Four Nights With the Duke by Eloisa James Read Free Book Online Page A

girl you pushed off on me the last time we went to the theater bleated at me like a goat all night. And her face was beaky.”
    “Those are cheekbones, you ass.”
    “I didn’t like them.” The girl had been all angular bones and hard edges. He preferred . . .
    He preferred a woman who fit under his arm like a sheltering bird. Even Thorn’s gorgeous wife, India, was too tall for him, if the truth be told.
    Thorn stared down at him. “Just tell me this: Does Miss Carrington agree with your limit of four nights?”
    “I haven’t told her yet, but she will. She’s mad with love , if I recall the phrasing correctly from that poem. She’ll take any scraps I throw in her direction. I think she repeated her proposal three or four times. To be succinct: she begged me.”
    “Damn it,” his friend said, obviously disgusted. “This marriage is going to give you a wildly inflated idea of your own importance.”
    Vander grinned at him.

Chapter Five
     
    NOTES ON F LORA & L ONDON
     
     
              ~ Mr. Mortimer’s solicitor buys her jewelry, coach, servants . . . what else?
              ~ Modiste ecstatic to provide wardrobe for young lady so exquisite. Slender, coltish legs, doelike eyes (watch for too many animal metaphors)
              ~ in wks, all London at Flora’s feet.
              ~ Virtuous, farmer impoverished squire, Mr. Wolfington. “My heart is the only gold I offer!”
              ~ Count Frederic—side of the ballroom—longs for her hand.
              ~ Frederic and Flora dance once, twice. Ballroom sighs at sight of his celestial beauty, dark locks next to yellow, & etc.
              ~ Yet even in the scene of mirthful festivity, Flora aware of an unaccountable feeling of Apprehension . . .
    V ander had ignored the question of marriage all day, working in his stables from five in the morning to evening. A stallion that he’d bought from Africa, chosen due to his bloodlines, had been delivered that morning. The young horse, Jafeer, had turned out to be both ferocious and completely unnerved by his new residence, and Vander had spent most of the afternoon trying to settle him.
    His stable master was convinced that a good night’s sleep would make all the difference to Jafeer’s temperament. Vander wasn’t quite as certain. There was a wild tone to the Arabian’s whinny that suggested true distress.
    Marvelous. He’d had the stallion shipped all the way to England . . . and now it was showing every sign of being difficult, if not impossible, to train.
    He walked into his study and caught sight of an untouched letter: Mia’s supposed requirements for marriage. Rage ran up his spine like a flame. The woman actually thought that she could dictate the terms of their marriage?
    She was blackmailing him into making her a duchess, and on top of that, insisting on her own terms as well? The hell with that. A man is the master of his wife. Once Mia and he married, he would be in control.
    She might be able to buy his title, but nothing else. With a sudden jerky movement, he crumpled the sheet and hurled it into the fire. It fell against the logs and within seconds was consumed by flames.
    He had never deluded himself about his intimidating size and rough demeanor. He knew he was theleast sophisticated duke in the land. But Mia hadn’t shown any fear in response to his explosion of anger, though grown men had trembled in his presence.
    Her infatuation was that powerful.
    She must have made up her mind as a girl, biding her time until precisely a year after the death of his mother. He balled his fist and tapped it against the mantelpiece, thinking. There was something deeply unsettling about the idea that she wanted him so much, even after all this time, that she was willing to blackmail him.
    By all rights, he should feel revolted at the idea of bedding her. But fool that he was, despite his outrage, he still liked her voluptuous figure.
    He dropped his