How to Tempt a Duke

But then the housekeeper had brought her one of the letters just arrived with the morning post.

After taking another sip of sweet tea, Charlotte had opened the missive from her good friend, read it in growing apprehension and disbelief until, with her newfound knowledge, her blissful ignorance turned to righteous anger.

“Unrepentant liars and tricksters! Wretched connivers!” she exclaimed, her teeth chattering in the cold, for she’d left the house without taking time to search out a warmer cloak than the rather shabby one she used while gardening that hung on the hook just outside the kitchens. “They’ll be lucky if I don’t choose to murder them!”

She stomped along the well-worn path that led through the trees from the manor house, to end halfway up the drive to Ashurst Hall. “And worse fool me because I believed them!”

What Miss Charlotte Seavers was referring to was her discovery, after months of the aforementioned ignorant bliss, that Nicole and Lydia Daughtry—in retrospect, mostly Nicky, with Lydia only following along because she felt she had no choice—had been pulling the wool over her eyes. Over everyone’s eyes.

All this time, since the spring, when they’d first had word from Rafael Daughtry that he was well and aware of the deaths of his uncle and cousins, Nicole and Lydia had been cleverly putting one over on Rafe, on their aunt Emmaline, on Charlotte.

Oh yes, and Mrs. Beasley. But then again, pulling the wool over Mrs. Beasley’s eyes was no great accomplishment, and the twins had the benefit of years of practice when it came to hoodwinking their governess.

In her haste to confront the Daughtry sisters and verbally rip several strips off their hides, Charlotte stomped on some wet, slippery leaves littering the path, and went down with a startled “Damn and blast!”

She just as quickly scrambled back to her feet, hurriedly looking about to be certain no one had heard her unladylike exclamation, and then brushed at the back of her cloak, pulling off damp leaves and bits of moss.

She took several deep breaths, hoping to calm herself, steady herself. After all, she was supposed to be a well-bred, civilized female, and here she was, racing through the trees like some wild boar.

But then she thought again of how Nicky and Lydia had spent the summer and fall posting letters back and forth, impersonating their brother to their aunt, and impersonating their aunt to their brother. Correspondence Charlotte had seen, had been allowed to read—all while the twins were doubtless laughing behind their hands at her gullibility.

Worse, if Emmaline hadn’t just now written to her privately, her words and her questions contradicting things she had already said in the letters Charlotte had been shown by the twins, she would still be none the wiser.

From the moment she’d begun reading the letter, Charlotte’s suspicions had been raised, as the handwriting was so very different from Emmaline’s letters supposedly posted to Ashurst Hall.

But those suspicions had turned to a cold certainty when she read the words, “Charlotte, I vow I sometimes think Rafe is Nicky in long pants. The girl never could get her mind around spelling any word longer than c-a-t.”

And here Charlotte had thought Rafe, for all his on-again, off-again schooling alongside his cousins, was next door to a yahoo when it came to grammar and spelling.

“They’ll pay for this,” she promised out loud, wiping her hand across her cheek to push an errant chestnut-brown curl back beneath her hood and depositing a smudge of dirt on her otherwise flawless skin.

Poor Emmaline, happy in her newly wedded bliss as she continued her long honeymoon in the Lake District, comforted with the knowledge that Rafe had sailed for home immediately upon receiving the news of his change of fortune.

And poor Rafe, going about his duties on Elba, assured that Lady Emmaline had everything at Ashurst Hall firmly in hand until his mission was completed, including the care of his young sisters.

“And me, duped by two miscreant monsters not yet out of the schoolroom—except that they most certainly did escape the schoolroom with their little trick,” Charlotte muttered, lifting up the hem of her gown even as she stepped up her pace along the path. “Commiserating with the girls about how much they missed their brother…joking with them about how Emmaline seemed to have thrown all sensibility to the four winds thanks to her newfound love. Running tame through the house all these months, leaving the nursery and their governess behind, because their brother wrote that he would be delighted—no! de-litted—to allow them more freedom. Their brother wrote? Ha! I’ll have their heads on a platter, I swear I will!”

Her mind on contemplated acts of mayhem, she broke free of the trees, stepping onto the gravel drive that twisted and turned on its way through the well-landscaped park.

The horse and rider appeared out of nowhere, heading for her at a vigorous canter.

