Love Letters From a Duke Read Online Free Page A

audacity of giving him a once over as if she were measuring him for a suit…or shackles.
    “Now that we’ve settled the fact that I am Miss Langley,” she was saying, “may I introduce my sister, Miss Thalia Langley.”
    Thatcher bowed slightly to the girl who thankfully still held her vermin of a dog, for he was wearing his only pair of boots. At least until Aunt Geneva could order up twenty or thirty new pairs. Enough to keep a room full of valets fully employed just with the task of polishing and shining them.
    Miss Langley opened the door all the way, and eyed him again. “Are you coming in or are you going to stand there and let that draught chill the entire house?” One hand rested now on her hip and the other one pointed the way inside. “Or worse, you catch your death out there before we can come to some arrangement and I’ll have to start this process all over.”
    Arrangement? Start this process all over? Well, there was arrogance if he’d ever heard it. She might be a pretty little thing, but he was beginning to see that she was also mad as Dick’s hatband.
    She huffed a sigh. “Now are you coming in or must I assume that you are as witless as the last one?”
    He wasn’t sure if it was the authority behind her order—er, request—or the draught of wind that blew up the street that finally propelled him into the house. “Yes, oh, so sorry,” he said.
    Then it struck him. The last one? Wait just a demmed moment. She had more than one ducal prospect?
    And she had the nerve to call him cheeky?
    Miss Langley closed the door, shivered, and drew her shawl tighter around her shoulders, then turned and led the way up the stairs. Her sister flashed him a saucy grin, while the oversized rat in her arms continued to look down at his boots with an eager eye. “Come along then,” Miss Langley told him. “As you can see, we need your services.”
    His what?
    But before he could ask her, she and her sister had already scurried up the flight of stairs. By the time he caught up with them, they’d turned down a narrow hall and entered a small parlor. The room was cozy, with a decidedly female air about it—a discarded basket of knitting, an open and forgotten novel on the floor near the grate. A small pile of coals glowed in the hearth, and off to one side sat a large overstuffed chair where an old lady snored most indelicately. Her lace cap sat askew and a lap robe lay on the floor at her feet.
    Without missing a beat, Felicity set things to right. The book was closed—a bit of braided thread to mark the page—then the throw was settled back over the lady’s lap, and she even had a moment to put a bit more coal on the fire.
    “I hope Aunt Minty finds you acceptable,” she said as she went about the routine tasks. “I’d wake her, but she likes a good doze this time of day, and bears no one any favors if they rouse her before she’s ready.” Dusting her hands off, she turned to him and sighed yet again, shaking her headas she went. “I suppose a good chaperone should be a bit more alert, but Aunt Minty is…well, she’s quite perfect for us, for we are very aware of our tenuous circumstances and haven’t the tendencies for romantic misalliances—”
    “’Cept for our cousin Pippin,” Miss Thalia added. “But you’ll meet her later.”
    Her sister shot her twin another scathing look, and he took the interruption in this nonsensical conversation as his chance to wrestle some control over the situation. “Uh, yes, well, the point of my visit—”
    In a flash, the chit outflanked him. “Oh yes, the point. Exactly,” Miss Langley said, not even batting an eye over the fact that she had just cut him off. “Though I must say, you hardly look proper.” She tipped her head and measured him yet again from the toes of his boots to the top of his head. There was another sigh and then she said, “I daresay the livery will be a tight fit.”
    Livery? He shook his head. Whatever was she talking about?