Never Have I Ever with a Duke by Darcy Burke

Author:Darcy Burke
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2019-08-26T18:30:00+00:00

Enduring the Marriage Mart was growing harder and harder. Arabella had danced with Sir Ethelbert again last night and also with Mr. Alexander Litcott. While he didn’t have a title, he was rather wealthy due to his family’s success in textiles. He was also just a year older than Arabella and not particularly adept at conversation. He’d spent a good portion of their dance staring at her breasts.

Duty called once more tonight, but Arabella wished she could go to the Marquess of Ripley’s party instead. If she wore a mask, she could…

“What?” Papa jolted awake, startling Arabella in the process. She dropped her needle, not that she’d been actively sewing the past few minutes while her mind had wandered.

She looked to the bed where Papa lay blinking his eyes, his head elevated on a stack of pillows. He’d fallen asleep while she’d read to him a short while ago. While he seemed better overall since she’d talked to him about Tibbord, he still lay down in the afternoon and napped. “Do you need anything?” she asked.

“Some water, please.”

Arabella set her sewing onto the basket beside her chair and went to a dresser in the corner, atop of which sat a pitcher. She poured water into a glass, then returned to the bed, where Papa was struggling to sit up.

After setting the glass on the bedside table, she helped him to a better position, then handed him the water. “Better?” she asked with a smile.

He finished drinking and handed her the glass, his brow furrowed. “I had a rather troubling dream. It was about Tibbord. Did you warn the investigator about what he might do?”

Arabella had no idea what her father was talking about. “No. Why would I warn him?”

The lines in his forehead deepened, and he sat up further, his back coming off the pillows. “I told you—he will seek revenge in some way. If any of us who invested with him complained about losing money or wanted to walk away or worse, if we said we’d tell others that Tibbord was fleecing us, Osborne threatened to share the truth of our financial states.”

“He extorted you to keep investing money or at least to keep quiet about his fiendishness?” Arabella’s blood chilled. “You didn’t tell me anything about that.”

“Of course I did. The other day, when you came to tell me about the investigation. I told you if Tibbord knew about it, whoever hired the investigator would find themselves exposed.” He hadn’t either, but she wasn’t going to continue to argue with him, not when he was like this.

“Perhaps they don’t care.” Arabella could think of who would care—Halstead. If he cornered Tibbord or Osborne tonight, he might find his insolvency revealed to the entire ton. While he could probably recover in ways she couldn’t, he didn’t want anyone to know.

She had to warn him.

It seemed there might be a mask in her future after all. First, she’d have to claim a headache and beg off attending the soirée with her mother.

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