Anthony collapsed into a chair in the library, well past exhausted after his most recent meeting with his solicitor. There had been rather too many of those meetings just lately, all in the service of sorting out his father’s affairs, and his brothers’, and his own. The minutia of inheriting a title without warning was mind-numbing, and with altogether too much damned paperwork to it.
He’d flummoxed his solicitor with this most recent complication, but then that was to have been expected. There was little precedent for a situation such as his, the man had acknowledged, though Anthony rather suspected that that was because there was little precedent for one’s presumed-deceased wife unexpectedly presenting herself so many years later.
But in the end, and with a full explanation of the circumstances that had led to this awkward and uncomfortable situation, the man had haltingly supposed that securing an annulment just might well be possible. If the Ecclesiastical Court could be convinced. If he and Charity were both willing to give evidence and testify to the fact that it had never been a real marriage in any sense of the word.
Anthony had tasked the man with making those inquiries with all due discretion, but his solicitor had suggested it could be some time—months, possibly—before a firm verdict one way or another was rendered. Still, he had said, their chances appeared decent on the basis of the facts.
He would have to tell Charity, of course. She was waiting on word; no doubt she wished to be free of him, legally speaking, as soon as possible. He owed her an accounting of his visit with his solicitor, so that she might prepare herself in advance for whatever questioning to which the Ecclesiastical Court might subject her.
God, what a damned mess.
Somewhere on the sideboard behind him there was a decanter of liquor, and he reached for it with one hand, feeling blindly for the cold crystal as he closed his eye and rubbed away the beginnings of a headache which had begun to settle in at his temple. He caught the neck of the decanter in his fingers, dragging it over his shoulder to land in his lap, and when he opened his eye once more—
Anthony jumped in surprise, biting back the instinctive oath that curled around his tongue.
“Helen,” he said.
“You startled me.”
His sister-in-law stood before him, clutching handfuls of skirts in her fingers. The black of her gown swallowed whatever color her pale skin might have claimed, lending her a rather ghostly air. That, coupled with her tendency to move about the house so very silently had led to more than a few awkward moments where her sudden appearance—or disappearance—had been a startling occurrence. For both of them, he thought, since she had always appeared as if she wished she were anywhere else but in his presence.
“I knocked at the door,” she hastened to assure him, a nervous swallow bobbing in her throat.
“I thought you must have heard. I’m sorry to have invaded your privacy.”
“You needn’t ask my permission to use the library. You live here as well.” For there was nowhere else, at present, for them to go. Once, his brothers had held leases upon their own townhouses in the city. But those had since expired, and he’d naturally offered their bereaved spouses rooms in the family home—at least until other, more suitable arrangements could be made for them.
It had not, however, made his company any more pleasant or easier to bear. Like always, Helen could not quite bring herself to meet his eye, her gaze bouncing around the room, falling upon anything, anywhere other than his face.
“The girls,” she said abruptly, an odd little warble in her voice.
“They’ve spent so much time within the nursery just lately. I thought I’d have them down for dinner.”
“Of course,” he said.
“As you wish.” Unusual, perhaps, but then the whole family was still deep in mourning, and there was little opportunity for the children for anything but the occasional walk about the garden. Public visits and social calls beyond the reception of visitors extolling their condolences had been right out—and would be for several months.
“If you don’t mind,” she added.
“I don’t.”
“That is to say,” she persisted, swiping her tongue across her dry lips.
“The girls are so fragile, Your Grace—”
“Anthony is fine. You are my sister-in-law.”
“It might be best…it might be best if you were to—”
If he were to make himself scarce this evening. To eat elsewhere, lest his face turn the appetites of little girls who tended to run from him on those rare occasions their paths crossed. As if he were the monster which lurked beneath the beds of naughty children, waiting to drag them off into the dark. Months now they’d shared the same house, and still they were terrified of him.
The desire he’d had for the liquor still in its unopened decanter waned abruptly.
“I see,” he said.
“I suppose I will dine elsewhere this evening.”
Helen’s shoulders, which had pinched up around her ears in fearful apprehension, lowered with her sigh of relief.
“Thank you, Your Grace—”
“Anthony.”
“They’ll warm up to you,” she hastened to assure him.
“They’re just young. Impressionable.” A curtsey, given hastily as she retreated.
