Page 1 of Married to the Icy Duke (Duke Wars #3)

S weat beaded on Charlotte’s face and prickled on her lower back. She longed to wipe her face with a handkerchief, but was painfully aware that eyes lingered on her. People were watching.

“One month later, and nobody had found anything better to speak of than of me, Sir Peter, and that fountain,” Charlotte muttered darkly.

Beside her, Thalia sighed and slid an arm through Charlotte’s. “I’m sure nobody is thinking of it now, Charlotte.”

Charlotte said nothing. She loved her new sister-in-law very much, but sometimes Thalia could be a little oblivious to the way Society worked.

She supposed that love could do that to a person.

She was glad that her brother had found love, and she did love Thalia herself, but frankly, it was Thalia’s appearance in their lives that made Charlotte understand that she had to marry. Ladies did have to marry, didn’t they?

“They haven’t forgotten,” Charlotte mumbled, letting her sister-in-law tow her through the crush. “You must have noticed that I hardly receive any invitations now. At Almack’s, my dance card was almost empty. Men avoid me like the plague.”

Thalia turned abruptly, seizing Charlotte by the shoulders. She stared up into her sister-in-law’s face, and Charlotte glimpsed some of that fierceness which her brother, Gabriel, so adored.

“Then ignore them,” Thalia said firmly. “Ignore those silly men who cannot see you for who you are. Ignore jealous women who seek to pull you down. You don’t have to marry. You can live with Gabriel and me. We love having you with us; you are family .”

Charlotte gave a sad smile. “You’re kind, Thalia. But before, I was the one running Gabriel’s household. Now, I … I have no place.”

Thalia frowned. “You do have a place. Your place is with us, and I won’t have it otherwise. Marry out of love , Charlotte.”

Charlotte brushed her sister-in-law’s hands away. “Love is a waste of time. Love makes people do terrible things, and nobody knows that better than Gabriel and I.”

Thalia flinched at Charlotte’s words, biting her lower lip. She stared up at her for a moment, frowning.

“I wish you didn’t think like that,” she said at last. “You deserve to be happy, Charlotte.”

Charlotte swallowed hard, turning away. “I will be happy. But I will not put my happiness above everybody and everything else. That’s what my mother did, and I will never, ever be like her.”

Thalia said nothing. Charlotte knew that her sister-in-law knew the story, much like the rest of Society. At the moment, the tale of the infamous former Duchess of Stonewell was not far from anyone's minds.

Charlotte walked away, pushing through the crowds. She was relieved when Thalia did not follow her. Thalia and Gabriel had a life of their own to consider. They were the illustrious Duke and Duchess of Stonewell, ready to clear the Harding family’s name and take their rightful place in Society.

Charlotte would not be the one who held them back.

She knew Gabriel was somewhere in the crowd, bunched together with his friends. This party, after all, was thrown by the Ton’s Devils. Once a year, the Devils hosted a huge ball, often themed in some way, and invited all of the ton.

This included men like her brother, who were part of the Ton’s Orions.

Privately, Charlotte thought that all the business about clubs and such was silly.

Did it matter whether one gathered in a vast old library with the Devils, or in a glass-domed astronomy conservatory with the Orions?

No, it did not matter. There were a few women members, which shocked more austere and old-fashioned clubs such as White’s and Barrett’s, but Charlotte couldn’t help but feel that women who joined were every bit as silly as the men.

Either way, Gabriel would be entirely uncomfortable all evening and would stick with the other Orions. Charlotte planned to avoid them.

Apparently, the rest of the guests planned to avoid her .

She caught the eye of the Misses Jenkins, four young sisters aged between seventeen and twenty-one, all out at once and all frankly proving to be a menace to Society.

Charlotte was friends with them before the Sir Peter-in-the-fountain incident, but since then, the Jenkins had decidedly avoided her.

They avoided her now. The oldest Miss Jenkins turned away, pretending not to have seen Charlotte at all, and the rest of the girls followed suit. Swallowing hard, Charlotte changed direction, pushing her way through the crowd towards the wall. There might be a quiet spot over there.

