“Because it’s meant for a woman,” Rafe said, cannily. “A courting gift?”
“I don’t know that I want it to be,” Anthony said. And at the sum it had cost and the lengths to which he’d gone to track it down, it would haveto be. He ought toknowby now; he’d been in Lady Cecily’s company often enough. And while he felt a certain affection for her, a friendship of sorts, it wasn’tlove.
And he was beginning to believe it never would be.
It was a problem that would not solve itself now. He would have to give it due consideration at some point, he knew, before the plant withered and died of neglect, for he hadn’t the faintest idea of how he was meant to care for it. But at this moment, he had a glass of obscenely fine liquor in his hand and the company of a number of gentlemen who might, however improbable a thing it was, offer him friendship, and it would be foolish to let either go to waste.
∞∞∞
The staccato clip of shoes upon the floor was warning enough to Charity that some manner of mischief was afoot. Or about to be, at any rate, given the speed at which they hastened toward the front of the house from somewhere within its depths.
Ah, well. She’d considered it something of a miracle that she had made so many visits to the house without the duchess making another nasty scene. It looked as though her luck had finally run out. She settled back in her seat upon the sofa within the drawing room, turning the page of the book she’d filched from the library.
The duchess did not disappoint her expectations. She flew into the drawing room as if she had ridden in upon the very fires of hell, her blue eyes blazing with antipathy. Some incandescent sound of wrath curdled in her throat just before her mouth fell open, and—
“I wouldn’t, were I you,” Charity advised sweetly, turning another page.
The duchess drew in a breath. “How dare you!” she snarled in response.
“Easily,” Charity said, striving for a bored inflection. “And with great pleasure. If you have come only to cast your venom at me, Your Grace, praydon’t bother with the effort. I have heard it all before, and from better people.”
The duchess reeled back a step from this new offense. “How—”
“DareI,” Charity interjected, with a simpering coo. “We have just had this conversation, Your Grace. You cannot hurt me. You do not frighten me. And I don’t, as a general rule, choose to make war upon sad old women.” Though by the tone of her voice, she let the suggestion linger in the air between them that did the duchess tempt her to make an exception, she most certainly intended to win.
The duchess quivered with rage, her hands fisting at her sides. “You—you grasping little shrew,” she seethed.
Charity smothered a yawn with her fingers. “Again, Your Grace, you have said nothing which is unknown to me.”
“So you admit to it!” The duchess notched her chin higher, her lip curled in a sneer. “You come into my home as if you own it—”
“I do,” Charity said calmly, and closed the book in her hand, setting it aside. “Need I remind you, Your Grace, a husband and wife are one person under the law? Everything your son owns, so do I. So yes, I own your home. I own the food upon your table and the clothes upon your back.”
The slightest flicker of self-doubt drifted through the duchess’ eyes, and her jaw clenched as she swallowed hard. Perhaps, Charity thought, she had begun to consider the possibility that she had made an error in forcing this confrontation.
Charity bit back a sigh. “I do not say this to hurt you,” she said. “I say it because it is true. For however long we are married—”
The duchess summoned forth a scoff, though it sounded considerably weaker than perhaps she had hoped. “No doubt you have played your part well enough to ensure that there will be no escape from you,” she said. “A woman of your stamp knows well enough how to turn the mind of a man too naïve to know better.”
Oh, now that wasenough. It was one thing for the duchess to disparage her, when she could not have given less of a care for the woman’s opinion, but it was another thing entirely for her to disparage Anthony.
Charity rose from her seat and drew herself up to her full height, which was still some inches from the duchess’ own statuesque figure, but she fancied the force of her ire made her appear taller to the woman who hadshrunk back slightly from her. “Do you know,” she said, in the sibilant, venomous hiss of the snake the duchess imagined her to be, “my own mother was a flighty, unfaithful bitch of a woman. She abandoned three daughters across two families, ruined lives with her lies, and left nothing but misery and desolation in her wake. My father was an evil bastard, who, if there is indeed a just and merciful God in Heaven, is presently burning in the deepest bowls of Hell. The day he died, I laughed for pure joy, and I gave him the pauper’s burial he deserved with a headstone only to mark his resting place should I have a sudden fancy to spit up his rotting corpse. And still I would take either of them—both of them—rather than suffering a mother like you.”
Those icy blue eyes widened, and the duchess’ cheeks flushed a vibrant red. “Do not presume to cast judgment upon me,” she said between the clench of her teeth. “You couldn’t possibly understand.”
“I understand that you have but one son left to you, Your Grace,” Charity returned. “A goodmother would treasure all of her children. But that isn’t you, is it? There is no feeling left within you. Do you even love your son, Your Grace? Did youever?”
Crack.
The slap surprised both of them, at least for a moment. But the duchess sucked in a breath and shook herself free of her shock.
“Of course I love my son!” she hissed. “How dare you suggest otherwise? My only desire as a mother is to save him fromyou!”
Well, that was something, at least, Charity thought as she worked her jaw gingerly. Her cheek stung something dreadful. Probably the duchess had swung hard enough to leave quite a mark. Her left ear had a bit of a ring to it, but that would soon fade. Still, she had managed to wring an admission from the duchess that had seemed promising. She only hoped it would prove to be worth her trouble.
As the ringing in her ear began to subside, the furious pound of boots sounded in the foyer. The duchess’ shoulders stiffened, her face going pale.
And Anthony stormed into the room, no doubt drawn down at last by the noise they had made. His dark gaze settled upon his mother, frigid and forbidding, as he snarledexpectantly, “What thehellhas happened here?”
