A Duke She Can't Refuse

by Gemma Blackwood

  And he took a step towards the side of the room where Daisy’s legs were protruding from underneath the bed.

  She dared not let out the breath burning in her chest.

  A distant murmur of conversation drifted up from the staircase. Kettleburn stopped.

  The chatter grew louder.

  “Out!” the lawyer hissed, marching back to the door. Daisy breathed out a careful sigh. “Go out the way I showed you – through the servant’s entrance! Make sure you are not seen!”

  “But what about –”

  “Never mind that now! If you are caught here, they’ll call the Bow Street Runners! Is that what you want?”

  The two men left the room. Daisy did not move until the door closed behind them.

  She curled her arm slowly back towards her, rolling her shoulder to ease the pain, and considered what to do next.

  There was no doubt that she had just overheard something illicit, possibly even dangerous. Kettleburn had no right to be in Alexander’s bedchamber, let alone with a stranger, but she was hardly in a position to accuse him of anything. She was not supposed to be in there herself.

  The pieces of broken vase in her reticule knocked against her leg as she eased her way out from underneath the bed. Kettleburn had been looking for that very vase. So Edith was right to think it was valuable – or at least somehow important.

  All the more reason not to be caught in a gentleman’s bedroom with its broken pieces in her possession.

  Daisy was about to stand up and make her own escape from the room when the door creaked on its hinges and swung open again. She flung herself down behind the bed and pressed herself against the floor as though, if she prayed hard enough, it would swallow her.

  “This is such a lovely room,” A female voice this time, and one Daisy recognised immediately. It was Jemima, her sister-in-law. Daisy might have revealed herself then, if not for the sound of multiple feet entering the room behind Jemima. “I hope you are not going to make many changes to it, Duke.”

  “I haven’t begun to think of it,” said Alexander. Unmistakably him this time. No one else’s voice sent little flutters of nerves through Daisy’s stomach.

  At least, this time, the nerves were warranted. Daisy squeezed her eyes shut. What she wouldn’t give to simply disappear!

  “Oh, you must change it however you wish,” came the old duchess’s voice, sad and gentle. “The house is yours now, dear nephew.”

  “Let me see that list, my friend.” If Alexander’s voice had been pleasant but unwelcome, this next speaker was both distasteful and worthy of pure dread.

  Lady Shrewsbury. The cold-hearted gossip who loved nothing more than to spread the word of some poor creature’s downfall. Since, in this instance, that poor creature was likely to be Daisy, she was not inclined to think charitably of her.

  “We will gather up your things together,” Lady Shrewsbury continued, as officious and self-important as ever.

  “There is not very much,” quavered the duchess. “Only a few small, sentimental items which belonged to my husband. I really should have collected them before you moved in, Alexander.”

  “Nonsense! You must always think of this house as your own,” said the duke. “It is no trouble at all.”

  Lady Shrewsbury’s pattering little feet were moving from one side of the room to the other and shredding Daisy’s nerves in the process. She clutched the reticule to her chest and kept her eyes closed. If she could not see them, perhaps they would not see her?

  “Where is that vase you wanted, my dear?” asked Lady Shrewsbury. “I cannot see it anywhere.”

  “Have you moved it, Alexander?” asked the duchess. “My husband kept it on his bedside table. He never put any flowers in it – they made him sneeze terribly – but the vase once belonged to his mother.”

  “I shall ask my valet,” said Alexander. Daisy heard him open the door and speak briefly to a servant waiting outside.

  Someone sat down on the chair at the writing desk with a loud creak.

  “It is rather warm in here,” said Jemima. “Shall I open a window, Duchess?”

  Daisy’s eyes flew open. No, no, no…

  “I am a little cold myself,” said the duchess. “I seem to feel the cooler weather in my bones these days.”

  Daisy’s white-knuckled grip on the reticule relaxed.

  “Ah, Johnson,” said Alexander, as the creak of the door heralded the arrival of his valet. “We are looking for a vase that used to be on the duke’s bedside table. Have you moved it?”

  “No, Your Grace,” said Johnson. “It was here, I’m certain of it. Or was it on the other side?”

