Sheri Cobb South (23 page)

“Tell me, Aunt Hattie, was I wrong to decline Lord Torrington’s offer?” Margaret’s eyes were clouded with anguished indecision. “I might have come to love him in time.”

“Indeed, you might have, but I think it much more likely that you would have come to resent him for being himself, instead of the man you wanted him to be. No, dearest, I think you were right to refuse him. There may be days when you wish you had married him, it is true. And yet it seems better to me that one regret the things one did
not
do than to regret things one has done and cannot
undo,
if you see what I mean.”

Margaret, following this convoluted sentence with some difficulty, rose from the window seat to embrace her aunt. “I see exactly what you mean, and I think you must be right. Oh, Aunt Hattie, I wish I were as wise as you.”

“Wise?” echoed her aunt incredulously. “Me? Why, your papa was used to say I was the greatest pea-goose of his acquaintance! Will you not come with me? I can promise you a very busy morning with little time for blue megrims, for today we are making candles to send to the natives in darkest Africa.”

“Perhaps another time. Only tell me, Aunt Hattie. I am sure you are rendering a valuable service, but—why candles?”

“You cannot have been paying attention, my love,” chided Aunt Hattie.
“Darkest
Africa, you know! Now, what have I said to make you laugh? Never mind, I don’t want to know. I am only pleased to see you happy again.”

On this note Aunt Hattie took her leave, bearing her basket of candle-making supplies on her arm. Left to her own devices, Margaret returned to her reading, but not even Mrs. Radcliffe’s ghostly monks, haunted abbeys, and fainting heroines were sufficient to prevent her mind from wandering back to a certain golden-haired Latin scholar, and the joy that might have been hers. Half an hour had passed in this manner (during which time she had read the same paragraph four times without yet comprehending it) when the sound of the door knocker shattered the silence.

Margaret was surprised in more ways than one, for in addition to being startled out of her reverie, she could not think who might be calling at such a time, when most of her aunt’s friends were making candles with the Ladies’ Missionary Aid Society. She waited for Tilly to announce the caller, but the maid never came. Instead, a second knock sounded, this one louder and longer than the first.

“Tilly?” Margaret called. “Tilly, someone is at the door.”

When no footsteps hurried to answer the summons, Margaret remembered this was Tilly’s marketing day. If the door were to be opened, Margaret would have to do it herself. Casting her neglected book aside, she shook out her skirts and reached the door just as a third knock sounded. She seized the knob, turned it, and pulled.

There on the porch stood a tall, almost gangly young man clad in an outmoded coat whose sleeves did not quite cover his wrists. Although his garments were depressingly sober-hued, his golden hair shone in the autumn sunlight, and behind his wire-rimmed spectacles, his eyes were a brilliant blue.

“Mr. Fan—that is, your Grace,” stammered Margaret, sinking into a deep curtsy.

“Miss Darrington,” he said, answering her curtsy with a bow, “I understand you have a position available for which I wish to be considered.”

Whatever she had expected him to say, it was not that. “I—we—Philip is quite happy at school, and doing very well there,” she said, nonplussed. “We have no need of a tutor.”

“The position I am applying for,” he continued, “is that of your husband.”

Margaret, still holding the door, now clutched at it for support, lest her knees give way beneath her. “Really, Mr.— your Grace, one can hardly engage a husband as one might a butler, or a—a—”

“A tutor?” James suggested, smiling his dimpled smile. “You have no idea how relieved I am to hear you say so. You have more than once given me to understand that was
exactly
how one should go about the business.”

The dimples almost undid her. “Your Grace, I am painfully aware of having said any number of—of foolish things to you,” she said, choking back tears of humiliation and heartbreak. “I beg you will cease making a May-game of me by throwing them in my face.”

She at least had the satisfaction of seeing the smile wiped from his face. “Is that why you think I’ve come all the way from London? Good God, what a pretty fellow you must think me!”

“How should I know what to think of you? I don’t even know you!”

But even as she said the words, she knew they were not true. She knew him, had known him almost from the moment she had first seen him bloody and beaten in the road, with the instinctive knowledge of the heart recognizing its soul mate. It would make no difference whether he called himself Mr. Fanshawe, or the duke of Montford, or the Czar of all the Russias.

Still, there were things that must be said, questions that must be asked. Days, weeks of agony were summed up in half a dozen words. “Why did you never tell me?”

He expelled a deep breath. “I fear it makes for a rather long story. The short version is, I didn’t know it myself—at least, not at first. I had just arrived in Montford to claim my inheritance when I was set upon by footpads—but you know that part. What you don’t know was that their tender ministrations were sufficient to deprive me of my memory. When you came along, apparently expecting me, I assumed I must be your Mr. Fanshawe. I labored under that delusion for several weeks, until our visit to Montford Priory. A certain silhouette there bore such a marked resemblance to Miss Amanda’s handiwork that it brought everything rushing back.”

