No Dukes Allowed

by Grace Burrowes, Kelly Bowen, Anna Harrington

  He was warm, however, and he wasn’t shy about discussing money. Theo stayed right where she was.

  “Cambridge offers a better education in the practical sciences and mathematics. I am something of an amateur mathematician, which skill is helpful when managing one’s finances.” He gazed at the fire, his expression once again the remote, handsome scion of a noble house.

  Theo had the daft urge to tickle him, to make that charming smile reappear. He’d doubtless offer her a stiff bow and never acknowledge her again if she took liberties with his person.

  “You offered me plain speaking, Mr. Tresham, yet you dissemble. No ducal heir needs more than a passing grasp of mathematics.”

  He opened a snuff box on the low table before them. Taking snuff was a dirty habit, one Theo had forbid Archie to indulge in at home.

  “Would you care for a mint?” Mr. Tresham held the snuff box out to her.

  Theo took two. “Tell me about Cambridge.”

  He popped a mint into his mouth and set down the snuffbox. “My father went to Oxford. He earned top marks in wenching, inebriation, stupid wagers, and scandal. I chose not to put myself in a situation where his reputation would precede me.”

  Most young men viewed those pursuits as the primary reasons to go up to university. “I gather he was something of a prodigy in the subjects listed?”

  “Top wrangler. So I became a top wrangler at Cambridge.”

  Ah, well then. “And you’ve taken no partners in your business endeavors. Can’t your aunt assist you in this bride hunt, Mr. Tresham?”

  “Quimbey’s wife doesn’t know me, and she’s too busy being a bride herself. She and Quimbey are…” He fiddled with the snuffbox again, opening and closing the lid. “Besotted, I suppose. At their ages.”

  Clearly, Mr. Tresham did not approve of besottedness at any age, and Theo had to agree with him. Nothing but trouble came from entrusting one’s heart into another’s keeping.

  “They are off on a wedding journey of indefinite duration,” Mr. Tresham went on. “They are reminding me that soon, Quimbey will not be on hand. He’s an old man by any standards, and I have put off marriage long enough.”

  “You want me to help you find a bride?”

  “Precisely. I haven’t womenfolk I can turn to for first-hand information, haven’t friends from school who will warn me off the bad investments. In this search, I need a knowledgeable consultant, and I am willing to pay for the needed expertise.”

  A consultant, but not a partner, of course. “Why should I do this? Why exert myself on behalf of a man I don’t know well. I could end up with another woman’s eternal misery on my conscience.”

  Another smile, this one downright devilish. “Would you rather have my eternal misery on your conscience?”

  Well, no. Mr. Tresham was little more than a stranger, but he’d been kind to Diana, he was dutiful toward his elderly relations, and he’d make a woman of delicate sensibilities wretched.

  “How would my matchmaking to be compensated?”

  “Your role has two aspects: Matchmaker and chaperone. I will accept only those invitations where I know you have also been invited. You will simply do as you did with Dora Louise’s ambush in the library—guard my back. You will also keep me informed regarding the army of aspiring duchesses unleashed on my person every time I enter a ballroom.”

  Theo got up to pace rather than remain next to him. “And my compensation?” Five years ago, she would have aided Mr. Tresham out of simple decency. Archie’s death meant she instead had to ask about money—vulgar, necessary money—and pretend the question was casual.

  Mr. Tresham rose. Manners required that of him, because Theo was on her feet, but must he be so tall and self-possessed standing in the shadows? Must he be so blasted, everlasting attractive?

  “Name your price, Mrs. Haviland.”

  Order your copy of My Own True Duchess!

  My One and Only Duke

  * * *

  Quinn Wentworth has escaped the hangman’s noose only to find a ducal title slung around his neck. He married Jane thinking they had no future, but fate has other plans. Now, when he ought to be bringing his enemies to justice, he’s instead besotted with his duchess…

  Having no alternative, Quinn went about removing his clothes, handing them to Jane who hung up his shirt and folded his cravat as if they’d spent the last twenty years chatting while the bath water cooled.

