The Very Daring Duchess Part 38

"Of course, Your Grace," trilled Lady Hingham, preening as she basked in his attention and completely ignoring poor Chetwynd. "I understand all the needs that a great lord and hero such as yourself might have."

Great or small, that was too much for Francesca.

"Then you will oblige His Grace by bidding him farewell, my lady, as he requested," she said with far less patience than was perhaps wise. But she didn't care for the way Lady Hingham was behaving with Edward, enough that if the woman never returned to her studio she wouldn't care about that, either.

"I shall see that your purchase is delivered to your home tomorrow morning, my lady, as you requested," she continued, gesturing toward the door to usher them along, "and I thank you and Lord Henry for your custom."

"And I thank you as well, Lady Hingham," said Edward, slipping his arm around Francesca's waist with a proprietary ease, "for granting me the privacy to speak to my dear wife alone."

"Your wife!" Lady Hingham's stunned gasp was echoed by every other person in the room, including Francesca herself. "Your Grace! Surely you do not mean Signora Robin!"

Edward's easy smile vanished, while his arm tightened around Francesca's waist.

"I mean it, my lady, because it is true," he said, and the tone of his voice allowed no discussion or doubt. "Miss Robin and I were wed by my chaplain on board my s.h.i.+p the Centaur, at Naples on the day before Christmas."

"But-but such a foreign lady, Your Grace!" exclaimed Lady Hingham with both horror and fascination. "As your wife, as your d.u.c.h.ess!"

"She is both my wife and my d.u.c.h.ess, Lady Hingham," answered Edward curtly, "and my love besides. But I must ask you to save your congratulations for another day. Her Grace and I are still newly wed, chary of our time with others."

After that there was nothing left for Lady Hingham or the others than to say their good-byes, adding a few perfunctory wishes for happiness and health as they left. There was even less for Francesca to do, either, except to smile in tight-lipped silence, and grimly wonder how much of this fiasco would appear in the next day's scandal sheets.

Last to leave was Mrs. Monk, hesitating at the door. "Will you be needing anything more, Your Grace?"

"Thank you, Mrs. Monk, that will be all," said Francesca stiffly. "Good evening, Mrs. Monk."

She waited until the housekeeper closed the door, watching the k.n.o.b turn and latch shut, before she flew apart from Edward.

"How dare you, Edward?" she cried furiously as she spun to face him, the gold fringe on her gown trembling in sympathy. "Do you know what you have done to me and my chances this afternoon? Santo cialo, I have worried and worked for weeks to make this right, and in ten minutes you sail in here, grand as any admiral, and make a mockery of it all! It isn't fair, Edward, it isn't fair at all!"

"Then was it fair for you to leave me like you did, Francesca?" he demanded, his anger instantly a match for her own. "d.a.m.nation, was it fair that you disappeared into London without leaving me even a note of farewell or explanation?"

"I did it for you, Edward!"

"Oh, aye, for me," he said with withering scorn. "Entirely for me, and how grateful I am, too."

"But I only did what we'd agreed, Edward!" she pleaded. "If we couldn't please one another, we agreed we would separate, and I knew from the beginning I could never be a proper wife for you. You heard Lady Hingham. I'm so foreign. I would have been a dreadful handicap to you in the navy, but now-now with you raised to a duke, I would be worse than a bucket of stones around your neck!"

"So I was to be the only one who suffered?" he demanded. "You would have been blamelessly cheerful otherwise?"

She shook her head, hugging her arms around her body. "I would have been a wretched wife to you, Edward, and a miserable one as well. I need to paint and draw and see, and not be left behind to make a mess of managing a great house and staff while you went about doing grand, lordly things!"

"But pandering to the ignorance of Lady Hingham," he said, sweeping his hand through the air as if to sweep aside her objections with it, "cajoling a foolish woman like that into paying ten times what a fake pot is worth-that is better, more n.o.ble?"

"I must earn my living!" she cried unhappily. "I do that only so I can paint for myself! I know this sounds very selfish of me, but I cannot squander the talent that G.o.d gave me, and try to be something I'm not."

