No matter how much she scribbled, her brain refused to produce a single line of the cheerful, amusing letter she’d envisioned flowing from the tip of her pen, and now she’d made a mess of the Duke of Basingstoke’s study. He’d regret his generosity to her when he sat at his desk tomorrow morning with a dry inkwell and an empty drawer where his paper had been.
Try as she might, she’d been sitting here for hours with her pen poised above a blank page, her head empty of words. The trouble was, she had nothing tosay. Well, no, that wasn’t it, precisely. There were plenty of shadowy thoughts tumbling about in her head that she might have spun into a dark, dramatic tale of the evils that befall penniless young ladies who get too far above themselves and gad about London with the aristocracy when they’d much better have stayed at home.
But she didn’t like to trouble her father with her dire predictions. It would only worry him, and he’d had enough worries these past months to last him a lifetime. No, only sunny, optimistic thoughts would do.
Surely, she could think ofsomethingpleasant to say?
Her journey from Wiltshire had been agreeable, the weather dry, and the roads tolerable. Lovely views, as well, with the English countryside dressed in her best gold and green summer garb. The duke’s carriage was as comfortable as any she’d ever traveled in—it was astonishing, really, what a difference superior springs made—and the duke’s coachman only permitted the finest carriage horses near the equipage.
Yes, that would do. Her father was always interested in horses.
She drew a fresh sheet of paper from the drawer, carefully blotted her pen, and ignoring the cramp in her neck, bent over her task and let her pen flow over the page.
Her dear friend Franny, now the Duchess of Basingstoke by a truly stunning twist of fate worthy of a fairy tale, was in the pink of health, as was her husband, the duke, and their eight-month-old son, Giles Frederick Charles Alexander Drew, the future Duke of Basingstoke.
It was a mouthful of a name for such a tiny mite of a boy, but then that was the way with dukes. He was called Freddy, and he was a perfect, laughing cherub of a child, a tiny prince blessed with his mother’s bright blue eyes, his father’s crown of curly golden locks, and a sweet, toothless smile.
Yes, that was very good. It was best if she focused only on pleasant things. Dinner menus, the baby’s antics, harmless gossip, and the like.
She dipped her pen into the inkwell again, prepared to launch into a description of the excellence of tonight’s curried eggs and the beauty of the roses still in bloom in the gardens, but she’d only gotten as far as “a spectacular array of blushing pink,” before the study door flew open and a whirlwind in dark evening dress stormed into the room. “How d’ye do, Basingstoke?”
Her hand froze, but her fingers went so tight around the pen she tore a jagged hole in the paper underneath it, and a pool of dark ink blossomed under the nib.
Thatvoice. It made no difference that she hadn’t heard him speak in more than eight months, and then no more than a few dozen words.
She’d know that voice anywhere. Since her disastrous first season, that voice had crept its dastardly way into her dreams every time her head touched her pillow.
Jasper St. Vincent, the Duke of Montford.
Scoundrel. Rake. Blackguard. Villain.
She hadn’t had a single moment of peace since her father had lost fifteen hundred pounds to His Grace, the Duke of Montford, during a game of piquet at Lord Hasting’s ball last year.
Fifteen hundred pounds, lost in a single evening. Poof, and just like that it was gone, vanished into the ether as if a magician had waved his wand over it.
Or not so much the ether, as the Duke of Montford’s pockets.
Because of that wager, Lord Hasting’s ball had been both the first and the last of her season. She and her father had hardly had a chance to unpack their bags in their rented lodgings before they were back in Wiltshire, in far tighter financial circumstances than they’d been when they’d left.
It had been an ill-conceived wager, and it made no sense that her father should have made it at all. Major Thomas Thorne wasn’t a man who wagered money he didn’t have.
That is, hehadn’tbeen, until he’d stumbled across the Duke of Montford.
She didn’t excuse her father’s part in it, any more than he excused himself. She’d never seen him more ashamed than he was when he’d confessed the whole of it to her. For the first time she could recall, he’d looked every one of his fifty years.
It had been one of the most dreadful moments of her life.
Her father had realized soon after they arrived in London that the expense of her season would far exceed his means, yet he’d been desperate to see the thing through, for her sake. The worst of it was, she hadn’t evenwanteda season. She was the last lady in the world who should be twirling about a grand ballroom in a tight silk gown.
But there they’d been, in London, and by the ugliest twist of fate, in the same ballroom as the Duke of Montford.
Her father’s desperation had led to predictably catastrophic results.
But surely most of the blame for their ruination must rest upon the Duke of Montford’s shoulders? He was known to play deep, and often. A man so accustomed to wagering must have seen at a glance that her father wasn’t a gaming man, yet he’d sat down with him anyway, and in the space of a few hours, he’d taken every penny they had.
No,morethan that. Every penny they had, and every penny they could everhopeto have.
“Christ, what a bloody disaster of an evening.” Montford threw himself into one of the chairs in front of the fire and propped his booted feet on the table in front of him without sparing a glance at the desk. “You won’t believe where I was, Basingstoke.”
