Along Came a Duke (36 page)

“Doltish man!” Roxley protested. “I told him exactly the opposite.”

“And neglected to mention why it is called Old Oak Road?” Harriet asked.

“Might have left that part out,” he admitted.

“So you did,” Tabitha said. “He had a hold of my arm and was driving with the other and had the horses going far too fast, and when we got to the corner—” She held out her skirt to show exactly what happened. “He let go just in time for me to jump. I thought I might do in my ankle, but I landed in the hedge—”

“Yes, I know that hedge well,” Roxley said, sending a scathing glance at Preston.

Tabitha nodded in understanding. “I saved myself, but I fear Mr. Barkworth wasn't as quick.”

“Mr. Barkworth is dead?” Daphne gasped.

Tabitha shook her head. “No, but he's trapped beneath his carriage. Had the audacity to ask me to fetch someone to rescue him. Oh, and a tailor to repair his best driving cape.”

She reached over, scratched Mr. Muggins behind the ears and grinned up at Preston. “I promised to send help, but I have yet to find anyone.”

“Yes, might take some time,” he agreed.

“Hours,” Harriet agreed, smiling over the entire story.

“I would think he might be there until morning,” Tabitha said.

“Serve him right,” Daphne added. “But Tabitha, you cannot stay here. This is the first place your uncles will look, and your aunts are inside. We cannot let them take you away.”

“They won't dare now,” Preston said, folding her into his arms again and kissing Tabby thoroughly, his heart hammering all the while to a new beat.

Home. Hearth. Love. Home. Tabby.

“It is the Midsummer's Eve Ball. I had hoped . . . That is, I thought . . . “ She looked up at Preston in wonder, her eyes aglow with what he could only hope was love.

“No,” Preston said. “If I know you, Tabby, you came for no other reason than to discover what color the buntings ended up being.”

She laughed. “What color are they?”

He glanced over her shoulder so he could see inside the ballroom. “Lavender.”

“Excellent. Some things shouldn't change.”

They spent a starry-eyed moment gazing at each other, and Harriet caught hold of Daphne and Roxley and towed them both into the ballroom, leaving Tabitha and Preston blissfully alone.

Save for Mr. Muggins, who, they all knew by now, was a wretchedly poor chaperone.

“You don't think some things should change?” Preston's heart trembled for a moment. “But others? Should they change?”

“Have you?”

“Would I be here if I hadn't changed?” He couldn't help himself; he gathered her closer to him. “I came along to save you. But mind you, Tabby, this is the last time.”

“You drove all this way just to save me?” She smiled with a coquettish little grin that made his heart hammer even harder.

“Yes.”

“From my uncles?”

“Yes.”

“How did you find out what they had planned?” she asked.

“It was rather by chance,” he admitted.

“Harriet's brother?” she asked, thinking he meant Chaunce.

“No, actual demmed luck,” he told her, explaining how he'd found the other page of Winston Ludlow's will.

She sighed. “However am I going to repay you, Your Grace?”

He scratched his chin and thought about it. “You're an heiress now, it ought not to be very difficult.”

She playfully slapped his chest. “You bounder.”

“Your friend called me a ‘badger.'”

“That too,” she agreed.

“I thought you might save me from my aunt,” he told her.

“Lady Juniper?”

“Yes, that one. She's determined that I marry. Marry anyone.”

It was her turn to tease. “Have you met anyone respectable and proper enough?”

“Yes. I wasn't overly fond of her. Especially after I met you.” He paused and let go of her, falling down to one knee and catching hold of her hands. “I want to marry you.”

She smiled at him. “I should confess, I already know that.”

“Eavesdropping, Tabby?”

“Yes, I was. I am surprised Lady Essex didn't hear you browbeating poor Daphne.”

“I wasn't browbeating Miss Dale,” he said in his defense. Actually that he'd refrained from throttling the overly opinionated chit was to his credit.

“She will be hard put to believe that you mean me anything other than further irreparable harm,” Tabitha informed him. “You don't intend to steal my fortune, do you?”

This took Preston aback. “Bother your uncle's fortune. Didn't you hear the rest of what I said?” he said. “About making you my duchess?”

“Yes, I heard all that,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest. “But I want to hear about my fortune first. And my ability to make my own choices.”

He might have thought himself done for if it hadn't been for a wicked little twinkle in her eyes. So he nodded in concession and explained himself. “Your uncle's will holds that if you reach your majority unmarried, your uncles become the trustees.”

