When the Duchess Said Yes (12 page)

“I trust you won’t do anything foolish, Hawke,” Brecon warned earnestly. “You’ve only a few days until the wedding. Pray don’t dishonor your bride with some manner of impulsive foolishness.”

“Foolishness, Brecon? You should know me better than that,” Hawke said, squaring his hat on his head with purposeful disdain. “I’ve never willingly done a foolish thing in my life, and I don’t intend to do so now.”

But impulsiveness: ah, now that was altogether different.…

Lizzie stood in the center of Mrs. Cartwright’s back room while three journeywomen mantua makers plus Mrs. Cartwright herself fussed about her, smoothing and pinning the silk sleeves of yet another gown in place. In the beginning, Lizzie had found the process exciting.
After a lifetime as the second sister, it was wonderful to finally be the center of everyone’s attention, and the clothes that were being made for her were extraordinarily beautiful, fit for the duchess she was to become.

But the novelty of her position had soon worn away and was replaced by the tedium of standing still for what seemed to be hours on end. Unlike gentlemen’s clothing, which was made from patterns, ladies’ dresses were draped and fashioned directly on the body, and required that lady’s body to be present. It didn’t help that Aunt Sophronia and Charlotte had attended every fitting, too, making all the choices of fabric and trimmings as they gave the mantua maker excruciatingly specific directions.

Lizzie sighed again. How many extraordinarily beautiful gowns (and stockings and stays and shifts and shoes and night rails and hats and cloaks and all the rest) did a duchess truly require, anyway? And what was the purpose if she couldn’t show them off to Hawke?

“Lizzie, please, you must stop wriggling,” Charlotte scolded. “These women cannot do their work properly if you won’t stand still. I vow you’re worse than the twins, and they’re only two.”

Lizzie sighed dramatically. “I wouldn’t wriggle a bit if His Grace were here,” she said. “
He
would amuse me.”

“His Grace at a fitting?” Aunt Sophronia exclaimed. “Why, what could be more improper?”

“I remember how March came rushing in to interrupt Charlotte’s before they were wed,” Lizzie said. “I haven’t forgotten. The scandal sheets were full of it.”

“The scandal sheets are full of a great many sordid things that should not concern you, my dear,” Lady Allred said severely. “The less frequently a lady’s name appears there, the better.”

Glumly Lizzie raised her arm to oblige the seamstress’s pins. She’d always loved the story of March being so
impassioned
that he’d ordered Aunt Sophronia out of the fitting room so that he could take liberties with Charlotte. That was how the gossips had described it—“taken liberties”—and because Charlotte had always refused to tell more, Lizzie’s imagination had supplied all kinds of thrilling indiscretions. Her own betrothal seemed sadly lacking in this kind of excitement. She knew that Hawke was capable of it—she had only to recall Ranelagh—but she’d been so well and oppressively chaperoned that there’d been no opportunities. She hadn’t seen him since he’d declared the date for their wedding, and though she told herself it was all due to Aunt Sophronia and the others ordering him away, she still couldn’t quite keep the doubts at bay, and wondered if he’d gone back to his former, neglectful ways. The little painting had been a perfect gift, but couldn’t he at least have sent her a love letter to tuck beneath her pillow, or flowers from his garden to prove she remained in his thoughts?

“Thank you, Your Grace, we are finished for the day,” Mrs. Cartwright said, curtseying to Charlotte as the highest-ranking lady in the room. “The gowns will be delivered to Marchbourne House tomorrow, exactly as you wished.”

Relieved to be at last freed from her role as a flesh-and-blood pincushion, Lizzie let the women dress her in her own clothes once again, while the others spoke of the final details of the new gowns around her, almost as if she weren’t there. Becoming a duchess might make her feel like a caterpillar magically transforming into a butterfly, but these three weeks in the cocoon were wicked tedious, and she barely hid another yawn behind her hand.

“I wish you’d take more interest in your wardrobe, Elizabeth,” Aunt Sophronia scolded. “You must be guided to develop your taste, so that you will learn to
dress according to your rank. You must make His Grace proud, you know. Whatever would he say if he were to see you in the ragamuffin clothes your mother let you wear before you came to town?”

