Page 3 of The Devil's Accidental Duchess
Selina would have repeated herself if she had thought it would make any difference.
“What does he have against that family, anyway?” she cried instead, throwing her hands up in frustration. “It was all in jest, nothing more! The Duke of Ashbrook probably has no idea about it! Father is more likely to make himselflook stupid, accusing the Duke of a wrong he has not done.”
A letter I am almost certain he did not write…
In fact, the entire matter could have been swept under the rug of convenience if her father had not raised a ruckus over it. She glanced at her mother, who stood tight-lipped and pale.
“Your father only means to protect you, Selina,” her mother said wearily, as if all the years and cares in the world had suddenly caught up with her at that moment. “And that letter… Why was such a scandalous thing in your possession in the first place?”
The book burned against Selina’s thigh, still tucked away, even if it might save her. Then again, if she showed it to her father, he would probably add an accusation of sending licentious literature to his ‘traitorous daughter’ and shoot the Duke twice.
She shook her head. “It is merely a game among the ladies, Mother. There is truly nothing to it. There is nothing between me and the Duke of Ashbrook!”
She had never even met the man or been introduced to him. She had only heard about him—of his coldness and callousness, the great war hero with the bad temper—and that was enough for her to form an opinion of him.
One that was not so much in favor ofmarryinghim, truly. She still had no idea why that secret little club matched her with him. Maybe the answer was in the book, but she had not had any chance to read it, for obvious reasons.
“Whether or not there is something between you means nothing now,” her mother sighed.
“How can it mean nothing?” Selina pressed. “It means everything, surely?”
“Reuben!”
Selina cringed at her father’s furious roar as he strode back into the parlor. Evidently, he had realized no one had followed him in his furious departure and had come to find out why.
He glanced at his two children and barked, “Well, what are you two doing standing around there? We are going to that den of defilers right this instant!”
Selina stared at her brother desperately. “Reuben, you must reason with him.”
“Oh, I think we are well past that now,” he told her somberly. “I think you should get in the carriage as he says, my dear, before it all gets worse than it is now.”
It was the very last thing Selina wanted to do, but she would rather walk than be dragged.
Rising from the settee as her father stomped out again, she hastily slipped the book to a trusted maid on the way past and whispered, “Hide it in my room for me.”
It couldnotsave her now.
“It is certainly good to see you back where you belong, Philip. Why, I thought that it would takemydemise to bring you back to England, if ever at all!”
Philip stretched out his legs in front of him and regarded his grandmother with a raised eyebrow. “I highly doubt that, Grandmother.”
The weathered old woman pressed a dramatic hand to her heart and gasped, “You mean that even if I had tragically passed, you would not have bothered to leave your battlefields to come to my deathbed?”
“I mean that even Death himself would not be so brave as to consider escortingyouto the afterlife.” He smiled at her. “If ever you should decide to shuffle off your mortal coil, Death shall only come at your invitation, and I do not think you would have wasted that invitation trying to bring me back to England.”
No, it had been another death altogether that had brought him back to the place he was supposed to think of as ‘home.’ A death he was glad about, though it wasn’t polite to say so.
“Miss the opportunity to berate me for being away so long? Never,” he added wryly.
“You naughty boy!” Aurelia St. Maur, the Dowager Duchess of Ashbrook, sputtered. “Why, I shall have you know that Dr. Alvers told me just last week that my heart is ailing—ailing, he said—and I am not to be antagonized anymore, lest I?—”
“Waste his time when we all know your heart is sturdy as a rock?”
“Oh, you!You!”
Philip grinned as his grandmother wagged her finger at him. Three score years of existence on this cursed mortal plane, andshe was still as sprightly as ever. Perhaps she may even outlive them all.
Besides, he could see in the wrinkled corners of her eyes and the slight curve of her mouth that she was not cross with him. He was exactly where she wanted him to be; what did she have to be cross about?
