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  A Lady’s Dream Come True

  True Gentlemen, Book Nine

  Grace Burrowes

  A Lady’s Dream Come True

  Copyright © 2020 by Grace Burrowes

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  If you uploaded this file to, or downloaded it from, a file sharing, torrent, open access internet library, or other pirate site, you did so in contravention of the law and against the author’s express wishes.

  Please don’t be a pirate.

  Contents

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  To My Dear Readers

  Excerpt—My Heart’s True Delight

  Excerpt — The Truth About Dukes

  Dedication

  A Lady’s Dream Come True

  * * *

  To the artists and to the galleries who preserve and protect the artist’s legacy

  Chapter One

  Throughout the length and breadth of England, fair summer days enjoyed a certain sameness. The blue of the sky rarely varied; the cheerful sun shone alike on cattle, sheep, country manor, or urban market with a predictably mellow, golden quality.

  Before Oak Dorning had turned fifteen, sunny days had ceased to surprise his artist’s eye.

  Rainy days, by contrast, varied from location to location. In the north, the rain took on an icy gleam. Along a shoreline, a storm could turn rainclouds a brooding jade green. In the uplands, a driving wind made rain more of a grim blur than actual precipitation.

  A mile and a half outside Little Bathboro, along a glorified, double-rutted sheep track, a rainy day was the embodiment of every misery a man who’d recently splurged on a pair of new boots could imagine. A penetrating chill had gripped Oak a mile out from the Bathboro crossroad. The wind kicked up a quarter mile beyond that, and after topping yet another rise, Oak saw that the weather would not relent for the foreseeable future.

  The entire vista before him was shades of desolation and damp, with contrasting dashes of flooding and mud. A square, gray edifice squatted on a slight hill a half mile in the distance, and if that wasn’t Merlin Hall, Oak would lay himself down in the nearest puddle.

  He hefted his sodden valise and was preparing to negotiate slippery downhill footing, when he noticed a darker patch along the hedge-lined track below. A gig pulled by a sopping wet bay had become mired in the ruts, and though the horse hopped gamely forward in the traces, the wheels were stuck fast.

  “Well, hell.” Part of Oak’s mind noticed the interplay of the melancholy clouds and the grass and gorse undulating in the gathering wind.

  Another part continued cursing silently. “Seems you’re a bit stuck,” he said, approaching the vehicle. “Perhaps I can help.”

  The driver was veiled in widow’s weeds, a heavy black wool blanket across her lap. “I can manage, thank you. Get up, Dante.” She waved the whip at the horse’s quarters without touching lash to hide. “Get up, boy. Get up.”

  Oak set down his valise and ignored the icy trickle of rain dripping from the back of his hat brim directly onto his nape. The gig rocked, it jostled, it lurched forward only to sink back more deeply into the ruts. The beast was giving the job a good go, but the steep angle of the rut worked against him.

  “You’re in want of a boost,” Oak said, when the driver allowed the horse a pause in his labors. “As it happens, I enjoyed a rural upbringing. I’ve unstuck a gig or two, ma’am, and I can have you on your way in a moment.”

  She had good posture, whoever she was. Her back was as straight as a marble column, and her hands on the reins gave with the horse’s attempts to win free. A competent whip, as many rural ladies had to be.

  “With another half hour or so of rocking your cart and hopping about,” Oak went on, squishing his way closer to the gig, “your gelding might bounce you loose. Or he might bounce you the rest of the way into the ditch and snap an axle. Your decision.”

  The horse hung his head and sighed, his coat curling wetly along his shoulders and flanks.

  “I hate this.” The lady sounded dejected and tired.

  Had Oak not been assessing the shine of the waning light on the jet buttons of the lady’s cloak, and thus looking more or less at her, he’d not have associated those three plaintive, muttered words with her straight spine and graceful hands.

  “Dante is not precisely thrilled with the day either,” Oak said, “while my own sentiments regarding this weather aren’t fit for a lady’s ears. Your horse seems a sensible sort, and we can take comfort from that.”

  “He’s an utter love, and if he pulls a shoe in this muck, my stable master will give notice.”

  What had sent this woman careering across the countryside on such a day? If she had a stable master, she likely had a closed carriage, but then, heavier vehicles became more easily stuck.

  “He won’t pull a shoe. Dante knows what the job entails.” Oak offered a final, silent curse in the direction of gentlemanly obligations and stripped off his damp gloves. “When the gig comes free, you don’t stop to congratulate the horse, you don’t take a bow for your fine skill with the reins. Trot on. Don’t canter, don’t walk. Keep moving enough to not get stuck again, not so much that you careen into another ditch.”

  “I really wish—”

  Whatever she wished was cut off by a crack of thunder that had Dante’s head coming up sharply.

  “The idea is to rock the gig gently,” Oak said as the rumbling faded. “At the opportune moment, I will lift the wheels, and you will be on your way. Agreed?”

  She nodded, causing droplets to fall from the jet beads weighting the hem of her veil.