"Yet you decided it was better to vanish from my life than discuss it with me first, didn't you?" He shook his head with furious disbelief. "h.e.l.l, Francesca! Couldn't you comprehend that I might be willing to make compromises for your sake? Or are you the one so determined not to change?"

"I didn't say that!" But saints in heaven, he was right. She'd been telling herself she'd been bravely protecting his happiness, when instead she'd been too cowardly to risk changing for the sake of love.

He was right.

"You didn't have to tell me anything, did you?" He glanced around the room, taking in the fresh paint and other improvements she'd made. "Though I must say you've certainly landed on your feet fast enough, Francesca. Or was it upon your back with your legs apart, to earn a place such as this?"

"Don't be hateful, Edward, per favore." Francesca flushed with shame. "I am living here through the kindness of my uncle, my father's only brother."

"But with a different name," he said. "Which is why you'd managed to hide yourself away so completely from me."

"It was a conceit of my father's to change his name from Peac.o.c.k to Robin when he left England for Naples," she explained, wis.h.i.+ng now her father had been content to leave his name alone. "You will find my Uncle Peac.o.c.k is an eminently respectable older gentleman."

"Oh, they always are, aren't they?" he said, his sarcasm cutting and bitter. "Older and respectable gentlemen are the ones with the most kindness and the deepest pockets. Did your good friend Lady Hamilton advise you about that as well?"

"Stop it, Edward, stop now." She raised her chin defiantly, though inside she was crumbling to pieces. Her first anger had been protective, defensive, but its fire had quickly burned itself out, leaving nothing but ashes. How could she stay angry when he was the one making more sense? "You don't have to believe me. I never said you did."

"No, I don't," he said. "The real challenge with you, Francesca, is deciding how much of what you say is true, let alone worth believing."

"You knew how I was when you married me," she said, her voice wobbling. What would he say if she told him she still loved him? Would he believe her, or doubt that as well? "But I have always tried to be truthful with you, caro mio. Truly."

His expression didn't change. "It would seem that you've tried harder some days than others."

"I never stopped trying, Edward," she said, more wistfully than she realized. "Only some days I do better at it than others. On the Antelope, we promised to be honest, didn't we?"

"I have always been honest with you," he countered. "I still am, even now that our circ.u.mstances have changed."

"Oh, yes." She barely stopped herself from feeling for the chain around her neck and his ring tucked inside her s.h.i.+ft. "You have become a grand gentleman, a duke, far above the rest of us, while I am what I always was."

"That's not what I meant," he said, so sharply that she realized that this time she'd wounded him. He turned away, restlessly running his finger around the rim of the vase that Lady Hingham had bought. "If I have gotten you with child-"

"No child." Her voice was brittle, unable to disguise her longing and regret. "No heir to your precious dukedom."

He wheeled around to face her, and the almost desperate hope she saw in his eyes stunned her. "It's very soon to be so sure, isn't it?"

"I am sure. I was last week." She gulped, and looked down. She would not cry. "If that was all you came here to learn-"

"Not by half," he said, and took a deep breath. "I came to see if you were happy."

She turned half away from him, not sure what he wished to hear. "Are you?"

"No," he said instantly, and the burden of that single word rang with the truth. "Not for a moment since you left, Francesca."

"Oh, caro," she murmured, overwhelmed. "I am sorry."

He shrugged, and shook his head, trying to prove that none of it mattered when of course it did. "And you? Are you happy, la.s.s?"

Now was the time for her to be as honest as she wanted to be: to apologize for everything she'd done, to admit that she'd been wrong and a coward as well, to tell him how much she'd missed him, how much she'd longed to be with him, how she loved him more, not less, than when she'd left.

Now. And of course, perversely, when so very much was at stake, she couldn't do it.

"I have been very busy," she said instead, her words-the wrong words-tumbling over one another. "There has been so much to do, to make this s.p.a.ce my own! Unpacking and arranging and displaying everything, writing letters and announcements, ah, you cannot know, you cannot know!"