  Quinn was down to his underlinen, hoping for a miracle, when Jane went to the door to get the dinner tray. He used her absence to shed the last of his clothing and slip into the steaming tub. She returned bearing the food, which she set on the counterpane.

  “Can you manage? I’m happy to wash your hair.”

  “I’ll scrub off first. Tell me how you occupied yourself in my absence.”

  She held a sandwich out for him to take a bite. “This and that. The staff has a schedule, the carpets have all been taken up and beaten, Constance’s cats are separated by two floors until Persephone is no longer feeling amorous.”

  Quinn was feeling amorous. He’d traveled to York and back, endured Mrs. Daugherty’s gushing, and Ned’s endless questions, and pondered possibilities and plots, but neither time nor distance had dampened his interest in Jane one iota.

  Her fingers massaging his scalp and neck didn’t help his cause, and when she leaned down to scrub his chest, and her breasts pressed against Quinn’s shoulders, his interest became an ache.

  The water cooled, Jane fed him sandwiches, and Quinn accepted that the time had come to make love with his wife. He rose from the tub, water sluicing away, as Jane held out a bath sheet. Her gaze wandered over him in frank, marital assessment, then caught, held, and ignited a smile he hadn’t seen from her before.

  “Why Mr. Atherton, you did miss me after all.” She passed him the bath sheet, and locked the parlor door and the bedroom door, while Quinn stood before the fire and dried off.

  “I missed you too,” Jane said, taking the towel from him and tossing it over a chair. “Rather a lot.”

  Quinn made one last attempt to dodge the intimacy Jane was owed, one last try for honesty. “Jane, we have matters to discuss. Matters that relate to my travels.” And to his past, for that past was putting a claim in his future, and Jane deserved to know the truth.

  “We’ll talk later all you like, Quinn. For now, please just take me to bed.”

  She kissed him, and he was lost.

  Order your copy of My One and Only Duke

  Pursuit of Honor

  Kelly Bowen

  Chapter One

  * * *

  Brighton, England, 1823

  “He’s here.”

  Diana felt an arm wrap around her waist, and she was almost yanked off her feet as she was pulled behind a potted fern that was starting to wilt. “Good Lord, Hannah, where have you been? You can’t just up and disappear for an hour—”

  “Hide,” her friend urged frantically, crouching behind the massive pot at the far edge of the ballroom and dragging Diana down with her.

  Diana’s right knee hit the ground, though she covered her wince with a light laugh. “Very funny, Hannah.”

  “I’m not trying to be funny. I’m trying to keep him from seeing you. Or me.”

  Diana sobered at Hannah’s urgent tone and cast a wary eye about them, but no one seemed to have noticed that she’d been all but wrestled to the ground. With the champagne flowing, conversation competing in volume with the music, and small, selfish dramas playing out all over the crowded room, no one even looked their way. Which had been Diana’s general objective in the first place. Stay in the background. Avoid notice.

  And the idea that the Duke of Riddington had managed to follow her yet again made her both uncomfortable and furious at the same time.

  Furious because the abhorrent man had the power to make her uncomfortable. Furious because she was reduced to crouching behind the imported shrubbery, on her hands and knees in a manner she hadn’t done
since she was nine. Furious because her well-intentioned friend believed this was a better option than another conversation with him, or another round of not-so-subtle suggestions that Riddington would do Diana the honor of allowing her to warm his ducal bed, if only she would come to her senses.

  “This is crushing my skirts,” she muttered.

  “Who cares about your skirts?” Hannah slowly stuck her head over the top of the pot, pushing aside a spray of fronds. The theme for tonight’s ball was the wilds of the Far East. Swaths of embroidered crimson and tangerine silk were tacked to the walls, and potted ferns lined the perimeter of the entire room. Ropes of ivy had been hung from the chandeliers in an attempt to create a canopy of vines. A handful of peacocks strutted through the chairs and refreshment tables, occasionally voicing their displeasure over the sound of the music. Someone had even come up with a tiger hide, and that was draped over the dais upon which the orchestra sat. Its glass eyes stared unseeingly at the crush, its teeth bared in an eternal snarl. Diana rather felt that the entire display belonged on a stage and not in a ballroom, but Hannah adored such spectacles.

