Page 6 of His Enemy Duchess

So, perhaps I am as bad as everyone else, perpetuating the feud in my own way.

“I know what everyone says about me, Brother,” she continued haltingly. “I know that the tonwill think me mad if I refuse this—my last hope, in their eyes, of ever being a wife. But no matter how many times I heard them whisper unkind things about my manners, my etiquette, my awful dancing, my clumsiness, my opinions, my thoughts on marriage, it pales in comparison to the wayhehas treated our family. How he has treatedme.”

“We would never have you any other way, duckling,” James responded.

He hadn’t called her that in ages. It was a nickname that harkened all the way back to their childhoods.

What the ton had never realized in their scathing assessment of her was that she had not always been averse to the idea of marriage. By the time she debuted, she had the same dream as every other lady of the ton: to marry for love, to marry someone who would take proper care of her and truly love her.

The years after, realizing that she did not fitgentlemen’sopinion of a good prospect—being too loud, too coarse, too opinionated, too unladylike—had soundly trounced that dream, turning it into a determination to remain a spinster.

“Hedoes not want me that way, I assure you,” she said. “I approached him a few times, did you know that?”

James nodded.

“I thought I could be the dove once. Itriedto get our families a bit closer together. I’d engage him in conversation, ask him if he was enjoying himself, say something nice about his attire, and every time he’d look at me like I had just spat on his shoes. He… he always has that expression on his face, like he’s saying, ‘I am better than you,’” she said, imitating the Duke’s voice and coaxing a soft chuckle out of James. “Besides, if you think he’s not that bad, then why don’tyoumarry him?”

“If only it were so simple, dear sister,” he replied, holding his hands up to her—presumably to help her down from the saddle.

Sophia squeezed her eyes shut. “I can’t do it, Brother. I am not strong enough.”

“My dear duckling, that is nonsense. You are the strongest of us,” he insisted, his tone genuine, thrumming with feeling. “That is why we are asking you to save us. Because only you have the ferocity, the will, the might to do it. We have proven that, to our shame. And… should the worst come to pass, and you feel like you must escape, you send word and I will personally come up there and get you out.”

Her eyes opened. “You promise?”

“A Kendall’s promise.” He took hold of her hands, and before she knew it, she was turning in the saddle, letting him help her down. Letting him persuade her yet again, not with an argument this time, but with quiet desperation.

As her feet touched the ground, he pulled her into a hug that felt a lot like an apology. She put her arms around him in kind, resting her head on his shoulder the way she did when they were children. He held her tightly and kissed the top of her head, murmuring against her dark locks, “I’ll keep practicing with the pistol until then—just in case.”

“And I will learn how to shoot,” she whispered back. “Just in case.”

It seemed she was to be the dove after all, and she did not trust that the Duke of Heathcote would not raise his rifle to blow her out of the sky.

CHAPTER 2

“Isee you reached a compromise,” James whispered to Sophia while they stood in the foyer of Kendall House, waiting for the rest of the family to join them.

Sophia smoothed anxious hands down the front of her gaudy yellow gown and then adjusted the strangling ribbon of her matching bonnet. “You think this was my choice?”

“No, I know it wasn’t,” James replied in an apologetic tone, clearly sorry for the dressandthe marriage. “Still, at least you don’t resemble some manner of… exotic bird that has flown through a line of similarly exotic laundry.”

Try as she might, Sophia could not stifle a giggle, drawing the sharp attention of the bird in question.

“I will have you know, dear children of mine, that this is the latest fashion in Paris—which is theCapitalof fashion. Everyonein England will be wearing this in the next few years, mark my words,” Lydia Kendall, Marchioness of Alderley and mother of the wayward siblings, said with certain confidence.

She had said the same thing for every single ill-judged outfit she had worn for the past two decades. None of them had ended up being as fashionable as she thought, making their way into the gossip rags for all the wrong reasons.

The latest was a combination of fabrics that clashed loudly in purples, blues, cabbage greens, and cherry reds, all interwoven together as if she could not decide between six dresses, so she had worn them all. She topped it off with an impossibly large hat that made Sophia wonder how her mother could pass through doors without an issue.

Another amused voice joined in. “Goodness, Mother. I know this marriage is laughable, but I did not realize we were supposed to dress as clowns.”

“That isenough, Samuel,” their father, Charles, the Marquess of Alderley, chided roughly as he entered from a side hallway. “In truth, I do not want to hear a single word leave your mouth. And if you take umbrage with the marriage, perhaps you might look in the mirror to find the one to blame—the truest clown among us.”

Chastened, Samuel slunk in beside Sophia, his hand still wrapped in a bandage. He made no effort to hide it. Rather, he placed it over his good hand, ready to show it off when the Duke arrived.

“It doesn’t matter what we wear or how we receive them,” Sophia said tightly, all her humor gone. “They will call us barbarians anyway.”

The Marquess scratched his neck, falling into line with the rest of his family. “Maybe so, but we should not give them additional cause.” He grimaced, glancing at his wife. “Lydia, my love, can you loosen the collar? It’s suffocating me.”

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