The Duke Goes Down (The Duke Hunt #1) - Sophie Jordan Page 0,37

as he called out a greeting.

The man broke his focus from his shuffling feet and looked up, his expression lighting with delight when it landed on him. “Oh, good day to you, Mr. Butler.” His rheumy-eyed gaze skipped to the horse beside Perry. “Out for an afternoon ride on that fine beast of yours? It’s a fair day for that.”

“Indeed it is, sir.”

After a restless night, Perry had risen early. He had tossed and turned. Fraught with the memory of the prior evening’s events, he’d scarcely slept. Not only did he discover who was spreading rumors about him, but he caught her in the act—and then he kissed her.

He had kissed Imogen Bates.

He still felt it in his gut. Deep in his blood. He had kissed her as though she was his to kiss and hold. As though there was not hostility and long-standing aversion between them. As though she were not a prim and gently bred lady but instead a hot-blooded lover. The kind of lover you took in broad daylight and cover of night equally. Without modesty. Without caution. With only wild abandon.

God, he had been too long without female companionship of the intimate variety. That was the only explanation. For no other reason could the painfully straitlaced vicar’s daughter ever entice him. Hellfire. She’d looked down her nose at him since the day they first met.

Ironic, of course. She was a humble vicar’s daughter whilst he had been a duke’s son. And yet she had somehow always made him feel lacking. A lad in mismatched shoes with spots on his face. She could wither him with a look even when they were children. It had made him uncomfortable. Rank alone demanded he feel superior. And yet in her presence he never had.

He should have felt no desire for her.

Oh, she was not unattractive, but no ravishing beauty either. He’d seen far more eye-catching women in London ballrooms. Her large brown eyes were fine enough. They’d been luminescent in the gardens. Following their kiss, though, those eyes had gleamed as if lit from flame.

Upon rousing from his bed, he’d dressed and departed the dower house.

He’d spent most of the morning at the local tavern before remounting his horse and riding aimlessly, lost in his thoughts. But he didn’t bother saying any of that to the vicar. Indeed not. The pious man would think he’d been at the tavern as a patron, there to drink—and it was much too early in the day for a respectable gentleman to spend his time in a tavern.

Perry could not very well explain he was there for something else, something more. That reason was too elusive, too outrageous even for him to wrap his thoughts around yet.

Hellfire.

He didn’t know what he was doing at the tired tavern, surveying the derelict place, talking to old Mr. Compton, the owner, asking him all manner of questions. He could only think that as far as taverns went it was a humble establishment . . . and the only one in Shropshire.

In a village that was bustling and becoming more metropolitan with each passing day, The Hare and The Basket could be more.

It should be more.

Perry knew about first-rate establishments. He’d spent all of his life in them. As a customer, of course. As a patron. Never the proprietor, but he’d certainly known his share of proprietors, and he could still recall the best ones. The ones who greeted him at the door, who saw to his needs with charm and easy grace and style. Several of them he had called friends. He’d liked them. He’d respected them.

All of this he thought about as he had sat in The Hare and The Basket and considered the many ways in which it could be better—the ways it could be made into a premier attraction for the denizens of the shire and even beyond.

He shook his head, dismissing those notions as he smiled at the vicar. Such thinking was fanciful and eccentric. No good member of the ton went into trade. His mother would be scandalized to know he was even thinking along such lines. Marriage to an heiress was supposed to be his way out of his troubles, as she was wont to tell him. A gentleman did not so much as dabble in commerce.

And yet it could be argued Perry was no longer a member of the ton. He realized that was the very thing at stake here—his place in the world. He’d been assigned a place