Anything But a Duke

by Christy Carlyle

  “Nothing, unless you can convince one of the men of the Duke’s Den to fund my machine.”

  “I’ve heard of it. Quite a strange arrangement. Titled men flouting convention and inviting others to petition for funds.” Grace lowered her voice and added, “My father thinks it’s all quite scandalous.”

  “Then he’d be horrified to know that I spoke to them.”

  “Did you?” Grace tucked a ringlet of blond hair behind her ear and stared at Diana with concern in her gray eyes.

  “Unfortunately, my presentation didn’t go well.” Disastrous was the most accurate description, but it sounded dreadfully hopeless. “I’m not giving up.”

  “You rarely do.” Grace’s smile indicated the words were meant as more compliment than critique. “What do you plan to do?”

  “Divide and conquer.” Diana stood and retrieved the notes she’d assembled on the men of the Duke’s Den. She laid the sheets down in front of Grace. “I only need to convince one of them.”

  “I know him,” Grace said immediately, pointing to the name of Lord Huntley. “He’s an utter rogue.”

  “So I’ve gathered. As you see, most of the details I have about him are from the scandal rags.” Diana tipped her head. “Do you know him personally? Perhaps you know something that would help me convince him to invest.”

  “I know his sisters mostly. Our families met once in Bath.”

  “Anything he seemed particularly interested in?”

  “Flirtation, as I recall.” Grace winked, then dipped her head to continue perusing Diana’s notes. “Tremayne is quite broodingly handsome, is he not? He and his wife attended one of Mama’s balls last year. They’re terribly smitten and didn’t attempt to hide it.”

  “I’m not particularly interested in what he looks li—”

  “Goodness.”

  Diana leaned closer to see what had caught her friend’s eye. “Ah, yes. Mr. Iverson. He is very . . .” Handsome didn’t seem sufficient. There was symmetry in his features and masculine appeal in every slope and line. But it was the way he carried himself. The confidence he exuded that somehow didn’t ever ebb into arrogance or pompous pride. She’d known from the first moment she met the man that he was kind. Yet she knew now that he could also be hard, decisive. She didn’t imagine him giving in to sentiment often.

  “Compelling,” Diana finally said. “He’s very compelling.”

  “He’s very rich.” Grace turned the page around so that Diana could see and placed her finger over a number. “Is that truly his annual income?”

  “Only an estimate. I calculated based on records I found related to dividends he’d received from his investments.” Diana shrugged. “Could be more or slightly less.”

  “And yet with all this money, he won’t invest in your device?”

  “He did initially refuse.” Diana bit her lip, thinking of the letter she’d impulsively sent. “But I still have hope.”

  Grace continued sifting through the pages and rested her chin on her hand. “What if no one invests? What will you do?”

  “I’ll join you in the marriage hunt. Which will make my mother very happy.”

  “And you very miserable?”

  “Perhaps.” Diana couldn’t imagine that possibility yet. She told herself that it would not come. She’d find funding and then she wouldn’t need to marry. At least not immediately. If she waited, perhaps she’d have time to read poetry and begin to believe in something as fanciful as love.

  “Why does this all matter to you so much?” Grace asked with a wave of her hand around the cluttered workshop. “These inventions. This drive to fund one of them. Are they truly your dreams, or your father’s?”

  “They’re mine, Grace. These designs, everything you see here, is mine.” Diana clenched her jaw and glanced behind her at the row of brushes, rulers, hammers, and chisels. They’d been her father’s tools. In some ways, they were her legacy. But what Diana built, she built to prove her own merit, not to carry on for her father.

  At Bexley she’d been teased for collecting bits of metal and wooden crates in order to build models of her ideas. After she had returned home, her mother discouraged her from scientific study. She’d never forbidden Diana from spending time in her workshop, but her mother made it clear that she believed all the hours spent there were wasted time.

  If Diana could never succeed with one of her designs, then her mother would be right.

