Love Letters From a Duke (34 page)

“Plead his case?” Lady Charles made an inelegant snort. “Why of course not. Why should I? No, I’ve simply come to bring my daughter-in-law home.”

Diana wasn’t one who was naysaid easily. “Miss Langley doesn’t want to return to Hollindrake. This very moment my husband is consulting the archbishop to see what remedy can be made, for he is certain there are grounds for annulment and—”

“An annulment?” Felicity sat up. She didn’t want her mar
riage annulled. She might have mentioned it last night as she cried her eyes out to Jack and Miranda and Temple, but she’d never thought…never meant…

Temple’s wife wasn’t finished. “After what he has done to her—”

Lady Charles snorted. “And she should listen to you, Your Grace? How many years did you spend casting covetous glances at Templeton before you finally got the nerve to make him come up to scratch?” She cast her gaze around the room and stopped at Miranda. “Or you? How many years did you hide from society because Mad Jack Tremont kissed you?” She blew out a breath. “If it was such a bad kiss, why did you marry him in the end?”

“My husband’s kiss isn’t—” Miranda began, then blushed deeply at such a confession, her hands folded over her ripe belly, proof that she found her husband’s kiss quite adequate.

Lady Charles glanced over at Jamilla. “I haven’t the vaguest notion who you are.”

“I am the Princess—”

“Yes, yes, whatever. Whoever you are, I doubt it has any bearing on these matters.” Turning to her right, her discerning gaze fell on Lady Rhoda. “And what say you,
Mrs
. Toulouse. Shall my daughter-in-law remain stubborn and proper or should she come home with me to the man she loves? How many years did it take you to make up your mind and marry Mr. Toulouse over your father’s objections to his lack of title and nobility? Fine man that he is, I can’t believe he waited for you, but you should be thankful he did.” She wagged her finger at the rest of them. “You should all be thankful.”

Lady Charles rose and held out her hand to Felicity. “You can be like these foolish, prideful women who hate to admit they were wrong,
even when it nearly cost them their splendid marriages
, or you can listen to me, a woman who loved
her husband every day of his life and misses him terribly.” She paused, and Felicity felt the weight of her measure falling on her shoulders. “Go home to my son before he leaves London. For good.”

Panic ran down Felicity’s spine. “He’s leaving?”

She sighed. “Yes. He was ordering Staines to pack his things not thirty minutes ago.”

Felicity bolted to her feet. “Where is he going?”

“How should I know?” Lady Charles said. “He’s in a terrible temper.”

Oh, no. Thatcher couldn’t leave. Not yet. Not without her. “Do you think he will forgive me?”

“Of course he will,” Jamilla said, glancing up from her tea. “The look, darling girl. Use the look.”

Yes, the look! She would use that, and if she failed there, well, she’d just beg. Felicity rushed toward the door, then came to a halt. “Oh, I will never get there in time.”

Thatcher’s mother smiled and nodded for her to continue on. “Take my carriage. It is right out front.”

“Oh, thank you, Lady Charles,” she said. “How will I ever thank you?”

“Give me grandchildren. Plenty of them for me to spoil.”

Felicity nodded, having not even thought of such a thing. Then her eyes widened and her hands went to her very flat stomach. “Children?”

“A houseful, please,” came the cheerful order.

Dashing out the door, Felicity whispered a word of thanks up to the Fates for bringing Lady Charles just in time.

Fate, it turns out, had little to do with it.

Even after the door slammed shut and the carriage rolled away at a frantic clip, the ladies waited. Then Lady Charles sat down on a chair and beamed at her audience.

“Oh, well done, Rosebel,” Lady Rhoda said. “I loved your entrance, darling! Splendid. So very dramatic. And Diana,
darling, the annulment part was a stroke of genius. Did you see how pale she went?”

Diana grinned. “Yes, I thought it all went perfectly!”

Miranda leaned forward, or as much as her pregnancy would allow, and said to Lady Charles. “I take it your son was just as unsuspecting?”

“Utterly taken in,” Lady Charles declared.

Everyone in the room applauded, except of course for Jack, who stood in the doorway, gaping at them. “You staged all that?” It wasn’t a question, but a statement of masculine horror. “You let Felicity think…”

The ladies all nodded.

“And now those two are headed on a collision course?”

“A perfectly charted one, dear boy,” Lady Charles told him.

He shook his head, as if still not quite sure he could believe it. “And whose balmy idea was that?”

From the far corner, two hands went up. “Ours,” Tally said, nodding toward her coconspirator, Pippin. “’Tis from the final scene of our new play, ‘The Lost Duke.’”

