When the Duchess Said Yes (8 page)

“You’re—you’re
vile
,” she sputtered, shoving hard against his chest. He let her go and didn’t try to stop her as she hurried away from him, her heels crunching on the shell path. She had never been this disgusted with herself.

He might even have laughed.

“Why, Lizzie, here you are,” Charlotte said as she reached the summerhouse. She sat with a teacup in one hand and surprise on her face—surprise, and questions, too. Self-consciously Lizzie reached up to smooth her hair. She hadn’t realized that her elaborately arranged hair was coming unpinned and that a tangled, heavy
piece of it was flopping awkwardly over her left shoulder. She shoved it back behind her ear and folded her hands neatly at her waist as if nothing untoward had happened.

“Lady Elizabeth,” Hawkesworth called, coming up behind her. “Your hat.”

“Thank you,” she said with murderous civility. She snatched the hat from his hands and jammed it back atop her head. “Sir.”

“How chivalrous of you, Hawke,” Brecon said, helping himself to another tea cake. “What delightful lovebirds! Have we determined a date for the wedding, then?”

“Never,” Lizzie said, and before anyone could say otherwise, she turned on her heel and fled to the house.

As much as Hawke enjoyed company, there were definitely times when solitude held a special allure.

After yesterday’s unfortunate afternoon at Marchbourne House, he wasn’t sure he ever wished to venture into company again, leastwise not company that included his cousins or the woman he was ostensibly to wed. After a merciless night of unrest, he gave up on trying to sleep as the sun was rising, and to Giacomo’s dismay carried his coffee himself downstairs to the old ballroom.

Since returning to London, he’d turned the ballroom into his makeshift picture gallery. In Italy, art wasn’t an ornamental flourish but a part of life, and Hawke had embraced it like one more lover. Even as a boy he’d been fascinated by the murky portraits and landscapes that had hung in their houses, and he’d secretly stare at them for hours; it had been one of the deeper conflicts with his father, who had wanted him to take an interest in something more useful if tedious, like politics.

It wasn’t until Hawke had traveled to Italy that he’d
been finally free to indulge himself. He’d collected pictures not like most Englishmen did—for their prestige and monetary value—but simply because he liked them. They amused him, pleased him, and brought him peace. He’d brought a score of his favorites along with him from Bella Collina, the ones he couldn’t bear to leave behind, and this morning they were all the company he wanted.

He’d arranged the paintings himself, some on easels and others leaning against the walls of the vast, empty room, not bothering to have them hung for what he expected would be a short stay in London. A ballroom was meant to be lit by candlelight and filled with music and laughter, but he liked it best this way, comfortably silent except for the birdsongs from the garden outside the tall windows and filled with the even, gentle sunlight from the north that was most perfect for viewing pictures.

He set the single chair (for he hadn’t seen the reason to have any more in the room) before one of the largest paintings, a landscape of the Bay of Naples at sunset that he’d commissioned from a local painter. It was not so much a great painting as an exact one: the view was precisely the same as the one from Hawke’s villa, and with a contented sigh and his cup of coffee in his hands, he prepared to lose himself in the scene’s beauty.

But this morning he couldn’t. Instead of the peaceful reverie he craved, he looked at the painting and thought only of how Lady Elizabeth compared to the women he’d left behind in Naples. With a frown, he pulled his chair to the next picture, an amusing vignette featuring a traveling theater company rehearsing their next play beside a stream.

Yet all he could think of now was how his own well-ordered life seemed to have deteriorated into a farcical scene from a bad comedy, just like the one shown in the
painting. If he’d been a character in such a play, then he would have been delighted to discover that the girl he’d been pursuing was the same lady he was betrothed to, and everyone would have lived happily ever after. But he wasn’t in a play, and he didn’t trust coincidence like that. It didn’t make sense in real life, especially in
his
real life. Having Lady Elizabeth equally unhappy and full of suspicion didn’t help matters, either, nor did he enjoy bearing the blame for her distress—blame that March, Brecon, and Charlotte, too, were determined to heap upon him.

No, no, this wasn’t right. Grumbling to himself, he moved to the one picture that was sure to make him smile: a nearly life-sized portrait of a reclining Venus, shamelessly nude except for her jewels. The Venus was a masterpiece, painted by Titian, a true master. It had been one of the first paintings he’d bought, and usually the goddess’s bounteous attributes could make him forget anything.