  Oak slogged around to the rear of the cart, put his shoulder to the back of the seat, and found what purchase he could in the slick footing. He knew what was coming, he knew what honor required, and he knew he truly should have remained in Dorset sketching butterflies and threatening to make a trip to Paris.

  Except he couldn’t afford a trip to Paris. “Ready?” he asked.

  She took a firmer hold of the reins. “Get up, Dante.”

  The horse really was a saint. He seemed to grasp exactly what the exercise was about, and when Oak hefted the back wheels straight up at the apex of a particularly vigorous rocking arc, the gelding gave a mighty heave forward.

  The driver let out an unladylike whoop, and the cart jaunted off down the lane.

  Without the support of the vehicle, Oak pitched to his knees, as he’d known he would. Unsticking carts was not a business for the faint of heart or high of fashion.

  “Thank you, kind sir!” came trilling back to him over the splash of the wheels, the drip of the rain, and the moan of the wind.

  He pushed to his feet and waved. “Godspeed!”

  What a fool he’d look if the lady could see him. He’d ruined his boots and his breeches, his hat had gone tumbling into the bracken, and he still had another half a mile to slog. A shiver passed over him, and another crack of thunder boomed as the gig bounced out of view around a grassy swale.

  What little daylight there was would soon be gone.

  Oak wasted another ten minutes locating his hat, picked up his valise, and trudged i
n the wake of the cart. If he’d pondered for the rest of the summer, he could not have conjured a gloomier scene. The sky was shifting from bleak to positively dire, and with every step, Oak’s boots squelched.

  And yet, that whoop of joy, that merry, “Thank you, kind sir!” cut through all the misery and chill, as a single shaft of sunlight confirmed the existence of heaven even in the midst of the most desolate, sodden wasteland.

  Oak traveled the rest of the way to the manor, mentally composing a sketch of the stuck gig, the lowering sky, and the brooding house in the background. All quite Gothic, quite dramatic, and awfully muddy.

  A similarly doleful and Gothic butler let him into the entrance of Merlin Hall, after keeping him waiting on the front step for a frigid eternity. Oak’s prospective employer was apparently a thrifty sort, for only a minimum of sconces had been lit, sending flickering shadows dancing along the stone walls.

  “We did not expect you until later this week, Mr. Dorning,” the butler said, casting a meaningful look at Oak’s much-abused valise. “I’ll have that taken up to your room, and perhaps you’d like a bath.”

  “A bath would be lovely, and a tray if it’s not too much trouble. Bread and cheese, a pot of tea, nothing complicated.”

  The butler was white-haired, solid, of African descent, and about as disapproving as a butler could be without audibly sniffing in disgust. Oak’s mother would have adored him.

  “I will alert the kitchen to your arrival. The mistress won’t expect to see you until breakfast tomorrow.”

  An entire lecture lay in that last sentence: By which time, you, Mr. Dorning, will be presentable, in dry clothing, free of mud, and no longer wearing the stench of Eau du Hampshire Hog Wallow.

  Such a scold, added to cold, fatigue, and ruined boots, might have provoked Oak to sketching a most unflattering caricature of the butler, but Oak’s habitual visual inventory of his surroundings at that moment fell upon a hat on a peg beside the front door.

  And not just any hat. This hat was a mourning bonnet, all black, and the veil that would cover the lady’s face to below her chin was weighted with jet beads. A slow, steady drip fell from the trailing end of the veil onto the stone floor. In the subdued illumination of the sconces, no light had ever flared more brightly in Oak’s imagination than did those shiny jet beads, dripping rainwater all over the foyer of Merlin Hall.

  The tub was a bit cramped for a man of Oak’s proportions, but he made do, and the heat of the water was exquisite. He scrubbed off and lay back, happy to soak until the water had cooled a bit more.

  Night had fallen, hastened by the miserable weather, and thus Oak’s chamber was illuminated by only candles and the fire roaring in the hearth. Mrs. Channing apparently did not skimp on fuel, nor did she believe artists should be housed in drafty garrets.

  Oak’s bedroom came with a cozy sitting room, and both chambers sported lit fires. A dressing closet off the bedroom added further to the sense that Oak was a guest rather than an itinerant tradesman.

  He took another nibble of a pale, blue-veined cheese and washed it down with a sip of excellent port. He’d begun the argument in his head—to doze off in the tub or climb out before the water grew cold—when a quiet snick sounded from the other side of the fire screens.

  “I’ll unpack the valise myself,” he said, giving up on the nap. “You needn’t bother. I’ll see to it later.” God willing, his clothes weren’t entirely soaked. His trunks would probably not arrive for another few days, and damp shirts were a misery not to be borne.

  He expected a footman’s cheery greeting, or maybe a disapproving comment from the butler, Bracken. Instead, he heard a quiet rustling.

  “Halloo,” Oak said, sitting up, though the fire screens blocked his view of most of the room. “Who’s there?” Had a maid stumbled into his room by mistake? Did somebody think to rifle what few belongings he’d brought with him?

  He stood reluctantly, water sluicing off him into the tub and cold air chasing the drowsiness from his mind.