“They’ll—they’ll come to appreciate you.” And then she was gone, loath, like most, to remain in his presence any longer than was strictly necessary. Whisking silently out the door, a ghost once more roaming the halls.
Unbidden, Charity’s assurance that the right woman would not be put off by his scars traipsed through his head, and he scoffed as he replaced the decanter. If his own family—his own flesh and blood—could not manage to overlook them, how could anyone else ever be expected to do so?
Yet she had sounded sincere in it, convinced of it. She alone had not shied away from him. She had looked him dead in the eye, unflinching. And it had felt—good, he thought. For one person, at least, not to tiptoe around what might be perceived as a sensitive subject. It had felt good to be seen for more than his injuries. Not past them, he thought, but through them to the man beneath, because she alone had understood and shared his experiences of war. She alone seemed to have recalled that there was in fact a man behind the wretched scarring. A person, with thoughts and feelings of his own.
Neither victim to be pitied nor a villain to be feared—just a man. And it was…intoxicating. Every bit as much as the liquor would have been.
Christ. How was he meant to find a woman like her, of a similar mind, of a similar temperament, when there was no other woman like her?
And then a thought occurred. Barely-formed, half an idea at best. She didn’t want to be a duchess; he knew that much at least. He’d be the beast everyone already thought him if he tried to keep her against her wishes, and he owed her better than an unwanted marriage that she’d long thought she’d escaped besides. She was happy as her own woman, free of any entanglements, legal or otherwise, and he owed it to her, that freedom she’d attained and for which she had striven for so long.
But perhaps he might prevail upon her for her assistance. Prevail upon her knowledge of those things, those social situations to which he had never much been exposed. How to find that woman who would inevitably replace her as his duchess, how to seek out the sort of woman who could see the man behind the wounds. How to gain her favor, how to win her heart—how to please her well enough to keep it forever after.
***
Twice inside of a week, Charity found herself calling upon a duke. The note had arrived only this morning, politely requesting her company—after nightfall. From anyone else, in any other situation, she might have assumed that there was some offense meant within the words, that a woman of her station and of her dubious reputation was unwelcome to pay a call in the daylight hours, when her presence might be seen and noted by others.
From him, she suspected only that it was to both of their benefits not to be seen more than necessary in one another’s company, and to subvert any gossip which might arise if a notorious former courtesan were to be spotted visiting the household of a duke who was meant to be in mourning.
The butler, Redding, admitted her at once upon arrival, but rather than directing her to the elegant drawing room where he had placed her upon her last visit, instead he said, “Captain Sharp requests the pleasure of your company for dinner, if you would be so kind, Miss Nightingale.”
“For dinner?” In this house, with all of its occupants? “I couldn’t possibly.” The dowager duchess’ glowering alone would put her off her appetite, and that was to say nothing of his sisters-in-law. How were they meant to hold what by all rights ought to be a private conversation amidst so many people?
Redding cleared his throat.
“Captain Sharp is dining upstairs in his study this evening. I’m given to understand that his nieces were expected down from the nursery to dine with the family.”
With the family. Notably, without their uncle—as if he were some sort of unwelcome interloper. Not family, certainly. At least not any family worth mentioning.
“They are frightened of him,” she said, her fingers flexing at her sides.
“They are very young, Miss Nightingale,” Redding said, the even cadence of his voice disguising whatever feelings he might have had on the matter.
“Miss Hattie is not yet seven. Miss Evelyn is only four.”
“Children are often frightened of things”—and people—“they don’t understand. They will never grow accustomed to him if they are kept away from him.” As if they required protection from him. And what a sad state of affairs it was for him; to be perpetually excluded from his own family over something so shallow, so superficial as his appearance.
“I do but follow Captain Sharp’s instructions, Miss Nightingale,” Redding said, and Charity thought that the faint twitch of his mustache might convey some manner of agreement. Probably Redding was the closest thing to an ally that Captain Sharp had within his own home at present. At the very least, he had chosen to honor Captain Sharp’s preferred appellation, and that said something of his character.
Redding led the way up the stairs, and Charity curled her hand around the banister lining the staircase as she followed after him. As she ascended, there came a soft hum of conversation from somewhere on the ground floor, evidence of a meal undertaken absent one who by all rights ought to have been included. A strange sense of sadness assailed her as the sounds faded, the diners unaware that they had been overheard—indeed, unaware even that they had been judged cruel for the isolation of one of their own.
