The Duchess Diaries: The Bridal Pleasures Series Read online

  He went straight to the couch and knelt at her feet. “What is all this frenzy about?”

  “A man…There was a man at the window watching me.”

  “Is he gone?” he asked, already rising, the thought apparently so infuriating that his first impulse was to fight.

  “Yes. I gave a cry when I saw him.”

  “A cry?” Miss Peppertree said. “It was more like a banshee’s wail. It went through the walls of every house on the street and may even have reached the corridors of Whitehall.”

  “What did he look like?” Gideon said.

  Charlotte closed her eyes briefly. “Horrible, vile, nasty, leering.”

  “I meant the details of his face, Charlotte.”

  “It was pressed to the window, Gideon.”

  “Try to describe him. What color was his hair?”

  “He was wearing a cap.”

  “What kind of cap?”

  “I don’t know. Dark. Woolen.”

  “And his eyes?”

  “He had two.”

  There was a commotion at the door, and Sir Daniel came in, bowing hastily to Gideon. “What did she say?”

  “There was a horrible, vile, nasty, and leering man in a dark woolen cap watching her through the window. Other than that, she has not been very helpful.”

  “Oh, Gideon. I’m sorry. It gave me quite a start.”

  He rose and sat down beside her on the couch, Miss Peppertree compressing her lips in disapproval. “It’s all right, Charlotte. I am here.”

  He pulled her into his arms. It was a breach of protocol, and she didn’t care.

  “Gideon,” she said against the warm support of his shoulder. “I thought it was you again. I went straight up to the window and pushed back the curtains like a ninnyhammer. And there you weren’t, and he was. I don’t know how long he’d been watching me.”

  “What had you been doing?” he asked quietly.

  “I was going to put out the lamp.”

  “Did he say anything?” Sir Daniel inquired, moving to the window and testing its integrity.

  “He might have said, ‘Hell’s bloody bells,’ but it was hard to hear.” She frowned. “He was tapping at the window, I think, to get my attention.”

  “And then?” Sir Daniel asked.

  “I lost my wits.”

  Gideon glanced up at Sir Daniel.

  “I’m glad you’re here, Gideon.” She lifted her face from his shoulder. “I feel better now. I shouldn’t have screamed. I should have remained calm and sneaked away to get help. But he scared me.”

  “There was nothing unusual about him, Miss Boscastle?”

  “Nothing. Except—”

  “Yes?”

  She shook her head. “I only got a glimpse of him.”

  Sir Daniel glanced up from his notebook. “Young or old?”

  “Oh. Young, I think.”

  “Tall or short?”

  Charlotte swallowed. “Tall. But he could have been standing on a brick in the flower bed. The gardener will be furious.”

  “Think again. Take your time. What did he look like?”

  She covered her face with her hands. “Horrible, vile, nasty, leering.”

  Gideon nodded patiently, pulling the cushion from her lap. She pulled it right back. “I think we’ve covered that. But as to his features—”

  “Snarling.”

  “Snarling? Did he have big teeth? No teeth? Yellow ones?”

  “I didn’t think to examine his teeth, Gideon. He took me off guard, as you did last night, and I wouldn’t have gone to look if I’d known it wasn’t you.”

  “But I wasn’t snarling at you.”

  “That’s true. And you didn’t show your teeth, either. Now that I think about it, he wasn’t snarling.”

  “Well, then,” Gideon said in a quiet voice, “what did he show?”

  “Nothing that you seem to be implying.”

  “I know this is a provocative question,” Sir Daniel said, “but it is important: Were you undressing in here, by any chance?”

  “This is the drawing room, Sir Daniel.”

  Gideon smiled.

  Charlotte felt her cheeks flush. “I don’t undress in the drawing room, sir. I review accounts. I read and I write.”

  Sir Daniel shook his head in frustration. “My assistant is outside interviewing people who may have been passing by when this happened. If you think of anything that might be helpful, please send for me.”

  “What if he’s dangerous?” Charlotte wondered aloud. “We had a girl kidnapped from here last year, as you well know. It was a terrifying experience.”

