The Day of the Duchess Read online

  Sesily added to the spectacle, calling down, “Vote Seraphina!” She turned back. “We should have made hats. Carried signs. Marched.”

  Sera resisted the urge to hide her face in her hands when Seline added, “I don’t think a march would have helped.”

  “One never knows,” Sophie said, hopefully.

  “One knows,” Seline said, voice dry as sand. “No one likes a fearless woman.”

  “Well, there are our reputations out the window and into the Thames, then,” Sesily said, dry and droll, taking her seat next to Sera and adding, blandly, “Whatever shall we do.”

  The Dangerous Daughters snickered en masse.

  “For all the grabbing Grab-hands does, you’d think he’d be a bit more in favor of a divorce,” Seleste said, a touch too loudly, drawing a collection of harrumphs from below for her inappropriate and exceedingly apt assessment of Lord Grabeham. She also drew a wink and a smirk from her handsome husband. “Oh, yes, I do like that wig.”

  “Seleste!”

  Seleste lowered her voice to a whisper. “Well, it’s true.”

  “Which bit?” Sera asked.

  All four of her sisters turned surprised eyes on her for a beat before Seleste replied, full of honesty, “Both.”

  Their collective laughter echoed through the hall, and Sera found she did not care. If Malcolm couldn’t find it in himself to turn up for the damn vote, she could spend the morning enjoying herself. After all, he would still win in the end, would he not?

  You might win, as well.

  She swallowed the thought, disliking the way it sent unease rioting through her.

  “My Lord Chancellor!”

  “Oh! Look! Heiferbetter’s something to say!” Sesily narrated, lowering her voice. “Odious man.”

  Sera did not disagree with the assessment.

  “The Chancellor recognizes the Lord Hoffenbetten,” the man presiding over proceedings intoned.

  “I humbly request that those in the viewing gallery be reminded that we are in a place of grave importance, deciding upon a question that impacts one of our members gravely, and may well influence the rest of us in a manner that might only be described as—”

  “Grave?” Seline asked, the word carrying down to the floor like lead.

  Lord Hoffenbetten looked up to Seline with pure irritation, and said, “Serious.”

  The Lord Chancellor responded in utter boredom, “Quiet please, from the gallery.”

  The quartet of sisters did as they were told, remarkably, taking their seats in a surprisingly quiet, colorful line of women, watching the members of the House of Lords file in and out through their respective doors to cast their vote, and possibly end their sister’s hope for a future that was not lived in the shadow of the past.

  After long minutes of observational silence, Sesily said quietly, “Sera—there are far more men voting Content than I would have expected.”

  Seleste leaned in and whispered, “I have been counting, and . . . well, I don’t wish to give you false hope . . . but I think you might have a fighting chance, Sera.”

  Sera nodded, unable to tear her attention away from the door to the Content Lobby, where a seemingly endless stream of peers—most young enough for her to recall from her early seasons—were returning to the floor of the House after having voted in favor of her divorce.

  Her heart began to pound. “It might happen,” she said softly, more to herself than to the others, but the Talbot sisters had always been connected by some kind of unbreakable bond in times like this.

  Sophie reached for her hand, squeezing it tightly. “Sera.”

  And that’s when she saw the Marquess of Mayweather. Memory crashed through her—so weathered it seemed as though it had happened decades earlier and not only three years prior. The night she’d met Mal, on the Worthington House balcony, he’d been with Mayweather, bemoaning the state of marriage-minded misses, berating the marquess for falling in love.

  She looked to her sisters. “Is the Marquess of Mayweather married?”

  Confusion bloomed on their faces before Sesily said, as delicately as Sesily could say anything, “Perhaps you should wait until you’re actually divorced before”—she waved a hand in the air—“setting sights?”

  Sera shook her head. “I don’t want to marry him, Sesily. I’m just curious.”

  “Oh. Good then.”

  “He is married,” Sophie offered. “The marchioness frequents the bookshop.”

  “Helen,” Sera said. “Her name is Helen.”

