My Fair Duchess (A Once Upon A Rogue Novel Book 1) Read Online Free PDF

touch one pretty little hair on your head because I won’t need to. I know all your secrets, my dear. I made it a point to learn them. They were shocking even to me, and that is saying something.”
    Her mouth gaped open.
    “Yes,” he said slowly. “I see you understand me now, and we can now go our separate ways. Permanently.”
    She nodded, even as her lips pressed into a thin, hard, white line. God, how he hated to threaten her, but he could not allow her to disparage his mother further than she had already managed to ruin herself, no matter how much she might deserve it.
    “You’re a beast,” she muttered before stomping out the door.
    Confident that his butler Bexley would see her out and safely into her carriage, Colin closed his door and ambled over to his bed. He dropped backward onto the mattress and stared up at the ceiling tiles. Was he really only twenty-five today? He felt eighty. Weary. Tired of his life. He needed a change. What sort, he had no idea. But everything seemed dreary. Depressing and predictable. Almost everyone he knew was banally disappointing in his or her debauchery, including himself. His father had been the only good person he knew, and look what that had gotten the old duke.
    “Your Grace?” Bexley called while scratching on the bedchamber door.
    Colin sat up. “Come in.”
    The door creaked open, and Bexley plodded in, his dark wooden cane clicking against the hardwood with each step he took. Even though it had been six months since Bexley had fallen down the stairs and broken his leg, Colin still sometimes forgot that the imposing butler who had served his father for years was not so sturdy anymore. By the whiteness of his knuckles gripping the handle of his cane, the man’s leg must have been causing him pain. Bexley was too stubborn and proud to admit such a thing, however.
    “Bexley, I’d like you to closet yourself today and take inventory of the staff’s wages. I do believe it’s time I give them a raise.”
    Bexley’s bushy black eyebrows shot up over his keen brown eyes. “You gave them a raise two months ago, Your Grace.”
    “Did I?” Colin moved past his butler toward his riding boots, which had been discarded haphazardly by the door. He knew damn well the servants had recently been given a raise, but it was the first task that had come to mind that would force his obstinate butler to sit and relieve his leg pain. He shrugged. “Well, I think I was too tightfisted. It’s been keeping me up at night.”
    “Yes, Your Grace. I could hear the trouble you were having sleeping last night when I strolled by your bedchamber before I retired.”
    Colin paused, bent over with one boot in hand. Heat seeped up his neck and for once, he wished he had a cravat on. “I know you don’t approve of Lady Diana. Rest assured she and her shrieking will not be returning to this house.”
    Bexley hobbled toward Colin, the movements jerkier than they had been moments before. He glanced down, and when he did, a thinning lock of peppered hair fell forward. In one fluid motion, he flicked the hair out of his eyes and back into its position then reached into his pocket and handed a letter to Colin. “It is neither my place to approve nor disapprove of the company you keep, Your Grace, but I do feel obligated to remind you that your father would not have liked her.”
    Colin grinned. Bexley always felt obligated to remind him of who and what his father would have liked and not liked, and Colin let him because Bexley had been loyal to his father all his life, and now he was loyal to Colin. The pain of his loss once again gripped him, tightening his shoulders, but he rolled them, stood, and took the cream-colored envelopes. He flipped the first one over and clenched his jaw. His mother’s overly flourished handwriting was not hard to recognize. He was tempted to throw it in the trash without reading it, but what if she was ill or hurt? Damnation, he hated that he cared at all.
    He ripped