Chapter Seventeen
Curiously, he led her up the servants’ staircase.
The Duke of Brantingham grinned at her like a mischievous boy as they climbed the tight, twisting, freezing stairs.
Music and laughter arose from the staff party in the kitchens far below, yet Aurelia’s destination was—or so it felt—the very top of the house.
Whispering to disguise their progress, His Grace explained, “I cut through here from time to time, since it’s a more direct route to the bedrooms, bathrooms, and my bolthole of an office.
” He paused before a baize door and shifted it open with his shoulder.
“Tonight, however, I don’t want Margie, Fannie, or Perry to know where we’re going. ”
Theirs was a clandestine journey.
Aurelia and the Duke exited the service passage into a quiet, carpeted corridor that she’d walked many times before, but never from this direction.
Gaslight burned from fixtures overhead and from candle sconces along the walls.
She admired China vases on marble pedestals, potted ferns in window planters, and family portraits of haughty ancestors whose eyes seemed to follow them as they sneaked through the house.
She recognized the door to the duchess’s apartments, where she had encountered him behaving strangely on the night of their jaunt to the Victoria Embankment. Her pulse quickened as His Grace turned the knob and stepped inside, for whatever he’d tried to hide from her before was no longer forbidden.
“Come,” he said, taking her hand and guiding her forward. “Don’t be frightened. Everything you wish to learn lies beyond this threshold.”
His words intrigued her—as they were doubtless meant to do—and she followed him into his mother’s bedchamber.
The room was dark, the curtains and shutters closed, yet His Grace strode purposefully across the space which was so familiar to him, even in relative blindness.
He lit the lamps along the perimeter, and she watched as the gaslight flickered to life.
The walls were hung in a soft rose silk, which grew warm and inviting in the gas-glow.
A large, four-poster bed with a high canopy and matching silk curtains dominated one side of the room.
Across from it sat a pink-veined marble chimneypiece, with the tall gilt-framed mirror above it shrouded in black crape, for this beautiful bedroom was only empty because its occupant had died.
Aurelia hugged herself against the chill, yet the Duke made no move to build a fire. She imagined that they would not be in here long enough for it to make a difference. Yet he noticed her shivering and shrugged out of his jacket before draping it across her bare shoulders.
She leaned into the warmth of his evening jacket, relishing in the scent of his shaving lotion on the soft wool. “Does it pain you to come here?” she asked. “Is it difficult for you to see it empty?”
These seemed foolish and hollow questions—so inadequate in the face of his significant loss—but she’d never known a family, never mourned a mother. She felt terribly sorry for him, though.
“Honestly, it’s something of a comfort to sit here and remember her,” he explained.
The Duke walked the room, fondly inspecting his mother’s favorite books, which remained on the bedside table a year after she’d last placed them upon its polished surface.
He touched the late Duchess’s pretty Dresden treasures in a glass-fronted cupboard.
He admired the clusters of framed photographs and miniatures upon the mantel.
“Mama was a popular hostess, even as a young woman. My parents were always giving parties and having friends stay on.” He turned to her and smiled. “We were a jolly bunch, as you can well imagine. She had a particularly dear friend called Cecile…”
His Grace plucked up an oval-framed miniature portrait and offered it to Aurelia, explaining, “I was too young to remember her face, as I was only five or six years old when last I saw her, but I’ve recalled her likeness on the mantelpiece.
You see, my mother kept it here, in pride of place, for over twenty years. ”
Aurelia took the small portrait in her palm and studied it in the lamplight. It showed a pretty lady, her plump cheeks brimming with youth and vitality. Her red-gold hair hung in loops and plaits about her ears in an old-fashioned style that must have been all the rage back then.
Smiling, she handed it back to the Duke. “Cecile seems lovely. I am glad your mother enjoyed such a friendship—it speaks well of them both, I’m sure.”
