A Duchess a Day (Awakened by a Kiss #1) - Charis Michaels Page 0,3

how long that might take. You’ve not been exonerated. The charges have been dropped. They can just as easily be brought up again.”

Declan swore under his breath and turned away. If he’d had more time, he would’ve been able to find her. But he’d been arrested, and expedited back to England, and languishing in the court and penal system since the girl went missing.

“Not to worry, Huntsman,” the older man said. “I have every confidence in you. You can manage Lady Helena. I would not have come if you couldn’t.”

Declan pivoted to lean against the wall. He refused to look at the man’s calm face as he drew him over a barrel.

Declan hated being drawn over a barrel.

But he was a survivor. He would not jeopardize this open cell door, nor the promise of £500. A large part of surviving was knowing when to say no, thank you, and when to make a deal with the devil. Declan had run out of options.

“I’ll do it,” he said, turning back. “Now get me the bloody hell out of this hellhole.”

Chapter Two

Lady Helena Lark had run out of options.

She had feigned sickness, perpetrated madness, and applied to be a nun. She’d declared herself too young, too old, too thin, too pale, and too disagreeable in every possible way.

For the last six months, she had simply dug in her heels and said no.

Before that, she had run away. Five times.

But her parents’ great wealth and influence had restored her every time. Today they had restored her to what appeared to be the point of no return. To London. To the townhome mansion of her betrothed.

Betrothed, Helena thought, rolling the word around in her head with a doomed inner voice. She took up the apple in her lap and frowned at it.

Consigned would be more accurate, she thought, taking a bite.

Bought and paid for.

Sold.

“Do strive for a pleasant expression, Helena,” sighed her mother. “You’ve no choice but to marry the duke, you’ve known this all along.” The countess said this in her most placid voice, the voice of someone who’d been patiently stating inevitability for five years.

“Perhaps I have no choice who I marry, but surely my expressions are my own,” said Helena.

“Your life is very fortunate, darling,” the countess continued, “ample reason to smile. But the fortune comes at a cost. In order to enjoy the homes and gowns and holidays and esteem, you must accept the responsibility. We all have a responsibility.”

“You and Papa enjoy the wealth and position,” Helena said idly. “I simply want to be left alone in Castle Wood. With my apple trees and the crofters. And I don’t want to be married to a prize idiot, even if he is a duke.”

“For God’s sake, Helena, must you be so very dramatic?” droned her father. He squinted out the window at the bright stone facade of the duke’s townhome. Yellow-liveried servants scurried to greet the approaching carriages. “Marriage to anyone, even the very devil, need not be the end of the world. You will have the ceremony and accommodate the duke in a few small ways, and then your life will go on. Except that you will be a duchess. Every girl aspires to this, but it has been given to you by birth. You are making a fuss over a minor detail, in the grand scheme.”

“My life as I’ve known it will not go on,” said Helena, thinking of the forest and her orchard. “And it is not a minor detail.”

She took another bite of apple, wondering why she bothered to object. They’d traveled from their estate in Somerset for the sole purpose of marrying her off to the Duke of Lusk. The marriage joined two ancient families and (more importantly) tied the duke’s limestone mines to barges on her family’s stretch of the River Brue.

The wedding was an arranged match for which her parents had been waiting, immovably, unshakably, for five years. She’d fought the betrothal in every way imaginable, and they had been blind and deaf to it all. They had not punished or strong-armed or shamed. They had simply ignored her pleas and waited. Now some fluctuation in international markets caused a spike in the demand for limestone and, in their view, the wait was over.

Helena pressed her back into the carriage seat, refusing to moon out the window at the duke’s London mansion. She’d seen the hulking townhome, thank you very much. In the weeks before the wedding she would come to know it