Chapter 2
The last place Crispin Ferguson, recently the 9th Duke Huntington, would have ever searched for Elizabeth Brightly over the years was a dreary, straitlaced finishing school.
Which was no doubt why the young woman—his wife of nine years—had remained so damned elusive.
Of course, her disappearance and her absolute ability to remain hidden hadn’t surprised Crispin in the least. After all, this was the same girl he’d once played hide-and-seek with in the far-distant corners of Oxfordshire. If Elizabeth hadn’t wanted to be found, she had had him searching from the moment the roosters crowed until the moon shoved back the sun for its time in the sky.
“Their Graces, the Duke and Duchess of Huntington,” Mrs. Belden announced in the same obsequious, fawning tones that had dogged him the whole of his time as ducal heir and now his ducal life.
Like dutiful little ducks, the seven young ladies present dropped into respectful curtsies.
A bespectacled Elizabeth looked about, perplexity brimming from behind her lenses. Did she seek escape? Or confirmation of the person now addressed by the crowd?
Having grown up alongside her and read her like the pages of a journal written in his own hand, Crispin would have ventured it was the former. But with time having carved them into strangers, she was unreadable in ways she never had been.
“And all this time, you fortunate young ladies have been schooled by a duchess.” The headmistress’ voice shook with pride and honor.
That seemed to snap Elizabeth from the shock that gripped her. She shot a hand up. Rushing past Crispin in a whir of skirts, she presented herself before Mrs. Belden. “No. That isn’t necessary.” She spoke to the room at large, pointedly leaving Crispin out of her announcement. “You needn’t… address me so.”
Her absolute indifference should have smarted. And yet, after a lifetime of fawning women vying for his attentions and affections, Crispin was… intrigued by this more composed version of the girl he’d called friend. With a grin, he perched his hip on the arm of the nearest unoccupied sofa and observed the proverbial show.
“But… but… are you saying you are not a duchess?” The headmistress’ face fell.
Seven rabidly curious stares whipped over to the lady in question.
Folding his arms at his chest, Crispin joined in, staring expectantly at Elizabeth.
“I… I…” She’d never stumbled over her words. She’d always been remarkably in control, when he’d been brash and reckless in every way.
For the first time since he’d entered the room and interrupted her lesson, Elizabeth looked at him. Crimson color splotched her cheeks, rushing to the roots of her like hair.
“It is… complicated,” she finally settled on.
No truer words had ever been uttered.
Nonetheless, the headmistress who’d greeted him with a fanfare usually reserved for a king beamed, as Elizabeth’s words seemed to be all the confirmation she’d required. Raising her cane, she clapped the head of it against her palm. “Ladies.”
“No!” Elizabeth squeaked, darting between the girls now filing from the room. “You needn’t leave. His Grace was just leaving.”
“No, I wasn’t,” Crispin called over, layering that jovial assurance with ice.
Elizabeth shot him a withering glare the likes of which his terrifying mother, the dowager duchess herself, couldn’t manage.
Yet, when a duke spoke, the world listened, just as the rapidly departing ladies before them did.
And a moment later, Crispin found himself alone with Elizabeth.
“Hello, Duchess.”
She spun about. “Stop calling me that, Your Grace,” she hissed, jerking her head back toward the open doorway.
Yes, no doubt, the headmistress listened from the other side.
Elizabeth ducked her head outside.
“My apologies,” the headmistress squawked, her footsteps growing distant as she retreated.
Elizabeth yanked the door closed and then spun back to face him. “You need to leave. Now.” She continued speaking in a rush, not allowing him to get a word in. “You should have never come. Why did you come?”
And that brought them to the reason he was here.
Crispin straightened from his negligent repose. “Do you know you’re the only woman in the whole of England who’d turn away the life of a duchess to live a life of drudgery?”
Several furrows creased the space between her eyebrows. “I don’t live a life of drudgery,” she declared, a defensive edge creeping into her tone, belied by the liar her eyes and miserable gray skirts made her out to be.
“Indeed?” he drawled, drifting over. “Nine years may have passed since we last saw one another, but we were friends far longer than that.” He stopped so only a handbreadth separated them. “This is your reveal, love.” He dusted the tip of his index finger between her eyebrows.
