The Charmer (7 page)

“Stay and keep an eye on her,” Wellington continued. “While you do, reason with her. With some influence and persuasion, she'll see what needs to be done. She just wants it to be her decision. Should have expected that. Willful blood in the family. Do you believe that story about a husband?”

“It is a fiction she invented in Paris and told to selected men.”

“Clever woman. Damned shrewd. You are hard-pressed to prove someone
isn't
married if they want to claim they are. I convinced Dincaster to keep quiet about it. If word got out, she might be tangled in her own lie. Anyway, I leave her to you. Get her to the boroughs for the nominations and get her in line for the Commons vote. Shouldn't be hard. You've managed Serbs and Turks, one woman should be easy.”

Not so easy, and not at all the same. This mission had a face and a name and a troubled sadness.

He would do what the Iron Duke wanted. He would take her to the boroughs and he would even reason with her. But his priority in staying nearby would be to make sure that she came to no harm because he had forced her to leave Paris.

“Take care of it, Burchard. Hell, seduce her if that is what it takes. Just make sure that she delivers those damn votes.”

chapter
8

M
arleigh's chambers were apportioned out according to precedence that night, which meant that Adrian slept at a nearby inn. The next morning he returned and went looking for the duchess.

He found her in the duke's study. She sat on the floor in a black riding habit behind the huge desk, immersed in a mountain of paper. She had caused a mess that would take several days for someone to reorganize.

“I can't find it,” she muttered when she saw him. “The will. I can't find it.”

“He probably kept it in a safer place than his desk. Besides, his solicitor has a copy. Why do you want it now?”

“I was hoping he added a codicil and found some way to keep me from inheriting
this.
” She raised her arms in reference to the house and the rest. Papers flew.

“It was not in his power to prevent your inheriting most of it, and you know it.” He waded in and lifted her up.

“Oh, dear, I have made a shambles of it.” Her black-covered backside curved up to him while she bent to gather documents into a useless stack. He experienced contradictory urges to both swat that bottom and caress it.

The events in Paris had breached some fundamental formalities between them, so he did not contemplate his action much before circling her waist with one arm and carrying her, derriere first, away from the documents before she did anymore damage.

She squirmed until he released her. “You go too far, Mister Burchard.”

“Your secretary will need salts when he sees this.”

“I have no secretary. I released my father's last evening. I think that I will change solicitors too. Papa's caused me a lot of trouble when I wanted to have my income from Mother's portion sent to me in Paris.”

Adrian gestured to the mountain of documents. “May I suggest that you wait on either change until that is dealt with?”

“I am sure that you will take care of it neatly. Didn't you come here this morning to offer your help in such things? I just assumed that Wellington would want someone spying on me and would realize that you are his best chance.”

She did not look at all sly, but Adrian suspected that the duchess had just revealed a depth of perception that would make everything about this business more difficult.

“The Duke of Wellington does not set spies on British citizens.”

She looked at the Mont Blanc of parchment. “Oh, dear. Then I did that for nothing. I wanted to see how quickly you could fix it all.”

“Wellington did, however, express concerns for your safety, and thought that you might accept my continued presence on that count.”

She settled herself on a chair and lounged with a pose more relaxed than was proper. It was probably one more example of the inappropriate behavior that she had adopted in Paris. That behavior, and just how inappropriate it might have been, had been on his mind quite a bit. The musings had been part of very male speculations regarding the duchess, Parisian freedom, and provocative memories of soft curves and soaked red silk.

“I do not expect to be in danger, and I have a dozen strapping footmen if I should be, so a position as a guard is overdoing it. However, if you are going to be underfoot, we have to find something for you to do.”

She made a display of contemplating hard. Her attitude provoked the devil in him.

“I don't suppose you play the pianoforte or violin?” she asked.

“Not well enough to be your entertainment.”

“Hmmm. Do you write poetry?”

“Sorry.”

“Then I am afraid that we are back to the documents.”

“Actually, Wellington suggested a different role for me. He thought it would be convenient if I became your lover.” He said it to retrieve the upper hand, but he waited for her reaction with interest.

“Considering your proven efficiency, you should make quick work of it,” she said, gesturing to the mess, simply ignoring his last comment.

“Not too quick. I'm sure we both want it done right.”

“A few days should get it all suitably arranged, I would think.” She spoke blandly, but a blush betrayed that she recognized the double meaning of the exchange.

“Only if you cooperate.”

Redder now, she persevered. “I will leave it to you, Burchard. I have no competence with such matters.”

He really shouldn't . . . “Women always say that, and then often prove amazingly adept at the business. It is really just a matter of proceeding with care and attention until one is satisfied.”

Her eyes widened. He gestured innocently to the mound of papers. “We will work at it together and I will teach you. We will get right to it after you nominate your candidates.”

The abrupt change in subject confused her. “Candidates?”

“The election. You must visit the boroughs at once. We will leave tomorrow. Jenny is already packing.”

“Oh, no, you don't. Not again.
I
will make the arrangements for this circuit and I will complete the journey alone. You just write down where I need to go.”

“The locations of the boroughs are often obscure. I will map out the general route for your planning purposes, but you will never find them without a guide.”

Her brow puckered peevishly. “Very well. If I need a guide, it may as well be you. You can come, but only for that purpose. You are not to give a single order, least of all to me.” She rose and headed for the door. “Now, please excuse me. I need to leave this house. It oppresses me even more than I thought it would.”

He followed her into the marble corridor, and gestured to her habit. “You are going riding?”

“Since my guests will not come down for at least an hour, I decided to take the opportunity.”

“May I join you?”

“I do not need a guardian angel. I am in no danger on Everdon's lands.”

