When You Wish Read online

Dare bit his lip and took the high road, letting it end there while Christian savored a bittersweet memory of Charles doing the same during similar squabbles when they were growing up.

  “I’m pleased to make your acquaintance, Jane,” he said. “Do you juggle as well?”

  She stuck out her lower lip and shook her head, sending her glossy dark brown curls dancing. “Dare says my hands are too small to hold the balls,” she explained, offering them for his inspection.

  Christian nodded. “I see. Well, that’s something time will remedy. How old are you, Jane?”

  “Five.”

  “Almost six,” added Dare.

  “Not until tomorrow,” she corrected.

  “That’s what almost means,” her brother retorted. “Tomorrow.”

  Jane smiled. “Oh.”

  “I predict that by the time you’re eight you’ll be juggling with the best of them.”

  “As good as Dare?” she asked, her eyes widening with anticipation this time.

  Christian nodded. “If you can persuade him to teach you his secrets.” He turned to Dare. “Who taught you to juggle so well?”

  “Lady Moon,” he replied.

  Christian’s brows shot up. “Really?”

  Dare nodded. “Least ways she taught me to juggle the first three balls. I added more on my own. The magic, making them appear and disappear, I learned that on my own, too.”

  “You’re a very resourceful young man. I’m sure that took a great deal of practice to perfect.”

  “Some. I like it, though. Lady Moon says juggling is good practice for life. She says if you’re lucky you’ll have lots of different things going on in your life all the time and that juggling teaches you to focus on what’s most important at the moment.”

  Christian nodded, struck by his careful recitation. He wasn’t sure which impressed him more, that Delilah indulged in philosophical discussions with her postilion or that the boy had committed her words to memory.

  “Lord Blackmoor.”

  He glanced over his shoulder to find Mrs. Tibble, Delilah’s housekeeper, at the door.

  “Lady Moon will see you now,” she said.

  He’d expected Delilah to join him in the drawing room, as she had last time. Evidently that was not to be the case. Curious, he nodded to Dare and his sister and followed Mrs. Tibble from the room and down a short hall. She paused at a door left ajar and announced him. Stepping into the room, Christian glanced around at the book-lined walls and heavy burgundy drapes that kept out the sun and provided a somber aura very unlike the bright, airy drawing room.

  Delilah remained in her high-backed leather chair without glancing up from the papers on the desk before her. A tall, severely dressed woman stood by her side, accepting each paper as Delilah affixed her signature to it and handing her another one to examine.

  “Please have a seat, Christian,” said Delilah. “I’ll only be another moment. These orders really must be placed today or work will come grinding to a halt.”

  He remained standing, examining open maps on which various shipping routes had been traced in colored ink, and several framed prints of sailing vessels.

  “Your husband’s office?” he inquired.

  “My office,” she replied with a vehemence that made him smile.

  “There,” she announced at last. “That’s that. Thank you, Gretchen. That will be all for now.” Dismissing the woman, she remained behind the solid barrier of the massive cherry desk and added, “I am sorry for keeping you waiting, Christian.”

  “Are you?” he challenged, taking a step around the desk. He might permit her to summon him at will and keep him dangling in the drawing room, but he’d be damned if he’d be kept at arm’s length as if he were some Cheapside merchant there to talk business.

  “Of course I am,” she said, smoothing her hair with a quiet laugh. “It was so kind of you to drop by to see me.”

  As soon as Christian heard the undercurrent of nervousness in her laugh, he knew. He knew that he was not the only one who had been taken by surprise by their kiss in the carriage, or who was still feeling its impact today. Excitement surged inside him at the realization. And confidence.He continued circling the desk until he stood close beside her and held out his hand expectantly.

  After a second’s hesitation, Delilah placed her hand atop his open palm. He bent and kissed it. She wasn’t wearing gloves and her skin was so soft and smelled so sweet that he was tempted to open his mouth and taste her, running his tongue over her palm and the inside of her wrist and undoing the endless row of tiny buttons along her sleeve so he could lick all the way to her shoulder.