  Before Daisy could breathe, Johnson stepped around smartly to her side of the bed and let out a strangled cry of horror.

  “A thief!” he cried. “Stay back, Your Grace!”

  Lady Shrewsbury, the Duchess of Loxwell, and Jemima all let out shouts of dismay. Alexander leapt forwards and thrust himself in front of the valet without hesitation, fists raised to catch the interloper a hefty clobber around the ear.

  When he saw Daisy, he froze for a moment in that pugilistic attitude, his eyes wide and astonished. Daisy held his gaze, mouthing a desperate apology.

  Alexander straightened himself up, coughed to hide his shock, and offered her his hand. Cheeks burning, Daisy allowed him to help her to her feet.

  “Why, Johnson,” said Alexander calmly, “it is only Miss Morton.”

  “Daisy!” Jemima gasped, looking from Daisy to Lady Shrewsbury and the valet in horror. “What are you – why are you –?”

  “Alone in a gentleman’s bedroom,” Lady Shrewsbury’s wrinkled mouth formed a lemon-sucking frown. “Miss Morton, I am alarmed by your behaviour! Anyone would think you were here to –” she lowered her voice to rapturous horror – “seduce His Grace the Duke of Loxwell.”

  Daisy swallowed. It looked bad, she had to admit. Of all the untoward places she had ever found herself, Alexander’s bedchamber was among the worst.

  “I was not trying to seduce anybody,” she said. Alexander’s eyebrow quirked upwards. If she had finally found the way to amuse him, it was not at all worth it. “I was…”

  She hesitated as her mind whirled through a series of possible explanations. She did not want to betray Edith. The vase currently lying in several pieces inside her reticule was evidently a valuable object – to Mr Kettleburn as well as the duchess. She would not break the bonds of friendship unless she was forced. A reasonable explanation for her presence in Alexander’s bedchamber must surely exist. All she had to do was invent it.

  “She was here at my invitation,” said Alexander smoothly. Daisy gaped. His eyebrow quirked up again, and she shut her mouth abruptly. Looking like a gasping fish in front of the Duke of Loxwell would be the ultimate indignity in an already undignified afternoon.

  Why had he said that? Did he think he was protecting her? Or was this his idea of a cunning way to make her pay for the impudence of hiding in his room?

  Whichever it was, nothing she could say would improve the situation now. She was entirely at his mercy.

  “Your invitation?” Jemima repeated, narrowing her eyes at Alexander. “Are you in the habit of inviting unmarried girls into your bedroom behind their chaperones’ backs, Your Grace?”

  “Not usually, Lady Northmere,” said Alexander. His eyes never left Daisy’s face, their steady gaze calm and incurious. “But in the light of my understanding with Miss Morton, I did not think it would be wrong to give her a tour of my new home.”

  Jemima, of course, knew that no such understanding existed. Daisy would have told her the moment even the hint of romance between herself and Alexander occurred. But in front of Lady Shrewsbury, Jemima was as helpless as Daisy – more so, since she could not guess the real reason Daisy had been hidden underneath the duke’s bed. Her lips pressed so tightly together their usual pink colour faded to an anxious white.

  “Your Grace, are you engaged to Miss Morton?” asked Lady S
hrewsbury, her voice rising to a squeak on the word engaged.

  “Not yet,” said Alexander. “And I must ask you not to speak of this to anyone until matters are comfortably arranged. I do so value your discretion, Lady Shrewsbury.”

  The lady’s painted eyebrows were located somewhere several inches above their natural position. “Of course, Your Grace! Of course!”

  Alexander offered Daisy his arm. “Did you find what you were looking for?”

  Was she dreaming? Five minutes ago, she had been mourning the fact that her best friend’s handsome brother had never given her so much as a second glance. Now he had decided, for reasons she could not imagine, to rescue her from ruin by the prospect of an engagement.

  An engagement. To the Duke of Loxwell.

  Daisy took Alexander’s arm before the wildly spinning world threw her off balance.

  “The item you dropped behind the bed,” he prompted her gently. “That you were searching for just now, when we all came in. Did you find it?”