She had not really refused his company, so he followed her to the stables and called for his horse. Her confidence in her safety was misplaced. The duke had died on Everdon lands.

However, as he watched the duchess settle on her saddle, he admitted that the idea of a long, private ride with this errant daughter of the nobility appealed to him for other reasons besides protecting her.

They walked their horses through the formal gardens and park behind the house. She stopped atop a rise and looked down its hill to where the family graveyard hugged one side of a little chapel. A freshly built small marble building dominated the sculpted memorials.

“My apologies,” he said. “I should have guessed that you might want to visit there.”

“I did not come out today to say prayers at my father's grave.”

She kept looking at the sepulcher. Adrian backed his horse away. She may not be saying prayers, but whatever worked through her mind absorbed her just as completely.

He watched her serious expression from his short distance, wondering what she tried to reconcile. He noticed that, as with her other mourning ensembles, her riding habit was old-fashioned and girlish for her age. They must all be costumes made when her brother Brandon died.

He remembered the accumulation of clothing tumbled around her dressing room in Paris. That extravagance spoke of a woman who would never be seen in dated fashions, no matter what the situation. He would have expected her to have modistes stay up all night sewing and altering to make sure she was turned out appropriately.

She didn't really care about it, he realized. Shopping was just a diversion, like her salons and parties. All of her behavior in Paris had been a means of distracting herself from something. What had Charles said that first night, about her reaction to the duke's death?
It is as if she knows that she cannot hide anymore.

A complex woman. An interesting one, with a compelling combination of strength and vulnerability. Pain hid behind the studied gaiety. A mask of frivolity deliberately obscured intriguing layers.

She turned her horse abruptly and broke into a gallop. Adrian pursued.

She rode away from the house as if devils drove her from its shadow. When they entered a wooded section of park that hid the palace from view, she finally reined in beside a large rock and used it to dismount. Adrian swung off his horse and they strolled together along the sun-dappled path. Rich, earthy odors of spring filled the air around them.

Slowly, her self-absorption lifted. “You think me heartless not to visit his grave.”

“You were estranged from him. Death does not always resolve that.”

“Especially because he is not dead. His body lies in that stone monument, but I am under his thumb more surely now than I was a year ago.” She smiled ruefully. “I was counting on his fathering another son. I never gave up hope for that. Nor did he. However, it appears that he let others know about his plans for Gerald and me, just in case.”

“It is typical for fathers to try and influence their children's matches, especially if the child will become a duchess.”

“I doubt that Gerald sees me as a duchess. To him I will always be Alistair's difficult little girl.”

“You, difficult? I can't imagine that.”

She laughed, in frank admission that she had been little else since they met.

“How long have you known Stidolph?” he asked.

“Ever since his mother married my late uncle, my father's brother. It was her second marriage. I was ten then. Gerald was at Oxford. He entered the army for a few years after and I never saw him much, but once he sold out his commission, he always seemed to be around. Papa favored him. He became like another son to him. Rather like Wellington and you.”

“Wellington hardly thinks of me as a son. I am useful to him, that is all. Did you go to Paris to avoid the match?”

“That is one of the reasons I went.”

“Why didn't you just marry someone else?”

“There was no one else. Papa could be very discouraging. I was isolated too. I was presented, but I never came out. My mother died when I was seventeen, so we were in mourning the season I should have done it, and other circumstances interfered later. I think that Papa was glad. He did not approve of marriages based on
tendres
with men met at London balls. The choice should be his, as with every other detail in my life.”

“I knew your father only through politics, but I suppose I can see how his sense of order might have appeared harsh to his family.”

“My father was an autocratic, cold man, too aware of his power. He treated my mother with little warmth. My brother and I were opportunities to be exploited and responsibilities to be managed. He forced Brandon into his own mold, and then harped when bits and pieces of my brother's nature bulged out of the container. He could be unbelievably cruel.”

She blurted it out with piercing bitterness. Her whole body tensed, as if she braced an invisible shield against the memory of the man. Even her hands tightened on the reins that led her horse.

“Men are what they are, Duchess. Their basic natures rarely change, even if they wish they might. Your father probably thought that he was doing what was best for his family.”

“He thought that he was doing what was best for Everdon. But then, I would expect you to defend him. You were his man.”

“I was his M.P., a position negotiated by Wellington.”

“I am well aware of where your first loyalty lies, Mister Burchard. As to my father, his family should have had more than a peer of the realm in their midst. There should have been some consideration of our dreams, and some love along with the lectures and criticism.”

Her resentful words speared his heart. He understood her bitterness more than he wanted to admit. Understood it at the visceral level that only a shared experience can evoke. He had long ago come to terms with that childhood misery, but that did not mean that her unhappiness moved him any less.

In spitting out her memories about Alistair, she also gave voice to his own about Dincaster. His attempt to soothe her had been an articulation of the boyhood excuses that he had used to assuage his own pain.

“Should there have been some love? I expect so,” he said.

She paused in her stroll and those green eyes turned on him with naked perception. He suddenly felt exposed, so complete was the comprehension in her expression. She knew that he understood, and she knew why.

An emotional bridge instantly formed between them. The empathy made something long-buried within him suddenly real again, and raw.

The silent, mutual acknowledgment that they had both lived with that void touched him profoundly. The urge to pull her into his arms flashed through him. He would carry her off to a private meadow and show her how embracing the present could free one from the past.

“Do you plan to live your whole life getting back at him? Will you let that consume your heart and rule your nature? If so, it will be a terrible waste, and his greatest victory.”

She glanced about desperately, as if he had cornered her.

“I cannot imagine why it should matter to you.”

He reached over and brushed at an errant curl, grazing her temple with his touch. Her eyes widened in surprise. The intimacy born of her revelations pulsed harder between them. “It matters to me, and you do know why.”