Chapter 3

CHAPTER 3

Charlotte straightened from the chaise at the sound of his retreating footsteps and adjusted the straps on the sheet Mrs. Vessey had helped her fashion into a toga. She quickly glanced around to the other guests who all remained quiet, waiting for her instruction.

Their eyes were wide and full of questions.

A smile faltered on her lips as she brushed back her hair and stood, the ground swaying slightly under her feet. She would blame it on the port, except she hadn’t a drop.

“Your Grace?” Monty whispered.

She waved her hand, dismissing him. It was bad enough that he rushed to her side as soon as the duke emerged from the darkened doorway to interrupt the evening’s play.

“What a wonderful production, friends. But it’s grown late, and I believe we should retire for the evening. Let’s continue tomorrow.”

“Yes, with the duke?” Miss Kemp asked. “There must be a role he can play.” She brushed aside her tangle of ashy brown curls and scratched the tip of her button nose. At nineteen and navigating her second year in the marriage mart, she still viewed London’s social scene with great anticipation.

What Charlotte would give to harbor such na?ve trust again. Once in a London ballroom, she had been swayed to believe he was a kind man. Once, she even fancied herself in love with him.

Before she could answer, another guest, concealed by the room divider, snickered. “He won’t be here in the?—”

“Well, I’ve been summoned.” Nathaniel jumped up. “It’s best I go, so I can be put neatly into my place.”

He spun around and folded in half with a dramatic bow, yanking his helmet off, and tossing it to the chaise beside Charlotte. The rest of the guests clapped and laughed, the tension easily slipping from the room. That was the power of Lord Nathaniel Gairdner. He was charm and light whereas his older brother was more the harbinger of death.

Well, it certainly felt that way.

Charlotte wasn’t known for fits of the dramatic, but the duke marching in here as he had, calling her darling…

Her stomach soured.

“Chin up, Lottie,” Nathaniel whispered, dipping down so only she could hear. “I will be back shortly.”

But she was not well.

The last time she had seen the duke, he had arrived as the sun was breaking over the horizon early one morning three summers ago. Lily had arrived, waiting for her husband to pick her up and drive her across the country to the Isle of Wight. She had answered an ad in the newspaper for a man seeking a wife.

In truth, it hadn’t been her husband who had arrived, however. Lieutenant Rafe Davies was the brother of Lily’s intended, and the man who had placed the ad on behalf of his older brother.

Their love story had turned out happy indeed in the end. Rafe was building a shipping empire with his friend, Liam Hawkins, and Lily was headmistress at Gairdner’s Seminary for Young Girls, the school Charlotte helped establish and fund.

If she couldn’t have children of her own, then she would use her position to care and nurture as many as she could. She thought it vital to provide a safe environment for girls to recognize their strengths and develop interests outside of marriage.

Something she had discovered too late .

After a few minutes, Charlotte bid everyone a good evening and wrapped her arms around herself, unable to chase away the chill which bore deep into her bones. The duke was busy with Nathaniel, and likely that conversation, while brief, would serve as distraction enough for her to slip into her new rooms and away from the duke.

She hadn’t dared look at him as he stood there in the doorway and called her darling. And she wouldn’t acknowledge him now.

Couldn’t, in fact.

In the morning, she would decide how to proceed. But given the duke’s inability to remain in her life, she didn’t wish to throw her plans into the wind because he decided to return to Stonehurst on a whim.

“Your Grace?” Susan whispered from Charlotte’s old rooms.

She spun, following as her lady’s maid gestured for her to enter. The woman shut the door promptly, locking it behind them.

“The valet is less than pleased with the new sleeping arrangements. The house is in chaos. No one knows where to put all the duke’s trunks.”

“It’s not for the valet to decide.”

“I told him as much, but you must have just missed him. He was seeking out the duke for the final say.”

With over eighty rooms in the grand home, she thought it likely the duke could find another place to sleep. If he were to treat her and Stonehurst as nothing more than an inn on his journey, she didn’t think it important that he should have the pick of rooms.

“Quick, help me dress for bed and I will gather my—” She stopped short, her eyes scanning the shelves where a few of her prized orchids lived. Empty now. “Where are my orchids, Susan?”

Her lady’s maid stopped searching through the duchess’s nearly empty wardrobe and spun around. “I moved them for you. And carefully. They are in the duke’s… I mean in your new room by the window but away from the draft.”

Charlotte fussed with the ribbons holding up the sheet she had fashioned into a toga. She had never wanted to participate in the play, especially not today. Her mind was elsewhere. And somehow, she had summoned the very devil who plagued her thoughts right to her doorstep.

Her only hope now was that he would come to his senses and leave in the morning, but hearing he had brought trunks was very bad news indeed.

It was a foolish idea to begin with. She would reside in her rooms, living in his shadow, and shut out of his heart.

Unless she left.

“You’re shaking, Your Grace.”

I have nowhere else to go.

She could return to London or travel to the Continent, perhaps. Or maybe she would visit Kate in Scotland. She would love to see her dear friend and hadn’t since the news reached of her marriage to Gabriel MacInnes.

It was like the plot of a Gothic novel, fleeing a dastardly villain to seek safety in a Scottish castle.

But if it allowed Charlotte room and space to breathe, she must consider it.

“I am cold,” she whispered instead, staring ahead at the dark-green rectangle on the wall where a portrait had once hung. “You were able to bring my paintings as well?”

“I am nothing if not efficient, Your Grace.”

