Mad About the Major Read Free Page B

they belonged. “You, sir, are most certainly not a gentleman.”
    â€œIf I’m not a gentleman, what does that make you? I will point out, you came quite willingly with me. What sort of milkmaid comes out to the gardens when a gentleman asks her to—­?”
    â€œOh, please do not repeat yourself!” she told him. “Do not ask me such a thing ever again!”
    â€œOh, please do,” came another voice. A deep and very familiar one. “I would like to know what you asked my daughter to do.”
    But her swain had no time to answer, because the Duke of Parkerton followed up his question by spinning the man around, and then landing a hard-­fisted blow that left the devilish fellow in a heap on the ground, out cold.

 
    C HAPTER 2
    T he next morning, Arabella stood by the window in the breakfast room awaiting her reckoning. Papa hadn’t said a word the entire way home from the Setchfield ball, which meant the explosion was only a matter of time.
    The Duke of Parkerton was known for his reckonings. After all, he’d had years of experience calling to heel his younger brother, Lord John, known throughout the ton as “Mad Jack.”
    And she had a sense of what this particular reckoning would be. He’d finally have all the ammunition he needed to marry her off to the Duke of Marbury’s heir.
    All of it for her “own good.”
    Behind her, her stepmother, Elinor, and Elinor’s young sister, Tia, sat eating their breakfast.
    â€œCome and have a bit of toast, Birdie,” Tia called out, using Arabella’s nickname. “Everything is always better with a bit of toast and jam.”
    â€œYes, please do join us,” Elinor urged her. “Afterward, we are planning a walk in the park with James. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
    She actually would—­she loved her new little brother. The heir that Elinor had provided the Duke of Parkerton within a year of their marriage. No one had been more surprised than the duke himself to become a father again. And if Arabella was to venture a guess, a spare would make an appearance not long after Michaelmas if the bulge in Elinor’s usually trim figure was any indication.
    Not that Arabella minded in the least seeing her family expand—­especially given her father’s happiness in the three years since he’d married Elinor after a madcap and scandalous courtship. Even better, little James’s arrival had become the perfect distraction to keep her father from pressing her to marry—­well, that is, marry well .
    Still, despite Elinor and her sister’s friendly pleas, Arabella continued to hold her place by the window. She couldn’t eat. Not yet. Not until this reckoning with her father was over. His silence in the carriage home had nearly been her undoing.
    Aunt Josephine, who sat in her usual spot at the table, winked at Arabella, and then went back to eating her breakfast. Most likely her elderly relation knew every detail of the night’s events.
    Then out in the garden, the gate opened and the milkmaid came through, right on schedule, carrying the day’s delivery. As always, she arrived whistling a dashing tune, the bright notes carried along on a morning breeze.
    Elinor’s ever-­present dogs, Fagus and Isadore, sat up and began barking at this intruder, racing in circles around the table and yapping as if the hordes of London had descended on their garden.
    While outside, the girl, used to the dogs’ ambitious greetings each morning, smiled as if her burdens and their yapping threats were nothing to concern her, and Arabella let out a sigh of envy.
    â€œWhat is it?” Tia asked, twisting around to look out the window. “Oh, it’s her.”
    â€œEvery morning she comes through our gate, bringing us those buckets of milk.”
    â€œThey look heavy,” Tia said in her very practical way and returned to her