Charlotte slid to a halt on the stones even as she threw up her hands and gave a quick, faintly terrified cry.

The horse, either in response to her unexpected appearance, or in reaction to his rider’s immediate sharp tug on the reins, gave a rather frightened cry of its own. It then reared onto its hind legs, pawing at the air as if attempting to climb an invisible ladder.

The hapless rider was immediately deposited on his back on the hard-packed gravel.

No fainthearted miss, Charlotte had already collected herself. She bravely grabbed at the horse’s now-dangling reins to keep it from bolting off down the lane, which, she readily saw, it appeared to have no intention of doing. She then walked toward the man she had unhorsed, hoping he’d get to his feet without assistance, which he would most probably do if he hadn’t cracked his skull, or worse.

“Are you all right, sir?” she asked rather cautiously, keeping her distance even as she leaned over the man, whose many-caped brown traveling cloak was twisted up and around his head. “I’m most terribly sorry. I am entirely at fault for your misfortune, I know, but I believe it would be extremely considerate and gentlemanly of you to pretend that you hadn’t noticed.”

The man mumbled something Charlotte couldn’t quite make out, which was understandable, what with him still all but strangled by his extremely fashionable cloak. She was, however, fairly certain that his response to her hadn’t been quite as forgiving as she might have hoped.

“Excuse me? Perhaps if you were to loose the fastenings of your cloak you’d be able to free yourself from its grasp?” She rolled her eyes, knowing that she was most probably only making things worse. “Shall I…shall I fetch help?”

“God’s teeth, no,” the man said, struggling to sit up while fighting his way out of the cloak. “I feel bloody well embarrassed enough, thank you. I’ve no need of an audience.” At last his head emerged from the tangle of cloth, his healthy crop of nearly black hair falling over his eyes. “Where’s my bloody hat?”

“I’ve got it,” Charlotte said, holding it out to him. “It’s barely dented, and I’m confident that it will clean up quite nicely once the mud is dry and can be brushed off.”

He still hadn’t looked at her, instead busying himself attempting to rearrange his many-caped collars so that they lay flat over his shoulders once more. She counted four capes, graduated in size—very impressive. More would have classified him as a dandy, and less wouldn’t be half so fashionable. Upside-down and over a man’s head, however, all that fine London fashion was probably little more than a nuisance.

“Next, madam, I suppose you’ll say I should be delighted with that piece of information. How fortunate I am. My cloak is only torn—ah, in two places—and my new hat is barely dented. Lucky, lucky me. Perhaps you believe I should be thanking you.”

“There’s no need for rudeness, sir,” Charlotte told him, knowing that there was probably every need. She’d unhorsed the man, for goodness’ sakes, ruining his fine clothes, which were apparently very dear to him. She probably also shouldn’t point out that if he hadn’t sawed so on the reins, his mount, which seemed a placid sort, may not have reared at all. No, she probably shouldn’t mention that, either. “I didn’t mean to unhorse you, you know. It was an accident.”

“An accident, of course. I believe the fool who touched off the Great London Fire attempted the same sorry excuse. You ran into the roadway, madam. Next you’ll probably say it was all my fault for having been on the drive in the first place.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Charlotte said tartly, beginning to lose patience with the man. “You had every right to be here.” Then she frowned. “And why are you here?”

The hat was all but ripped from her hand as the man finally got to his feet. But when he slammed the thing back on his head he uttered a quick curse and quickly removed it once more; it dropped, unnoticed, onto the drive.

She went up on her tiptoes. Goodness, he was a large man. Quite imposing. “What is it? What’s wrong? Is it your head? I don’t see anything.” But, then, how could she? He was very tall. Charlotte was rather impressed; she’d known few men who stood a full head and shoulders above her not inconsiderable height. He actually made her feel small.

“Damn,” he said, touching the back of his head and then bringing his hand forward once more, looking at the blood on his fingers. “Six years of war all but unscathed, and I take a head wound not a mile from home. Inflicted by a woman, no less.”

Home. He’d said that. She’d heard him. He’d said home. Charlotte’s eyes went so wide she was amazed they didn’t pop straight out of her head.

While he fished in his pocket for a handkerchief to press against his wound, Charlotte eyed Rafael Daughtry, whom she’d last seen in the flesh the day he rode off to war, and only in her foolish, maidenly dreams in the intervening years.