Jack groaned. “I should have known.”

When Felicity arrived at the house on Grosvenor Square, the entire front curb was taken up with carriages—it seemed nearly everything Hollindrake owned was in the process of being loaded. And a legion of footmen, clad in the blue and white Hollindrake livery, scurried about carrying trunks and crates and all sorts of valises.

It was, simply put, chaos.

As she waded through it, a footman hurried past with a familiar looking traveling bag.
Hers
.

“Wait just a moment,” she called out to the man. “What are you doing with that?”

“Putting it in the wagon, miss.”

“You will not, that is mine.”

The man snorted. “It belongs to the Duchess of Hollindrake.”

Felicity’s hands went to her hips. She might still be wearing the same gown she’d worn the night before, her face still puffed and red from the buckets of tears she’d shed, but she hadn’t been practicing and planning her elevation all these years for nothing.

“
I am the Duchess of Hollindrake,
” she said.

The man looked skeptical, but only for a moment, and then his face fell. “Pardon, Your Grace. Where would you like this, Your Grace?”

Having moved households constantly throughout her life, with her father’s rather unorthodox assignments requiring they leave with all haste, and sometimes in the middle of the night, Felicity was in her element. “In the main carriage,” she declared.

Then she glanced around, realized nothing was being packed correctly and set to work to righting it all.

“No, no, no,” she was saying, as one of the hapless fellows came down the steps with a trunk. “That shouldn’t go in the wagon, but behind His Grace’s carriage—for what if he decides to ride his horse rather than inside the carriage? He’ll need his riding clothes close at hand!”

From the top of the stairs came a question, a voice that sent shivers down her spine. “And why would I want to leave your delightful company?”

Felicity spun around. “Thatcher!” She went to rush into his arms, but ended up skidding to a stop on the step below him, still unsure, despite the rakish gleam in his eyes.

“I’m not the man who wrote those letters,” he told her. “Not the man you fell in love with.”

“I know,” she said, so very glad of it.

“But you fell in love with
him
.” There was a fierceness to his words. A jealousy that made her smile.

“I’ve only ever truly loved one man,” she confessed. He stiffened and stared at her, until she playfully slapped him on the chest. “Oh, don’t be such a cabbage head. I mean you. I fell in love with
you
.”

“You did?”

“I did. I am,” she confessed.

He looked down at her, his eyes filled with a light that seemed brimming with hope. “I wanted to tell you last night, but you—”

“I left,” she finished for him. “I was being the cabbage head then. But I’m back now. That is, if you want me…”

It seemed every member of the Hollindrake staff froze, as if their fates too were about to be decided.

And in a thrice Thatcher gave them their answer. He caught up his bride in his arms and kissed her soundly, and quite improperly.

And sensing a fresh new wind blowing through their lives, the staff responded just as uncharacteristically, cheering, “Huzzah! Huzzah!”

Felicity melted in Thatcher’s arms, marveling under the spell of his kiss. And when he finally—and reluctantly—pulled away, she sighed. “I’m so glad you’re my Hollindrake. Though I’d nearly gotten used to the idea of being poor and unfashionable.”

“I fear you’ll have to make do with being excessively rich and terribly spoiled.”

Felicity grinned. “Then why don’t you start right now by kissing me again, Your Grace. Improperly, and before all of Mayfair, so we might add to our infamy before we go on our honeymoon and someone else has a chance to scandalize society.” She glanced at the carriages still being packed. “We are going on a honeymoon, aren’t we?”

He nodded and bent over to kiss her thoroughly yet again, planning all the ways he was going to make love to her in the coming days, weeks, and years. And much to his delight,
no one disturbed them, allowing the Duke and Duchess of Hollindrake to kiss for as long as they wanted.

And in those moments, Thatcher realized two things.

He’d forgiven his grandfather for his high-handedness.

And it wasn’t so bad being a duke.

Several hours later the Duke and Duchess of Hollindrake set off for their honeymoon, having taken their public and improper display of mutual affection inside and continued it in the privacy of the duke’s bedchamber.

But the journey got no farther than Bond Street, where Thatcher ordered the carriage stopped and dashed inside a shop, without so much as a “just a moment” to his bride.

Felicity waited for about a minute or so, before she caught up her cloak and marched inside to discover what was so urgent that their honeymoon must be delayed.

When she entered the tidy little shop, the bell overhead rang with a sweet jingle and both Thatcher and the owner turned toward her. The man behind the counter held a lady’s hairbrush for the duke’s inspection.

