Chapter 12
He’d never experienced anything like this, or her, in his life.
His bonbon, his roast dinner, whatever she wanted to call herself, was not of this world. She was far more than any of them. And, really, he wished that the entire world could know the bliss that she had brought with the violin. But she did not seem to wish it.
She seemed quite content in the little life she had. And, actually, that thought brought every hope he had crashing down.
She did not want to be famous. She did not want people to watch her. She did not want to be lauded for her talents. She wanted a little life in the country, and that meant there was no chance that she wanted to be his duchess.
It was brutal.
Heartbreaking, really, because as he had listened to her, he had felt himself succumb, give in, and surrender to her.
She was his goddess. She was his muse. She was the sun, spring, that thing in which a man hoped to revolve around.
A center, a compass, a north star. But she did not wish to be his, or at least not in the way that he wished.
And he could not abandon the dukedom to go live a little life, but a good one.
It wasn’t possible. Such a thing would be more selfish than anything he’d ever done.
And so, when he left the ladies standing there gaping, he lifted his hand and said, “Forgive me. I need to go finish a bill in my study. The government calls.”
He bowed and existed swiftly, leaving the ladies gaping.
It was a lie, an utter lie, and he was fairly certain that the ladies knew. But lies were the stuff of which the ton was made. As long as no one told the exact truth and no one got caught? All was well.
So, he raced through the halls, desperate to find her, and headed out to the garden. Something called him out to nature, and he went down through the hedges until he spotted her in the lilac bushes, her proud shoulders hunched, her face covered with her hands. He cursed himself.
“Forgive me,” he whispered.
She whipped around and faced him. “You can’t be here.”
“Well, I am,” he said, “and I beg your forgiveness.”
“If you really want my forgiveness,” she said, blue eyes wide and shining with unshed tears, “you should turn around and go. If we are caught here, none of us will have a choice, and that would be the worst of all worlds.”
“Would it?” he breathed, his heart aching that he had already lost his chance at love. “You didn’t complain yesterday when we were alone and offered to dance with me. What would’ve happened then?”
She arched a brow, her usual humor returning through her emotion. “I told you I would’ve fainted.”
“Well, then faint again,” he teased.
She laughed, but it was a half groan as she looked over his shoulder back to the towering house. “I don’t think Lady Larkin will accept that,” she said. “I think she’d be happy to drag my name through the mud if it made certain that her daughter was your duchess.”
“I would never marry the daughter if the mother did such a thing,” he said without hesitation.
“Convince Lady Larkin,” she returned.
He hesitated, his hands itching to take her in his arms, and yet he did not feel able to do so. Emotions tore through him and he blurted, likely ill-advisedly, “I’m sorry. I did try to tell you.”
“What?” she asked.
“That being a duchess is… I tried to tell you that you probably didn’t want the job.”
She lifted her hand and caught his. “Yes, you did. You really did, didn’t you?”
He smiled slowly, a smile which hurt, for he hated that he was right. Was he truly cursed? Could he not know love? Was he condemned to marry a woman who would merely go through life by his side but never be in his heart? “I did.”
Her fingers wound with his, and despite all he had done as a bachelor, it was the most intimate thing he’d ever done. Somehow, she got past all his armor. Somehow, she wound into his heart.
“So are we to forget it all then?” he whispered. “Are you to forget me?”
She tsked. “I don’t know how anyone could forget you, Your Grace.”
“I don’t know how I could forget you either,” he said. “I can’t. The way you just played now. It was…”
“My dear, Your Grace,” she teased, “it was merely the accumulation of notes that I have practiced for years upon years.”
“That is ridiculous,” he said. “You put your soul into that song.”
What would it be like to have someone love him the way she loved that violin and the music that she brought from it?
“I can’t help it,” she said with a shrug. “I just have an affinity for music.”
“Mozart,” he said, the realization hitting him. “That’s why you love it so well. That’s why you have to move about to it, because it is your soul.”
“I suppose.”
“And you don’t wish to play professionally?” he asked. “Some young ladies might, even if they were the daughter of a baron.”
“I want the music to be for me,” she rushed. “I don’t need to share it with everyone else. I don’t need to be the center of attention.” She bit her lower lip, then said, “I think you do.”