  “I can testify to that,” Miss Peppertree said with a shiver. “The men who enter this house nowadays are ones who have been willfully admitted.” She looked pointedly at Gideon. “Perhaps we should place a footman on guard here with a pistol.”

  Charlotte paled at the suggestion. “We cannot chance an accidental shooting with so many girls in the house.”

  Gideon rose, his brow furrowed. “The fellows of my fencing salon often volunteer to stand guard at the charity school. We should alert the watchman and have a nightly patrol going until this peeper is found.”

  “Peeper?” Charlotte said, aghast. “Why would anyone peep at me?”

  Miss Peppertree pursed her lips. “I should think the answer to that is obvious. You have drawn some attention to yourself in the last few days.”

  “He could as well have been looking at you,” Charlotte said indignantly.

  “I doubt that,” Miss Peppertree retorted, and Charlotte heard Gideon mutter something under his breath that sounded like, “So do I.”

  “You could stay with one of your cousins,” Gideon said, falling silent as he lifted the curtain and stared.

  “What is it?” Charlotte asked, her voice rising. “Is he back?”

  “No. It’s only Sir Daniel’s man. Perhaps I should go out to talk to him.”

  Charlotte rose. Now that the initial shock of seeing that face had begun to wear off, she was starting to put her thoughts together. “He might have been anyone passing by,” she conceded. “It’s just that…”

  Gideon closed the curtains. “We could move the cabinet here for a temporary measure. What were you saying, Charlotte?”

  “The look on his face—I sensed a familiarity.”

  He turned sharply. “Are you sure it wasn’t the man from your past?”

  “Certainly not.”

  “What man?” Miss Peppertree asked. “Do you mean to say there’s another?”

  “I would never have screamed if it were Phillip,” Charlotte insisted.

  “No?” Gideon said. “What would you have done?”

  “I would have waited until the morning to notify my brothers.”

  “And?”

  “And you.”

  He appeared to be unsatisfied with her answer. She decided it was fortunate that Sir Daniel returned to the drawing room before Gideon could work himself into a state.

  “Miss Boscastle, other than a few trampled roses, I can find nothing out there of help in identifying the man.”

  “There was something else,” she said, “but it sounds silly.”

  “Perhaps you’ll think more clearly after a good night’s sleep,” Gideon said.

  “I know it doesn’t make sense,” she said, hugging the cushion in her arms. “But he was looking at me as if he knew me.”

  “We’ll find him, Charlotte. Until then I do not want you alone in this room again.”

  Chapter 23

  The formal courtship between the Duke of Wynfield and Miss Charlotte Boscastle successfully captivated society. They became the couple to invite to one’s party, to read about in the papers, to gawk at and gossip about when they were spotted by the observant eye.

  A wedding between two houses of the nobility did not take place every day. The aristocracy commanded attention. Somewhere around the globe a kingdom toppled. An investment scheme collapsed. A war raged in a remote lan
d.

  One could forget these distressing events for a few hours at an elegant wedding.

  Jane had volunteered to plot out an itinerary that would have worn out the Prussian army. As their appearances grew more demanding, Charlotte and Gideon actually began to think their engagement might be the death of them.

  Between her duties at the academy, the strain of hiring another lead schoolmistress, the wedding preparations and appointments with the dressmaker, and the picking out of linens and monogrammed sheets, there were moments when Charlotte wished Gideon would cancel an event or two so that she could drop into a chair and sleep.

  And one night when his carriage arrived to pick her up for a supper party, she found him slumped against the seat in such a deep slumber that she not only was tempted to let him sleep but to join him for a nap herself. Jane’s presence deterred her.

  “Bear up, both of you,” Jane said. “You cannot enact a courtship looking half-dead.”

  Gideon stirred, his heavy-lidded gaze meeting Charlotte’s across the carriage. All of a sudden she felt wide-awake. “Where are we going again?” he asked, stretching his arms.

  “To the Earl of Stanwood’s supper party,” Jane replied, shaking her head.

