by Eloisa James
“It means that I never again need put myself under the control of a man—any man. So, no, I have no interest in joining you at dinner. I know perfectly well that Lord Dimble-Dumble has been summoned to audition as my next husband. I don’t want him. I’d be more likely to come to dinner if you had invited the butcher.”
“I couldn’t do that,” Cat said, in a sudden digression. “Mr. Lyddle has developed a most unfortunate addiction to strong ale, and he’s regularly found lying about in the gutter singing, rather than butchering meat.”
“Who does the butchering now?” Lizzie asked, deciding to take a walk to the village and see this interesting musical event herself.
“His wife. My housekeeper says that she can get better cuts at a lower price these days. You’re trying to distract me with talk of singing drunkards,” Cat said, unfairly. “Let’s discuss your future.”
“Let’s not.”
“We might begin with the fact that you were never in love with Adrian.” Cat began walking around the bedchamber, waving her hands as she waxed eloquent about her late brother-in-law’s flaws.
She was preaching to the choir, so Lizzie stopped listening and just watched Cat pacing back and forth. How could it be that her older sister was positively frothing with life and energy and passion, while Lizzie felt like a tired, pale shadow?
Her hand crept toward her book. It wasn’t the most interesting novel in the world, but it had the inexpressible charm of being new.
Over the last eighteen months, Lizzie had read every novel she owned three times over. She would be quickly bankrupted if she bought more than two books a week, so one of the best things about visiting Telford Manor was access to her sister’s library.
Cat appeared to be hopeless at arranging a refurbishment of the manor—which desperately needed it—but she was very good at ordering novels. And clothing. If Lizzie looked like a black crow, Cat was a chic French peacock.
Lizzie raised her knees, surreptitiously propped her book against them, and slipped back in the story of Eveline, a sixteen-year-old girl being forced to marry an old man. She herself had been twenty when she walked down the aisle.
On the shelf.
Beggars can’t be choosers, her father had told her.
Her book suddenly vanished. “No reading!”
Cat was holding the novel above her head, for all the world as if they were children again. Lizzie used to hope that someday she’d grow up to be as commanding as her sister, but she had given up that idea long ago.
It wasn’t just a question of height. Her sister was the type of person who gathered everyone in a room around her, and Lizzie was the type of person whom they walked over on their way to be with Cat.
That sounded resentful, but Lizzie didn’t actually feel bitter. She would hate to be the center of attention. She wound her arms around her knees and propped her chin on them. “Cat, may I have my book back, please? It was a hard journey, and I’m tired.”
“What do you mean, a hard journey? It can’t have been more than a day and a half!”
“My coach is over twenty years old and the springs are worn out. It bounced so hard on the post road that I couldn’t keep my eyes on the page, and my tailbone still hurts.”
“If your jointure won’t extend to a new vehicle, Joshua or Papa would be happy to buy you a coach.”
Lizzie turned her head, putting her right cheek on her knees, and closed her eyes. “No.”
She heard her sister drop into the chair by the side of the bed. Then she heard a sigh. “Papa is getting old, Lizzie. He made a terrible mistake, and he knows it. He misses you. If you would just pay him a visit . . .”
“No.”
Why would she visit the father who had turned her away when she ran to him in desperation? The father who had known precisely what a disaster her marriage would be, but didn’t bother to warn her?
An hour or so after their wedding ceremony, Adrian had brought Lizzie, still wrapped in her bridal veil, to his mother’s faded, musty house, and informed her that he had no intention of living with her.
Not only that, but he was late to meet his lover for tea.
It had happened almost six years ago, but she could still remember her stupefaction. She’d been such a silly goose.
“But where do you live?” she had stammered.
“I bought Sadie a house, and we live there,” Adrian had said casually. When she frowned in confusion, he had added impatiently, “Sadie. Didn’t your father tell you her name?”
“Sadie?”
For the first time—and in her experience, the last time—her husband had been a little defensive, even a trifle ashamed. “I never lied. He knows perfectly well that we will lead separate lives.”
“Perhaps you should explain to me,” Lizzie had said, “because my father unaccountably forgot to mention it. As did you, I might add.”
Adrian had unemotionally laid out the terms of her marriage. It seemed her father had paid a great deal of money to buy his daughter the title of Lady Troutt. For his part, Adrian had wed her for her dowry, and because he needed someone to care for his mother.
“The estate is entailed,” he had told her, glancing around the musty sitting room. “It goes to some distant cousin, along with the title, of course. I told your father that I wouldn’t be averse to trying for a child, once we’ve had time to get used to each other.”
Lizzie had just gaped at him.
“But we can’t bother with that now,” Adrian had told her briskly. “Sadie is upset about this mess, naturally enough. I promised her I’d be home by four. My mother takes her luncheon on a tray. There are a couple of maids, but it would be good if you could bring it in yourself. She complains of being lonely.”
After that, he left.
A few minutes later, Lizzie left as well. She went home.
