Enchanting the Duke Read online

  John followed the Avon River for two miles and then guided his horse, Nemesis, into the woodland. He halted the horse when an unusual sound reached his ears. Cocking his head to one side, John listened and smiled when he recognized what it was.

  Someone—no, two people were playing flutes. The haunting melody sounded eerie in the lonely woodland. The lilting notes held a melancholy mood, yet the warm and sensitive tones touched his heart.

  John nudged Nemesis forward again. Remaining in the woodland for this unexpected musicale was not on his agenda for that afternoon. He had a score to settle with the impertinent Miss Montgomery and refused to be deterred from his purpose.

  When he broke free of the woodland, Arden Hall came into his long view. Built during Elizabethan times, the manor was a product of local materials—timber from the forest of Arden and blue-gray stone from Wilmcote. The mansion’s stately drive had been fashioned of plum-red bricks and gray stone dressings. On one side of Arden Hall was a chapel and a graveyard. Its spacious gardens were located on the other side.

  “How may I help you, my lord?” the Montgomery majordomo asked, escorting him into the foyer.

  “You may begin by calling me ‘Your Grace’,” John said, sliding his gaze toward the man. “I am the Duke of Avon.”

  “Forgive me, Your Grace,” the majordomo apologized, but his expression was decidedly unrepentant.

  “Welcome to Arden Hall, Your Grace,” said a woman’s voice.

  “Welcome, Your Grace,” two other females chirped in unison.

  John turned in the direction of the female chorus. Three of the plainest-looking women he had ever seen dropped him curtsies. Apparently, the two younger women had inherited their mother’s dismal features. Even their gowns fit improperly, as if made for a smaller woman.

  The older woman stepped forward to greet him. “Your Grace, we are honored by your presence at Arden Hall.”

  “Thank you, my lady.”

  “Please call me Delphinia. I am the late earl’s wife.” She gestured to the younger women “These are my daughters, Lobelia and Rue.”

  Both daughters dropped him a second curtsy. Acknowledging their respectful deference, he inclined his head slightly.

  “Your Grace, come into the drawing room and take some refreshment,” Delphinia invited, a gracious smile on her face.

  “No, thank you,” John said in refusal. “I have business with Isabelle Montgomery. Would you kindly send for her?”

  Lobelia and Rue giggled, drawing his attention.

  “Isabelle isn’t here at the moment,” Delphinia explained. “May I—”

  “Isabelle is roaming the woods with her invisible friend,” Lobelia interrupted.

  Rue nodded in agreement. “Isabelle is quite mad, Your Grace.”

  “That is unkind to say,” Delphinia scolded her daughters. “Isabelle has been upset about her father’s passing.”

  “The man has been dead eight years,” Lobelia sneered.

  John looked from the daughters to the mother. Apparently, Miles Montgomery had been correct. His stepfamily harbored no fondness for his sister. He felt glad that he’d agreed to take charge of the Montgomery affairs.

  Delphinia cast him an ingratiating smile. “May I be of assistance, Your Grace?”

  “Miles has named me his sister’s temporary guardian and given me the management of his businesses and estates,” John informed her. “I have the necessary documents to verify my words.”

  “Pebbles, show His Grace to the earl’s study,” Delphinia ordered the majordomo.

  “Yes, my lady.” Pebbles turned to him. “This way, Your Grace.”

  John followed the majordomo down a long corridor and then into the study. While John made himself comfortable at the earl’s desk, the majordomo stoked the fire in the hearth and then opened the draperies behind the desk to allow more sunlight into the chamber.

  “Will there be anything else, Your Grace?”

  “No.” John watched the man retreating across the chamber and then called, “Pebbles?”

  The majordomo paused and turned. “Yes, Your Grace?”

  “Is Isabelle Montgomery mad?”

  “The lady is as sane as you or I.”

  “Does she possess an invisible friend?”

  A wholly disgusted look appeared on the majordomo’s face, but was quickly banished. “Your Grace, if you had grown from childhood to adulthood without a real friend, you would invent someone too.”

