The Courtship

Lady Morrisette paused while a footman opened the parlor doors, and too late, Percival understood the ambush he’d charged into: Her Grace and His Grace sat reading a newspaper at the same table by the window where Esther Himmelfarb had been playing cards more than two weeks ago.

“Possible hostiles near the window,” Tony muttered, coming up on Percy’s shoulder.

Nothing possible about it, and yet, there was Esther, embroidering in a corner on a settee, Quimbey sitting beside her and looking entirely too content, while the rest of the room looked askance at the recent arrivals.

“Look who I found in the foyer!” Lady Morrisette’s cheerful announcement had all heads turning, but where Percival had expected to see welcome in Esther’s eyes, he saw guardedness.

She said something to Quimbey, who smiled like a man besotted, then went back to her embroidery.

Percy could not take his eyes off Esther—though she was ignoring him. “My apologies to the company for the state of my attire, but my errands in Town were urgent.”

The Pankhurst girl rose, as if she’d leave the room or say something, but her gaze went swiveling from Percy to Esther and back to Percy.

“Percival, what can you be about?” His mother’s tone was dry as dust. “Disgracing yourself and tracking mud all over Lady Morrisette’s carpets. Take your brother and see to your wardrobe.”

She turned a page of the newspaper laid out before her, paying no more heed to her sons than if they had been footmen caught in an indecorous exchange. His Grace neither followed up with a ducal rebuke nor interceded for his sons—of course.

“I beg your pardon, Your Grace.” Percival bowed to his mother. “Before I take my leave, I would address Miss Himmelfarb in private.”

Sir Jasper Lay-About cleared his throat. “Perhaps Miss Himmelfarb isn’t interested in what you have to say.”

The supercilious ass offered his suggestion from a pose by the fireplace, one leg bent, an elbow propped on the mantel. In full morning finery, he was the picture of gentlemanly grace. The urge to knock the presuming idiot on his backside was nigh unbearable.

“Not now, Perce,” Tony whispered. “Get the girl; then deal with the buffoon.”

Esther was watching him, but there was no welcome in her eyes. Quimbey would not have trespassed, and Esther would never have yielded to Sir Jasper’s importuning… and yet.

As Percy watched her, unease curled more tightly in the part of a man’s gut that could save his life if he listened to it. “Then I’ll say my piece to her here.”

Like a marionette whose strings had been jerked, Charlotte Pankhurst came to life. “Esther Himmelfarb, how could I have forgotten! I have been remiss, and I do beg your pardon. I promised to give you back the correspondence you gave me for safekeeping, and it completely slipped my mind.”

As the girl withdrew a folded piece of paper from her workbasket, Esther turned to regard her. “I gave you no correspondence, Charlotte.”

“Oh, now don’t be coy!” With a flourish and an odd glance at Sir Jasper, Miss Pankhurst started to read. “It’s signed by Sir Jasper. ‘My dearest and most precious Esther.’” She paused long enough to take visual inventory of her rapt audience, while Percival’s hand went to the place at his side where his sword hilt would have been.

“Silence, woman!”

He’d bellowed indoors, an infraction guaranteed to give his mother the vapors, but over by the window, the duke had placed a hand on his duchess’s wrist.

Charlotte Pankhurst clearly had a longing for death, for she smirked at Percival. “Sir Jasper isn’t taking exception to having his billet-doux read in company. It’s just a note, my lord. Sophisticated company such as this would never take such a thing seriously.”

Esther had risen, her fists clenched at her side. “It’s not a note I ever received, Charlotte, nor would I have given you anything for safekeeping.”

She hadn’t received it?

She hadn’t received it?

For three days she’d been left wondering, alone, thinking all manner of untoward things? The very notion was…

It wasn’t to be borne.

Percival regarded the woman he loved, willing her to meet his gaze. “Then my dearest and most precious Esther, you must allow me to recite it for you—and I am remiss for not signing my love letter. In future, I will remedy the oversight, and you may be certain all my love letters will be addressed to you.” The room went silent, and for the first time, Esther’s eyes held something besides self-possession. She looked at him with hope, with a wary, wounded variety of the emotion, one that cut Percy to the heart.

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