“But you said nothing, even then!”

“No, for to have done so would have been extremely awkward for all of us. Besides, your family had taken me in and nursed my wounds—and loved me a little, I think. In some ways, you became the family I never had. I was in no hurry to give all that up for a life of lonely luxury.”

“We would have come to visit you—”

“I can see us now, very properly sipping tea under Aunt Hattie’s chaperonage. I thank you, but no!” He hesitated a moment before adding, “There was another reason, too, in which my rôle is not nearly so heroic. Before I came to Montford, I was curate of a rural parish. There I fell in love—or thought I did—with one of the daughters of the local gentry.”

“Miss Prescott?” breathed Margaret.

“The very same. I asked her to marry me, and was promptly turned down. She was very beautiful, as you know, and her sights were set much higher than a shabby-genteel curate with no prospects. So she went to London, and I—” His mouth twisted in a wry smile. “I inherited a dukedom.”

“So you might have married her after all.”

“True. But I had learned a hard lesson, which left me determined not to be married for the sake of my title. And so it was as plain Mr. Fanshawe, rather than the duke of Montford, that I asked you to marry me. When I met with much the same response, I told myself I had been wise to withhold the information, and went off to London to lick my wounds and make my mark in Society.” He possessed himself of her hands. “So there you have it. I have been both a pauper and a peer, but I find I would rather be a tutor with you than a duke without you. I am not mistaken, am I, in thinking that you—care for me—to some extent?”

“No.” Her confession was scarcely more than a whisper. “No, you are not mistaken. It was not until the night Amanda’s betrothal was announced that I realized why I was so set against your marrying her. For one dreadful moment, you see, I—I thought it was you.”

He released her hands, but only so that he might take her into his arms. “My dearest love!”

“But I can never marry you now,” Margaret said some time later, emerging flushed and breathless from his kiss. “Not after I refused to have you as plain Mr. Fanshawe. What sort of person would that make me?”

“Human,” he suggested.  “Imperfectly, adorably human.”

“Everyone would say I only married you in order to become the duchess of Montford,” she insisted. “And they would call you a fool for allowing yourself to be entrapped by a country nobody.”

He merely shrugged. “So they may. But we’ll be halfway up the Acropolis by that time.
We won’t hear a thing.”

As a diversionary tactic, it worked brilliantly. “Oh, do you remember that?” she exclaimed, gazing up at him with a singularly foolish smile playing about her mouth.

“I remember everything you ever said to me, up to and including the bit about Aunt Hattie and the naked Romans.” His tone was playful, but there was a light in his blue eyes that made her feel suddenly weak in the knees. “I want to kiss you on the steps of the Parthenon, Margaret. I want to explore the Coliseum hand in hand with you, and swim naked with you in a Roman bath.”

“Oh!” she exclaimed, blushing rosily.

“And then,” he went on, unmindful of her maidenly modesty, “I want to settle down in the Priory and set about ensuring the succession.” He grinned sheepishly. “It is truly amazing how quickly one adapts to a dynastic mode of thinking. Tell me, shall we engage an artist from the Royal Academy to restore the Hogarth? I think I should like our children to know their great-grandfather.”

“I
should settle for knowing their father,” she retorted. “Do you realize that I don’t even know your name? I can no longer call you Mr. Fanshawe, and I refuse to go through life addressing my husband as ‘your Grace.’ ”

“No, too formal by half, particularly in moments of, er, connubial bliss,” he agreed. “When we are in private, a simple ‘duke’ will suffice.”

“Oh, you
are
an idiot,” she said with a blissful sigh.

“Not at all. Mr. Fanshawe may have been an idiot, but now I am a duke, and therefore merely eccentric. And incidentally, my name is James.”

“Are you certain? I should hate for you to suddenly remember another identity, along with perhaps a wife and six children somewhere, all awaiting your return.”

“No, no other wife and children. I am quite certain I am James Weatherly—just as I am certain that I love you, Margaret Darrington.”

He would have taken her into his arms to demonstrate the truth of this statement, but she splayed her hands against his chest, holding him off.

“But James, darling, are you quite sure you wish to marry me? You may find yourself living under the cat’s paw, for I fear I shall always be an odiously
managing
sort of female!”

“Oh, I’ve no doubt of it! Fortunately, it so happens that my dearest wish is to be managed by you for the rest of my life. Now kiss me, my love, or I shall suspect that your only interest in me lies in my coronet.”

Margaret, determined to refute so unjust a charge, obeyed with enthusiasm.

Copyright © 2006 by Sheri Cobb South

Originally published by Five Star (1594145296)

Electronically published in 2009 by Belgrave House/Regency Reads

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This is a work of fiction. All names in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to any person living or dead is coincidental.