Grace Burrowes - The Courtship

He took a breath, gathering his courage, and prepared to offer his heart. “My dearest and most precious Esther, after such pleasures as I have known in your company, any parting from you is torture. Rest assured I will return to your tender embrace as soon as I am able. Until we kiss again, my love, you will remain ever uppermost in my thoughts, and I shall remain exclusively and eternally, yours.”

After an interminable beat of silence, Esther’s eyes began to sparkle. “Say it again, my lord. Please. More slowly this time, for surely if such a note had found its way to me, I would have read it a thousand times by now.”

Behind him, Tony was shifting from one squeaky boot to the other. Charlotte Pankhurst was looking like a little girl who’d forgotten her lines at the church play, while Percy’s heart starting dancing a jig.

“My dearest and most precious Esther.” He declaimed the words, hoping every servant in the corridor and every gossipmonger in the room was committing them to memory. “After such pleasures as I have known in your company—”

“Cease this nonsense at once!” Her Grace did not rise, likely because His Grace still had her by the wrist. “Percival Windham, you will not be publicly making love to a mere earl’s granddaughter. I know not what spell she has cast, nor do I care. Pack your effects, and take yourself back to Morelands.”

The joy in Esther’s gaze winked out. Without moving, she wilted where she stood, and nobody, not one person in the entire room, remonstrated with the duchess for her rudeness.

Percival crossed the room and linked his fingers with his intended, turning a glower on his mother. “I apologize for the abrupt and public manner of my declaration, but Your Grace will apologize to Miss Himmelfarb.”

“I will do no such thing. I permit you to socialize in hopes you’ll attach a suitable prospect, and this is the thanks I get? You may go back to the Canadian wilderness if you think to comport yourself thus.”

The duke cleared his throat. Tony groaned.

Percival tucked an arm around Esther’s waist. “I have resigned my commission, Your Grace. I have no doubt my intended would follow the drum cheerfully did I ask it of her, but I have no wish to subject her to such hardships.”

The duchess sniffed. “Your intended—”

“My beloved intended,” Percival shot back. “Whose father has given me permission to court her, and whose finger will soon be wearing this modest token of my esteem, if she’ll have me.”

Ringing declarations were all well and good, but a man ought to be judged by his actions, too. Percival withdrew a small parcel from his pocket, fished the ring out of the cloth he’d wrapped it in, and took his beloved by the hand.

“Esther Louise Himmelfarb, will you—”

She put a finger to his lips, and his heart stopped. “No, I will not.” She caressed his lip fleetingly then dropped her hand. “Not without your mother’s blessing.”

What the hell?

Across the room, His Grace finally bestirred himself to speak. “Hear your lady out, Percival, for I think she has the right of it.”

The duchess speared Moreland with a look that pronounced him daft or possessed of three heads, but she held her tongue too.

“I love you as well, Percival Windham,” Esther said. She wasn’t offering a performance for the assemblage, though, she was speaking straight to Percival’s heart. “Nothing would please me more than to be your wife and the mother of your children. You saw me when I was supposed to be invisible. You treated me like a person, not a fixture in service. Your manners were those of gentleman in the best sense of the word. You listened—”

He did not interrupt her. He let her gather her dignity, because in part she was offering a reproach worthy of a Dissenting minister to her supposed betters. “You listened to me and took my welfare seriously. Of course, I would be honored to be your wife, but your mother loves you too.”

A soft gasp from the direction of the duchess suggested Esther had scored a hit, but she went on speaking. “Her Grace is protective of those she loves, as a mother should be. I don’t give that”—Esther snapped her fingers crisply before his nose—“for permission from a duchess to wed the man I love, but I care very much for a mother’s blessing.”

Somebody sighed. Not the duchess. She sniffed again, but it wasn’t a sniff of disapproval.

Quimbey offered his handkerchief to Lady Zephora. Sir Jasper led a distraught Miss Pankhurst from the room. Tony’s boots had gone silent.

The duchess rose and opened her mouth, then shut it.

Esther turned to face the older woman, though Percival did not for an instant think of turning his most precious, dearest, most stubborn beloved loose.

“Please, Your Grace.” Esther swallowed, and it felt to Percival as if she might have tucked herself more closely to him. “Your Graces. I love your son, my affection for him is as fierce as it is sudden—and as it is surprising even to me. I know he would bring consequence, wealth, and comfort to the union, but I care not for the gifts he can give me with his hands. I seek only the gifts he promises me with his eyes.”

Another silence stretched while the duchess groped for her husband’s hand, and Percival tried to will his mother to see reason.

“But you’re not…” Her Grace’s expression went from glowering to puzzled to bewildered. “George? She’s not… She hasn’t…” Like the sails of a ship drifting into the eye of the wind, her indignation luffed, slowed, then died away. “Moreland? What are we to make of this?”

Had he not heard the words himself, Percival would not have believed. Agatha, Duchess of Moreland, had in public turned to her spouse for reassurances. The expression on Moreland’s face was far from incredulous. The duke was smiling faintly at his duchess and stroking her hand with his fingers.

“Young people today,” Moreland said in dismissive tones. “All is high drama with them, though given these passionate declarations, one can hope Percival and his lady will at least be enthusiastic about providing us grandchildren.”

His Grace emphasized the point by kissing his wife’s knuckles and keeping her hand in his.

Grandchildren. Oh, of course. Moreland had dangled before the duchess the ultimate prize, the trophy awarded on behalf of duty that would serve so wonderfully in the name of love.

“We can assure you of that,” Percival said. “If we have your blessing.”

Esther, in a gesture that boded well for their marital union, held her silence—and his hand.

The duchess drew herself up and laced her arm though the duke’s. “Come along, Moreland. If we’re to have a prayer of seeing the ceremony properly planned, there is much to be done.”

But the duke didn’t immediately lead his wife from the room. He instead tucked her hand over his arm and paused, giving her a look that was positively doting. “And if I am to have a prayer of arranging the settlements adequately, I must of course consult with my duchess. And remind me, my dear, was it the Holsopple girl you had in mind for Anthony?”

They processed from the room, dignity very much in evidence.

When the door had closed behind them, Tony squished across the room and clapped Percival soundly on the shoulder. “Well done, you lot. Madam, my lady hostess, regardless of the hour, we’ll be having your best champagne, as it appears congratulations are very much in order.”

Quimbey started the applause, Lady Pott thumped her cane repeatedly on the floor, Lady Zephora and Miss Needham wept openly in the arms of whatever swain had presented himself at the convenient moment.

While Percival kissed his ladylove.