  It was with great reluctance that he released her hand and straightened to meet her gaze. “I didn’t drop by. I was summoned. I got the distinct impression from your note that this visit was not optional.”

  “How astute of you,” she shot back, visibly gathering her mantle of self-assurance. Christian might have been fooled into thinking she was as nonchalant as she pretended if not for the way she clasped the back of her hand where he had kissed it. The lady was not quite as immune to him as she would like to appear.

  “I meant my note to be taken seriously,” she continued. “We need to talk, Christian.”

  This time when she waved him toward the seat across from her, he complied.

  “Our campaign is not going at all well,” she said.

  “I’m excruciatingly aware of that fact, madam. First, Lady Hoppinworth decided to champion our reputations, then our timing was off at the opera, and yesterday the blasted rain was so heavy I probably could have ravished you when we met in Grosvenor Square and no one would have taken notice of us.”

  “Don’t make excuses,” she snapped.

  “Don’t chastise me,” countered Christian. “I’m not one of your lady lackeys.”

  “Lady lackeys?” she echoed, standing and leaning on the desk with both hands as she glared at him. “That is just like you, to make a joke of something you don’t know anything about.”

  He shrugged. “Educate me, Delilah.”

  “Hah! I wouldn’t know where to begin.”

  “Begin by telling me about this business of yours,” he suggested, far more interested than he was willing to appear. “What exactly is it you do that has raised male hackles and has the ladies of the ton whispering behind their fans?”

  “As if that’s such a feat,” she scoffed. “Most of those ladies would whisper just as savagely if my slippers didn’t match my ball dress.”

  He chuckled. “True enough. I still think there’s more to this than mismatched slippers. Are you running a ring of pickpockets, perhaps? Selling women into slavery? Printing subversive literature?”

  “Are you through?” she asked at last.

  “I think so. I’ve exhausted my repertoire of dastardly deeds.”

  Silently she stood and crossed the room, returning with a small wooden box, which she handed to him.

  “Open it,” she directed.

  He did so, noting the intricate craftsmanship as he lifted the dome lid with its mother-of-pearl insets in the shape of a butterfly. The rest of the box was mahogany and when he turned the handle inside it played a lilting French melody. A music box. Belatedly he remembered being told that Delilah was manufacturing jewelry boxes and not being especially impressed. He was now.

  “That’s it,” she said. “No slaves, no pickpockets, no subversive literature. What you’re holding is what has everyone talking. That is my dirty deed, the offense that enrages my brother, challenges the social order, and threatens to topple civilization as we know it.”

  “The music box,” he said.

  “The music box,” she confirmed. “How does it feel to be so close to a purveyor of wanton destruction?”

  “I have to admit that I am impressed. No, amazed. How in the world did a woman with no business experience and a group of war widows manage to produce this?”

  Her offhand shrug did not disguise her pride. “We simply took stock
of our talents and went from there.”

  The look he gave her challenged the notion that there was anything simple about what she had accomplished.

  “One of the women was the daughter of a watchmaker from La Vallee de Joux, a region of Switzerland near the French border. Did you know that’s where the music box originated?” she asked.

  He shook his head.

  “Neither did I,” she confessed. “Elise worked side by side with her father and uncles for years and she was able to teach the craft to several of the other women. As we went along we discovered that another woman had worked in her father’s cabinetmaker’s shop and another had been married to a jeweler. We shared what we knew.

  “Those who have neither knowledge nor an aptitude for the creative process do whatever they are suited for, cooking or teaching or bookkeeping, pitching in wherever they’re needed from day to day.”

  “Keeping all the balls in the air,” he murmured.

  “What did you say?”

  He shook his head. “Sorry, just thinking out loud.”

  “Anyway, somehow, miraculously, everything gets done. And women who were once reduced to begging for handouts are able to look after themselves and their children with dignity.”