He didn’t look at all as she remembered him.

This man seemed to be twice the Rafe she remembered, or perhaps that was only because he weighed a good three stone more than the gangly youth whose wide, unaffected smile had always had the ability to make her knees buckle. The hair?Yes, that was the same coal-dark hair she remembered, if longer than she remembered.

But his features seemed sharper, more mature, and his skin was tanned from the sun in the way that the farm laborers were tanned…years and years of exposure to the elements that toughened the skin, made for small crinkles around the edges of his eyes.

She looked at him again, examining him.

These weren’t Rafe’s eyes. They were the same color, a warm, rich brown, almost sherry. But they were hard eyes, centuries-old eyes, not the laughing eyes of the boy she’d known. These eyes had seen things she could never imagine.

Charlotte suppressed a small shiver, one born of vague nervousness coupled with a definite curiosity. Why had she never realized that he would be changed by war, changed by his six long years away from Ashurst Hall?

“Rafe?”

He still held the handkerchief pressed to the back of his head. “Pardon me?” he asked, looking at her. Finally looking at her. Was that interest in his eyes? “I’m afraid you have the advantage of me, madam.”

“If I do, Your Grace, it would be the first time,” Charlotte said, dropping into a fairly mocking curtsy. But she couldn’t seem to curb her tongue. “Perhaps I should have thought to unhorse you six years ago. Perhaps on the day you and George and Harold saw nothing out of the ordinary in speaking freely around me about the charms of the new barmaid in the village, just as if I wasn’t there at all.”

“Again, madam, I don’t believe I—” Rafe blinked and leaned closer, looking intensely into her face. “Charlie? By God, it is you. And still wreaking havoc all over Ashurst Hall, I see. I should have realized at once. Maybe you should have thrown another apple at my head. I would have remembered then. You always were a bit of a menace.”

Charlotte fought down the urge to go up on tiptoe again and box the man’s ears. “While you, Your Grace, always were a bit of an insensitive beast. And it’s Charlotte. Not Charlie. I detest Charlie.”

“Really?” His quick, unaffected smile caused her stomach to perform a small flip. It was still the smile Charlotte remembered, if not the Rafe she remembered. “I rather like it. Charlie. Why would anyone with the least sense wish to be called Charlotte?”

She silently acknowledged that he had a point. She hated her name, passed down to her from a great-aunt who’d been so kind as to establish a small dowry in exchange for the infant carrying on her name. Still…

“Everyone calls me Charlotte,” she informed Rafe tersely. “But you may address me as Miss Seavers.”

“The devil I will,” he told her, checking the state of his handkerchief and then, seeming satisfied with what he saw, returning the thing to his pocket. He looked at her again. “You grew up pretty enough, didn’t you? But then, you probably frightened all the men away. I know you frightened me.You must be all of what, two and twenty?”

“Not quite, Your Grace.”

“Then close enough,” Rafe said, taking the reins from her and turning once more toward Ashurst Hall, leaving her to either pick up his hat and follow him or just stand here in the drive looking like the sorriest looby in Creation. “I imagine you’ll be putting on your caps any day now, preparing to lead apes in Hell.”

Charlotte looked down at his fine, fancy hat and then raised her skirts slightly to employ one half boot to send the thing sailing off into the bushes. “Indeed no, Your Grace,” she said sweetly, catching up to him. “I’ve simply been waiting for you to return so that we could marry, for I have always loved you from afar. I would think that should be obvious.”

Ah! Now she had his complete attention. And all she’d had to do was tell the truth, shameful though it was. After all, it was the one thing she was confident Rafe would never believe.

“Zounds, I’m sliced to the bone with that cutting retort. You always were a funny little thing, weren’t you?” he said, smiling down at her. “But you’ve made your point, Charlie, and I apologize. It’s none of my business whether you are married or not. So, now that we’ve settled things between us, and I’m fairly well assured my wound isn’t fatal, why don’t you tell me why you were in such a hurry?”

Charlotte opened her mouth to answer him and then just as quickly shut it. The man had worries enough without learning that his sisters had made a May game out of them all for the past many months. “I…I was hurrying to get inside. I hadn’t realized how cold it is until after I’d left the house.”

He seemed to accept her answer.

