To Pleasure a Duke (The Husband Hunters Club 3)

The hero jumped, but Annabelle faced their discoverer with a raised eyebrow and a cool smile.

“Lizzie. I hope you haven’t told Mother I am out here.”

“Of course not,” Lizzie Gamboni retorted.

Terry thought she looked flushed and cross, her fair hair fluffy about her face, the buttons on her pelisse crooked as though she had dressed in the dark in a hurry. And yet there was something oddly endearing about her.

“Well, now you have found me what are you going to do?” Annabelle dared her. “You know how miserable I am. Will you give me up? They will keep me prisoner until the wedding if you do. Lock me into some horrid little room with only bread and water.”

“Annabelle, I won’t give you up,” Lizzie said, and Annabelle’s shrill voice quavered to a stop. “I would never do that. But I do wish you would be careful and—and think before you act.”

Annabelle sighed and took her hand. “You are a true friend, Lizzie.” She turned and smiled back over her shoulder at Terry, reached to claim his hand, too. “You are my only friends in this cruel world.”

Terry found himself looking into Lizzie’s pale eyes. Was there a plea in them? A plea to take care with her charge? Well, there was no need to ask him that. He would never harm Annabelle; he would only ever do what she wished him to.

“We had best go indoors now,” Lizzie said, lowering her gaze and turning away, leaving Terry feeling strangely bereft. “Come, Annabelle.”

Annabelle went without argument, and Terry watched them disappear into the starlit darkness, Annabelle’s hair dark as a raven’s wing, Lizzie’s fair as a dove.

Chapter 13

“I’m sure you’ve been overfeeding that goat,” Eugenie greeted Sinclair at Erik’s compound the next afternoon. “He’s grown quite fat.”

Sinclair raised his brows. “I will tell Barker,” he said.

“Genie,” Jack murmured, uncomfortable. “Somerton has been very kind to Erik. Perhaps Barker just doesn’t know what sort of food is good for goats.”

“Should you be calling His Grace by his name, Jack?” she said sharply.

“He asked me to,” Jack retorted, puzzled. “Why? What should I call him?”

Sinclair’s brows were still raised as he waited for her answer.

She changed the subject. Just because she was cross with him didn’t mean she should be rude. “Here I am berating you for making our goat too comfortable when I should be thanking you for taking him in.” She looked up at him from beneath the brim of her straw bonnet, a wry smile in her eyes. One of her wayward curls danced against her cheek in the summer breeze.

Sinclair smiled back, as if she’d reacted exactly as he expected. “Barker mentioned to me that he thought your goat might like several lady goats to keep him company. What do you think of that, Jack? Should I ask your father’s permission to go ahead?”

Eugenie bit her lip while Jack deliberated.

“No, you needn’t ask Father,” he said at last. “He’d only make you pay him again. Genie says that wasn’t fair, and I think she’s right.”

Eugenie sighed with relief. Jack was right. She could just imagine her father demanding a fee for Erik’s stud services. “If Barker believes that is best for Erik then that is good enough for us,” she said firmly.

“Father says we were lucky you didn’t take us to the magistrate for having a dangerous animal,” Jack went on blithely.

Sinclair was suddenly looking very dukelike.

“My meeting with your goat is probably a constant topic of conversation in your household,” he said coolly. “I imagine it causes you all a great deal of hilarity.”

“No,” Jack said thoughtfully, before Eugenie could stop him. “That isn’t Father’s favorite story. Do you want to know what his favorite story is?”

“I’m sure the duke would much rather not,” Eugenie said, putting a restraining hand on Jack’s shoulder.

“But indeed I would,” Sinclair retorted, his lips growing frighteningly thin. In a moment he would be curling one of them in that hateful sneer. “Tell me, Jack, what is your father’s favorite story?”

“You tell him, Genie,” her brother begged. “You tell it better than I do.”

Eugenie sighed.