  “Show yourself,” he said, grabbing a towel and wrapping it around his middle. “I already have an extra bucket of coal in both rooms.” More evidence that Oak was to be well treated at Merlin Hall.

  Over the top of the fire screens, Oak saw the door to the corridor open. Soft footsteps pattered from the room, though in the gloom, all he could make out was a shadow slipping into the greater darkness beyond the doorway.

  “Bloody hell.” A thief stealing his sketch pad would not do. Oak extricated himself from the tub and bolted for the open door. “Get back here, whoever you are. Stealing from a guest is not the done thing.” Though Oak wasn’t quite a guest. He was an employee at Merlin Hall, an artisan rather than an artist.

  The air in the corridor was even colder than the air in the sitting room had been, and Oak hadn’t gone two yards from his doorway before it occurred to him that he was racing about a strange house wearing nothing but a towel.

  He came to an abrupt halt just as footsteps faded around a carpeted corner. “Christ in swaddling clothes. What was I—?”

  A throat cleared.

  Oak turned slowly, clutching his towel about his waist with one hand.

  “I see the swaddling clothes,” the lady said. “I rather doubt the son of the Almighty stands before me.”

  She wore an aubergine dress so dark as to approach black in the corridor’s shadows, and she held a carrying candle that flickered in the chilly breeze. The candle flame found brilliant highlights in her auburn hair and cast high cheekbones into dramatic relief.

  “Oak Dorning, no relation to the Almighty. I would bow, but a man wearing only a towel has no wish to look yet more ridiculous.”

  The lady cast an appraising eye over him. “I assure you, Mr. Dorning, you do not appear ridiculous, though I can understand why you’d be a bit self-conscious. I am Verity Channing.”

  Oak considered himself too slender, at least when compared to his brother Hawthorne. Compared to Valerian, his toilette and manners were unpolished. He lacked Casriel’s Town bronze. He hadn’t Ash’s head for business, Sycamore’s cunning, or Willow’s imperturbable calm.

  But Verity Channing apparently saw something in Oak’s nearly naked form that held her interest. Her gaze conveyed no prurient curiosity, but rather, the same assessment Oak made when he considered sketching a subject. How did the light treat this particular complexion? Was a slightly different angle more revealing? More honest?

  Candlelight was said to be flattering, but Verity Channing needed no shadows to obscure her flaws, if any she had. Her eyes tilted ever so slightly, the perfect complement to a strong nose, full lips, and swooping brows. Her features had a rare symmetry and came together in ideal proportions. Brows, chin, jaw, cheeks… All the structures of a human face were presented in her physiognomy on the balancing edge between grace and strength, beauty and perfection.

  She was, quite simply, stunning. So lovely to look at that, for a moment, Oak forgot he was wearing only a towel, forgot she was his employer, and forgot that he stood gaping at her in the middle of a chilly corridor.

  He’d heard her laugh out on the cart track, heard her whoop with glee, though now she was utterly composed, inspecting rather than gawking.

  “I owe you a favor, Mr. Dorning,” she said, lowering the candle. “You extracted my gig from the muck and spared Dante and me a long, chilly walk home. For that reason, I will promise never to mention to another soul the circumstances of this meeting.”

  He could not tell if she was teasing him, but he believed she’d keep her word, and thank God for that, because his brothers would never stop laughing if they learned of this encounter.

  “I don’t suppose you might forget the circumstances of this meeting, ma’am? Wipe them from memory, perhaps?”

  He’d have to pass her to return to his room. Her smile, so slight, so devilish, suggested she knew that.

  She approached and handed him the candle. “When I am an old woman who hums under her breat
h to the distraction of all who must endure my company, I will still recall the sight of you clad in only a towel.” She made a slow inspection of his chest, his arms, his shoulders, his face. “And the memory will make me smile. Good evening, Mr. Dorning. I’ll see you at breakfast, though lamentably for me, somewhat less of you, I trust. One wouldn’t want such a fine specimen to come down with a lung fever.”

  She sauntered off into the darkness, and Oak remained in the corridor, sorting through his thoughts. He could not recall anybody—male or female—regarding him with such frank appreciation. The attention was unnerving, but also gratifying in an odd way.

  And besides that lingering sense of gratification, he had the artist’s aching need to render on paper something he’d experienced mostly through his visual senses—but not entirely. A hint of cinnamon hung in the air, a throb of awareness lingered such as a man felt toward a woman who had impressed him viscerally.

  “That smile,” he murmured, gathering up his toweling and returning to his sitting room. “That knowing, impish, female…”

  When three footmen arrived to deal with the tub, Oak barely noticed. He sat swathed in towels and blankets on the sofa, trying to sketch Verity Channing’s smile.

  Oak Dorning made an even stronger impression fully clothed than he did wearing only a towel—which ought not to have been possible.

  Perhaps the difficulty lay in the fact that Vera had seen him nearly naked and knew that the lean torso clad in a lawn shirt and blue paisley waistcoat was wrapped in muscle. Those long legs were similarly powerful, and those shoulders, which filled out a brown morning coat to perfection, could heft a gig from deep mud.