“Do they know I’m coming?” he asked as they navigated a turn in the drive and Ashurst Hall was at last visible in the distance. “I wrote Emmaline from London, but I may have beaten the post.”

“Yes…about that,” Charlotte said, twisting her gloved hands together in front of her. “Emmaline isn’t here at the moment.” She looked at Rafe, wondering how much he actually did know. “She and her husband have gone to tour the Lake District as part of their honeymoon.”

Rafe nodded. “The Duke of Warrington, yes. I inquired about him in London. A good man, from all accounts. But then who is in charge of the twins?”

That’s a very good question, Charlotte whispered inside her head. “Why, I am, of course.”

“You are? But you’re barely more than a girl yourself.”

“A few moments ago you had me donning spinster caps and leading apes in Hell,” she reminded him, mentally adding to her list of Reasons To Murder The Twins—an already lengthy list. Now they’d made a liar out of her.

“Then you’re staying at Ashurst Hall, and not simply on your way there for a visit? You were merely out for a walk.”

“All right…” Charlotte agreed slowly, wondering how deep a hole she could dig for herself in protecting Nicole and Lydia before the sides toppled down on her head. “That is, I mean, yes. Out for a walk. Visiting my parents. Mama…Mama has taken a putrid cold, you understand.”

“Probably acquired after walking outside in the cold wearing an inadequate cloak,” Rafe said, grinning at her. “There may be a lesson there for you, Charlie.”

She ignored his teasing. “But I’m not the twins’only guardian,” she said, improvising rapidly. “Their governess, Mrs. Beasley, is of course in residence, as well as a household staff numbering more than forty. Nicole and Lydia have hardly been left to their own devices.” Devices, machinations, mischiefs—oh, they would pay for this, the both of them!

“And my mother?” Rafe asked, obviously believing her. After all, why would she lie to him? Emmaline was right; men truly were gullible. “Is she also in residence?”

Charlotte shook her head. “No, I’m afraid not. Your mother, now, as she reminds us quite often, the Dowager Duchess of Ashurst, traveled to London for the Small Season, and from there to a house party in Devon, I believe it is.”

“Is she really the Dowager Duchess? God, I suppose she is. That must have tickled her straight down to the ground.”

“Except for the dowager part, yes,” Charlotte said, smiling as she remembered Helen Daughtry’s struggle between clasping an exalted title to her bosom and being thought old enough to be mother to a duke. “I think she has settled for Lady Daughtry.”

“My mother never settles for anything, Charlie,” Rafe said as he stopped at the bottom of the circular drive that led to the enormous front doors of Ashurst Hall and looked at the building. “I still don’t believe this. I still feel like one of the beggars come to town.”

He turned to look at Charlotte with those soul-deep eyes of his, and her stomach did another of those small flips. Really, she should try harder to control herself. “Now you sound like your cousin George.”

“I suppose I do. They’re really dead? This hasn’t all just been some long waking dream, and I’m about to be shown to my usual small room near the nursery?”

“The duke’s suite of rooms has already been prepared for you, Your Grace,” she told him rather kindly, for she could now at last see traces of the old Rafe, the less-sure-of-himself Rafe in those sherry eyes. “Your aunt Emmaline saw to it.”

“It’s still difficult to believe he’s gone. And his sons…”

“May they rest in peace,” Charlotte said, still looking at Ashurst Hall, all four floors, dozen massive chimneys and thirty bedrooms of it. Somewhere inside those massive fieldstone walls two unsuspecting tricksters were about to find themselves firmly under the control of one Miss Charlotte Seavers.

“Well, that sounded a tad perfunctory,” Rafe said, and she could feel his eyes on her. “You didn’t care for George or Harold?”

Charlotte averted her head as she answered, shivering slightly, and not from the cold. “I really didn’t know them that well these last years, once they’d for the most part taken up residence in London.”

“Yes, the mansion in Grosvenor Square. I stopped there for a week before heading here. I thought my wardrobe needed replenishing. Bought this cloak, that hat.” He looked at her questioningly. “Where’s my hat, Charlie?”

She really had to stop feeling sorry for the man. “It’s Charlotte, and I’m in charge of your sisters, Your Grace, not your hat.”

“And now I remember that tone of voice, as well. You left my new hat lying back there in the middle of the drive, didn’t you, to punish me for that remark about spinster caps?”