“That is a rather painful assessment.”
“I seem to assess you far too often.”
“Perhaps I’m just not accustomed to being assessed,” he said. “Perhaps.” He took a step towards her. “Perhaps I need to be assessed so I can know the truth. Don’t you think that you could stick around for a little bit and assess me a bit more, to toughen me up a bit?”
She smiled at him then, her lips curving into the most delicious of grins. “I suppose I could do that.”
“You’re not going to run off then?” he dared to ask, hardly daring to hope. “Just because my mother has been absolutely terrible.”
She sighed. “Your mother, I think, desperately wants the best for you. And I’m fairly certain that I am not the best for you.”
He leaned in then and did something he knew he shouldn’t. He traced his fingers along her jaw, her cheekbone, and then stroked a lock of hair back from her face. “What if you were?” he whispered. “What if you were the very best thing for me?”
“I can’t imagine that to be true.”
He tilted her face up towards his, taking her chin betwixt his thumb and forefinger. “I want to kiss you so badly,” he said.
“It is the worst idea in the world,” she said.
“The very worst?” he asked.
She laughed. “Perhaps not the very worst.”
“I’m not accustomed to doing the worst sorts of things,” he said. “I probably shouldn’t start.”
“No, you probably shouldn’t,” she agreed.
“But damn it,” he said. “I think I should like to be the hero of the book you mentioned.”
“Oh yes?” she queried, her eyes darting over his face.
“Yes,” he murmured. “I may not kidnap you up to my rooms, but I can certainly steal a kiss.”
And then, without thinking, without hesitation, he did.
He kissed her, kissed her as if he was not a duke and she was not a lady.
He kissed her as if there were no rules.
He kissed her as if there was nothing to hold them back, as if they were simply a man and woman caught up in the storm of passion.
And she gave into him, and he loved it, every bit of it.
Love. Yes. Surely that was what this growing passion could lead to? Couldn’t it?
This was what a man and a woman were born for. Not politeness, not just getting along, not passing on a fortune. This.
And now that he knew it, he did not know if he could ever go back.
“Oh, thank heavens,” a voice exclaimed from behind them.
Adam jolted back and swung his gaze toward the sound.
Lady Hortense Larkin stood there in her pink, beribboned gown, staring at them both with utter relief. Her eyes were dancing, and her lips were parted in the deepest of smiles. “Thank you, both of you. I cannot express how deeply grateful I am that the two of you have done this.”
He pulled back immediately from Agatha. “What in the blazes are you on about, Lady Hortense?”
“The kiss,” Lady Hortense said, gesturing with her hand to the both of them. “I don’t have to marry you, Your Grace. It is the happiest I have been all year.”
He couldn’t help the shocked laugh that tumbled out of him as he realized what she was saying. “That terrible, am I?”
“Oh, not you,” Lady Hortense rushed. “But the very idea of you is awful. I don’t want to be a duchess. And I don’t really want to marry someone I don’t know. Frankly, I think you and I are terribly suited. I like all sorts of things that I think you don’t like.”
“Should I ask?” he ventured.
“Don’t bother,” she said swiftly. “It’s not important.” But then Lady Hortense swung her gaze to Agatha. “But I do think that I would like her quite a lot.”
“Her being me?” exclaimed Agatha as she stepped out from behind Adam.
“Yes,” Hortense said. “My mother finds you appalling, of course, but that’s because she thinks you’ve taken my future husband.
But I don’t want him. And thank you, thank you, thank you for making this so that you will marry him, and I don’t have to, and this whole thing can be done.
I won’t tell anyone what I’ve seen, of course.
But I can see that the two of you will be wed by the end of the Season.
Congratulations to you both! Now, all I have to do is convince my mother not to pass me off to Skyburn when she realizes I haven’t a chance at you, Westfort.
” Lady Hortense blew out a breath. “I don’t want to marry Viscount Skyburn either.
Who wants to keep up with him? I’d be old before my time. ”
Adam’s lips twitched. “Yes, he is a bit much, isn’t he?”
Though he rather liked the viscount for his “too much” nature.
She laughed. “How well said.”
But before she could turn and scamper off, full of her glee, Lady Hortense’s mother and Agatha’s mother and the Duchess of Westfort all came stumbling out into the lilacs.
