A Dukes Behaving Badly Novella
by Megan Frampton
In Megan Frampton’s delightful Dukes Behaving Badly holiday novella, a young lady entertains a sudden proposal of marriage—to a man she’s only just met!
1844
A coaching inn
One lady, no chickens
“Poultry.”
Sophronia gazed down into her glass of ale and repeated the word, even though she was only talking to herself. “Poultry.”
It didn’t sound any better the second time she said it, either.
The letter from her cousin had detailed all of the delights waiting for her when she arrived—taking care of her cousin’s six children (his wife had died, perhaps of exhaustion), overseeing the various village celebrations including, her cousin informed her with no little enthusiasm, the annual Tribute to the Hay, which was apparently the highlight of the year, and taking care of the chickens.
All twenty-seven of them.
Not to mention she would be arriving just before Christmas, which meant gifts and merriment and conviviality. Those weren’t bad things, of course, it was just that celebrating the season was likely the last thing she wanted to do.
Well, perhaps after taking care of the chickens.
The holidays used to be one of her favorite times of year—she and her father both loved playing holiday games, especially ones like Charades or Dictionary.
Even though he was the word expert in the family, eventually she had been able to fool him with her Dictionary definitions, and there was nothing so wonderful as seeing his dumbstruck expression when she revealed that, no, he had not guessed the correct definition.
He was always so proud of her for that, for being able to keep up with him and his linguistic interests.
And now nobody would care that she was inordinately clever at making up definitions for words she’d never heard of.
She gave herself a mental shake, since she’d promised not to become maudlin. Especially at this time of the year.
She glanced around the barroom she was sitting in, taking note of the other occupants. Like the inn itself, they were plain but tidy. As she was, as well, even if her clothing had started out, many years ago, as grander than theirs.
She unfolded the often-read letter, suppressing a sigh at her cousin’s crabbed handwriting. Not that handwriting was indicative of a person’s character—that would be their words—but the combination of her cousin’s script and the way he assumed she would be delighted to perform all the tasks he was graciously setting before her—that was enough to make her dread the next phase of her life. Which would last until—well, that she didn’t know.
Sophronia was grateful, she was, for being offered a place to live, and she didn’t want to seem churlish. It was just that she had never imagined that the care and feeding of poultry—not to mention six children—would be her fate.
Which was why she had spent a few precious pennies on a last glass of ale at the coaching inn where she was waiting for the mail coach to arrive and take her to the far reaches of beyond. A last moment of being by herself, being Lady Sophronia, not Sophy the Chicken Lady.
The one without a feather to fly with.
Chuckling at her own wit, she picked her glass up and gave a toast to the as yet imaginary chickens, thinking about how she’d always imagined her life would turn out.
There were no members of the avian community at all in her rosy vision of the future.
Not that she was certain what her rosy vision of the future would include, but she was fairly certain it did not have fowl of any kind.
“All aboard to Chester,” a voice boomed through the room. Immediately there were the bustling sounds of people getting up, gathering their things, saying their last goodbyes.
“Excuse me, miss,” a gentleman said in her ear. She jumped, so lost in her own foolish (fowlish?) thoughts that she hadn’t even noticed him approaching her.
She turned and looked at him, blinking at his splendor. He was tall, taller than her, even, which was a rarity among gentlemen. He was handsome in a dashing rosy-visioned way that made her question just what her imagination was thinking if it had never inserted him—or someone who looked like him—into her dreams.
He had unruly dark brown hair, longer than most gentlemen wore. The ends curled up as though even his hair was irrepressible. His eyes were blue, and even in the dark gloom, she could see they practically twinkled.
As though he and she shared a secret, a lovely, wonderful, delightful secret.
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Excerpt from Dirty Talk copyright © 2015 by Megan Erickson.
Excerpt from Dirty Thoughts copyright © 2015 by Megan Erickson.
Excerpt from Guarding Sophie copyright © 2015 by Julie Revell Benjamin.
Excerpt from The Idea of You copyright © 2015 by Darcy Burke.
Excerpt from One Tempting Proposal copyright © 2015 by Christy Carlyle.
Excerpt from No Groom at the Inn copyright © 2015 by Megan Frampton.
DIRTY DEEDS. Copyright © 2015 by Megan Erickson. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition DECEMBER 2015 ISBN: 9780062407771
Print Edition ISBN: 9780062407788
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Dirty Deeds (Mechanics of Love #3) Page 23