  “I am not hiding behind a pot all night,” Diana said, making an effort to rise. Her pride was worth far more than the Duke of Riddington.

  Hannah yanked her back down with more strength than should have been possible for a small, red-haired, green-eyed pixie. “Well, I can’t go out there.”

  Diana finally extricated herself from Hannah’s grasp and staggered to her feet. The Duke of Riddington was her problem, not Hannah’s. Diana would deal with him again if she had to, but her more immediate concern was dealing with the woman who was still cowering behind the décor, looking pale and panicked and disheveled. In truth, Hannah hadn’t been herself in awhile—withdrawn and secretive and seemingly avoiding everyone, Diana included. She’d tried many times to gently extract the source of her friend’s discontent, but her efforts had been met only with mumbled apologies and no real explanations. Yet since the redhead had arrived in Brighton last week, the vivacious, cheerful Hannah Burton seemed to have returned.

  “He shall see you.” Hannah’s eyes darted between Diana and the far side of the room.

  Diana followed her gaze and saw nothing but a wall of people in a dizzying array of colors, none of whom seemed to be looking in their direction.

  “And then he shall see me.” Hannah crouched lower behind the greenery. “He can’t see me. I’m not ready to see him. Promise me you won’t let him see me.”

  Diana was aware she was scowling now, and she forced her expression to relax. “I don’t see the duke,” she told Hannah. A horrible thought struck her. Had Riddington threatened or propositioned Hannah in his vile manner? Had—

  “The duke?” Hannah’s gaze snapped to Diana’s face. “What duke?”

  “Riddington.” He was, in part, why Diana had left London in the first place, though that had been pointless, given the man had appeared in Brighton not three days later. The relentless gossip that linked Diana and the duke had followed hard on his heels.

  “Riddington? He’s here too? Oh, good God, this is a disaster.”

  “Wait, who were you talking about?” Diana asked.

  Hannah pushed the fern fronds a little farther to the side and scrambled back. “No, no, no. I can’t do this now.”

  Diana looked across the room again, half expecting to see a bloody troll with a great lurching gait and a mouthful of sharp, pointy fangs headed their way. But all she could see were knots of people standing and talking and drinking and laughing. One group of dandies, dressed obnoxiously and speaking in tones to match, were clearly well on their way to being utterly foxed. A dark-haired gentleman with his back to her stood just past them, a tall, masculine figure in well-tailored, elegant evening clothes. Those dandies would do well to take a lesson from him, she thought idly. There was nothing more attractive in a man than one who was confident enough that he felt no need to posture.

  “Don’t tell him you saw me,” Hannah said, and Diana twisted to find her friend crawling from behind the pot toward the wall. “Promise me. I was never here.” Hannah reached the wall on her hands and knees and stood, sidling under a hanging swath of crimson silk.

  Diana followed her, wondering if she should fetch Hannah’s aunt, who was somewhere in this crowd, and have her take her niece home. Because her niece had clearly taken leave of her senses.

  “I need your word that you won’t mention me at all.” Hannah’s disembodied demand was frantic.

  “You have my word. But, Hannah, this is ridiculous,” Diana started, though she was speaking now toward nothing but a curtain of crimson silk hanging on the wall. “I can handle the duke or anyone else who—”

  “It’s not the duke or anyone else,” Hannah hissed. She poked her head out, making frantic gestures in the direction of the dance floor. “It’s Oliver.”

  Chapter Two

  * * *

  “Say, who is that woman talking to a potted fern?”

  Oliver Graham, third and youngest son of Viscount Hambleton, drained what was left in his glass of a middling-quality brandy. He’d been trying to ignore the three young dandies who were having a very loud, somewhat drunken conversation behind him, but that comment had piqued his interest.

