Louise Allen - Least Likely To Marry A Duke

A marriage of inconvenience

For the buttoned-up duke!

Bound by convention, William Calthorpe, Duke of Aylsham, is in search of a suitable bride to help raise his half siblings. Despite his methodical approach to finding such a lady, he stumbles—quite literally—into freethinking and rebellious bishop’s daughter Verity Wingate. And when they find themselves stranded overnight on a tiny island, compromising them completely , he knows exactly what he must do...

LOUISE ALLENloves immersing herself in history. She finds landscapes and places evoke the past powerfully. Venice, Burgundy and the Greek islands are favourite destinations. Louise lives on the Norfolk coast and spends her spare time gardening, researching family history or travelling in search of inspiration. Visit her at louiseallenregency.co.uk, @LouiseRegencyand janeaustenslondon.com.

Also by Louise Allen

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His Housekeeper’s Christmas Wish

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Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk.

Least Likely to Marry a Duke

Louise Allen

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-1-474-08886-2

LEAST LIKELY TO MARRY A DUKE

© 2019 Melanie Hilton

Published in Great Britain 2019

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.

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www.millsandboon.co.uk

Version: 2020-03-02

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To Chris, Dickie, Robbie and Darren,

who built me my wonderful library and study.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

About the Author

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Extract

About the Publisher

William Xavier Cosmo de Whitham Calthorpe, Fourth Duke of Aylsham—William to his recently deceased grandfather, Will in his own head and Your Grace to the rest of the world—strode up the gentle slope of the far boundary of his new home and relaxed into the calming certainty that all was as it should be.

There was the slight matter of the turmoil he had left behind in the house, but he would do battle with that later, when he returned for breakfast. Patience and the application of benevolent discipline was all that was required. A lot of patience.

Now he was doing what any responsible landowner did first thing in the morning—he was walking his estate, learning its strengths and weaknesses and needs so that he could be a good landlord. He was the Duke now and he knew his duty, whether it was to the undisciplined brood of half-siblings who were currently making domestic life hideous or the hundreds of tenants and the numerous estates that were now his responsibility.

Oulton Castle, twenty miles away, was the true seat of the Dukes of Aylsham, but although, naturally, it was in a state of perfect repair and management, it was completely unsuitable for the large and lively family he had just acquired. This manor, Stane Hall, had been in the hands of excellent tenants for years, but with its improved drainage, its unoccupied Dower House and its complete absence of lethal moat, towering medieval walls and displays of ancient weaponry it was a far safer home for now. He could only be thankful that the tenant had been ready to retire to Worthing and had needed no persuasion to leave.

Will pushed thoughts of problems away to focus on what he was doing. This was the seventh day he had been in residence and the first morning he had been able to spare to inspect the land. Ahead must be the northernmost point of the boundary.

He checked the map he had folded into his pocket. Sure enough, the six low irregular bumps that lay before him like a string of half-buried beads were shown with stylised hatching and labelled ‘Ancient Tumuli (Druidic).’ The low morning sun cast long shadows from their bases and the boundary line was shown on the map as running along the crest of the chain. There was no sign of a fence.

That was not good. Fences were of the utmost importance to a perfectly managed estate and he intended Stane Hall to be perfect. Dukes did not accept second-best, either in their staff, their surroundings or themselves. That had been one of the first lessons his grandfather had taught him when the third Duke had plucked Will out of the miserable chaos that life had become with his father, the now deceased and always erratic George, Marquess of Bromhill.

The old Duke’s first attempts at training the perfect heir had all gone for nothing the moment his son, the newly widowed George, set eyes on the lovely Miss Claudia Edwards, writer and passionate educational theorist. A life made notorious by the couple’s eccentricity had ended with the Marquess’s plunge to his death from a rooftop, where he had been putting into practice the theory that a gentleman should be able to perform any task he might ask of others, including manual labour.