Jillian Hunter: The Wicked Duke Takes a Wife

“Unfeeling fools,” Aunt Primrose said from her chair. “Don’t you realize that the girl wants her mother more than anyone in the world, which is hardly a surprise considering that her father is a rude young rakehell who cannot even behave when his elders are in the room?”

Griffin and Liam straightened, bowing this way and that at the aunts, at the dogs, at each other, until Aunt Glynnis picked up a pair of apples and stuck one apiece into their grinning mouths.

In the months following Edlyn’s outburst, Liam reluctantly made plans to travel to England to court the woman brave enough to be his wife. He and Edlyn still clashed whenever they spent more than a few minutes together. Griffin, their two aunts, and their twin siblings, Ravenna and Rhys, were still forced to intervene more times than the allied powers completing the peace treaty.

Was there a woman in London, in the whole of England, strong enough to bridge the family divide?

Edlyn withdrew until she became a shadow. Everyone wondered why she seemed agreeable to accompanying Liam to London. Could she be growing up at last? She didn’t object when Aunt Primrose explained that she would make friends her age at school and no longer be allowed to wander about with the gypsies who lived nearby. A week before the journey, she had already packed her own bag and talked the guards into promising to feed the crows that nested on the parapets.

Griffin challenged his older brother to one last ride through the woods and over the river wall. Liam never refused a dare. Griffin had never lost a race.

Not a day had passed since that Griffin didn’t picture Liam standing in the stirrups with his windblown hair bristled up like a hedgehog. “Come on!”

Griff guided his horse down the incline. “I’ll go first.”

“No, you won’t. You challenged.”

They stared across the river, absorbing the beauty of Glenmorgan, young pagans who preferred wildness over London’s pleasures, warriors at heart.

Griff lifted his face to the sky. The light was swiftly fading. The mystical irradiance that bathed the battered castle stones would soon disappear. Storm air drifted in the breeze.

“Let’s do it tomorrow,” he shouted to Liam.

“Giving up already? I’ll jump,” Liam said, wheeling. A dying ray of light caught his smile and outlined his agile figure as he set in his spurs.

A crow flew toward the castle turret. Griffin felt the drum of his brother’s hoofbeats through his bones. Invincible.

His brother’s mare had never before balked at a jump or thrown a rider. Not that anything could hurt Liam. The great vital lump that landed in the water had steel woven into his body and soul.

“Duke! If you want to cede the race right now, I won’t tell anyone what a bloody fool you’ve made of yourself.” Griff waited, then dismounted. He knew as he slogged through the water that at any moment his brother would tackle him by the knees and half-drown him to prove he could. This day would not be different than countless others.

“Liam. Get up, idiot.”

The head groom, who’d been following at a distance, splashed up beside him in his thick riding boots. “Move aside, my lord.”

The mare scrambled up the embankment. Griffin grabbed his brother’s riding coat at the shoulder, turning him onto his back. “Please,” he whispered.

The groom pulled off his jacket. “His neck is broken. It was an accident. Let me lift him onto the rocks.”

Griffin sank to his knees. “Did you see it?” Their eyes met.

“Aye,” the groom said. “And so I shall swear.”

He hadn’t seen. No one but Griff had witnessed what happened. It was inevitable that some of the villagers in Glenmorgan would ask themselves if he’d done more than entice his brother into taking that fatal jump.

Wasn’t that enough?

He would be the one who had to tell Edlyn and the rest of the family. She had lost her mother, and now he was responsible for her father’s death.

After the funeral and a suitable period of mourning, they would travel to London together-he, the seventh Duke of Glenmorgan, to find a wife, and Edlyn, to learn the rules she would break for the rest of her life.

The red salon filled in moments. Ladies buzzed about, footmen swarmed, and a sharp-eyed scullion at the hearth swept up the few ashes that Harriet had missed. Griffin would never have recognized Charlotte Boscastle, as they had both been in the cradle at the time of their only acquaintance. She stood almost as tall as he, her blond hair drawn off a delicate oval face that could have graced a cameo. Miss Gardner was easily the most arresting person in the room, with her tightly knotted red hair, piquant features, and marked lavender dress. Her disheveled charm drew his eye so often he feared he would be caught.

She did catch him once as he looked up from the fireplace.

Her brows rose. Calmly, she turned to the tea table, concentrating on the cups as if one of them contained a gold sovereign. His gaze slid down her creamy décolletage to the damning brand above her bosom. Not only did it appear that the smudge had darkened, but the ruffled hem of her ruined dress had not escaped the soot, either.

He gazed down into his goblet at his reflection. He’d made another fearsome first impression, and he hadn’t even tried. It seemed to get easier every time.

“Are you looking in the River Styx?” a throaty voice asked at his elbow.

He glanced around in hesitation at his niece, who never missed the chance to spread her personal gloom around.

As was so often the case, it was his aunt, Lady Primrose Powlis, who quickly intervened before anything worse could erupt.

“Do I smell smoke? I hope something hasn’t gotten caught in the chimney. You weren’t puffing on one of those vile cheroots again, Griff?”

He glanced good-naturedly at his aunt. She was a small woman, whose spirit increased as her physical self diminished every year. Her booming voice could chill his blood. Her sweet wrinkled face was a beloved comfort. The rain had fortunately destroyed her atrocious hat. Her silver-white hair was flattened beneath an intricate netting of tiny ivory pearls, showing a bald spot here and there.

Annoying, intrusive, she manipulated her family without a thought, making up stories and heartrending fibs as served her purpose. And it was because her purpose nearly always derived from a genuine concern for those she connived that Griffin adored her.

He rarely admitted this to her, however. She took enough advantage of him as it was.

She was also uncannily observant. He was not at all surprised when in her next breath she accused him of setting Miss Gardner on fire with an imaginary cigar.

“Did my nephew drop ashes on your dress, Miss Gardner?” she asked in a horrified voice, leaning from her chair for a closer look.

Griffin smiled. The River Styx might need to be refilled tonight.

“It was my fault,” Harriet said quickly. “I fanned some papers I hadn’t noticed in the grate. His grace was good enough to air out the room.”

Lady Powlis settled back in her chair. “Hmmph.”

“But everything is fine now,” Griffin added, suddenly afraid it was anything but. Thanks to Aunt Primrose’s meddling, his cousin Charlotte now appeared to be on the scent.

She had excused herself from chatting with Lady Dalrymple and was making a quiet assessment of Harriet’s crumpled gloves, her dress-and heaven only knew how Charlotte put two and two together, but all of a sudden she was looking right at Griffin’s cravat.