Love Letters From a Duke

To the families who live with autism.
May your days be blessed with the kindness of strangers,
the love of friends and families, and most of all, a cure.

And to FEAT of Washington and Autism Speaks,
my unwavering gratitude to you for your dedication
and spirit of hope.
You help us believe.

And last, but far from least,
to Jamilla Kounellas and Rhoda Toulouse
for lending their names to this story
and their generosity to the charities
near and dear to my heart.

A portion of the sale of this book will go to support
Autism Speaks and FEAT of Washington.

To learn more about autism, please visit
www.autismspeaks.org
www.featwa.org

The Duke of Hollindrake’s secretary laughed out loud.

This was notable for two reasons: No one ever laughed in front of the imposing and impossibly ill-tempered duke, and, who would have ever thought that his straight-backed, pinched-nosed, impeccably mannered secretary, Mr. Gibbens, even knew how?

And then he laughed again. Guffawed, really. Out loud and much to his employer’s chagrin.

“Whatever has come over you, Gibbens? Have you gone mad?” the duke barked across the wide desk separating them. “Control yourself this instant!”

Gibbens struggled to do just that, but it was of no use. His gaze slipped once again to the last line of the letter he’d been reading and he broke out in a loud gale of laughter and continued until tears ran down his cheeks. It wasn’t until he set aside the well-traveled post to retrieve a handkerchief from his waistcoat pocket and had a chance to wipe his eyes that he recovered enough to answer. “My deepest apologies, Your Grace. It is just that—” And then he started to stammer again, his eyes crinkling in the corners and his lips twitching rebelliously. He shook his head and pointed like a guilty child at the letter.

“Harrumph! Whatever nonsense is this?” the duke asked as he reached for it.

“A letter, Your Grace,” Gibbens managed. “To your grandson.”

“Standon? Whyever would someone be writing him, least of all have the nerve to send it here?” He eyed the missive in his hand as if it carried plague. “Owes more money, does he? Well, I’m not paying his debts. I’m not, I say.”

Standon and his grandfather had never seen eye-to-eye, having argued years earlier, resulting in the younger Sterling leaving England and his family, without ever looking back.

Of course that had been well and good with the duke, for his miscreant grandson had been the third son of a third son, so far removed from inheriting that his foibles and follies had been nothing more than a continuing annoyance rather than any grave concern. That is, until fate intervened—and now the young buck who’d driven his family mad with his exploits and then disappeared was the heir.

So even as the old duke made his strident declaration, to anyone who knew him, there was an odd wistful note behind his words. Regret, even.

“It isn’t about debts, Your Grace,” Gibbens explained. “Rather, the letter is from a young lady—”

“Got himself into that sort of trouble, eh? Not going to have some wench thinking she can wrangle a fortune—”

“No, Your Grace, it isn’t that sort of, um, well, difficulty,” Gibbens managed, for he was a lifelong bachelor and carried an unholy fear of the female sex. “Rather it is from a
lady
. A proper one.”

“A proper one, you say?” Hollindrake brought the letter up for a closer examination. “And from Bath it appears,” he said, looking at the directions. “What the devil is this Miss Emery’s?”

“A school, Your Grace. I believe it teaches deportment and other such qualities.”

“Churning out qualified flirts and silly chits, most likely,” the old man said with a snort. Yet there was a glint of curiosity in his old rheumy dark eyes. He looked up and pinned a
glance on his secretary. “And what the devil did you find so amusing?”

Gibbens choked and stammered. “Miss Langley writes to ask, that is, she is under the impression that, well, apparently—”

“Out with it, man,” Hollindrake barked.

The poor man took a deep breath, screwed up every bit of courage he possessed and managed to get it all out in one sentence. “This Miss Langley is proposing that Lord Standon consider her hand in marriage.” Gibbens then closed his eyes and braced himself for the pending explosion.

None came. And after an indecent amount of silence, he peeked out through his lashes and discovered the old duke engrossed in reading the letter for himself.

Then the second noteworthy event occurred that day.

The duke laughed.

“Some cheek!” he said, once he gathered his wits about him. “She has the audacity to inquire about the state of my health. Probably be demmed disappointed to find me fit and hardy, I wager.” He set the letter down on his desk and laughed again.

“Yes, Your Grace,” his secretary agreed. “Quite presumptuous.”

“Exactly!” the duke declared. “Which is why we are going to answer it.”

“Answer it, Your Grace?” A sense of foreboding ran down the secretary’s spine.

“Of course! Why, I suspect any chit with this much brass would make a most excellent duchess. And further, I’d wager she’d bring that rapscallion grandson of mine to heel.”

Gibbens’ lips flapped like a fish out of water. “You mean to accept her proposal? But, Your Grace, you can hardly accept a proposal for your grandson on a matter such as this, why it’s—”

“I can and I will!” the old man said, sitting up straight and looking younger than he had in years. “So we will answer this Miss Langley—and court her in his name. One day Standon will thank me.”

And eventually he did.

But not at first.

“Oh, heavens, Tally, this is terrible news,” Miss Felicity Langley announced to her sister Thalia, who was seated across the sitting room.

“What is it?” her twin replied, looking up from her sketch pad.

Felicity set down the copy of the
Times
she’d been reading and sighed. “Lord Garner died.”

“No!” Tally got up from her chair by the window, and as she rose, her little black dog, Brutus, rose as well, stretching out his legs and yawning before he followed his beloved mistress as she crossed the room to see the account for herself. “A riding accident! How dreadful.”

