Page 3 of My Secret Duke
“No, you weren’t wrong,” she admitted, her eyes filling with tears. “Iwasenjoying myself. It was so pleasant to be sought after and to dress in pretty things, and I was liking it very much. And now I’ve ruined it.” Her lip wobbled.
Her brother seemed to be choosing his words carefully. Although his expression was stern, there was kindness in his dark eyes. “We are still learning to live within the rules,” he said. “Sometimes we can stretch them a little, or even bend them on occasion, but we must never break them.”
It was his kindness that threatened to undo her. Her throat almost closed over her anxious reply. “Do you think I have? Broken them?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “You certainly caused a stir. Northam said he would fix things, but how reliable is he, and how can he mend matters? Perhaps people will make allowances for your inexperience.”
She expected he actually meant for her headstrong nature and foolish behavior. “I am very sorry. I forgot for a moment where I was and what was at stake. I am trying very hard to be a duke’s sister.”
“Your life has been turned upside down,” Gabriel agreed.
“So has yours. And don’t tell me you don’t resent it, for I won’t believe you,” she said when he went to dismiss her words.
“Of course I resent it.”
She held her breath. Gabriel had been a gambling club owner, without any encumbrances, and now he was a duke with six unmarried sisters. Could he turn his back on them all and walk away? After tonight, she wouldn’t blame him if he did.
His next words soothed that worry.
“I wish it were different, but I understand why I have to change. It’s for the sake of you and your sisters. If I had refused to take on the dukedom, then you would have been cast into penury, forced to live with relatives and strangers who had no care for you. How would you have felt about that? The estate was bankrupt, and although I have managed to claw it back to respectable limits, it will take time for us to be truly safe.”
Olivia felt the old fears twist in her stomach—memories of her life before Gabriel came to save them. “Do you mean we could still be cast into pen-penury?” she asked and strained to hear the answer to her question over the beating of her heart.
“There is a possibility. However, I will do my utmost not to let that happen. I may be a bad duke,” Gabriel said, “but I am an excellent businessman.”
Olivia found a shaky laugh. “You’re not a bad duke. It was I who messed up. Grandmama will be livid, she is always going on about what is at stake, but I didn’t realize how bad things could get until now. It’s horrible to be treated like that. Especially when I was enjoying myself so much. I don’t like it, Gabriel, I really don’t.”
Shehadbeen enjoying her new life, and thishadbeen a painful lesson in what she could and could not do if she wanted to keep her reputation and her place in society. Returning to Grantham, to the past, was not an option, and certainly not one she wanted to contemplate.
She finally understood the command she held over her own destiny. Ivo was not the right gentleman for her. Attractive and charismatic he might be, but he was completely wrong when it came to her future. If she was to have any chance of making a good match, if she was to find a wealthy and respectable husband, if she was not to end up where she started, then she must distance herself from him.
She must.
Chapter One
Two weeks later, Ashton House
Mayfair, London
The girls were huddled together in Olivia and Justina’s bedchamber. Edwina was trying not to bounce on the feather mattress as her big blue eyes slid from sister to sister. There were six of them altogether, ranging in age from twenty to five, and despite the Ashton town house having many rooms, all six of them were in this one.
“Is Grandmama speaking yet?” one of them asked Olivia, deferring to her as the eldest sister. They had been tiptoeing around their grandmother, the Dowager Duchess of Grantham, ever since their half brother, Gabriel, had rushed off to Cornwall. Apart from one furious outburst from the dowager, there had been nothing since but an icy silence. She kept to her rooms, her meals carried up on trays by nervous-looking servants, and refused visits from anyone, including her granddaughters.
Especially her granddaughters.
Olivia could understand it. The dowager had discovered the girls had been coconspirators in Gabriel’s decision to set off after Miss Vivienne Tremeer, with the goal of asking her to marry him. The very woman Grandmama had warned him against because of hertarnished reputation and unsuitable family. The dowager had already decided that the perfect wife for Gabriel was the Earl of March’s daughter, Lady Edeline, and she had believed Gabriel had been convinced. Why should he not be when the beautiful and blue-blooded Edeline would ensure the Ashton family’s return to respectability, sweeping their scandals beneath their threadbare carpet?
And their scandals were numerous.
Harry, the former duke, had married his mistress, Eugénie Cadieux, and then kept it hidden when he went on to marry Lady Felicia. Therefore, Gabriel, the “bastard” son of Eugénie, was now the legal heir, while the six daughters of Felicia had no legal standing. Gabriel had agreed to take his half sisters on, as well as an estate that was groaning under the weight of his father’s and grandfather’s debts. The dowager had thought she could influence him—or bully him—into doing what was best for the family, especially after Olivia created a scandal of her own. But Gabriel was not a man to be forced for long into doing something he didn’t want to, and once he fell in love with Vivienne, that was it for him.
“You shouldn’t have told him to follow Miss Tremeer to Cornwall,” Georgia said in a prim voice. She was eight years old, the youngest sister but one, and a stickler for “doing the right thing.”
Olivia’s eyes blazed. “What? And let him marry that insipid Edeline? You agreed Vivienne was perfect for him! We all did! And remember how miserable he was, all that walking in his sleep because his mind was disturbed? Besides, he had already decided to go after her, he just needed to know we were on his side. Gabriel will be happy now, and so will Vivienne. And once Grandmama gets to know her properly, I’m sure everything willbe comfortable again.”
She broke off then because so far, the dowager had shown no signs of softening when it came to Gabriel and his radical choice of wife.
“And to make it worse,” observed Justina—at eighteen years, the second-eldest sister—while settling herself comfortably against the bolster at the head of the bed, “Vivienne’s aunt has been telling everyone she knew all about their ‘romantic’ love affair and is looking forward to welcoming the new Duchess of Grantham. And this is after she sent Vivienne away in disgrace!”