Any other time, Charlotte would have laughed. Susan had been far too kind in light of the duke’s behavior toward her since their wedding. But now, the familiar numbness crept in. It was an all-consuming darkness that wrapped around her and pulled her away from the small joys of life. Leaving her alone.

She hated to be alone.

“You are too kind to me, Susan.”

“I am only doing my duty, Your Grace.”

Her lady’s maid helped her finish dressing, then escorted her into the duke’s room.

“Are you certain you wish to stay?”

Charlotte peered around, then heard a knock at the door from the hallway .

“Let me in, Charlotte,” the duke said, his voice a calm, menacing threat. “Don’t make a scene.”

But what he really meant was don’t ask for more, go back to where you belong, and do as I say.

He had been the one who left, but she had remained all these years, waiting. Doing exactly as he had wished, playing the part of the dutiful duchess. Even when he left and she had to endure the hushed whispers and tittered laughter, explaining over and again that he wouldn’t be attending. And knowing full well she had been invited purely because she was a duchess. How she had to keep her features the perfect mask when asked about her husband, and she had no news to share, again. But worse was enduring the gossip that, after eight years, there was still no heir, and Charlotte was left to pretend as if it didn’t affect her.

When all she wished for was a child of her own.

Once, she was certain she had loved this man.

“Open up.”

She glanced at the closed door as a shiver raced down her back. Making a stand rarely ever worked with the duke, and she didn’t have the strength this evening to fight.

Charlotte wiped at her face and grabbed the portrait off the wall, shaking her head. “No, let him in after I leave, Susan.”

With each step closer to her old room, it felt as if her heart was splintering open once more. Each step was a resigned acknowledgment of her fate. Her mother had been so proud to see Charlotte engaged to the duke. But when her parents disowned her after the wedding, that pride had tarnished to shame. Their perfect daughter only had a pretty story because the reality of it was anything less than perfect. The duke had left after their wedding and in his place, his rakish younger brother had spent too much time with her.

It was bad enough the ton thought she might have trapped the duke into marrying her by pretending to be with child. They hadn’t known the truth, which made it all the more bittersweet. There had been no baby after he left. But then London society had become cruel, saddling her with the moniker Honey Duchess because, in her grief, she had found support in an unlikely source—his brother, Nathaniel.

Charlotte turned and locked the door to her dressing room, resting against it as she heard Susan open the door to the duke’s room, allowing him in.

“Where is she?” he asked.

Always the picture of calm the duke, even if his voice was laced with ice.

“She has retired to her old bedchamber.”

“I need to speak with her.”

Charlotte clutched the painting and slid back against the door, falling to the floor and hugging it to her body.

“She has gone to bed, Your Grace.”

“I will not be turned out of my rooms, nor will I be denied an audience with my own wife.”

Charlotte tensed, ready to spring to her feet. She wouldn’t allow any harm to come to Susan for her own foolish decisions.

“You may go,” he snapped, dismissing her.

A moment later, Charlotte heard the muffled noise of a door shutting.

My own wife .

He didn’t deserve to consider her as such.

Another knock. Swift, urgent. This time against her dressing room door.

“Charlotte, open up. I need to speak with you.”

She couldn’t swallow past the lump in her throat to summon the words.

“Charlotte.”

She blew out a puff of air and glanced up at the ceiling painted with clouds and cherubs. Funny, considering it felt as if she was being dragged down into the underworld.

“I am not leaving until you speak with me.”

Charlotte placed the painting down beside her on the floor.

Once when she was younger, she had been at the gallery, admiring a Flemish painting, when the duke had approached. They had been introduced only the previous night at a ball and had shared a heated kiss hidden away on a dark balcony.

He had given her the Flemish master painting as a present later that week with a brief note, asking if she would enjoy a ride through Hyde Park. It was how the duke had entered her world—all at once, consuming what she knew of life and turning it on its head.

“I have nothing to say. Please leave.”

He cleared his throat, dropping his voice to the warm timber that made her remember all too well what they had once shared.

“Eight years ago tonight, I left you standing in my room in London.”

She felt nothing, even as her eyes welled with tears, and her heart drummed in her chest.

“Eight years, but I will claim what is mine. I am back and I am not leaving until there is an heir for the title.”

She wiped her tears and laughed. It was the most ridiculous thing, but the duke always did move through the world like a spoiled child. He always received everything he desired, even Charlotte in the end.

To think of his touch? To think of his lips pressed against hers?

It could never happen again. She would never allow it.

Charlotte stood, even as the world in front of her blurred and tunneled, closing in around her. Her hands and feet were cold. And after all this time passed between them, he had managed to freeze her heart as well.

She turned the key and clutched the knob in her hand as she slowly cracked the door open.

First, a sliver.

A small slice of the man who held her heart ransom. Who had left, twice now, before demanding this evening that she perform her wifely duties and consummate their marriage.

Then, wider.

Revealing the cold, determined man he had become.

Handsome, yes, but he always had been.

Tan skin from his mother’s Italian heritage. Cold, obsidian eyes beneath a strong, pronounced brow that was furrowed now. At her. A straight, Roman nose. Wide lips, once soft and skilled at whispering alluring promises to her, now pressed into a frown. Dark stubble shadowed his strong jaw, hiding the dimple in his chin. He was almost always clean-shaven, so that was interesting.

His shoulders were wide and dressed in a flawless bespoke suit.

She shut her eyes for only a moment, summoning the courage tossing around in her stomach. She had practiced this speech for years now, but still, with him mere inches away, the words were no easier to say.

“You may have decided to return, but I will no longer be staying. I want a divorce, Ian.”