“We weren’t ragamuffins,” protested Lizzie, ready to defend not only her old clothes but her mother, too. “We were
comfortable
, as children should be, and if His Grace can’t understand—”

“Lizzie, please,” Charlotte interrupted swiftly, always playing the peacekeeper. “I’m sure you’d like some air after all those fittings. Why don’t you wait in the carriage, and we shall join you there as soon as we are done?”

Lizzie sighed, knowing that Charlotte was right. Nothing would be gained by quarreling with Aunt Sophronia, especially over something her aunt would never concede. Her mouth tight, Lizzie instead turned toward the door and her sister’s coach waiting outside. One Marchbourne footman hurried forward to open the shop door for her while another let down the carriage’s folding steps. At the same time, the tall footman deftly managed to block the pavement and hold back other passersby and curiosity seekers, granting Lizzie a clear path to the carriage.

But not everyone had been pushed away. To one side of the pavement stood a man in a green feathered cap with a hurdy-gurdy hanging from a leather strap around his shoulders. As he turned the instrument’s crank, music filled the narrow street, the rolling, buzzing notes bouncing off the glass shop windows and drowning the noise from horses and carts. Best of all was the musician’s companion, a grinning capuchin monkey dressed like a tiny gentleman, perfect from his satin breeches to his miniature cocked hat. Unperturbed by the looming footman, the monkey danced a smart little jig to the music, bowing and scraping just like any other courtier.

Fascinated, Lizzie stepped around the footman to better see the monkey, clapping her hands in time to his dance. The monkey skipped away, stretching the long gold chain around his neck taut until he capered beside the tall wheel of a hackney. The song ended and he bowed again, this time pulling his little hat from his head and holding it out toward Lizzie.

“Aren’t you a bold little beggar?” she said, laughing as she reached into her pocket for a coin to put in his proffered hat. The monkey deserved it; it had been ages since she’d felt so lighthearted. She joined him with a merry little skip of her own and bent down to his level with the coin in her fingers.

With avaricious haste, the monkey grabbed for the coin, then suddenly froze. He wasn’t looking at the coin or even at Lizzie, but behind her, his tiny wrinkled face anxious with fear. He grimaced, baring his teeth, then let loose an ungodly shriek of distress.

Startled, Lizzie frowned and drew back, and began to look over her shoulder to see what had frightened the monkey. But as she turned, a heavy rough cloth smelling of horses and tobacco suddenly swept over her, covering her as completely as a shroud.

She cried out, her words muffled by the blanket that was now being wrapped around her. Strong arms grabbed her around her knees and lifted her from her feet. She punched and kicked as hard as she could, yet still she felt herself being carried, then tossed onto an unyielding bench or seat. She heard men shouting, a door close and latch, horses’ hooves, and the scrape of wheels on paving stones. She was in a carriage, then, and as she kicked and clawed against the tightly wrapped blanket and the weight of her kidnapper—obviously large, heavy, and strong—crushing upon her, she felt the lurch of the carriage moving forward, then increasing in speed.

That was enough to make her stop fighting and lie still. Think, she ordered herself sternly even as her heart raced with fear.
Think
. She tried to recall all the novels she’d read where the heroine had been kidnapped like this, but romantic heroines tended to swoon becomingly and wait for the hero to arrive on a snow-white charger to rescue her. That wasn’t likely to happen, not on the streets of modern London. Besides, she’d never swooned in her life.

Think, think,
think
.

She hadn’t been chosen at random, and she wasn’t going to be sold into some distant sultan’s harem or even into a Covent Garden brothel. She’d been kidnapped because of who she was, no doubt because she was going to marry a wealthy nobleman and could fetch a handsome ransom. This kind of peril wasn’t something she’d ever considered about becoming a duchess, and it didn’t seem entirely fair, either, especially since she was still just Lizzie. In fact the more she considered it, the more her fear became mixed with anger. How dare this ogre, whoever he was, believe he could profit by bundling her up like an unwanted litter of kittens? At least if he expected to be rewarded for her safe release, then he wouldn’t hurt her.

Which was not to say she’d make the same assurance toward him.