“Dinner has already been delivered,” Redding said as he reached the landing and continued down the hall.
“If it is not to your liking, or if you require anything further, you have only to tell me, Miss Nightingale.”
“I’m certain that won’t be necessary,” Charity said.
“You needn’t treat me as the lady of the manor, Redding. I assure you, my tenure will be a short one.”
“You are an honored guest of Captain Sharp’s, Miss Nightingale. Naturally you will be afforded every courtesy.” He paused at last before the door of the same room to which Captain Sharp had taken her on her last visit. The study, with its walls of books and its magnificent portrait of what had once been a happy family, which had since gone to ruin. Redding scratched at the door and announced, “Captain Sharp, your guest has arrived.”
From beyond the thick door, Charity heard the distant call of, “Enter.”
With a nod and a bow, Redding turned to leave, and Charity was left to let herself in.
Captain Sharp sat behind the desk across the room, engaged in a solitary meal.
“I began without you,” he said between bites, and gestured to the chair set before the desk, at which another tray had been placed.
“Probably that was rude of me. Would you care for something to drink?”
“Thank you, no,” Charity said as she crossed the room.
“I hadn’t planned on a meal, so you needn’t harbor any guilt over beginning without me.” She sank into the chair, lifted the silver cover that concealed her plate.
“Do you not eat with your family?”
“Rarely.” He shrugged as if it did not much matter to him one way or another, when she knew it must trouble him very much indeed.
“My table manners occasionally offend. I have lived too long outside of polite society to have had much use for them.”
Her plate was still warm, but he had demolished at least half of what had been laid out upon his already. Meals were often long, drawn-out affairs, especially in households like these, but he must have plowed straight through his dinner like a starving man. Alone as he was, there was no need to linger over a meal, no conversation to entertain. It had become sustenance to him, and nothing more.
It surprised her, how badly she wanted to make some remark, to suggest that perhaps he ought not to humor such unkindness. It was not her place to do so, she reminded herself as she reached for her silverware and cut off a small slice of roast duck. The tender, delicate flesh practically melted in her mouth, savory and seasoned to perfection.
“Your cook is wonderful,” she said.
“I suppose,” he said, and shoved another cut of meat into his mouth, chewing too rapidly. A task to be accomplished rather than a meal to be enjoyed.
“You suppose?”
“I’ve never paid much attention.” Between bites, he gestured with his fork, as if he might wind back the clock with it.
“You recall what it was like, don’t you? Food on a campaign.”
“Substandard at best.” Edible, mostly, but only just.
“Yes. But one does what one must. If the food was not palatable, it was at least filling. Provided one could eat it swiftly enough to ignore the taste.”
Good God. He had eschewed all manner of simple pleasures on habit alone. Probably he had done for years and years, now. Charity set down her fork, reached across the expanse of the desk, and touched his sleeve.
“This is not substandard,” she said.
“And you are no longer at war. It is permissible—even expected—for you to enjoy your meals.”
He startled at the pressure of her fingers there upon his sleeve, his gaze dropping to them as if he could not quite believe she had dared to touch him, and she wondered how long it had been since someone, anyone, had done so. Of course, it was not done for one to place one’s hands upon an aristocrat, most especially a duke, without having been invited.
But the duke bit had been a relatively recent development.
“How is it,” he asked, his voice toneless, carefully stripped of inflection, “that you can look upon me without flinching? That you can touch me without recoiling?”
“Because there is nothing from which I ought to flinch. Nor anything from which anyone else ought to flinch, either.” But they had. Monstrous, he had called himself, upon their first meeting. Not his words, but those of others spoken too near him. Possibly not deliberately so—only the most careless of the Ton would risk so insulting a duke to his face—but still those cruel words had reached his ears.
“But I am ugly,” he said, and this time his voice came with a thread of steel within it, as if daring her to deny it.
“I’ll allow you are not handsome,” she said, and gestured with the tines of her fork to the portrait hanging upon the far wall.
“Not so handsome as that boy in the picture would certainly have grown to be.” She had never known that boy, nor the man who must have been classically handsome once. If their paths had crossed on the campaign before he’d been injured, she had never known or marked it.
“Lacking a pretty face is not the same as being ugly. I have seen ugliness, Captain Sharp, and too often it lurks behind a beautiful visage. I have also seen plain features clothing the loveliest hearts. So I set little stock in beauty—or its lack—as a measure of worth, for I have long learned otherwise.”
