Page 72 of His Duchess of Scandal
“Heavens!” Phoebe echoed.
Levi smirked as he picked up his wine glass. “One particular day, Charles wanted to see a star that was due to be visible. Heclaimedit was for a project for a science class, but to this day, I believe he just wanted to be a hopeless romantic and stargaze. Perhaps even imagine himself stargazing with someone.”
“Levi,” Charles said tersely. “Get to the point. I am sure you will lose our listeners.”
“Not at all,” Hermia assured. “Do continue.”
“Well, Charles had the bright idea of smashing the lock on the observatory door with a whiskey bottle he smuggled there. However, he did not consider that the bottle would break instead of the lock, and he would end up with quite a spill. We were caught, of course, and we made a run for it. Only, Charlesdoubled back and snuck in through a window that had a loose latch. And—well, it was a bit of a disaster, but we got out there, and we saw that star, and one of us had the foresight not to smashtheirliquor bottle, so we drank and looked out.”
“Do you remember what I told you up there?” Charles murmured, sipping on his wine.
“Yes,” Levi answered. “You told me that you did not want the looming pressure of the dukedom, that you did not know how to fix what had been broken. You told me that you wanted to watch the stars with your future Duchess. That you wanted to at least have a duchess who might like watching stars with you.”
Silence settled over the dining hall for a minute, before Phoebe exclaimed, “Oh,Papa! That is so romantic!”
“Did you?” Hermia asked quietly.
A longer silence ensued.
“Did I what?” Charles looked at her, finding a devastatingly hopeful look on her face.
“Watch stars with a duchess.”
He didn’t know if it was his imagination or if her voice had grown breathless. Her eyes were framed by her long, dark lashes, and he could only stare at her, forgetting stars ever existed.
“No,” he breathed. “No, I did not.”
“I see,” Hermia uttered.
“Do you like stars, Hermia?” Phoebe asked loudly, not noticing the tension between them.
“I do,” Hermia answered.
It felt like a confirmation of something Charles hadn’t realized he had been waiting for ever since that night at the observatory.
The fact that he had found the duchess he had been aching for. The fact that Levi had been right; he had been a hopeless romantic before Society, duty, and his mother had forced it out of him.
“Huh,” Levi murmured. “I never realized that. I suppose it is true; Mercy was never one for such soft things.”
“Mercy?” Hermia frowned.
“Oh, pardon me,” Levi said. “The late Duchess of Branmere.”
“My late wife,” Charles further explained. “Lady Mercy Farriday.”
He saw surprise flicker across Hermia’s face, as if she hadn’t expected him to ever mention her.
Phoebe pointedly looked down at her plate. “She was my mama,” she said. “What was she like, Papa?” Her voice wobbled.
Charles blanched, not expecting the mention of his late wife or Phoebe’s questions. How long had she had them for, and why did Hermia look more sympathetic than anything else?
“I…” He fumbled for words.
I did not really know her. She did not let me, and I simply did my duty to see our marriage through.
“She was lovely,” Levi spoke up. “Very elegant and graceful. She did not speak a great deal, except to give orders, and—and she was… yes, she was lovely. She was a good duchess, if you don’t mind my saying, Your Grace.”
Charles tensed up, trying not to think of his late wife’s face, her cold ways, her sense of duty that had almost rivaled his. And then the cold finality of her death, leaving him unmoored, leaving Phoebe without a mother, and him knowing that he would need to find another wife to produce an heir.