Only to be sent back to her husband’s house.
There was no point in revisiting her father’s line of reasoning. Suffice it to say that no woman—even one who had abundant sensuality and beauty, which Lizzie did not—was capable of seducing a man who didn’t return to the house for a fortnight.
A man who doesn’t bother to consummate his marriage until he’s suffered a heart seizure and has, as the vulgar might put it, been given notice to quit.
A man who despises his lower-class wife, and never bothers to hide it.
Read on for an excerpt from
Much Ado About You
the first novel in the Essex Sisters Quartet!
Available wherever books are sold!
Chapter 1
September 1816
Holbrook Court, seat of the Duke of Holbrook
On the outskirts of Silchester
In the afternoon
“I am happy to announce that the rocking horses have been delivered, Your Grace. I have placed them in the nursery for your inspection. As yet, there is no sign of the children.”
Raphael Jourdain, Duke of Holbrook, turned. He had been poking a fire smoldering in the cavernous fireplace of his study. There was a reserved tone in his butler’s voice that signaled displeasure. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that Brinkley’s tone signaled the disgruntlement of the entire household of elderly servants, not one of whom was enchanted by the idea of accommodating themselves to the presence of four small, female children. Well, the hell with that, Rafe thought. It wasn’t as if he’d asked to have a passel of youngsters on the premises.
“Rocking horses?” came a drawling voice from a deep chair to the right of the fireplace. “Charming, Rafe. Charming. One can’t start too early making the little darlings interested in horseflesh.” Garret Langham, the Earl of Mayne, raised his glass toward his host. His black curls were in exquisite disarray, his comments arrogant to a fault, and his manners barely hid a seething fury. Not that he was furious at Rafe; Mayne had been in a slow burn for the past few months. “To Papa and his brood of infant equestriennes,” he added, tossing back his drink.
“Stubb
le it!” Rafe said, but without much real animosity. Mayne was a damned uncomfortable companion at the moment, what with his poisonous comments and black humor. Still, one had to assume that the foul temper caused by the shock of being rejected by a woman would wear off in a matter of time.
“Why the plural, as in rocking horses?” Mayne asked. “As I recall, most nurseries contain only one rocking horse.”
Rafe took a gulp of his brandy. “I don’t know much about children,” he said, “but I distinctly remember my brother and me fighting over our toys. So I bought four of them.”
There was a second’s silence during which the earl considered whether to acknowledge the fact that Rafe obviously still missed his brother (dead these five years, now). Mayne dismissed the impulse. Manlike, he observed no benefit to maudlin conversation.
“You’re doing those orphans proud,” he said instead. “Most guardians would stow the children out of sight. It’s not as if they’re your blood.”
“There’s no amount of dolls in the world that will make up for their situation,” Rafe said, shrugging. “Their father should have thought of his responsibilities before he climbed on a stallion.”
The conversation was getting dangerously close to the sort of emotion to be avoided at all costs, so Mayne sprang from his chair. “Let’s have a look at the rocking horses, then. I haven’t seen one in years.”
“Right,” Rafe said, putting his glass onto the table with a sharp clink. “Brinkley, if the children arrive, bring them upstairs, and I’ll receive them in the nursery.”
A few minutes later the two men stood in the middle of a large room on the third floor, dizzily painted with murals. Little Bo Peep chased after Red Riding Hood, who was surely in danger of being crushed by the giant striding across the wall, his raised foot lowering over a feather bed sporting a huge green pea under the coverlet. The room resembled nothing so much as a Bond Street toy shop. Four dolls with spun gold hair sat primly on a bench. Four doll beds were propped atop each other, next to four doll tables, on which sat four jack-in-the-boxes. In the midst of it all was a group of rocking horses graced with real horsehair and coming almost to a man’s waist.
“Jesus,” Mayne said.
Rafe strode into the room and stamped on the rocker of one of the horses, making it clatter back and forth on the wooden floor. A door on the side of the room swung open, and a plump woman in a white apron poked her head out.
“There you are, Your Grace,” she said, beaming. “We’re just waiting for the children. Would you like to meet the new maids now?”
“Send them on in, Mrs. Beeswick.”
Four young nursemaids crowded into the room after her. “Daisy, Gussie, Elsie, and Mary,” said the nanny. “They’re from the village, Your Grace, and pleased to have a position at Holbrook Court. We’re all eager for the little cherubs to arrive.” The nursemaids lined up to either side of Mrs. Beeswick, smiling and curtsying.
“Jesus,” Mayne repeated. “They won’t even share a maid, Rafe?”
“Why should they? My brother and I had three nurses between us.”
“Three?”
“Two for my brother, ever since he turned duke at age seven, and one for me.”
Mayne snorted. “That’s absurd. When’s the last time you met your wards’ father, Lord Brydone?”
“Not for years,” Rafe said, picking up a jack-in-the-box and pressing the lever so that it hopped from its box with a loud squeak. “The arrangement was just a matter of a note from him and my reply.”
