When a Duke Says I Do

Read When a Duke Says I Do Online

Authors: Jane Goodger

Tags: #Fiction, #Romance, #General, #Historical

BOOK: When a Duke Says I Do
2.75Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
“YOU TEMPT ME BEYOND REASON.”
 
“Surely you know that,” he said harshly. “You cannot be that innocent. You are not a child.”
She looked ridiculously pleased, and Alexander let out a groan of frustration. “You want to kiss me,” she said, rather too happily.
“Yes, I want to kiss you. I’m a man and you are a beautiful girl sitting next to me night after night in her bedclothes.” He ended on an exasperated note.
“I give you permission.”
He pressed his fingers to his temples and muttered a prayer. “Have you not heard a single word I’ve said, girl?”
“You said you wanted to kiss me.” She sat on the bench and smiled up at him.
“What are you doing to me?” he asked, looking at her almost beseechingly. As she watched, desire and something like resignation flickered in his gaze. And then in one quick, desperate motion, he grabbed her upper arms and brought her against him, their lips only a breath away. “This is a mistake. A mistake...”
Other Books by Jane Goodger
 
Marry Christmas
 
A Christmas Scandal
 
A Christmas Waltz
 
 
 
 
Published by Kensington Publishing Corporation
When a Duke Says I Do
 
J
ANE
G
OODGER
 
 
ZEBRA BOOKS
KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.
 
All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
 
I am always extremely grateful to the people who help me with my research. In particular, I would like to thank Gail Ker vatt, M.Ed., who gave me needed insight into a rare disorder called selective mutism. While this is a disorder that affects children, the impacts of this condition are often felt into adulthood, especially if untreated. In selective mutism, a child cannot physically speak in front of strangers, but easily speaks with people he or she is comfortable with. It’s an extremely complex disorder, and one that can be devastating to a child who has it.
I would also like to thank Tiffany Cooper, who bravely and graciously gave me her first-person account of the affects of botulism, referred to as Kerner’s disease in this book. Tiffany’s courageous battle with this disease was inspiring to me, as she was far more ill than my heroine. Here’s hoping you’re doing well, Tiffany.
Lastly, I would like to thank the great late Kate Duffy for having faith in me, for being one of my biggest fans, and for making me laugh at this sometimes crazy business of writing romances.
Chapter 1
 
