I accept.
Those simple words alone should not have made Anthony’s heart beat faster, should not have dampened his palms in a mist of sweat. But they had, and he—he couldn’t even say whether it was anticipation or anxiety which had done it.
He hadn’t expected her to agree, really. But perhaps he had grown rather too accustomed to rejections of all kinds just lately. Enough that he had naturally begun to presuppose them before they had occurred. And now that, for once, that predicted rejection had not come, he didn’t know what he was meant to do about it.
In print, she was not a woman of many words, it seemed. She had given him no terms, sent along no contract, named no price for her assistance. Was he meant to see to the particulars himself? Send a proposal to her solicitor?
“What does that woman accept from you?”
The tight, guarded words reminded him at last that he was not alone; that Mother had handed off the letter to him, a fact which had entirely slipped his mind since he’d opened the note. Flipping the letter over, he scanned for evidence of a seal—and there, the slight discoloration, the oil-like sheen upon the paper where a dab of wax had once rested. The seal not only been broken, but picked clean off, as if to erase its existence altogether.
“You opened my letter?” he inquired, his tone so flat that it had sounded more like a statement than a question.
“Of course I did. I frequently managed your father’s correspondence for him, as well,” Mother said, without so much as a shred of shame.
“It is beyond the pale that she should be writing to you. She presumes upon an acquaintance that ought not to exist.”
“It is beyond the pale that you should be opening my correspondence,” Anthony said, striving to keep his tone even and firm.
“Much less reading it. You will not do so again.”
Mother drew in a sharp breath.
“You were not trained for this role you now play,” she said, and the severe cut of her voice slid like a razor against his every nerve, fragile threads fraying beneath it.
“You are inexperienced, unpracticed—”
Unworthy. Always the lesser. Always the last. It would likely not be the last time he heard those words slung at him, and yet—somehow they hurt less than they once had. Of course the sting was still there, like the burn of a shallow wound. But the darts, he thought, had not struck quite so deeply as they might have only days ago. A flesh wound, and he’d survived worse.
“Regardless, it is now my role to play,” he said, “however I care to do so. I would remind you that Charity and I have the matter of our inconvenient marriage to resolve.”
“Pray do not be so foolish as to pay the woman,” Mother said, her inflection contemptuous.
“She will only want more, and you will never be rid of her. Not when she discovers how deep your pockets go.”
Even he did not know quite how deep his pockets went at the moment. He’d yet to find the time to go over the accounting books and various financial ledgers to determine an exact figure. His solicitor was still deep in the arduous process of drawing up a thorough accounting of all the assets that now belonged to him.
“My business with Charity is exactly that,” he said.
“My business, and no one else’s. When she is here”—and it was likely that she would be a great deal—“I will expect you to be cordial. If I find that you have not been so, then I will be happy to arrange for you to leave London for your dower estate.” A small but respectable property in Cornwall, out in the provincial countryside. Perfectly suitably as a retreat from the bustle of the city, but too far from the creature comforts of town which Mother preferred. The income it produced would only just cover the costs of maintaining the estate itself, much less provide the sort of financial security which would let her come to London for the Season.
Mother went a shade paler, her lips thinning. Affecting a more moderate tone, she said, “Warrington, you must be reasonable. That woman had been within these walls too often already. There will be talk.”
“Would you prefer, then, if I were visit her residence instead?” Anthony inquired dryly, with the sardonic lift of one brow.
There was the grit of clenched teeth in her voice when she responded, “You know I would not.”
“Charity, at least, stands a fair chance of going unnoticed here, if she dresses appropriately and arrives after dark. Whereas I am always noticed, whether I wish to be or not. And even if she were noticed, no one would be fool enough to think anything unsavory was occurring. Not within a household in mourning.” Not with his mother in residence. His sisters-in-law. His nieces.
Mother’s cheeks hollowed.
“What can you possibly have to say to that woman that cannot be said through your solicitor?”