  He turned casually, his eyes sweeping past them and over the crowd, finding the object of the dandies’ discussion near the far wall. She had her back to him, gleaming wheat-gold curls artfully arranged at the back of her head, a few spilling down over the champagne hue of her gown. Even from this distance, he could see the gracefulness of her movements and the slide of satin over curves that would make any man with a pulse look twice.

  Even if the fact that she did, indeed, appear to be talking to a potted fern did not.

  This was absurd. Oliver had been in Brighton barely twenty-four hours, and this was not how he had envisioned spending his time. Wasting his time, in truth. There were things that legitimately required his attention, the least of which was finding Madelene. A dull fury rose, one that had been festering since he had stopped in London and discovered that his sister was not in Boston as he had believed. As he had been told. The story had been something that his parents used to explain away the fact that his sister had abruptly left London six years ago for whereabouts unknown.

  Unknown, save for a single, unopened, unread letter she had sent the unforgiving viscount and viscountess a year after her departure, postmarked Brighton. A letter that confirmed Oliver’s worst suspicions and made his heart break and his anger ignite.

  “That woman is the Duke of Riddington’s mistress,” one of the dandies behind him stage-whispered loud enough for half the room to hear.

  This wasn’t absurd, it was intolerable. Nothing had changed in the dozen years he had been gone. It was still a never-ending agenda of balls and assemblies and musicales where the same small people gossiped about the same small things. He wasn’t sure how he’d managed to be persuaded to partake in it all tonight, but he blamed his bad judgment solely on his friend.

  You should accept your invitation to the Montmartin ball , Maxwell Thorpe had suggested. You’ll see some old friends, he’d promised with a wink and a knowing look. That assurance had finally convinced Oliver to go, yet he had not seen anyone he even remotely recognized, much less knew. Something that didn’t come as any sort of shock, since he’d been away from England for well over a bloody decade.

  “Not his mistress,” the second dandy was arguing behind him. “I heard she won’t have him.”

  “But the scandal sheets said he’s already had her. In all sorts of—”

  “You can’t believe everything you read,” the second dandy scoffed.

  Dandy One snorted into his glass and promptly choked. “I’d have the duke,” he snickered when he’d recovered. “Wherever and whenever he wanted. If only for the wardrobe he’d buy me.”

  “She’s only the daughter of a damn baron.” His friend giggled drunkenly. “Almost a nobody. You at least have the
advantage of rank. Perhaps you should ask His Grace when he plans to give up on her and if he’d consider you.”

  Oliver’s eyes swiveled back to the woman talking to the fern. Only now, she had moved and seemed to be conversing with the swath of silk hanging against the wall, her back still to them. The color of her hair was faintly familiar. Or maybe it was her height. Or— He stopped, discarding his conjectures and far-fetched ideas. He knew a blond-haired girl who was the daughter of a baron, but she didn’t possess curves like that. And she wouldn’t be talking to ferns. Or walls.

  “If a woman like that turns down a damn duke, what chance do we have?” It was said morosely by the buck who had asked the original question. “Is she holding out for a bloody prince?”

  “A woman who looks like that could. She’s already turned down two earls and a marquess since she was widowed. I hear the pot at White’s is up to two thousand pounds on who will bed her first.”

  The seed of suspicion was starting to sprout despite the part of his brain that was telling him it was impossible. Well, unlikely at least, that his childhood friend would be here. A childhood friend who had written him hundreds and hundreds of letters and entertained him with stories from home during his absence. But she had said nothing about Brighton in her last one, after he had written to tell her he was coming back to England.

  You’ll see some old friends, Thorpe had told him.

  Oliver stared harder. It couldn’t be. And yet—

  “But she was just talking to a plant,” one of the dandies tittered.

  “No one said she was sane. One doesn’t have to be sane to be taken to bed and fu—”

  “Excuse me.” Oliver shoved through the knot of dandies with more force than was necessary. There were numerous mutterings and exclamations, but Oliver ignored them, making his way across the room, heading for the blond vixen who had turned down a duke, two earls, and a marquess. A vixen who was still talking to a swath of crimson silk.