  Daisy opened her mouth to come clean about the broken vase, about Edith’s explorations, about Mr Kettleburn and the strange man. But just as she was about to speak, Lady Shrewsbury fixed her with a glare of pure hostility.

  If that woman could ruin Daisy’s reputation, she would do it without a second thought. Only Alexander’s influence restrained her now.

  Daisy could see no other choice but to play along.

  “Oh, yes,” she said, holding up the reticule that was now bulging with pieces of the late duke’s precious vase. “Yes, I found it.”

  “Perfect,” said Alexander. “Duchess, I will set my servants to searching for that vase. I ought to accompany Miss Morton downstairs.” He shot Daisy a glance full of dark amusement. “It is high time I spoke to her brother.”

  2

  “You were caught where?” Ralph Morton had tugged at his cravat so forcefully in his distress that he would soon have to go back upstairs, summon his valet, and spend another half hour carefully folding a fresh one into the complicated arrangement he preferred.

  “Really, Ralph, are you losing your hearing?” asked Daisy’s mother, Lady Peyton. She leaned forwards with a wicked grin and tapped her lacy fan on Ralph’s knee. “She was caught in the Duke of Loxwell’s bedroom.” Lady Peyton sat back, wriggling her shoulders against the plush back of her chair, and gave a happy sigh. “And now he will have to marry her.”

  “There will be no marrying of anyone,” Daisy protested. Her voice rang out with unintended force in the breakfast room at Morton House. The room was nowhere near as grand as any of Alexander’s, of course, but it was perfectly comfortable for their small family.

  Smaller than usual, today. Jemima had left that morning to travel with the duchess to the dower house at Loxwell Park, and Daisy’s stepfather, Lord Peyton, was still in the country until the following week. That left only Ralph and her mother to deal with.

  Ralph jumped up from the breakfast table and began pacing between the window and the sideboard, eyes flickering to Daisy and away again as though it was too painful to look directly at her. “Daisy,” he said, “when the duke asked my permission to court you yesterday, I gave it with pleasure. You are so close to the Balfour ladies that I thought it more than natural that interest had sprung up between you. Needless to say, he made no mention of any indiscretion on your part. But now that I hear what was behind his offer, I cannot allow him to call on you. This whole thing must be forgotten as swiftly as possible.”

  “Nonsense!” cried Lady Peyton. “Daisy could not dream of making a finer match! I commend you for your cleverness, my dear,” she said, reaching out to take Daisy’s hand. “How bold of you to catch him that way!”

  “I did not catch anyone,” said Daisy, drawing her hand out of reach. “I was caught myself. And I cannot think why the duke rescued me from the disgrace of my own making. You must permit me to receive his visit, Ralph, if only to get a proper explanation.”

  “And to give one.” Ralph’s tormented pacing slowed to a halt beside her chair. He rested his hand on her shoulder and gave her a gentle shake. “I suppose you had a good reason for hiding in a gentleman’s bedchamber?”

  “Better than what Lady Shrewsbury imagined,” said Daisy. Ralph put a hand over his eyes.

  “Lady Shrewsbury! You could not have chosen a worse witness.”

  “On the contrary, Ralph, she could not have chosen a better one!” said Lady Peyton, buttering herself another slice of toast. “Lady Shrewsbury will see to it that the news of Daisy’s impending engagement spreads throughout the ton by the end of the week. Only a cruel man would jilt her after that, and I am sure that the duke is not cruel.”

  “Cruel or kind, he is not in love with Daisy,” said Ralph. “And if he is not in love with her, he does not value her nearly as highly as she deserves. And since he does not deserve her, I will not give him my permission to court her.”

  Daisy pushed her plate aside, leaving half her piece of toast and an entire boiled egg uneaten. “He promised to call on me this afternoon,” she reminded Ralph. “I do not see how I can refuse to see him. It would be rude.”

  Lady Peyton’s hands went to her rouged cheeks. “Oh, Ralph! Would you really turn a duke away at the door? What will our neighbours think?” She winked at Daisy. “The ton will talk of nothing else for days!”