But this morning when he looked at her, his thoughts raced back to Lady Elizabeth: astonishingly beautiful, amusing, clever, and, when she was in a good humor, graceful and charming beyond measure. An earl’s daughter or not, she had also revealed herself to be a termagant of the first order, with a fiery temper to match.

Of course she wanted nothing to do with him.

And equally of course, he had never been more insanely attracted to a woman in his life.

Almost desperately Hawke tried to focus on the painted Venus, her creamy flesh, her seductive smile. He’d wager fifty guineas that Lady Elizabeth’s breasts were every bit that fine, round, and tempting. It was difficult to gauge with modern women, who barricaded their charms so tightly behind whalebone stays and hoops, but he’d bet Lady Elizabeth was—

“Good day, Hawkesworth,” his mother said briskly,
entering unannounced, the plumes on her oversized hat all a-flutter. “I told the footman not to bother calling my name. This was my house long enough that I should know my own way to my own son, even if he insists on sitting alone in his undress in the ballroom. Is this another of the Italian customs you have acquired?”

He rose and bowed, taking care to keep his banyan closed. “If you insist on appearing without warning, Mother, then you will find what you find.”

“Indeed,” she said, coming around the easel to claim his chair. She stopped abruptly before the painted Venus, wrinkling her face with distaste. “I suppose that is Italian as well?”

“It is,” he said evenly. Unable to resist, he added, “She’s beautiful, isn’t she?”

“Shameless harlot,” Lady Allred said, her nose high with disdain as she sat, purposefully turning the chair and her back to the painting. She sat with practiced care, arranging her silk skirts to cover her feet. “I trust your wife will put an end to that sort of trumpery. That is, if you can ever make yourself sufficiently agreeable to the poor lady that she’ll agree to wed you.”

Glumly Hawke stared into his mostly empty coffee cup. He longed for more, but if he summoned Giacomo, then he would have to be hospitable and offer refreshment to his mother as well, and he’d no desire to encourage her to stay any longer than was necessary.

Which, knowing his mother when she’d things to say, could be very long indeed.

“I know you don’t wish me to linger, Hawkesworth,” she said as if reading his thoughts. “But I heard of yesterday’s debacle with the Wylder girl, and I cannot conceive of how you misplayed your hand so badly. What do you propose to do next? How will you redeem yourself?”

Hawke frowned and tapped his fingers against the
side of the cup, wishing his mother didn’t insist on treating him as if he were still a twelve-year-old sent down from school for bad behavior.

Little wonder he thought longingly of Bella Collina, so agreeably distant from London.

“I am meeting with my solicitors later today, Mother,” he said at last, striving to sound businesslike and in control. “Since this marriage is a contract instead of a love match, it seems better to turn the arrangements over to the fellows who execute such things on a regular basis.”

“Oh, Hawkesworth,” said his mother, wincing as if she’d just smelled an unpleasant rot. “That is preposterous.”

“I’ve given the situation much thought, Mother,” he said. Not that he’d tell her the real reason for turning to the lawyers: that he didn’t entirely trust himself to be with Lady Elizabeth again. He needed time away from her to cool his passions, or God only knew what kind of insanity he’d commit with her. “I know what I am doing.”

“No, you do not,” Lady Allred said. “Love match or arrangement, every marriage is a kind of partnership, and not one made by lawyers, either. For people like us, it is also a way to cement important fortunes and families. You must demonstrate an agreeable face to your bride and a willingness for compromise, and you must show the lady at least a smidgeon of wooing.”

“Oh, yes, a smidgeon,” Hawke said. “I can’t see Father showing you any more than that.”

Lady Allred smiled serenely, touching a gloved finger to one of the plumes in her hat.

“You would be surprised what your father showed in the early days of our marriage,” she said. “If he hadn’t, I doubt that you or your sisters would be here now.”

Hawke gulped, not wishing any further information from his parents’ bedchamber.

“The wooing part is also being addressed, Mother,” he said. “I’m not the complete dolt you think me.”

Her gaze narrowed. “I have never once called you a dolt,” she said. “You are unbearably selfish, even for a man, but you are not a dolt.”

