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Only Beloved
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Chapter 1
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She picked up her cup and sipped her tea. But it had grown tepid and she pulled a face. It was entirely her own fault, of course. But she hated tea that was not piping hot.
And then a knock sounded on the outer door. Dora sighed. She was just too weary to deal with any chance caller. Her last pupil for the day had been fourteen-year-old Miranda Corley, who was as reluctant to play the pianoforte as Dora was to teach her. She was utterly devoid of musical talent, poor girl, though her parents were convinced she was a prodigy. Those lessons were always a trial to them both.
Perhaps Mrs. Henry would deal with whoever was standing on her doorstep. Her housekeeper knew how tired she always was after a full day of giving lessons and guarded her privacy a bit like a mother hen. But this was not to be one of those occasions, it seemed. There was a tap on the sitting room door, and Mrs. Henry opened it and stood there for a moment, her eyes as wide as twin saucers.
"It is for you, Miss Debbins," she said before stepping to one side.
And, as though her memories of last year had summoned him right to her sitting room, in walked the Duke of Stanbrook.
He stopped just inside the door while Mrs. Henry closed it behind him.
"Miss Debbins," He bowed to her. "I trust I have not called at an inconvenient time?"
Any comfort Dora had drawn during those few days last year from a realization that he was kindly and approachable and really quite human fled without a trace, and she was every bit as smitten by awe as she had been when she met him for the first time in the drawing room at Middlebury Park. He was tall and distinguished looking, with dark hair silvered at the temples, and austere, chiseled features consisting of a straight nose, high cheekbones and rather thin lips. He bore himself with a stiff, forbidding air she did not remember from last year. He was the quintessential fashionable, aloof aristocrat from head to toe, and he seemed to fill Dora's sitting room and deprive it of most of the breathable air.
She realized suddenly that she was still sitting and staring at him all agape, like a thunderstruck idiot. He had spoken to her in the form of a question and was regarding her with raised eyebrows in expectation of an answer. She scrambled belatedly to her feet and curtsied. She tried to remember what she was wearing and whether her garments included a cap.
"Your Grace," she said. "No, not at all. I have given my last music lesson for the day and have been having my tea. The tea will be cold in the pot by now. Let me ask Mrs. Henry—"
But he had held up one elegant staying hand.
"Pray do not concern yourself," he said. "I have just finished taking refreshments with Vincent and Sophia."
With Viscount and Lady Darleigh.
"I was at Middlebury Park earlier today," she said, "giving Lady Darleigh a pianoforte lesson since she missed her regular one while she was in London for Lady Barclay's wedding. She did not say anything about your having come back with them. Not that she was obliged to do so, of course." Her cheeks grew hot. "It was none of my business."
"I arrived an hour ago," he told her, "unexpected but not quite uninvited. Every time I see Vincent and his lady, they urge me to visit any time I wish. They always mean it just as they never expect that I will come. This time I did. I followed almost upon their heels from London, in fact, and, bless their hearts, I do believe they were happy to see me. Or not see in Vincent's case. Sometimes one almost forgets that he cannot literally see."
Dora's cheeks grew hotter. For how long had she been keeping him standing there by the door? Whatever would he think of her rustic manners?
"But will you not have a seat, Your Grace?" She indicated the chair across the hearth from her own. "Did you walk from Middlebury? It is a lovely day for air and exercise, though, is it not?"
He had arrived from London an hour ago? He had taken tea with Viscount and Lady Darleigh and had stepped out immediately after to come… here? Perhaps he brought a message from Agnes?
"I will not sit," he said. "This is not really a social call."
"Agnes—?" Her hand crept to her throat. His stiff, formal manner was suddenly explained. There was something wrong with Agnes. She had miscarried.
"Your sister appeared to be glowing with good health when I saw her a few days ago," he said. "I am sorry if my sudden appearance has alarmed you. I came to ask a question."
