Lady Adventuress 01 - His Wayward Duchess Read Online Free PDF Page A

thoroughly. It was right here, in fact. She was to dine with my mother, when I knocked a shuttlecock through the open window and into her soup.”
    Holly stared at him, wide eyed, then looked o ut the window, imagining the disaster as though she could see it unfolding before her eyes.
    Then something caught her attention. “Was it white soup, by any chance?”
    His lips twitched. “Why, yes, as it happens, it was. I wonder that you guessed so well.”
    “Yes – just the merest luck ,” Holly murmurred wryly, and ate a spoonful of the soup in question to keep from grinning in a manner that he would find most undignified.
    “I am afraid Cook has certain ideas and it is beyond me to address them.”
    Holly didn’t suppose he’d been around enough to speak to Cook at all. The house was all in dust sheets. “Forgive me, but why is the house in such disuse?”
    The question was out before she could have stopped it, and then it was too late. Holly held her breath and wondered if she had overstepped herself.
    It seemed, however, that she had caught him in a rare moment of earnestness, because then the duke began to speak. His voice, dark like midnight, dropped lower still and she couldn’t help the shiver that stole through her. Such a wonderful voice he had.
    “My late brother, you see, was not of a domestic bend, though he was the heir. He had insisted on a place in the army, despite what my father wanted, and once the house passed to him, he carried on with his military career. I do believe he gave hardly a thought to the running of the place, though he was fond of it. We had been very happy here as children. Max mostly kept to the London house when he was on furlough. He had the best of intentions but not the least notion how to go about managing his inheritance. But it is the family seat and now that it has passed to me, I mean to set the pace to rights, in memory of my brother and my parents.”
    His eyes darkened as he remembered the previous duke, and she could read sorrow in the sharp lines of his face. A moment later it was gone, as though it had never been, and his face was once again an impassive mask.
    “I belie ve that what the house needs most is the exacting attention of a lady of sense and skill in domestic matters.”
    Her stomach turned to ice and she felt somewhat ill. Ah. So there it was then, the answer to the riddle that had plagued her so. All that talk of refurbishment and looking after the grounds.
    He really couldn’t have made a better choice if he had advertised, she thought bitterly.
    She felt full to bursting with hurt and disappointment, which had no place being there because it was not as though he had ever deceived her. Holly wasn’t sure how to respond, so she merely nodded.
    “Of course, the whole estate will need a lot of work,” the duke continued. “New drainage must be installed before the autumn hits, and stone foundations. The roads, too, will need to be widened: I mean to take Pontridge properly into this new century. Macadamised roads would make all the difference, I am told, though they are generally scoffed at.”
    Was the room tilting, Holly wondered, or was it just her imagination? She always did have such an imagination.
    “I th ink it would be largely appreciated by the tenants,” Holly said faintly, “It will vastly improve the speed of travel.”
    This is about the farthest thing imaginable from declarations of love or strolls in the moonlight. She really had outdone herself . But at least now she knew why he had yet to even try to kiss her.
    She wondered if she could be bold enough to kiss him first , just to see what he’d do: but no, definitely not. He’d be appalled. She was supposed to be setting the house to rights, after all.
    She tried to eat another spoonful of the damnable soup, wondering if they would go on in this strange fashion forever. Could she go on in this way forever? How long did it take for love to atrophy?
    How much h appier a world where