Other than the maids tasked with keeping the house presentable, Anthony supposed the last woman to have been in his room must have been his mother. And yet, here now was Charity, buried in the depths of his dressing room and examining his clothing with an eye even more critical than any valet could have managed.
He had come down to greet her in the drawing room this evening only to find himself dragged immediately back up the stairs, his clothing for the first time having failed to meet her approval. And she had taken it upon herself immediately to rid his wardrobe of anything that might offend her faultless sense of fashion.
“Not this,” she said dismissively, casting out what had looked to him to be a perfectly good coat. It landed on the floor in a heap.
“What’s wrong with it?” he asked as he settled into a wingback chair before the hearth, craning his neck to watch her at her work.
“You might be in mourning,” she said, “but you are not dead. And the only way it would be acceptable to be seen in that coat would be if you were on your way to your own funeral. Really,” she muttered to herself as she ducked back into the closet once more, “I ought to have gone through your wardrobe ages ago. And I will certainly give you the direction of a proper tailor, for when you are out of mourning attire.”
Somehow, in these past several weeks, she had wrested some sort of order out of the wreck of his life. From dancing lessons and the art of conversation—and things far less proper—to the slow and subtle mend in the rift of his family. Now, it seemed, she would put his wardrobe in order as well. And if he could not himself see the particular fault she had found in the coat, well, then, he trusted that it was there.
A pair of trousers consigned to perdition with just the careless flick of her fingers. She asked, “How are the girls?”
He said, “Somewhat less quiet than once they were.” No longer haunting the house in tense silence as if they were afraid of making too much noise. There was still an air of melancholia, the lingering weight of grief. But Helen did not tiptoe around him as if he might explode at any moment. Esther had joined him in the library on a few occasions to read in companionable silence. Even little Evie had come to perch upon his knee a time or two, seeking comfort. From him.
“The house is…a bit lighter.” As if some sense of security, however minor, had returned to it. Some tenuous mending of its crumbling foundation.
The lone holdout lately was Mother.
“Good,” she said.
“That’s good.” A scoff as she tossed out a waistcoat.
“You can get better fabrics than this. You’re a duke.”
Somehow, the mere reference to his title didn’t hurt quite as much as it once had. He couldn’t say that he would ever wear it comfortably. But perhaps he might…grow accustomed to it, eventually.
“I’ve been out of society too long to have paid much attention to such things,” he said.
“When I was living abroad, it was a rare day that I even bothered with a waistcoat.” Most of the time there had been no one to see him anyway. And he had quite liked it that way, since the people who did see him, however irregularly, had invariably made it clear that they wished they had not.
A handful of cravats tumbled onto the floor, and another pair of trousers with them.
“Well, you must wear them now,” she said.
“But not, I think, this one.” She let another waistcoat fall from the pinch of her fingers with a little moue of distaste.
“There,” she said, nudging the small pile away from her.
“I think that’s the last of it.”
“Would you like to examine my shoes as well?”
“I don’t think that will be necessary,” she said.
“I’ve found no fault with them yet. Although—” She tapped her finger to her chin.
“Your eyepatch,” she said.
“I think plain black does not quite suit.”
He touched his fingers to it, startled. “Why not?”
“Because everything you own should be elegant,” she said.
“And your eyepatch—it is an accessory, you know. Just because it serves a purpose does not mean it cannot also be pretty.”
“I have never wished to draw attention to it,” he said, and winced at the slight inflection of embarrassment in his voice. It drew attention anyway, he knew. Left people wondering how much worse whatever was hidden behind it might be.
“It’s not about attracting attention,” she said.
“It’s about confidence.”
“Confidence?”
“Yes, of course. A pretty face might hold the interest for a moment or two—just long enough, really, for a man to open his mouth and ruin any temporary good will he might have gained upon a shallow first impression.”
Anthony smothered a snort in his palm.
“But you could be Adonis made flesh, and still it would avail you nothing if you had not a pleasing personality, an amiable character. Haven’t you ever noticed that people become ever so much more attractive when we admire them? Even a homely face becomes beloved when the one who wears it is dear to us.”
“Are you saying,” he asked, “that you could find me attractive despite my scars?”
“Yes,” she said baldly, with a little gesticulation of her hands that was meant to convey her exasperation with the question. As though the answer ought to have been obvious.
“Yes, I do. Because you are attractive.” And she fisted her hands on her hips, as if to suggest some manner of annoyance over his willful ignorance.
For a moment, he could only find himself stunned into silence. That the question he had expected her to neatly sidestep had instead resulted in an answer he had not expected. That it hadn’t even sounded like a polite lie.