  “This matters to me because it’s who I am. Even if I weren’t in this workshop every day, the ideas, the drive to create, would be whirling in my head. It never quiets. But I need it to be more than fanciful notions.” Her mother claimed that Father’s inventions had ruined their family. “I need my inventions to be real and make someone’s life better.”

  Diana realized she was rambling, talking too fast, speaking so that she didn’t feel.

  Grace reached out and laid a hand over hers. “I’m sorry. Forgive me.”

  Diana nodded, but she could no longer find any words. Her mother spoke about their father often, but never of his death. Even she and Dom, as close as they were, had never been able to revisit that pain.

  “I wonder why. The question haunts me,” Diana finally managed. “Why that particular day at that particular hour? And why did none of us know he had become so hopeless?”

  Others referred to Frederick Ashby’s death as tragedy, but no one dared mention that he had taken his own life.

  Diana didn’t pursue her inventions simply to follow in her father’s footsteps. Her ideas were her own. But his life, and his death, were always in her mind.

  “I won’t lose hope. I can’t give up no matter how difficult this path might be.”

  Grace squeezed her hand. “I understand a little better now.” She settled back on her stool and turned contemplative. There was a look that came over her, one Diana remembered from finishing school. She was plotting, and few plotted as well as Grace Grinstead.

  “What are you thinking about?”

  “How I might help you. My father isn’t much of a venturer when it comes to investment. He doesn’t have the funds to risk. But he knows men who do. Club friends. Railroad barons mostly. One man who helped fund Brunel’s steamship. He may know someone. I shall ask.”

  “Thank you, Grace.” Diana spent so many hours alone, so much time in her own head, that it felt odd to have an ally. Odd and yet wonderful. Her heart felt fuller, and the day seemed brighter, but worry still crept in. “How can I repay you for this?”

  “You must wait until I do something worth repaying,” Grace reminded her. She reached out a hand and sifted the pages of Diana’s notes about the gentlemen of the Duke’s Den. “Though I must say that my mother would be forever grateful if you could introduce me to a man as wealthy as Aidan Iverson.”

  The words came punctuated with a trill of laughter. There was as much tease as seriousness in the request, Diana knew. But even that light jest caused something to knot in Diana’s stomach. A burn of irritation and possessiveness when she had no right to either.

  “I’d be happy to introduce you to him,” she told her friend, “if I ever see the man again.”

  Chapter Ten

  A week after Diana Ashby’s presentation at the Duke’s Den, Aidan paced the pavement in front of her Cadogan Square home, debating the folly of going inside.

  He hated the mere fact that he was debating.

  Decisiveness. Taking action. That’s what he was known for. He’d never been a man to dither.

  Dragging in a deep breath, he narrowed his gaze and stared at the rose red entrance of the Ashbys’ whitewashed town house. The hue reminded him of Diana Ashby’s mouth, a darker shade than the pink frock she’d worn to the Den, a shadow of the flush that had rushed up the curve of her cheeks.

  The lady behind that door sparked a mix of attraction and interest that hadn’t waned since the night she’d rushed toward him across slick cobblestones, determined to save him from men who were twice her size.


  He’d known then that she was trouble. Brave, impulsive, and troublesome because he’d been utterly unable to forget her.

  “Why the hell am I here?” he grumbled under his breath.

  Her summons was like many he received from inventors eager for someone to make their ideas take flight. Despite her insistence, he didn’t owe Miss Ashby this visit. Clumsiness did not equate to indebtedness.

  But there was the other debt. How did one repay a young woman for recklessly saving one’s life?

  And there was more.

  The desire to see her again had gone past intrigue and become something of a craving since the previous week when she’d torn his coat and stared at him with a disturbing mix of curiosity and interest at the club.

  He should go inside and do exactly as she requested. Give her a chance to display her invention, apologize again for their unfortunate collision, thank her once more for saving his life, and go on his merry way.

