Not Quite A Duke (Dukes' Club Book 6) Read Online Free Page A

have been a more apt description.
    He was familiar with this sort of room though she likely was unaware of that.
    This was the sort of room one put an unwelcome guest in the hope they would hie hence with speed.
    Well, he wasn’t hieing anywhere. London had grown depressing. All his friends were marrying. It was as if a disease had slipped through his company and men were falling left and right.
    Yes. A spell away from them all in the presence of such a prickly woman would ensure his safety from the connubial cage.
    The walls were molding.
    Molding.
    Devil take it but she clearly wished him gone.
    He took the single, flickering candle over to the small mahogany desk before the window. There was a crack in the glass pane which let in the cold night air.
    The room was damp.
    Which was a shame because there was a stack of rather beautiful books on the desk and damp was notoriously bad for books.
    He’d have to speak to her in the morning of such carelessness. Let the walls rot. Books had to be preserved.
    He picked one up and eyed the title.
    The Wicked Adventures and Journey of Calliope Baker.
    It was a salacious and typical title of the day. . . It was a title he knew. He’d bought it but had yet to read it. It was the most popular book in London at present written by one mysterious P. Auden.
    He’d heard it talked of in the coffee shops and the taverns he frequented. His sister was reading it as well. It was a work that straddled all walks of life.
    Everyone was obsessed with Calliope and her flight from the notorious Lord Wakefield.
    It was a bit of a surprise to find such a popular work in the home of the seemingly prudent Lady Patience.
    She’d gone to bed. Early. Very early. Sending him up to his horrendous sleeping quarters after a very bad dinner.
    The meat had been cold. The sauce had been dubious.
    In fact, it was very possible they’d eaten horse. It had been impossible to tell.
    The wine had been scant and tasted as if it had gone off.
    Once again, Lady Patience was in for a long wait if she thought such tactics could send him packing.
    He picked up the first leather bound volume in Calliope’s adventure and palmed it.
    It was going to be a long night.
    Perhaps he should stay in his room, but that would hardly aid him. If he went off in search of brandy and a better, hopefully warmer, nook to read, he’d have a good excuse for searching out clues to Lady Patience.
    So, he headed out of his cold room into the ever so slightly warmer hall, his single candle in hand.
    The house had to be nigh three hundred years old and it seemed that, for the most part, it had been kept up. . . Still, such places were disastrously difficult to keep warm.
    Mayhap he would go in search of some servant to find something, anything, to keep him from shivering. He hadn’t traveled here with the intention of freezing to death. Spring or no, the old house felt largely like an ice cave.
    It was completely understandable the wearing of furs and fear of drafts when one could turn a corner and see one’s breath. In a house like this, one could see one’s breath four feet from the fire, in all truth.
    Still, in his experience, the English were a hearty lot who were accustomed to such things.
    If he protested, he’d, no doubt, be solidifying his role as a delicate flower of a man to Lady P, but he was happy to do so if it gained him ground.
    The single candle he bore before him barely cast a beam into the darkness but he made his way down the hall with a confident stride.
    At the end, he found the beautiful, carved, wooden stair and headed downward.
    If he was lucky, he’d find a fireplace with some fuel at hand. Unlike most nobles, he actually knew how to start a blaze.
    But as he wandered into the grand foyer, he noticed a faint, glowing light coming from the central hall.
    Charles blew out his own candle and quietly stepped along the floorboards which had a deuced inclination to creak.
    But with a long ago developed skill, he made