Dora clasped both hands at her waist and waited for him to continue. A day or two after she had played for the guests at Middlebury last year he had come to the cottage with a few of the others to thank her for playing and to express the hope that she would do so again before their visit came to an end. It had not happened. Was he going to ask now? For this evening, perhaps? Suddenly she forgot her weariness.
"I wondered, Miss Debbins," he said, "if you would do me the great honor of marrying me.”
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DUKE OF MY DREAMS
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By
Grace Burrowes
Dedication
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To the odd ducks
Chapter 1
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“I do not ask this boon of you lightly.”
Elias, Duke of Sedgemere, strolled along, damned if he’d embarrass Hardcastle with any show of sentiment in the face of Hardcastle’s wheedling. Hardcastle was, after all, Sedgemere’s oldest and dearest friend too.
Also Sedgemere’s only friend.
They took the air beside Hyde Park’s Serpentine, ignoring the stares and whispers they attracted. While Sedgemere was a blond so pale as to draw the eye, Hardcastle was dark. They were both above average in height and brawn, though Mayfair boasted any number of large, well-dressed men, particularly as the fashionable hour approached.
They were dukes, however, and to be a duke was to be afflicted with public interest on every hand. To be an unmarried duke was to be cursed, for in every ballroom, at the reins of every cabriolet, holding every parasol, was a duchess-in-waiting.
Thus Sedgemere endured Hardcastle’s importuning.
“You do not ask a boon,” Sedgemere said, tipping his hat to a fellow walking an enormous brindle mastiff. “You demand half my summer, when summer is the best time of year to bide at Sedgemere House.”
They had known each other since the casual brutality and near starvation that passed for a boy’s indoctrination at Eton, and through the wenching and wagering that masqueraded as an Oxford education. Hardcastle, however, had never married, and thus knew not what horrors awaited him on the way to the altar.
Sedgemere knew, and he further knew that Hardcastle’s days as a bachelor were numbered, if Hardcastle’s estimable grandmama was dispatching him to summer house parties.
“If you do not come with me, Sedgemere, I will become a bad influence on my godson. I will teach the boy about cigars, brandy, fast women, and profligate gambling.”
“The child is seven years old, Hardcastle, but feel free to corrupt him at your leisure, assuming he does not prove to be the worse influence on—good God, not these two again.”
The Cheshire twins, blond, blue-eyed, smiling, and as relentless as an unmentionable disease, came twittering down the path, twirling matching parasols.
“Miss Cheshire, Miss Sharon,” Hardcastle said, tipping his hat.
Sedgemere discreetly yanked on his friend’s arm, though nothing would do but Hardcastle must exchange pleasantries as if these women weren’t the social equivalent of Scylla and Charybdis.
“Ladies.” Sedgemere bowed as well, for he was in public and the murder of a best friend was better undertaken in private.
“Your Graces! How fortunate that we should meet!” Miss Cheshire gushed. The elder by four minutes, as Sedgemere had been informed on at least a hundred occasions, she generally led the conversational charges. “I told Sharon this very morning that you could not possibl
y have left Town without calling upon us, and I see I was right, for here you both are!”
Exactly where Sedgemere did not want to be.
“We’ll take our leave of—” Sedgemere began, just as Hardcastle winged an arm.
“A pleasant day for pleasant company,” Hardcastle said.
Miss Cheshire latched on to Hardcastle like a Haymarket streetwalker clutched her last penny’s worth of gin, and Miss Sharon appropriated Sedgemere’s arm without him even offering.
“You weren’t planning to call on us, were you?”
Miss Sharon posed exactly the sort of query a man who’d endured five years of matrimonial purgatory knew better than to answer. If Sedgemere admitted that he’d no intention of calling on anybody before departing London, the Cheshire chit would pout, tear up, and try to shame him into an apology-call. If he lied and protested that, of course he’d been planning on calling, she’d assign him a time and date, and be sure to have her bosom bows lying in ambush with her in her mama’s parlor.
Abruptly, three weeks trudging about the hills of the Lake District loomed not as a penance owed a dear friend, but as a reprieve, even if it meant uprooting the boys.