She felt him relax his grip on her, doubtless lulled by her lying so still beneath him. More fool he, she decided fiercely, and before he could realize that she wasn’t in the grip of a proper maidenly swoon, she shoved forward and freed herself of the blanket, and of him. In front of her was the window of the hackney—for so it must be, from his plain and grimy condition—and at once she threw herself at it, shoving aside the flapping black curtain so she could shout from the window for
help. That would draw attention, even in a crowded London street, and attention would be her salvation.

But before she could, her kidnapper recovered enough to clap his hand over her open mouth.

Lizzie would have none of that, and bit his palm as hard as she could.

The man jerked his hand away and swore vehemently. The oath was in Italian, and though Lizzie didn’t understand a word of it, at once she recognized the swearer.

“You!” she cried furiously, twisting around to face Hawke. “How could you do this to me, Hawke? To
me
?”

His expression managed to be both outraged and bewildered as he cradled his bitten hand against his chest. “How the devil could you
bite
me?”

“What else am I to do when you thrust your hand into my mouth?” She shoved herself free of the blanket and clambered onto the seat, keeping as far away from him as was possible in the narrow hackney. “You terrified me, and likely have my poor family worried to death. You even scared that little monkey, and for what? For
what
?”

He was still rubbing his palm. His clothes were anonymously plain and unducal, a dark, threadbare jacket and breeches and a plain white shirt open at the throat. On his feet were well-worn top boots, the sort worn by jockeys, hunters, and other such disreputable sorts. Clearly he’d adopted such a costume to be unnoticed—as if any man as tall and well made as Hawke could go unnoticed anywhere.

“I’d no intention to frighten anyone,” he said. “And the monkey was well compensated for his part.”

“You mean to say his owner was compensated for
his
part, not the poor little monkey,” she retorted. Bracing herself with one arm against the rocking hackney’s side, she reached up and rapped against the roof to signal to the driver to stop.

“What the devil are you doing?” Hawke demanded.

“I’m stopping this cab so that the driver might turn about and take me back to Mrs. Cartwright’s shop.”

“He won’t,” he said. “At least not unless I’m the one to order it.”

Lizzie scowled, ducking her chin low with frustration. As she did, the sad remnants of her hat slid forward over her brow. Today had been the first time she’d worn it, but thanks to that all-enveloping horse blanket, the brim was now bent and broken and the silk satin ribbons sadly crushed beyond redemption. Her frustration growing by the second, she snatched it from her head and threw it on the seat, a dramatic gesture that only managed to pull a large piece of her hair free to flop over her eyes. She shoved that aside, too, muttering the sort of black oath no duchess should even know, let alone allow to pass her lips.

Hawke’s dark brows rose, more with amusement than with shock, which irritated her all the more. He held his hand out to her—not, she noted, the hand she’d bitten earlier.

“Come, Lizzie, be honest,” he said cordially. “You can’t really prefer a mantua maker to me, can you?”

He smiled warmly, wickedly, coaxing her toward forgiveness with his charm. Standing and swaying with the hackney’s motion, she gazed down at him, at the white smile in his sun-browned face, at the dimples, and lower, to the tantalizing glimpse of bare skin revealed by the open collar of his shirt. She’d never seen a gentleman’s bare throat before, or the dark curls on a gentlemanly chest, and it was all … distracting. How was it possible that even when he was dressed like a threadbare Quaker he remained the handsomest man she’d ever met?

No, the handsomest man who’d just carried her off from her family like some impetuous Gypsy king, and she wanted none of it, or him, either. Resolutely she turned
back to the hackney’s window and shoved aside the curtain.

“Help me, good people, I beg you! Help me at once!” she shouted to the startled passersby on the pavement as the hackney continued to clatter briskly down the street. “I’ve been taken prisoner by a—
ooof
!”

This time Hawke didn’t try to silence her with his hand. Instead he grabbed her about the waist and tossed her on her back on the hackney’s seat, pinning her there with his knees on either side of her legs and her wrists held fast in his hands. Because of the hackney’s small size, it wasn’t gracefully done, and their arms and legs were tangled together with awkward intimacy.

“What are you
doing
?” she sputtered. She couldn’t push away with her hands trapped, and she couldn’t kick with him holding her skirts tight around her legs. He was not only a great deal larger than her but a great deal stronger, too, and the harder she struggled, the more she was forced to admit it.