  “I hope it doesn’t go on for hours,” he said. “I’ll sleep until noon tomorrow.”

  “No, you won’t,” Jane said. “We are attending an auction for charity bright and early in the morning. And afterward there is an open-air concert and dinner at the Pulteney.”

  In her spare moments Charlotte gave her attention to the academy and to interviewing and reviewing character references for another schoolmistress to take her place.

  The image of the stranger’s face in the window began to fade. She felt embarrassed by the fuss she’d made. It became easier to believe he had been only a happenstance passerby, a pedestrian who had indulged his curiosity, rather than to accept that a stranger meant her harm—a stranger whose eyes had hinted of…well, the only word she could think of was intimacy.

  But that was impossible.

  There was no reason to think they had ever met. Charlotte had been sheltered all of her life. What on earth had given her the impression of a prior association? Unless—no. A man like that could not possibly have found and read her diary. Gideon had been bad enough. The thought of a stranger invading her secret world was too upsetting to consider.

  Charlotte could almost pity the man. If he should disturb the house again, a veritable army of servants would go on the attack. Miss Peppertree had taken to checking the windows herself every night.

  As Gideon so tactfully said to Charlotte the day he escorted her, Miss Peppertree, and two young ladies of the academy to the emporium, “He’s the one who’ll start shrieking if he’s expecting you and sees her face instead.”

  “That is rude.”

  “She doesn’t like me,” he said, examining a silver filigree chest set on display.

  “Nonsense. She doesn’t like men in general.”

  “What about you?”

  “I have to like men, don’t I? I have three brothers and innumerable male cousins.”

  She feigned an interest in an ivory hunting horn displayed in a glass case. “Isn’t this an interesting piece?”

  “Interesting, yes. Necessary, no.” He propped his elbow on the counter. “It seems to me that you, my huntress, have already cornered your quarry.”

  “People are staring, Gideon.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “What about the girls?”

  “They are pretending not to notice the youngbloods who are flirting with them.”

  “Where?” She craned her neck to see around him.

  “The girls are fine. Miss Peppertree is aware of the situation.”

  “She’s aware of you.”

  “Do you like me as much as you did when you wrote about me in your diary?”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “I like you more. Is that what you wanted me to say?”

  “Yes. Now pick out anything your heart desires.”

  The emporium’s owner, Sir Godfrey Maitland, suddenly recognized the duke and approached him with a solicitous smile. “Miss Boscastle. Your Grace. How good to see you without a sword pointing in my direction.”

  Charlotte blinked. “Excuse me?”

  “Didn’t your betrothed tell you? He and I used to practice at the same school. Business is so brisk that I no longer have time for the sport.”

  “What a shame,” Gideon said, knowing full well that Kit had stripped the pompous merchant of his subscription to the salon over a personal matter.

  “Yes, well, I hear you have been active yourself,” Sir Godfrey said with glee. “Congratulations to both of you on your engagement. I hope you will keep the emporium in mind as you plan your nuptials. We carry a silver bridal service, linens, and clocks. Wedgwood china and camphor-wood chests equipped with brass locks.”

  “My fiancée is interested in that hunting horn,” Gideon said.

  Charlotte shot him a look. “No, I am not.”

  “It’s a nice piece,” Sir Godfrey said. “But it is rather heavy for such a delicate hand. Perhaps the lady would be interested in our collection of Welsh love spoons.”

  Gideon smiled. “Darling?”

  “Not today, thank you. I was looking for a fan.”

  “Why?” Gideon asked. “You have more fans than I’ve ever seen in my life.”

  “A lady needs more than one fan if she is to have a complete wardrobe,” Charlotte said.

  “Aren’t they all the same?” Gideon asked blankly.

  Sir Godfrey hastened to enlighten him. “Goodness, Your Grace, they are not.”

  “I am teaching a class at the end of the week on the language of fans,” Charlotte said. “Perhaps you would like to observe, Gideon.”

  He made a face. “I don’t think so.”

