When the Duchess Said Yes (10 page)

“We shall,” Lady Allred said, drawing an elaborate lace fan from her pocket and snapping it open. “Though mind you, Hawkesworth, Lady Sanborn and I shall be out of hearing, but not out of sight. Now come, Sophronia,
I wish to see this new trick that you claim your pup can do.”

“It is no idle claim, Mary, I assure you,” Aunt Sophronia said as they walked away. “My darling Swan will jump higher than any trained beast in the circus, so long as I hold his treat in the air. Isn’t that so, my own little fellow? Won’t you do that for your mama and her friend?”

“I should rather like to see Swan jump that high myself,” Hawkesworth said, watching the older ladies and the dogs retreat to a settee at the far end of the drawing room. “A leaping dog can be wicked amusing.”

“My aunt exaggerates, sir,” Lizzie said. “Swan is more wicked fat than wicked amusing. Cannot you see how his belly nigh drags on the floor? All he does is eat the cake that my aunt feeds him, and even then it must be frosted, or he’ll not touch it.”

Hawkesworth laughed, that wonderful warm chuckle that she remembered from Ranelagh. “Truly?”

“Truly, sir,” Lizzie said. “I would never lie about such a thing. Would you sit, sir?”

“Ah, so that’s part of the script, isn’t it?” He bowed and indicated her chair. “Those two may be fussing over the dogs, but all the time they’re keeping a weather eye on us. Your chair, Lady Elizabeth.”

“Thank you, sir,” Lizzie said, sitting with care so that her hoops wouldn’t spring up. She’d never worn hoops in the country, and she still found the cane rings unpredictable. Thoughtfully Aunt Sophronia had arranged for them to sit on side chairs, not armchairs, to minimize the risk of hoop mishaps. Now it was her turn to wave a purposely languid hand toward the other chair for him. “If you please, sir.”

“And thus we begin again, Lady Elizabeth,” he said. “That is their reason for bringing us together, and I suppose it must be ours as well.”

“Oh, yes,” she said fervently. “Let us forget those other times ever happened.”

“Most of them,” he agreed, all amiability. “Though there are certain pleasurable parts that I’d hate to let slip from my memory.”

She blushed, for there were more than a few things she wouldn’t forget, either.

He pulled his chair nearer to hers before he sat, so his long legs were nearly touching her knee.

“To begin, you must call me Hawke,” he continued. “All my friends do, and I’ve no intention of being one of those men who require their wives to remind them of their own rank.”

“Thank you, Hawke,” she said, strangely shy. She’d kissed him, yes, but somehow calling him by this shortened name seemed so
familiar
and worldly. “I am grateful for that.”

“You shouldn’t be, since it comes with a condition,” he said, leaning closer. “You must permit me to call you Elizabeth.”

“Lizzie,” she corrected. “That’s what my friends and family call me.”

He made a face of mock severity. “I do not know if I can do that,” he said. “I’ve never heard of a duchess named Lizzie.”

“Then I shall be the first,” she said. “Or more likely, I shall be Elizabeth as a duchess, but Lizzie to you.”

At once she realized how imperious and forward that sounded.

“That is, you may call me whatever you please,” she said quickly. “I did not mean to order you like that, as if you were no better than fat little Swan.”

“I will forgive you only if you offer me a bite of cake,” he said, managing to keep his voice so perfectly even that she didn’t realize at first that he was teasing. “Mind
you make the bites precisely square and with icing that you have spread yourself.”

She blushed with pleasure. She did not possess an abundant knowledge of gentlemen and their ways, but she did know that they didn’t bother to tease unless they were interested.

Of course, having two sisters made her perfectly capable of teasing him in return. Slowly she opened the book of sermons, holding it up as if she were reading aloud to him, her eyes modestly downcast and intent on the page before her.

“When the ladies study us from across the room,” she began, “they will see me sharing a favorite edifying passage with you.”

“Yes, they will,” he said, smiling and nodding at his mother and Lady Sophronia. “But am I correct to suppose that what they will see is not what is happening?”

