Chapter Six #2
It took all of Wilfred’s self-control not to smile. He couldn’t imagine that ever going down well, if Michael were to try.
“But I think that you might be approaching Reeny all wrong,” continued Michael. “I’m not saying you don’t know her. But you know her as a friend, and you want to know her as… God, I can’t believe I’m saying this about my sister, but as a lover. She only knows you as a brother.”
Wilfred winced.
“So court someone else. Hell, fake an engagement with someone else,” said Irene’s brother with a lopsided grin. “Make Reeny jealous. Make her realize what she’s missing.”
It was the most ridiculous idea Wilfred had ever heard. “You’re mad.”
“Maybe. But I’m not the one screaming into a cushion,” pointed out his friend fairly.
“And the other lady? Where am I to find a willing partner, one who will not mind our ‘courtship’ not ending in marriage?” Wilfred was not even sure he had ever even spoken to another eligible lady at length, unless one counted Irene’s cousins and sisters, and somehow, they didn’t count.
Irene’s mere presence at his side had done a fabulous job of keeping eager mamas and their daughters at bay.
“I might have a suggestion. Let me know if you have the stomach for the charade,” Michael said, standing up and straightening his waistcoat. “Now, I’ve got an appointment to make and you need to decide just how far you are willing to go to marry my sister. Ugh, still odd. Good day to you, Aynor.”
Wilfred almost certainly wished his friend a good day, but he could not recall doing so. He had just sat there, in the silence of the library, the broken plate and scattered cake by his feet, thinking.
Make Reeny jealous. Make her realize what she’s missing.
It was a ridiculous idea. A foolish one, one that could surely not lead to anything good.
But it might just work.
By luncheon, Wilfred had sent a note to Michael at the Chance townhouse and within an hour, a note had returned to the Aynor residence with a name and an address.
Wilfred was outside the address fifteen minutes later.
It was not a pleasant street, and not one he typically frequented.
Some of the windows were boarded up and though the area had clearly once been rather pleasant, poverty had dragged it down.
A few faces peered curiously as he knocked heavily on the door and waited for what felt like an age while his pulse beat faster and faster.
A woman appeared at the door. “Yes?”
“Miss Fletcher? Miss Annie Fletcher?”
The woman was pretty, in a plain sort of way. Straw-colored hair, small eyes, a rather nondescript nose. Wilfred could not describe her any other way; every woman paled in comparison to Irene. “Who’s asking?”
“Mr. Michael Chance recommended you to me,” Wilfred began awkwardly. How precisely did one go about this? “I need a favor.”
Her eyes glittered. “Sixteen shillings, not a penny less.”
“No—no!” Dear God, he would have to have a word with young Michael Chance. “No, there has been a misunderstanding.”
“If you don’t have coin, then I can’t help you,” Miss Fletcher said, pulling a threadbare shawl around her shoulders. “It’s cold out and you’re letting the warmth get away. State your business or go away.”
Compassion flooded through him. This was not a woman who had an easy life.
“It’s simple,” Wilfred said shortly. “I’m in love with a woman and I want to make her jealous. Make her think that you and I are…are engaged.”
As he had expected, Miss Fletcher’s eyes widened. “Engaged? To you?”
“And you won’t be, let’s make that very clear,” Wilfred said hastily. Perhaps this had not been a good idea. The Duke of Aynor should not be seen in this part of Bath…yet he could hardly falsify an engagement with a lady of good standing.
Her good standing would be reasonably short-lived.
Then again, it wasn’t proper for a duke to be engaged to a lady in her position, either. So they’d have to come up with a proper history.
“All I wish is for your company in public a few times, to ensure she sees us,” he said hurriedly, conscious he was starting to gain more than a few stares the longer he stood speaking with Miss Fletcher.
“We shall keep your identity mysterious, imply, perhaps if anyone asks, that you’re a lady from a foreign nation.
You won’t even need to speak. I shall pay you a guinea a day, when I need you. ”
Perhaps a guinea had been too much, judging by the suddenly eager look on her face. “A guinea a day?”
