The Duke's Rules of Engagement by Jennifer Haymore

Author:Jennifer Haymore
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Regency;historical romance;Bridgerton;opposites;duke;royalty;marriage of convenience;matchmaker;meteorology;sexy;spicy;virgin;spinster;found family;best friends;Historical Romances;Victorian Historical Romance;Regency Historical Romance;Women's Historical Fiction;Historical British Fiction;Historical Fiction;Genre Fiction;Entangled publishing;Amara;Mass Market paperback romance;new romance book;popular romance book;single title romance;stand alone romance book;2022 Romance book;2022 Mass Market Romance;books with a Happy ending;HEA;The Duke’s Rules of Engagement;Jennifer Haymore;Paperback romance;Beach Reads;New Beach Reach 2022;Books like Bridgerton;Bridgerton type book;Sexy Historical books;Sexy Regency book;Regency book with Sex;Historical book with sex
Published: 2022-06-08T12:59:56+00:00

Chapter Eighteen

“They’re inviting us to meet them at the opening of the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens tonight!” Lilly exclaimed.

Jo looked up from the book she was reading. “Who’s inviting us?”

Lilly waved the letter she’d just received. “The Cherrington sisters. Please, can we go?”

Jo sighed. “Can’t we wait until later in the summer when the crowds have thinned?”

“We could, but I’m dying to get out of this house. I have been so cooped up, I feel like an anxious chicken. All I do is work on my design.” Lilly gestured to her pile of notebooks.

“How is your design going?” Jo asked her.

Lilly smiled. “It would be so marvelous if it were ever built, Jo.”

“Show me,” Jo said.

She sat beside Lilly as her friend opened her most recently completed notebook to her latest vision. The palace boasted not only towers, but also domes and minarets, and was unlike any palace—or, in fact, any building—Jo had ever seen.

“It is stunning,” Jo breathed. “You should show it to someone.”

“I’m showing it to you right now.”

“I mean someone who could actually do something with it.”

Lilly raised her brows. “I know nobody who’d deign to look at this design. And even if they did, they’d probably laugh. It is such a departure from our staid British ideals of symmetry and balance.” She sighed. “I know I’ve been wasting my time. I should work on redesigning our garden—something that could actually be put to use. My mind refuses, though. Instead, it continues conjuring ideas on such a grand scale as to be laughable.”

“Not laughable,” Jo argued. “Your ideas are wonderful.”

“Even if they are wonderful, it is unrealistic to ever think that they might one day become reality.” Lilly closed her notebook. “It is fine. I enjoy dreaming of what will never be. That, at least, brings me joy.”

Jo sympathized with her friend. Finding a perfect love match brought her joy, yet it still left a part of her feeling as if she was missing something important. She squeezed Lilly’s hand.

“Vauxhall Gardens tonight?” Lilly asked hopefully.

It occurred to Jo that it was a good idea—a distraction from both their passions, and both their feelings of unfulfillment.

“Harriet will be there,” Lilly added.

Jo would like to speak with Harriet again. And it was true that Lilly had hardly been out of the house since receiving Charles’s letter. She’d only gone to the soiree, then to visit the Cherringtons. She needed an evening away from this house and all her notebooks.

Jo could afford it right now, too. Just yesterday, she’d received full payment from a client who’d married last month, as well as an advance on the duke’s fees.

The duke. It had been over a week since the afternoon he’d touched her so intimately in her office. Jo repressed a shudder of longing.

In any case, it had been three years since she and Lilly had visited the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens across the Thames, a place where everyone was welcome as long as they could afford the entry fee. Vauxhall was entertaining, too, with many nighttime amusements to stimulate all the senses.

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