  “Well, I’ve only ever called her Lady Mayweather, but yes, I think it is. Did you know her? Before?”

  She shook her head, barely speaking above a whisper, distracted by the man far below. “I knew of her. I knew that he was besotted.” She was distracted by the fact that he entered the Content Lobby. The Marquess of Mayweather voted for divorce. Why? Wouldn’t he side with his friend? “She likes cats,” she said, vaguely. Nearly unaware of what she was saying.

  If Malcolm wanted a divorce, wouldn’t he ask his friends to vote with him?

  “I also like cats,” Sesily said. “Has anyone seen Lady Felicity since she returned to town? I was so happy she returned Brummell. Someone should have her to dinner.”

  “You could have her to dinner,” Seleste said.

  Sesily shook her head. “No one will let their unmarried daughter befriend me.” After the events at the Sparrow, Sesily’s name had been plastered throughout the papers, and their parents were threatening to send her away from London to restore her reputation. As though such a thing were possible.

  “Sophie should host her. She’s the most respectable of the lot of you.”

  “Oh, yes,” Seleste smirked. “She’s never done anything scandalous.”

  “Well, her scandal ended in a marquessate.”

  As Sera watched, another man exited the Content Lobby far below, stopping to speak to several others in a tightly knit group. She couldn’t place them, but they were terribly familiar.

  “Sera?” Sophie said, quietly, as though she could sense Sera was thinking.

  “Who is that man?”

  Sophie turned to look. “The big one is the Duke of Lamont. The tall ginger is the Earl of Arlesley. And the handsome one is the Marquess of Bourne. They own a club.”

  Not just any club. They owned Haven’s club.

  And they were voting for divorce.

  Something was happening. Her breath came fast in her chest. Something was afoot, and she could not work it out. Where was Mal? Would he not cast his vote? Why not? Why let her sit in the gallery and wait for the results as though she were waiting for the guillotine?

  It had been three weeks since she’d left him, sleeping at Highley, and he’d left her at the Sparrow. She’d seen him there, in the audience. It had been impossible not to see him, and not only because he and her sister had colluded to destroy a table and several chairs at the Sparrow, and sent four men battered and bruised to the ground.

  She’d seen him the moment he’d entered.

  But Mal had disappeared, as though the night had never happened. Which was, Sera supposed, what she had always hoped for him to do. Except, once it was done, she seemed not to want that at all. He’d disappeared and, somehow, all she wanted was to see him.

  Why wasn’t he here?

  “Sera,” Sophie said her name a third time. When Sera looked, it was to discover her youngest sister, watching her carefully. “Do you still want it?”

  The question was nearly too much. Of course she wanted it, didn’t she? She’d wanted it for years. It had been the thing she’d promised herself in the years she’d had nothing. After she’d lost everything—the marriage of which she’d dreamed, the husband she’d loved, the child she’d birthed, the future she’d imagined. And when she’d run, she’d even lost these women, her sisters.

  Divorce was to close the door on all that loss and give her a chance to begin again. “Everything I’ve ever loved has turned to rubbish. Everything but
the Sparrow.”

  For nearly three years, the only time Sera had ever been happy was on the stage, first, in Boston as the Dove and then here, as the Sparrow. In song, she had always found herself.

  And if she had nothing else, she at least had that.

  “I cannot be the Sparrow and the duchess. I never wanted to be. But now . . .” She let the words trail off.

  “But now . . . ?” Sophie always saw the truth before the rest of them.

  Sera looked to the floor far below, absent of Mal. Thought of the past three weeks, absent of Mal. Where was he? Had he decided not to be here? Not to chase her? He’d spent the last three years chasing her. He’d traveled the Continent. He’d sailed to Boston. He’d searched for her.

  He’d loved her.

  Even as she’d believed she’d lost everything, he’d loved her.

  And now, he was gone.

  And it felt, somehow, like she was losing everything all over again, and this time, she was not certain the Sparrow would save her.

