She was wringing her hands as she stood in front of him, a shawl wrapped around her shoulders against the cool winter air. “I know you do not really want to marry me,” she said flatly, not making eye contact with him. “I know that you are just doing it to avoid scandal. But I will run away! I will spare you from this awful fate so that you can be happy with someone else.”
She looked so desperately unhappy, and he wanted to take her in his arms and kiss her, then and there in the garden, next to the beautiful winter-flowering cherry tree whose branches were sheltering them from the wind. A petal fell from a branch overhead and landed in her hair. He could not resist reaching for it and removing it.
“It is not an awful fate to be married to you. Who has put such thoughts into your head?”
“But it is true, is it not, that you would not have agreed to marry me if we had not been caught?”
“Charlotte-”
But she would not let him speak. The words tumbled from her mouth like a waterfall, bubbling froth from a well of pain. “You would not have agreed if there wasn’t such a risk of a scandal, I know it, but you do not need to worry about that! If I run away and become a governess, it will all be forgotten soon, and you can marry a proper young lady, someone who is fit to be a duchess, rather than being stuck with an oddity like me.”
“A governess?” He almost laughed at the nonsense she was spouting. “Do you want to be a governess?”
“No, but I do not want to make you miserable, and I don’t want to be sitting at Seton Hall on my own, slighted by all of society…” Her voice trailed off, and a tear escaped and slithered down her cheek.
“You will not be alone. I will be with you, and society will come to us on our own terms.” He gazed at her and thought how beautiful she was, standing there in the garden, her cheeks pink from the cold and her eyes bright with emotion. He desperately wanted to kiss her, but he sensed that what she needed now were words, reassurance and certainty.
He took her hands and looked deep into her eyes. “Charlotte, I want to be with you for your own sake. Why do you think that I could not resist kissing you? I am not some worthless cad who seduces young ladies in the shrubbery. Surely you must know that? I had fallen in love with you, almost as soon as I met you and I couldn’t control my feelings. I was wrong to take such a liberty with you, but I do not regret it.”
He heard her let out a gasp, and he moved closer to her, pulling her towards him. “I do not regret it because it means we will be married all the sooner. I would have had to wait weeks to propose to you otherwise. And I would have waited, of course, but I am glad I did not have to.”
“You – you are in earnest, Your Grace?” she whispered.
“I am in earnest, Charlotte, and I think you may call me Luke now, do you not agree?”
She smiled a little tentatively. “But what about the gossip, the scandal? Would it not be better if I just disappeared?”
“If you disappeared, my dear Charlotte, my poor heart would break in two, and I think that you would not want to be responsible for breaking a duke’s heart.” He paused for a moment, thinking that he was going to have to kiss her sooner or later, or something inside him might explode. And they were engaged to be married, after all. Just one kiss would not be too scandalous.
“I can scarcely believe it, ” she said softly.
He moved closer and was about to press his lips against hers when a thought popped into his mind. He stepped backward and saw a look of confusion crossing her face as she struggled to understand why he had moved away from her. He dropped to one knee, not caring about the moisture from the damp grass seeping through his trouser leg.
He looked up at her, hoping that she could see the earnestness in his eyes. “I did not get the chance to do this properly. My dear Miss Hervey, will you do me the very great honor of becoming my wife? My duchess?” He swallowed, a ball of emotion forming in his throat. Never before had he been so candid with his feelings to anyone. “Charlotte, will you marry me?”
A tiny cry of happiness escaped from her then, as she finally seemed to believe him. “Yes, Luke, I will.”
He jumped to his feet and kissed her, then pulled back. “Two days, Charlotte, that is all. Two days until we will be married, and we can escape from these awful people who wish us ill. Two days until we can be truly happy together.”
* * *
The rest of the day flew by as Charlotte prepared for her marriage with her sister’s help, and before she knew it, it was the morning of the wedding.
Charlotte was in her chamber with Martha. Sally had just left them, having spent several hours helping Charlotte with her dress and her hair. And now, at last, the sisters were alone. All they had to do now was to wait for the carriage, which would take them to the chapel, where Charlotte would say her vows and become Luke’s wife.
“I am glad to see that you finally look excited for your wedding,” Martha said with a smile, sitting down on the bed and looking at Charlotte. “You look beautiful. The Duke will be enchanted when he sees you.”
Charlotte returned her sister’s smile and thought back to the moment in the garden when the Duke – or Luke, as she should think of him now – had declared his feelings for her. “I had no idea of it, really, that he had fallen in love with me right at the beginning.”
“And why should he not fall in love with you? I am not surprised at all,” Martha declared.
Charlotte looked at her sister shrewdly. “You know why, as much as I do, Martha.”
“But the Duke has told you that he does not care a fig what the ton thinks,” Martha replied. “And neither should you. Our mother did not care, either. And that is the best way to be. Who cares what they think, with all their stupid rules and judgment. The most important thing is to be happy!”
Charlotte nodded. It had taken her a while to realize her own feelings for the Duke. Things had been so confusing and difficult for her since they had met in the woodland on that fateful day when the dog had stolen her letter. And she had been so consumed by worries, obsessed with scandal and gossip and the knowledge that people were thinking poorly of herself and the Duke, that she had not allowed herself enough time to think about how she really felt about him. But now, her heart had softened to him to such an extent that she would almost allow herself to call it love.
“He stood up for us against our stepmother,” Charlotte mused. “I should have realized, then, that it meant something to him – something real. But I was so distracted by how awfully she was behaving and so embarrassed at the things she said in front of him about our mother that I did not think, did not notice…”
