The Portrait of a Duchess by Scarlett Peckham

Before

It had been late, and pouring rain, and the knock—a staccato rap so deafening it drowned out the storm—had startled Rafe awake. He’d have thought someone was shooting a rifle in his parlor were it not that he’d recognized Miss Ludgate’s voice calling out his name.

He barely knew Miss Ludgate, but he knew her voice.

He’d been mesmerized by it the few times they’d met. Miss Ludgate was every inch the dewy, well-bred maiden in her white frills and flowery bonnets—until that low alto came out of her mouth, a voice so cultured and sonorous that it made a melody of vowels and consonants.

At eighteen, she talked like most people recited poetry.

She pounded on the door again. “Mr. Goodwood? Ae you at home? ’Tis Miss Ludgate.”

He found her standing on his paving stones looking as sodden as a sea sponge.

When she saw him, she closed her eyes. “You’re home. Thank God.”

“Miss Ludgate, what are you—”

“I’m unspeakably sorry for the intrusion at this hour. But may I please have a word with you? I’m desperate.”

“Of course.” He pulled open the door, though not without a moment’s pause for what her guardian might think—or do—if he found out his ward was standing soaked in a horse trainer’s parlor hours before dawn.

There was not time to worry over dreadful consequences, for as soon as Miss Ludgate stepped into the threshold of his home, she started sobbing.

He’d never seen her anything but poised to the point she was intimidating. He froze like she’d shot him dead.

Don’t panic. They’re just tears.

But tears were worse than bullets. He needed to make the crying stop. But how did one get a weeping, wet, young woman to collect herself when she appeared at one’s door unannounced and without explanation in the middle of the night?

Same as anyone, he hoped.

Sit her by the fire, give her tea, and let her talk.

It must have been the right thing, for she surrendered to his care like an orphaned fawn who’d take mothering from a wolf.

He settled her in front of the fire with a steaming mug.

“Miss Ludgate,” he said cautiously, sitting down across from her. “Has something happened to you?”

Poachers were known to prowl at night on the forest roads between his house and Gardencourt Manor. She could have been attacked, or worse. And if she had—

She shook her head. “No, I haven’t been harmed.” She paused, blew on her tea, and looked up into his eyes. “Yet.”

Her voice broke on that final word. He wanted to gather her to his chest and stroke her back to soothe her.

“Tell me what’s the matter,” he said, keeping his voice gentle.

“I need a husband,” she said. She drew a breath and looked him directly in the eye. “And I hoped you might be him.”

“I— Pardon?” He’d expected her to say something along the lines of “I’ve fallen off my horse.”

“I’m sorry to ask. But I’ve gone through many calculations and you are the only person who can help me.”

He felt guilty for doing it, but he laughed.

He couldn’t help it. It was the strangest thing he’d ever heard.

He was a commoner. His closest claim to gentle birth was some old family Bible that proclaimed him the ninth-odd cousin of Miss Ludgate’s uncle. He trained horses and sometimes bred them, when he could get the money for their keep.

She was the kind of girl who would marry the third son of a viscount. Maybe better, if her dowry was as hefty as the rumors held.

“I assure you, this is not a jest,” she said.

“I’m sorry. I’m just imagining the likes of me as the only possible suitor for you. It’s quite amusing.”

“You don’t know me very well, though, do you?” she asked evenly.

He shut up and let her talk.

Her explanation was halting, interrupted by many fortifying gulps of his bracingly hot tea. By the time she was done, she’d consumed the entire pot, told him a long story about painting lessons and a tutor from Vienna she’d been found with in the nude, and a list of dreadful suitors her uncle had threatened to make her choose among—or else.

“So you see,” she concluded, “I must marry someone of my own choosing, before he marries me off against my will.”

“What about your tutor?”

She snorted. “No, impossible. If I married him, he’d think I was his wife.”

“That . . . is the resulting consequence of matrimony.”