  Behaving like a proper gentleman hadn’t been bred into his bones, but he knew enough of propriety to spend twenty minutes with an unwed gentlewoman and not cause a scandal.

  He approached the door, knocked once, and glanced at his pocket watch to remind himself to keep this short.

  “Good afternoon, sir.” A bespectacled older gentleman greeted him and took his measure in one discerning glance.

  “Is Miss Ashby at home?”

  The question seemed to surprise the servant. His mouth dropped open before he answered. “Why, yes, sir. And who may I say has come to call?”

  “Iverson.” He offered the man a calling card. “She invited me.”

  The old man quirked a brow and tipped his head as if he doubted every word. But he took Aidan’s card, coat, and hat, and led him to a drawing room. For a London town house in a good neighborhood, the space was snug but warm and inviting. A wash of morning sunlight streamed through the curtains, enhancing the yellow shade of the walls. It was a room he could easily imagine Miss Ashby inhabiting.

  “If you’ll wait here, sir.”

  Aidan explored the space while he waited, noting every sign that told the tale of the Ashby family. Watercolor miniatures of Diana and her brother. Porcelain figurines of two identical children, a boy and a girl. A pile of books that included everything from Dickens to Copernicus. A few unpolished but framed technical drawings made him wonder if Miss Ashby’s interest in engineering had been encouraged from her youth.

  “Those were my father’s.”

  Aidan inhaled sharply and caught her rosewater scent on the air. He told himself not to act like a fool before turning to face her.

  “He inspired you to become an inventor?” The words came out too rough, because the sight of her was as unsettling as he anticipated.

  A rush of pleasure came first and then the same jolt of attraction as when he’d looked into her eyes at Lyon’s.

  “I suppose he did, in some ways.” Her voice was breathy too and he found himself hoping he had even a fraction of the effect on her that she did on him. “Though our designs are quite different.” She approached and lifted the framed image of a technical drawing that he’d been examining.

  Her nearness sped his pulse. But of course they’d stood this close before. Closer, on the night she’d let him hold on to her in the moonlight.

  Having her close seemed more awkward and intimate today. He was in her home, and she looked far different than she had when he’d last seen her.

  At Lyon’s, she’d worn a fashionable, ruffled traveling gown, her glossy brown hair trapped in pins. Today she was downright unkempt. Her chocolate waves had been captured in a messy braid that lay over one shoulder and her plain peach gown fell naturally over her curves.

  “There was no consistency to my father’s fancies. He could imagine a whole city engineered to his specifications or design something like this.” She held up her father’s drawing. “It’s a ventilating top hat.”

  “A ventilating . . . ?”

  Miss Ashby leaned closer, her bodice brushing the arm of his coat. She lifted a finger to trace the mechanism of the design. “When a man becomes very warm—”

  A sound emerged from the back of his throat. A strangled chuckle, as much because of the absurdity of the design as the fact that she was deliciously close, which had the very unsettling effect of making him overheat.

  She glanced at him as if to determine whether he intended to interrupt her any further and then carried on. “By cranking this lever, the top would open to allow in some cool air.”

  “Why?”

  She looked at him, a confused expression carving two tiny lines between her brows. “Why what?”

  “If a man wishes to be cool, he can simply remove his hat.” He pointed to the crank and lever design. “That seems like far too much work.”

  Miss Ashby returned the drawing to the table where it joined several others, then offered him a smile that made the breath tangle in his throat. “You’re right, of course. Few of my father’s designs ever became more than sketches.”

  “I can see why.”

  “But I assure you, Mr. Iverson, mine are already much more than fanciful nonsense.” There was a delicious gleam of challenge in her gaze.

  “Show me.”

  Without another word, she led him deep into the interior of the house, looking back now and then to make sure he still followed. Finally, she turned and headed toward what appeared to be a back garden. But as they drew closer, he realized much of the space had been taken up by a glass-covered conservatory.