“In the middle of the drive? I most certainly did not!” she retorted quite honestly.

“No, I left it there, didn’t I? I take full responsibility. You know, Charlie, I wouldn’t tell anyone else, but it’s rather daunting, knowing I am now the custodian of all of this,” he said, indicating Ashurst Hall, the estate, all of his inheritance, with the sweep of his arm.

“I can well imagine, Your Grace,” Charlotte said, sighing as she thought of the twins. “Having an unexpected responsibility suddenly thrust on your shoulders is rather disconcerting.”

“Harris, my majordomo in London, grew rather weary of calling me Your Grace, just for me to not answer him. I know it has been some time, but it’s only now that I’m back in England that I’m beginning to realize the full consequence of what has happened. I was comfortable as Captain Rafael Daughtry. I’m not sure I’m up to this, Charlie.”

Her heart went out to him at his unexpected honesty and humility, and without thinking she placed her hand on his arm. “You’ll be fine, Rafe. And everyone at Ashurst Hall will help you.”

“That’s better. You called me Rafe. Please always do that, Charlie—Charlotte.” He sighed, nodded, and then seemed to remember that he was the Duke of Ashurst and should not be admitting fear or apprehension or anything else remotely human or vulnerable. “I’ve kept you outside in the cold long enough. Let’s go inside.”

Charlotte pictured the look on the twins’ faces when they were confronted not only with their brother—and if he looked huge and imposing to her, what would the twins see when they saw him?—as well as one Charlotte Seavers standing next to him, looking at them with a knowing glare in her eyes.

“Yes, let’s do that. At the least, you should have that head of yours attended to.”

“Funny, my friend Fitz says that a lot about my head, although he makes the suggestion not half so politely. You two will doubtless become fast friends.”

“Pardon me?”

“Never mind. Fitz and my coach will be along soon enough, making explanations unnecessary.”

The front doors opened even as they walked up the wide stone steps.

“Ah, I see my late uncle’s footmen are still as curious as ever. We’ve been observed, Charlotte. A good thing I didn’t attempt to seduce you as we stood here, casting your reputation to the four winds.”

“You wouldn’t do that,” Charlotte said, suddenly sober again.

“No, I wouldn’t. Should I?”

She collected her scattered thoughts. “You know, Rafe, you’re not half so amusing as you seem to think you are.”

“Yes, Fitz tells me that, as well.” He took her arm and, together, they entered the imposing foyer of Ashurst Hall, the cold and damp of the day immediately closed off behind them by the shutting of the door.

“His Grace has returned from Elba,” Charlotte informed the fairly dazzled young footman who, instead of jumping-to to help Rafe with his cloak, just stood there, his mouth at half-mast, goggling up at his new master.

“Billy,” Charlotte prodded quietly. “His Grace’s cloak?”

“A big ’un, isn’t he, ma’am?” the wide-eyed Billy muttered before he was pushed aside by Grayson, the starchy, silver-haired majordomo of Ashurst Hall.

“Allow me,Your Grace,” Grayson said, deftly sliding the cloak from Rafe’s shoulders even as he executed a perfect bow, one caught somewhere between perfunctory and fawning. “And may I be so bold as to welcome you home. I have already sent someone to alert the Ladies Nicole and Lydia. They await you in the main saloon.”

“Thank you, Grayson,” Rafe said solemnly before turning to assist Charlotte with her own cloak. “It’s good to be home. My traveling coach will be here shortly. Please see that my luggage is attended to, and that there will be ample assistance shown my good friend Captain Fitzgerald, who has sustained an injury and will needs must immediately be carried to a bedchamber.”

“It would be my honor, Your Grace,” Grayson said, bowing yet again.

“His honor? Poor fellow is probably near to bursting his spleen, having to bow to me. The man would much rather kick me down the stairs,” Rafe whispered as he and Charlotte made their way across the wide black-and-white marble tiled expanse toward the pair of doors leading to the main saloon. “I once put a toad in his bed, you know.”

“I know. And it was two toads, one under his pillow and one deep beneath the covers, so that he thought he was safe once he’d removed the more obvious one.” He took her arm, and she didn’t even bother to pretend she didn’t feel a small frisson of awareness course through her body. “And one thing more, although I would have thought you’d know. There is something about the configuration of the ceilings of the entrance hall that allows even whispers to carry to every corner.”