“Quite an easy thing to say, when one is pretty.”
Charity snickered over a bite of salad.
“My prettiness comes at its own costs, Captain. It is an impossible standard to maintain as one ages, and I assure you, I have aged considerably past the bloom of youth already. A woman’s worth—as defined by a man, mind you—declines year over year. A courtesan’s worth declines faster still. My days of being in high demand will soon be behind me, and I should be in dire straits had I not planned for my retirement accordingly.” And then, because it was perversely delightful to return question for question, she inquired, “You might have cast judgment upon me, as did your mother, for my vocation. Why did you not?”
He was silent a moment, frowning over his plate as he considered the question, and Charity was gratified to see that he had, in the flow of conversation, slowed his bites, as if in some concession to her. Perhaps he was not enjoying his meal in the same way that she was, per se, but he was not tearing through it as if it were a chore to be stricken off a list any longer.
“I suppose,” he said, “because I know what it is to be judged.”
“Ah,” she said.
“But you are judged for things beyond your control, Captain, whereas I am judged for the choices I have made.”
“Were they choices?” he asked.
“I’ll allow that you made those you were permitted to make—but were they choices, in any true sense of the word? Had you, for example, the ability to attend university? Could you have studied beneath a barrister or a physician, or enlisted in the military as an officer? Would even a position as a governess, assuming you could have found one, have afforded you any reasonable amount of financial security?”
“No,” she said.
“You know it would not have done.” Of course her opportunities had been necessarily limited, so much lesser than a man’s—any man’s.
“I might have been a shop girl or a laundress,” she said.
“A seamstress, perhaps.” But even those vocations, which might have been judged respectable enough for a woman of her station, paid a pittance at best.
“A choice is still a choice,” she said.
“Even if my options were limited, I made the choice which would benefit myself and my sister best.” And she had never regretted it.
“Felicity,” he said, and she jerked in surprise.
“You remember her name?”
“I remember every word you ever spoke to me. There was a time when I had nothing but that. Your words, your voice in the darkness tethering me, however tenuously, to life. You saved me,” he said, “more than anything else ever did. Just occasionally I resent you for it, when I am feeling brought particularly low. When it occurs to me in my weaker moments that perhaps it would have been for the best if you hadn’t. But I do not resent you for surviving however you had to. For carving out a measure of happiness from a world too bleak and brittle to give it freely. In fact, I—I would like to solicit your assistance.”
“I beg your pardon,” Charity said.
“My assistance?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Once our marriage is annulled—”
“Will it be?” she blurted out.
“That is to say, can it be?”
“There is little precedent for a situation such as ours,” he said.
“However, my solicitor thinks there is a chance, possibly even a good one. He’ll conduct some discreet inquiries with the Ecclesiastical Court and report back. We may be called to give evidence. Testimony, as it were, to the fact that our marriage was never a true one. But he seems to think it likely that it can be done quietly—if not, necessarily, quickly.”
Charity blew out a breath of relief.
“Thank God,” she said, and winced.
“I mean no offense, Captain. It is not you in particular to whom I object; it is the institution of marriage itself. I am far too set in my ways to make anyone a good wife, much less a duke.” Too opinionated, too accustomed to her freedom, and too scandalous by half, besides.
The shadow of a smile curled his lip.
“But I will need a wife,” he said.
“Once your position is vacant, I mean to say. I haven’t the faintest idea how to go about finding one. Much less the woman you have assured me exists who will not mind my scars.”
Charity hesitated.
“I am not much accepted within polite society,” she said, “but I do have…friends, of a sort, upon whom I might prevail for such advice. Ladies who know who is suitable and who is not, and who might have some opinion to offer there.”
That smile turned wry and faintly self-deprecating.
“I fear finding her will be the least of my troubles,” he said.
“There are…certain rituals of courtship of which I am largely ignorant. Certain things that I must learn if I am to find a woman, win her hand, and keep her. May I be frank?”
“I wish you would,” Charity said, still every bit as befuddled and feeling more so with each passing second.
“I am not particularly adept at riddles.”
“I would like for you to teach me,” he said, “how to woo the woman who will become my wife, how to make such a woman fall in love with me—and, most of all, how to pleasure her.”