He supposed she had made some salient points; despite her flagrant beauty, he would not have found her half so lovely had she been cold, or arrogant, or condescending. Those things he had always considered to be his flaws…they weren’t flaws to her. And in retrospect, he had spent considerably less time just lately considering his own appearance and anyone else’s opinion of it. Gentlemen were wont, after all, to weave intricate knots of their cravats—why should an eyepatch be any different?
“I suppose I might…consider it,” he said.
“Embroidery,” she said as she stepped closer.
“Or perhaps a few pearl beads—”
He huffed out a laugh.
“I draw the line at pearls. But the embroidery…” He shrugged and repeated, “I’ll consider it.”
“Do. I think you would look quite dashing,” she said as she settled not into the chair across from his own, but upon his knee.
“Rakish, even, if it suits you.”
Anthony could only marvel at the assertion. Had anyone ever described him as dashing? “I don’t know that I’d care to be called a rake,” he said as she walked her fingertips up his chest toward the knot of his cravat.
“Rakish,” she corrected mildly.
“It is to your benefit to have the air of one, since many men seek to portray themselves thus and just as many women fancy that they’d like to reform one. And how lucky for your eventual bride that she won’t find it difficult at all.”
Right. His eventual bride.
“You still haven’t told me what you will ask for your fee,” he said. And God knew he owed her more already than he could ever hope to repay.
“I still have yet to decide,” she said.
“Perhaps I will ask for an invitation to your wedding.”
It was offered in the teasing inflection of a jest, but it was the first allusion either of them had made to a potential wedding—and by proxy, to Lady Cecily—in some time. The delicate broaching of a subject they had tacitly decided to avoid. And he found himself asking, with some curiosity, “Would you truly attend?”
For a moment some odd expression chased across her face, something he couldn’t quite place.
“No,” she said at last, though it had been tendered with a forced smile as she rose once more to her feet.
“I won’t ask, and you must not invite me. It wouldn’t be wise.”
“I don’t care if it is wise. I would rather have you at my wedding.” And in his life thereafter. He didn’t want their friendship to come to so abrupt an end that she would not even attend his wedding. Perhaps it was why he could not make himself settle upon Lady Cecily, despite her apparent suitability—because once he did, Charity would consider her job accomplished. It would all be over.
He would lose her.
“And I would rather not be. Weddings always make me a bit sad,” she said on a sigh.
“I would hate to bear witness to yet another perfectly good bachelor sacrificing himself upon the altar of marriage. There’s fewer and fewer of us every day.”
“You’re not a bachelor,” he said. “You’re—”
“God help you if you say spinster,” she quipped.
“For I will not be merciful.”
No, she wasn’t a spinster, she was just—Charity. She defied categorization. She was as she was, and there was no one else in the world like her.
“You will have to tell me your price, eventually, you know,” he said.
“I will,” she said as she turned away. Her voice had a strange distance to it, as if the prospect had become a chore she did not relish.
“Of course I will. When I have decided upon one.”
***
The days had seemed to lengthen lately, the time between dawn and dusk stretching without cease for more hours than they had any right to, given that it was now November, and the daylight hours ought to be at their shortest.
It was only her perception of time that had caught her out, Charity knew—but still it did not stop her from sighing over the endless tedium of her days and waiting with bated breath for night to fall once again. She had found herself going through the motions of a social life, filling those endless empty hours with teas and visits and good-natured ribbings from those women whom she had come to call friends, but somehow…somehow she had come to the realization that her days did not feel as if they had ever truly begun until night had fallen. Until she was once more climbing into a hack to be spirited across London to Anthony’s residence.
She had woken too early this morning, roused to consciousness not by the horror of another nightmare, but by the ache between her thighs which had gone too long unrelieved. An ache that would persist, she thought glumly, at least until they had gotten their mistake of a marriage annulled.
But once it had been—once it had been, then perhaps she would take him as her first lover. For a time. Until he had made a new match for himself. Because once he had—
Once he had, he would no longer be hers in any meaningful way.
An oddly wistful sigh drifted from her lungs, too loud in the silence of the bookshop in which she had been browsing, and it earned her a glare of reproof from the aged bookseller behind his desk at the front of the shop, his bushy brows furrowing above the rims of his spectacles.
She had intended to occupy herself in the interminable daylight hours left by searching for offerings more recent than could be found within Anthony’s library to aid in his courtship, and yet she found she had lost the taste for it. It felt that each volume, any volume, might be the one to carry him away from her and toward someone else. Some other duchess who would be suited to the title. Suitable to be a wife instead of a mistress.
Damn it all, she would have something to show for today’s outing. Stretching onto her toes, she reached for a volume upon the highest shelf, swiping for a book which remained stubbornly out of reach.