“Do we have an agreement, Miss Fletcher?” Wilfred said urgently.
He was almost certain he would regret this. This was foolishness, that was what it was—but he could see no other alternative.
Michael was right. Irene saw him as naught but a brother and while that had been a great comfort to him as a child, he wanted more now.
Familial love simply wasn’t enough.
Miss Fletcher lurched and grasped his hand, shaking it heavily. “A guinea a day to walk about an hour or two with a gent? You must think I’m mad.”
“I must think that you will be the soul of discretion and say nothing of this to anyone,” Wilfred said firmly, drawing himself up and hoping that he was giving her a stern yet fair look.
Whether or not she understood it, he was not sure. She did understand the flash of silver as he produced half a crown from his pocket.
It had disappeared into her own pocket in an instant. “So when shall I expect you, sir?”
“I’ll send a note,” Wilfred said, trying not to think too much about it.
It was a good idea. And it would work. “I’m afraid you’ll have to buy new clothing.
” He brought out another coin, and she snatched it as eagerly as the first. “A gown. And a proper bonnet. Something a—a lady would wear for a walk.”
“I can get the clothes. You said you’d send a note. A note from who?”
Ah, yes. Probably shouldn’t give his title. “Wilfred,” he said quietly.
Miss Fletcher grinned. “All right, Wilf. I’ll see you when I see you!”
And that, it appeared, was that.
Wilfred still felt the cloying air of the rundown street by the time he’d reached the corner of Milsom Street and George Street, but he tried to put the place out of his mind.
He may never end up actually using Miss Fletcher as a source of jealousy for Irene, after all.
He might wake up tomorrow and think better of it.
Irene could arrive at their appointment and fling her hands around his neck and profess her love.
Well. She might.
Sadly, it was not to be. When Irene appeared around the corner—without her sister or even her lady’s maid in tow, he had to note—and waved as she approached, Wilfred was filled with a bubbling affection that made him smile and know that he could never find such happiness as this.
When Irene reached him, she punched him slightly on the arm.
“Ouch!”
“My brother says you offered him the most splendid chocolate cake, and I have never had such fare when I have visited,” Irene said conversationally, as though cake were the most important thing in the world. “How dare you?”
Wilfred could not help but laugh as he rubbed at the spot where she had touched him. The contact had been brief. Too brief. “You know you can come to my townhouse any time and demand cake. Even if I’m not at home.”
It could be your home one day, he thought desperately. Hang it all. A man shouldn’t be pining like this!
The trouble was, he didn’t know any other way to pine.
“Now, don’t you dare chastise me for not bringing my sister.” She pouted playfully. “You know she’d rather be at her pianoforte than dragged through the shops.”
Darn it all. Her pouting only made the need for a companion or chaperone all the more urgent. How could she not realize, after all of this, the danger? “And Wharton?”
“I left the house before she or Mama noticed. The house was all quite a flurry. That’s what comes of sharing a lady’s maid between three sisters and a viscountess—four sisters, if you count Jessica before she left and got her own.
” Irene gestured for him to follow. “Come on. I need a new bonnet and I can’t keep borrowing Jessica’s anymore.
” She looped her hand in his arm without seemingly a second thought and paraded him toward a modiste.
“You are going to tell me what looks good.”
It was all Wilfred could do not to allow his spirits to sink. “Oh. Oh, good.”
It was not good. There was absolutely nothing good about Madame Decartes, the best modiste in Bath, to be sure, but the place was absolutely stuffed full of… Well. Stuff.
Hats and bonnets and turbans. Silks and cottons and muslins. Bolts of fabric and boxes of buttons and parasols and dainty shoes and impressively hefty trunks—
“If you’re not going to be helpful, I shall send you away, you know,” said Irene with a teasing grin. “You haven’t told me how lovely I look.”
“You look lovely,” said Wilfred obediently, though he could not help the mischievous twinkle he was sure shone in his eye.
