Who Wants to Marry a Duke - Sabrina Jeffries Page 0,102
bedchamber?” he suggested.
“Thorn!” she cried. “It’s still morning! If we return to our bedchamber now, everyone will know what we’re doing.”
“I should hope so. You married into a family of wicked fellows like me, sweeting, and we’re all rather unrepentant about such things.” He released her, only to go over and shut and lock the drawing room door before returning to her side. “On the other hand, enjoying another consummation of our marriage in the drawing room might actually scandalize them, my love. Shall we experiment?”
“Oh, yes,” she said with a laugh. “You do know how I like experiments.”
All in all, the experiment was a resounding success.
Read on for a preview of the next book
in Sabrina Jeffries’ Duke Dynasty series . . .
UNDERCOVER DUKE
Coming soon from Headline Eternal
London Society Times
THE LAST DUKE STANDING
Dear readers, I, your esteemed correspondent, cannot believe it. Not only has that randy devil, the Duke of Thornstock, actually married, but he chose Miss Olivia Norley as his bride! And this, after she refused him most soundly. He must have reformed because Yours Truly knows full well Miss Norley would never have married him otherwise.
This means that his half brother, Sheridan Wolfe, the Duke of Armitage, is the only one of the Dowager Duchess’s offspring not yet married. What a coup it will be for the young lady who snags him! Although the usual wagging tongues claim he must needs marry a fortune to shore up his estate, that will not matter to anyone with an eligible daughter. He’s a duke, after all, and a young, handsome one at that, which is particularly rare. I daresay he will not be left unwed for long.
How delicious it will be to watch him hunt for his bride. Armitage is discreet where Thornstock was not, and he’s more reclusive even than his other half brother, the Duke of Greycourt. So it will have to be a most intriguing lady to pierce his armor and seize the rare heart that surely beats beneath. We await the result with bated breath.
Chapter One
Armitage House, London
November 1809
“The Duke of Greycourt is here to see you, Your Grace.”
Sheridan Wolfe, the Duke of Armitage, looked up from the account ledgers for his family seat, Armitage Hall. “Show him in.”
Grey, his half brother, was supposed to be in Suffolk, but Sheridan was glad that wasn’t the case. Grey would be a welcome distraction from the thing Sheridan detested most. Numbers. Arithmetic. Double-entry accounting. Which, try as hard as he might, he could not fathom.
Unfortunately, running a ducal estate required dealing with endless permutations of the method, so he must master it.
But not just now. Sheridan would rather have a brandy and a pleasant chat with Grey than continue slogging through the books. To that end, he poured himself a glass and was about to pour one for his half brother when the butler showed Grey in, and Sheridan’s idea of a pleasant chat evaporated.
His brother looked as if he’d drunk one too many brandies already and was now about to cast up his accounts. Pale and agitated, Grey scanned the study of Sheridan’s London manor as if expecting a footpad to leap out from behind a bookcase at any moment.
“Do you want anything?” Sheridan asked his brother, motioning to the butler to wait a moment. “Tea? Coffee?” He lifted the glass in his hand. “Brandy?”
“I’ve no time for that, I’m afraid.”
Sheridan waved the butler off. As soon as the door closed, he asked, “What has happened? Is it Beatrice? Surely you’re not in town for the play, not under the circumstances.”
In a few hours the whole family would be attending a charitable production of Konrad Juncker’s The Wild Adventures of a Foreign Gentleman Loose in London at the Parthenon Theater. Although Sheridan barely knew the playwright, Thorn had asked him to go because the charity was a cause near and dear to his wife’s heart: Half Moon House, which helped women of all situations and stations get back on their feet.
Grey shook his head. “Actually, I came to fetch an accoucheur to attend Beatrice. Our local midwife says my wife may have our baby sooner rather than later, and the woman is worried there will be complications. So I rushed to London to find a physician to examine Beatrice, in case the midwife is right. The man awaits me in my carriage even as we speak.”
Lifting an eyebrow, Sheridan said, “I would suspect you of having taken Beatrice to bed ‘sooner rather than later,’ but you’ve been