Page 18 of The Duke's Carriage Window
“Yes, Your Grace?” the woman asked as he rose from the settee.
“Miss Montague has a very lovely figure, does she not?” he asked.
“She…yes, she does.” The woman clearly feared she would give him the wrong answer.
“Then let us be sure that we show her to her best advantage, and not try to hide anything overly much?” he said carefully.
“Yes, yes, of course.” The dressmaker let out a breath of relief. “If you don’t mind such fashions, I can certainly display her… assets in a way that won’t cause any scandal.”
“I leave her in your capable hands.” He resumed his seat and let the dressmaker return to her task.
More than once, Meredith cast him a beseeching glance as Suzannah and the modiste discussed various dresses. Unable to ignore her looks of dread for long, Darius stood and came over to her as she perched shyly on the little pedestal surrounded by the mirrors. The raised pedestal brought her level to his face, which pleased him more than it should because it put her lips in perfect alignment with his own.
He was reminded of the kiss she’d stolen from him last night. A kiss that continued to vex him in the sweetest and yet most wicked way. Did she remember that she’d kissed him? He couldn’t ask, not here, at any rate.
“Darius,” she whispered. “Surely this is all too much?”
“What?” he asked innocently, though he knew exactly what she was talking about.
“I need only a few gowns. Suzannah has already ordered twenty.”
“Did my uncle not buy you gowns each year?” Darius asked.
“He tried,” Meredith replied. “But I didn’t let him. Though I wished I was his natural born child, I was not. I could not in good conscience accept anything that wasn’t absolutely necessary.”
Darius considered her words seriously, realizing then just how his pretty ward saw herself…as an unworthy burden upon others. She was so very wrong on that account and he was going to teach her.
“I must regrettably inform you that as my ward, as long as you are in a duke’s household in London, all of this”—he waved a hand around the dressmaker’s shop—”is absolutely necessary. I fear you must resign yourself to a wardrobe so exquisite that you would sparkle like a diamond at every engagement we attend. Such is the burden you must bear.”
Meredith’s eyes widened, then narrowed as she realized how he had trapped her into accepting the lavish new wardrobe.
“Drat,” she murmured. Darius burst out laughing so hard that it Suzannah looked over to him in shock.
He recovered himself and returned to his seat. Maybe it wasn’t so bad to escort Meredith about town and shower her with gifts. He’d always enjoyed the practice of spoiling his mistresses, but had to remember Meredith was not his mistress.
She was a young lady in need of an excellent match, not to share his bed, no matter how much she tempted him. And Meredith Montague tempted him deeply. With her soulful hazel eyes, her love for Uncle Ben, and her overdeveloped determination to never be a bother to anyone, it made him half-mad to do just about anything for her.
And that, he acknowledged as he paid the dressmaker’s bill, was exactly the problem. Darius had always prided himself on his control over his desires, but Meredith frayed that control like no other woman ever had. He was going to have to be damned careful, or he would risk far more than just his control. He’d risk Meredith’s ruination.
5
If there was one thing Meredith truly loved, it was an English garden at dusk. The Duke of Tiverton’s townhouse gardens were exceptionally beautiful. Rather than a perfectly curated series of hedgerows, he had gravel pathways that meandered in gentle curves around the space between his house and the garden wall that overlooked the townhouse behind them.
There was a wildness to the roses and creeping vines that fringed the back of the house. The garden shed shielded by ivy in the far corner made if feel as if the land had been forgotten under some fairy’s spell. Yet the pots of flowers that sat atop pedestals were filled to the brim with a curated perfection of beautiful blooms that restored a semblance of order to the scene. The blend of colors caught her eyes, and everything attracted bees and butterflies which filled the garden with a teeming sense of life in gentle motion. With the sun setting just behind the horizon of the skyline, the world had turned the sky a lilac color and the clouds were striated with pink light as the final beams of light cut across the heavens.
I could spend my entire life in this garden, she realized with a contented sigh.
Meredith lifted the skirts of her white muslin gown and carefully stepped over a patch of peonies so that she could leave the gravel path and walk on the dew-covered grass. There was a small little heart-shaped hole in the back garden wall that had caught her attention, and she was determined to get a better look at it.
Whoever had built the wall had created a sort of window in a lovely pattern to let someone peer between Darius’s garden and the garden of the house behind his. She couldn’t deny she was a bit curious as she approached the wall. To see over the top, she’d need to stand upon a bench and then perhaps a box or a crate before she would be able to peer over the other side, but with the advantage of the little window, she could see part of the other garden.
When she reached the window within the stone wall, she peeked through, taking in the wild, clearly uncared for garden of the other house. She stared at the garden a moment longer before a movement caught her attention. A woman was rolling in an invalid chair down the path and it seemed she was headed toward where Meredith stood.
The woman was blond-haired and in her middling years. Meredith could tell the woman had once been exquisitely beautiful, but there seemed to be a cloak of illness around her now that had withered away the vigor and loveliness of the woman’s features. The lady rolled to a stop and glanced around with a sigh. Her gaze flitted past Meredith and then she jerked back and gasped, her face paling.
“Good morning,” Meredith called out shyly. “I didn’t meant to startle you.”
The woman smiled a little, the expression weary as she relaxed. “It’s all right.” She turned her chair toward Meredith to face her fully and wheeled closer.