“Why, yes, you are,” Lizzie said. “Because in reality, I am imagining myself standing on my tiptoes, on this chair, with my hand raised high and a small cube of iced cake—
pink
iced cake, with silver French dragées pressed into the icing—held in my fingers, whilst you leap as high as you can into the air and attempt to snatch the cake from me.
That
, Hawke, is what I am imagining, even as I turn this next page of the good Reverend Fullingham’s book.”

She did turn the page, and finally raised her gaze to meet his.

His well-mannered drawing-room expression was gone, and in its place was the same look she’d seen in his face when he’d asked her to leave Ranelagh with him so they might better explore her fairy ways. Though he smiled still, he looked hungry, in a masculine, wolfish sort of way that had nothing to do with scampering little dogs. It was exciting to realize she could inspire such a look simply by teasing him, but at the same time she
felt like an inexperienced swimmer who had drifted well out beyond her depth.

“Truly?” he asked. “Those were your thoughts, Lizzie?”

“Yes,” she said, her cheeks warming with excitement.

“What if I told you that I would never be that obedient, or agreeable to tricks?” He leaned a little closer to her. “What if I said that if you kept that sweet little cake too long from my reach, I might tire of the game and simply seize it for my own?”

She had the distinct feeling he was no longer speaking of the cake alone.

“But waiting always makes the treat sweeter,” she said. “Didn’t you learn that as a boy?”

He slipped his arm over the back of her chair, behind her shoulders. “Recall that I’m a duke, and I don’t have to wait for anything that I want.”

She raised her brows, incredulous. “Nothing?”

“No,” he said, and smiled. “Not even pink frosted cake with silver dragées.”

She blushed and quickly looked back down at the book. His arm wasn’t touching her, but she was acutely aware of it there. Part of her wished to scuttle away like a nervous little mouse, but the other part of her wanted to lean back against his arm and let it curl around her shoulders.

“Then perhaps you should be the one reading Reverend Fullingham’s sermons, not I,” she said. Absently she looked down at the page she held open, which seemed to be a sermon about how bearing poverty with humility displayed rare virtue: not exactly applicable to a duke who’d always been granted whatever he wished as one of the wealthiest gentlemen in the country. “There must be plenty here that might be useful to you.”

“Oh, I’m sure of it,” he said easily. “I’m a duke, not a
paragon. I never claimed otherwise. Unlike you, my ever dutiful Lady Lizzie.”

“Ah, you mean what I said to your mother.” She closed the book, holding it cradled in her hands. “To be truthful—for I am that, Hawke—I haven’t read a single one of the good reverend’s admonitions. Not one. Aunt Sophronia thrust the book into my hands before you arrived, for show.”

He chuckled at that. The arm on the back of her chair moved lower, and she felt him toying with the wisps of hair that curled on her nape, tendrils that had slipped loose of the neat linen cap. She’d never realized how sensitive the back of her neck could be—at least how sensitive it was to his featherlight touch, barely grazing her skin yet sending tiny ripples of sensation down her spine. She wondered if her aunt and his mother could see what he was doing from across the room. She hoped they couldn’t, because she didn’t want him to stop.

“I like truth,” he said softly, “especially in a lady. Though you’ve confessed that virtue to me before, at Ranelagh, didn’t you? If you have said it twice, I suppose it must be the truth. You are truthful regarding truth.”

She smiled wryly, looking back down at the book. “It is, and I am. Which must make me thoroughly dull to a worldly gentleman like you.”

“Not at all,” he said. “I’d hardly scorn the rarity of an honest lady. But why didn’t you confess that to my mother as well? Why did you speak of being dutiful instead?”

She twisted on her chair to face him, letting his hand drop to her shoulder.

“Why?” she repeated, incredulous because to her it seemed so perfectly obvious. “Because you and I are dutiful, Hawke, as dutiful as any two people can be. Why else would we be here together, sitting in this room on
these chairs, unless we were aware of our duty not only to our fathers but to each other?”

He turned his head to one side, frowning a bit and making Lizzie wish she were more adept at reading his handsome face.

“I suppose we are dutiful,” he said thoughtfully, as if he’d never considered such a notion before. “We are.”

“It doesn’t displease you, does it?” she asked wistfully, and immediately wished the words unsaid.

But at last he smiled, the smile that lit his entire face. For the first time, she thought she saw not only desire there but respect as well, and even a bit of affection.

