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Preview: How to Catch a Duke in Ten Days
Chapter One
“Ido not think you realize just how tarnished your reputation is, Hermione.” Her aunt’s words made her flinch in her seat in the carriage. She lifted one hand to the locket she carried around her neck, clinging to it tightly, whilst the other hand was encased in her sister’s fingers.
“Tarnished? Pah!” her father scoffed at the words, earning her gaze. Rufus Rogers, the Earl of Branigan, had once been both a handsome and an extremely wealthy man, one of the most eligible bachelors in the ton. The years had taken its toll, and though he still bore the coifed fair hair and startling green eyes that once made him attractive, his face was haggard with his age, and his accounts had withered too.
“It is destroyed. It lays in tatters, about as ripped to shreds as her veil was on that dreaded day,” he said, gesturing to Hermione.
She recoiled away from his words, trying to sit straight in the seat and take their censure on the chin, but it was nigh on impossible. She’d suffered their chastisement and reprimands for the last week and a half since the event that had turned her life upside down. She didn’t imagine they would ever stop now.
“What follows next must be handled with tact and care, My Lord,” her aunt said kindly, placing a gentle hand on his arm. The simple touch seemed to take the wind of anger out of him. Since their mother had passed some years ago, their mother’s widowed sister, Mrs. Cordelia Atkins, had moved in with them. “As long as everything goes according to plan, she will be married before anyone can find out what happened in London.”
“And you do not see the problem with your plan?” Hermione asked, finding her voice at last.
“Hermione, don’t,” Phoebe whispered at her side, pleading with her. Hermione looked to her sister, just long enough to see the petite and slender girl with just as piercing green eyes as their father shaking her head. “Do not argue with them any further.”
“I am sorry you have to hear it, Phoebe, truly, I am,” Hermione said, squeezing her sister’s hand tighter. Her sister had always been more of a sensitive soul, and Hermione usually went through life trying to shield her sister from the harsher things in life. Sadly, she could not protect Phoebe from these arguments from anymore. “Yet, something has to be said.”
“You wish to argue with me more?” Rufus thundered, his face blushing bright red as did his neck around the cravat he was wearing. He moved forward to the edge of his seat, his body frantic and tensed with evident anger.
“You wish me to trap a man into marriage,” Hermione stressed the words, glancing between her father’s and her aunt’s faces. “Do you not hear how awful that is? You wish me to deceive a man, not only forcing him into marriage, but persuading him to believe I am an ideal woman too? With a reputation intact?”
“You no longer have the virtue of actually having a perfect reputation. That was your own doing,” Rufus snapped the words. Horrified, Hermione’s lips parted, just as Phoebe at her side cowered back into the seat, trying to hide from his anger.
“It was not my doing,” Hermione matched the vigor in her father’s tone, moving to the edge of her own seat. Placed directly opposite her father, she stared him down, refusing to look away from his calculating gaze.
“You did nothing wrong? Nothing wrong!” her father roared the words.
“Please be quiet, My Lord, or the coach driver will think something is amiss,” Cordelia pleaded with him. He glanced once at her, breathing deeply in the obvious attempt to control his anger before he looked back to Hermione again.
“It astounds me you still deny all blame in this situation.” Her father spoke much quieter this time, though with just as much venom in his voice as before.
“And I will continue to deny it,” Hermione said, snapping her gaze back to him.
“Why do we have to continue this same argument all the time?” Phoebe pleaded, looking between them. Hermione could feel her sister’s hand trembling. “Are we incapable of talking of anything else?”
“Phoebe, you will need to toughen up to hold your head high in this world,” Rufus said tiredly, pinching the bridge of his nose.
“How can you speak to her like that?” Hermione asked, horrified. “She is hurt by our argument because she feels things keener than you ever could. She has more heart than you have in your breast–”
“Do not you dare talk to me with such insolence!” Rufus raged, dropping his hand from his face. “The point is, Hermione, you do not have a choice in this matter.”
The vigor of Hermione’s argument was taken out of her, and she sank back onto the cushions of the carriage, just as the coach jolted back and forth across potholes, making them sway from side to side.
“Your father is right, Hermione,” Cordelia said with a softer tone. With some reluctance, Hermione looked up to her aunt, waiting for her next words. “It is not easy to hear, yet it is imperative. Your damaged reputation does not only affect you but all of us. Especially Phoebe.”
At these words, Hermione turned to her sister, seeing Phoebe looking down at her lap, biting her lip, and avoiding Hermione’s gaze.
“Your sister’s name will be tarnished too. The only way to ensure Phoebe makes a good marriage now is if we marry you off and marry you off well,” Cordelia said plainly, as though the solution were an obvious one.
“The Duke of Benson is the perfect candidate,” Rufus said with animation, leaning forward toward her with his hands outstretched. “He has never married and was betrothed himself before, so he should not be so choosy.”
“He isverywealthy,” Cordelia said with widened eyes. “Immensely so.”
“That is important, is it?” Hermione asked, unable to resist challenging the two of them. “Since when is money the cause of a happy marriage?”
