A Duchess for his Family (Dukes of Devotion #3)

Chapter 1

Chapter One

“Frances, if you pull that ribbon one inch tighter, your daughter will be unable to breathe before the first quadrille.”

“She is not being strangled, Mama. She is being made presentable.”

“She is three years old,” Emma said, with the mild desperation of one who had spent the morning rescuing peace from the edge of ruin. “I do not think Lady Briarwood will inspect her waistline.”

“She inspected mine last year,” Frances returned, “and she has never forgiven me for looking better in lavender.”

Sophia Norton stood in the passage outside the morning room with a book pressed to her chest and a bonnet dangling from one hand, wondering whether the house had always been this loud, or whether her married sisters brought thunder with them in their trunks.

Keswick Estate, usually so orderly in its country dignity, had surrendered to confusion.

The hall smelled of beeswax, sugared biscuits, and the perfume her mother insisted on placing in every room.

A maid fled past with a small shoe in one hand and a ribbon in the other.

Above stairs, a child shrieked in that peculiar delight children took in being chased by people who could not afford to lose their tempers.

Her father, Henry Norton, the Viscount of Keswick, retreated to his study an hour earlier under the noble pretense of correspondence. Sophia considered him the wisest man in England.

In the drawing room, Andrew Hill, the Duke of Sinclair, was attempting to distract a fretful baby with his watch-chain, while Philip Ashwell, the Duke of Thorne, stood near the hearth with the long-suffering expression of a man accustomed to being outnumbered by females of spirit.

His wife and Sophia’s sister, Emma, moved between mother and sisters like a dove determined to prevent a war between falcons.

Her other sister Frances, who was the Duchess of Sinclair, looked pretty and animated while she argued with their mother over whether a married duchess might be trusted to choose her own gloves.

Sophia loved them all. She also felt that another quarter hour among them would reduce her nerves to threads.

The ball that evening was not even to be held at Keswick but at Sir Jonathan Briarwood’s neighboring estate, which made the level of domestic disturbance seem particularly unfair.

Yet her mother treated the occasion as though all of London were to be accommodated beneath their roof and as though every future alliance of the family depended on the polish of a shoe-buckle.

“Sophia!” her mother called suddenly. “Where is Sophia?”

Sophia started as though guilty, though she had done nothing worse than seek air.

Emma saw her first and smiled in instant apology. “There you are. Mama only wished to ask whether you had seen the pearl pins.”

“I believe they are on your dressing table,” Sophia replied softly.

“No, those are the smaller pearls,” their mother replied from within. “I require the better pearls. One cannot attend Lady Briarwood’s ball looking as though one has been dressed by sentiment.”

Frances gave a laugh. “Sentiment would at least be cheaper.”

“Frances.”

A child darted through the open doorway, pursued by another, slightly smaller and more determined. Sophia stepped aside just in time to save her skirts from disaster. The first child carried what looked like a hairbrush, while the second cried, “Mine!”

Sophia looked down at the novel in her arms. It was a volume she had begun twice that week and had not yet managed to read past the third chapter. She chose it for its promise of quiet emotions, orderly sentences, and people who usually remained upon the page where they belonged.

The garden called to her with an almost human tenderness. While her mother resumed her campaign for the superior pearls, Sophia slipped down the side passage, crossed the little vestibule, and let herself out through the glass doors.

The relief was immediate. Cool afternoon air touched her cheeks, carrying the scents of cut grass, lavender, and roses just beginning to bloom.

Behind her, the house continued its commotion, but the closed doors softened every voice into a distant murmur.

Before her lay the gardens of Keswick, bright and green beneath a sky veiled in pale summer clouds.

Sophia drew a long breath. It was not that she disliked society.

At least, she did not think she disliked it in principle.

She liked conversation when it was kind, music when it was not too loud, dancing when no one looked too much at her, and company when it did not require her to become brighter, cleverer, or more pleasing than she knew how to be.

But large family gatherings had a way of reminding her that everyone else seemed to occupy their place in the world with perfect certainty.

Emma was a wife, mother, duchess, peacemaker.

Frances was a wife, mother, duchess, whirlwind.

Even their children seemed to know exactly how to demand attention and receive it.