  “Teaching, cooking,” he repeated, still coming to terms with the magnitude of her undertaking. “Did you open a factory or found a bloody city?”

  She smiled with amusement and satisfaction. “Actually it’s more of a workshop than a factory. The word factory conjures up such a grim image. We have curtains on the windows and teatime and children running in and out. But to answer your question, I suppose I did a bit of both. I founded the Widows’ Memorial Cooperative, and if orders and production remain on course for the next two months, we will show our first profit before year’s end.”

  “Your first profit?” His eyes narrowed. “Do you mean to tell me that for years now you have been supporting all these women and children and pouring money … Of course, you have,” he murmured, his gaze softening as he opened his eyes, and heart, to a side of Delilah he hadn’t bothered to notice until now.

  “It was an investment,” she insisted, evidently accustomed to defending herself on this point—to Roger, no doubt. “I invested in a business venture, just as men make investments every day of the week, and it’s about to produce a return, a very handsome return, if my projections are correct, and I’m sure they are.”

  “So you are the sole owner of this business of yours?”

  “Well, not exactly,” she countered with an awkward lift of her shoulders. “I knew it would be an uphill struggle and it just made sense to me that everyone would work harder if they had a personal stake in the outcome. So each woman was allowed to purchase a share of the company based on her ability to pay.”

  He looked astounded. “Based on her … Is this in writing? Is it legal?”

  “It’s honorable. That’s good enough for me,” she declared, lifting her chin in preparation for an argument. She didn’t get one.

  Christian was too busy dealing with the sudden lump in his throat. Inexplicably, he felt as proud as if he had been the one to work a miracle, changing people’s lives and teaching them to make something beautiful and valuable out of what little they possessed. Delilah was not the woman he had thought her to be. She was much more, more caring, more generous, more daring … daring in ways that mattered, in ways that made a real difference, in ways that inspired hope and restored pride and enabled a little five-year-old girl to sit in the sunshine and laugh.

  “I see I was wrong,” he said lightly, unwilling to let her see how moved he was. “They’re not your lackeys at all, they’re your partners. On second thought, Roger and the others might have cause to object. You really might be in danger of overthrowing civilization as we know it.”

  She snatched the music box from him and put it aside. “Mock me all you want,” she retorted. “I don’t know why I tried explaining anything to you in the first place. You’re as cynical as ever, utterly beyond redemption, and I certainly don’t owe you any explanations.”

  Her comments stung. The truth had a way of doing that. “I suppose not,” he retorted. “You do, however, owe me the return of my bottle, Saturday night, regardless of the outcome of this little scheme of yours.”

  “I’m beginning to regret that I ever agreed to that stipulation. Making the bottle’s return contingent on success might have provided you with greater motivation.”

  “Perhaps it’s your own motivation you should question,” he advised, standing and approaching her. “Not to mention the consequences of success. If I do manage to cast aspersions on your reputation, however discreetly, Remmley won’t be the only man scared off. No matter how fulfilling your work seems now or how successful you are at it, the allure will fade in time. Trust me. I know. Are you prepared to live the rest of your life alone?”

  “Yes,” she said, stalking away from him. “I’d prefer to, actually.”

  “You’d prefer to?” he echoed, startled by the fervor in her reply. “Prefer not to have the support and protection of a man who loves you? Prefer not to have children?” His expression dark, he grasped her arm and turned her to face him. “Why are you so opposed to marriage? Did something happen? Did Moon mistreat you? Scare you? Did he—”

  “No, no,” she said, shaking loose of his hold. “Nothing like that. Andrew was …” Regret softened the tense lines of her expression. “Andrew was a very sweet man who deserved far better than I could possibly have given him.”

  “I’m sure that’s not true. I’m sure you were a wonderful wife and that Moon considered himself lucky to have you.” What man wouldn’t? he thought.

