A Duke Never Yields Read Free Page A

adore her, I assure you.”
    “I beg your pardon. Have I gone to sleep and woken up two hundred years ago?”
    Olympia patted his coat pocket and withdrew a slim leather diary. “No,” he said, examining a few pages. “No, it remains February of 1890. Thank goodness, as I’ve an immense number of appointments to make today, and I should hate to have to wait so long to complete them. If this is all agreeable to you, Wallingford, I shall invite the girl and her family around at the end of March, when they return to town. A private dinner would be best, I think. Allow the two of you to get to know each other.” He turned a few more pages in his diary. “A wedding around midsummer would be ideal, don’t you think? Roses in bloom and all that?”
    “Are you mad?”
    “Sound as a nut. I must be off, however. I’ll send in Shelmerstone on my way out. No doubt he stands ready at the keyhole. And Wallingford?”
    “Yes?” He was too stunned to say anything else.
    “Do contrive not to embroil yourself in any further scandal before then, eh? The Queen don’t like it, not a bit. Oh yes! And orchids.”
    “Orchids?”
    “Orchids to Madame de la Fontaine. It seems they’re her favored blooms.”
    Olympia left in a flash of tweed coat and silver hair, and Wallingford stared at the door as if it were the gate to hell itself.
    What the devil had come over the old man? He’d never so much as mentioned the word marriage before, and all at once it was brides this and weddings that and bloody roses , if you will! He looked down at his hand, holding the blue and white porcelain saucer, and saw it was shaking.
    The door slid open in a faint rush of well-oiled hinges. “Your shave is ready, sir,” said Shelmerstone, and then the slightest intake of breath at the sight of the pool of coffee settling into the priceless rug, surrounded by long, ambitious streaks of brown and, at their tips, the final tiny droplets, still winking atop the rug’s tight woolen weave. Without a pause, he snatched the linen napkin from the coffee tray and fell to his knees, blotting, going so far as to murmur a reproachful Sir! in the depths of his distress.
    Wallingford set down the saucer. “I beg your pardon, Shelmerstone. His Grace has delivered me the devil of a shock.”
    “What was that, sir?” Shelmerstone asked, covering a sob.
    “Marriage,” Wallingford said. He added, for clarification, “Mine.”
    A dreadful pause. “Sir.”
    “Yes. Most distressing. He’s picked out the bride, the date, the damned flowers. I daresay he’s chosen her a dress already, and embroidered the pearls himself, God rot him.”
    Shelmerstone cleared his throat. His face was white, either from the coffee or the bride or some combination of the two. A funereal gravity darkened his voice. “Her name, sir?”
    Wallingford squinted his eyes. “It was . . . something like . . . By God. Do you know, Shelmerstone, I don’t think he even saw fit to tell me.”
    “Sir.”
    “Not that it matters, of course. I shan’t do it. I shall tell my grandfather exactly where he can stash his arranged brides.” His words sounded hollow in the great cavern of a bedroom, and he knew it. He could hear Shelmerstone’s thoughts, as the valet bent over the coffee stain.
    Ha. Like to see him try. No going against His Damned Bloody Grace Olympia, when he has one of them ideas in his noggin.
    “I believe I shall fetch the bicarbonate,” Shelmerstone said faintly, and rose to his feet.
    Wallingford fell into the armchair, staring blankly at the room around him. His familiar room, grand and yet with a certain worn comfort, bare of unnecessary decoration, not a flower in sight, his favorite books piled on the nightstand, his aged single-malt Scotch whiskey at the ready. The very notion of a woman inhabiting this sanctum made his mind vibrate with dissonance.
    No. No, of course not. Not even the Duke of Olympia would dare such a thing.
    True, he’d hand-selected more than one