Sophia, at two-and-twenty, remained… Sophia, the youngest, the quiet one, the one who fetched misplaced pearls and remembered where books had been put down.

She walked quickly beyond the formal beds, past the yew walk and the little fountain whose water fell with a silvery, soothing chatter.

At the far edge of the property stood an old oak tree, broad-armed and magnificent, its trunk ridged like ancient leather and its leaves whispering together in the mild breeze.

Sophia had been going there since girlhood.

It stood just beyond the more cultivated garden, half in the world of propriety and half in the freer country beyond.

Beneath it, one could sit unseen and read, while still being near enough to return before one was missed.

She settled upon the grass where the roots rose in gentle curves beneath the earth, opened her book, and looked at the same first sentence for several seconds without reading it. The quiet was too lovely to spend at once. She closed her eyes instead.

For one blessed moment, there was no argument over gloves, no shrieking child, no reminder that by evening she had to dress herself and enter a ballroom where her sisters would shine, and she would do her best not to disappear entirely.

Then laughter rang out. Sophia opened her eyes. It was not the laughter of the children from the house. This was nearer, lighter, and sharpened by secrecy.

A second voice followed it, lower and anxious. “You must come down. You said you would only go to that branch.”

“I said I would only go to that branch if the higher one was dull.”

“That is not the same thing.”

“It is very nearly the same thing.”

Sophia rose, with curiosity overcoming caution. She picked up her book and followed the sound around the far side of the oak.

There, in the mottled shade, stood a little girl of perhaps eight, gazing upward with her hands clasped tightly before her.

She wore a pale muslin dress that somehow stayed tidy despite the grass, and her bonnet hung properly down her back.

Her face was heart-shaped, fair, and solemn, with wide eyes that seemed to notice far more than they revealed.

Above her, on a branch much too high for comfort, sat another little girl with the same face entirely altered by mischief.

Sophia blinked. They were identical, with the same dark lashes, the same small nose and the same soft hair escaping in curls about the temples. Yet no one could have mistaken them. The child on the ground was still as a prayer. The child in the tree looked like a declaration of war.

“Oh,” Sophia gasped before she could stop herself.

The girl on the ground turned sharply. “I beg your pardon. We did not know anyone was here.”

The girl in the tree looked down and grinned. “I did.”

“You did not,” the one on the ground replied.

“I suspected.”

“You cannot suspect a person into existence, Marjorie.”

“I can if I am right.”

Sophia took one step forward, alarm stirring beneath her amazement. “You are rather high.”

“I know,” said the climber, with satisfaction.

“That was not praise.”

The branch beneath Marjorie’s shoe cracked sharply.

Everything happened at once. The girl’s grin vanished.

Her foot slipped. The branch snapped free and dropped through the leaves, striking lower boughs before landing with a terrible thud in the grass.

The child clutched the trunk with both arms, her body pressed against the bark, one foot searching blindly for leverage and finding none.

The girl below cried. “Marjorie!”

Sophia dropped her book. She did not remember deciding to move.

One moment she stood with her heart frozen in her chest, and the next she was at the tree, lifting her skirts with one hand and catching the lowest branch with the other.

Bark scraped her palm. Her slipper found the ridge of the trunk.

She had not climbed that oak since she was fifteen, when her mother declared such conduct unbecoming, but her body remembered what propriety tried to forbid.

“Don’t move,” she called upward.

“I wasn’t intending to,” Marjorie replied very quickly.

The answer might almost have made Sophia laugh if terror had not tightened her breath. She climbed higher, awkwardly at first, then with more certainty. Beneath her, the quieter twin made a small distressed sound.

“Please be careful,” the child whispered.

Sophia did not look down. She reached the fork below Marjorie and braced one knee against the trunk. Marjorie’s face was pale now beneath its freckles, though her chin retained a brave, foolish lift.

“I cannot find the branch,” the child said.

“I know.” Sophia swallowed. “Give me your hand.”

Marjorie hesitated only long enough to prove she possessed courage, then obeyed. Her fingers were small, hot, and trembling.

“Now put your foot where mine is, but do it very slowly.”

“I am excellent at climbing,” Marjorie informed her, though her voice wobbled.

“I have no doubt. At present, we shall discover whether you are equally excellent at descending.”