“My uncles are hardly trustworthy!” she told him. “They meant to put me in a madhouse.”

“That is excellent news,” he told her.

“Not for me.”

“Yes, but it will prove they are unworthy of their positions, and Mr. Pennyman, as the solicitor of record, will be obliged to appoint a new trustee. And since I have moved a rather large portion of legal work to his offices, I do believe I may have some influence in the matter.”

“Information that might have been helpful last week before you ruined me,” she pointed out.

“Yes, well, that is the problem with using Roxley as a messenger,” he told her, reaching out and taking her hand. “When I learned the truth—”

“—you came along to save me?”

“It seems to be my fate,” he told her, trying to sound humble, which was rather difficult when one was a duke.

“Just fate?” she teased.

“Tabby, I love you. When I realized that, it rather changed my opinion of marriage.”

Gooseflesh ran down her arms and her eyes stung with the rush of hot, sudden tears that welled up but didn't quite fall. “You love me?” she whispered.

He bounded to his feet, and, once she was in his arms, he was kissing her. “Good God, woman, how could you not know?”

His practical, straightforward Tabby told him. “You rather neglected telling me.”

Preston's chest puffed out. “I'm more of a prove-my-point sort of man.”

She nestled closer, her hand reaching up to cup his face, her bare fingers warm and soft against the stubble there.

“Then, Your Grace, what are you waiting for? Prove it.”

Chapter 16

London

A fortnight later

T
abitha smiled as she read the carefully engraved words on the thick piece of vellum she held.

The Most Noble the Duke of Preston

Requests the honour of your presence

at his marriage to

Miss Tabitha Timmons

Commencing

On the morning of

Wednesday, the eighth of August

in the Year of our Lord, Eighteen Hundred and Ten

Owle Park, Surrey

“Four weeks!” Preston complained, looking down at the invitation Tabitha had brought over to show him.

They were in the Red Room of his London house. Mr. Muggins lay curled up on what was probably a very expensive rug near the fire, his tail beating in a happy refrain. For an Irish terrier with no manners, he had quite taken to ducal life and turned over a new leaf. Well, nearly.

For he was still a bad chaperone. After all, he'd let Tabitha and Preston spend an indecent amount of time together alone in the gardens (“wretched Seldons,” Daphne had complained), yet when they had returned to the Midsummer Eve Ball they'd announced their betrothal, which, as Harriet had said, “was how it was supposed to be all along.”

Much to the chagrin of Tabitha's uncles. But Lady Timmons viewed this change of fortune with a more pragmatic air.

“Think of the connections, my dear,” she told her outraged husband, who had finally managed to escape the cellar. “Why, our dearest Tabitha will be the Duchess of Preston!”

Lady Essex had immediately taken charge of the bride-to-be and brought her to London to help her pick out her trousseau and to declare to one and all that she had been instrumental in bringing the notorious Duke of Preston to heel.

“He kissed me once,” she was wont to say.

And while Preston had vowed their return to London was only to gain a Special License and a quick wedding, Tabitha refused.

“I will have the banns read and a proper wedding,” she repeated to him this day, as she had every day since they'd left Kempton.

“Yes, yes,” Preston agreed, though he was still of a mind to hasten the entire process along. He'd been convinced that after a fortnight under Lady Essex's strict care, Tabitha would change her mind.

But he was learning his bride-to-be had a stubborn streak that rivaled his own.

“I ordered my gown yesterday, and it will be ready in time to take to Owle Park for the house party,” she told him.

Owle Park
. Preston couldn't believe it. He'd driven down to the house with Tabitha the previous week, Hen and Henry coming along to chaperone.

All his fears had washed away as he'd stepped down from the carriage and looked over the lush green lawn, the warm stone facade and the line of servants awaiting him.

When he'd taken Tabitha's hand and guided her out of the carriage, the servants had cheered heartily.

And he'd sworn the old house had as well.

“Welcome home,” she'd whispered up at him.

“Yes, welcome to
our
home,” he'd replied.

Everything had been ordered for a house party that would culminate in their wedding. And now the invitations were being sent out.

“I am still holding out hope of convincing you of the decided advantages of a Special License,” Preston said as he looked down at the invitation. Four bloody weeks!

Tabitha shook her head. “I will be married properly. On the church steps, with a new gown on a Wednesday.”

“Leaving nothing to chance?” he teased, smiling at her traditional leanings and superstitions. This bride from Kempton was taking no chances.

