It's Hard Out Here for a Duke(6)

Their carriage was moving at a glacial pace through streets thickly congested with carriages, cattle, and people. His lungs constricted. He couldn’t breathe.

And now the carriage was slower, slower, slower.

Stopped.

The Cavendishes had arrived in London.

James looked up at the house. The stately building seemed to soar toward the sky, and the limestone seemed to glow in the afternoon light. This was no mere house; it seemed like a concrete ray of light from Heaven, ordained by God Himself.

It was a grand residence designed to impress and intimidate. Success, James thought wryly. This was his now and it terrified him.

James swallowed hard as a fleet of servants exited the house from the large front doors and decorously lined up on the cobblestones. So elegantly and expertly did they do this that he wondered if they had practiced and if they had been watching and waiting for his arrival.

The women wore dark dresses pinned with starched white aprons and caps. The gentlemen were dressed in blue-and-gray livery, which happened to be of a finer style and quality than the clothes he wore.

He thought of her, again, and her comment on his plain attire. It hadn’t bothered him then, but he was keenly, awkwardly aware of it now.

The lot of them just kept coming, lining up and waiting to serve him.

But not yet. Not yet.

James had promised himself that none of this became real until he set foot in London, and, as he was currently ensconced in the carriage, he technically had not done so.

Therefore, he could still flee.

His sisters were exiting the carriage, one after another, spilling forth in a mass of skirts and petticoats and bonnets and curls and girlish chatter. Bridget dropped her diary on to the cobblestones, Claire tripped on the carriage step, and Amelia gaped openly at all of it, her loosely tied bonnet tipping off her head as she looked up and up at the huge house.

He could go.

And God, he wanted to.

His heart was pounding, blood roared in his ears, something was lodged in his throat, and he couldn’t breathe. The city was closing in on him, all these people were waiting for him, expecting things from him that he didn’t know if he could deliver.

He was a simple man, of simple pleasures. He was happiest on his farm, with dirt on his boots and the company of his horses.

He wasn’t . . . this.

James could order the driver to take him away, anywhere. At this moment, he had half a mind to. More than half. They could drive straight to the docks, where he could board a boat for America, back to the land that was green and beautiful and his.

Back to the horses he’d trained from birth. He’d had to say goodbye to them, their big brown eyes somehow knowing that he was leaving them forever, his friends, his life, the things that made him him. And for what?

Everything in him urged him to flee, to turn and to run. Like a wild horse running from a wolf.

But then he caught sight of a familiar face. One that had made him look twice, then a third time, then he couldn’t stop. It was a face of beauty and mystery that had haunted him ever since he woke up expecting her and found she’d vanished.

She was just a girl, she had said.

But she was also here.

James stepped out of the carriage.





Oh, hell . . .


An elegant older woman dressed in a blue gown stepped forward to greet him. She was fair and of slight stature but held herself in a manner that suggested an ability to command armies with nothing more than a politely worded order. James recognized her demeanor from his work with horses; dominance needn’t be displayed with size or brute force. It was a subtle energy conveyed through a look, a word, and self-possessed confidence.

“Your Grace,” she said. He started to turn to see to whom she was speaking but quickly realized she addressed him. “Welcome to London.”

“You must be the Duchess of Durham,” James replied to Josephine Marie Cavendish, the Duchess of Durham, daughter to the Earl of Cambria, and God only knew how many other titles or royal connections she possessed.

Was he supposed to bow to her? Shake her hand? He was acutely aware that an entire phalanx of servants watched his ignorant behavior.

“Presently, yes,” she said with a pointed smile. And so it begins. “I trust your journey went well.”

“Yes, very well . . .”

James looked past the duchess to her, his Just A Girl who by some twist of fate or the grace of God happened to be here. He couldn’t quite wrap his head around it, but he was glad. He couldn’t quite wrench his attentions away from her, either—though she steadfastly refused to look at him.

“And these must be your sisters,” the duchess said, gesturing to the pack of girls standing behind him.

“What? Yes.”

Right. He was the duke now. He had to set an example. Manners, et cetera. Paying attention to the business at hand and not staring like some gawking schoolboy at the girl he thought he’d lost forever. His Just A Girl was here, standing with the line of servants, but not quite a part of them. She did not wear a uniform like the others, but she wasn’t standing with the duchess, either. He didn’t understand how she fit into the household.