This Duke is Mine (40 page)

I hope you enjoyed
The Duke Is Mine
—and any other books of mine that you might read. If you’d like more information about my novels, just check out my website, www.eloisajames.com. And I’m often on Facebook, at www.facebook.com/eloisajamesfans. I’d love to chat with you there.

With very best wishes,

Eloisa

Here's a sneak peek

at the newest romance from Eloisa James,

The Ugly Duchess,

available September 2012

from Avon Books

A Rather Long Preface

March 1805

45 Berkeley Square

The London residence of the Duke of Ashbrook

“Y
ou’ll have to marry her. I don’t care if you think of her like a sister: from now on, she’s the golden fleece to you.”

James Ryburn, Earl of Islay, and future Duke of Ashbrook, opened his mouth to say something, but a mixture of rage and disbelief choked his throat.

His father turned and walked toward the far wall of his library, acting as if he’d said nothing particularly out of the ordinary. “We need her fortune to repair the Staffordshire estate and pay a few debts, or we’re going to lose it all, this townhouse included.”

“What have you done?” James spat the words. A pounding, terrible feeling of dread was spreading up his limbs.

Ashbrook pivoted. “Don’t you
dare
speak to me in that tone!”

James was aware of rage burning up his spine and took a deep breath before answering. One of his resolutions was to master his temper before turning twenty—and his birthday was a mere three weeks away. “Excuse me, Father,” he managed through stiff lips. “Exactly how did the estate come to be in such danger, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“I do mind your asking.” The duke stared back at his only son, his long, aquiline nose quivering with rage. James came by his temper naturally; he inherited it straight from his irascible, reckless father.

“In that case, I will bid you good day,” James said, keeping his tone even.

“Not unless you’re going downstairs to make eyes at that girl. I turned down an offer for her hand this week from Briscott, so I didn’t feel I had to tell her mother. But you know damn well her father left the decision over who marries his daughter to her mother—”

“I have no knowledge of the contents of Mr. Saxby’s will,” James stated. “And I fail to see why that particular provision should cause you such annoyance.”

“Because we need her damned fortune,” Ashbrook raged, walking to the fireplace and giving the unlit logs a kick. “You need to convince Dora that you’re in love with her, or her mother will never agree to the match. Just last week, Mrs. Saxby inquired about a few of my investments in a manner that I did not appreciate. Doesn’t know a woman’s place.”

“I will do nothing of the sort.”

“You’ll do exactly as I instruct you.”

“You’re instructing me to woo a young lady whom I’ve been raised to think of as a
sister
.”

“Irrelevant! You may have rubbed noses a few times as children, but that wouldn’t stop you from sleeping with her.”

“I can’t.”

For the first time, the duke looked a trifle sympathetic. “Dora is no beauty. But all women are the same in the—”

“Do
not
say that,” James snapped. “I am already appalled; I don’t wish to be disgusted.”

His father’s eyes narrowed and rusty color rose in his cheeks, a sure sign of danger. Sure enough, Ashbrook’s voice emerged as a bellow. “I don’t care if the gal is as ugly as sin, you’re taking her. And you’re going to make her fall in love with you. Otherwise, you will have no country house to inherit. None!”

“What have you done?” James repeated through clenched teeth.

“Lost it,” his father shouted back, his eyes bulging a little. “Lost it, and that’s all you need to know!”

“I won’t do it.” He stood up.

A china ornament flew past his shoulder and crashed against the wall. He barely flinched. His father was given to fits of temper, and James had grown up ducking to avoid everything from books to marble statues.

“You will, or I’ll bloody well disinherit you and name your cousin Pinkler my heir.”

James’s hand dropped from the door handle, and he turned around. He was well aware that he was on the verge of losing his temper. While he’d never had the impulse to throw objects at the wall—or his family—his ability to fire cutting remarks was equally destructive. He took another deep breath, trying to curb the fire in his belly. “While I would hesitate to instruct you on the legal system,
Father
, I can assure you that it is impossible to disinherit a legitimate son.”