  The Ashby conservatory was filled with mechanical parts and tools. So many technical sketches were applied to the glass windows that they served as wallpaper, blocking much of the sunlight.

  “I hoped you’d come, so I have everything laid out in anticipation. I do need a moment to prepare the device. Are you in a terrible rush?”

  “No.” In truth, he had two investors to meet within the hour, an appointment with his banker, and a lecture to attend in the evening. He’d intended to come and go quickly, to stay as long as politeness required and be on his way. Yet for the first time in a long while, he found himself wishing to linger.

  She disappeared into a partitioned area of the conservatory and he appraised the workshop she’d created. Order reigned in the space, with nails and screws sorted by size and stored in jars on a shelf, spools of wire captured on hooks along the wall, and a neat assembly of books, seemingly organized by topic.

  And then there were her creations. Strange metal contraptions with arms and levers and springs where Aidan had never imagined a spring would be needed.

  One device was particularly intriguing. It was designed in a feminine shape, curved like a metal hourglass, and sat on a high stand that made it the height of a moderately tall woman. Aidan reached out to run his finger along one of the odd metal arms that marched down the length of the shapely device.

  Miss Ashby cleared her throat as she stepped into the room.

  Aidan snatched back his hand.

  “See anything of interest?” She swept her gaze around the collection of devices and then focused on the one that had caught his notice. One dark brow edged up as she watched him.

  He couldn’t back down from the challenge.

  “Tell me about this one,” he said, indicating the shapely device.

  A hint of a smile caused a dimple to flicker in her cheek. “It’s a corset unlacer.”

  Aidan’s throat went dust dry, but his mind flooded with images. Thoughts of Diana Ashby wearing nothing but a corset. And images of how he, not this many-armed contraption, might free her of such a garment. Her back to him, his fingers sliding across her skin.

  When he got lost in his thoughts and said nothing more, Miss Ashby crossed the room and approached her device. She adjusted the mechanical projections so that they were all arranged in a straight row.

  He watched as she ran her hands along the mechanism and wasn’t sure he liked the effect the lady had on him. It wasn’t just her pretty face,
her lush lips, the spark of challenge in her eyes. She made him want to know everything about her.

  Observing her while standing so close, he could almost hear the whirring of her mind. She radiated a determination that was as enticing as her confidence.

  “You own a shopping emporium, don’t you?” The glance she cast over her shoulder told him she wasn’t waiting for an answer so much as stating a fact. She’d admitted to studying all the investors of the Den. He couldn’t help but wonder what else she’d learned about him.

  “Several.”

  “I’ve worked on a prototype that would lace a corset too.” She ran a finger along the row of retracted arms. “The bottom of a lady’s laces would go here and these looseners would gradually ease the laces free.” She pointed to a slat at the bottom of the device’s stand that he hadn’t initially noticed. “By pumping the pedal, the mechanism gradually loosens the corset so that a lady might free herself.”

  “Do ladies generally need freeing from their corsets?”

  “Trust me, Mr. Iverson, you wouldn’t wish to sleep in one.”

  Aidan’s mind tangled on the notion of sleeping and Miss Ashby, and suddenly his thoughts had nothing to do with corsets. Not much to do with sleeping either.

  Rein it in, man. His visit today was a business matter. Nothing else. She’d invited him to consider her invention, not to get lost in thoughts that would scandalize her. She turned to face him, crossed her arms, and notched her chin up with a defiant tilt. “Not all ladies have maids to assist them. And there are times when a woman wishes to become unfettered quickly.”

  He could only manage a nod.

  “Do you think you might be able to sell them in your shop? I could take one in for a demonstration.”

  “Is your pneumatic device ready? I’d be interested in seeing a demonstration of the repaired model of your machine.”

  “Yes, Mr. Iverson.” Miss Ashby pursed her mouth, as if disappointed that he hadn’t jumped at the chance to feature her corset device in his shop. “It’s just through here.”