as his wife, and small though it might seem, she treasured it.

“I’ve missed you, too.” She smiled, feeling suddenly shy, exactly as she had earlier in St. Paul’s. He was so
magnificent
. He, too, had changed his clothes for evening, and now wore a dark blue suit embroidered with gold vines, the linen of his shirt flawlessly white. But no matter how richly March was dressed, he still always outshone his clothes. He had a physical presence that she couldn’t quite explain, and a male power that she couldn’t resist—especially now, when he was regarding her with that same intense, hungry interest that he’d shown in the coach. It made her feel desired and oddly, pleasantly warm all over, with her heartbeat quickening just as it did when he kissed her.

“Sit here by me, as close as can be,” he said, and she slipped into the other armchair across the corner of the table from his. “It’s pathetically romantic, I know, but I pray that’s forgivable on our wedding night.”

“Oh, yes,” she breathed. “It’s entirely forgivable, and you are entirely forgiven.”

At once a footman appeared to push her chair forward,
then remained standing slightly behind it. Another stood behind March’s chair, and three more stood ready at the sideboard. Her goblet was instantly filled with wine, and a plate with the Marchbourne arms was placed before her. Charlotte remembered how March had said he was never alone, and now with dismay she realized how accurate he’d been.

“I hope you’ll also forgive me depriving you of your rightful place at the end of this table,” he said, covering her hand with his own. “But I wanted to be able to do this.”

She turned her hand over so their fingers intertwined. Without looking away from her face, he began tracing small circles with his thumb on the inside of her wrist, in exactly the perfect place to make her catch her breath.

“That—that would be the least of it,” she said, reaching for her wine with her other hand. “If I were clear down there, then you would have had to shout to converse with me.”

“I would have done it,” he said. “Mind you, I’ve climbed a tree for you already. But this is much easier. A toast, Charlotte.”

She nodded, pausing with the heavy goblet in her hand. There had never been wine or strong waters at Ransom, and only in this last week had she first tasted wine. But Aunt Sophronia had advised that wine would help ease the wedding night, and for that reason Charlotte was determined to drink it.

“To you, my dearest bride and duchess,” he said softly as he held the glass toward her. “To my Charlotte.”

“To you, too, March,” she said, “my dearest, dearest bridegroom and duke and—and everything else.”

He raised a single dark brow, teasing. Perhaps he was following Aunt Sophronia’s advice, too. “You would outdo me?”

She blushed but did not back down. “I won’t outdo you, no. But I will match you.”

“To you, then, Charlotte.” He laughed and drank, and she did the same, emptying the glass.

“Goodness.” She blinked, startled by the taste of so much wine in such an abrupt volume, and set the goblet down on the table with a thump. Instantly it was refilled, and she steeled herself for the next toast.

“To your beauty and grace,” he declared, grinning at her reaction. “Never was there a more lovely bride.”

“Nor was there a more handsome bridegroom,” she said promptly. “To your handsomenessnessness.”

He set his glass down. “That’s too many ‘nesses,’ madam. I cannot drink to an invented compliment.”

“Very well, then,” she said. “You are comely, sir. Can you drink to that?”

He winced. “I’m not sure ‘comely’ is an appropriate word for a bridegroom.”

She frowned and tapped her finger on the stem of the goblet. The wine was making her feel exceptionally witty and daring, too. “Then what of ‘virile’? Will that do? To my virile bridegroom?”

“Virile?”
He widened his eyes with surprise and laughed. “You’d call me that?”

She laughed with him, though she wasn’t sure of the source of his amusement. “Am I wrong to do so? Isn’t that the proper word?”

He laughed even harder. “I should hope it’s the proper word.”

“Well, then.” She raised her glass. “To my very virile bridegroom. Very,
very
virile.”

She drank it down, before he could protest again, and he drank his as well.

But even after their glasses had been refilled, he still didn’t offer a reply.

Charlotte scowled. “What, can you not think of an equal compliment for me?”

“I can think of a great many,” he said, “but not one I’d wished spoken aloud of my wife.”

“Hah,” Charlotte said with a magnanimous flourish. “Then look elsewhere about my person for inspiration.”

He nearly choked, he laughed so hard, and again she laughed with him. If marriage to him was always to be so entertaining, then they were destined to be happy indeed.

“I’ll look to your other qualities,” he said. “To my wife, a most excellent climber of trees.”

She grinned. “To my husband,” she said. “A most excellent gentleman to land atop.”

“I trust I’ll be the only one,” he said, laughing still, and they drank again. “Here now, sweet, it would be a good notion for you to eat something along with all this wine.”

Charlotte hadn’t noticed when the footman had brought several dishes of food to the table. She leaned forward to consider them, and at once the footman behind her chair appeared to serve her, using a large silver spoon to ladle a grayish, creamy something onto her plate.

She stared down at it, unconvinced. The footman had carefully added a bit of the garnish to her plate, a purple flower that matched the Marchbourne livery.

“That’s a fricassee of goose livers and mushrooms, with a sauce of red currants to the side,” March explained proudly as he began to eat. “I’m certain you’ll enjoy it. I keep both a French cook and an English one. You met them earlier. This is most likely from Monsieur Brière’s kitchen, though they are both eager to please you.”

She remained skeptical, both of the flowers and the livers. “Is he the one who has put the blossoms on the plate?”

“I expect it is,” March said. “A pretty conceit, isn’t it?”

But Charlotte’s thoughts had already left her untouched plate. “Answer me true, March, if you please. Are you hungry?”

He set his fork back down on the plate with gratifying haste.

“You see, I’m not, not really.” She plucked the purple flower from her plate and twirled it idly in her fingertips. “While you worry about your two cooks, I’m thinking of my poor lady’s maid, waiting in my bedchamber to undress me.”

“Is she now?”

Charlotte nodded, looking up at him through her lashes. That had gotten his attention earlier in the carriage, and clearly it had done the trick here again.

“I’m thinking it’s barbarously ill-mannered of me to keep her waiting much longer,” she said. “And I’m thinking that my virile husband would not ever wish me to—”

But before she could finish, March had pushed back his chair and dragged Charlotte into his arms. Her chair toppled backward with a crash, but neither noticed as it fell, or as a footman hesitantly replaced it. March kissed her furiously, his mouth slashing across hers with a dizzying urgency. Charlotte answered, as bold and eager now as he. Aunt Sophronia had been right. The wine had helped, and any last vestige of restraint or uncertainty had vanished—or had been vanquished—then and there. The heat that he’d stirred in her earlier in the carriage had returned as they’d made their way here, and now she felt it glowing again, a feverish fire low in her belly.

Desire
, she thought, the very word titillating and forbidden. That was what it was. She
desired
her husband.

And March—March desired her, too. The way he was kissing her told her that.

“Upstairs.” His voice was low and rumbling, the edge to it making her shiver with anticipation. “Now.”