“Oh, do let me help you with that.” From her right, a hand stretched out to seize the volume, snatching it down from the shelf before Charity could embarrass herself further.
“Thank you,” she said as she turned to receive the book.
“I—” Every word backed up in her throat, dying an ignoble death as her savior laid the book into her hands.
“Lady Cecily,” she managed to say, in an odd, shrill little voice, stunned to find herself sharing a bookshop with the woman.
“The Sorrows of Rosalie,” Lady Cecily said.
“I enjoyed that one. It has a rather poignant melancholia to it, if you care for such a thing.”
Charity curled her hands around the book reflexively. “My lady—”
But Lady Cecily had already turned back to the bookshelf, scanning the topmost row.
“There is also a copy of The Undying One, which I found most enjoyable as well,” she said.
“It was released only last year. Have you read it?” She reached up once again, her more advantageous height allowing her to easily recover the book in question.
“I have not,” Charity said.
“My lady, I beg your pardon. You ought not be speaking to me.”
Lady Cecily raised her brows as she turned once more, book in hand.
“Whyever not?”
“Because—because I am—” Blast. How did one delicately phrase such things to ladies?
“I know who you are,” Lady Cecily said, with a curious tilt of her head, as if she could not quite comprehend what manner of objection Charity could possibly have.
“Miss Nightingale, no?”
“Yes,” Charity said.
“But you should not acknowledge me. Forgive me, but you should not even be within this shop.” There were plenty of others which carried volumes more suited to a lady’s tastes—or to what polite society assumed a lady’s tastes ought to be. While this shop—this shop was suited to people like her. The less savory sorts, with the less savory tastes to go along with it. It carried all manner of books, including many which had been railed against for their offenses against the public decency.
“But this shop carries the books I wish to read,” Lady Cecily said reasonably.
“And, having achieved that arbitrary age at which I am permitted largely to do as I wish—provided I am appropriately discreet about it—I find that I very much enjoy embracing the freedoms which are available to me.”
But she was going to be a duchess. Anthony’s duchess, once he was free again to marry where he would. She could not be seen to keep company with those who could only harm her reputation.
“I confess,” Lady Cecily said, sotto voce, “to some advance familiarity with you. A cousin of mine, you see, was a patron of yours some years ago. He had an illness, a weakness of the heart—”
Oh.
“Mr. Swinton,” Charity said, her hands curling around the book as she cradled it to her chest.
“I was…rather fond of him.” A genial man, and a quiet one. But kind and generous, and with a dry wit that had kept her perpetually laughing. She had not loved him, but she had genuinely liked him. And she had missed him, when that weakness of his heart had led him to depart the world too soon.
“He visited me in the countryside often, and he always brought me the most salacious, scandalous tales.” There was the twitch of a smile about her lips that suggested that this had been meant in a complimentary fashion.
“So I felt I knew you a little, you see, through him. I think he must have always known that his time on earth would be short, but you brought him much joy while he was here with us.”
“That is kind of you to say,” Charity said.
“But truly, my lady—”
“Might I ask a favor of you?” Lady Cecily inquired, and gave a little nod to the bookshelf before which they were standing.
“I have a great number of these books already within my library.”
Damn. Well, there went any hope of finding something new for Anthony to bring to her.
“If you might show me where the more shocking volumes are kept, I would be most appreciative,” Lady Cecily said, her inflection sheepish, a tinge of pink appearing in her cheeks.
“I do feel more comfortable, you understand, asking another woman rather than the bookseller himself.”
Despite herself, an incredulous laugh reeled up Charity’s throat.
“You do realize that if you wish to purchase such a book, you will have to show it to him?”
“Then might I beg you to do it for me?” Lightly, Lady Cecily reached out to touch Charity’s hand, her blush deepening.
“I fear I could not look him in the eye.”
It carried with it a sense of camaraderie, of sisterhood—between two women who could not possibly be more dissimilar to one another. But it had been rendered in such earnest hopefulness that it was an impossible request to refuse, and so Charity found herself spending the next hour of her time in assisting the woman who would one day become her husband’s wife.
***
“I hate her,” Charity declared, flouncing down upon the sofa in Diana’s drawing room in a puff of vibrant scarlet skirts after her impassioned recitation of her encounter with Lady Cecily.
“You do not,” Lydia scolded, shaking her head in exasperation.
“I do!” Charity insisted in a petulant whine, casting one arm over her eyes with a dramatic flair to rival any actor within Lydia’s theatre troupe.
“What reason could you have to hate her?” Emma inquired over the rim of her tea cup, a furrow of perplexity creasing her brow.