Hawke grumbled, refusing to discuss his doltdom any further. “I have already arranged to send a small token to Lady Elizabeth today, by way of apology and regard.”

His mother glanced at him suspiciously. “Not flowers, I hope. You are a duke, you know. More is expected from you than mere ephemeral blossoms.”

Flowers were exactly what Hawke had intended, though he could scarcely admit it now. In desperation he glanced around at the paintings lined up on their easels, and seized the smallest one.

“I am sending her this,” he said, holding the painting with a flourish for his mother to see, as if he’d planned it all along. “It’s a tempera panel, and more than three hundred years old.”

The painting was a jewel in its own right, the ancient paint still bright and gleaming as if it were enameled, a prize he’d bought on a trip to Florence. Two lovers in lavish ermine-trimmed clothes from some forgotten royal court sat facing each other beneath an apple tree whose fruit hung like bright red ornaments. Hawke had bought it mainly because he’d liked the two dogs in studded collars that sat beside their owners: a white greyhound beside the woman, and a black one beside the man.

The longer Hawke looked at the painting, the more he realized he didn’t really wish to part with it, but now he didn’t have a choice. If he didn’t trust Lady Elizabeth about her past, then how was he to trust her with his pictures? But perhaps this was what everyone meant about sacrifices made for love: if he offered a gift as significant as his greyhound painting to Lady Elizabeth,
then perhaps she’d begin to find him a bit more agreeable, too.

His mother, however, understood none of this, any more than she realized the true value of the painting.

“Very nice,” she said, barely glancing at it. “An untraditional gift, but I suppose Lady Elizabeth must learn of your penchant for buying foreign pictures soon enough. You can give it to her yourself this afternoon at Lady Sanborn’s house.”

So at last his mother had come to her true reason for calling. “Lady Sanborn, Mother?”

“Yes, yes, Lady Sanborn,” she said, smoothing her black lace shawl over her shoulders. “Surely you recall her, Hawkesworth. The dowager Countess of Carbery. She has been among my acquaintances forever. More important to you, she is Lady Elizabeth’s great-aunt.”

Of course she was. When Hawke had first arrived in London, he hadn’t been able to find a soul with personal knowledge of Lady Elizabeth. Now there seemed to be a fresh relative on every tree branch.

Carefully he set the little painting back on its easel. “Recall, Mother, that I am to marry Lady Elizabeth, not Lady Carbery.”

“Don’t be impertinent, Hawkesworth,” she said. “You made such a misery of your first meeting that Lady Sanborn and I decided we’d no choice but to involve ourselves. You will begin again, and attend Lady Elizabeth in Lady Carbery’s drawing room this afternoon at four.”

“A misery,” he repeated, marveling at her choice of the word, and how inadvertently—for so it had to be—that was exactly what his meeting with Lady Elizabeth had become. “What if I have other obligations for this evening?”

“Then you must make your apologies,” Lady Allred
said, rising to leave. “Pray do not be late. Lady Elizabeth will not wait forever.”

He kissed her cheek as she expected, and escorted her to the door. Then he returned to the pictures, especially the one he was giving to Lady Elizabeth. He hoped she appreciated it. He hoped she liked it as much as he did, because, really, he was giving her a small part of himself with this painting. Truly, it was much easier to send flowers to ladies.

He sighed, running his finger lightly around the gilded frame. It was irrational, yes, but he was almost certain she would like it. Treasure it, even. Why else would it be so easy for him to imagine her eyes wide with pleasure when she saw it, her gasp of delight, and, if he was lucky, the deliciously sweet kiss of thanks she’d impulsively grant?

It would not be such a trial to be civil to her. In fact, it would be quite the opposite: a pleasure, a delight, a blissful experience. Seducing a wife couldn’t be that different from seducing any other woman, and he’d always enjoyed that. And, as with any other woman, once the delight and the pleasure began to fade, he could turn elsewhere, except that this time he needed to sire a child or two before he left.

He smiled to himself, thinking again of his soon-to-be wife. His
wife
. His mother could babble on all she wished about how Lady Elizabeth wouldn’t wait forever. The unholy truth of the matter, though, was that now he was the one who couldn’t wait.