How to Tame Your Duke Read Free Page A

shall be a dairymaid. I milked a cow once, at the Schweinwald summer festival. They were all quite impressed. The dairyman told me I had a natural affinity for udders.”
    “Nonsense. A dairymaid! The very idea. No, my dears. I have something in mind more subtle, more devious. More, if you’ll pardon the word . . .”—he paused, for effect—“. . .
adventurous
.”
    Luisa drew in a long and deep breath. “Oh,
Uncle
. What have you done?”
    “I admit, I had the idea from you yourselves. Do you remember, a great many years ago, when I came to visit your . . . er, your charming homeland? You were just fifteen, Luisa.”
    “I remember.” Her voice was dark with foreboding.
    “You put on a play for me, did you not?
Hamlet
, I believe, which was just the sort of melancholy rubbish a fifteen-year-old girl
would
find appealing.” Olympia came to a bookshelf, propped his elbow next to a first folio, and regarded the girls with his most benignly affectionate expression.
    “Yes,
Hamlet
,” said Luisa warily.
    “I remember!” said Stefanie. “I was both Claudius and the Prince of Norway, which proved rather awkward at the end, and Emilie of course played Polonius . . .”
    Olympia widened his beneficent smile. “And Luisa was Hamlet. Were you not, my dear?”
    The timepiece above the mantel chimed three o’clock in dainty little dings. The corgi went around in a circle once, twice, and settled himself in an anxious bundle at Stefanie’s feet. His ears swiveled attentively in Olympia’s direction.
    “Oh no,” said Luisa. “It’s out of the question. Impossible, to say nothing of improper.”
    Stefanie clasped her hands. “Oh, Uncle! What a marvelous idea! I’ve always wanted to gad about in trousers like that. Such perfect freedom. Imagine! You’re an absolute genius!”
    “We will not,” said Luisa. “Imagine the
scandal
! The . . . the
indignity
! No, Uncle. You must think of something else.”
    “Oh, hush, Luisa! You’re a disgrace to your barbarian ancestors . . .”
    “I should hope I am!
I
, at least, have some notion . . .”
    “Now, ladies . . .”
    “. . . who overran the steppes of Russia and the monuments of Rome . . .”
    “. . . of what is due to my poor husband’s memory, and it does not require
trousers . . .”
    “My dear girls . . .”
    “. . . to create the very wealth and power that makes us targets of assassins to
begin
with . . .”
    “
HUSH!
” said Olympia.
    Luisa paused, finger brandished in mid-stab. Stefanie bent over with a mutinous expression and picked up the quivering corgi.
    Olympia rolled his eyes to the ceiling, seeking sympathy from the gilded plasterwork. His head, unaccustomed to such late hours, felt as if it might roll off his body at any moment and into the corgi-soiled Axminster below.
    Indeed, he would welcome the peace.
    “Very well,” he said at last. “Luisa rejects the notion; Stefanie embraces it. Emilie, my dear? I believe it falls to you to cast the deciding vote.”
    Stefanie rolled her own eyes and sat with a pouf into her chair, corgi against her breast. “Well, that’s that, then. Emilie will never agree.”
    “I am shocked, Uncle, that a man of your stature would even consider such a disgraceful notion.” Luisa smoothed her skirts with satisfaction.
    Olympia held up his hand and regarded Emilie. She sat with her back straight and her fingers knit, thumbs twiddling each other. Her head cocked slightly to one side, considering some distant object with her mother’s own eyes.
    “Well, my dear?” Olympia said softly.
    Emilie reached up and tapped her chin with one long finger. “We shall have to cut our hair, of course,” she said. “Luisa and Stefanie will have an easier time effecting the disguise, with their strong bones, but I shall have to wear a full beard of whiskers at least. And thank Heaven we are not, taken as a group, women of large bosom.”
    “Emilie!” said Luisa, in shocked