As for Preston, he glanced around the Red Room and decided to take this opportunity, while Lady Essex was downstairs with Hen looking over china, to give Tabitha a long overdue kiss. “A Special License,” he teased as he nibbled at her neck. “And you could spend tonight in my bed.”

“No,” she told him with that determined air that he loved so much about her.

“Gretna Green?” he tried. “That's only a few days away, and longer if we find a cozy inn with a large bed.”

There was another shake of her red head.

“What if your most esteemed Mr. Barkworth were to steal you away before I can marry you myself?” Preston teased. “He's back in Town, or so I hear.”

“He wouldn't dare,” Tabitha said, grinning and tugging Preston closer for another kiss.

He indulged her and kissed her soundly yet again, until his Tabby, his dearest, beloved Tabby, was breathless.

As was he.

“I know I can convince you otherwise,” he said, leaning down for yet another attempt.

She put her fingers on his lips and looked him squarely in the eye. “Care to wager on that, Your Grace?”

As the Duke of Preston

was busy wooing

Miss Tabitha Timmons,

what was going on with his uncle,

Lord Henry Seldon?

Keep reading for a sneak peek

at the next book in

Elizabeth Boyle's

Rhymes With Love series,

And the Miss Ran Away With the Rake
,

coming soon from

Avon Books!

Henry Finds a Letter

Sensible gentleman of means seeks a sensible lady of good breeding for correspondence, and in due consideration, matrimony.

An advertisement placed in the
Morning Chronicle

One month earlier

“N
o! No! No!” Lord Henry Seldon exclaimed as their butler brought a second basket of letters into the morning room. “Not more of those demmed letters! Burn them, Benley! Take them out of my sight!”

His sister, Lady Juniper, the former Lady Henrietta Seldon, looked up from her tea and did her best to stifle a laugh as poor Benley stood there, wavering in the doorway, with a large wicker basket overflowing with correspondence. “Set them beside the others and ignore his lordship, Benley. He is in an ill humor this morning.”

Ill humor? Try furious, he would have told her. And he did, in so many words. “I am going to kill you for this, Preston.”

Preston, being their nephew, who was also the Duke of Preston and the head of their family, was right now ducking behind his newspaper at the other end of the table, feigning innocence in all this. If only he was innocent in deed.

For he was currently the bane of Henry's existence. Not only had Preston's rakish actions—ruining no less than five young ladies in the past few weeks—put the duke on the “not received list” but now that taint had spread to Henry and Hen, and they'd suddenly joined the ranks of “barely received.”

Guilty by association, as it were.

“You cannot kill Preston,” Lady Juniper said, wading in. She wiped her lips with her napkin and set it down beside her breakfast plate. “You are his heir. It would be bad form.”

“Yes, bad form indeed, Uncle,” Preston said over the top of his paper. Probably examining it for more gossip about—what else—himself.

Preston only called Lord Henry “Uncle” when he wanted to vex Henry further. There was only six months in age between the three of them, Henry's father and Preston's grandfather having added Henry and Henrietta to the nursery at an indecently old age.

“Bad form?!” Lord Henry sputtered, taking the bait against his better judgment. “Bad form was what you and that idiot friend of yours, Roxley, did when you placed that ridiculous advertisement in the
Morning Chronicle
.”

That one small advertisement, a drunken joke, had now garnered an avalanche of responses.

Henry was being buried alive in letters from ladies seeking husbands.

“You should be thanking me,” Preston pointed out. “Now you can have your pick of ladies without ever having to set foot in Almack's.”

“Thanking you? I don't want to get married,” Lord Henry declared. “That is your business. Why don't you marry one of these tabbies?”

Preston glanced up, an odd look in his eye, but before Henry could discover the reason behind it, Hen chimed in. “You should be thankful, Henry, that Preston didn't place his ad in the
Times
,” she teased, taking one sip from her tea and settling back in her seat. “Personally, I found Preston's ad rather dull myself.”

“Dull?” Preston complained, snapping his paper shut and eyeing his aunt. “I am never dull.”

“Then tedious,” she corrected. “I can't imagine anyone replying to such nonsense, let alone want to marry a man who describes himself as sensible.” She glanced up at Benley, who was placing the basket of correspondence next to the one that had arrived earlier. “Just how many lonely hearts are there in London?”

