Once Upon A Dream

by Mary Balogh, Grace Burrowes

  Anne began to shake, like a fading leaf in a strong autumn wind. “Sedgemere, you cannot believe that I, a mere spinster daughter, could hold the reins to some of the greatest fortunes in the realm. I manage the household, I deal with squabbling housemaids. I don’t even know the names on many of the accounts.”

  Sedgemere tucked that stray curl back in its place when he wanted to undo her coiffure entirely.

  “You make it a point not to know the names, to insist your father speak to you in hypotheticals and exercise what discretion he can. Nonetheless, the bank and all its titled, arrogant clients rely on you to increase the wealth in its coffers. That’s what the flock of pigeons and platoon of special messengers are about. That’s why you can explain multiplication to a boy who disliked addition and subtraction. That’s why you will marry me.”

  She tore from his embrace and stomped off, deeper into the woods. “Don’t you see, Sedgemere, Papa will fail without me. He nearly failed when Mama died, but she’d warned me I’d have to step in. He was about to invest in tulips—tulips, of all the cautionary tales!—and I could not keep silent. Once he realized that I was as capable as Mama had been, he expected that I’d sort matters out.”

  “And you’ve been sorting them ever since,” Sedgemere said, resisting the urge to haul her back into his arms. “You’ve done so well that his business has grown exponentially, and now you dare not take your hand off the tiller for even a few weeks.”

  She swung around to face him and crossed her arms, a feminine citadel of exasperation. “Not even for a few days. Papa takes odd notions and gets ahead of himself, and while I would love to be your wife, Sedgemere, I cannot have the fate of royal dukes and presuming earls on my hands. Papa could ruin them, especially now when they all trust him to produce such excellent returns. The Postlethwaites were courting ruin until two years ago. The Cheshires cannot afford another Season for both daughters. You see my predicament.”

  Sedgemere saw her brilliance, her frustration, her predicament, and her honor.

  He also saw his future duchess. “My love, you have needed a partner. Your father was sensible enough to accept your help when it was offered. Will you be as wise? All that’s wanted is a duke at your beck and call, a fellow somewhat wanting for charm, but well-endowed with consequence and devoted to you.”

  He took another step closer, for he had her attention. “I’ll simply tell your dear papa that he’s to dine with us once a week without fail, and that he’s to hire the manager of your choosing, who will report to you. Hannibal will not sign a document without your permission, will not commit to an investment unless you’ve discussed it with him. I will further bruit it about that the ducal finances, including your dower funds, will be entrusted to his bank for safekeeping.”

  As Sedgemere stalked closer, Anne unfolded her arms. “You’d have me manage my own fortune?”

  “Mine too, if you have time. I’ll be too busy loving my wife and creating trouble in the Lords. Or keeping kites from disappearing into trees, stewarding sheep races, dandling our babies on my knee. If you enjoy finances, it’s my duty to see that you may have as much diversion in that regard as you please—and as little burden. A duke knows all about duty, my dear, but he needs the right duchess to teach him about happily ever afters and true love.”

  * * * * *

  A duck quacked somewhere out on the lake, and a breeze presumed to tease at Sedgemere’s hair. His tone was very stern, but his eyes were no longer an arctic wilderness to Anne. His eyes held promises, and challenges, and such a steady regard her heart warmed to behold him.

  That he’d puzzled out her situation didn’t surprise her that much, though he’d found her out much more quickly than she’d anticipated. She had not, however, expected that his reaction would be to… solve her dilemma.

  “I like money,” she said, lest he mistake the matter. “I like making money grow like that magical beanstalk, and grow with the slow inexorability of the moonrise, grow every which way in between.” Grow like her feelings for Sedgemere. “I like interest calculations, and formulas, and ledgers that balance to the penny. I can chase a missing penny for hours.”

  Sedgemere stood very close. “I can make love with you for hours.”

  Anne had enjoyed a taste of that, when she’d nearly torn his clothes from his body, and he’d met her frantic overtures with slow, steady, relentless desire. Sedgemere’s self-control had taken her breath away, and driven her nearly to Bedlam at the thought of having to give him up.