Nottinghamshire, England, 1862
 
One of the more harrowing tasks of the servants of Mansfield Hall was searching for Miss Elsie, who had a tendency to fall asleep in the oddest places. They once found her balancing precariously on the edge of a fountain, one hand dangling in the water as carp nibbled curiously and painlessly upon her fingers. Though the servants always began their search in her rooms, it was almost inevitable that they would find her where she oughtn’t to be—and never in her bed.
“Don’t she look like an angel, though,” Missy Slater, Elsie’s personal maid, said, gazing down at her employer as she slept like the dead curled up in an oversized leather chair in her father’s library.
Mrs. Whitehouse, the housekeeper, was far less charitable, and scowled down at the sleeping girl. “As if I have time for this,” she grumbled, then cleared her throat loudly in an attempt to awaken her.
“You has to give ’er a good shake,” Missy said, doing just that. She was rewarded when Elsie’s moss-green eyes opened drowsily, and she smiled. She nearly always woke up smiling.
“What am I missing?” she asked, as she always did. She was feeling a bit groggy, for she must have been sleeping for at least an hour. The servants had been instructed to never awaken Elsie unless something of importance had happened.
“That Frenchie painter is here,” Missy said. “I know you wanted to be in the ballroom when your father met with him.”
“Monsieur Laurent Desmarais, Miss Elizabeth. He arrived not ten minutes ago,” Mrs. Whitehouse said, glaring at Missy for her familiarity. Missy made a face behind the housekeeper’s back and Elsie found herself trying not to smile at her maid. Just because she knew she should, she gave Missy a halfhearted stern look, which only caused the little maid to shrug innocently.
“Thank you, ladies,” she said, bouncing up, as if she hadn’t just been sound asleep. She patted her golden-brown hair, which was none worse for having been slept upon, and headed off to the ballroom. Having the great Laurent Desmarais paint a mural on their ballroom wall was a great coup for the Stanhope family. Usually, the famous muralist painted for no one beneath the level of a viscount, but her father, Baron Huntington, had more pounds than the typical baron, and apparently that income was more than Monsieur Desmarais could resist.
The Stanhope estate was in close proximity to the Dukeries, an area of Nottinghamshire that had an excessive number of dukes, making it a rather fortunate place for any family with girls of marrying age. Elsie had the good fortune of having been engaged to a future duke from the time she was an infant. At least, her father insisted it was good fortune. Elsie thought the idea of having her future laid out before her rather uninspiring.
Which was why having Monsieur Desmarais agree to paint their ballroom was so very exciting. So little of anything nearing excitement happened at Mansfield Hall.
Elsie lifted her skirts and ran, her slippers tap-tapping on the marble floor, as she hurried to the ballroom, a fairly new addition to their sprawling old home. There she found her father in deep discussion with a rather rotund-looking man, whose mustache was so thin, it looked as if it had been painted upon his face. His hair had too much pomade and his clothing looked about to burst away from his porcine body.
“Ah, this must be the beautiful Mademoiselle Elizabeth,” he said in his delightful French accent, and instantly Elsie forgave him his rather dubious charms. She’d conjured up a far more romantic image of the famous painter and felt rather ridiculous about that now.
Elsie dipped a curtsy. “Monsieur Desmarais,
un plaisir
,” she said, in impeccable French. “
Veuillez m’appeler
, Mademoiselle Elsie.”
“Of course. Mademoiselle Elsie. Lord Huntington was telling me a bit of your wishes. You require a large mural, no?”
“Yes. I would like it to cover this entire wall,” she said, indicating a large barren wall that had been stripped of all decoration in preparation for the muralist. A man was there, his back to them, laying out a drop cloth to protect the ballroom’s marble floor.
“My assistant, Andre,” Monsieur Desmarais said, nodding toward the man, who froze momentarily at the muralist’s words before continuing his work. “He does not speak, but he hears perfectly fine, the poor soul. He’s been with me since he was a boy. His English name is Alexander, but I call him by his French name.”
“How very charitable of you,” Elsie said.
Monsieur Desmarais puffed up a bit, seeming pleased by Elsie’s comment. “Do you have anything particular in mind for the mural?” he asked. “I understand you admired Lady Browning’s mural last Season.”
“Indeed I did. But I was thinking of something else. I was thinking of perhaps a lake.” She gave him an impish smile, acknowledging her whimsy. “A magical lake.”
“Magical?” Monsieur asked, with obvious skepticism.
Elsie smiled, her eyes full of merriment. “A secret lake might be a better description. Or one long forgotten. With a gazebo, at the far end.” From the corner of her eye, she could sense the assistant turning his head a bit as if to hear better what she was planning. “It’s painted white, but with paint chipping and rotted wood, perhaps. But I want it to look enchanted, not neglected, if you know what I mean. And in the center of the small lake”—she closed her eyes—“a rock formation, jutting out.”
At that moment a loud clatter sounded and Elsie opened her eyes. The mute had apparently dropped a supply of brushes. In rapid French, Monsieur chastised the younger man. “He is not usually so clumsy,” he said apologetically. “Usually as silent as a little mouse, that one.”
“Do you think you could paint that? I remember such a lake from my girlhood. There were no swans, but you may add some for visual interest or whatever you like.”
“Just a lake?”
“A secret lake,” she said, teasing. “I wonder if it would be possible to paint it as if someone is seeing it through branches or trees?”
“This would be difficult,” he said slowly, staring at the wall, his eyes falling briefly on his assistant. “But I think it can be done.”
“Wonderful,” Elsie said, clapping her hands together. “And will it be done in time for my birthday ball? I’ll be twenty-two on September the fourteenth. Is that enough time?”
“I will endeavor to complete the mural for you in time, Mademoiselle Elsie.”
“It shall be the best of all balls,” Elsie said, grabbing her father’s arm and hugging it to her. “Thank you, Father.”
Lord Huntington gazed down affectionately at his daughter, and Elsie smiled, a bit guiltily, up at him. She knew she could ask her father for the moon and the man would try to give it to her. And since her mother died three years before, he’d been even more indulgent. Even though she was already engaged—and had been for seventeen years—her father had given her a Season in London to introduce her to the society she would soon be an integral part of. Since her fiancé seemed to be in no hurry to marry, Elsie wanted to experience as much fun as she could before the daunting duties of being a duchess claimed her.
“It shall be a lovely mural,” Elsie said, watching as Monsieur Desmarais donned his smock. With a fine charcoal pencil, he began the barest outline of what Elsie knew would be a work of art. She knew, because Lady Browning’s rose garden mural was quite the most beautiful thing she’d seen. She’d half expected the air in the lady’s ballroom to smell of roses, so real and life-like was that fanciful garden. Lady Browning’s only complaint was that Desmarais had included a few fading blooms, which the countess claimed her gardener would never allow.
When Elsie saw that painting, the exquisite detail, the realness that made her feel as if she could walk right into that garden and touch a pointed thorn, she knew she had to have a mural of her own. She knew, without even thinking, what she wanted the subject matter to be. It had to be of that secret lake at Warbeck Abbey, where she and her sister had played, making believe they had discovered something truly magical. They’d never told a soul about the lake, about how they’d dangled bare toes into the cool water while sitting on a dock that was beginning to sag rather dangerously. Elsie and Christine had always dreaded their visits to Warbeck Abbey, for it was such a dour, strict place where the laughter of children seemed out of place. But after they’d discovered the lake, their visits had become far more tolerable.
The mural would be a happy reminder of her sister, who she still so desperately missed. They’d been twins, identical in nearly every way and inseparable, and her death twelve years earlier had affected Elsie profoundly.
“Let’s leave them to their work,” Elsie said, leading her father out of the ballroom. “I have about a dozen letters to write before meeting with the chef. Are you planning any dinner parties in the next few weeks, Father?”
“No, dear. Nothing special.”
Elsie frowned, and started to say something but stopped herself. Her birthday ball would be the first large social gathering they’d had at Mansfield Hall since her mother’s death. While many a man would have remarried already, Michael Stanhope missed his wife desperately and only recently had begun accepting invitations. If not for her aunt Diane, Elsie was quite certain she wouldn’t have had a Season at all. Her father simply had no interests other than wandering the countryside and collecting unusual lichens. They were quite beautiful, but his preoccupation with them was at times a bit worrying. He carried a magnifying glass and sketchbook with him and would disappear for hours at a time. He seemed content enough, but Elsie did worry about him.
Perhaps as much as her father worried about her. What a pair they were—a father who wandered the forest and a daughter who was afraid to fall asleep.

Other books

A Run for Love by Callie Hutton
Damaged 2 by Ward, H.M.
Darkling by Em Petrova
Paranormal Bromance by Carrie Vaughn
Pedigree by Patrick Modiano
At Their Own Game by Frank Zafiro
From Across the Clouded Range by H. Nathan Wilcox