I Dared the Duke by Anna Bennett

Author:Anna Bennett
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

Chapter TWENTY-ONE

“The transformation shall be spectacular!” the dowager declared. She referred to Alex’s study, of course. Collapsed balcony notwithstanding, she’d talked of little else all day, leaving Beth’s head swirling with scores of combinations of carpets, furniture, and ornamental pieces.

From his end of the dinner table, Alex shot Beth a pointed look that said the transformation had better not be too spectacular. She turned to the duchess. “While the end result will most definitely be different, I feel certain your choices will suit the duke perfectly.”

He grunted, only slightly mollified. The dark circles beneath his eyes suggested he’d had even less sleep than Beth, and her brain was so fuzzy that she was having trouble forming coherent sentences. If she didn’t catch up on her sleep, she’d soon sound like Uncle Alistair.

Lord Darberville had joined them for dinner, much to the duchess’s delight. She even solicited the marquess’s opinion on velvet drapes during the dessert course. He’d good-naturedly confirmed that solid midnight blue was an impeccable choice, sure to complement the duke’s eyes. The marquess’s tongue-in-cheek comment was lost on the dowager but elicited a surly growl from Alex.

Beth had barely swallowed her last bite of pastry when he announced, “Darby and I have a few matters to discuss but will join you ladies in the drawing room shortly.”

“Excellent, my dear,” the dowager said. “I was just thinking that I’d like to see how the chair fabric will look next to the walls. For the life of me, I can’t figure out what I did with those wallpaper samples. They must be buried in the mess atop my escritoire.”

Oh dear. Alex coughed, and Beth made a mental note to locate the samples after the duchess went to bed—provided they weren’t at the bottom of the balcony rubble in the garden. “I’m sure they’ll turn up somewhere,” she said, offering her elbow to the dowager and escorting her from the dining room.

Beth wished she could stay and hear the men’s conversation. If she hadn’t known the duchess would frown upon it, she’d have been tempted to press her ear to the door. She suspected the discussion had something to do with the balcony, and she prayed that no one but Alex knew she’d been there last night when the ground had literally crumbled beneath their feet.

An hour later, the men still hadn’t joined them, and the dowager began to doze off while sitting at her escritoire, gazing at sketches. Yawning, she rubbed her eyes beneath her spectacles, then straightened her desktop. “My eyes are crossed from looking at these books all day. I’m for bed.”

“Let me see you to your room,” Beth offered.

“No, you stay and make my apologies to Alexander and Lord Darberville,” the duchess replied wearily. “Then see that you retire early as well—you look as exhausted as I. I’m sure it’s the result of our decorating efforts, and I’m most grateful for your help.”

Beth blushed. If the duchess knew the extent to which Beth had helped, she’d be shocked and dismayed.

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