“My plans are not yet entirely made,” Sedgemere said. “Though Hardcastle and I will both be leaving Town shortly.”
Miss Sharon was desolated to hear this, though everybody left the pestilential heat of a London summer if they could. She cooed and twittered and clung from one end of the Serpentine to the other, until Sedgemere was tempted to push her into the water simply to silence her.
“We bid you adieu,” Hardcastle said, tipping his hat once more, fifty interminable, cooing, clutching yards later. “And we bid you farewell, for as Sedgemere says, the time has come for ruralizing. I’m sure we’ll see both of you when we return to London.”
Hardcastle was up to something, Sedgemere knew not what. Hardcastle was a civil fellow, though not even the Cheshire twins would accuse him of charm. Sedgemere liked that about him, liked that one man could be relied upon to be honest at all times, about all matters. Unfortunately, such guilelessness would make Hardcastle a lamb to slaughter among the house-party set.
Amid much simpering and parasol twirling, the Cheshire ladies minced back to Park Lane, there to lurk like trolls under a bridge until the next titled bachelor came along to enjoy the fresh air.
“Turn around now,” Sedgemere said, taking Hardcastle by the arm and walking him back the way they’d come. “Before they start fluttering handkerchiefs as if the Navy were departing for Egypt. I suppose you leave me no choice but to accompany you on this infernal frolic to the Lakes.”
“Because you are turning into a bore and a disgrace and must hide up north?” Hardcastle inquired pleasantly.
“Because there’s safety in numbers, you dolt. Because if Miss Cheshire had sprung that question on you, about whether you intended to call, you would have answered her, and spent half of Tuesday in her mama’s parlor, dodging debutante décolletages and tea trays.”
Marriage imbued a man with instincts, or perhaps fatherhood did. Hardcastle was merely an uncle, but that privileged status meant he had his heir without having stuck the ducal foot in parson’s mousetrap.
“I say, that is a handsome woman,” Hardcastle muttered. Hardcastle did not notice women, but an octogenarian Puritan would have taken a closer look at the vision approaching on the path.
“Miss Anne Faraday,” Sedgemere said, a comely specimen indeed. Tall, unfashionably curvaceous, unfashionably dark-haired, she was also one of few women whose company did not send Sedgemere into a foul humor. In fact, her approach occasioned something like relief.
“You’re not dodging off into the rhododendrons,” Hardcastle said, “and yet you seem to know her.”
Would Miss Faraday acknowledge Sedgemere? She was well beyond her come out, and no respecter of dukes, single or otherwise.
“I don’t know her well, but I like her very much,” Sedgemere said. “She hates me, you see. Has no marital aspirations in my direction whatsoever. For that alone, she enjoys my most sincere esteem.”
* * * * *
Effie was chattering about the great burden of having to pack up Anne’s dresses in this heat, and about the dust of the road, and all the ghastly impositions on a lady’s maid resulting from travel to the countryside at the end of the Season.
Anne half-listened, but mostly she was absorbed with the effort of not noticing. She did not notice the Cheshire twins, for example, all but cutting her in public. They literally could not afford to cut her. Neither could the Henderson heir, who merely touched his hat brim to her as if he couldn’t recall that he’d seen her in Papa’s formal parlor not three days ago. Mr. Willow Dorning, an earl’s spare who was rumored to enjoy the company of dogs more than people, offered her a genuine, if shy, smile.
If Anne wanted freedom from Papa’s sad eyes and long-suffering sighs, the price she paid was not noticing that, even in the genteel confines of Hyde Park, most of polite society was not very polite at all—to her.
“It’s that dook,” Effie muttered, “the ice dook, they call him.”
“He’s not icy, Effie. Sedgemere is simply full of his own consequence.”
And why shouldn’t he be? He was handsome in a rigid, frigid way, with white-gold hair that no breeze would dare ruffle. His features were an assemblage of patrician attributes—a nose well suited to being looked down, a mouth more full than expected, but no matter, for Anne had never seen that mouth smile. Sedgemere’s eyes were a disturbingly pale blue, as if some Viking ancestor looked out of them, one having a grand sulk to be stranded so far from his frozen landscapes and turbulent seas.