“Yes, and therefore you see why I have asked you.”

“You are speaking in riddles,” he said.

She smiled. “I love riddles.”

So had her mother.

Her parents had died when she was an infant, but her composure reminded him distinctly of Demeter Ludgate, her mama. Cornelia’s stubborn courage, however, was an inheritance from her papa. Even at his most well-mannered, Jamesy Ludgate had never held back the slightest impulse. It had made him brave. It had also gotten him killed.

And here was their daughter, a combination of the two of them in looks and temperament, staring at Rafe like he was the answer to a puzzle he couldn’t see the pieces to.

“Please, explain, in a way my simple mind might grasp,” he said.

“Mr. Goodwood, my aunt Elinor trusts you, and you knew my parents. So I thought you might understand the unfairness of my position and be willing to help.”

“I’m still not sure why marrying me would help you.”

“Because I’m not marrying to gain a husband. I’m marrying to avoid having one. To protect my freedom.”

It was irritating to deal with an eighteen-year-old who was leagues smarter than you.

“You wish to marry me so that you cannot be forced to marry someone else by your uncle?” He hoped he was following her meaning.

“Yes.” She paused. “I know it is a tremendous thing to ask, and that I am quite outrageous to ask it of you, given we are only so casually acquainted. I shall not prevail on you to accept my scheme if you are opposed to it. But I am desperate, and in going through the small list of men I know well enough to ask, your name came to mind. It’s well-known among the girls in town that you are determined not to marry. Therefore, I hope I would not be depriving you of a chance for happiness by asking you this favor.”

He had, in fact, sworn off matrimony repeatedly and publicly. He was not opposed to love—he welcomed it, fell into it constantly and with a fervor that often got him into trouble—but he was not the marrying kind.

“I won’t prevail on you beyond a trip to Gretna Green,” she said, not giving him a chance to talk. “I intend to go to Florence as soon as I’m certain my uncle can’t capture me and make me marry someone else. I’m his ward, you see. And I’m eighteen. He has control of me for three more years.”

Rosemere was more than Miss Ludgate’s guardian—he was also Rafe’s landlord and most coveted potential patron. Rafe was courting a prime role to help the duke establish a breeding stable to rival the top horseflesh investors in Britain.

Winning Rosemere’s ire would be most unwise.

Which made it odd that Rafe was entertaining this proposition.

But Jamesy and Demeter had been kind to him. They’d made introductions that had changed his life. Surely, were they aware their daughter was in danger, they would wish for him to help her.

Not that he was convinced he could.

“And how do you expect your uncle to react when you tell him you’ve married the horseman in the stable cottages?” he asked.

“I have no intention of telling him unless he captures me. I have no intention of telling anyone. Were it not so difficult to procure an annulment, we could end the marriage when I come of age. But it’s impractical and terribly expensive. So, if you give me your word, we’ll simply go to our graves with the secret.”

He worried she was being horribly impulsive. He hated the idea that tomorrow she might regret leaving her bed, let alone proposing marriage to a man she’d met three times who was nearly twice her age.

“You’re aware that if anyone heard a whisper of this—even after you come of age—it would create a tremendous scandal. One that would be difficult to ever overcome.”

She gave him a look that evoked bedrock. “I’m not afraid of scandal. I’m afraid of losing my freedom.”

He loved her for that answer.

It was that answer that decided it.

He did not know why, for what she asked was mad.

Maybe he wanted to help her for her parents’ sake.

Maybe he wanted to say yes because he knew what it felt like to have only options that did not fit the person that you were. To have to choose between concessions.

Maybe some part of him thought the gesture was romantic. Never mind that the romantic in him had always wreaked havoc on his life.

“Please, Mr. Goodwood,” Miss Ludgate whispered. “Please help me.”

By God, he would.

He extended his hand to her. “Well. If we’re to be married, I suppose you should call me Rafe.”

She clasped his hand, and her grip was hot and firm. “Cornelia.”