To Pleasure a Duke (The Husband Hunters Club 3)

“I see.”

And reading the misery in Terry’s face Sinclair did indeed “see” the truth.

“Will there be a terrible scandal, sir? I don’t care what happens to me but please don’t blame Lizzie for any of this. It wasn’t her fault.”

Sinclair rubbed a hand across his eyes, feeling the weight of his responsibilities, of being the Duke of Somerton.

“We had turned back,” Terry went on to explain. “We didn’t even reach the border. Annabelle wanted to go home. She decided she didn’t want to be an ordinary girl after all. She wanted to marry this Lucius fellow and live in London and go to parties and balls and . . .” He sighed, as if all his beliefs had been shattered. Sinclair had a fair inkling that the boy had imagined himself in love with Annabelle, and planned to be her heroic savior. Now he probably felt like a complete idiot.

“You understand I will have to send you away from Somerton,” Sinclair said, watching Terry’s face to see how he’d take the news.

He took it bravely, straightening his shoulders, although there was an expression of misery in his eyes. “I know that, sir.”

“So where is it to be, then?”

Terry shrugged a shoulder. “I thought about enlisting as a common foot soldier, just to get away from . . .” He swallowed. “I always hoped for a commission but my father . . . It was not possible.”

Sinclair could read between the lines. He considered the matter. “Very well, I will buy you a decent commission. But you will repay me by being a model soldier. If I hear of any schemes to make money and defraud anyone, any gambling, any drunkenness . . . you know the sort of thing I’m talking about. If I hear of anything like that then I will pay a call to your commanding officer and see you thrown out. Do you understand me, Terry?”

The boy blinked in amazement. “I . . . I don’t know what to say, sir.”

“Thank you and good-bye, in that order,” Sinclair said. He looked at the door that led to the stairs. “I wonder what’s taking her so long,” he murmured, and realized he was thinking of Eugenie.

“You will look after Lizzie, won’t you, sir? You will take her home with you and write her a good reference?”

“Yes, all right.” He eyed Terry with sour interest. “Are you planning to marry her now?”

“She wouldn’t have me,” he said glumly.

“Give it a year or two and she might forget what a fool you’ve been over my sister,” he felt impelled to say. The boy looked so forlorn, and the fact that he could feel so when he’d just been given the commission he’d always wanted said something for his genuine feelings for Miss Gamboni.

“Might as well be a lifetime,” Terry sighed.

Upstairs, Eugenie had helped Annabelle to undress and rubbed her warm and dry with towels provided by Mrs. Burdock. They tucked the girl into a bed with a hot water bottle, and eventually her shudders began to give way to yawns and sighs.

“What is my brother doing here?” she asked, eyes beginning to close. “I did not expect to see him here.”

“He was trying to catch you before you reached the border,” Eugenie explained. “We have been following you since the night you left Somerton.”

“We?” She gave Eugenie a scornful look. “What, were you traveling with him?”

“Terry is my brother,” she said with quiet dignity.

“Oh yes, so he is.” Annabelle yawned again. “It wasn’t his fault,” she said. “He only did what I wanted him to do. I thought I knew what I wanted but I didn’t understand what it would be like. Being a commoner.”

A commoner, thought Eugenie, as if she were royalty! She supposed with the Somerton wealth and power and family background, she was the next thing to it. Eugenie felt her spirits sink as once more Annabelle’s attitude brought back to her just how large was the gap between a duke and a Belmont. As wide as an ocean.

Or it might as well be.

“Do you think Lord Salturn will take me back?” Annabelle was nearly asleep, struggling to keep her eyes from closing.

“I’m sure your brother will persuade him to do so.”

She managed a smile. “Sinclair can be very persuasive.”

“He can.”

“Why is it I never realized how much I—I wanted to be Lucius’s wife until it was too late?”