Ten Things I Hate About the Duke - Loretta Chase Page 0,2

behavior, thanks to my overindulgent parents.”

Their hands full with an abundance of sons, her parents had more or less transferred the upbringing of their difficult eldest daughter to her paternal grandparents, a most fortunate turn of events. Grandmama and Grandpapa Chelsfield understood she wasn’t like other girls, and they didn’t try to mold her into that sort. However, they remained in Paris, and she was obliged, for the present, to deal with her parents on her own.

“It does not occur to you,” her father was saying, “that eligible men as well as their families may wonder whether Hyacinth will follow in your footsteps.”

“But Hyacinth is nothing like me, Papa. She never has been.”

Neither younger sister was like her. Helena was away at school, not getting into any trouble, so far as Cassandra knew, and Hyacinth . . .

Oh, she was beautiful, inside and out, sweet-natured, kind, forgiving, tolerant, patient.

Cassandra was Medusa and deGriffith’s Gorgon and Cassandra Prophet of Doom. The world saw her as unwomanly because she did not keep her opinions to herself and, worse, she said what she had to say plainly and directly.

In short, she was a shrew.

Nobody wanted to marry a shrew—except the swaggering bully Petruchio in the Shakespeare play, hardly her ideal man. Not that the ideal man existed.

Marriage was tricky enough even with relatively rational men like her grandfather or father or her brother Augustus. Even intelligent women made fatal errors in this regard. Look at her dearest friend, Alice, now bound forever to the Duke of Blackwood. And only the other day, Lady Olympia Hightower had a narrow escape, she having the abundant good sense to run away minutes before she was to marry the Duke of Ashmont.

“I had deluded myself that being in Society with other girls would soften you,” Papa said. “But Season after Season passed, and you only became more fixed in your ways. I cannot allow you to continue to set a bad example for your younger sisters. I cannot allow you to continue to distress your mother. As I have pointed out to her more than once recently, it is ridiculous to bring out a daughter of eighteen when the one so rapidly approaching thirty will not settle down.”

Thirty! She would not reach that dire age for another four years and some months.

“Papa, it is not a matter of—”

“It would appear very ill for Hyacinth to be wed before her sister, who is quite as handsome in her own way and could be equally agreeable if she would only make the effort. And so, that is the end of it.” He paused, and looked from one daughter to the other.

“The end of . . . ?”

“I will not give Hyacinth permission to marry until you are wed,” he said. “Since she may not marry, I see no reason for her to spend another minute on the Marriage Mart. No dinners, dejeuners, fêtes champêtres, balls, routs, picnics, water parties, plays, ballet, opera. In short, as of this minute, Hyacinth’s Season is over.”

Putney Heath

Midmorning of 15 June 1833

Lucius Wilmot Beckingham, the sixth Duke of Ashmont, slowly lifted his head from his folded arms. He’d been called the most beautiful man in England. He’d been called other things, too, but that’s for later. At present his fair, curling hair stood in ragged corkscrews. His excessively blue eyes were bloodshot. Bruises, a few days old, adorned one.

While he struggled to focus, the clamorous world about him tipped up, down, and sideways, the whole time turning like a fog-filled ship in a swirling sea.

He closed his eyes then opened them again, and the haze thinned a degree. These weren’t sailors, only yokels shouting at one another. The din arose not from creaking ropes in a storm but from the thump of feet and the clunk of ale pots slammed on tables. Not a ship or anything like a ship. A public house.

Right.

The Green Man. Putney Heath.

That’s where he was.

After the duel.

With his best friend.

He looked down at his hands. They’d finally stopped shaking.

It had taken only—what? A dozen brandies and soda? Two dozen? Why not three?

No matter. He’d done what he had to do. His Lying, Traitorous Grace the Duke of Ripley, miserable, rotten cur of a so-called best friend, had stolen the girl. Not just any girl, but Lady Olympia Hightower. And not the usual stealing-the-girl business—normal fun and games for him and his two alleged best friends—but Ashmont’s bride-to-be. In her wedding dress! Minutes before the sermonizing and I wills and