“I’ll tell the House of Lords that you’re no child of mine,” the duke bellowed. Veins were bulging on his forehead and his cheeks had ripened from red to purple. “I’ll tell ’em that your mother was a light-heeled wench, and that I’ve discovered you’re nothing but a bastard.”

At the insult to his mother, James felt his fragile control snap altogether. “You may be a craven, dim-witted gambler, but you will
not
tar my mother with sorry excuses meant to cover up your own idiocy!”

“How dare you!” screamed the duke. His whole face had turned the color of a cock’s comb.

“I dare say only what every person in this kingdom knows,” James said, the words exploding from his mouth. “You’re an idiot. I have a good idea what happened to the estate; I just wanted to see whether you had the balls to admit it. And you haven’t. No surprise there. You gambled our lands on the Exchange. You invested in one ridiculous scheme after another. The canal you built that was only seven feet from another canal? What in God’s name were you thinking?”

“I didn’t know that until it was too late! My associates deceived me. A duke doesn’t go out and inspect the place where a canal is supposed to be built. He has to trust others, and I’ve always had the devil’s own luck.”

“I would have at least visited the proposed canal before I sank thousands of pounds into a waterway with no hope of traffic.”

“You’re nothing more than an impudent ass!” The duke’s hand tightened around a silver candlestick standing on the mantelpiece.

“Throw that, and I’ll leave you in this room to wallow in your own fear. You want me to marry a girl who thinks I’m her brother in order to get her fortune . . . so that you—
you
—can lose it? Do you know what they call you behind your back, Father? Surely you’ve heard it. The dam’fool duke!”

They were both breathing hard, but his father was puffing like a bull, the purple stain on his cheeks vivid against his white neckcloth.

The duke’s fingers flexed around the silver piece.

“Touch that candlestick and I’ll throw you across the room,” James said, adding deliberately, “Your Grace.”

The duke’s hand fell to his side and he turned his shoulder away, staring at the far wall. “And what if I lost it?” he muttered, belligerence underscoring his confession. “The fact is that I did lose it. I lost it all. The canal was one thing, but I thought the vineyards were a sure thing. How could I possibly know that England is a breeding ground for black rot?”

“You idiot!” James spat, and turned on his heel to go.

“But you must save the estate,” Ashbrook hissed. “The Staffordshire estate’s been in our family for four generations. You
must
. Your mother would be devastated to see Ryburn House sold. And what of her grave . . . the cemetery adjoins the chapel, you know.”

James’s heart was beating savagely in his throat. It took him a moment to come up with a response that didn’t include curling his hands around his father’s throat. “That is low, even from you,” he said finally.

The duke paid no heed to that weak rejoinder. “
Are
you going to let your mother’s corpse be sold?”

“I’ll think about marrying some other heiress,” James said. “But I will not marry Daisy.” Theodora Saxby—known to the family as Dora and to James alone as Daisy—was his dearest friend, his childhood companion. “She deserves better than me, than anyone from this family.”

There was silence behind him. A terrible, warped silence that . . . James turned. “You didn’t. Even you . . . couldn’t.”

“I thought I would be able to replace it in a matter of weeks,” his father snapped, the color leaving his cheeks so that he looked positively haggard.

James’s limbs suddenly felt so weak that he found himself leaning back against the door. “How much of her fortune is gone?”

“Enough.” Ashbrook dropped his eyes, finally showing some sign of shame. “If she marries anyone else, I’ll . . . I’ll face trial. I don’t know if they can put dukes in the dock. Probably be the House of Lords. But it won’t be pretty.”

“Oh, they can put dukes on trial all right,” James said heavily. “You embezzled the dowry of a girl entrusted to our care since the time she was a mere infant. Her mother was married to your dearest friend. Saxby asked you
on his deathbed
to care for his daughter.”

“And I did,” her father replied, but without his usual bluster. “Brought her up as my own.”

“You brought her up as my sister,” James said flatly. He forced himself to cross the room and sit in a chair opposite his wretched father. “And all the time you were stealing from her.”

