The Reluctant Duke Read Online Free PDF Page B

up,’ Lucan dismissed. ‘Normally we would have flown up in the company-owned helicopter, but it’s being serviced at the moment.’
    The St Claires really were a breed apart, Lexie decided slightly dazedly. Super-rich. Super-powerful.
    How on earth her gentle and unassuming grandmother had ever dared to fall in love with the head of that rich and powerful family was a wonder in itself!
    ‘Silly me.’ Lexie grimaced.
    He nodded. ‘You should pack warm clothing—’
    ‘I believeI’m intelligent enough to have worked that out for myself,’ she snapped in her irritation.
    ‘I don’t think I’ve ever given you reason to think I believe you lacking in intelligence, Lexie,’ he assured her huskily.
    ‘So far,’ she challenged.
    ‘Ever,’ Lucan corrected gruffly.
    Lexie looked at him uncertainly, slightly unnerved by the throaty huskiness of his tone, and even more so by what she could see in those dark eyes as Lucan steadily returned her gaze.
    Dear Lord, she was going away with this man for two days. Would be in his company for the same amount of time. Constantly in his disturbing company…!
    ‘I’ll be back within the hour,’ she confirmed.
    But first Lexie had to go to the office of Premier Personnel and explain the situation to Brenda.
    Attempt to explain something Lexie couldn’t fully explain to herself!
    ‘Put your seat belt on,’ Lucan advised as he turned on the ignition of his black Range Rover.
    Lexie had looked disturbingly attractive when she’d returned to the offices of the St Claire Corporation an hour or so ago, carrying a thick calf-length woollen coat and an overnight bag, and dressed in a blue sweater the same colour as her eyes, with denims that fitted snugly over that shapely bottom and slender legs before being tucked into calf-high boots. The long length of that gloriously wild black hair was secured in a loose plait down her spine, revealing that she wore small pearls in the lobes of her ears. An oval gold locket was also visible against the blue of her sweater.
    Closed in the confines of the Range Rover with her, Lucan was also aware of the subtleness of the perfume she wore, along with a softer, even more subtle smell that was provocatively feminine. In fact the small and very womanlybundle beside him was—as Lucan had hoped she would be—a distraction from the fact that their destination was Mulberry Hall.
    Although Lucan knew that no one, and nothing, would ever make him feel completely relaxed about returning to the house he had lived in until he was eleven years old.
    Lucan knew from attending Jordan’s wedding almost a week ago that the house had changed little since he’d last spent any time there. There was no reason for it to have done. The furnishings and draperies were antiques, the floors downstairs mainly marble, the paintings on the walls originals, as were the ornamental statues, and the impressive chandeliers that hung from the high ceilings were of very old Venetian glass.
    No, there was no doubting that Mulberry Hall was a beautiful house. A gracious house. A house fit for a duke. The Duke of Stourbridge. A title Lucan currently held.
    Something else he had avoided thinking about for the last eight years.
    As the eldest child of a broken marriage Lucan had found it all too easy to blame Mulberry Hall and the demands of holding the title of Duke of Stourbridge, as much as his father’s and Sian Thomas’s affair, for wrecking his parents’ marriage and creating a schism in his own young life and that of his brothers. Lucan wanted to avoid all of those things. Mulberry Hall. His father. The title of Duke. Most of all, Sian Thomas—the woman Alexander had loved enough to sacrifice his whole family for.
    Initially, after the divorce was over and emotions had calmed somewhat, Alexander had tried to encourage his three sons to meet and get to know Sian Thomas. An encouragement that had fallen on stony ground as they’d all refused to go anywhere near the woman