  “My lords, the votes are tallied,” the Lord Chancellor boomed from his place at the far end of the floor. “And I am surprised and not a little amazed that the result is a tie. Eighty of my lords have cast a Content vote, and eighty a Non-Content vote.”

  Sera caught her breath in shock as the collected aristocrats hemmed and hawed and harrumphed, several calling out their vocal discontent for the scenario.

  “A demmed tie?”

  “As though it weren’t enough that we wasted a day voting on a dratted divorce!”

  “The man should take his wife in hand is what he should do!”

  “Who said that?” Seline leaned over the edge of the railing. “I want to be certain to invite your poor wife round for cake—perhaps we can convince her that marital dissolution is a worthy goal!”

  The men below thumped and bellowed, disliking the brazen women above. “One wonders why Haven would want anything to do with you lot! How any man would throw in his lot with such a horrid group!”

  Sophie’s husband leapt into the fray, the Marquess of Eversley coming to his feet, robed and wigged and not a bit lacking in intimidation. “Say it again!” he thundered.

  Shouting ensued, the room gone wild with the restrained madness that comes only from parliamentary antics.

  And all the while, Sera was consumed by the vote. “How is it a tie?” She looked to her sisters. “We were assured I did not have the votes!” Her gaze fell to the Marquess of Mayweather, who looked perfectly calm. As did the owners of Mal’s club and several other members of the Content Lobby.

  Sesily Talbot was not content, however. She stood up, grabbing hold of the railing guarding her from toppling over into the throngs of lords below. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Lord Chancellor. Get to it! What happens now?”

  What happens is, Mal comes.

  And as though Sera summoned him with her thoughts, the enormous doors at the far end of the room burst open, the sound echoing through the quiet hall, quieting the chatter. There was Malcolm, calm and unflappable, as though this were a perfectly ordinary day, and his wife weren’t sitting in the gallery waiting to hear of their future.

  “If I may, Lord Chancellor?”

  Sera drank him in, marveling at how she could have gone years without seeing him and now, three weeks had made her desperate for him.

  “You are late, Duke Haven,” the Speaker called. “Which is not a small amount strange, considering the business of the day. Additionally, your inappropriate attire insults the circumstance of the House of Lords.”

  He wasn’t wearing his robes. Or his wig.

  “I do apologize,” he said. “I was whipping votes.”

  Sera went cold at the words, then fiery hot.

  “Well, you’ve done a poor job at it, as the count is a tie.”

  Was that a smile on his lips? She could not look away from that expression—not happy and not sad. What was happening? “Ah. Well. Perhaps, as I am here, now, I might be able to cast a verbal vote?”

  The Speaker paused. “That is unorthodox.”

  The room erupted in a chorus of pounding fists and hissing. “Let the man speak,” came a cry from somewhere below her.

  And then Mayweather spoke up. “He’s got a right to vote on his own marriage, doesn’t he?”

  “He does,” she said softly.

  Her sisters heard her. Sophie turned to look at her. “You want him to vote.”

  If he voted, it would be to keep their marriage intact.

  Yes.

  Shock coursed through her, and she nodded, the movement barely there, so small that no one should have seen it. Of course, her sisters saw it, and they set to hooting and shouting themselves, banging their hands on the observation railing, and drawing Mal’s attention to the upper level of Parliament. When he found her, he met her gaze without hesitation, and she saw everything there. Love. Passion. Conviction.

  He wanted her, and he would do anything to have her.

  And in that moment, she realized, she felt the same way.

  “I don’t think you’re getting your divorce now,” Sophie said, squeezing her hand.

  “But it does seem like you might be getting a grand gesture,” Sesily said happily. “I told him we like a grand gesture.”

  “All right then, Haven, get on with it,” the Lord Chancellor said with more than a thread of irritation in his tone. He seemed to have eschewed parliamentary formality.

  Haven moved to the center of the floor, his gaze riveted to her, and somehow, all Parliament fell away, as though it were the two of them somewhere private and perfect. The underwater ballroom at Highley. The stage of the Sparrow in the early morning. Somewhere the world could not see them.

