Wicked and the Wallflower

Chapter Twelve

Because she wasn’t entirely certain what one was to say to a man whom one had proclaimed her fiancé, Felicity settled on, “Hello.”

She winced at the decidedly unmagical word.

His gaze flickered to the dark gardens where Devil had disappeared, then back to her. “Hello.”

She blinked. “Hello.”

Oh, yes, this was all going quite well. She was all flame. Good God. It was only a matter of time before he ran back to the ballroom, stopped the orchestra, and denounced her publicly.

But the duke did not run. Instead, he took a step toward her, and she pressed back to the stone balustrade. He stopped. “Am I interrupting something?”

“No!” she said altogether too forcefully. “Not at all. I was just . . . here . . . breathing.” His brows rose at the words, and she shook her head. “Breathing air. Taking air. I mean. It’s quite warm in the ballroom, don’t you think?” She waved a hand at her neck. “Very warm.” She cleared her throat. “Hot.”

His gaze slid to her wrist. “It was good foresight for you to bring something to combat it.”

She looked down at the wooden fan dangling from her wrist. “Oh.” She snapped it open and fanned herself like a madwoman. “Yes. Of course. Well. I have excellent foresight.”

Stop talking, Felicity.

Those brows rose again. “Do you?”

Her brows narrowed. “I do.”

“I only ask because it seems to me that someone uninformed of that particular quality might find you to have the opposite of foresight.”

She caught herself before her jaw dropped open. “How is that?”

He did not immediately reply, instead coming to stand next to her at the balcony railing, turning his back to the gardens, crossing his arms over his chest and watching the revelers inside the beautifully lit ballroom. The light made his fair hair gleam gold as it harshened the angles of his face—high cheekbones and strong jaw; something about him whispered familiarity, though she couldn’t place it. After a long silence, he said, “One might argue that telling the world you are engaged to a duke when you’ve never met him lacks foresight.”

And, like that, the truth of her act was between them. Felicity was not riddled with the embarrassment or the shame she might have imagined. Instead, she was consumed with an immense relief. Something near to power—close to the way she felt when she picked a lock, as though the past was behind her and what was to come was all possibility.

Which was, of course, a kind of madness in itself, because this man held her fate and that of her family in his hands, and the future he might mete out was dangerous indeed. Madness seemed to reign, nonetheless. “Why did you confirm it?”

“Why did you say it?”

“I was angry,” she said quietly. She lifted a shoulder. “It’s not a good excuse, I know . . . but there it is.”

“It’s an honest excuse,” he said, returning his attention to the ballroom. “I, too, have been angry.”

“Did your anger result in tacit engagement to a person you’d never met?”

He looked to her, and it was as though he was seeing her for the first time. “You remind me of someone.”

The change of topic was jarring. “I . . . do?”

“She would have adored that dress; I promised to keep her in spools of gold thread, someday.”

“Did you deliver on that promise?”

His lips flattened into a cold, straight line. “I did not.”

“I am sorry for that.”

“As am I.” He shook his head, as though to rid himself of a memory. “She is gone now. And I find myself in need of an heir to . . .”

Felicity could not help her little huff of surprised laughter. “I say, you’ve come to the right place, Your Grace, as there’s nothing London likes more than a duke in your precise predicament.”

He met her gaze, and that eerie familiarity echoed. “If we are to be engaged, you ought to understand my purpose.”

“Are we? To be engaged?”

“Aren’t we? Did you not make that decision five nights ago at my home?”

“Well, I wouldn’t call it a decision,” she said softly.

“What would you call it?”

The question didn’t seem relevant, so instead, Felicity asked, “How did he convince you?”

He looked to her. “Who?”

“As I’ve said, you could have denied me and chosen another without hesitation. What did he threaten you with to make you choose me?” She didn’t think Devil the kind of man who would threaten bodily harm, but she supposed she didn’t really know him, and he had climbed her trellis and entered her bedchamber uninvited, so perhaps he had less of a conscience than she thought.

“What makes you think I had to be threatened?”

The duke was an excellent actor, clearly. Felicity almost believed that Devil hadn’t convinced him to marry her. Almost.

And then said, “I accepted your proposal, did I not?”

“But why? We’ve never met.”

“We met several minutes ago.”

She blinked. “Are you mad?” It was an honest question.

“Are you?” he countered.

Felicity supposed that was fair. “No.”

He shrugged one shoulder. “Then perhaps I’m not, either.”

“You don’t know me.”

He looked to her. “You would be surprised by what I know of you, Felicity Faircloth.”

A thread of unease passed through her at the way he said her name, an echo of another man. The fairest of them all. “I’m sure I would, Your Grace, as I am surprised you were even aware of my existence.”

“I wasn’t honestly, until late in the evening on the night of my ball, when a half-dozen doyennes of the ton—none of whom I knew existed, either, by the way—waylaid me on the way to the water closet to confirm my engagement to—what was it they called you?—poor Felicity Faircloth. It seemed they wanted to be certain I knew precisely what sort of cow I was purchasing.”

“Hog,” she corrected, immediately regretting the words.

He looked to her. “I’m not certain that’s more flattering, but if you prefer it.” Before she could tell him she was not enthralled by either descriptor, he pressed on. “The point is, I narrowly escaped the gaggle of women and then the ball—I should thank you for that.”

She blinked. “You should?”

“Indeed. You see, I no longer had need of it, as my work had been done for me.”

“And which work is that?”

“The work of finding a wife.”

“And an heir,” she said.

He lifted a shoulder. Dropped it. “Precisely.”

“And you thought a madwoman who pronounced you her fiancé was a sound choice for the mother of your future children?”

He did not smile. “Many would say a madwoman is my best match.”

She nodded. “Are you a madman, then?”