Irene giggled as she removed the hideous gray-and-yellow-striped bonnet from her dark curls. “Well, you have to say that. You’re my best friend.”
The lump in his throat did not make it impossible to speak, but it certainly did not help. “And that is the only reason why I am saying it.”
Wilfred watched Irene as she slowly moved around the modiste’s shop, touching buttons and stroking fabrics, and he wondered how on earth he was going to live without her.
For all his fine words to Michael about never marrying another woman, Wilfred was not so foolish as to believe that Irene would remain unmarried.
No, there were a few other gentlemen at Madame Descartes who were evidently with sisters, their handsome gazes following the beauty around the shop with eagle eyes.
No, Irene would be courted by someone and she would fall in giddy love and she would marry. And Wilfred would be right there to watch her.
And have his heart broken.
“What about this one?” Irene had picked up a dashing navy number with military-gold buttons along the side and gold frogging along the edges.
“Very impressive,” Wilfred said with a laugh. “But aren’t you afraid that you’ll be press-ganged into service?”
“Oh, they don’t do that anymore,” Irene said dismissively, but her eyes sparkled with curiosity. “Do they?”
“I have heard tell that strange things indeed go on in places like Cornwall, or Devonshire,” Wilfred admitted, “though I speak from an utter lack of experience.”
“Well, I do not think I should be a very good sailor,” said the woman he loved as she removed the bonnet and placed it back on its stand. “I was awfully seasick that one time we went on a boat in Brighton, and I’m not sure I should like to swat a deck.”
Dear Lord, how could he ever think about marrying anyone else? “Swab a deck.”
“I don’t think I would like to do anything to a deck.” Irene grinned from underneath the most fantastically feathered bonnet that Wilfred had ever seen. In fact, he could barely see Irene. “You never wanted to go to sea?”
“Dukes do not go to sea, as a general rule,” he said genially.
Perhaps he should not have said so. Now a few of the sisters to the gentlemen who were eagerly watching Irene’s progress around the modiste were now staring in a completely different light.
Oh, blast.
Wilfred was no fool. He knew he was a duke, and a duke with a significant income, and that always attracted a certain amount of attention from mamas and their darling daughters.
He managed to avoid most of it. Irene usually did that on her own.
If these women had not known him at a glance, however, they might have assumed her to be his sister and not a competitor for his affections. After all, what duke escorted a lady to whom he was unrelated away from the watchful eye of a chaperone?
This duke does, he reminded himself.
“No, I suppose dukes have better things to do,” said Irene, now adorned by a turban of the most fantastic silk. “Look at this!”
Wilfred did look.
Another observer might have seen a very pretty girl wearing a turban made of a silk that seemed quite extraordinary and impossible. One moment it looked red, and Irene would tilt her head and the fabric would somehow become purple, then blue, then a dark, shimmering green.
“Don’t I look marvelous?” Irene asked, fluttering her eyelashes.
Need burned in Wilfred’s loins. “You look like a peacock.”
“Wilfred!”
“You look marvelous,” he said obediently with a sarcastic air, but as she continued to smile, he added, much against his better judgment, “You… You look perfect.”
She looked perfect in all of them. She looked perfect in all of them because she was Irene in all of them.
His flattery, however, did not appear to be taken seriously.
Irene snorted and removed the turban. “Now you’re just talking nonsense. Come on. There must be a bonnet here that would suit.”
Wilfred had seen it the moment they had entered Madame Descartes’s boutique. In just a few steps, he picked up the delicately stitched, light-green silk bonnet. It was not overly decorated; it did not need to be. The woman whom it would adorn had more than enough embellishments.
“This one,” he said quietly, handing it to Irene. “It will go with your favorite gown, for a start, but green goes with everything. It’s why God put it so much in nature. And it will match your eyes.”
Those eyes sparkled, and then Irene’s lovely face lit up with well-worn laugh lines. “I’ll buy it immediately.”
“You’re not going to try it on?”
“I don’t have to,” said Irene, warming Wilfred’s spirits in a way she could not understand. “You chose it. And I trust you.”