“My own Lizzie,” he said. “Truly you will make me the most fortunate of men.”

“Oh, Hawke.” Though she’d take being his own Lizzie over being his duchess any day, she did wish he’d make her some sort of pretty lover’s speech, the way the heroes did in novels and plays, instead of falling back on the same words his mother had used. But perhaps pretty speeches would come in time, and she leaned closer, hoping he’d dare to kiss her even with the two older ladies standing guard.

But Hawke turned away before he could take note of her willingness, and instead of kissing her he beckoned to one of the footmen who stood by the door, and then with surprising impatience rose and went to meet the footman halfway. Lizzie’s consolation was being able to watch him; this was a view she didn’t ordinarily see, and she unabashedly admired him. His coat was pale gray and perfectly tailored to display his height and the breadth of his shoulders; his dark hair was held back with a black silk ribbon.

She was so busy ogling him that she almost regretted it when he returned, carrying a flat linen-wrapped parcel that he’d taken from the footman. Until, that is, he came to stand before her, the package in his hands.

“I know it’s common for gentlemen to offer their brides some costly jeweler’s bauble,” he said, carefully unwrapping the linen. “But I wished to give you something that cannot be bought in London, not for any price, and something that only I could give to you.”

He pulled away the last length of linen, and though he still held the object facing away, she could see now that it was some sort of framed looking glass or picture.

“If it’s from you, I am sure to like it,” she said, her curiosity growing by the second. “Please, Hawke, might I see?”

Looking down at the picture in his hands, he visibly took a deep breath. His uncertainty surprised her, but she found it endearing, too, that he’d worry so over pleasing her with his gift.

“Please,” she said softly, more to reassure him than to beg.

“Very well,” he said, and handed the picture to her.

She took it and gasped. She’d never seen anything like this painting. An elegant lady and gentleman, married or at least lovers, sat beneath a tree with their dogs. Though the picture was clearly very old—even her uneducated eye could tell that—the colors were as bright as jewels, the gold leaf shining, the detail precise and charming. The painting of the gentleman in his fur-trimmed clothes offering a white primrose to the lady in her ermine-edged robes was the most exquisitely romantic object she’d ever held in her hands. And now, to her wonder, it was hers.

“It’s more than three hundred years old, tempera on panel,” he said, rapidly explaining and apologizing at the same time. “It may seem peculiar to modern tastes, I know, but it’s always been one of my special favorites, which is why I wished you to have it. But if you’d rather I bought you a bracelet or some such, I will understand, and—”

“This is
perfect
,” she whispered, unable to look away from the picture in her hands. “Why would I ever long for a bracelet when you’ve given me a gift like this?”

He dropped back into the chair beside her. “You like it, then?”

“How could I not, Hawke?” she said. “I shall be the first to admit that I know nothing of pictures—our house at Ransom had only a few gloomy ones from the old queen’s time that scared me when I was little—but even I can tell that this is special, and right, and—and I cannot believe you would give it to me.”

“It’s easy enough to learn the history,” he said eagerly, studying the picture over her arm. “But not everyone can
see
paintings, with their heart as well as their eyes.”

She glanced at him, surprised by what she saw. She hadn’t realized how much of his charm was a mask, a guise of pleasantry worn before the world. Yet when he spoke of the painting, the mask had vanished, and his face suddenly became much more alive and almost boyishly enthusiastic.

“Is that how you see?” she asked, her excitement matching his. “With your heart?”

He nodded, raking his hair back from where it had slipped across his forehead. “Most Englishmen can’t, you know, being hopeless Philistines. All they can see in art is expense and value and how many guineas were spent to impress the squire in the next county. Italians discover beauty everywhere. To see like that, Lizzie, is a rare gift, a marvel, a—”

“Ah, very good, Hawkesworth,” Lady Allred said. “I see you have given Lady Elizabeth your little token.”

Lizzie looked up, startled and disappointed. How had her ladyship and her aunt managed to appear so suddenly and so silently, very like thieves in the night, to spoil her conversation with Hawke?

“To be sure, it is a most curious gift to offer one’s betrothed,
but then my son never will follow the usual custom,” Lady Allred continued. “Show the thing to your aunt, Lady Elizabeth, so she might understand.”