He wanted to squirm, something that rarely happened to him. How did he come to be speaking of marital intimacies with a reformed prostitute? This was what happened when you blurred the lines between business and your private life. “Those details can wait a bit. I’m busy. I’ve an investigation to run. I can’t be bothered with domestic issues. I want to keep all my roles both simple and separate. How many men in this city are married but behave as if they are not? Not that I intend to betray any marriage vows I make, but men don’t involve their wives in matters of business. I doubt many wives could even articulate the sources of their husband’s income or amusements, or the extent of their estates or what it takes to run them. I’m sure Charlotte will be content to oversee the estate house and do whatever it is that females do and leave the rest to me.”
“If she is, she’s not the right woman for you.” Aunt Dolly pointed her knitting needle at him. “You would be better off marrying one of those bits of fluff coming out of the finishing schools these days, who have to ask permission before having an intelligent thought, but they know how to host a tea party and count linen.”
Again, guilt rolled through him like a boulder. “In my defense, I’ve known her less than a week.” The excuse sounded as barmy to him as it did to her. The glasses came off, and she blinked at him.
“Less than a week?”
He shrugged. “There will be plenty of time to get to know her better later. It’s done all the time in society. For now it is enough that I’ve found someone to fill the role of my duchess so I can stop thinking about that part of my life and focus on what’s important.”
“If you think your choice of wife isn’t important, you’re sadly uninformed. I’ve heard you speak time and again about keeping all the parts of your life separate and tidy, even having the boldness to claim that you can confine God to only a portion of your life, but what you’re attempting with a wife is just as impossible. Especially if you want to receive any joy from your relationship with your bride.” The rocking stopped, and her brows rose as her chin fell. “But you’ll have to find out on your own since you’re clearly not in a frame of mind to take my advice. I shall pray that God somehow hits you on the head with a bit of wisdom. If you treat your fiancée as you have been treating God, I suspect you’ll get the same results. You can’t put God in a box, and you can’t put a wife there either. Both will spill over, and both deserve more from you. You’re missing out on life’s greatest joys, and you don’t even know it.”
A knock on the door had Marcus feeling like a fish who had wriggled off the hook. He wanted to call down a blessing on whoever had interrupted at that moment. Aunt Dolly had poked plenty of holes in his philosophy, and he was a bit raw, but he could and would keep his public, his secret, and his private lives separate. He’d been successful about it until now. After all, his mother hadn’t the merest notion that he was a spy. Charlotte wouldn’t tumble to it either.
He rose, wrapped his muffler about his face, and donned his cloak, making sure to pull up the hood to complete his disguise before opening the door. May’s sleepy face peered in. She blinked when she saw him but then shrugged. “Aunt Dolly, there’s some stitching needed, and Belinda’s got her hands full with two others that just came in.”
“I’ll be there directly. Make sure there is water on the boil. Hawk, perhaps you could lend a hand?” She always used Hawk rather than Marcus when others were present.
Gratefully, he followed them down the stairs, and in the front hall, a woman sat on a chair, holding a bloodstained cloth to her brow.
“Ah, Ginny, back again?” Aunt Dolly put her arm around the woman. “Here, let us help you. We’ll go down to the kitchen. Hawk?”
He helped her get Ginny to her feet, but halfway down the hall, he gently removed Dolly’s hand, scooping the woman up into his arms. She was too weak and wobbly, and the stairs too narrow, to get her down safely between them. He kept his face turned away from her, but she didn’t even seem to notice. Ginny was no weightier than a bit of thistledown, and he had no trouble depositing her with care into a chair beside the worktable. Without speaking, he moved to the corner of the room to observe, waiting to see if they needed someone to fetch a physician.
Two other women sat at the table, bent over steaming bowls of soup, one with a bruise on her left cheek, the other with eyes bright and face flushed as if she had a fever. She paused in her eating to cough into a handkerchief, her face reddening until the spasm passed.
“You’ll finish that soup and then it’s bed for you, my dear.” Aunt Dolly went to a cupboard and removed a roll of cloth. She opened it on the table, revealing a small selection of medical equipment, cotton tufts, and linen bandages.
“Now, Ginny, let me take a look at you. May, give me some more light. What happened?”
“He wouldn’t pay, and when I insisted, he knocked me into a wall.” Ginny muttered her confession, and Marcus took a grip on his temper, knowing it would be disastrous to show it here. How awful men were, using and abusing women simply because they could. In the more expensive bordellos there were guards on the payroll to ensure the protection of the girls and that each man paid what he owed, but these women who walked the streets alone, without anyone to look after them, were at the mercy of their customers’ whims and tempers.
Ginny had been roughly treated, but it didn’t appear they would need a doctor tonight.
Marcus touched Aunt Dolly’s arm. “I’ll take my leave.”
She nodded, not looking at him. “Be safe, Hawk. And remember what I said.”
He nodded and slipped through the back door. Once outside in the dark, he inhaled the cold night air through his muffler.
Hawk. His code name. His alter-identity.
Except that to him, it wasn’t an alter-identity. He was Hawk. It was the Duke of Haverly that felt like the facade.
A facade he would have to wear for the rest of his life.
CHAPTER 7
CHARLOTTE PACED THE morning room, barely aware of her mother’s prattling. Pages and lists decorated the writing desk, and her mother repeatedly dipped pen into ink and wrote. She had started talking the minute they had entered the carriage the night before, and except for a brief interval of sleep, hadn’t stopped.
“It’s the date that needs to be settled first. Once we have that, all the other plans will fall into place. There’s so much to do.” Mother held up one paper. “We’ve so much shopping to accomplish. I wonder how much money your father will part with for the wedding and your bridal clothes. After all, we can’t be seen to be skimping when our daughter is marrying a duke. The stationer’s first, I think, to have invitations printed. Then there is the church. St. George’s is the only place that will do for a duke’s wedding. Perhaps we should secure the church first, before we see the stationer. But then again, we can’t secure the church until we have a date settled.”
It had been the same merry-go-round all morning, and Charlotte was heartily sick of it. Mother would be so disappointed when the duke called in to say it was all a hoax.
Charlotte had barely slept, mulling the evening in her mind, going over every moment, dissecting and holding it up to scrutiny. Somewhere between the moment he had asked her to dance that first reel—out of courtesy or pity, to be sure—and the mischievous way he had bowed over her hand and helped her up into her father’s carriage just after midnight, they had become engaged.