A Duke for Christmas Read Online Free

them excellent references.”
    She stood up to go to them and felt his hand warm on her arm. “And the man?”
    “Man?” Sophie followed his gaze and saw Mr. Knox talking to the girls. His Italian was not as good as hers, but both Angelina and Lucia were paying close attention, not giggling as they usually did when any non-Italian tried to speak to them.
    “Oh, that’s Clarence Knox. He was a friend of my husband’s. He’s a poet, too.”
    Mr. Knox looked up and caught sight of her. He smiled at her in the way that she’d come half-consciously to dread. It held too much warmth, too much hope. One she could not return, and the other she could not bring herself to dash. Now they had come home, this friendship she had inherited would fade without the necessity of hurting his feelings. It could never ripen into anything else. Mr. Knox resembled Broderick too much in tone of mind to attract her. Besides, her tastes had never run to men shorter than herself with hair carefully brushed to conceal its thinning. Even that wouldn’t have prevented her if she’d found almost childlike round blue eyes and snub noses appealing.
    Dominic followed her across the dock, his footsteps firm and slow. She’d forgotten how tall he was. “Your Grace, may I present Mr. Clarence Knox? Mr. Knox, this is the Duke of Saltaire.”
    Mr. Knox actually took a step back, as anyone might when suddenly confronted with an inoffensive young man who turned out to have a title and a fortune reputed to be majestic in scope. Dominic hardly seemed to notice the man’s reaction. Perhaps he was used to it by now.
    They shook hands in that very cool English style. Sophie compared it to the sometimes overwhelming enthusiasm of the Italian male and knew she had truly come home.
    “Could you tell them where to send the luggage?” she asked Dominic, indicating the several crew members bringing down trunks on their shoulders. Most were dumped in front of the Gibbses.
    “Certainly,” he said, stepping away.
    “I had no notion that you were acquainted with anyone of such high degree,” Mr. Knox said in her ear. “Is that the famous Duke of Saltaire?”
    “Famous? I don’t know if I would describe him so.”
    “Come now, you must know the story. How he was a poverty-stricken nobody until careful investigation uncovered the truth. I believe Armstrong Blevely was writing an epic on the subject.”
    “Armstrong wrote many an epic—in his head,” Sophie said tartly. “Never a one on paper that I ever heard tell of. The last I heard, he’d taken a position in his uncle’s relish manufactory.” Her late husband had poured scorn on the fallen poet for his choosing Gentlemen’s Pickle over the divine fee, but Sophie herself only wished that there’d been a going concern connected with the name of Banner, even if it had been connected with marmalade or horseshoe nails.
    “Alas, poor Blevely,” Mr. Knox said, shaking his head.
    “Still, it’s a tale worthy of an epic. I heard tell he was working in a blacksmith’s when they told him he was the heir to a dukedom.”
    “No. He was a writer.”
    “A writer?”
    “Grub Street, I believe. But we’ve never actually discussed the matter.” Not, at least, in any circumstances that she’d care to share.
    “What a fate to befall one,” Mr. Knox said, half to himself. “So much wealth and fine position and all through a mere accident of fate.” He smiled at her, returning to the present. “Ah, well, no such fairies attended my christening,” he said ruefully. “My father was a simple justice of the peace whose family line was as clear as a black line upon white paper. Not the slightest chance that some surprising rich relations will suddenly point to me and say, ‘Thou art the man to inherit my riches.’ More’s the pity. I shall have to win my fortune by other means.”
    “Your pen, perhaps?”
    His eyes suddenly moist, Mr. Knox reached out to grasp her hands. “Poor Broderick was taken from