Kissing the Duke of Hearts: Sweet and Clean Regency Romance (His Majesty's Hounds Book 10) by Arietta Richmond

Author:Arietta Richmond [Richmond, Arietta]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dreamstone Publishing
Published: 2017-11-25T22:00:00+00:00

Christmas Day dawned, with snow still falling, although less of it. There was hope, perhaps, that it would stop soon. Everyone in the house and outbuildings was cheerful – except Lucian. Somehow, they had produced a substantial meal for everyone, and the house had enough decorations of greenery and ribbons to feel like Christmas should. They had even managed to drag a large log in for the parlour fire, a harking back to older country traditions of the Yule log.

It was an intimate gathering in the parlour, for the snow still bound them in. No-one else could reach them. The servants had their own gathering in the kitchens and the servant’s hall, the farmers and the grooms and groundsmen theirs in the stables. Lucian felt like an outsider. He did not belong here, he did not belong anywhere, he never would again, in a family like this. He listened to them, for they spoke unabashedly in front of him, as if he were, indeed, one of their family. It was, he supposed, an honour to be so treated. Yet it cut him to the heart.

In their openness, they drove home to him how much he had lost, with his parents’ death.

They spoke of the last two years of their lives, of tragedies and triumphs, of challenges overcome, of friends who had also found happiness, of business and travel, of fear and strength and love. Every word hurt.

But the more he listened, the more he learned of them, the more he saw them as whole, rounded people. No longer ‘the upstart merchant Earl’ or ‘the noble Lady with the disgraced family’ or ‘the merchant born commoners’. Now, they were themselves, and they were, he was coming to recognise, far better people than most of the members of the ton that were part of his ‘correct social circle’. It was hard to accept, yet he could not deny the evidence before his eyes.

He had expected the Earl to be brash, self-important, and ready to push himself on others to achieve social success. Now he knew him as a quiet man, with a deep sense of humour, a man who cared for his family, and for those around him, with a greater sense of responsibility to his tenants than most of the nobility felt. A man who had no need to grasp at social connections, for his friends already counted Dukes, Marquesses, Earls and Viscounts amongst them. He could not deny the innate goodness of the man.

He had thought the girl shallow, and likely a social climber, concerned with fashion and making an advantageous match. Now he knew that she had courage, had survived a kidnapping, and been clever enough to aid in her own rescue. He had thought the Countess a typical woman of the ton, who had grabbed on to a wealthy man to rescue her family from disgrace.

Now he knew that she had been strong enough to work to survive, to keep her mother alive as well, had survived an arson attempt, and had, in the end, had the courage to stand before society and face them down.

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