How to Lose a Duke in Ten Days Read Online Free Page A

Charles! What an idea! You know how much I detest the aristocracy.”
    Charles sat back again and sighed. “You’ll have to marry one day, Pip. Why not to a duke? No one would dare sneer at a duchess—not to her face, in any event.”
    “ If I marry at all, I intend to do it for love,” she said sternly, knowing his response would be to snicker. Charles was decidedly un romantic. “A nice, quiet tradesman would suit me very well.”
    Charles held up the newssheet. “Then perhaps you can explain why an invitation to your engagement ball has been published in the papers.” He glanced at it, then back at her. “It’s very elegant. I love the lettering.”
    Pippa jumped to her feet and snatched the newssheet from Charles’s hand. “That scoundrel! No wonder he agreed not to send out the invitations! He’d already invited all of London!”
    Her heart sank. She’d thought she’d been so clever to have outwitted him! Turned out, he’d outwitted her .
    “But you refused him.” Charles frowned. “Or didn’t you? I’m quite confused.”
    Pippa threw the newssheet down on the table in disgust. “Of course I did, but that hardly deterred him. In fact, he didn’t offer for my hand at all; he commanded I marry him. I’m astonished he even felt it prudent to inform me!”
    “He can’t marry you against your will.”
    “The duke is a powerful man. I’m afraid he may retaliate if I don’t go through with it. He’s known to be quite ruthless.” She let out a breath. “The man is insufferable.”
    “Women seem to find him quite handsome.”
    “He’s distracting, to say the very least,” she said.
    And if she thought of him naked, every last inch of him exposed to her very hungry gaze, then that was perfectly normal, surely. She was a red-blooded woman with natural curiosities, after all. There was nothing odd or disgraceful about it.
    What worried her was how invasive those thoughts had become. For six months, since first glimpsing him at the Tisdale ball, she’d imagined all the different ways she might slap him across the face, then claw every finely tailored garment off his powerful body.  
    It was a problem, indeed. Especially since she had no intention whatsoever of encouraging their ridiculous engagement—if one could even call it that.
    “Curious that he’d make a match he must find degrading.” 
    She shot Charles a sharp glare. “Thank you kindly.”
    “It’s no slight against you, darling. You know how the elite view our kind.” He tapped his chin. “Did he give you a reason?”
    “Aside from my irresistible charm? No. The only explanation he gave was ‘because I wish it.’” She sighed heavily, then glanced back up at Charles, a plan forming. “Perhaps you and I should become engaged. Only until Arlington loses interest. He can’t marry me if I’m already betrothed to you.”
    And considering the direction of her thoughts, the sooner this whole mess was dispatched, the better.
    Charles shook his head. “You know I’d do anything for you, Pip, if you were truly in a bind. But honestly, I’m perfectly capable of creating trouble for myself. I don’t need to entangle myself in your schemes as well.”  
    “What am I to do, then? Arlington won’t relent. He is quite determined to wed me for some mysterious reason. I wouldn’t put kidnapping past him.”
    Charles stood and paced the room, pausing occasionally before resuming again. Finally, he turned to her, finger on his chin. “What if you were to chase him away?”
    Pippa knit her brows together. “How, exactly, would that be accomplished?”
    Charles strode to the desk on the far side of the room and snatched up a blank piece of parchment and a quill and ink. He brought them back and sat in front of her, using the low table between them as a desk.
    “What are the qualities a duke would loathe in a wife?”
    “How am I to know?”
    “Come now, think. A duke would want a wife who is intelligent, beautiful,