The American Duchess by Joan Wolf Read Free Book Online Page B

if any, chances to please him in the future.
    Tracy was very fond of her father, although she did not know him all that well. It was true what he had said to her tonight: all his energy and time had gone into making his fortune. As a child she had seen very little of him; it was her mother who had brought her up. Then, after her mother had died, she had gone away to the Bradford Academy, where she had indeed received an excellent education. It was only in the six months that she had lived at home since leaving school that she had really ever seen a great deal of her father. But she cared for him and, especially now, she desired to please him.
    Then there was Adam Lancaster. She had not said she would marry him, but she had said she would listen to him after she returned from England, and she had let him kiss her. It had been very pleasant, that kiss, and she had thought Adam the most impressive man she had ever seen. She laid in bed now, trying to recall his strong, dark-skinned features, his flashing brown eyes, but his face would not materialize for her. She kept seeing instead the dark blue eyes and aristocratic face of someone very different from Adam Lancaster.
    The Duke was nothing in comparison to Adam, she told herself. Why, Adam had shoulders that would fill a doorway. But her mind’s eye kept seeing a very different figure, a man whose shoulders were surprisingly wide and strong, even if they would not fill a doorway, a man who moved with a grace and precision she had seen on no one else, a man who, she suspected, had always gotten what he wanted. And now he wanted her.
    One of the questions that bothered Tracy was why did he want her? She might not agree with the English prejudice about birth, but she acknowledged that the prejudice existed, and would have to be coped with by both sides of the marriage that was being proposed to her. Why would a man like the Duke want to marry a girl such as herself—a girl not of noble birth, a girl who had no idea of what might be required of an English duchess?
    She remembered the one other proposal of marriage she had received from an English nobleman. “I am not interested in your money,” Lord Belton had said. Tracy wondered if the Duke was. From the luxury of his house it seemed impossible that he could want money. But Tracy remembered the empty stalls. She recalled Lady Mary’s sad words about “the horses that had to be sold after Papa died.” It was not at all unlikely, she concluded, that money was an important consideration in the Duke’s choice of a wife. Tracy determined she would ask him; she did not at all care for the idea of being married for her money.
    The Duke did not delay.He appeared in the library the next morning shortly after Tracy herself had settled into a comfortable chair. “May I interrupt you, Miss Bodmin?” he asked quietly, crossing the room toward her.
    “Of course, my lord.” Tracy put down her book and looked at him gravely. He stood between her and the window, so that the sun coming in shone on his brown hair, which glinted with a copper sheen she had not noticed before. He looked perfectly relaxed and the thought crossed her mind that he had probably never assumed an awkward posture in his life.
    “I have a confession to make,” he said. “I invited you to Steyning Castle for a purely selfish reason. I wanted to show you my home. I wanted you to meet my family. I wanted, in effect, to show you the whole picture before I asked you a question that is very important to my happiness.” He smiled a little wryly. “All this is a very long-winded way of saying that I find I love you and hope very much that you will be my wife.”
    She was looking at him very seriously. “I do not know,” she replied slowly.
    He came a little closer. “That is encouraging. If you are open to persuasion, let me persuade you.”
    She smiled a little. “I wonder if you could?”
    “I shall certainly try. What is it that worries you?”
    “Why do you