Gasping, Elizabeth tripped over herself in a bid to escape his touch.
Which was also a ducal first for one who’d had every woman from maids to maidens and matrons hurling themselves into his path.
“What do you want?” she demanded, all fire and fury.
Elizabeth Terry—nay, Elizabeth Brightly hadn’t changed a jot. She was still the small, slender imp with outrageously curled hair and cream-white cheeks. No, that wasn’t altogether true. Her eyes had changed. They were more wary than the fresh innocence of her then seven and ten years.
Was it a product of life’s natural progression? Or the effects of their failed marriage?
For the first time since he’d stepped inside this establishment and found that the woman he’d spent years looking for was here the whole time, regret needled around his chest. For what might have been. For their lost friendship. For a marriage that could have been.
Unnerved by that maudlin musing, Crispin clasped his hands behind him. “My father is dead.”
“My apologies,” she said softly. “I loved His Grace very much.”
Yes, everyone had adored his father. As cold and ruthless as the dowager duchess was and always had been, her late husband had been jovial and warm.
“He always liked you a great deal, too, Elizabeth,” he said quietly.
Something passed in her eyes, but she dipped her gaze, and he was left to wonder at that brief flash of emotion.
Her family had lived on a parcel of land in the Fergusons’ Oxfordshire properties. Despite the station divide between her father, a struggling merchant, and Crispin’s, the duke, the men had been friends, and their children—Elizabeth and Crispin—had become even greater ones. Until the day her parents had taken ill, within a couple of weeks of each other, and in that short time, she’d found herself orphaned. When Crispin had proposed marriage to a friend to provide her security, his father had proven a duke would always be a duke where matters such as marriages were concerned.
“I haven’t come to speak about the past,” Crispin finally said. The scholar in him, who’d spent years as a fellow delivering lectures in Oxford, knew that logic and reason said no good could come from any such talks. They wouldn’t erase anything that had passed between them.
“The thing about the past, Crispin…” she said in governess tones, stealing the use of his Christian name when no one had done so… since her. To the world—his mother included—he’d only ever been a title. “One cannot divorce oneself of one’s past when it is responsible for one’s present and future.” She started for the door.
Why…why… she was dismissing him? Just like that?
He rocked back on his heels.
“You are my wife,” he called, halting her in her tracks and bringing her back around. God, how he hated to put any favors to her, the traitorous friend who’d accepted his offer of marriage and then abandoned him. He curled his lips up into a slightly mocking, indifferent grin. “And, you see, I am in need of one.” A pretty blush splashed her cheeks with pink color. “A wife, that is,” he purred.
A strangled, choking sound escaped her.
Despite the gravity of their reunion, Crispin’s grin deepened. “Not for… those reasons.” Eventually, there would be the need for an heir. “That is not why I’m here.”
That assurance did nothing to ease the tension from her small frame. Rather, she narrowed her gaze on his face, sizing him up the way she might a London footpad who stepped too close. “Wipe that false rogue’s smile from your lips, Crispin Ferguson.”
That grin she took as fake, however, was the first real expression of mirth he’d formed with his lips in… longer than he could remember. And this person who’d once known him better than anyone couldn’t even tell. She didn’t know the difference.
This, their meeting, was spiraling out of his control, the control he had on his emotions. In a bid to restore a semblance of calm, Crispin grabbed a pair of mahogany rope-twist armchairs and positioned them so they faced each other.
“Perhaps we should sit, Your Grace.”
Elizabeth remained planted to her spot close to the doorway. He set his jaw. God, she was as stubborn as she’d always been. Crispin settled his frame into the small, mustard velvet chair. He looped an ankle across his opposite knee, and the delicate wood groaned under that slight movement. “I’ve no intention of leaving, Duchess.”
She elevated her chin. “I asked that you stop calling me that, Your Grace.”
“But that is what you are now.” He flashed another smile meant to rile, meant to infuriate, meant to shake some of the bloody calm out of her. “What was it we pledged? Hmm?” He lifted an eyebrow. “Until death do us part?”