“Have you left something out which would otherwise validate it? Was she cruel? Spiteful? Arrogant?”
“No,” Charity said morosely.
“She was perfectly lovely and amiable to the last, and I loathe her with every fiber of my being.” She heaved a violent sigh, sinking into her seat.
“Why couldn’t she have had a—a hooked nose, or a hunched back? At least a haughty disposition or condescending air. Is it too much to ask for one teeny tiny little flaw? How is it fair to the rest of us insignificant mortals that she should be pretty and kind?” And clever and interesting, if Anthony was to be believed in his assessment.
“Oh, come,” Diana said, the threat of a laugh in her voice attesting to the fact that she had been much amused by Charity’s discontent.
“I am certain that Lady Cecily has got her flaws. Everyone has.”
“None which I could find,” Charity snipped back.
“She’s a damned paragon of womanhood, and I am—”
“Jealous,” Phoebe pronounced blandly, as she plunked a lump of sugar into her tea.
Charity bolted upright, her mouth agape in shock.
“Why, you insufferable harpy,” she cast out.
“You take that back at once!”
“Oh, fine, then,” Phoebe said.
“I retract my accusation.” She let a moment draw out in a tense silence as she stirred.
“You are jealous and unnecessarily petty about it,” she said at last.
“Petty! Is it truly so very petty of me to wish to find some small fault with the woman?”
“Do you know,” Diana said, touching the point of her index finger to her chin.
“I think it is, rather.”
Lydia clucked her agreement, exchanging a knowing glance with Emma.
“Oh, don’t misunderstand me,” Phoebe said, biting into a biscuit.
“Your pettiness is one of the things I love best about you. I cannot imagine having shining examples of perfection for friends; it would be tedious in the extreme. A woman ought to have a few flaws, just to make life interesting.”
Charity folded her arms over her chest in a sullen display of her ill temper.
“She hasn’t got any.”
“Jealous,” Phoebe sang out again.
“And besides, I’m certain you’re wrong. One can be kind and beautiful and still have flaws. Perhaps she has the singing voice of a toad,” she posited.
“She doesn’t,” Diana chirped, smiling brightly.
“Actually, her singing voice is quite lovely.”
“Oh, naturally it is,” Charity said, with a roll of her eyes.
“Well, then,” Lydia suggested, a cunning sparkle in her green eyes, “perhaps she has the tendency to talk too much? Or to laugh too loudly? Perhaps she brays like a donkey.”
“No, not at all,” Emma said.
“In fact, she is a scintillating conversationalist and an avid listener. And her laugh—”
“I take your meaning!” Charity exclaimed with a wild gesticulation of her hands.
“She is utterly perfect in every conceivable regard; the epitome of female excellence. A candidate for sainthood!”
“And you are jealous,” Phoebe reiterated needlessly.
“Perhaps you ought to examine why that might be.”
Charity slid deeper into her seat with a brooding sigh, pressing the heels of her hands to her eyes. There was a terrible suspicion there, heavy as lead in her chest. It had started off small, just a tiny pellet. And it had grown slowly, a bit at a time—until she had come face-to-face with Lady Cecily. She was jealous. Jealous of this woman, so much more suitable than she could ever hope to be, who would one day become Anthony’s wife. She had even, however obliquely, alluded to a suitor from whom she expected soon to receive a proposal of marriage.
But at this moment, Anthony was her husband. She had developed something more than mere friendship for him, more than simple affection. And it would never matter, because he could never truly be hers. He knew, every bit as much as she did, that a duke could not have a courtesan for a wife.
Anthony wanted love in his marriage. When he dedicated himself to Lady Cecily, it would be completely. There would be no illicit love affair, no mistress—not even her. The worst of it was that she had chosen Lady Cecily herself, selected her own perfect replacement. He deserved someone like her; someone kind and gentle, someone warm and genial and not given over to such petty jealousies. Someone who would keep him entertained, and be a balm to the weary soul he had shown to so few, and ease him ably into the position within society he now occupied.
Lady Cecily would do all that and more. She would share his home and his heart. She would give him children and fill his life with the contentment he ought always to have known.
If she had been a better person, a woman even halfway approaching Lady Cecily’s worthiness, perhaps she could have found it in her heart to be happy for the both of them. But she wasn’t that sort of woman. She never had been.
In this moment, she could only be sorry for herself. That she had somehow, quite without her leave, fallen victim to that most wretched of maladies—love.
“I don’t hate her,” she muttered sullenly, turning her face aside lest anyone else should happen to glimpse the curious sheen of her eyes.
“Of course you don’t,” Phoebe said.
“You’re not that petty.”