“Again, that is my business alone.” Somehow, once he’d made the decision not to accept Mother’s reprimands, it was easier to set aside his own irritation in favor of unaffected calm.
“I enjoy her company,” he said.
“She is kind to me. Pleasant. Companionable.”
“A mistress must be those things,” Mother ground out, a spark of indignation glowing behind her eyes.
“Her damned career depends upon them.”
“Do you know,” Anthony said, only moderately surprised that Mother had uttered a coarse word, “I don’t think the career had anything to do with them. Probably those qualities have aided her, but I think that is simply the way she is.” The way he remembered her. Holding his hand in the darkness long after she ought to have been to bed herself. Speaking softly to him until her voice had gone hoarse and rough to pull his mind away from the pain that was his only other companion, save for her.
“She’s like all of her contemporaries. Cunning. Avaricious. Cold.”
“I never said she had a heart of gold,” Anthony said. Avariciousness had saved her from the poorhouse, supported herself and her sister. Cunning had got them both free from beneath their father’s rule. Coldness had aided her to make difficult decisions for more futures than only her own.
“It is so easy for you to judge another person’s life, which you yourself have never experienced.”
Mother’s black crepe skirts rustled as she drew herself up, notching her chin higher.
“I am thinking of this family’s good name,” she said.
“I am thinking of your reputation. God knows someone has got to.”
“Then you should mind your tongue and manners both,” Anthony said.
“Charity has been very generous to this family, given the circumstances. She’s even offered to help me find a suitable woman to take her place.”
“And how in the world does she mean to do that? She is not welcome in polite society.”
“No,” Anthony acknowledged, “but she is friendly with a few ladies who are.” He searched his memory for those references she had listed off to him before she had left upon their last meeting.
“The Beaumonts,” he said.
“And Mrs. Moore, who I believe is the daughter of a viscount.” The woman who had, inexplicably, married the gentleman who had confronted him at his club.
“Mrs. Moore married a common criminal. And the Beaumonts!” A scathing sound erupted from the back of her throat.
“I’ll grant you that two are titled, but nobody would be fool enough to call them Good Ton.”
Really? Jolly good for them. They sounded delightful.
“They cannot possibly find you a good match. None of them have got the slightest idea of what it means to be the Duchess of Warrington.” Mother’s fingers had begun to flex at her sides as if the thought of throttling someone—most likely him—was becoming more appealing by the moment.
“You cannot trust them to act in your interests, Warrington.”
Perhaps not. But he trusted Charity to do it, and Charity trusted them, so—if they had suggestions for him, he would take them under advisement.
“Do you know, Mother, if you had shown me even a fraction of the warmth and kindness my long-lost wife has, I might have trusted you to do so instead.”
Mother recoiled as if he had slapped her, her pale face whitening still further. And he didn’t understand it. She had made no particular secret of her distaste for her youngest son, eschewing his presence whenever possible. Approaching him only when she had some complaint to make known to him.
She had been fond of him, once. God, it hurt to remember that now, when she could not even bear to look upon his face for longer than a moment. She had, once, been fond of him. Had spent hours at his side in the nursery when he had been just a boy, playing at pretend military campaigns waged with a set of old, battered tin soldiers that had once belonged to her brother. A treasured family heirloom which she had passed down to him, in those distant days when she had loved him.
Anthony pulled open the drawer of the desk and slapped Charity’s letter down within it.
“I am so damned tired, Mother, of this constant battle. Tell me now that you will mind your tongue in Charity’s presence—because she is presently my wife, and for that alone she deserves your respect—or I will have the carriage readied at once for your journey to Cornwall.”
“I will!” Mother squeaked, and her fingers clenched in the folds of her skirts, knuckles whitening.
“I will, for God’s sake. Anthony—”
“Inform Esther and Helen of the same,” he snapped as he rose from his chair, tugging at the cuffs of his sleeves as he rounded the desk.
“I won’t have her insulted in this house. For any reason.” Mother pulled away from him as he crossed to the door, just as she always did.