“Your papa could buy and sell the consequence of any three dooks, miss, and well they know it.”
“The problem in a nutshell,” Anne murmured as Sedgemere’s gaze lit on her.
He was in company with the Duke of Hardcastle, whom Anne had heard described as semi-eligible. Hardcastle had an heir, twelve estates, and a dragon for a grandmother. He was notably reserved, though Anne liked what she knew of him. He wasn’t prone to staring at bosoms, for example.
Always a fine quality in a man.
Sedgemere was even wealthier than Hardcastle, had neither mama nor extant duchess, but was father to three boys. To Anne’s dismay, His Grace of Sedgemere did not merely touch a gloved finger to his hat brim, he instead doffed his hat and bowed.
“Miss Faraday, hello.”
She was so surprised, her curtseys lacked the proper deferential depth. “Your Graces, good day.”
Then came the moment Anne dreaded most, when instead of not-noticing her, a scion of polite society did notice her, simply for the pleasure of brushing her aside. Sedgemere had yet to indulge in that particular sport with her, but he too, had visited in Papa’s parlor more than once.
“Shall you walk with us for a moment?” Sedgemere asked. “I believe you know Hardcastle, or I’d perform the introductions.”
A large ducal elbow aimed itself in Anne’s direction. Such an elbow never came her way unless the duke in question owed Papa at least ten thousand pounds.
“Sedgemere’s on his best behavior,” Hardcastle said, taking Anne’s other arm, “because if you tolerate his escort, then he’ll not find other ladies plaguing him. The debutantes fancy Sedgemere violently this time of year.”
The social Season was wrapping up, and too many families with daughters had endured the expense of a London Season without a marriage proposal to show for their efforts. Papa made fortunes off the social aspirations of the beau monde, while Anne—with no effort whatsoever—made enemies.
“The young ladies fancy unmarried dukes any time of year,” Anne replied. Nonetheless, when Sedgemere tucked her hand onto his arm, she allowed it. This time tomorrow, she’d be well away from London, and the awful accusations resulting from a chance meeting in the park would never reach her ears.
The gossips would say that the presuming, unfortunate Anne Faraday was after
a duke. No, that she was after two dukes.
Or perhaps, wicked creature that she was, she would pursue a royal duke next, for her father could afford even a royal husband for her.
“Will you spend the summer in Town, ma’am?” Hardcastle asked.
“Likely not, Your Grace. Papa’s business means he will remain here, but he prefers that I spend some time in the shires, if possible.”
“You always mention your father’s business as early in a conversation as possible,” Sedgemere said.
Anne could not decipher Sedgemere. His expression was as unreadable as a winter sky. If he’d been insulting her, the angle of his attack was subtle.
“I merely answered His Grace of Hardcastle’s question. What of Your Graces? Will you soon leave for the country?”
Miss Helen Trimble and Lady Evette Hartley strolled past, and the consternation on their faces was almost worth the beating Anne’s reputation would take once they were out of earshot. The gentlemen tipped their hats, the ladies dipped quick curtseys. Hardcastle was inveigled into accompanying the ladies to the gates of the park, and then—
Like a proud debutante poised in her newest finery at the top of the ballroom stairs, Sedgemere had come to a full stop.
“Your Grace?” Anne prompted, tugging on Sedgemere’s arm.
“They did not acknowledge you. Those women did not so much as greet you. You might have been one of Mr. Dorning’s mongrel dogs.”
Well, no, because Mr. Dorning’s canines were famously well-mannered, and thus endured much cooing and fawning from the ladies. Abruptly, Anne wished she could scurry off across the grass, and bedamned to manners, dukes, and young women who were terrified of growing old without a husband.
“The ladies often don’t acknowledge me, Your Grace. I wish you would not remark it. The agreement we have is that they don’t notice me, and I don’t notice their rudeness. You will please neglect to mention this to my father.”
Once Upon A Dream Page 11