How to Tame Your Duke Read Online Free PDF

believe it
was
necessary.”
    Dear boy?
    Emilie blinked and brushed her sleeves. She noticed the chicken leg and shoved it hastily in her pocket.
    “I was about to take him, you know,” said Freddie, in a petulant voice.
    The man turned at last. “I would rather not have taken that chance, you see.”
    But Emilie didn’t hear his words. She stood in horrified shock, staring at the face before her.
    The face before her:
His
face, her hero’s face, so perfect in profile, collapsed on the right side into a mass of scars, of mottled skin, of a hollow along his jaw, of an eye closed forever shut.
    From somewhere behind him came Rose’s voice, raised high in supplication. “Yer Grace, I’m that sorry. I did tell him, sir . . .”
    “
Your Grace?
” Emilie said. The words slipped out in a gasp. Understanding began to dawn, mingled with horror.
    Freddie handed Emilie her valise and said ruefully, “His Grace. His Grace, the Duke of Ashland, I’m afraid.” A sigh, long and resigned. “My father.”

TWO

    T he carriage rattled over the darkened road. Each jolt echoed through the silent interior before absorbing into the old velvet hangings, into the cushions with their crests embroidered in gold thread.
    Emilie took in shallow breaths, hardly daring to disturb the heavy air. How many years had this carriage sat inside the duke’s stables, taken out for polishing every month or so and rolled back in again? She tried to think of something to say. She had been educated to speak into silence, to keep conversation flowing during interminable state dinners and family visits, but on this occasion she could not produce a single word.
    Young Freddie sat next to her, or rather slumped, dozing against the musty velvet. Freddie, by courtesy the Marquess of Silverton, as it turned out. Across from them sat the duke, still and massive, his head bent slightly to avoid the roof of the carriage. He stared without moving through the crack in the curtains to the wind-whipped moors beyond. Emilie could scarcely see him at all in the darkness, but she knew that he was facing to his right, that he was shadowing his flawed side from her view. She sensed, rather than saw, the rise and fall of his chest as he breathed. The rhythm mesmerized her. What was he thinking, as he sat there with his steady breath and his steady heartbeat, while the wind pounded the carriage walls?
    The Duke of Olympia had told her little about him. He lived in deepest Yorkshire, at the Ashland family seat, from which he rarely ventured. He had been a soldier before assuming the title—he was a younger son of some sort, and not expected to inherit—and had fought in India or thereabouts. (Emilie, her skin prickling at the memory of the duke’s elbow landing expertly on the drunkard’s neck, could readily believe this.) His only child, Frederick, was nearly sixteen, extremely clever, and already preparing for the entrance examinations at Oxford; his old tutor had left a few months ago, which was why they needed another scholar without delay.
    There had been no mention of a wife.
    She opened her mouth to say something, anything, but the duke’s voice checked her.
    “Well, Mr. Grimsby,” he said, without turning his head, just loud enough to penetrate the rising howl of the wind with his extraordinary deep voice, “this is a fortuitous coincidence indeed. Another instant, and I should have been forced to find Frederick a different tutor.”
    Emilie cleared her throat and concentrated on keeping her words steady. “And I thank you again, Your Grace. I assure you, I am not in the habit of engaging in tavern brawls. I . . .”
    The air stirred as Ashland waved his hand. “No doubt, of course. Your references are impeccable. Indeed, I rather believe I trust Olympia’s judgment in such matters above my own.”
    “Still, I should like to explain myself.”
    He turned at last, or at least Emilie thought he did. Her eye caught a flash of movement, the sliver of