  She smoothed her fingers over the lock of his hair sent amiss by the wind. “I like money, I do not like being its slave, Sedgemere. You must keep your hand in the finances, help me manage Papa, and ensure I have time to hunt for lucky clovers.”

  She longed, not only to be rescued from her inherited burdens, but also to have all the happiness life as Sedgemere’s wife and mother of his children could dream of. Wealth mattered not at all without somebody to share it.

  Anne had learned that lesson four hundred thousand pounds ago. She had never learned how to beg, though. Sedgemere held her heart in his hands, and all she could do was await his decision.

  He gazed out over the lake, his expression inscrutable. “Will you search for those treasures in the locations of my choosing? The lucky clovers and such? A few might be stashed in the places you’ve yet to thoroughly inspect.”

  Relief and gratitude, sweet and profound, coursed through Anne. She need not be her papa’s abacus ever again—Sedgemere would intercede when she felt overburdened—and she need never carry another burden in solitary misery either.

  “You are all the treasure I will ever need, Elias. You and the boys, and Joseph too, of course.”

  Sedgemere’s arms came around her, Anne leaned into him, and before they returned to the house, she did, indeed, find an entire bouquet of lucky clovers in some very unlikely places.

  Epilogue

  * * *

  “Anne looks different to me,” Hardcastle said as he and Sedgemere sat down to the obligatory rare beefsteak and undercooked potato featured in London’s most exclusive gentlemen’s clubs. On a blustery late autumn day, the place at least had a roaring fire in its dining room. “She seems… happier.”

  Though how taking Sedgemere in hand could add to a woman’s happiness, Hardcastle did not know. Sedgemere seemed happier too. He swore less frequently, reduced fewer presuming earls to quivering wrecks in the Lords, and no longer plagued Hardcastle night and day about finding a bride.

  Tedious business, bride hunting, but Hardcastle’s own grandmama had taken up the cudgels, and seeing Sedgemere and his duchess billing and cooing restored a man’s faith in miracles. Thank goodness, Hardcastle had a nephew in the nursery to prevent Grandmama from declaring outright war on his bachelorhood. Finding the right duchess would require care and planning, nerves of steel, and a well-developed sense of martyrdom.

  “Please pass the damned salt,” Sedgemere snapped. “Are you quite well, Hardcastle? I’m not in the habit of repeating my requests.”

  “Yes, you are,” Hardcastle replied, passing the salt cellar. “Until you get exactly what you want. When is the blessed event?”

  The delicate silver spoon Sedgemere had been dredging through the salt paused. “Did Anne tell you?”

  Well, damn. “You told me. Your step is lighter, you bring up the boys more often than you mention whatever scheme you’re hatching with Moreland regarding the Corn Laws. You dragged me to a shop that sells kites last Tuesday. Marriage agrees with you. Ergo, a blessed event becomes likely.”

  Sedgemere sprinkled salt just so over his beefsteak. The potatoes were hopeless, but Hardcastle passed the butter anyway.

  “I should become a papa again in the spring,” Sedgemere said. “I’m shamelessly hoping for a daughter, and so are the boys. Don’t think you’re safe though.”

  Sedgemere was safe at last. A man at risk of becoming a stodgy old duke had been rescued by a banker’s daughter and a few weeks of duck hunting,
as it were. Hardcastle congratulated himself on having played matchmaker with no one the wiser.

  “I am a duke,” Hardcastle said, taking a sip of a red wine more hearty than delicate. “No one would dare harm my person. Ergo, I am safe. Grandmama would kill the matchmakers for even trying to usurp her right to plague me herself on the matter of matrimony.”

  “As would I, as would Anne, and the boys too. You are not safe, however, from the Duchess of Sedgemere’s latest ambition. Aren’t you having anything to eat?”

  Ambitious duchesses ought to be outlawed by royal decree. Hardcastle poured himself more wine.

  “I’d rather hear about these ambitions you’ve allowed your wife to develop, for I sense they do not bode well for your oldest and dearest friend.” Also, possibly Sedgemere’s loneliest friend, though a duke became inured to loneliness.

