The American Duchess Read Online Free PDF Page A

like yourself. ‘My Lord’ will do admirably.”
    “I am so glad,” she replied with faint irony and he grinned, looking all of a sudden charmingly boyish.
    “May I call on you tomorrow?”
    “Yes, you may,” said Tracy Bodmin, that ardent republican.
    “Well?” said Lady Bridgewater to her nephew after the last of her guests had gone and they were alone together in the empty saloon. She had seen the attention that Adrian had paid to Tracy, but that attention did not necessarily mean anything conclusive. The Duke paid attention to a pretty girl in much the same way as he would listen to a piece of well-played music. Attention, in each case, was what he considered simple good manners.
    He looked at her for a minute without speaking. Then he smiled slightly. “Yes,” he said. “I think she’ll do.”
    Tracy went home with her father, unaware that she had just passed a momentous test. “I liked that Duke of Hastings,” her father said as they were sitting side by side in their carriage.
    “Did you, Papa? Evidently he is quite a grand seigneur over here.”
    “The grandest. Next best thing to royalty, according to Lord Melrose.”
    “Yet he seemed to know quite a bit about America.”
    “Yes, I discovered that myself.We had a very interesting discussion about the British Navigation Laws.”
    Tracy looked startled. “Did you?”
    “Yes.” Tracy could hear from his voice that her father was smiling. “That is, I talked about the Navigation Laws, and he listened. But he did actually listen, which is rare for an Englishman in regard to that topic.”
    “Yes.”
    Her father turnedto her. “You liked him, didn’t you, Trace?”
    “I’m afraid I did.”
    “Why afraid?”
    “I shouldn’t mindif I didn’t,” she said, with truth if not with great rationality. “It’s not good for a girl’s pride to like a man so much on first acquaintance.”
     “Nonsense,” replied her father, very pleased with her answer. “What has pride to do with it?”
    * * * *
    The Duke came to call the next day and sat talking to Tracy for over an hour. The day after that he took her driving in the park, and later in the week he escorted both Bodmins and Lady Bridgewater to the theatre.
    He was very pleased with his aunt’s protégée. If he had been given his own choice, he would have chosen his bride from his own order, a girl who would understand the duties and responsibilities of the great position she would be called upon to fill. But he did not have freedom of choice. Nor could he look with anything but pleasure at this American girl whom he proposed to make his wife.
    She was different from any girl he had ever met. She looked at him frankly, her sunny head not tilted in coquetry when she spoke or listened, but serenely upright. He liked looking at her, at her eyes, so brilliantly hazel, the whites so ultra white, at her short straight nose, her glowing skin, her wide, full mouth. There was passion in that mouth, he thought, and intelligence in her eyes. He did not think it would be difficult for her to learn the things she had not been bred to.
    At the end of two weeks, the Duke invited Mr. and Miss Bodmin to visit his estate, Steyning Castle, in Sussex. The only other persons included in the invitation were Lord and Lady Bridgewater. It was as good as a proposal of marriage, and Mr. Bodmin knew it even if Tracy did not.
    William Bodmin had, by this time, managed to find out a great deal about the Duke of Hastings. At first it had not seemed possible to the American that such a personage as the Duke could be seriously interested in Tracy. Mr. Bodmin had looked into the history of the Deincourt family. He had seen for himself the dignity of the Duke’s position. That his daughter should be a duchess! In his wildest dreams, Mr. Bodmin had not hoped for so much.
    But he had had a very interesting conversation with Lady Bridgewater, in which it had become apparent that the state of the ducal finances left a great deal