  The hint of a smile touched the corners of John’s lips. “I commend your loyalty.”

  “Thank you, Your Grace,” Pebbles drawled. “It’s good of you to notice my finer points of character.” The majordomo left the study and shut the door behind himself.

  Blonde or not, Isabelle Montgomery must surely possess a special, redeeming trait in order to inspire loyalty in a servant. On the other hand, she had been particularly impertinent and disrespectful to him. He would need to make his own judgment when she appeared.

  John began his task of auditing the household ledgers. He had already made arrangements for anything new of a business nature to be sent to him. As he perused the accounts, he realized that Montgomery was right, the girl did know what she was doing. Her talent with numbers, albeit odd in a young woman, was admirable.

  An hour passed. John wondered what was delaying the girl. He hoped nothing had happened on her walk. Should he search for her?

  Afternoon’s shadows were already lengthening in the chamber. Where could she have gone? He would go looking for her if she didn’t return in the next fifteen minutes.

  Rising from the chair, John wandered to the window and gazed at the well-manicured grounds. A movement in the distance caught his attention. A girl was crossing the winter-brown lawns toward Arden Hall.

  At long last, this must be Miss Montgomery.

  His hopes faded as the girl walked nearer to the manor. She was merely a servant, as evidenced by her coarse gray cloak, and probably destined for Bedlam.

  The chit was deep in conversation with herself, hand gestures and all. Then he noticed the flute she held and knew that she’d been the one playing in the woods. The girl disappeared from view.

  Within minutes, the study door burst open with a loud bang like a canon exploding. John whirled around and watched in amazement as the servant girl in the coarse gray cloak marched across the study.

  Reaching the desk, the girl pushed the hood off her head to reveal hair the color of spun gold. She set her flute down and glared at him.

  “I don’t give a rat’s arse what Miles wants. I forbid you to meddle in Montgomery affairs.”

  Chapter 3

  “Isabelle Montgomery, I presume?”

  “No, the Queen of Sheba.” Isabelle arched a perfectly-shaped blond brow at him. “The Duke of Avon, I presume?”

  “No, the fifteenth Duke of Doom,” John told her. “I am also the tenth Marquess of Mean and the twelfth Earl of . . .” He hesitated as if searching for the correct word.

  “The Earl of Egads?” Isabelle suggested, her lips twitching with the urge to laugh in spite of her reluctance to like the man.

  The Duke of Avon gave her a devastating smile. “I see that my reputation precedes me.”

  “Indeed it does, Your Grace.” Isabelle succumbed to the smile she’d been struggling against. She had wanted to insult the man into leaving Arden Hall. Never would she have guessed the duke possessed such an easygoing nature that he would joke in the face of impertinent provocation.

  “What a sly charmer he is.”

  Isabelle looked in the direction of the hearth where her old friend sat.

  “Does he seem familiar to you?” Giselle gave her an ambiguous smile.

  “He seems familiar to me,” Isabelle muttered in a voice barely loud enough to hear.

  “To whom are you speaking?”

  Isabelle looked at the duke. “I have a habit of thinking out loud.”

  “Who looks familiar?” John asked.

  “You
do,” Isabelle answered. “I’ve seen you somewhere before.”

  “If we had met before,” John said, walking around the desk toward her, “I am certain I would have remembered you.” He stopped in front of her, forcing Isabelle to tilt her head back in order to meet his gaze. “I watched you walking across the lawns. You were—”

  “Thinking out loud, Your Grace.”

  The Duke of Avon slid his midnight black gaze down the length of her body. “Why are you dressed like a servant?”

  “Have you ridden to Arden Hall to criticize me?” Isabelle asked him. “If so, you will need to get in line behind my stepfamily.”

  The Duke of Avon leaned back against the edge of the desk and folded his arms across his chest. “Do you have an invisible friend?”

  “Ah, you’ve had the pleasure of meeting Lobelia and Rue.”

  That devastating smile of his appeared again, confounding her. “If they were my stepsisters, I would invent an invisible friend too.”