“This will make over two hundred, my lady,” Benley said, warily eyeing the collection that carried with it a competing air of rose water and violets. “My lord,” he said, turning to Lord Henry, “Lady Taft's footman would like to know how you are going to settle the bill for the outstanding postage. Her ladyship is quite put out at having to pay for a goodly number of these—apparently the newspaper has now reached the outlying counties.”

Lady Juniper's eyes widened. “The letters are arriving at your house?”

“Yes,” Lord Henry said.

“I wasn't so foxed that I'd use this address,” Preston supplied. “Can you imagine the clamor and interruptions?” He shuddered and returned to his paper.

“Which is exactly why Lady Taft is not amused,” Lord Henry said. “I promised her when she took the house for the Season that it was the quietest of addresses.”

The house in question, on the very respectable and previously quiet Cumberland Place, was a large residence that Henry had inherited from his mother, though he had yet to live in it. He, Preston and Hen (when she was between husbands) had lived all these years quite comfortably in the Seldons' London residence on Harley Street, just on the corner of Cavendish Square. With such a good address and all the comforts of a ducal residence, Henry saw no reason to strike out on his own.

Besides, he could collect an indecent amount of rent for his well-placed Mayfair house—though now even that was in question. He glared at his nephew, but Preston was too busy studying the newspaper to notice.

Really, who could blame Lady Taft for threatening to quit the lease, what with a bell that rang constantly from the steady arrival of these demmed letters?

All addressed to
A Sensible Gentleman.

Well, right now he felt anything but sensible.

Lord Henry shoved his seat back from the table and got to his feet. Crossing the room in a few quick strides, he caught up the first basket and strode over to the fireplace.

“Good heavens!” Hen exclaimed, jumping to her feet. “Whatever are you doing?”

Even Preston put down his newspaper and gaped.

“What does it look like?” Lord Henry said, poised before the fireplace. “I am going to burn the lot of them.”

Hen dashed across the room, a black streak in her widow's weeds, and yanked the basket from his grasp. “You cannot do that.”

He tried to retrieve it, but this was Hen, and she was quite possibly the most stubborn Seldon who had ever lived. She turned so the basket was out of his reach and glared at him.

“The ladies who wrote these letters did so with great care. They are expecting responses. You cannot just burn them to suit your mood,” she said, looking down at the basket of notes she held. “You must reply to them. All of them.”

Henry had been too busy hoping that the overwhelming
eau du floral
rising from the pages would leave his sister overcome, that he hadn't truly listened to what she was saying. He was too busy making his own plans for those wretched slips of paper. When Hen was out cold on the floor, he'd consign them to the flames before she recovered.

But not even the happy image of these annoying reminders of Preston's prank roasting over the coals could overshadow what Hen had been saying.

What she wanted him to do. Answer them?
All
of them?

A notion that Preston found quite amusing. “Yes, Henry, I quite agree,” the duke said. “You wouldn't want to disappoint so many ladies. That would hardly be sensible.”

Lord Henry ignored Preston and faced down his sister. “You can't seriously expect me to write to all those women?”

“But of course! Each one of these poor, dear souls is awaiting your answer. Most likely watching the post as we speak.”

He let out a graveled snort at the image of lovelorn spinsters—all over London and, from the return addresses, a good part of England—sitting by their front doors in hopes true love was about to arrive in a scrap of paper and sealed with a wafer. “That is ridiculous.”

“It is not,” Hen said in that tone of hers that Henry knew all too well meant she would brook no opposition. Hen carried the basket to the table and began sorting through the feminine appeals. “Do you recall what I was like when Lord Michaels was courting me and how distraught I was when I did not hear from him for two days straight?”

Both Henry and Preston groaned at the mere mention of the bounder's name.

Michaels being her second husband. There had been three to date—with her most recent venture, Lord Juniper, having died suddenly nearly six months earlier. Hence the widow's weeds and the onset of Hen's sentimental side.

“I had no idea if he loved me or not,” she declared, clutching a few of the letters to her breast, as if to make a desperate point. That is until the overwhelming odor of competing perfumes made her sneeze and she had to surrender them back to the basket.

“Didn't stop you from marrying him when he did bother to show up,” Henry muttered. Then again, he'd never approved of Lord Michaels. A mere baron and barely that.

Hen sniffed. “Be that as it may, those two days, when I knew not what he was thinking, those were the longest, worst two days of my life.”

“Really, Hen? Isn't that doing it up a bit? The
worst
two days of your life?” Henry shook his head and glared at the basket of letters. They were making this the worst week of his life.

