The Duke's Undoing (Three Rogues and Their Ladies) Read Online Free PDF Page A

to leave even her distant presence, he turned the page and sketched the tree and then the geese to which the maid was feeding bread scraps.
    He realized that his unwillingness to part with this vision was to do with her loneliness. Though he would never admit it to a living soul, it crept across the emerald lawn to touch that same chord in him. The chord played louder and louder until, rising, he could not resist walking to her side. As he did so, he was startled by a disembodied voice— The jig is up, Your Grace. That is the woman you are going to marry .
    Marry? Now that was a laughable notion, wherever it had come from.
    He came even with her. “Pardon me, my lady, but may I be of assistance to you in any way?” He took his top hat off as he spoke, noting a piece of blue notepaper closed on her lap.
    Starting with alarm, she turned her head away, as if by any chance he could see her face. “No, but thank you for asking, sir.”
    Without knowing why he did it, he tore the page with the drawing of the tree out of his pad and placed it on her lap. Never had he inflicted his amateur sketches on another human being. “You seem to be fascinated by Old Father Tree over there. Perhaps you might like this.” Turning, she looked down at his drawing, her face still not visible.
    “Why, ’tis lovely. Thank you.” Her appreciation appeared genuine, which pleased him. As she held the drawing in her gloved hands, he wished he could see them. There was something about this woman that struck a chord in his memory. Maybe it was her low, honeyed voice. He was certain he had heard it before.
    Unable to think of another thing to say, he returned his hat to his head. “Good morning to you, my lady. I hope the Old Father will comfort your solitude.”
    She bowed her head in acknowledgment, saying nothing else, and so he moved on. It wearied him inexpressibly to think of billiards and lunch at White’s.

CHAPTER FOUR
    IN WHICH OUR HEROINE RECEIVES ANOTHER PROPOSAL

    Staring at the old tree, Elise felt the pain she had been keeping at bay. Whether or not she had predicted it, being deserted for Violet was causing her real grief.
    Sukey is right! Why doesn’t my sense of irony rescue me from this hurt? In a book, this would be my comeuppance—punishment for my vanity. Haven’t I always, in spite of our friendship, been glad that I was not chubby like Violet?
    But books aren’t real. Mine aren’t even meant to be real. They are an escape. I write them to get away from the realities of my life—an impossible mother who is never pleased, the love of my life brutally killed, a man I thought I could count on instead changing into someone out of a nightmare, and now Gregory with his secret love for my moral superior.
    Looking at her life from this perspective, she realized why she felt as though she were in mourning. It wasn’t just one thing that burdened her. It was the combination. She was two and twenty, and the prospect of yet another love affair gone awry was impossible to contemplate. If ever there was another fiancé, he would probably be struck by a shaft of lightning at the altar.
    This was not the first time she had visited Old Father Tree, as the stranger had called it. Its ancient dominion over this little part of London always put her little life into perspective. Think of the griefs, the lives, the heartbreaks, the deaths it had overseen! But for each death there was a life, for each heartbreak a love. Nature was balance.
    This tree had borne her grief two years ago, as she held that same letter she clutched now. The “Old Father’s” transcendent beauty had conveyed the truth that life was evergreen, that Joshua was alive in some other sphere. Her other griefs were really nothing compared to that one. And now, as in that time, she felt his presence as she used to when he hid from her in a tree in the forest.
    Opening her battered heart to the memory of her deliriously happy childhood and adolescence, she let her love