Yet he wouldn’t take the miniature from her. “Don’t you see, Aurelia? Can you not recognize the resemblance? Cecile Hartley was Lady Mathieson. She wasn’t only Mama’s dearest friend,” he told her. “She was your mother.”
Aurelia’s knees went as weak as gelatin. Clutching the little oval portrait to her breast, she collapsed on the hearth rug in a billow of silver and gold brocade skirts. “My mother?”
He sank before her, holding her tightly as she caught her breath.
“I was so close to the truth, yet I hadn’t quite put two and two together until we met Lord Mathieson at the Embankment,” he said, hugging her shoulders.
“I believe my mother hoped to shelter Cecile from Lord Mathieson, and perhaps that was why she was discovered on the Great North Road with a runaway coachman. I suspect my parents intended to meet her in York and to quietly bring her to Brantingham—though I don’t know the truth of the circumstances, as I never dared to ask Mama what happened to her friend.
Yet, she never forgot Cecile, and she never forgave Mathieson for his callous treatment of her. ”
She heard his story as though she were listening through a tunnel. Everything felt black, and distant, and echoey in her mind. She clung to her mother’s likeness until her knuckles ached. She blinked up into the Duke’s face and realized he was still speaking.
“Had Cecile survived,” he said, “we all would’ve been childhood playfellows.
You would have grown up in the nursery alongside Margie and Fannie, and rambled the Yorkshire wolds with Perry and me.
You would’ve had a home, a family, and a respectable place in the world, for Mathieson must have claimed you.
You would not have been hidden away or abandoned.
You would have belonged with us Charltons. ”
Aurelia smiled weakly. “I would’ve belonged.”
His Grace kissed her temple and held her closely. He enfolded her in his arms, though he was stripped down to his shirtsleeves in the chilly room. She leaned back against his firm, warm chest, taking comfort in his solidity.
“If you stay on through the New Year,” he said, lightly, “I shall take you to meet your maternal grandparents, Lord and Lady Strensham. They will be ecstatic to know you exist, for like everyone else, they must’ve been told that you had died.”
“I have grandparents!” What a cheering thought!
“Yes, and they are charming people. They’ll love you and welcome you, and will claim you as their kin despite whatever Mathieson has to say about it. Your family resemblance is unmistakable.”
“But there will always be folk who whisper that I’m the coachman’s daughter…”
He grimaced. “To hell with them.”
Aurelia was glad to have such a staunch friend and ally. Soon she would have a family of her own relations, people who looked and possibly felt like her.
“I, for one, don’t care whether Mathieson acknowledges you,” he vowed, reverently touching the miniature portrait in her hands. “This is your lineage. You are your mother’s daughter, Aurelia, and she lives on in you.”
“I traveled to London believing that my life would turn out like a fairy tale,” she said, “but the harsh reality soon set in. Men like you don’t marry girls like me.
Even if you don’t care where I come from, you’d never be able to show your face in society, where birth and connections mean everything. ”
The Duke turned her in his arms to gaze deeply into her eyes.
Warmth and light and love shone in those brown depths, as he said, “I wager I could weather the storm.” He kissed her forehead, her powdered nose, her trembling lips.
At last, he asked, “Won’t you do me the very great honor of becoming my wife, Aurelia? ”
***
He feared he’d blundered by proposing, for she stiffened in his embrace.
Selwyn had brought Miss Goldsworthy to his mother’s bedchamber, a place that had always conjured up fond memories of nibbling from Mama’s breakfast tray as a lad while the entire Charlton clan crawled onto the covers for snuggles and kisses.
He had told Aurelia everything he knew about her origins so that she might come to him on an equal footing, for she was a relation of the Hartleys, Strenshams, and the Mathiesons—all noble families of the English upper class, as old and as grand as his own illustrious forebears.
Yet Selwyn didn’t give a fig about whether Mathieson claimed her as his child. Truthfully, he’d rather the fellow wash his hands of her, as Selwyn would pummel anyone who caused Aurelia pain or shame, and no happiness could come from that blackguard.