“Funny you should remember that part,” she noted in droll tones, completely unaffected. “There was the whole ‘to live together,’ love her, comfort her, honor, and keep her in sickness and in health.” Elizabeth shot him an arch look. “Forsaking all others.”
He sat back, celebrating the first real triumph since he’d stepped into this schoolroom and faced her. Despite her seeming indifference, she’d revealed her hand for a second time now. “You kept up with gossip on me,” he noted huskily. Those gossip rags were forever speculating about which widow or actress he was linked to at any given point.
The hard, tense set of her lips strained her cheek muscles and was going to give the minx a deuced megrim. “Hardly,” she said too quickly.
She’d always been rubbish at lying. It was an inadequate skill set that continued to this day.
“I would be remiss if I didn’t point out, Duchess”—she winced—“that you were the one who left me.” The memory of that night slipped in. He’d been informed she’d been feeling unwell, but when he’d visited the guest rooms she’d been given as his bride—they were empty. She was gone. All that had remained had been three curly strands of her red hair upon a blindingly bright white coverlet.
“Is that why you are here, Your Grace? Did I wound your pride?”
God, the chit could drive the patience from a saint. As it became increasingly clear that the lady had no intention of taking the seat across from him, Crispin stood. “I’ll get ’round to why I’m here. Since my father’s death and my ascension to the dukedom, there have been…” He searched for the words.
Elizabeth crossed her arms. A study in annoyance at his presence? His telling? All of it? “I’ve been the recipient of attention from many ladies.”
“How dreadful for you,” she declared, her expression deadpan. Just then, her glasses slipped down the bridge of her nose.
Crispin stilled. They were the wire rims she’d donned when last he’d seen her nearly ten years ago. The fact that she still wore the same pair was an inconsequential detail. Or it should have been.
He frowned. And yet it was not. It was a material telling about Elizabeth and the state of her affairs these past years.
Noting his attention, Elizabeth pushed her glasses back into place and jutted her chin at a defiant angle.
As for the first time since he’d entered the room, Crispin took in those details, which had escaped him until now: the heinous gray skirts that hung, shapeless, on her slender frame. The painfully severe chignon that could never tame those crimped red curls. She should be attired in garments fit for one of near royalty, as she, in fact, was. The idea that she’d gone all these years without, choosing a life of work over a life with him, stuck odd in his chest.
They, after all, had been friends, and this was the life she’d sought instead. She’d always been prouder than most—including him. Including anyone he’d ever known in his thirty years.
He cleared his throat. “As I was saying—”
“Your bride problem.”
“I only ever had one bride problem,” he muttered. And it had been this fearless minx before him.
Understanding lit Elizabeth’s eyes. “I see.”
Crispin puzzled his brow. “You do?” Of course. With her head in a book for as long as he’d known her, she’d always been clever enough to see everything.
The first eagerness he’d caught in her expressive moss-green gaze flared to life. She sailed over in a whir of loud, rustling skirts. “You require an annulment.” A smile, one that still dimpled her cheeks and lit her eyes and turned her lips up, transformed her from the ordinary girl of his past to someone… quite… enthralling. He stared back, transfixed by the sparkle in the glittering green depths of her eyes. “Do you have papers for me to sign?”
Reality seeped back in. “What?” He raced through his mind for whatever last words had been spoken before he’d noted the entrancing color of her intelligent eyes.
“Papers.” Her smile slipped, and he mourned that fleeting light. “For the annulment?” Hope threaded those three words and stuck in a pride he hadn’t realized he had.
“You think I want an annulment?”
“You don’t?” She answered another of his questions with one of her own.
“I don’t.”
She looked so crestfallen that, if he weren’t so offended, he would have laughed outright. “But then you can marry whomever you wish,” she persisted.
“I understand the implications of a church-granted annulment,” he said with false drollness. Crispin made a show of studying her. “You’ll do just fine.”
Splotches of color tinged her cheekbones again.
Her mouth moved.
Before she found the right words and skewered him, Crispin hurried on with his reason for being here.
“I’ll need you to return to London… as my wife.”