Beauty and the Duke Read Online Free PDF

Amelia isn’t here.”
    A knock on the front door signaled an end to their tête-à-tête . Sophie patted Christine’s cheek. “That would be wonderful, dear. We can share a spot of tea later this week.”
    A footman entered the dining room and announced that Lady Bosworth’s carriage and party had arrived.
    “I am off to the races, dear.”
    “I thought you didn’t like Lady Bosworth.”
    “Pish-posh.” Aunt Sophie tugged on her gloves. “That was yesterday. She has apologized for whatever it was she did that caused the tiff. At my age, it is never wise to hold grudges for too long. You will understand soon enough, dear.”
    Aunt Sophie hurried out of the room, leaving Christine alone with her thoughts and listening as the horsesand carriage pulled away from the drive. At sixty-eight, Aunt Sophie showed a remarkable lack of regret for any of the choices she had made in life. She was who she was and to the devil with anyone who found exception to her character.
    Her cat meowed at her feet. Christine looked down. Beast, her fat tabby, rubbed against her legs. She lifted the large tomcat onto her lap. He began to purr against her hand, his front paws kneading her arm. She’d found him years ago, after the poor thing had been run over by a beer wagon, and she had nursed him back to health. He had one golden eye and parts of his body were missing fur, but to her, he was a beautiful cat.
    Nuzzling his head, she picked a piece of cheese off Aunt Sophie’s plate and rewarded him for his affection. “You know who loves you best, don’t you?” she cooed.
    But after a while Beast abandoned her for the outdoors, where an abundance of mice awaited the patient hunter and he could be king of his world.
     
    Christine made her way through the empty and hallowed corridor of the school where the young women who attended learned about something more than manners, etiquette, and needlepoint. Many of the students here were younger daughters of genteel landowners, bereft of the needed dowry to marry well. They would never see a Season in London. But for most of the sixteen girls enrolled at Sommershorn Abbey and for the three teachers, former students who spent the year living among the girls, the experience this school provided gave them the means to better their lives.
    Christine picked up her pace and felt a pin drop from her tightly wound chignon. It fell to the wooden floor with a soft click, but she couldn’t stop to find where it had fallen. Already she was late.
    She paused outside the classroom. It would not do to allow the girls to see her harried, especially when she preached the importance of self-respect and control. She opened the door. The girls were congregating around the desk, clearly not expecting to see Christine. They straightened guiltily, their excited chatter coming to an abrupt end as if someone had doused them with ice water. Each of them scattered to take her place behind her wooden desk.
    “Miss Amelia has left us,” Christine explained when she had their attention again. She walked across the room to stand behind Amelia’s disorganized desk. “I will be taking over her classes until the end of the session this week.”
    The girls looked at each other and giggled. Dolly, a lanky seventeen-year-old with a mop of red curls spoke first. “Did she and Mr. Darlington really elope?”
    Startled, Christine looked at the girls, their expressions intent as they awaited her reply. “Did Miss Amelia inform you of her plans?”
    The girls grew more excited and animated. “Not in so many words, Miss Christine,” Dolly replied, clearly the class spokesperson. She was the oldest.
    “It’s the magic ring what done it,” the school’s newest acquisition blurted. Babs was the fifteen-year-old granddaughter of Aunt Sophia’s whist partner.
    “Two months ago she made a wish that Mr. Darlington would marry her,” another girl replied to a chorus of animated gibberish.
    “ ’Tis true, Miss Christine,” Dolly