“You will all be civil, or you will answer to me.”
He left her there, standing waifish and alone, before the desk that had once been his father’s. And it did not occur to him for several hours afterward that she had called him, at last, by his name.
***
“I like your butler,” Charity said as she sashayed into Captain Sharp’s study late in the evening.
“Thrice now he’s admitted me without so much as a blink. It’s rather refreshing, you know, not to be glared at.”
“Redding?” Captain Sharp asked from his seat at his desk, glancing up briefly from the stack of documents laid out before him.
“I should hope he doesn’t glare. Unseemly in a butler, I think.”
“They do glare, though.” Not that she had ever paid it much mind.
“Redding’s been with the family since I was a child. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him evince an emotion that might even remotely be called mild surprise. If he ever attempted a glare, his face might split straight down the middle.” He scraped the fingers of one hand through his hair, ruffling the dark strands.
“My apologies,” he said.
“There’s a great deal of business that goes along with inheriting a title. I had hoped to be finished with this before you arrived.”
“That’s quite all right,” she said as she meandered to the right side of the room, pausing before the stuffed bookshelves to scan the titles contained therein.
“I’m well aware that noblemen often have a great many responsibilities to which to attend.”
“It’s not the responsibilities which plague me,” he muttered absently, riffling through pages still left to peruse.
“It’s ascertaining the precise nature of them. The minutia of it all.”
“Ah.” He had not been raised to the role, of course. Probably his elder brother had, to one degree or another, been given some manner of education in the properties that would one day be his, and thus would have had a far simpler time stepping into the role when the time came. But Captain Sharp—well, he was discovering it all now, as he went along.
“While you are at it, then, would you mind terribly if I looked through your social invitations?”
“Invitations?” His dark head popped up once more, brow furrowed.
“Whatever for?”
“So that I might determine which you are to accept,” she said as she wandered toward the sideboard and selected a glass for a drink. That forbidding expression he leveled in her direction was delicious, but she had not met the man yet who could make her cower.
“Of course you will accept them. A few of them, at least. Not to worry; I shall be selective with my choices.”
“I’m still in mourning. No one would expect my attendance.”
“You must know that men are not bound to the conventions of mourning in the same manner that women are.” Which was monstrously unfair, but then that was the way of the world. Society perpetually carved out exceptions for men which women were fundamentally disallowed. A man might saunter through the strictures of mourning with only a black armband—such as the one he wore now—to show for their sorrows, while women were expected to retreat entirely from society.
That frown deepened into a glower.
“If I am invited at all, it is only because they wish to mock me. To stare at me, as if I were a curiosity.”
Poor man; so desperately lonely and unhappy.
“And your response is to banish yourself voluntarily? To strike yourself off before you can be struck?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I only mean to say that you have as much right to your amusements as anyone else,” she said.
“Probably there are people who say cruel things and think cruel thoughts, but they are none of our concern.” She pulled the stopper from a decanter and poured.
“You asked how I did it,” she said.
“How I made myself not care. This is it. I refuse to let cruelty force me from a place it is my right to occupy. And what is more: I never let me force myself out, either.”
“I don’t take your meaning.”
“It is one thing,” Charity said, “to be excluded. It is another—a worse thing by far—to exclude yourself. You haven’t even let anyone else convict you. You’ve judged yourself, found yourself wanting, and banished yourself all on your own. Quite efficient, really, when you get down to it. You never have to wonder. You never have to risk anything.”
“Are you calling me a coward?”
“God, no. You’ve braved things that would fell the vast majority of peers. Defensive, I’d say. Cautious. With good cause, no doubt.”
He gave a tight, small nod, which she interpreted as permission to continue.
“You could hide from it all, if you liked,” she said as she sipped the rich amber liquor in her glass, “for the rest of your life. And how very small that life would be. How lonely. How sad. With only yourself for company. Alone with the very same person who banished you to it.”