  “Lucky to have me,” she echoed softly. “If he ever truly did. We were together only a few weeks before his regiment was activated. Did you know that?”

  Christian nodded. He knew. For no particular reason that he could name, he’d made it a point to stay abreast of the milestones in her life. He knew everything there was to know that was public knowledge. There were, however, things not commonly known, the things hidden in the turbulence of her eyes at that moment, that were a mystery.

  “And during those weeks I wasn’t much of a wife, I’m afraid.”

  “You were young … inexperienced.”

  “For God’s sake, I was pretending,” she blurted, and immediately looked trapped by her honesty. “We were husband and wife, but I felt as if I was playing a role, constantly having to think of what I ought to be feeling when he spoke to me or touched me, instead of just feeling. I kept telling myself that it would change, that I would grow accustomed to being his wife and my feelings would become genuine, in time. But we never had time.”

  “Did you love him, Delilah?”

  “I tried to,” she said, looking away. “But deep in my heart I always knew the truth, that what I felt for Andrew wasn’t love and that I had married him for the wrong reason.”

  “Why did you marry him?”

  She lifted her gaze to his. “I married him to punish you, of course.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHRISTIAN FELT LIKE a rag doll with the rags knocked out of it. “Me? You married Moon to punish me?”

  Delilah sighed and nodded.

  “Why?” he demanded.

  “Because I was in love with you.” Christian’s heart lifted into his throat, then quickly sank as she added, “Or rather, I thought I loved you, silly chit that I was at the time.”

  “I had no idea.”

  “Oh, please. Don’t pretend you didn’t know. I may have been green and gullible back then, but no longer. How could I not have fallen in love with you? You were so handsome and charming and reeking with all the excitement and glamour I longed for and that was missing from my life. I couldn’t believe my luck when you danced with me. Me, gawky, inexperienced, tongue-tied me.”

  “You were never gawky,” he said softly. “Or tongue-tied, either, as I recall.”

  “Not with you. You made it so easy to ta
lk with you and be with you. And you were such a … such a …” She lifted her outspread hands, grasping for the right word.

  “Bastard?” he suggested.

  “Man. Such a man. So powerful and … sensual,” she said, hurling the word at him. Less defiantly, she added, “And you made me feel like a woman, powerful and sensual, too.”

  “God, Delilah, you will never know how—”

  “No, you will never know. You’ll never know how desperately I felt about you. That night you came to my window and carried me off to the summerhouse was like a dream come true. Oh, I knew you were simply amusing yourself with me.”

  He shook his head. “I wasn’t.”

  “But I didn’t care. I loved you. I wanted you to love me. The last thing I wanted was for Roger to barge in and force your hand or twist your arm or shove in your face just how unsuitable a choice I was for you. I had it all planned, you see, I knew I would continue to see you in London that season. I thought that in time—” Delilah cut off the thought and squelched the small, bereft smile that accompanied it. “I know now it doesn’t work that way. You can’t learn to love someone.”

  Arching her brows, she added, “Especially not someone barely out of the nursery.”

  He grimaced. “Delilah, believe me, when I said that I was—”

  “You were speaking the truth,” she broke in. “I was too young and foolish to be involved with a man … especially a man like the Blackmoor Devil.” Her sudden laugh had an edge of self-disgust. “If my behavior that night didn’t prove that beyond any doubt, I certainly proved you right a few weeks later when I insisted on marrying Andrew in order to show you that I was not a child, that I was a woman.” She laughed again, wearily this time. “Instead, all I managed to do was cheat and confuse a man who deserved much better.”

  “Moon bragged about you all the time,” he told her. “I know because we had friends in common. If it’s any consolation, I don’t believe he felt cheated in the least.”

  “Thank you, but it’s no consolation. I know the extent of my deceit even if poor Andrew never did. If I didn’t realize it fully while he was alive, I had it driven home to me when I attended the memorial service to accept the medals he was awarded posthumously.”