He watched her for a long moment, until she thought he was not going to speak again. And then, “Here is what I know of you, Finished Felicity. I know you were once a perfectly viable option for marriage—daughter to a marquess, sister to an earl. I know something happened that landed you in the bedchamber of a man to whom you were not married, and who refused to marry you—”

“It wasn’t what you—” she felt she had to explain.

“I don’t care,” he said, and she believed him. “The point is, after that, you became more and more curious, an oddity on the edges of ballrooms. And then your father and brother lost a fortune and you became their only hope. Unbeknownst to you, they took your freedom from you, and shipped you off to—do I have this right?—vie in a competition for a married duke’s hand?”

“Yes,” she said, cheeks blazing.

“That sounds like the plot to a ridiculous romantic novel.”

“It wasn’t ridiculous. And it was terribly romantic for the woman already married to the duke.”

“Hmm,” he said. “So, I have it all right? Impoverished spinster wallflower?”

Felicity rather hated to be boiled down to three unflattering words, but, “Yes. You have it right. Except for the bit where I proclaimed to be affianced to a duke whom I had never met.”

“Ah. Yes. I had nearly forgotten that.” The words weren’t dry. They were honest. As though he had forgotten why they were conversing altogether.

He might be mad.

Felicity pressed on. “I’m sorry, Your Grace, but why on earth would you—a young, handsome duke with a clear past—choose to remain affianced to me?”

“Are you trying to convince me not to remain affianced to you?”

Was she?

Of course she wasn’t. He was, after all, a young, handsome duke with a clear past, was he not? She’d falsely proclaimed him her fiancé, plunging herself and her family into certain social and financial ruin, and here he was, offering her rescue.

I promised you the impossible, did I not?

For a strange, wild moment, it occurred to Felicity that it was not the duke offering rescue at all—it was the Devil, with his outrageous offers and his wild deals and his wicked deeds.

A ducal moth, straight to her flame.

And here it was.

Magic.

“But . . . why?”

He looked away then, turning back to the dark gardens, his gaze searching, as hers had done before he’d appeared. “What do they call it? A marriage of convenience?”

The words settled between them, simple and unsatisfying. Of course, the offer of a marriage of convenience should have sent Felicity into convulsions of pleasure. It meant she’d save her family’s reputation, and her own. It meant money in her father’s coffers, the restoration of the estate, the protection of the name.

And that was all before she became a duchess, powerful in her own right, welcome once more in the bright, glittering ballrooms of London. No longer strange or scandalous, but valued. Returned to the place she’d been before—plain, but empowered. Duchess of Marwick.

It was all she’d ever wanted.

Well, not all. But much.

Some.

“Lady Felicity?” the duke prompted once more, pulling her from her thoughts.

She looked up at him. “A marriage of convenience. You get an heir.”

“And you get a very rich duke. I’m told that’s a precious commodity.” He said it as though he’d just learned the fact earlier that day, as though all of recorded history hadn’t been predicated on women being forced to find wealthy matches.

Her mother would be beside herself with pleasure.

“What say you?” he prompted.

She shook her head. Was it possible it was so simple? A single meeting, and her lie made true? Her gaze narrowed on the duke. “Why?” she repeated. “When you could have any of them?”

She waved a hand at the open door to the ballroom, where no less than a half-dozen women openly watched them, waiting for Felicity to misstep, and for the duke to realize his mistake. Frustration flared, alongside that familiar indignation—the emotion that had set this insanity in motion. She resisted it as his gaze followed hers, lingering on prettier, younger, more entertaining unmarrieds, considering them.

When he turned back to her, she expected him to have realized that she was not the most qualified bride for him. She was already imagining the disappointment in her mother’s eyes when this false engagement was no longer. She was already scrambling for a solution to Arthur’s empty coffers. To those of her father. Perhaps she could convince the duke to break off the engagement without revealing her stupid mistake. He did not seem a bad man. He simply seemed . . . well, frankly, he seemed uncommon.

Except he did not break off the engagement as she’d expected. Instead, his eyes met hers and, for the first time, it seemed as though he saw her. And, for the first time, she saw him, cool and calm, not at all unsettled by the fact that she was there, and they were about to be engaged. He seemed not to care at all, actually. “I don’t want them. You turned up at the right time, so why not you?”

It was ridiculous. Ducal marriages did not happen like this. Marriages in general did not happen like this—on empty balconies with no more than a vague whim born of convenience.

And yet . . . this was happening.

She’d done it.

No, Devil had done it. Like magic.

The words whispered through her, at once true and terribly false. Devil hadn’t worked magic. This duke was no moth. Felicity was not flame. She was convenient.

And there was nothing magical about convenience.

“Have you room on that fan for another dance?” the duke said, interrupting the rush of awareness that flooded her at the thought.

She looked down at the fan, at the empty slat that remained. An echo came from earlier. A vague imagining of another man marking that slat. Claiming that dance. A man who disappeared into the darkness, replaced with this one—who reigned in the light. She tried a smile. “I do have room, as a matter of fact.”

He reached for the fan, stopping before he touched it, waiting for her to offer it to him. Devil hadn’t waited. Devil wouldn’t have waited. She extended her hand to the duke and he lifted the fan, taking the little pencil dangling from it in hand and writing his name across the bare stick. Marwick.

Felicity imagined she should feel breathless at the action—but she didn’t. Not even when he released the fan and claimed her hand instead, lifting it in a slow, deliberate motion, until his full, handsome lips grazed over her knuckles.

She most definitely should have felt breathless at that. But she was not, and neither was he. And as she watched the Duke of Marwick—her proclaimed fiancé turned real—lift his head, a single thought rioted through her.

The duke’s wings remained unsinged.

Which meant the Devil had not made good on his deal.