Page 55 of How to Seduce a Duke this Autumn
“Oh, Adam!” a girl chirped after she rounded the corner, clearly summoned on cue. Her blonde hair was impossibly coiffed, bouncing as though even her curls sought attention. She made her approach as if on a carefully choreographed stage, hands clutching skirts that barely needed adjustment.
Adam stiffened, his patience fraying even before she spoke. Oh. Lorena Martínez was Miss Martin in England. How very flexible her name was, Adam thought. Judging by her looks, she was flexible in other ways, too. And in the ways David would enjoy but the ways Adam would fear—flexible morals usually meant trouble. And when it was his brother… that was particularly disastrous.
A distant, supremely distant cousin of his. He’d almost forgotten about this branch of the family. His late father certainly had tried to forget them, and Adam began to understand why.
“How you’ve changed since I last saw you. We were what… fourteen? Your mother has been so gracious to invite me to stay,” Miss Martin said, sweeping toward him with a kind of feigned demureness that grated on every nerve he owned. “But,Adam, don’t you think it’s about time you considered settling down?”
He flinched at her continued use of his name. “Excuse me?” he muttered, caught between confusion and outright annoyance.
“You really ought to, you know,” she said brightly, stepping closer. “You’re quite the eligible duke, and, well, I do believe a man should marry someone acquainted with his ways. Someone who understands his family.”
Behind her, his mother clasped her hands in agreement and said something under her breath in Spanish that Adam couldn’t hear but knew would not help matters.
“I see you’ve all been very busy in my absence,” Adam said slowly, keeping his tone polite. “I find myself in need of some fresh air before this enlightening conversation continues. If you’ll excuse me.”
“Nonsense!” Miss Martin piped up, but his mother cut her off with a roll of her wrist and a sharp “Déjalo. Leave him. He is being impossible.”
Adam bowed stiffly and stepped away as Miss Martin made an exaggerated little sigh behind him. Once outside, the cool air braced him, though it did little to untangle the slow burn of frustration that had begun in his chest. He couldn’t stomach the spectacle of orchestrated family interference any longer and needed the clarity that only town business might provide.
Charlene’s laughter echoed faintly in his mind, offering a momentary respite, but even her memory couldn’t fully soothe him.
He wanted to see her. Feel her. Kiss her.
Work. Duties. Yes, he decided a distraction pertaining to his legacy was the best way to handle the chaotic women at home and the chaos the one he couldn’t bring home caused inside him.
Once Adam managed to extricate himself as politely as he could from the fangs Miss Martin had on his home, he walked tohis barrister’s office. Time to be duke again. For at home, with his mother and her new guest, he was little more than marriage material.
But it made no sense. His heart belonged to Charlene, and he’d never marry anyone else.
It was a long walk, but after nearly an hour had passed, the brisk walk through the cool autumn air had cooled his nerves slightly.
When he arrived, the Inner Temple with all its old legal traditions exuded a centuries-old solemnity similar to the quad at Oxford—a weight of tradition that pressed down on Adam as he crossed the cobbled pathway leading to the office. His gaze swept over the view. In the background, the River Thames murmured faintly, its current steady and deliberate, contrasting with the bustling voices of merchants and hawkers from the strand. The late afternoon sun broke lazily through a patchwork of gray clouds, casting long, slanted shadows across the courtyard’s tidy gravel paths. A few stately trees stood at its center, their edges tinged with the fiery hues of autumn. Leaves stirred in the crisp air, drifting lazily down to settle at the roots.
Distinguished.
Calming.
Inside the barrister’s building, a creak from the heavy oak door announced his arrival, joined almost immediately by the soft groan of the wooden planks beneath his heels. The space was narrow, the low beams overhead making one feel uncomfortably large, though Adam had been in enough offices like this to know it bore no ill intention.
The smell of parchment mixed with faint traces of damp stone and old coffee seemed to linger perpetually here, as though the very walls held their breath around the ebb and flow of all sorts of life and death matters. It reminded him of the day after his father’s death.
His barrister himself matched this flow.
The man was somber, his desk swathed in papers that looked to have grown roots in the dark wood surface. Behind him, row after row of ledgers lined the shelves, their spines varying in shades of brown and gray, embossed titles faded almost to obscurity. A single window at the far end of the room barely allowed a threadbare shaft of light to filter through. Adam noticed how it landed softly, almost tenderly, on the edge of the desk, illuminating a small inkpot and the sharp, gleaming nib of a quill. A small bit of life in an otherwise dreary place. Much like Charlene.
He was reminded of her even here.
He said little to the clerk who guided him in, his thoughts already wheeling toward business. After all, routine formalities offered their comfort. Distance was useful when his every nerve felt exposed, and repetition steadied him as no human connection could at that moment.
“Your Grace, what brings you here at this hour? Did I not address all of your questions satisfactorily?”
“Good afternoon to you, too. How unusual the tone even for you, Hartford.” Adam sat in the chair across the barrister where he hadn’t sat since the week his father had died. “Mr. Hartford, I must entrust you with a matter concerning the estate’s tenants,” Adam said, his tone measured but authoritative. “Have you collected the rents owed for this quarter? I would have managed the task myself, yet pressing business has called me elsewhere as I am only beginning to learn how to manage the estate.”
The barrister inclined his head respectfully, his hands resting atop the neatly ordered ledgers on his desk. “Of course, I have seen to the matter personally. And as I already told you, it’s all been carefully accounted for.”
“Told me?” Adam felt a familiar tension in his stomach but didn’t dare think the thought to end.
“Yes, and I ensured each payment is accounted for precisely and recorded against the tenants’ leases. The ledger must be immaculate, as inaccuracies would serve neither tenant nor landlord.” The barrister narrowed his eyes.