  She caught her breath, waiting for him to speak.

  “I love you.”

  A chorus of irritated harrumphs sounded around the room as peers from across Britain realized what they were in for, but Sera found she did not care a bit. She stood, clutching the rail of the observation gallery for support, wanting to be as close to him as possible for whatever was about to come.

  Especially when he pressed on. “I have known I wanted to marry you since the moment I met you, when you gave me a dressing down for insulting women’s motives in marriage. You were magnificent.” He pointed. “Mayweather was there. He would have thought so, too, except he was in love with Helen already.”

  Her sisters all offered little sighs of pleasure, so Sera assumed the marquess did something lovely at that, but she was too busy watching her husband, who was moving toward her, as though she weren’t ten feet in the air. “Do you remember what I said to you that night?”

  “You said that love is a great fallacy.”

  Several of the men assembled seemed to agree.

  Mal nodded. “I did. And not ten minutes later, I had tumbled into it.”

  Her heart pounded. She had, too. She’d been planning to seek him out, this legendary eligible duke, and then she’d stumbled upon him, and he’d been perfect. And she’d almost been disappointed that he was the same man she’d thought to catch.

  “Do you remember the first song you ever sang to me?”

  Of course she did. And he knew it. She’d sung it that last night at the Sparrow. “I do.”

  Mal had reached the first of several rows of seats separating them, all populated by robed, wigged lords. “Careful, Haven,” one of them grumbled.

  He didn’t seem to hear. “She was born that day in the heart of a boy. I always thought it was about you. That you found yourself in me.” Tears pricked at her eyes. “But as the years passed, I realized it was a fool’s thought. Because what of him? What of the boy, born that same day, in the heart of a girl?”

  The words were thick with emotion, and Sera’s knuckles turned white with the force she used to clutch the railing. “What of the boy who hadn’t seen the sun until he’d seen her? The moon? The stars?” He stilled, staring up at her, his gaze tracking every inch of her face as she did the same, wishing he w
ere closer.

  He must have wished the same, because he moved then, climbing up onto the heavy benches below, caring neither for the venerable furnishings, nor the venerated aristocrats who had to lean out of the way or find themselves trampled by the Duke of Haven. He seemed to care only for getting closer to her.

  “Here it comes,” Sesily whispered.

  Sera leaned over to watch him as he reached for the inlaid pillars in the wall beneath and, without hesitation, began to scale the wall.

  The room gasped in collective shock, a dozen men on the floor bursting into angry censure, and two directly below reaching for him, as though they could stop him.

  They couldn’t. He was too fast, and too strong, and too damn perfect, throwing one leg over the rail as Seleste and Sophie backed away to make room for him while Sesily squealed her excitement from several feet away.

  At least, Sera was fairly certain it was Sesily. She wasn’t about to look away from Mal to be certain. And then he was standing in front of her, breath coming harsh from the exertion of—Dear God. He’d scaled a wall.

  He reached for her, his fingers trembling as he pushed a curl behind her ear, leaving a trail of fire in the wake of his touch. When he spoke, his voice was thick with emotion. “What of the boy who couldn’t let her go?”

  Tears came, hot and unexpected. “That was always the problem,” she said to him. “You wouldn’t let me go.” Or perhaps it was that he wouldn’t keep her close. Nothing made sense anymore. Except this. Him, here, touching her.

  He shook his head. “I was a bastard. I didn’t see that the closer I held you, the farther you’d fly. I didn’t realize you could take flight. And I was young and stupid, and God knows I did young and stupid things, not the least of which is vowing never to let you go.”

  He paused, and she ached for the people they’d been, for the young, beautiful, restless people who had done everything wrong. “Even when you returned, I swore I’d never let you go, Sera, because I never stopped wishing that you’d stayed.”

  But she’d had to go. She’d ruined so much.

  It was as though he could hear her thoughts. “I know you think we failed, my love, but we did not. I failed. I failed you.”