Kasey Michaels - How to Tempt a Duke

Friendship is Love without his wings.

— Lord Byron

CHARLOTTE SEAVERS was on the hunt. And she was in a mood to take no prisoners.

Only scant minutes earlier Charlotte had been comfortably ensconced in the drawing room of her parents’ small manor house, happy in her ignorance, enjoying the sight of a mid-November frost glittering on the newly bare tree branches outside her window while she stayed warm and toasty inside.

But then the housekeeper had brought her one of the letters just arrived with the morning post.

After taking another sip of sweet tea, Charlotte had opened the missive from her good friend, read it in growing apprehension and disbelief until, with her newfound knowledge, her blissful ignorance turned to righteous anger.

“Unrepentant liars and tricksters! Wretched connivers!” she exclaimed, her teeth chattering in the cold, for she’d left the house without taking time to search out a warmer cloak than the rather shabby one she used while gardening that hung on the hook just outside the kitchens. “They’ll be lucky if I don’t choose to murder them!”

She stomped along the well-worn path that led through the trees from the manor house, to end halfway up the drive to Ashurst Hall. “And worse fool me because I believed them!”

What Miss Charlotte Seavers was referring to was her discovery, after months of the aforementioned ignorant bliss, that Nicole and Lydia Daughtry—in retrospect, mostly Nicky, with Lydia only following along because she felt she had no choice—had been pulling the wool over her eyes. Over everyone’s eyes.

All this time, since the spring, when they’d first had word from Rafael Daughtry that he was well and aware of the deaths of his uncle and cousins, Nicole and Lydia had been cleverly putting one over on Rafe, on their aunt Emmaline, on Charlotte.

Oh yes, and Mrs. Beasley. But then again, pulling the wool over Mrs. Beasley’s eyes was no great accomplishment, and the twins had the benefit of years of practice when it came to hoodwinking their governess.

In her haste to confront the Daughtry sisters and verbally rip several strips off their hides, Charlotte stomped on some wet, slippery leaves littering the path, and went down with a startled “Damn and blast!”

She just as quickly scrambled back to her feet, hurriedly looking about to be certain no one had heard her unladylike exclamation, and then brushed at the back of her cloak, pulling off damp leaves and bits of moss.

She took several deep breaths, hoping to calm herself, steady herself. After all, she was supposed to be a well-bred, civilized female, and here she was, racing through the trees like some wild boar.

But then she thought again of how Nicky and Lydia had spent the summer and fall posting letters back and forth, impersonating their brother to their aunt, and impersonating their aunt to their brother. Correspondence Charlotte had seen, had been allowed to read—all while the twins were doubtless laughing behind their hands at her gullibility.

Worse, if Emmaline hadn’t just now written to her privately, her words and her questions contradicting things she had already said in the letters Charlotte had been shown by the twins, she would still be none the wiser.

From the moment she’d begun reading the letter, Charlotte’s suspicions had been raised, as the handwriting was so very different from Emmaline’s letters supposedly posted to Ashurst Hall.

But those suspicions had turned to a cold certainty when she read the words, “Charlotte, I vow I sometimes think Rafe is Nicky in long pants. The girl never could get her mind around spelling any word longer than c-a-t.”

And here Charlotte had thought Rafe, for all his on-again, off-again schooling alongside his cousins, was next door to a yahoo when it came to grammar and spelling.

“They’ll pay for this,” she promised out loud, wiping her hand across her cheek to push an errant chestnut-brown curl back beneath her hood and depositing a smudge of dirt on her otherwise flawless skin.

Poor Emmaline, happy in her newly wedded bliss as she continued her long honeymoon in the Lake District, comforted with the knowledge that Rafe had sailed for home immediately upon receiving the news of his change of fortune.

And poor Rafe, going about his duties on Elba, assured that Lady Emmaline had everything at Ashurst Hall firmly in hand until his mission was completed, including the care of his young sisters.

“And me, duped by two miscreant monsters not yet out of the schoolroom—except that they most certainly did escape the schoolroom with their little trick,” Charlotte muttered, lifting up the hem of her gown even as she stepped up her pace along the path. “Commiserating with the girls about how much they missed their brother…joking with them about how Emmaline seemed to have thrown all sensibility to the four winds thanks to her newfound love. Running tame through the house all these months, leaving the nursery and their governess behind, because their brother wrote that he would be delighted—no! de- litted —to allow them more freedom. Their brother wrote? Ha! I’ll have their heads on a platter, I swear I will!”

Her mind on contemplated acts of mayhem, she broke free of the trees, stepping onto the gravel drive that twisted and turned on its way through the well-landscaped park.

The horse and rider appeared out of nowhere, heading for her at a vigorous canter.

Charlotte slid to a halt on the stones even as she threw up her hands and gave a quick, faintly terrified cry.

The horse, either in response to her unexpected appearance, or in reaction to his rider’s immediate sharp tug on the reins, gave a rather frightened cry of its own. It then reared onto its hind legs, pawing at the air as if attempting to climb an invisible ladder.

The hapless rider was immediately deposited on his back on the hard-packed gravel.

No fainthearted miss, Charlotte had already collected herself. She bravely grabbed at the horse’s now-dangling reins to keep it from bolting off down the lane, which, she readily saw, it appeared to have no intention of doing. She then walked toward the man she had unhorsed, hoping he’d get to his feet without assistance, which he would most probably do if he hadn’t cracked his skull, or worse.

“Are you all right, sir?” she asked rather cautiously, keeping her distance even as she leaned over the man, whose many-caped brown traveling cloak was twisted up and around his head. “I’m most terribly sorry. I am entirely at fault for your misfortune, I know, but I believe it would be extremely considerate and gentlemanly of you to pretend that you hadn’t noticed.”

The man mumbled something Charlotte couldn’t quite make out, which was understandable, what with him still all but strangled by his extremely fashionable cloak. She was, however, fairly certain that his response to her hadn’t been quite as forgiving as she might have hoped.

“Excuse me? Perhaps if you were to loose the fastenings of your cloak you’d be able to free yourself from its grasp?” She rolled her eyes, knowing that she was most probably only making things worse. “Shall I…shall I fetch help?”

“God’s teeth, no,” the man said, struggling to sit up while fighting his way out of the cloak. “I feel bloody well embarrassed enough, thank you. I’ve no need of an audience.” At last his head emerged from the tangle of cloth, his healthy crop of nearly black hair falling over his eyes. “Where’s my bloody hat?”

“I’ve got it,” Charlotte said, holding it out to him. “It’s barely dented, and I’m confident that it will clean up quite nicely once the mud is dry and can be brushed off.”