Page 1 of Married to the Icy Duke
CHAPTER 1
Sweat beaded on Charlotte’s face and prickled on her lower back. She longed to wipe her face with a handkerchief, but was painfully aware that eyes lingered on her. People were watching.
“One month later, and nobody had found anything better to speak of than of me, Sir Peter, and that fountain,” Charlotte muttered darkly.
Beside her, Thalia sighed and slid an arm through Charlotte’s. “I’m sure nobody is thinking of it now, Charlotte.”
Charlotte said nothing. She loved her new sister-in-law very much, but sometimes Thalia could be a little oblivious to the way Society worked. She supposed that love could do that to a person. Shewasglad that her brother had found love, and shedidlove Thalia herself, but frankly, it was Thalia’s appearance in their lives that made Charlotte understand that she had to marry. Ladies did have to marry, didn’t they?
“They haven’t forgotten,” Charlotte mumbled, letting her sister-in-law tow her through the crush. “You must have noticed that I hardly receive any invitations now. At Almack’s, my dance card was almost empty. Men avoid me like the plague.”
Thalia turned abruptly, seizing Charlotte by the shoulders. She stared up into her sister-in-law’s face, and Charlotte glimpsed some of that fierceness which her brother, Gabriel, so adored.
“Then ignore them,” Thalia said firmly. “Ignore those silly men who cannot seeyoufor who you are. Ignore jealous women who seek to pull you down. You don’t have to marry. You can live with Gabriel and me. We love having you with us; you arefamily.”
Charlotte gave a sad smile. “You’re kind, Thalia. But before,Iwas the one running Gabriel’s household. Now, I … I have no place.”
Thalia frowned. “Youdohave a place. Your place is with us, and I won’t have it otherwise. Marry out oflove, Charlotte.”
Charlotte brushed her sister-in-law’s hands away. “Love is a waste of time. Love makes people do terrible things, and nobody knows that better than Gabriel and I.”
Thalia flinched at Charlotte’s words, biting her lower lip. She stared up at her for a moment, frowning.
“I wish you didn’t think like that,” she said at last. “You deserve to be happy, Charlotte.”
Charlotte swallowed hard, turning away. “I will be happy. But I will not put my happiness above everybody and everything else. That’s what my mother did, and I will never,everbe like her.”
Thalia said nothing. Charlotte knew that her sister-in-law knew the story, much like the rest of Society. At the moment, the tale of the infamous former Duchess of Stonewell was not far from anyone's minds.
Charlotte walked away, pushing through the crowds. She was relieved when Thalia did not follow her. Thalia and Gabriel had a life of their own to consider. They were the illustrious Duke and Duchess of Stonewell, ready to clear the Harding family’s name and take their rightful place in Society.
Charlotte would not be the one who held them back.
She knew Gabriel was somewhere in the crowd, bunched together with his friends. This party, after all, was thrown by the Ton’s Devils. Once a year, the Devils hosted a huge ball, often themed in some way, and invited all of the ton.
This included men like her brother, who were part of the Ton’s Orions.
Privately, Charlotte thought that all the business about clubs and such was silly. Did it matter whether one gathered in a vast old library with the Devils, or in a glass-domed astronomy conservatory with the Orions? No, it did not matter. There were a few women members, which shocked more austere and old-fashioned clubs such as White’s and Barrett’s, but Charlottecouldn’t help but feel that women who joined were every bit as silly as the men.
Either way, Gabriel would be entirely uncomfortable all evening and would stick with the other Orions. Charlotte planned to avoid them.
Apparently, the rest of the guests planned to avoidher. She caught the eye of the Misses Jenkins, four young sisters aged between seventeen and twenty-one, all out at once and all frankly proving to be a menace to Society. Charlotte was friends with them before the Sir Peter-in-the-fountain incident, but since then, the Jenkins had decidedly avoided her.
They avoided her now. The oldest Miss Jenkins turned away, pretending not to have seen Charlotte at all, and the rest of the girls followed suit. Swallowing hard, Charlotte changed direction, pushing her way through the crowd towards the wall. There might be a quiet spot over there.
“Careful, now,” laughed a gentleman as she pushed by, “Lady Charlotte is about! She might beat us to death with an umbrella or drown us in a fountain!”
He was rewarded with a surge of laughter from his companions, a selection of gawky-looking young men who Charlotte didn’t know. She rounded on the man at once, and the smile dropped off his face like a stone.
“It was a parasol,” she responded smoothly. “And luckily for you, I do not have such an item on me.”
The man blinked, clearly feeling foolish, and that feeling of silliness solidified at once to anger. Curling his lip, he shouldered past her in a most ungentlemanlike way, his friends following suit.
“Wretched little …” he began, but stopped abruptly when a large, heavy hand clapped down on his shoulder. A tall, broad-shouldered man appeared, his back turned to Charlotte so that she could not get a glimpse of his face. The gentleman who had just pushed her, however,couldsee him, and the color drained from his face. His friends disappeared in the blink of an eye, melting into the crowd.
“Lord Tabbish, I am not sure I can countenance a lady being knocked around in my own home,” came a deep, drawling voice.
“M-M-My lord,” Lord Tabbish stammered. “That is, your Grace, I …”
