Free When You Wish Upon a Duke by Isabella Bradford

onto his head. “Nor will I test her. She’s a dragon, your aunt.”
    Hastily she pulled the neckline of her gown back in place over her breasts and shoved the pins back into her hair. She glanced at her reflection in the seamstress’s looking glass. Oh, my, she did look the wanton, her lips red and full from kissing, her hair tousled, and her eyes—she knew not how to describe it, but her eyes were different . No matter what she did to tidy herself, her aunt would not be pleased, and unhappily she turned back to Marchbourne.
    His clothes were once again perfectly composed. His handsome dark face was not. She’d never seen a man simultaneously look so angry, yet so disappointed.
    “Charlotte?” her aunt called again. “Charlotte, the door, if you please.”
    “One moment, Aunt Sophronia.”
    She darted over to Marchbourne. “Trust me in this, too, I beg of you,” she said softly. “Don’t fear that I’ll forget you, Marchbourne. I never could, and I never will.”
    She touched her fingers to her lips and then to his as a pledge. He seized her wrist and kissed her open palm, his gaze not leaving hers.
    Her head spun. Could there be anything more perfect than this gentleman?
    “Charlotte!”
    She pulled her hand free and hurried to unlatch the door. Her aunt swept inside, furiously studying Charlotte, then the duke, then Charlotte again.
    The duke nodded to the countess as if nothing were amiss. Perhaps to him there wasn’t.
    “I’ll leave you ladies to conclude your business,” he said. “It has been my pleasure to share your company. Good day, Lady Sanborn, Lady Charlotte.”
    Charlotte curtseyed beside her aunt, watching sadly as the duke left. She considered what might happen if she ran after him in the hall. She’d seen plenty of girls in their old village running after sailor-sweethearts who were bound for their boats and ships, and begging (and receiving) one last kiss had always struck her as tragically romantic. But she wasn’t a village girl and he was a duke, not a sailor, and besides, he was only bound for his carriage, not for sea, and her aunt—ah, Charlotte was quite sure her aunt would not approve.
    Certainly her aunt was close to expiring now as she shut the door to the room against the seamstresses who still hovered waiting outside.
    “You shame me, Charlotte,” she said in a furious whisper so that the others would not overhear her. “You shame our entire family, and your dear father’s memory as well. But most of all, you shame His Grace and yourself.”
    “But he came to me, Aunt Sophronia,” Charlotte said, clinging to whatever scraps of a defense she could muster in the circumstances. “He wished to see me, that wasall, and to ascertain for himself that I’d not been hurt when we fell from the tree.”
    “No tales, Charlotte, no lies.” Her aunt’s face was so flushed with anger that the red showed through her face powder in ruddy blotches. “Not when the guilt’s written so plainly over your face.”
    Her cheeks hot, Charlotte self-consciously smoothed her palms again and again across her untidy hair. “Forgive me, Aunt Sophronia, but where is the harm in conversation with the gentleman I am to wed?”
    “A conversation ,” repeated her aunt with disgust. “I’d vow far more than words alone were exchanged between you two. Look at you!”
    She reached out to pull Charlotte’s bodice square across her chest, tucking the frill of her shift back inside.
    “How long do you think it will take before word of your conversation with the duke flies from this shop?” she demanded. “Before the sun sets, you two will be the talk of every supper table, high and low, in London, and by midnight your name will be common in every rum shop and alehouse as well. Surely the duke must have been aware of that when he shut this door. Surely he must have been aware of the consequences, even if you are so woefully, foolishly ignorant.”
    She groaned and shook her head, and then took