  “Anne has your happiness in mind,” Sedgemere said. “I’m mentioning her plans because you’re owed a warning. Once the baby arrives, Anne will turn her attention to organizing a house party. She’s been in correspondence with Her Grace of Veramoor, and your days as a single duke are numbered, my friend.”

  “This is the thanks I get for finding you a wife?” Hardcastle retorted. “For presiding at a duck orgy, and becoming godfather to no less than five waddling little god-ducklings? Now your own duchess is plotting a house party, and my name is on the guest list? Sedgemere, you disappoint me.”

  Though the betrayal was sweet. Sedgemere’s duchess had him firmly in hand. Probably regularly in hand, too. Envy tried to crowd its way onto Hardcastle’s dinner menu, but he fended it off by focusing on the threat immediately before him.

  “When is this bacchanal to take place?” Hardcastle asked.

  “You have plenty of time, not until summer, when all the best bacchanals take place. You might consider spending the summer in France.”

  Not again. France, Ireland, Scotland… Weariness joined envy as additions to the meal’s offerings.

  “Grandmama will never allow me to decline an invitation from Sedgemere House,” Hardcastle said. “I suppose we’ll have sheep races at this gathering too?”

  Sedgemere sat back, crossing his knife and fork over his mostly empty plate. Marriage must give the man an appetite, for Hardcastle had found the food utterly ignorable.

  “You’re just jealous,” Sedgemere said, which was true enough. “I’m the better sheep-race steward, and you know it. We probably will have sheep races too, because the boys are insistent that Christopher come along with you to the house party.”

  Christopher, the nephew who grew three inches every time Hardcastle visited the nursery.

  “What do we have to do to get some trifle in this establishment?” Hardcastle muttered. “You’d have me drag an innocent child the length of the realm so he might be inducted into the royal order of sheep jockeys. My upbringing was deprived, I see that now.”

  His upbringing had been deprived, of course, so had Sedgemere’s. They’d been ducal heirs from too young an age, not allowed to be boys much less rascals or sheep jockeys. Christopher deserved better, though hauling him from Kent up to Nottinghamshire would also mean…

  “Hardcastle, that expression does not bode well for the king’s peace.”

  “The poor king sired fifteen children,” Hardcastle replied, signaling the waiter. “He’ll never have peace again. If Christopher is to attend this house party—assuming it ever takes place—his governess will have to travel north with us and join the assemblage for the duration.”

  “Ah, the trifle arrives,” Sedgemere said, as one waiter removed the dinner plates, and another set a frothy, fruity confection before each duke. “Eat up, Hardcastle. For nothing you can say or do, promise or threaten, will tempt me to get your name off Anne’s guest list.”

  “Don’t be needlessly puerile,” Hardcastle said, taking a spoonful of creamy, delectable heaven. “I know my duty. Eat your trifle, Sedgemere. If Christopher and I are invited to this house party, to this house party we will go.”

  Though they would not go without Christopher’s devoted governess, of that, Hardcastle was most certain.

  THE END

  To my dear Readers,

  I hope you enjoyed Elias and Anne’s story, and appreciate that I did not name it Duck of My Dreams. (I was tempted, but Hardcastle would have none of that.) His story is found in the anthology, Dancing in the Duke’s Arms, and is titled May I Have This Duke?

  If you’re in the mood for more ducal disporting, I recently joined Emily Greenwood and Susanna Ives in publishing the Regency novella anthology, Dukes in Disguise. Three young, handsome dukes take to the shires to dodge the matchmakers, and run straight into the arms of true love. Funny how that always seems to happen.

  My next full length Regency romance— Jack—The Jaded Gentlemen, Book IV—comes out in June 2016. I’m looking very much forward to Jack’s tale, and have included an excerpt for you below.

  If you’d like to be kept informed regarding all of my new releases, special offers, and events, you can sign up for my newsletter. I issue a newsletter several times a year, and will never sell or give away your address.