  “With all due respect, Your Grace, do not patronize me.” Isabelle unfastened her cloak and tossed it on top of the desk. Then she walked around the desk and sat in her brother’s chair in an unspoken challenge that she, not he, was in charge of the Montgomery affairs.

  The duke turned around to face her, his expression telling her that he knew her ploy. “Call me John.”

  Isabelle stared down at the top of the desk and refused to spare him even one small glance. “I do not know you well enough to use your given name.”

  “You don’t like me, do you?”

  Isabelle felt the heated blush rising upon her cheeks. Of all the things he could have said, that remark was not the one she had expected.

  “You are a stranger to me, Your Grace.” Isabelle refused to let him embarrass her into meddling in Montgomery affairs. “Like or dislike has no significance to this business between us.”

  “The handsome devil has you flustered.”

  Isabelle glared at her old friend.

  “What is so interesting about that hearth?”

  Isabelle snapped her head around to look at the duke. She blushed and then inwardly cursed herself for letting the man fluster her. She took a calming breath. “What is it you wish to discuss, Your Grace?”

  The duke gestured to the chairs in front of the hearth. “Shall we sit down and discuss this?”

  “I am already sitting, Your Grace,” Isabelle said, a mulish expression upon her face.

  Walking around the desk to stand beside her, he offered her his hand. “Please, Mistress Montgomery, humor an illustrious peer of the realm.”

  Isabelle looked from his offered hand to his eyes, blacker than a moonless midnight, and became caught in their fathomless depths. She placed her hand in his and rose from her chair. His touch was firm yet gentle as he guided her across the study toward the hearth.

  Isabelle sat in one of the vacant chairs. “Oh, don’t sit there,” she cried, when he moved to sit in the other chair.

  John stopped short and stared at her in obvious surprise.

  How was she to explain this? The duke couldn’t know that he’d been about to sit on her guardian angel.

  “I’ll move.”

  Covering her blunder, Isabelle reached out and brushed nonexistent lint from the chair’s cushion. “You may sit down now.”

  Isabelle breathed a sigh of relief when his expression cleared, and he sat down beside her. She fingered her golden locket and hoped her mother’s spirit would give her the strength to see through this difficult interview.

  “That’s an interesting locket,” John remarked, noting her movement. “Is it an heirloom?”

  “I carry my mother’s miniature inside it,” Isabelle said, dropping her hands to her lap. She did not want him to realize how nervous she felt.

  “Oh, may I see it?”

  “My mother’s image is meant only for me.” Isabelle reached up to cover the locket with one hand. “Get on with your business.”

  “Bloody hell, have you no social graces?” the duke asked. “However will I—”

  “Your Grace, I really must protest your vocabulary,” Isabelle interrupted. “And spoken in anger, too.”

  “A man would need the patience of a saint in order to hold his temper when dealing with you,” John shot back.

  Unaccountably guilty about her rudeness, Isabelle cast him an unconsciously flirtatious smile. “Ah, yes, I hear the clinking of the black stone falling onto your spiritual scale.”

  “To what do you refer?”

  “The angels drop white or black stones onto a person’s opposing scales of spirit in order to keep track of the soul’s virtue or sin,” Isabelle explained. “You, Your Grace, just earned yourself a black stone, while I earned myself a white stone for warning a sinner.”

  The duke smiled. “Will I earn myself a white stone if I wander the streets of London and warn sinners of their folly?”

  “Warning the sinner is a spiritual work of mercy,” Isabelle told him. “There are several other works of mercy you may perform in order to earn yourself a place in Heaven.”

  “And what would they be?” John asked, stretching his long legs out in front of him.

  “Warning the sinner, instructing the ignorant, counseling the doubtful,” Isabelle said him. “The others escape my mind at the moment.”

  “How about bedding the frustrated?”

  “God mend your words,” Isabelle said, shocked by his vulgarity. Hearing the old woman’s chuckle, she said without thinking, “Lust isn’t funny.”

  “Now the man thinks you’re crazy.”

  How would she explain herself? Thinking aloud wouldn’t do this time.

