A Duke in Danger Read Free

whether you live to do so.”
    “What are you insinuating?”
    Gerald paused before he replied:
    “I heard, but paid no attention to it at the time, that after Richard’s death at Waterloo, Jason had a large wager that you would not be a survivor.”
    “Well, he lost his money,” the Duke said sharply.
    “I agree that you are now not likely to be killed by a French bullet, but there is always such a thing as an— accident.”
    The Duke threw back his head and laughed.
    “Really, Gerald, now you are trying to frighten me! Jason is far too much of a shyster to soil his hands with murder.”
    “I do not suppose it would be Jason’s hands which would get dirty,” Gerald Chertson answered drily. “Do not forget there was an attempt to assassinate Wellington in February.”
    “That is true. But Andre Cantillon was an assassin with a fanatical devotion to Bonaparte.”
    “I know that,” Gerald Chertson replied. “At the same time—and I am not trying to frighten you—Jason Harling has a fanatical devotion to himself and his future.”
    “I refuse to worry about anything so absurd,” the Duke said loftily.
    However, as he walked from the Dining-Room towards the Library after an excellent meal, something struck him.
    Together with his satisfaction with the house and everything which now had changed his life to a bed of roses from one which at times had been on very hard ground, he felt that Jason Harling was undoubtedly longing for his future to be assured.
    “I suppose I shall have to marry,” he told himself.
    It was a depressing thought, and his mind wandered to the beautiful Lady Isobel Dalton.
    She had made it quite clear when he left Paris that as she would be in London next week, she expected to see a great deal of him.
    The daughter of a Duke and widow of an elderly Baronet who had died of a heart-attack from over-eating and over-drinking, Lady Isobel was a very gay widow.
    She had been one of the many women in Paris—French, English, and Russian—who had been eager to console the war warriors after their long years in the wilderness.
    At every party they had glowed like lights in the darkness, and the Duke had found that Isobel’s arms encircled his neck almost too eagerly, while her lips invited his even before he had any desire to kiss them.
    However, it would have been impossible not to become aroused by the fiery delights which Lady Isobel offered him, and by the flattery with which she made him feel he was the only man in the world.
    “I love you! I want you!” she had said a thousand times. “I loved you the moment we met, and now, dearest, you are in a position I never dreamt would be yours. I love you because you will behave exactly as a Duke should.”
    He was well aware that she pressed herself both physically and determinedly closer and closer to him, and when he had stayed with her after dinner the night before he left Paris, she had made her intentions very clear.
    “ As soon as you have everything in order, I will join you,” she had said softly. “We will entertain and make our parties the smartest, the most fashionable, and the most influential in the whole of London.”
    She had given a little sigh before she said:
    “The Prince Regent is getting very old, and the Beau Monde needs a new leader, and who would look more handsome and more dashing or authoritative than you?”
    She paused, expecting the Duke to say that no-one was more beautiful than she was.
    But he realised that he was being pushed into declaring himself, and he had not yet made up his mind whether he wished to marry anyone, let alone Lady Isobel.
    When he thought about it, he knew it would be a marriage which would please his many Harling relations and be acclaimed as “sensible” by the Social World at large.
    Although Isobel could excite and arouse him as few women had been able to do, something which he called his “intuition” told him she was not really the type of woman with whom he desired to spend the