Scandal And The Duchess by Jennifer Ashley Read Free Book Online Page A

gave up as the road bent around a corner from the village and drifted away.
    “Thank you for coming with me,” Rose said, hanging on to the seat in the rocking cart as they rolled between hedgerows. “I didn’t realize how shaky I’d be coming out of the station. I had no idea how they’d receive me.”
    “I wasn’t about to make you face dear Albert alone,” Steven said.
    He screwed up his eyes against the sunlight on snow, his head pounding. The thought of himself lying randy and uncomfortable in his hotel bed, knowing Rose lay on the other side of the wall, had sent him out last night. He’d met up with friends he hadn’t seen in donkey’s years, drank too much, dragged himself back at four, and then was up a few hours later to catch a train.
    Steven had successfully avoided lying in bed wishing Rose was in it with him, but now his head was punishing him, and all this light
hurt
. It hadn’t been as bad in the train, but the dogcart was open to the world, nothing to mute the white glare.
    “I know,” Rose said, her contralto like a balm on his raw nerves. “But this isn’t your fight.”
    “It is now.” Steven put his hand over his eyes. Helped, and also shut out his need to see her smile. “My impetuousness put me in this right up to my neck.”
    “Still, I am grateful.”
    Don’t make me out to be a hero.
Steven’s words inside his head were impatient, almost savage.
I’m a frivolous, drunken rake, not a benevolent philanthropist. I’m helping you to make up for the fact that I couldn’t help someone else.
    The dogcart jerked, making Steven’s headache stab at him. He had to stop seeking out his friends. Perhaps stop even
having
friends.
    The cart rumbled over a bridge, a half-frozen stream trickling in the bed below it, and the house came into view. Steven sat up and sucked in a breath.
    The place was bloody enormous. Built in the early Georgian style, the house was perched on a wide green hill. It was composed of three huge, boxlike wings, each crowned with a giant triangular pediment. Flat columns marched across the house between tall, many-paned windows and more columns flanked a massive front double door. The structure had been built of golden stone, and when sunshine broke through the clouds, the house took on a bright hue, painfully so.
    “Good God,” Steven said. He’d spent the past few Christmases at Kilmorgan Castle in Scotland, a pile even larger than this, but it was different somehow. Kilmorgan was always overflowing with families, children, dogs, and horses when Steven visited, and never seemed too large.
    This monstrosity had an empty look, as though knowing its master had gone, never to return. Not literally true, because a Duke of Southdown was still master here—he was just a different man. The house seemed to feel its emptiness, however, and mourn.
    “I loved this house the moment I saw it,” Rose said with a sigh. “My stay in it as a wife was brief, but I consoled myself with the fact that I’d least continue living on the estate. But that wasn’t meant to be.”
    She looked so sorrowful that Steven wanted to move to her seat and gather her into his arms. He held on to the sides of the cart to keep from doing it.
    The drive took them past the dower house, a much smaller version of the main mansion. It too had been built of golden stone, and its three-story, one-winged splendor looked a bit more cheerful than its parent.
    As they rolled by, Steven heard barking—a lot of barking. A man came out the front door of the dower house, followed by three hounds, and stopped to stare at the cart.
    “That’s Mr. Hartley, the steward,” Rose said. She lifted her hand in greeting, and Mr. Hartley’s mouth popped open. The dogs stared as well, but wagged tails. “Albert has turned the dower house into a kennel for his dogs. Albert loves to hunt, you see.”
    The steward belatedly bowed, but his eyes gaze remained fixed as the dogcart rattled by.
    The driver took them