An Unlikely Duchess Read Online Free Page B

not handsome. His hair was brown and curled all over the place, to the despair of every valet he had ever employed. His features were arranged on his face in the most ordinary and unimaginative way. His eyes were gray—just gray, without any interesting adjectives to add to the color name. He was, in fact and altogether, a very ordinary man.
    And a dull one too. His friends were right, he thought with a sigh. A dull and ordinary man about to pay his addresses to a dull and ordinary woman. And they would live a dull and ordinary and quite exemplary life for ever after.
    Sometimes he could almost envy that beggar in the gutter he had advised Angie to seek.
    “I shall scream!” the female from the next room shrieked. “If you do not leave this instant, sir, I shall scream the roof down.”
    The walls between rooms were not by any means soundproof.
    The male was unwise enough to laugh again. He must be either very young or very silly in the head. Or very brawny.
    The noise from the taproom belowstairs was becoming somewhat deafening too. Someone down there must be very witty if the great gusts of laughter were anything to judge by. And someone was singing, though it would be a kindness to everyone in the inn if someone else would just hint to him that he was slightly off-key.
    “You will not ravish me!” the female shrieked through his wall. Her voice was a trifle thinner than it had been. “If you try, sir, I shall put my knee where it most hurts.”
    The Duke of Mitford was on his feet even as the man laughed again. Did the female not have a brain in her head, giving him fair warning like that? And what kind of a female was she to know about such things? But were matters that serious? Was it possible that it was not a simple domestic quarrel he had been listening to?
    “Don’t!” The female’s voice was shaking. There were other words he could not catch. “Stop it! Oh, help, someone. Mmmmm!”
    After shooting out through his own door, Mitford tried the handle of the door next to his own, but of course it was locked. The corridor was narrow. He could not take a great run at the door. And doubtless even if he could, he would only shatter his shoulder for his pains. But there was a female in distress inside that room. A voluble and scatter-brained female, it was true, but one in dire straits, nevertheless.
    He took his run, hurled his shoulder against the upper panel of the door, and found himself hurtling through it and colliding with a very large and solid object on the other side.
    It was a conquest not to be boasted of afterward. Mitford admitted that much to himself in all fairness. The man had been taken totally by surprise. The duke had not even knocked to warn the occupants of the room that there was a concerned citizen outside. There was only a flashing impression of a tall, muscular gentleman with a bewildered expression and a hanging jaw.
    And then the duke’s fist connected with that jaw, shutting it with a satisfying crunching of teeth. The gentleman swayed on his feet while his assailant’s other fist bruised itself against his ribs. Doubtless the gentleman would have recovered and given a good account of himself if the female had not recovered far faster and dealt him a finishing blow to the back of the head with the bowl that no longer had a pitcher to stand up inside it.
    The gentleman’s eyes rolled in his head and he toppled sideways, hitting the bed and sliding off it to the floor.
    ***
    Josephine was feeling frantic. It was late in the day already and the carriage was broken. And there were still ten miles to go. And why had Mr. Porterhouse secured her a bedchamber instead of just a private parlor? Was he expecting that they would have to spend the night at the inn?
    Oh, dear, what a coil she was in if that happened. Papa would not like it at all. Neither would Aunt Winifred. Or Grandpapa. She had got herself into some scrapes during her twenty years— indeed, she had got herself into a great