How to Tame Your Duke Read Free Page B

tones.
    “Emilie,
darling
!” cried Stefanie. “I knew you had it in you!”
    Olympia clapped his hands in profound relief. “There we are! The matter is settled. We shall discuss the details in the morning. Wherever has the tea gone? I shall have it sent to your rooms instead.” He turned around and pressed a button on his desk, a state-of-the-art electrical bell he’d had installed just a month ago. “Ormsby will show you the way. Tally-ho, then!”
    “Uncle! You’re not going to
bed
?”
    Olympia yawned, tightened the belt on his dressing robe, and made for the door. “Oh, but I am. Quite exhausted.” He waved his hand. “Ormsby will be along shortly!”
    “Uncle!” Luisa called desperately. “You can’t be serious, Uncle!”
    Olympia paused with his fingertips on the door handle. He looked back over his shoulder. “Come, my girls,” he said. “You shall be well instructed, well placed in respectable homes. You are actresses of exceptional talent, as I have myself witnessed. You possess the dignity and resourcefulness of a most noble family. You have, above all, my unqualified support.”
    He opened the door, stretched his arm wide, and smiled.
    “What could possibly go wrong?”
    *   *   *
    T he Duke of Olympia did not, however, make straight for his room. He walked in the opposite direction, down the hall toward the service staircase at the extreme back of the house. As he descended, the expressions of feminine outrage and excitement from the study died slowly into the walls, until the air went still.
    Miss Dingleby was waiting for him in the alcove near the silver pantry. She made a little noise as he drew near, and stepped into the light.
    “Ah! There you are, my dear,” Olympia said. He looked down at her from his great height and placed his hand tenderly against her cheek. “Won’t you come to bed and tell me all about it?”

ONE

    A ramshackle inn in Yorkshire (of course)
    Late November 1889
    T he brawl began just before midnight, as taproom brawls usually did.
    Not that Emilie had any previous experience of taproom brawls. She had caught glimpses of the odd mill or two in a Schweinwald village square (Schweinwald being by far the most tempestuous of the three provinces of Holstein-Schweinwald-Huhnhof, perhaps because it was the closest to Italy), but her governess or some other responsible adult had always hustled her away at the first spray of blood.
    She watched with interest, therefore, as this brawl developed. It had begun as the natural consequence of an ale-soaked game of cards. Emilie had noticed the card players the moment she sat down in an exaggerated swing, braced her elbows, fingered her itching whiskers, and called for a bottle of claret and a boiled chicken with her deepest voice. They played at a table in the center of the room, huddling with bowed heads about the end as if they feared the spavined yellow ceiling might give way at any moment: three or four broad-shouldered men in work shirts, homespun coats slung over their chairs, and one stripling lad.
    The stakes must have been high, for they played with intensity. A fine current of tension buzzed through the humid, smoke-laden air. One man, his mustache merging seamlessly with the thicket of whiskers along his jaw, adjusted his seat and emitted a fart so long, so luxuriously slow, so like a mechanical engine in its noxious resonance, the very air trembled. A pack of men at a neighboring table looked up, eyebrows high in admiration.
    And yet his companions were so intent on the game, they couldn’t be bothered to congratulate him.
    At that point, Emilie had taken out a volume of Augustine in the original Latin and made an impressive show of absorption. Travelers, she had discovered early in today’s journey from London, tended to avoid striking up conversations with solitary readers, especially when the book’s title encompassed multiple clauses in a foreign language, and the last thing Emilie needed was an