  Ralph groaned and released his grip on Daisy’s shoulder. He flung his hands up in surrender. “Very well! You may receive the duke this afternoon. I will not be here to glower at him. I have business to attend to.” He glared at their mother. “You will rediscover your fervour for acting as the perfect chaperone. Not the faintest hint of impropriety is to occur under my roof. Is that understood?”

  “Ralph, you ought to have more faith in me,” said Lady Peyton, completely unperturbed. “I am perfectly capable of managing Daisy’s tête-à-tête with the duke. Leave it all to me.”

  Ralph raised an eyebrow, but refrained from saying what Daisy suspected was on his mind.

  The Morton siblings knew their mother well. She was many admirable things, but a diligent chaperone was not among them.

  When Alexander arrived that afternoon, Daisy was not at all surprised that her mother immediately remembered a pressing matter she had to discuss with the cook. The young duke accepted Lady Peyton’s effusive apologies with perfect composure. Only the slightest line of a frown between his eyebrows betrayed his disapproval as she hurried from the room, leaving him and Daisy completely alone.

  How ironic that the man renowned throughout the ton as an absolute stickler for propriety was the very person Lady Peyton decided to fling Daisy towards with all her powers of indiscretion.

  Daisy rang for tea and took a seat opposite Alexander, trying not to gnaw on her lower lip. The situation was awkward enough without her mother’s interference. “I’m sorry. My mother does not make a habit of leaving me alone with suitors, I promise.”

  Rats. She had just described him as a suitor. Now he would surely think her presumptuous, as well as impudent, wild, and – oh yes – prone to trespassing in gentlemen’s bedrooms.

  Alexander held her gaze gravely. “Perhaps, under the circumstances, it is better that we are alone.”

  Daisy’s heart, against all reason, gave a giddy flutter. Which was ridiculous. He could not possibly be referring to romance.

  She put on her most demure expression. “I agree. There are several things I ought to explain.” Was there a faint light of amusement in his eyes? Most likely she was only imagining it. “I was not in your bedroom in order to trap you into a compromising situation.”

  “I should hope not.” The corner of his mouth tightened slightly, as though he were hiding a smile. “I have the impression that you are not going to tell me what you were doing there.”

  Daisy breathed out a sigh. If she could negotiate this awkward conversation without betraying Edith, that was more than she had hoped for. “It was nothing untoward. I give you my word.”

  �
��And you expect me to accept that?”

  Daisy forced herself not to look away. If she was doomed to be impudent, she could at least maintain her self-possession. “I’m afraid you will have to, Your Grace.”

  Alexander crossed one leg over the other, his eyes never leaving her face. “We can dispense with the titles,” he said. “It will give entirely the wrong impression if you do not start calling me Alexander.”

  Daisy blinked. “What impression do you wish to give?”

  “That of a love match,” he said calmly. “At least for the time being.”

  Daisy’s mouth had developed a habit of dropping open whenever Alexander was around. The best she could hope for at this point was that for some reason he found gaping astonishment attractive. “Your Grace, I am flattered, but –”

  She faltered. But what? He was handsome, after all. So wealthy she could not quite fathom it. His reputation was spotless. His behaviour towards her had been far more gentlemanly than she deserved.

  But he did not love her. That was certain. And Ralph was right – Daisy would not settle for less than a love match. A real one.

  Perhaps that was an unrealistic dream. So much of the ton married for position, for power, for money. True love was scarcely to be found among them. But Daisy had seen Ralph fall so hard for Jemima that his world changed forever. She wanted to taste that passion, too. If her brother could find real happiness, why couldn’t she?

  “I have done nothing to deserve such favour,” she said, finally.

  The frown line reappeared between Alexander’s brows. “That is not for me to judge. But my sisters will never forgive me if I abandon you to disgrace. I am afraid rumours are already spreading that you hid yourself in my bedchamber to entrap me in an unwanted engagement.”

  “No one in my family is a stranger to rumours,” said Daisy. Her brother’s abrupt and legally questionable marriage of convenience to Jemima was a salient example, not to mention the fact that Lord Peyton was only the latest in a long line of her mother’s paramours. “I will survive.”