  You can also find me on Facebook and Twitter, or stop by the website to browse the shelves and catch up on the news.

  Read on for the opening scene from Jack—The Jaded Gentlemen, Book IV!

  Grace Burrowes

  Jack—The Jaded Gentlemen, Book IV

  * * *

  Chapter One

  * * *

  “My poor, wee Charles is all but done for,” Mortimer Cotton ranted. “This is the next thing to murder.”

  All poor, wee, wooly, twelve-stone of Charles—a ram of indiscriminate breed—lay flat out in the December sunshine as if dead from a surfeit of sexual exertions.

  “Thievery has been committed under our very noses, Sir Jack,” Cotton went on, meaty fists propped on his hips. “That woman stole my tup, bold as brass. Now look at him.”

  Charles II, as the ram was styled, would recover from his erotic excesses by sundown, if he ran true to his owner’s boasts. Based on the contentment radiating from Hattie Hennessey’s ewes, Charles had shared his legendary favors with the entire lot of them.

  “Mark my words, Sir Jack: Slander is what we have here,” Hattie retorted. “Mr. Cotton accuses me of stealing yon lazy tup, when he ought to be fined for not keeping his livestock properly contained. Now here the ram is, helping himself to my fodder, and to my poor yowes.”

  Cotton’s complexion went from florid to choleric. “Your runty damned yowes haven’t been covered by a proper stud since they were born, Hattie Hennessey. Do I hear gratitude for their good fortune? Do I hear a word about compensating me for poor Charles’s generosity? No, I hear you blathering on about fines and insults to my integrity as a proper yeoman.”

  Opinion in the shire was usually divided regarding which injured party—for Hattie and Mortimer were perpetually offending each other—had the true grievance. In this case, Hattie had notified Sir Jack that a stray ram was loose among her ewes.

  The very same ram Mortimer would have charged her a fortune to borrow for stud services.

  “Mr. Cotton, might I have a word between us gentlemen—us human gentlemen?” Sir Jack interjected into the escalating insults.

  “I’ll give ye as many words as ye like. None of ’em fit for Charles’s delicate ears.”

  While Cotton cast a baleful glance at his exhausted ram, Sir Jack winked at Hattie. She turned her regard on her ewes, the major source of her cash income, and very likely her dearest companions besides her collie and her cat.

  Jack paced over to the far side of a hay rick, and Cotton followed a few fuming moments later.

  “Hattie Hennessey has not the strength to wrestle your ram over stone walls,” Sir Jack said, “much less carry him the distance from your farm to hers.” This was not entirely true. Hattie Hennessey had the Hennessey family height and substance, even in old age. When in a temper she could likely subdue even
a fractious ram.

  She could not, however, ask for help from anybody under any circumstances, the Hennesseys being notoriously stubborn and independent—much like the Cottons.

  “Then she hired this thievery done,” Cotton shot back.

  “I don’t think so,” Sir Jack replied, brushing a wisp of hay from his sleeve. “In the first place, she hasn’t a single coin to spare. In the second, I think a certain neighbor, who is too kind for his own good, set the ram down among Hattie’s ewes in the dark of night, thus saving a poor widow from begging for aid she desperately needs.”

  Cotton’s bushy white brows beetled into a single line of consternation. “Mr. Belmont, maybe? Or his boys? Boys at that age would consider this a lark. Charles is the friendly sort, when he’s not on the job.”

  Charles was an ovine hedonist. “I’m not accusing the Belmonts of wayward charity, Mr. Cotton. I’m accusing you.”

  Those brows shot up, and before Cotton could get out a word, Jack continued his theorizing. He’d learned serving in India that if senior officers were spared having to comment on a report prematurely, matters generally came to a more sensible conclusion.

  “You know Hattie’s circumstances would deteriorate if she couldn’t replace the ram who died over the summer. You know she can’t afford to go a year without a crop of lambs. Rather than affront her dignity with outright charity, you—or somebody with a charitable heart—concocted this scheme to spare her pride and put her situation to rights. I must say, I’m impressed. Vicar will likely be impressed as well.”