Training Lady Townsend Read Online Free

garden rustled with swishing coat tails and embellished and ruched silk gowns. The season’s most eligible young ladies clustered in pastel groups with frowning chaperones and hawk-eyed mothers, while toplofty gentlemen sized up the possibilities for consolidating families and power. Fans fluttered and come-hither glances flew, most of them toward the garden party’s towering blond host.
    “They want you, Arlington,” Hunter drawled from his position near the east balustrade. “You’d better pick one of them soon, before things come to a head.” He gestured toward young Lady Eleanor, who exchanged viciously polite glances with her rivals on all sides. She looked like a puffball, all white and soft around the edges, although marital ambition sharpened her smile. “Shelbourne’s chit thinks she has you in the bag.”
    “For God’s sake, she’s the Marquess of Shelbourne’s daughter, not ‘Shelbourne’s chit.’ Could you attempt to be even a little polite and sociable? I threw this blasted party for your sake, and for your soon-to-be wife.”
    Both men turned to where Aurelia sat in her protective social circle. The young ladies perched around a tea tray but none of them touched a thing.
    “She looks like she’s having fun,” said Arlington.
    “She looks like she’d like to jump off a cliff, but you’ve none on your vast property. You call yourself a duke of the realm?”
    “I’ll have to look into acquiring some cliffs.”
    At nearly thirty, Arlington was the oldest of their mad little group, as well as the most respectable, having been forced into duty and responsibility at a very young age. Outwardly respectable, anyway. The duke was possessed of long, golden hair he sometimes pulled back in a queue, and pale blue-gray eyes capable of freezing those who risked his displeasure.
    “These betrothals are a dull business,” the duke said, frowning. “People who aren’t suited for one another are forced together to breed so society can proceed in the same lockstep manner.”
    “It’s ghastly,” Hunter agreed.
    “You’ll have a pretty wife anyway.” Arlington nodded in Aurelia’s direction.
    Hunter studied her, her spine stiff and her head tilted just so to her companion. “Pretty dull, you mean.”
    “You didn’t find her dull when we pointed her out at your parents’ ball.” His friend’s mouth twitched with amusement.
    “I’ll get all of you back for that one day,” Hunter huffed. “Mark my words.”
    “We look forward to your glorious transformation once you’ve been dragged, kicking and screaming, into the state of matrimony.” His hilarity died away, replaced by a gloom of concern. “Really, Towns, we wish you the best. If there’s anything we can do...”
    “There is something you can do. Especially you, Your Grace. Go to Lansing and make an offer for her hand.”
    “No point in that. She’s yours now. You’ve seen to it, for better or worse.”
    Lady Aurelia turned to speak to the simpering young woman at her side. Minette, Warren’s amiable younger sister. So prim. So proper, all of them. “You’re a duke,” Hunter said. “Lansing would at least consider you.”
    “She’s always been promised to you.” His friend’s voice took on a strange tone. “Funny, if not for the adjoining property, I might have had her.”
    “Would you have wanted her?”
    “I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. You’ve known for years this was coming, so buck up and be a man about it.” He pursed his lips, staring across the garden. “Your Lady Dormouse does have a magnificent set of breasts. No wonder Lansing kept her hidden away.”
    Out of principle, Hunter refused to moon at his fiancée in public, although he’d had similar thoughts about her breasts, her hips, her pleasingly round
derrière
. She was womanly, lush. Ripe, one might say, which made her prim mousiness that much harder to bear.
    “She’s in love with Warren.” The words burst out, apropos of nothing. Arlington