“Careful, now,” laughed a gentleman as she pushed by, “Lady Charlotte is about! She might beat us to death with an umbrella or drown us in a fountain!”

He was rewarded with a surge of laughter from his companions, a selection of gawky-looking young men who Charlotte didn’t know. She rounded on the man at once, and the smile dropped off his face like a stone.

“It was a parasol,” she responded smoothly. “And luckily for you, I do not have such an item on me.”

The man blinked, clearly feeling foolish, and that feeling of silliness solidified at once to anger. Curling his lip, he shouldered past her in a most ungentlemanlike way, his friends following suit.

“Wretched little …” he began, but stopped abruptly when a large, heavy hand clapped down on his shoulder.

A tall, broad-shouldered man appeared, his back turned to Charlotte so that she could not get a glimpse of his face.

The gentleman who had just pushed her, however, could see him, and the color drained from his face.

His friends disappeared in the blink of an eye, melting into the crowd.

“Lord Tabbish, I am not sure I can countenance a lady being knocked around in my own home,” came a deep, drawling voice.

“M-M-My lord,” Lord Tabbish stammered. “That is, your Grace, I …”

Suddenly, Charlotte understood. This man was the Duke of Arkley, her host. That made sense, since this vast, cavernous house was Arkley Hall. She had never met the duke in person, but she had heard of him. Everybody had.

It wasn’t often that Charlotte found herself being towered over , but the top of her head barely came to the man’s shoulder.

“An apology, I think, is in order,” the duke said pleasantly.

There was real fear in Lord Tabbish’s face when he looked at Charlotte.

“I am deeply sorry, Lady Charlotte,” he whispered, and she was sure that he believed it.

“Think nothing of it, you are quite forgiven,” Charlotte heard herself saying, lest the formidable duke thought that Lord Tabbish hadn’t suffered enough.

“Very good,” the duke said, and released Lord Tabbish’s shoulder. The smaller man hurtled off into the crowd like a rabbit with hounds on its tail. The duke glanced briefly over his shoulder, and Charlotte met his eyes.

Well, eye . He had one piercingly blue eye, and the other was covered by an eyepatch, of all things.

Before she could say a word, even in thanks, he inclined his head infinitesimally and strode off into the crowd.

People parted to let him pass by, and pushed together again in his wake, jostling Charlotte again.

She found herself standing there for a moment, a little bewildered. She knew, of course, that the duke of Arkley was something of a rival to Gabriel, being a key member of the Devils. She hadn’t imagined a man with a reputation like his to care about a singular woman being jostled at his party.

Giving herself a little shake, Charlotte ploughed through the crowd, putting her odd host out of her mind, and at last found a quiet corner where she could breathe.

There was a long table pushed up against the wall, covered with a silk tablecloth.

The table had likely once held refreshments, which had long since been devoured, and now the table was empty except for a few shiny silver plates.

There was, however, a seat beside it, and Charlotte sank into it with a sigh, resting her elbow on the table.

It wasn’t a particularly ladylike attitude, but she had long since stopped caring about that.

According to the gossips and the scandal sheets, she had forfeited her femininity.

Whether she had forfeited it after what her mother had done or after Sir Peter’s tumble into the fountain remained to be seen.

Charlotte’s warped reflection stared up at her from an abandoned silver plate. The theme for the party was The North Pole. She had no idea what it meant, but the ballroom had been decorated to resemble the icy Pole.

False snow made of flour and some clumpy, pale-blue substance lined the windowsills and other surfaces. Paper snowflakes hung from gilded portrait frames, and blocks of wood painted to look like ice were piled in the corner.

If that were real ice, Charlotte thought moodily, fanning herself, it would have long since melted by now.

The ladies were given dance-cards shaped like snowflakes, which hung from their wrists by pale blue ribbons. Charlotte’s, of course, was empty. Gabriel generally made an effort to dance with her, but in the house of his rival, he had sworn not to dance.

