From Cinderella to Countess by Annie Burrows

Author:Annie Burrows
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2020-03-10T14:37:32+00:00

* * *

There was worse to come. When they arrived back at Grosvenor Square that night, Dawes gave them the news that the Duke of Theakstone had arrived while they were out.

‘Bother,’ said the Duchess. ‘I was sure that the condition of the roads would keep him away.’

They might have done, if someone hadn’t written to tell him about her presence, and that of Herr Schnee, in Grosvenor Square. Just as Lord Lavenham had predicted, the Duke must want to see for himself exactly what his stepmother was up to. Eleanor only just barely resisted the temptation to pelt up the stairs and hide in her room. It was bad enough having just learned that she’d made such a terrible, erroneous assumption about Lord Lavenham. She really, really wasn’t in any state to start trying to deal with the Duke, particularly not when he sounded such a formidable man.

‘His Grace said that he took advantage of what seems to be the beginning of a thaw and has already gone to his room,’ said Dawes, perhaps sensing Eleanor’s nervousness at the prospect of meeting him. ‘We do not expect to see him until the morning. It is his habit,’ he said to Eleanor, ‘to breakfast early.’

‘Thank you, Dawes,’ said the Duchess, ‘for warning us. Eleanor, I mean Eve—oh, bother, I really must be more careful about using your new name, mustn’t I? But anyway, you will be prepared now for your first meeting, won’t you? And all the staff will back you up, won’t they, Dawes?’

Dawes bowed in a way that conveyed the meaning that, of course, Eleanor would have the support of all the staff in hoodwinking their employer.

‘Thank you,’ said Eleanor shakily, wondering what kind of man the Duke must be for all his staff to collude with his stepmother in this deception. How on earth, she wondered as she made her way up the stairs while the Duchess, Dawes, and Herr Schnee all went into the drawing room for a nightcap, and what she suspected would turn into a council of war, had she got embroiled in this situation? She’d planned on spending her life in a quiet country backwater, as a companion to an elderly lady, not living in London with a duchess, trying to pass herself off as a foreign princess. All under the watchful, mocking, cynical gaze of Lord Lavenham. Poor Lord Lavenham, who’d just confessed he’d been on the verge of perhaps developing something like a tendre for her. But...

Oh, if only Uncle Norman would write back to let her know that he was willing and able to let her stay with him for a while. Nothing like this could possibly happen to her in Suffolk. Perhaps she should write to a few of her other uncles and aunts? None of them had such roomy houses, or the means to support an indigent niece, but really, it might be better to have some bolthole ready, for when the Duke found out that she was an imposter.

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