“You have never met your own wards?”
“Never. I haven’t been over the border in years, and Brydone only came down for the Ascot, the Silchester, and, sometimes, Newmarket. To be honest, I don’t think he really gave a damn for anything other than his stables. He didn’t even bother to list his children in Debrett’s. Of course, since he had four girls, there was no question of inheritance. The estate went to some distant cousin.”
“Why on earth—” Mayne glanced at the five women standing to the side of the room and checked himself.
“He asked me,” Rafe said, shrugging. “I didn’t think twice of it. Apparently Monkton had been in line, but he cocked up his toes last year. And Brydone asked me to step in. Who would have thought that ill could come to Brydone? It was a freak accident, that horse throwing him. Although he was fool enough to ride a half-broken stallion.”
“Damned if I thought I’d ever see you a father,” Mayne said.
“I had no excuse to say no. I have the substance to raise any number of children. Besides, Brydone gave me Starling in return for acting as a guardian. I told him I’d do the job, as soon as he wrote me, and no bribe was necessary. But he sent Starling down from Scotland, and no one would say nay to adding that horse to their stables.”
“Starling is out of Standout, isn’t he?”
Rafe nodded. “Patchem’s brother. The core of Brydone’s stable is out of Patchem, and those are now the only horses in England in Patchem’s direct line. I’m hopeful that Starling will win the Derby next year, even if he is descended from Standout rather than Patchem himself.”
“What will happen to Patchem’s offspring?” Mayne asked, with the particular intensity he reserved for talk of horses. “Something Wanton, for example?”
“I don’t know yet. Obviously, the stables aren’t entailed. My secretary has been up there working on the estate. Should Brydone’s stable come to the children, I’ll put the horses up for auction and the money in trust. The girls will need dowries someday, and I’d be surprised if Brydone bothered to set them up himself.”
“If Wanton is for sale, I’m the one to buy him. I’d pay thousands for him. There could be no better addition to my stables.”
“He would do wonders for mine as well,” Rafe agreed.
Mayne had found a little heap of cast-iron horses and was sorting them out so that each carriage was pulled by a matched pair. “You know, these are quite good.” He had all the cast-iron horses and their carriages lined up on the mantelpiece now. “Wait till your wards see these horses. They won’t think twice about the move from Scotland. Pity there’s no boy among them.”
Rafe just looked at him. The earl was one of his dearest friends, and always would be. But Mayne’s sleek, protected life had not put him in the way of grief. Rafe knew only too well what it felt like to find oneself lonely in the midst of a cozy nursery, and cast-iron horses wouldn’t help, for all he found himself buying more and more of them. As if toys would make up for a dead father. “I hardly think you—”
The door behind him swung open. He stopped and turned.
Brinkley moved to the side more nimbly than was his practice. It wasn’t every day that one got to knock the master speechless with surprise. “I’m happy to announce Miss Essex. Miss Imogen. Miss Annabel. Miss Josephine.”
Then he added, unable to resist, if the truth be known, “The children have arrived, Your Grace.”
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About the Author
ELOISA JAMES is a USA Today and New York Times bestselling author and professor of English literature, who lives with her family in New York but can sometimes be found in Paris or Italy. She is the mother of two and, in a particularly delicious irony for a romance writer, is married to a genuine Italian knight.Visit her at www.eloisajames.com.
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By Eloisa James
MY AMERICAN DUCHESS
FOUR NIGHTS WITH THE DUKE
THREE WEEKS WITH LADY X
ONCE UPON A TOWER
AS YOU WISH
WITH THIS KISS (a novella in three parts)
SEDUCED BY A PIRATE (a novella)
THE UGLY DUCHESS
THE DUKE IS MINE
WINNING THE WALLFLOWER (a novella)
A FOOL AGAIN (a novella)
WHEN BEAUTY TAMED THE BEAST
STORMING THE CASTLE (a novella)
A KISS AT MIDNIGHT
A DUKE OF HER OWN
THIS DUCHESS OF MINE
WHEN THE DUKE RETURNS
DUCHESS BY NIGHT
AN AFFAIR BEFORE CHRISTMAS
DESPERATE DUCHESSES
PLEASURE FOR PLEASURE
THE TAMING OF THE DUKE
KISS ME, ANNABEL
MUCH ADO ABOUT YOU
YOUR WICKED WAYS
A WILD PURSUIT
FOOL FOR LOVE
DUCHESS IN LOVE
Coming Soon
SEVEN MINUTES IN HEAVEN
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.
Excerpts from A Gentleman Never Tells and Much Ado About You copyright © 2016, 2005 by Eloisa James, Inc.
MY AMERICAN DUCHESS. Copyright © 2016 by Eloisa James, Inc. 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, 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 hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books. For more information, address HarperCollins Publishers, 195 Broadway, New York, NY 10007.
EPub Edition FEBRUARY 2016 ISBN: 9780062389442
Print Edition ISBN: 9780062389435
FIRST EDITION
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