  “It is an art,” Sir Godfrey said. “It never hurts to understand what a lady is saying with her fan, if you take my meaning.”

  Gideon looked unconvinced. “An art?”

  “Nothing turns a gentleman’s head like a lady versed in the language of the fan,” Sir Godfrey said.

  “I don’t know about turning a man’s head with her fan,” Gideon said. “But she can certainly hit one on the head with it and make herself understood.”

  Charlotte gave him a strained smile. “That evening was the occasion of an unprecedented emergency.”

  “Plying the fan is a learned skill much like fencing,” Sir Gideon said. “The fan speaks volumes when wielded by the educated female.”

  Gideon subjected Charlotte to a long, considering stare.

  Sir Godfrey moved to another counter and brought out two different fans. “This,” he said, snapping open a black fan, one hand on his hip like a toreador’s, “is for mourning.” He drew it up to his eyes. “I can hide my tears and still express my grief.”

  “And this one,” Charlotte said as she took the fan made of lace with mother-of-pearl sticks, “is a wedding fan.”

  Sir Godfrey waved his fan in agreement. “Do you see the Cupid painted beside the bride and groom, Your Grace?”

  “Hmm. It isn’t a before-the-wedding baby?”

  “I have to have this one,” Charlotte said.

  “It’s indispensable,” Sir Godfrey agreed.

  “It looks exactly like your other fan,” Gideon remarked.

  “I use a different fan every day and every night. Haven’t you noticed?”

  “It isn’t the first thing about a woman that catches my eye.”

  Charlotte and Sir Godfrey glanced at each other, neither of them daring enough to ask Gideon to elaborate.

  “A lady could hardly teach etiquette without an assortment at her disposal,” Sir Godfrey said at length. “There is a secret code that must be learned to move in society.”

  “A code?” Gideon grinned. “Do you expect me to believe that ladies tap their fans at one another to send signals like dru
mbeats?”

  “A lady would not tap unless it was absolutely necessary,” Charlotte said. “Considering Your Grace’s vast experience, I surmise that you have been the subject of many clandestine conversations.”

  He shrugged. “Maybe I have. How would I know?”

  Sir Godfrey glanced at Charlotte. “Shall we give him a demonstration?”

  “Oh, by all means.”

  Sir Godfrey swished open the black fan with a flick of his wrist. “Let us spell the word ‘love,’” he said, and proceeded to lay the fan upon his chest, smiling coyly. “That is L.”

  “O,” Charlotte said, placing her fan in a similar movement to her breast.

  Sir Godfrey lifted the fan to his forehead. “V.”

  “And for E one moves the fan in the left hand to the opposite arm,” Charlotte said. “Then, to indicate that the conversation has ended, the fan is fully opened.”

  Gideon stood between the two suspended fans, not uttering a word until Charlotte broke the silence. “Your Grace,” she whispered. “It’s rude not to make a comment.”

  He shook his head. “Forgive me. I was stunned speechless. To think these secret parleys have been conducted all my adult life, and I hadn’t a clue. I might have been mocked while dancing a minuet and been none the wiser.”

  Charlotte pursed her lips and carefully placed the fan on the counter. “I would like the bridal fan, Sir Godfrey. And I shall need at least six church fans. His Grace and I will be attending services together every Sunday.”

  “We will?” Gideon asked.

  “And a dozen brisé fans decorated with pastoral scenes.”

  Gideon smiled at her. “A dozen? Darling, you have only two hands and I have a hundred ideas on how better to use them.”

  Charlotte smiled at Sir Godfrey. “The other fans are for the academy.”

  “Oh, silly me,” Gideon said.

  Charlotte pretended not to hear him. “Now that I think about it, a dozen isn’t enough. The sticks are often broken during practice. I should have twenty, just in case. Oh, and Lady Sarah—I want an assortment of appropriate fans for a little girl.”

  Sir Godfrey flushed in pleasure. “A wise investment, Miss Boscastle. His Grace is fortunate to have found a lady of your discernment. By the way, I’ve received a new shipment of vellum journals.”