Page 1 of The Duke I Wished For
PROLOGUE
Lady Daffodil Underhill tilted up her chin to the bright late April sun as she stared at a tall pole before her, ribbons dancing in the breeze.
A lock of her blonde hair slipped from under her bonnet, brushing across her face, but she paid it no mind as she assessed the centerpiece of Mayfair Square.
The maypole.
May Day was only a few short days away and the pole had been strung with fresh ribbons for the festival that would happen. But today, the square was quiet.
Her younger sister’s fingers slipped into hers as Delilah whispered, “It’s so tall.” She threaded their fingers together. Though Delilah was only ten months younger than her, Daffodil had always seen it as her duty to protect her sweet and timid sister.
“It is. You don’t realize just how large it is until you’re right up next to it,” Miss Jocelyn Barrow answered as she reached up a hand to catch one of the fluttering ribbons.
Across from the three of them stood Daffodil and Delilah’s cousin, Lady Jane Wrightmore, and their new friend, Lady Isabelle Carrington.
All students at Madame Bellafonte’s finishing school, they’d been sent to Mayfair to learn the art of being a lady with the intent of finding a husband.
Daffodil frowned at the thought, reaching up and catching a dancing ribbon of her own. She didn’t wish for a husband. At least not any of the men her mother had paraded before her. And the latest… She gave a distinct shiver despite the warm sunshine dancing along the rim of her bonnet.
“Cold?” Delilah asked, her hand tightening on Daffodil’s.
“No, I’m fine.” She gave her sister a falsely bright smile, not wishing to burden Delilah with her inner turmoil. Both of them would have to marry well to keep the family from falling into financial ruin. Delilah had her own worries, she didn’t need to hear Daff’s.
The silk of the ribbon slipped through her fingers and she tightened her grip, watching the long string dance in the breeze. Just above her face a lone butterfly danced about the bright pink ribbon, its delicate wings as beautiful as they were fragile.
“Why did we come out here again?” Jane asked, cocking her head to the side. Her thick coiffure of auburn hair glinted in the sun as she looked up at the white pole, a slight frown marking her brow. “My riding lesson is in twenty minutes.”
Isabelle looked heavenward, as though rolling her eyes. “Why do you even bother? We all know you can ride like the wind. Why take those boring lessons at all?”
Jane shrugged as a ribbon wrapped about her body. Her movements ever fluid, she unwound the ribbon from her middle, also holding the fabric in her hand. “At least I’m outside when I’m on a horse. Since coming to this school, I spend so much of my time indoors…”
The other girls nodded. Madame Bellafonte had recently expanded the school, her demand for acceptance higher than ever. The woman had a reputation for training all ladies so that they made successful matches, but she specialized in the unfortunate.
Thanks to several investors, she’d doubled the size of the building, purchasing a second property on the square. Madame Bellafonte had taken on lots of ladies with excellent potential like Jocelyn and Isabelle, but she’d left room for girls like Daffodil and Delilah as well. Girls who had some flaw, whether it be failing social skills or lack of dowry.
Daffodil had hoped that attending the school would lend her a reprieve from her mother’s attempts at matching her with a string of increasingly rich but also increasingly abhorrent suitors, but much to her dismay, she’d received a note from her mother just this morning.
There was a dinner that Daffodil was to attend tomorrow evening. She was to wear her lavender gown that highlighted the pinks of her skin—her mother’s words, not hers. The directions had gone on as to which gloves she ought to choose and how best to coif her hair.
Directions that specifically meant one thing…her mother had identified another suitor. She held in her shudder, knowing that he would be awful.
The last one, Mr. Charles Pennywind, had been beyond disastrous, pinching the behinds of every woman he caught unawares. It had been tawdry and awful, but he’d offered her parents a ridiculous sum to wed Daffodil. Her parents might be impoverished, but her father was an earl.
Men of the merchant class clamored to buy their way into the peerage in the form of brides like Daffodil.
The ribbon in her hand danced again, the butterfly still flitting about. She’d only narrowly escaped marriage to Mr. Pennywind when he’d managed to ruin a baron’s daughter and the two had wed. Poor girl.
“It is difficult to be here when you wish to be somewhere else, isn’t it?” Isabelle nodded, her dark brown hair showing the tiniest bits of blonde in the sun as it peeked out from her pink bonnet.
Daffodil attempted to regain the thread of the conversation, having been lost in her own thoughts. What had they been discussing?
“Where would you be if not here?” Delilah asked, her grip tightening further on Daffodil’s fingers as she stared at Isabelle intently.
Daffodil felt a moment of relief, realizing what they were discussing before her stomach tensed again. Thinking of the future always managed to disconcert her.
Isabelle gave a delicate shrug. “It’s not where I would be but what I would be doing, I suppose. You know that meeting all of you has been so wonderful, but if I had my choice, I’d be working on my library of books for the poor. It’s so needed and yet I waste my time…” The other woman allowed her words to taper off.
Daffodil winced in sympathy. It must be frustrating to so clearly see a path forward and not be allowed to take it. Still, she admired her friend’s goal. So noble that Isabelle wanted to help people in need.