“You must answer these,” she repeated, wagging a finger at her brother. “If only to let these ladies know that they have been deceived, just as you were, and you are most sorry for any distress this will cause them.”

“Make Preston apologize,” Henry told her, pointing toward the real culprit in all this. “He placed the ad.”

“Yes, well, you know he will never do that,” Hen said with a dismissive wave.

“And I wouldn't have placed it if you hadn't been so prosy that night,” Preston complained. “Going on and on about how I'd ruined the family's good name.” He picked up his paper. “I would remind you both, we are Seldons. We have never had a good name.”

“Exactly,” Henry said, latching onto the notion with an idea of his own. “When these ladies discover who has written them, and they nose it about how they've been ill used by a Seldon, don't you think, Hen, that this will only go to sully our family name further? Might even leave you cut from Almack's.”

Both he and Preston eyed her speculatively. For while Preston was in name the head of the family, neither of them naysaid Hen. Not if they knew what was good for them.

And it very nearly worked. Nearly.

This was Hen, after all. She rarely, if ever, gave up.

“There is no reason for you to sign your own name,” she pointed out. “Sign it . . .” She tapped her fingers against her lips, then smiled. “I know! Sign it ‘Mr. Dishforth.'”

“Dishforth!” Henry exclaimed, for it had been some time since that name had been uttered under their roof.

“Dishforth! Of course! I don't know why I didn't think of it myself, Hen,” Preston declared with an approving nod. Of course he would approve. Dishforth, though Henry's invention when they were children, had become Preston's shining hero. If something got broken or the apple tart disappeared and all that was left was a plate of crumbs, the always culpable “Mr. Dishforth” was there to blame.

Dishforth had been the cause of any number of tragedies. And now, it seemed, he could take the reckoning for this newest one.

“That doesn't get you off the hook, Preston,” Henry told him. “You are going to answer those letters.”

“Trust me to do that?” Preston said, waggling his brows and winking at Hen.

“Preston won't have the time, Henry. You'll have to see to this yourself,” Hen advised her brother. And her nephew.

“He won't?”

“I won't?”

“No,” she replied. “I don't see why you are complaining, Henry. I know very well you will assign the task to your secretary and be done with the matter.”

Henry had the good sense to look sheepish. Which is what he had planned from the very first moment she'd suggested it.

Not that Preston was going to escape her wrath either. Looking the duke in the eye, she said, “You will have nothing more to do with this, as you are going to be too busy finding a wife. A respectable lady to bring your reputation—and ours—up out of the gutter.”

“Good God, Hen! Not this again,” Preston moaned. “What if I told you I had already discovered such a paragon? The perfect lady to be my duchess.”

“I wouldn't believe you,” Hen replied, arms crossed over her chest. “It is time you were married.”

Henry grinned over his sister's shoulder at Preston, only too pleased to see the tables turned on the rapscallion duke. For once.

But Henry hardly got the last laugh in.

As Hen was dragging Preston from the morning room, the duke turned and pointed a finger at his uncle. “Best answer those quickly. Would be a terrible shame if it were nosed about Town that you've been advertising for a wife. Lady Taft is known to gossip.” Preston waggled his brows and was then led off by Hen to whatever fate she had in store for him.

Henry watched Preston being dragged off and, for a moment, felt a twinge of guilt at watching a fellow bachelor being led to his demise—though it didn't last for long. Bother Preston! He would do just that. Probably get that jinglebrains friend of his Roxley to spill what they'd done, and then he, Henry, would be the laughingstock of London.

He hadn't even considered that horror.

Going to retrieve the first basket, he noticed that one of the letters had fallen to the floor, the wax seal having come off, leaving the page wide open.

Inside, a vivid, albeit feminine, hand caught his eye, her bold script jumping off the pages.

Dear Sensible sir,

If your advertisement is naught but a jest, let me assure you it is not funny . . .

Despite his mood, Henry laughed. This impertinent minx had the right of it. The entire situation wasn't funny. Glancing at the letter again, he realized the entire first half was a censorious lecture on the moral ambiguities of trifling with the hearts of ladies.

A composition that would scald even Preston's thick skin.

Not even realizing what he was doing, Henry sat down at the table, entirely engrossed in the lady's frank words. Pouring himself a fresh cup of coffee—for while Hen and Preston loved tea, Henry much preferred coffee, and Benley always made sure there was a pot on hand—he propped his feet on Hen's chair and read the entire letter. Twice.