To Pleasure a Duke Read Online Free PDF Page A

Lucius.” Her voice wavered. “It isn’t fair of you to make me do this. I hate you, Sinclair.”
    He sighed. Part of being an elder brother and the head of his family meant playing the disciplinarian. Sinclair knew the marriage was a coup where Annabelle was concerned, and Lucius was the perfect addition to their family. His mother had explained the importance of marrying within one’s own sphere, of doing one’s duty by one’s family. Sinclair knew that his tough behavior was for Annabelle’s own good, and any niggling doubts or sympathies he felt must be firmly quashed. But even so it was not easy to feel he was making her miserable.
    “That’s as may be,” he said, steeling himself for her tears, “but you will be leaving for London on the first day of July and I expect you to be packed and ready. Do I make myself clear?”
    His sister promptly fled the room, her steps ringing up the staircase and her sobs echoing up into the domed seventeenth-century gallery.
    “Blast it,” Sinclair muttered, and flung out of the French windows and onto the terrace, where he glowered at a gardener’s boy who was staking lilies, frightening him badly. It was in Annabelle’s best interests to marry Lucius. A year ago their mother announced that Annabelle was growing far too wild and willful, and behaving in a manner that was quite unladylike. She needed curbing; she needed to be married.
    “Marriage will sober her,” said the dowager duchess. “She must learn that people like us have a position to maintain. We cannot do what we wish. We must conform to our breeding.”
    It was only what Sinclair knew to be the truth, for such pronouncements had been drummed into him all his life. He no longer questioned them. He no longer hungered for what he could not have. Or so he told himself.
    “We cannot have Annabelle turning into a hoyden,” he muttered to himself. “Like . . . like . . .”
    The name rang in his head.
    Miss Eugenie Belmont of Belmont Hall.
    His lip curled. It was his trademark expression and others saw it as a sign of his disdain for those less fortunate than himself. It was an affectation he’d learned as a boy and now it came so automatically to him he didn’t even know he was doing it.
    But was Miss Belmont a hoyden? Surely it was her family who were the hoydens! It still stung him when he remembered the father trying to ingratiate himself with Sinclair and then making that outrageous offer. Sinclair didn’t entirely understand why he’d paid for the privilege of keeping an animal on his estate that he hadn’t wanted in the first place. He supposed it was partly because of the boy, Jack, and the tears in his eyes. And partly because he had seen in Jack a remarkable talent for taming animals—in particular horses. According to Sinclair’s groom the boy was a marvel. Within moments he’d had the wildest stallion eating from his hand.
    Sinclair was very fond of his horses, and he told himself that by allowing himself to be fleeced by the father he was gaining the trust of the son.
    As for Eugenie Belmont . . . her brother had artlessly told him that when his sister came home from finishing school her parents hoped she’d marry someone rich as a consequence. “Father is very proud of Eugenie. He says that when she comes home she’ll be a lady and we need her to marry someone who can put money into Belmont Hall before it falls down,” he went on, clearly too naïve to realize he was saying things he ought not.
    “And has your sister a particular suitor in mind?” Sinclair inquired calmly, while a tingle of warning sharpened his senses.
    “Oh, no, I don’t think so. Not yet, anyway.”
    The tingle faded. Sinclair breathed a sigh of relief. Just for a moment he’d thought he might be the unlucky object of her desires! But surely Eugenie Belmont—royal blood or not—would be too canny to think she could ever be in the same class as the Duke of Somerton!
    He wondered now whether it would be