Read The Incredible Honeymoon (Bantam Series No. 46) for Free Online Page B

eyes had a sparkle of defiance in them.
    Then before he could reach the door she had opened it herself and was hurrying across the Hall to where her maid was waiting.
    The Butler let them out and the Duke stood staring with an expression which was almost one of stupefaction, until the door closed behind them.
    “Good God!” he muttered to himself.
    He knew that he was more surprised by Antonia’s appearance and what she had said to him than by anything that had happened in his life for a very long time.
    ‘The whole situation is absurd—utterly absurd!’ he thought as he rode towards the Park.
    He avoided the Row where he was certain to meet a number of acquaintances, and galloped in the less fashionable part on the other side of the Serpentine.
    Although after an hour’s exercise he undoubtedly felt better in himself, he still found it impossible to decide his future.
    Everything had seemed comparatively simple when Clarice had persuaded him that Felicity Wyndham was exactly the type of wife he required and beguiled him into writing to the Earl of Lemsford.
    It was true, the Duke thought, that at the back of his mind he had assumed that any woman he honoured would be content to live in the country except on special occasions.
    Although the Marchioness had said it would be easier for them to see each other when they were both in Hertfordshire he had the uncomfortable feeling that there might be prying eyes and just as many gossiping tongues in the country as there were in London.
    Now for the first time the full impact of what he was about to do seemed to strike him like a blow.
    Could he really contemplate spending a lifetime with a woman in whom he had no interest and who, even if she did not interfere with his love affairs, might prove an intolerable burden in other ways?
    “What would we talk about?” the Duke asked himself as he slowed the stallion, now not so frisky, down to a trot.
    If he married Antonia, he told himself, it would undoubtedly be about horses.
    He had not missed the light in her eyes when she spoke of them or the excitement in her voice.
    The Duke was not used to women showing interest in other subjects when he was present.
    If their faces lit up, it was when they looked at him ! If their voices deepened with excitement, it was because he excited them!
    Antonia certainly did not look like the type of woman he had envisaged as bearing his name.
    Yet there was something about her which made it difficult for him to dismiss her as completely unattractive.
    Her clothes were lamentable, but at least she was conscious of their deficiencies and she might, as another woman would put it, ‘pay for dressing’.
    “The whole thing is ridiculous!” the Duke told himself. “How can I possibly marry a girl who comes to my house early in the morning and offers herself to me in place of her sister?”
    Then he thought it was really no more extraordinary than marrying the sister he had never met.
    He realised that neither the Marchioness nor himself had for one moment considered the possibility that the girl they had chosen for such an enviable position might positively dislike the idea and in fact be in love with somebody else.
    “I will call the whole thing off,” the Duke decided. “I will send a note to the Earl—tell him I have made a mistake—that unfortunately circumstances prevent me from calling on him and I have no desire to meet his daughter!”
    He knew even as he spoke the words to himself that to do so would be to insult the Earl gratuitously and unforgivably. Moreover it would involve him in explaining to the Marchioness why he could not do what she had asked of him.
    She had set her heart on becoming a Lady of the Bedchamber and the Duke knew that the Queen would not have been speaking idly when she had implied it was more or less a condition of the appointment that he should find himself a wife.
    “Dammit!” the Duke ejaculated. “Royalty has no right to interfere with one’s private