“Yes, yes, that is perfect,” he said. “Please wrap it up and send it along with this note.” He was bent over the counter scribbling on a sheet of paper.

Felicity glanced over his shoulder. “A wedding gift?”

“Of a sort,” he murmured as he tipped his shoulder to hide what he was writing.

“For me? For I already have a hairbrush, and don’t need another.”

“I know,” he said, his back still to her.

She arched a brow. “You are buying a gift for another woman?”

“Exactly,” he said, blowing on the paper to dry the ink, then folded it up and handed it to the man. “Thank you, sir, and good day.” He caught Felicity by the elbow and led her from the shop.

“Who is that hairbrush for?” she asked as he all but pushed her inside the carriage and nodded for his driver to get under way.

“Miss Browne.”

Felicity dropped to her seat, but her gaze flew to his, where his confession had left a smug, satisfied smile on his handsome face. “You bought a gift for who?”

“You heard me,” he said, leaning back in the seat opposite hers and propping his boots up on the seat beside her. “Miss Browne.”

“Harrumph.”

“I can tell you why, if you’re curious,” he offered. “But you’ll have to come sit next to me.” His brows waggled invitingly, and oh so very improperly.

Felicity knew exactly what would happen if she took him up on his offer and joined him on his side of the carriage—he’d kiss her, and then he’d…well, suffice it to say, he’d distract her utterly and then there would be no getting her answers.

“I am not curious and I am quite comfortable here,” she said, but in truth she was dying of curiosity and wanted nothing more than to curl into the warmth of his arms. But as much as she wanted her answers, she’d rather have had her name struck from the social registry than ask.

“Suit yourself,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest and closing his eyes, as if he’d like nothing better than a little nap.

If he wanted to act like there was nothing wrong with him buying gifts for the lady she considered her worst enemy, then she could as well. And so she crossed her arms and closed her eyes.

But all that danced through her thoughts were visions of Miss Browne’s delight at receiving such a personal and intimate gift from no less than the Duke of Hollindrake.

She peeked at him and found him peeking at her, and knew he would tell her only if she took another course. “How I wish…” She let her question float through the carriage.

“What is that, my dear?” he asked, shifting in his seat.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said, glancing up at him, handsome devil that he was. “Did I disturb you?”

He shook his head. “No, not at all. You said something about a wish?”

“I did,” she told him. “I was just thinking how delightful it would have been if we could have had a big wedding, you know, in the country with our families and friends around and a large house party. I could have carried a bouquet of orange blossoms and had a new gown from Madame Ornette’s. With Tally and Pippin as bridesmaids, of course.”

He nodded and closed his eyes again. “Well if that is what you wish…”

“Well, the house party certainly, but we are already—” she began, even as a vague memory from the night at the Ransomed Cat flitted through her hazy recollections.

Got a fellow who can do the job right
,
though not altogether proper
,
if you know what I mean…Not that she’s likely to notice.

“Oh, dear heavens!” she gasped. “We aren’t—” She couldn’t even say the words.

“No. No, we aren’t,” he agreed, still feigning his sleep stance.

“You rakish, improper, devil of a—” Felicity blustered for a moment, then continued, but in Russian and some Italian and even a bit of French, which obviously Thatcher knew, because he flinched when she impugned his parentage as well as his manhood.

“Now, that’s a lie,” he pointed out. “I believe I proved that quite to the contrary earlier today.” Then he grinned like Brutus in a boot shop. “If you want, I can prove it again.”

“You will not! We aren’t married,” she replied. “Dare I ask when exactly were you planning on telling me?”

He leaned forward and looked out the window. “I suppose in about five minutes. When we got to the archbishop’s house, but now you’ve gone and ruined the surprise.” Then he reached over and tugged her into his arms, that passionate, smoky light in his eyes telling her that her outburst had been like an aphrodisiac to him. “I had Gibbens send around a note asking the good man to see us this afternoon.” And then he kissed her, plundering her lips and teasing her until nearly every bit of her anger had fled.

Nearly all.

“Marry me, Miss Langley, for you are the only woman I will ever love.”

“I will not,” she told him, her gown askew and her hair tumbling down from its pins, her body trembling from his touch. “Not ever.”

“You will when I tell you why I sent that hairbrush to Miss Browne,” he said, nuzzling her neck with his lips.

“I doubt it,” she replied.

And so he told her.

And as he predicted, she married him. Again.

Because a man so thoughtful, so very scandalous, was worth marrying. Twice.

Even if he was a most improper duke.