Why Dukes Say I Do Read Online Free Page A

carriage,” Lady Isabella said calmly. “I hope you do not mean to refuse me accommodation, Your Grace. ” She put special emphasis on his title. “Rustic though I suppose it must be.”
    “I can hardly do so and continue to call myself a gentleman,” Trevor returned. Though he’d like to, just to prove a point to his grandmother. But the punishment would be for Lady Isabella, not the dowager. Which would be fruitless. “And fear not. I believe you will find Nettlefield up to your, no doubt, exacting standards.”
    They rode along in silence until finally they reached the lane leading to the manor. It was full dark now and visibility was such that only the front step was illuminated in the gloom. Even so, the house was not an unimpressive sight. Nettlefield had been built sometime in the seventeenth century by a prosperous squire whose descendent had sold the property off some two hundred years later to Trevor’s father, who had been in search of a place to settle his young family. The façade was grayed with age and weather and rather dour, but it was home.
    “Your Grace,” Templeton, his butler, said from the top step, “we had begun to fear you’d met with some misadventure.”
    Dismounting and reaching up to lower Lady Isabella to the ground, Trevor was pleased to see her mouth agape. Rustic accommodation indeed, he thought wryly.
    “Templeton, see that the blue room is readied for our guest,” he told the butler, offering Isabella his arm as he led her up the steps. “Lady Isabella Wharton will be our guest for a few days before she returns to London.”
    If Templeton thought there was anything untoward about the fact that his master had returned home with a strange lady on his arm, the older man didn’t mention it.
    “Of course, Your Grace,” the butler said, bowing to their guest as they moved into the hallway. “Lady Wharton, may I offer you a warm welcome and offer my assistance should you need anything during your stay?”
    “Please have Mrs. Templeton send a tea tray into the sitting room,” Trevor said, assisting Isabella to remove her cloak and handing it to a waiting maid who seemed to have appeared from nowhere.
    He was leading Isabella toward the stairs when a whirling dervish in the form of his sister Belinda came bolting into the hallway. “Trevor! Thank goodness you’ve returned! Flossie is about to give birth and I fear that she simply won’t rest until she sees you!”

 
    Two
     
    Today was obviously the day for Isabella to find her preconceived notions upended at every turn.
    First the fellow she assumed was a common laborer turned out to be the Duke of Ormonde. Then the house she’d expected to have all the elegance and appointments of a shepherd’s cottage turned out to be a sturdily built manor house. Now the duke himself turned out to be married to someone appallingly named Flossie, and if that weren’t bad enough, she was about to give birth to their child. For all Isabella knew, this young woman who had just burst onto the scene was his child as well.
    Isabella rubbed her forehead between her brows, though it did nothing to assuage her burgeoning headache.
    But, despite the news that he was about to become a father, the duke merely shrugged. “I will be up directly, Bel, though you know my opinion about Flossie’s affection for me. She could not possibly care less whether I’m in the room with her or not. That is, I fear, a notion entirely of your own making.” He turned to Isabella, and she felt suddenly diffident under his gaze. “I wish you to meet our guest.”
    The young girl had seemed about to argue with him over the unfortunate Flossie, but she stopped when she realized that the duke was not alone.
    “Lady Isabella Wharton,” he said, “may I present my youngest sister, Belinda.”
    Isabella felt herself being subjected to the same scrutiny the duke had given her when he’d first come upon her on the roadside. Only now her gown was more rumpled, her