“Isn’t the smell of the garden glorious at this time of year?” the Duchess of Westfort said, but as the ladies clearly spotted them, her voice cut off with a bleat of horror.
The curiosity of the mothers had gotten the better of them, and now they spotted Adam and Miss Allen hand in hand.
They bolted apart as if they were water and oil.
“No,” the duchess said. “No,” she exclaimed with utter frustration.
“Nothing has happened,” Agatha protested, panic shooting her voice up.
“That’s right,” Lady Hortense agreed with far too much enthusiasm. “Nothing has happened at all.”
Lady Larkin narrowed her eyes. “Don’t lie, Hortense. You’re terrible at it. Everyone shall know what kind of a girl she is. There’s no reason that my daughter should be supplanted by the daughter of a baron.”
With that, Lady Hortense turned on her mother and said with more power than Adam had ever thought existed in such a small frame, “If you do that, Mama, I shall never marry. You shall have to put me in a nunnery, or…” A look of pure delighted mischief crossed Hortense’s face.
“I shall run off with the first Italian artist that comes my way. Do you understand?”
A look of sheer terror washed over Lady Larkin’s face. “You wouldn’t marry an Italian artist. You couldn’t do that to your mother.”
“Watch me,” Hortense declared, reveling in her newfound power, before she turned to Adam and Agatha and mouthed, I’d love to marry an Italian.
English people are so fussy. Then she whipped back to her mother and all but ordered, “You leave those two alone. I am deeply happy for them. I have no wish to marry Westfort.”
“And I have no wish to marry you,” Westfort said cheerfully, amazed at how the day had gone.
“Neither of you were supposed to really wish to marry each other,” the Duchess of Westfort cried out. “You were meant to be partners. You were meant to be an alliance. You don’t need to like each other.”
“Oh, I think I could like him just fine,” Lady Hortense said, “but I have no wish to marry a man that I don’t love.”
“Bloody hell,” the Duchess of Westfort bellowed.
Everyone turned to her.
It had been a bellow worthy of the best actors in London.
“My,” Lady Allen said, her eyes wide with astonishment and growing enjoyment. “My goodness, my dear duchess. I had no idea that you were so interesting. I think I might like you better than I thought.”
The Duchess of Westfort swung her gaze to Lady Allen. “And I, at this particular moment, wish I could bury you in the garden.”
“Though it would be a fine resting place, I cannot allow it,” Lady Allen said with surprising cheer.
“I don’t really mean it.” The Duchess of Westfort sighed, gathering up her skirts. “But this is going against my plans entirely.”
“Mama,” Adam said as kindly as he could, “no threatening to do murder amongst the lilacs. It doesn’t suit you.”
“None of this suits me,” the duchess said dryly. She turned and headed off, and Lady Larkin and Lady Hortense followed suit. As they charged across the lawn and through the hedges, Lady Hortense glanced over her shoulder, waving at them both with a smile.
Then they were left alone with Lady Allen.
Agatha’s mother tutted. “Oh dear, Your Grace. What have you done?”
“I will marry her, of course.”
“No, you won’t,” Lady Allen said.
“What?” he exclaimed.
“No, you won’t,” Lady Allen affirmed with the loveliest of smiles.
“Not if my daughter doesn’t want to marry you.
And, frankly, from where I stand, and the way you lot all behave as if you’re a bunch of loons, I don’t think it’s a good idea.
I think I should take her down to the country at once, and I think I should find her a nice lad there who—”
“Don’t do that, Mama.”
Lady Allen and Adam both turned to Agatha.
His heart slammed in his ribs as, once again, that most dangerous thing began to whisper in him. That he could break the family tradition. That he could dare to want more for his wife than a mere partner… And that Agatha was the one to help him do it.
Lady Allen hesitated, then asked gently, “Are you certain, my love, that you wish to do this?”
Agatha worried her lower lip. “Well, I’m not going to marry him. Not right away. We don’t know each other at all. But I cannot deny that we are drawn to each other and do not seem to be able to avoid it.”
“Then get to know me,” he said, grabbing onto this chance. “Perhaps I could make wearing a coronet a little bit more tolerable.”
“Perhaps,” she said in return with a slow smile.
Her mother let out an exhausted sigh.