Page 35 of Yours Truly, the Duke
INVOCATION TO A WREATH OF TRANSATLANTIC FLOWERS
—MRS. BALMANNO
Of him who, wild as thy own wreath,
Has all its artlessness?
The stag, the steed, the mountain wind,
The birds that sportive skim,
All joyful things, may to thy mind,
Present the thought of him!
Seldom was there a reason for anyone to make a hasty decision.
Waking in the duke’s house this morning was proof impulsive behavior should be avoided as carefully as the thorn on a rose. Fredericka knew, as in all good judgments, there should be a fair amount of planning and preparation first. She had done neither.
She made her way slowly along the upper corridor toward the stairs holding a candle in one hand and lifting the hem of her apricot-colored dress off the floor with the other. It was daybreak and the house was still relatively dark with no lamps burning and most of the draperies in the house closed.
Once she made it belowstairs, she would have to search for the location of the book room, which sheassumed would be toward the back of the house. She didn’t expect the duke would be up for quite some time, but she’d become too restless to remain in the bedchamber any longer.
Last night, after getting Miss Litchfield and Elise settled in one room and Charles and Bella in another, Fredericka had closed her eyes to rest, but it hadn’t done much good. What little sleep she’d managed was fitful. All the worry had given her a headache behind her eyes. Not even the poetry she read had settled her.
At first light, she decided to dress and go down to wait for the duke to join her. Only Heaven knew what time that would be. Clearly he wasn’t ready for the life of a settled married man, but maybe she could persuade him to pretend to be until guardianship of the children was settled.
Her stomach knotted as she remembered him twirling the beautiful young lady under his arm. She felt as if a sledgehammer had been slammed against her chest and knocked all breath from her lungs. Yet, in that moment, she’d realized coming to London was a mistake. Jane and the scandal sheets had warned her the duke’s high society evenings hadn’t changed at all since their marriage. He was carrying on with his usual life as he’d told her he wanted to do.
When she’d arrived, she’d seen carriages lining the street and the duke’s house lit as if it were the Grand Ballroom on opening night of the Season. There were sounds of music and the roar of chatter as she’d walked up the stone pathway to the front door. As she was still immersed in all her worry and frustration and weary from the grumblings of the children about the journey, it hadn’t actually sunk in that Wyatt was hosting a party. But what could she have done if it had?
She was already there.
It hadn’t been difficult to talk her way past the butler and gain entrance once Fredericka told the man who she was. Perhaps she could have avoided the calamity that happened after if she’d waited in the vestibule as he’d asked. But filled with an alarming amount of worry, she followed the man instead. When she looked into the drawing room where the lovely music was coming from, she’d seemed to freeze in place.
Of all the things she could have imagined happening when meeting the duke again, seeing him dancing with a lady under flickering candlelight with a roomful of people watching wouldn’t have been one of them. Neither would the prick of jealousy that spiked through her as quick, forceful, and unexpected as a lightning strike.
Fredericka didn’t know why seeing him living his carefree life in the flesh, doing what she already knew he was doing, made her feel as she had so many times when growing up. As if she was in the way and didn’t belong. At the time, all she could think was that everything the gossip pages had said about Wyatt’s social life was true.
And maybe she did have a gray beard after all!
Though she guessed there had been a small part of her that wanted to believe all the things she’d read about him were false and that marrying her had caused a change in him. Now she knew the fallacy of that.
Morning had arrived; reality had set in. Fredericka was more settled and more prepared to do whatever was needed to clear up the jitters about her husband and outwit Jane. Upon reflection, she was glad she hadn’t talked in detail with Wyatt after she arrived. At first, she had been ready to return to Paddleton without so much as a good-bye. Sometime during the long night she’d returned to her sensible self and remembered why she came to London in the first place.
However, her renewed resolve didn’t mean she didn’t dread the upcoming conversation with the duke.
Fredericka made it to the bottom of the stairs and, deliberately avoiding a glance toward the drawing room, started down the corridor peeping through all the doorways on both sides until she found the book room at the back of the house. With it too dark to see anything other than three tall walls of bookshelves, she walked straight to the desk and placed the candle down so she could open the draperies.
“It’s about time you got here.”
Startled, Fredericka almost knocked over the candle. She whirled to see Wyatt sitting in a high-back armchair in front of the fireplace, where a bed of embers glowed like a setting sun.
“Jumping gooseberries, Wyatt. You scared me silly. I didn’t see you sitting over there.”
In response, he rose from the chair and started toward her. An uncommon shiver of excitement wove through her. Heavens! He was a fine-looking man. A heavy swell of anticipation choked her throat. Her heart started pounding like a chunk of iron against an anvil and seemed to reverberate all through her body.
It took a moment to realize why he looked so appealing. He wasn’t properly dressed. He wore no coat, waistcoat, or neckcloth and collar. Only a white shirt tucked into the waistband of well-fitted trousers. His hair looked as if his hands, or someone’s, had run through it several times, leaving it quite tousled. That, coupled with a night’s growth of stubbly beard, left him with a decidedly rakish appearance.