“Not all the time,” his father protested. “Just the last year. Or so. The majority of her fortune is in funds and I couldn’t touch that. I just . . . I just borrowed from . . . well, I just borrowed some. I’m deuced unlucky, and that’s a fact. I was absolutely sure it wouldn’t come to this.”

“Unlucky,” James repeated, his voice liquid with distaste.

“And now the girl is getting a proposal or two, I don’t have the time to make it up. You’ve got to take her. It’s not just that the estate and the townhouse will have to go; the name won’t be worth anything either, after the scandal. Even if I pay off what I borrowed from her, it won’t cover my debts.”

James didn’t reply. The only words going through his head were flatly blasphemous.

“It was easier when your mother was alive,” the duke said after a minute or two. “She helped me, you know. She had a solid head on her shoulders.”

James couldn’t bring himself to answer that either. His mother had died five years earlier, and in a mere half-decade, his father had managed to ruin an estate stretching from Scotland to Staffordshire to London. And he had embezzled Daisy’s fortune. And . . . “
Bloody hell
.”

“You’ll make her love you,” his father said encouragingly. “She already adores you; she always has. We’ve been lucky so far that Dora is so homely. The only men who’ve asked for her hand have been such obvious fortune hunters that her mother wouldn’t even consider them. But that’ll change as the season wears on. She’s a taking little piece, once you get to know her.”

James ground his teeth. “She will never love me in that way. She thinks of me as her brother, as her
friend
.”

“Don’t be a fool. You’ve got my profile.” A glimmer of pride underlaid his words. “Your mother always said that I was the most handsome man of my generation.”

James bit back a comment that wouldn’t help the situation. He was beginning to feel an overwhelming sense of nausea. “We could simply tell Daisy about what happened. What you did. She’ll understand.”

His father snorted. “You think her mother will understand? My old friend Saxby didn’t know what he was getting into when he married that woman. She’s a dragon, a positive dragon.”

In the seventeen years since Mrs. Saxby and her infant daughter had joined the duke’s household, they had managed to maintain fairly cordial relations—primarily because Ashbrook never threw anything in the widow’s direction. But James knew instantly that his father was right. If Daisy’s mother got even a hint that her daughter’s guardian had embezzled her inheritance, she would be battering on the door of a high judge before evening fell. Nausea drove James’s stomach into his throat at the thought.

His father, on the other hand, was cheering up. He had the sort of mind that flitted from one subject to another; his rages were fierce but short-lived. “A few posies, maybe a poem, and Dora will fall into your hand as sweetly as a ripe plum. After all, it’s not as if the girl gets much flattery. Tell her she’s beautiful, and she’ll be at your feet.”

“I cannot do that,” James stated, not even bothering to imagine himself saying such a thing. It wasn’t a matter simply of not wishing to say such inanities to Daisy herself; he loathed situations where he found himself fumbling with language he found tedious in the extreme. The season was three weeks old, but he hadn’t attended a single ball.

His father misunderstood his refusal. “Of course, you’ll have to lie about it, but that’s the kind of lie a gentleman can’t avoid. She may not be the prettiest girl on the market—and certainly not as delectable as that opera singer I caught sight of with you the other night—but it wouldn’t get you anywhere to point out the truth.” He actually gave a little chuckle at the thought.

James heard him dimly, concentrating on not throwing up as he tried to think through the dilemma before him.

The duke kept talking, amusing himself by laying out the distinction between mistresses and wives. “In compensation, you can keep a mistress twice as beautiful as your wife. It’ll provide an interesting contrast.”

There was no human being in the world he loathed as much as his father. “If I marry Daisy, I will not take a mistress,” he said, still thinking frantically, trying to come up with a way out. “I couldn’t do that to her.”

“Well, I expect you’ll change your mind on that after a few years of marriage, but each to his own.” The duke’s voice was as strong and buoyant as ever. “Well? Not much to think about, is there? It’s bad luck and all that rot, but I can’t see that either of us have much choice about it. The good thing is that a man can always perform in the bedroom, even if he doesn’t want to.”

The only thing James wanted was to get out of the room, away from his disgusting excuse for a parent. “I will do this on one condition.” His voice sounded unfamiliar to his own ears, as if a stranger said the words.