When the Duke Found Love Read Online Free PDF

matter.”
    “I don’t,” Brecon agreed. He dropped into the armchair beside Sheffield’s and sighed with pleasurable relief as another footman brought him a glass of sherry. “Having sired only sons, not daughters, I have little experience of my own in young female willfulness. Lady Hervey rather sought a friend’s commiseration, not advice, and that I was happy to provide.”
    “Tell me more of this willful young lady,” Sheffield requested. Both March and Hawke, the last of his cousins, had married daughters of the late Earl of Hervey through arranged matches. These ladies were beauties, but they were also now duchesses, and thoroughly respectable as such, even though Hawke had insisted on carrying his wife off to live in Naples. The notion of another, younger sister, one who was likely just as beautiful, but willful and impulsive, was intriguing to Sheffield. He’d always liked beauty unburdened by responsibility. “Is she as fair as her sisters?”
    “Some believe her to be the loveliest of the lot,” Brecon said, more with dismay than with admiration. “Golden hair, blue eyes with a winsome charm, and a lissome figure, too, much like her mother’s. Oh, yes, she’s fair which only magnifies the misery she’s capable of inflicting upon her family. She’s had all manner of disreputable men sniffing after her, and there was one bounder in particular—an Irish officer, if you can believe it—who nearly coaxed her toward Gretna Green. All enough to scare off respectable suitors, and who can blame them? The chit’s a handful. I’ve never seen poor Lady Hervey so distraught with worry.”
    Sheffield nodded, considering as he sipped his wine. From Brecon’s description, this Lady Diana could be a twin to the girl that Fantôme had found for him in the park—as if any earl’s daughter, however willful, would ever be found alone beneath the trees. But at least he’d the explanation for Brecon’s involvement: a poor noble widow, distraught over her youngest child’s fate. How could Brecon resist?
    “It’s a pity her father didn’t have the chance to arrange a marriage for Lady Diana as he did for his other two daughters,” Brecon was saying. “If he had only lived a bit longer, then everything would have long been settled, and there’d be none of this nonsense from the girl now about falling in love.”
    “Love is hardly nonsense, cousin,” Sheffield suggested, sympathizing with the lady who possessed that golden hair and lissome waist. Perhaps she needed a champion, just like her mother. “What could be more important to a young lady than love?”
    But Brecon knew Sheffield well—too well, really. He set his glass down on the table beside his chair and leaned forward, his expression serious.
    “Sheffield,” he said slowly, so there’d be no misunderstanding, “you are to have nothing to do with Lady Diana Wylder. Not. One. Thing.”
    Sheffield smiled, bemused. “She’s as much as another cousin, Brecon. I do not see why I must keep from my own family.”
    But Brecon wasn’t smiling. “You will heed me in this, Sheffield, family or not. I know how you are with women.”
    Sheffield shrugged to show that none of it was his fault. “It’s rather how women are with me.”
    “I’m serious,” Brecon said. “The girl’s head is already too full of sentimental ballads and tawdry novels. She doesn’t need you addling her further.”
    Sheffield sighed, leaning back against the cushions. He rested his elbows on the arms of the chair and made a small tent of his fingers, bouncing them lightly against one another as he pretended to study the effect.
    “Then tell me, Brecon,” he said, musing, “for I am most curious. If not my own excellent company, then what would you prescribe for the lovesick lady? What do you believe she requires that I cannot offer her?”
    Brecon made a grumbling, growling sound deep in his throat. “I know exactly what you’d offer Lady Diana, sir, and she is