“Your parentage doesn’t matter to me,” he said. “You stand on your own, regardless of the man who sired you or the man you marry—you taught me that, Aurelia. You showed me my ignorance and exposed me for being a snob, and I deserved every word of that dressing down.
“I hope you can see past my role as the Duke of Brantingham,” he continued, “and recognize the man within, for I, too, am more than my parents’ son.
I’m a country gentleman at heart, happier in the hills and dales, and farmlands along the Humber.
I have experienced enough of life and death to understand what matters in the end.
I love and respect my family, as I shall love and respect you, if you would only let me. ”
Miss Goldsworthy sat stunned and silent as he spoke. Indeed, he’d told her many things tonight when he ought to shut his mouth and open his ears. She had a voice, a will, and a heart of her own, and it was time she expressed them.
“Do forgive my ramblings, darling,” he said while she gazed at him as if in a trance. He gave her a gentle jostling, pleading, “Tell me, Aurelia, what do you want?”
“The world,” she answered suddenly, “I demand the world.” A smile spread across her face as she pressed her upturned lips to his.
“I want a home, a family, a purpose. I want a life of consequence and the duties of a duchess, which I believe I can fulfill admirably.” She kissed him again and again until there was no doubt what she meant when she said, “Oh, I want you, Selwyn.”
As the Duchess of Brantingham, Aurelia Goldsworthy would be a busy, benevolent, important lady. He didn’t care if she never hosted society balls or attended Court receptions, for she would be a leading figure in Yorkshire, and a delight to everyone who knew her.
They would be together—living, working, and loving—for the rest of their lives. Selwyn couldn’t imagine anything more perfect.
He drew the woman of his dreams into his arms and cradled her against his chest. Her hands clutched at his sleeves, and the stiff boning of her bodice pressed into the soft silk of his waistcoat.
Their mouths met in a tangle of lips, teeth, and tongues, as this was no chaste embrace in the carriage, no stolen kisses by the staircase.
They were in love, and they wanted to share in that love, physically as well as emotionally.
Selwyn felt as if his heart would burst in his chest as Miss Goldsworthy—his beloved Aurelia—snaked her arms around his neck, tangling her fingers into his hair. She was, it seemed, as desperate as he to transform their love into a tangible thing.
“I never dreamed…” she whispered as his mouth burned a trail up and down her throat, nibbling her neck and pressing hot, open-mouthed kisses to the pale peaks of her bare shoulders. “I never dreamed…”
He smiled against her bosom. “I know, my love, it’s too good. Too good to be true. I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve you, but I’m grateful for the chance to be yours.”
“But it is true, Selwyn. If anyone deserves happiness, it’s you—and me, I suppose.” Aurelia laughed as she stroked her fingernails across his scalp. “We can be greedy in this. There’s no shame in it.”
He lifted his chin and claimed her mouth in a hungry kiss. “I am not ashamed.”
She angled in his lap, deepening their embrace. Nimble fingers searched his arms, his chest, beneath the starched points of his shirt collar. She unfastened the tiny, gold buttons and freed his throat, which she boldly kissed.
“I’m not ashamed either,” she said.
He was glad to hear it. Selwyn eased her from his lap, unrepentant in his rather apparent desire for her. He was a big man, that was true, but he would be tender and gentle, and sought only to treasure her with his touch.
“Will you come to bed with me, Aurelia, as my friend, my lover? My equal?” He offered her his hand.
She placed her fingers into his palm and rose to her feet. “I will come.”
For the first time, Selwyn Charlton, the Duke of Brantingham, was about to put a foot perilously wrong—at least in the worst sticklers of proprieties’ eyes—yet he had never felt so free or so right.
Yes, good things came to those who waited, and he had undoubtedly been patient, dutiful, and noble, but the best things came to risk takers like Aurelia who refused to settle for anything less than what they wanted.
He scooped her into his arms and carried her over the threshold of his own bedchamber.