He flattened his lips into a firm line, and that scar that bisected them whitened beneath the pressure.
“So your advice is to brave the mockery,” he said, his voice flat and unimpressed.
“What am I to do for it when it occurs?”
Charity shrugged.
“Laugh,” she suggested mildly.
“If someone should have the audacity to say something unpleasant of you in your hearing, you laugh at them. Or, if they have been particularly audacious about it, you tell them to go to hell.”
“I can’t tell someone to go to hell.”
“You’re a duke,” she said, with an insouciant lift of her shoulders.
“I think you’ll find there are all manner of things you can say and do.” As she crossed the room toward the desk, she extended her free hand.
“The invitations, if you please.”
He gave a muffled sigh as he reached for a drawer, which he pulled open to rifle through.
“Is that what you do?” he asked as he collected a neat stack of letters.
“You tell people to go to hell when they say offensive things of you?”
“On occasion,” she said as he laid the stack of letters into her hand.
“I have been known to use coarse language when it suits me to do so. When someone has proved themselves particularly deserving of my scorn. But mostly I ignore them, Captain, for there is little quite so diminishing to the ego as to be entirely disregarded. And do you know, even if it should begin as only the pretense of indifference, I believe you will find that it does, eventually, become the truth.” Quite a few more invitations than she had expected, now that she had them in her hand. And all with seals still intact.
“You’ve opened none of them?”
“I wasn’t going to accept them. I didn’t think it would much matter whether or not I had opened them.” He gave a vague, disinterested gesture of one hand as he redirected his gaze to the pages upon the desk before him.
“Be my guest.”
As if she were his secretary! With a magnificent flounce, Charity took a seat in the chair nearest the desk and pried up the wax upon the first of them.
“I won’t write your responses for you,” she warned as she settled in to read.
“That you will have to do on your own.”
“Why? Your penmanship is exquisite.”
“Because I am not your damned secretary,” she said with a sharp flash of her teeth in his direction and a faintly feral inflection that seemed to take him aback for a moment.
“I only meant to say that mine is abysmal,” he said, sheepishly.
“I know. I’ve had the dubious pleasure of attempting to read it.” Charity thrust her hand into her reticule and withdrew a folded sheet of paper, which she spread out upon the desk.
Captain Sharp hunched forward, narrowing his eye into a squint as he attempted to read the paper she’d set upon the desk—upside down, from his perspective.
“What is that?”
“A list of my potential replacements,” Charity said as she began to pry up one wax seal after another, organizing the invitations into a tidy stack.
“My friends were happy enough to provide me with the names of several ladies they thought would suit. You will attend those events at which one or more of those ladies are likely to be present, and make yourself known to them. An introduction, perhaps a dance—”
“I can’t dance,” he interjected. And then, at her suspicious glare, he added, “That is, I don’t dance. It’s been twenty years since last I learned, and I’ve had no occasion at all to do so in recent years. I would make a fool of myself if I attempted such a thing in public—and I have played the fool a little too often for comfort just lately.”
“Then I will add dancing to the list of things which you must learn,” she said. A list which was growing longer by the moment.
“You are remarkably chatty for a man who has got pressing business to which to attend,” she said, with a flick of her gaze toward the papers he had once again abandoned.
“I suppose I am,” he mused, and at last he pressed his hand down upon the papers and pushed the whole stack aside, abandoning them in truth.
“Nobody much talks to me, really. I don’t think I would know what to say to anyone even if they did.” His gaze flicked down, shying away from hers as he admitted, “I suppose I can talk to you only because you have already seen me at my worst.”
And it had not lessened her opinion of him, which she supposed must have been something of a rarity to him in the ordinary course of his life. It made her sad for him, for the man he should have been, had his life not taken such a tragic turn so early. But that was still there within him. He only had to learn how to find him.
“All right,” she said, and pushed aside the invitations as she rose to her feet.
“This will wait for an hour or so. First, you are going to learn to dance—and to talk.”