Read A Duke Deceived for Free Online

he would procure rooms for each of them.
    The last night of their journey, they stopped at the Blue Cock Inn, where Radcliff informed the cousins there were not enough available rooms. Emily and Bonny would have to share.
    While their things were being taken to the room, the duke escorted the ladies into the private dining parlor, where he had ordered ale and kidney pie. Though it had turned beastly cold outside, a fire nicely warmed the darkened room. The duke sat on one side of the table, which was but a short distance from the hearth; Emily and Bonny sat on the other side. Bonny welcomed the musty scent of a rich peat fire, the first she had smelled since she left Milford.
    “I feel such a burden, your grace,” Bonny said. “You’ve had nothing to do but ride and ride for eleven long days. How deadly dull it must be for you.”
    “It hasn’t been dull. I’ve never been north before, and I’m enjoying new scenery. There’s a gentle beauty about this country with these long stretches of lonely moors.”
    Gentle beauty. That was exactly how she felt about the moors. Most Londoners cursed them, but Bonny had always loved to wander by herself along the moors. Nothing gave her so great a feeling of inner peace as walking through the mist here in Northumbria, where the land gently sloped into shrouded skies. “I find it so myself, your grace,” Bonny said with a funny little catch in her voice. For once, she did not avert her eyes from his but looked at him full force, drawn by his penetrating gaze, which made her feel he knew her every thought.
    She wondered how long they would have looked into each other’s eyes had not the innkeeper’s wife chosen that moment to deliver their ale. The kindly woman, not used to having so grand a personage as a duke, could not do enough for them.
    During these evening meals, Emily and Bonny had learned more about the duke. That his seat was in Kent, that he appreciated beautiful things from horses to snuffboxes, that he preferred the country to the city.
    And Radcliff had learned more about them.
    “I must confess I enjoy going where I’ve never been before,” the duke said, glancing at Emily this night. “Is that what took you to Spain, Lady Emily?”
    “That and the fact I’d be with my aunt Camille. I was much closer to her than I am to my own mother. Maybe because she never had children of her own. She spoiled me greatly.”
    “Her husband served with the Peer?”
    Emily nodded agreeably. “Yes. Uncle Trevor’s a colonel.”
    “I suppose not having children made it much easier for your aunt to follow the drum,” Radcliff said. “Did you enjoy it, Lady Emily?”
    Emily’s eyes sparkled. “It was the greatest experience of my life.” She lowered her lashes as well as her voice. “It was also the most sorrowful.”
    Bonny met the duke’s awkward gaze. “Emily’s aunt Camille took a fever and died not two months ago. In a French farmhouse. I regret to say my aunt Lucille, Emily’s mother, wanted to put off the mourning until Emily was presented. You see, few people know yet of her sister’s death.”
    He nodded. “And if Emily was not presented this season, you, too, would have had to wait another whole year.”
    “Exactly,” Bonny said, her lips firm. “For they were to present us together, and because of my mother’s situation, waiting another year would not have been acceptable. So you see, I am a burden to everyone.”
    “No you’re not!” Emily protested.
    “Your cousin’s quite right, Miss Allan. It is obvious you two are quite fond of each other, and I would guess that Lady Emily most certainly prefers being with you than with anyone else.”
    Emily nodded at this.
    Then the duke turned his eyes on Bonny. “And as for myself, I find it an honor to be able to spend so many days in your agreeable company. I daresay, there are a score of men who would happily join me in paying court to your beauty.” The duke stabbed his fork into his pie to avoid