How the Duke Was Won by Lenora Bell

Author:Lenora Bell
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2016-05-01T07:00:00+00:00

Chapter 16

Are you going to marry Lady Dorothea?

How could he?

James positioned a log on the block and hefted an axe.

She’d just demonstrated why he couldn’t marry her. She was actively encouraging Flor in her rebellious ways.

He slammed the blade into the wood.

Crack.

She was impulsive.

Splinter.

Irreverent.

Thud.

And worst of all? Impossible to ignore.

It was almost as if she was two people. One intent on meeting her exacting mother’s standards, and, underneath the thin layer of propriety, someone fearless and outspoken, with passionate convictions and a decided disdain for social conventions.

He threw the newly split wood on the woodpile and paused, leaning on the axe.

The way they’d been tearing across the lawn, whooping and pretending to be shipwrecked boys.

The shock on Lady Vivienne’s face. Where are your bonnets?

He smothered a smile. It had been undeniably amusing.

No. Not amusing. Deplorable. Highly inappropriate.

Flor had too much of James in her. She was restless. She couldn’t sit still in the classroom when there were lawns to run across, rules to flout.

Probably Dorothea had been exactly the same at her age.

He wasn’t here to find a sensual goddess with a razor-sharp intellect and a rebellious mind. He’d found that. And she was driving him insane.

He split wood until his arms ached and sweat dripped down his chest. He should go in and dress for dinner, but he wanted to exorcise Dorothea first.

He stood behind the old unused barns he’d converted into a workshop. He liked the large open space with no velvet draperies or ornamental plaster.

Most nights he slept in his workshop, on a pile of cushions. The nightmares were shorter out here. Less vivid. They seemed to fade the farther he was from his mother’s chambers in the east wing. He hadn’t visited that wing since he’d come back. Bickford had informed him that her chambers had been preserved exactly the way the duchess had left them. The household staff had loved his charming mother.

A shiver chased across James’s shoulder blades.

He positioned more wood on the block.

He didn’t want to revisit buried pain. He needed to follow the plan. Conclude things swiftly and return to Trinidad. But Dorothea did have a point. He’d had no idea there was corruption at the Banbury Hall manufactory. He couldn’t be there to oversee every aspect of the business on two continents. Of course he would rectify it immediately, but it galled him that it had happened in the first place. He’d find a manager he could trust.

He was only one man. And he was being split along so many different fault lines.

He could still see the accusation in her blue-gray eyes. He’d disappointed her. Why did that sting so much?

“Hiding, Your Grace?”

Dorothea rounded the wall of the barn, her cheeks rosy, fists planted on her hips. The riding habit was gone and she was wearing something pale pink and virginal, but her hair was a windswept cascade of golden curls escaping from a bright red silk bandeau.

He placed another log on the block and raised his axe.

“Well?” she said.

“What? What do you want from me?”

Crack.

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