The Duke (The Generous Ear) by Catherine Coulter

Author:Catherine Coulter [Coulter, Catherine]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Scotland, General, Romance, Great Britain, Historical, Large Type Books, Fiction
ISBN: 9780451406170
Google: oC34Z5WNTq8C
Amazon: 0451206630
Publisher: Signet
Published: 1995-05-15T07:00:00+00:00

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Chapter 9

Brandy awoke early the next morning with a slight headache, ravenous hunger, and an urgent desire to speak to the duke. Crabbe raised a surprised face as she crossed the front hall toward the breakfast room.

"Surely, ye shouldn't be out of yer bed, miss!"

"'Tis fit as a new penny, I am, Crabbe. Is the duke about yet?"

"Nay, miss. 'Tis even earlier he was this morning. Off with Master Bertrand, to Clackmannanshire, I believe. The Cheviot sheep, ye know."

She tried to hide her disappointment and walked ahead of Crabbe into the breakfast room. She served herself a large bowl of porridge, as Crabbe hovered like a clucking mother hen next to her.

"Master Percy also took his leave early this morning," he offered, still eyeing her closely.

"Good heavens," she exclaimed, relief lacing her voice. "Ye'll be telling me that we're alone at Penderleigh, Crabbe!"

"Nay, miss. Lady Adella ordered him to be gone, last evening. Told him that she didn't want to see him again until he was no longer a bastard!" Crabbe added with a rare smile, "Leastways as regards his name, she said."

"I fear that that is all that Percy will achieve," she said with an answering grin.

After Crabbe left the breakfast room, satisfied, she supposed, that she would not expire from her riding accident, Brandy finished her porridge at a leisurely pace, her thoughts turning to Ian. With the sheep purchased and on their way to Penderleigh, it could not be long now until he took his leave back to England. After what had happened yesterday, she had to admit the likelihood that the dreadful other lady would have him. There was simply no help for it. She was silent for some minutes. Finally, she forced a smile to her lips and went to the nursery to fetch Fiona. She wanted to get away from the castle, with all of its prying eyes, and thus bundled up Fiona and took her to the small cove where her boat was moored.

It was late in the afternoon when she bore Fiona back to the castle, the both of them saltily damp and windblown. There was a strange equipage standing at the front of the castle. "Perhaps it is one of Grandmama's friends," she muttered to Fiona, and drew the child with her into the front entrance hall. Her feet came to a paralyzed halt at the sight of the most beautiful lady she had ever beheld. She was small, with a gloriously willow-slender figure encased in a golden traveling gown that fit snugly under her bosom and fell in straight lines to her delicately shod toes. Her black curls elegantly framed her face under a bonnet of matching gold straw with bunches of darker gold ribbons, glossy as a raven's wing. Her eyes were slightly slanted and a deep leaf green, fringed by thick black lashes.

The lady was speaking to Ian, and Brandy saw that he was clasping one of her slender gloved hands. She knew without being told that she was the duke's betrothed.

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