It was going to be a long evening. At least she had dressed to the theme, albeit by accident.

Joan was the one who had chosen Charlotte’s gown for that night, a frothy, pale-blue creation which made her look somewhat like an icicle.

Her chestnut hair hung down the back of her neck in ringlets, swept up from her face.

She looked pretty enough, Charlotte knew that.

They were an attractive family, and Gabriel was considered to be handsome, too.

And yet her looks meant nothing. She could be as pretty as anything, but she was still considered to be a violent harpy with a murderous, shameful mother.

A bad family, people said. Bad family with bad blood.

No wonder no one wanted to be associated with her. And risking children with her? Heavens, no. After all, the world knew that the previous duchess had abandoned her children. With such an unnatural mother, who only knew what Charlotte might be capable of?

On this delightful thought, a sudden, hiccupping sob drifted its way to Charlotte’s ears, nearly drowned out by the noise of the crowd.

At first, she was sure she’d imagined it. Then the sob returned, sounding very much as though somebody were trying to muffle their tears behind their hands. She sat up straighter, peering at the crowd. Nobody appeared to be crying.

Then the table beside her shivered, just a little. Charlotte stared down at the table with something like amazement. Could it be possible that here, at a party like this , somebody had crawled under the table and begun to cry?

No one else seemed to hear, so Charlotte bent down and lifted the corner of the tablecloth.

A little boy was hiding under the table.

Charlotte was no good at guessing the ages of children, but she suspected that he was two or three years old.

He had a fluffy headful of black curls, and behind his small hands, covering his face, she was surprised to see a pair of small spectacles carefully perched on his nose.

It was odd to see spectacles on a child as young as he, and they must have cost a great deal.

He peered up at her, and their eyes met. Abruptly, Charlotte sat up, peering around the room. Surely someone must be looking for the child. Where was a nursemaid, or a frantic mother?

Nobody appeared to be searching for anything, so Charlotte peered under the table once more. The boy’s crying had eased a little, and he stared up at her curiously.

“Are you all right, my dear?” Charlotte tried. The boy only stared at her and did not reply.

“It is rather crowded in here,” Charlotte added. “Sometimes, when I meet certain people, I feel like crying. But you should not stay under the table. It’s awfully stuffy in there, and dusty, too. Why don’t you come out?”

The boy stared at her for a long moment, as if considering. Then he crawled forward, shuffling out from under the tablecloth, and stood before her.

Charlotte was no good at managing children.

She had no younger siblings, and while her future, in her mind’s eye, included a family of her own, she did not consider herself to be particularly fond of small children.

Still, it was clear that the poor child was distressed, and his cheeks were tearstained.

Acting on instinct, she reached forward and swept him up, placing him on her lap. Part of her expected the child to scream and squirm, but he only sat perfectly still, staring up at her with curiosity. Charlotte withdrew a handkerchief and mopped his cheeks.

“There,” she said, venturing a smile. “ I always feel better after a good cry, I must say, and I daresay you do, too.”

The boy gave the tiniest of smiles. It felt like success.

Smiling back at him, Charlotte smoothed back a tangle of dark curls from his forehead. “What is your name, little one?”

The boy said nothing and abruptly climbed off her knee. He clutched onto her hand, however, and after a moment, Charlotte realized that he was tugging her after him.

“You want to crawl back under the table? Does it feel safer there?”

The boy gave a small nod. It was hardly ladylike, but Charlotte followed him, crawling on her hands and knees under the table until the tablecloth flopped back into place behind her.

It was as if they were in a quiet, secluded little room of their own.

The boy sat cross-legged on the floor and beamed up at her.

Charlotte tried again.

“Come on, dear, you can tell me. Tell me your name, dearest, then we’ll find something fun to do while we wait for your parents to find you.”

The boy hesitated, just for an instant, then said a single word in a thin, tentative voice.

“Tommy.”