  “I am sorry,” John apologized to her. “You are correct, lust is not funny. Don’t you know enough to look at a man when he is apologizing to you?”

  Isabelle looked at him. Thank God, the man believed she’d turned away because of his vulgarity.

  “Will you forgive me?”

  Isabelle nodded. He seemed so contrite and sincere. At that moment, she would have agreed to almost anything to keep him from believing she was crazy.

  “I suppose I now have two black stones on that scale?”

  “I will pray for your soul, Your Grace.”

  “I appreciate the consideration. Now, shall we get down to business?”

  “We have no business, Your Grace.”

  “Oh, but we do,” he disagreed, his voice and his expression pleasant. “Your brother asked me to become your temporary guardian and keep an eye on the Montgomery ledgers, which are fine at the moment. I will sponsor your come-out in the spring if Miles hasn’t returned by then.”

  Isabelle fingered her golden locket and tried to muster the courage to defy the duke. Inwardly, she rebelled against his announcement, but what could she do about it? She knew her stepmother would side with the duke.

  Insidious insecurity coiled itself around her heart, and Isabelle knew, as surely as she was breathing, that she could not make a come-out in the spring. She had no idea how to go about in society. Besides, the world was filled with people like Lobelia and Rue. Society would never accept her. She would rather die an old maid on the shelf than put herself through that humiliation.

  “Did you hear me?” the duke was asking.

  Isabelle focused on him. “I beg your pardon?”

  “This document names me your temporary guardian,” The duke said, holding up a paper for her perusal. “Believe me, I like the idea less than you. I have given your brother my word of honor and intend to keep it.”

  Isabelle’s expression became mulish again. “I am content to live as I have been and refuse to take orders from you.”

  “Your brother worried about leaving you in your stepmother’s care.”

  “If he worried that much,” Isabelle countered, unable to keep the bitterness out of her voice, “why did Miles abandon me?”

  “Abandon?” John echoed, surprised by her choice of words. “Our brothers have taken a business trip and
will return as soon as possible.”

  Isabelle opened her mouth to argue the point, but the door swung open, drawing her attention. Pebbles walked into the study. “Supper is served, Your Grace. My lady insists you join her and her daughters.”

  John nodded at the man and then glanced at Isabelle. “We can finish this conversation later.” He offered his hand, and without thinking, Isabelle accepted it.

  When they entered the dining hall, Delphinia was already seated at one end of the table, leaving the head of the table for the duke to occupy. On Delphinia’s right sat Lobelia and Rue while Isabelle took her place on the duke’s right.

  Supper consisted of pea soup with bacon and herbs, Cornish hens, and potato pudding. Wine, cider, and biscuits with quince jelly completed the fare.

  Isabelle hoped her stepsisters wouldn’t start insulting her. She didn’t give a fig what the duke thought. It was only that—she flicked a surreptitious glance in his direction—he was the handsomest man she’d ever seen.

  “Please tell us the gossip circulating in London this year,” Delphinia was saying.

  “I never engage in gossip,” John said with a polite smile. “I’m usually the center of such falsehoods. Did I mention that I will be sponsoring the young ladies’ season this spring?”

  Lobelia and Rue squealed with delight. Less delighted, Isabelle rolled her eyes at their behavior.

  “My daughters have been looking forward to the season,” Delphinia said. “It’s time my darlings were married.”

  “I know several suitable gentlemen and would be willing to introduce them,” John said. “Let me see . . . Stephen Spewing, Baron Barrows, Charles Hancock, Baron Keswick, Lord Finch, Lord Somers, and Major Grimase. I do believe the major is a bit too old for them, but very rich.”

  “I have nothing to wear,” Lobelia complained, giving Isabelle a pointed look.

  “Neither do I,” Rue whined.

  “Funds for a new wardrobe will be necessary,” John told them.

  Isabelle thought she might lose her supper when Lobelia and Rue squealed with delight again. She sneaked a glance at the duke and caught him smiling at her. Could he read the mutiny in her expression? She dropped her gaze to her plate.