His Duchess’ Deal (Duchess Deals #4)

Prologue

TWO YEARS AGO

The letter had been sitting on his desk for six hours.

Cassian had read it three times in the carriage from Dover, twice on the road, and once again in the front hall before he had walked into his study and laid it on the blotter.

Your father, Albert Arnolds, the Duke of Langton, departed this life on the night of the fifteenth of Apoplexy.

The seal was unbroken when he found it. He did not know who had broken it.

His father was dead. He had been processing the news for two days now and had still not arrived at any feeling about it.

A pebble struck the window.

He looked up. The wind, a moth, a branch. Then a second pebble hit the glass with a small bright tap then a third, and he heard the faint laughter of a woman.

He went to the window.

His study faced the back garden. Beyond the yew hedge ran the lane to the stables and standing in the lane was a young woman in a dark cloak with a fistful of gravel. She was not alone. There was a smaller figure at her elbow, hooded, being tugged toward the gate. The smaller figure was his sister.

He opened the window. “Joanna.”

The young woman in the lane jumped a foot in the air and dropped the gravel. She looked up, saw him, and put her hand on his sister’s arm in a way that clearly meant do not run, which was the worst thing she could possibly do because it meant she thought she could handle this.

His sister looked up and went absolutely white. “Cassian. You are home.”

“I am home.”

“We were just…”

“Just what, Joanna?”

“Going for a walk.”

“At eleven o’clock at night?”

“There is moonlight,” said the young woman in the lane helpfully.

He shut the window. He went down the back stairs without his coat, around the yew hedge, through the gate, and was standing in the lane in less than a minute.

The young woman was still there. She had pushed her hood back. Untidy dark hair. A round face. Green eyes that did not lower when he looked at her, which was the first thing he noticed because ladies usually lowered their eyes when he looked at them.

“Your Grace,” she greeted and dipped into a curtsy of such offensive perfection that he wanted to shake her, “welcome home.”

“Who are you?”

“Lady Alice Lockwood. A great friend of your sister’s.”

“My sister has no friends who throw pebbles at my window at midnight.”

“She has one. Surprise.”

“Where were you taking her?”

“Nowhere of consequence.”

“Lady Alice.”

“Your Grace.”

He took a step toward her. She did not step back.

“My father,” he said quietly, “has been dead less than a fortnight. My sister is barely one-and-twenty. If you have managed in two weeks to drag her out of this house at night in a cloak into a public lane, then you have done my family damage I will not forgive. Where were you taking her?”

For a moment, just a moment, he thought he saw something move behind her green eyes. Then her chin lifted.

“I was taking her to see the moon over the river. She has been weeping for two weeks straight, Your Grace, and I thought she might breathe better in the open air. That is all.”

“You expect me to believe that?”

“I do not particularly care what you believe.”

The little hellion.

“Joanna, go inside. Now.”

His sister fled past him without a word.

Lady Alice stayed.

He should have walked away. He did not. He stood in the lane in his shirtsleeves and looked at her, and she looked back. She came up to about his collarbone. She had a freckle just below the curve of her right cheekbone, and her hair smelled faintly of lemon.

“You will not come here again,” he ordered.

“That is not your decision to make.”

“It is entirely my decision to make. This is my house. Joanna is my sister.”

“And she is also a person, Your Grace.”

“I am aware.”

“Are you?”

He stepped closer. He did not know why. He was close enough now to count her lashes. She did not move.

“You will not come here again,” he repeated, quieter.

“I will come where I am invited.”

“You will not be invited.”

“By you, perhaps.”

He breathed out slowly and stepped back. “Get off my land, Lady Alice.”

“With pleasure, Your Grace.” She curtsied again, just as offensively as before, then turned away and walked up the lane without looking back.

He watched her go until she rounded the bend.

He bolted the gate behind him. Then he climbed to his sister’s room where he found her sitting on the edge of her bed in her cloak, red-eyed and defiant.

“Lady Alice Lockwood,” he said, very calmly, “is not to enter this house again. She is not to be received. She is not to be written to. She is not to be acknowledged.”

She cried. He did not soften.

He returned to his study and sat at his father’s desk. He poured the brandy he had not touched before, drank it in two long gulps, and then set the glass down. He stared at the dark beyond the window, where a green-eyed woman had been standing not twenty minutes ago, and made himself a vow.

That woman would not come near his sister again. That woman would not come near him.

That woman was nothing but trouble.