“Terrible luck,” Felicity muttered as she dipped her quill into the ink pot and proceeded to strike Lord Garner’s name from the open journal before her.

“Heavens, that’s the fifth bachelor this winter to expire,” Tally said as she watched her sister draw a series of lines through her careful reckoning of the now deceased baron’s life and holdings.

“Actually the sixth.”

After giving her head a few woeful shakes, Tally asked, “This Lord Garner, he was rather old, wasn’t he?”

“Nearly forty.”

Her nose wrinkled. “Positively ancient. You should have crossed him out years ago.” The twins had just turned one and twenty not a fortnight earlier, and Tally especially considered any man not in his twenties to be nothing short of a Methuselah.

“Ancient or not, one cannot overlook twelve thousand a year.”

Her twin shrugged, then glanced back at the paper. “An heir worth noting?”

“A lad of seven.”

A
tsk, tsk
was her sister’s only reply, for she knew this meant that the new Lord Garner would have to wait another ten years before he could even be considered eligible for inclusion in Felicity’s infamous
Bachelor Chronicles
.

Not that any man in his right mind would want to find
himself inside the pages of such a journal. The
Bachelor Chronicles
, as they’d been dubbed by her classmates at Miss Emery’s school, was far from being the giggling, foolish musings of a title-mad young lady, but rather a meticulously researched encyclopedia of every eligible bachelor in the
ton
.

A volume of
Debrett’s
could give you lineage and a family motto. The
Bachelor Chronicles
could tell you if the man had a penchant for drink and late night rambles through the wilds of Seven Dials. Mr. Billingsworth’s guidebooks and histories would give you an effusive and flowery travelogue of the man’s holdings and properties, but Felicity’s encyclopedia of dilettantes and Corinthians revealed the true condition of the roof and whether or not the walls were buttressed by mortgages or mortar.

Dukes to barons, knighted gentlemen and even a few men of means were given her discerning perusal. Even second sons and distant heirs found their way into the
Chronicles
, because, as Felicity was wont to say, “One day a spare, the next an heir.”

To accomplish all this, she spent the first few hours of each day scouring the
Times
, the
Globe
, and of course the
Morning Post
, as well as the latest volumes of the
Gentleman’s Magazine
, the
Ladies Magazine
, and
The Ladies Fashionable Cabinet,
looking for information that would necessitate addendums or corrections to her
Chronicles
.

What she couldn’t glean from the regular publications, she gathered by contacting Miss Emery’s former students. A voluminous correspondence with these ladies, most of them having married into the loftiest families in society, gave her insights into her quarry that unfortunately never found their way into print.

“Tally, I am rethinking Pippin’s future again,” she said after she’d carefully blotted the wet X running across Lord Garner’s entry.

“Oh, Duchess, not again,” Tally protested, using her favorite nickname for her sister.

Felicity waved off her sister’s objection. “I’m more inclined to see our cousin with Lord Elmsley than the Earl of Darlton. I’ve just been informed by the viscount’s mother’s second cousin’s wife that Elmsley carries a bit of the romantic tragic about him, which would fit quite nicely with Pippin’s current state—”

Tally groaned. Loudly. “Don’t do this,” she told her sister. “Leave Pippin be.”

“Whyever for?”

“Because our poor cousin hasn’t been the same since…well, you know.”

Felicity heaved a sigh. “Her father’s death was untimely to say the least, and the shocking state of his finances even worse, but I daresay it is high time that she—”

“Stop!” Her sister threw her hands up. “Sometimes I wonder if you even have a heart. I’m not talking about her father. I’m talking about
him
.” Tally lowered her voice to a whisper. “Captain Dashwell.”

“That pirate?” Felicity exclaimed. “I won’t hear that name mentioned again. Not in this house. Oh, how I wish the devil would take him to the bottom of the sea! Pippin was such a sensible creature before that wastrel kissed her.”

Four years earlier, during Felicity’s first matchmaking endeavor, she, Tally, and Pippin had become entangled in more than assisting their teacher, Miss Porter, find her heart’s desire with the rakish Jack Tremont—rather, they’d discovered themselves in the middle of an elaborate network of spies and espionage, and had stood in for Jack when their misadventures accidentally landed him in prison.

And that one night had changed their lives forever—ending with Pippin being kissed by a young American sea captain, Thomas Dashwell, as they exchanged gold for passengers from France. It had happened in the flash of an eye,
but to hear their cousin recall the night, it was as if she and Dash had spent an eternity in each other’s arms.

Nonsense
,
really
, Felicity had told them both on numerous occasions. Captain Dashwell was a murderous, ruinous, dreadful pirate. Best forgotten, or better yet, hung from the nearest yardarm. For not long afterward the brash American had gone from being their ally to their enemy, as their two countries plunged into war. And, since then, his daring and audacious pirating had cost England dearly.

Tally’s blue eyes sparkled. “You’re just jealous he didn’t kiss you.”

“I am not!” Felicity told her. “I’d have shot the scallywag before he’d come close enough to dare.”

“Oh, come now, you don’t want to end your days never having been kissed, do you?” Tally gathered her dog Brutus into her arms, fluffing the mane of fur that ringed his monkeylike face.

Felicity’s hand came to rest atop her volume of
Debrett’s
, its thick weight just the right foundation from which to launch her argument. “Tally, kissing is out of the question. If I thought for a moment either of you two were going to run about kissing every pirate and rapscallion you cross paths with, I would never have gone to such lengths to get us to Town for the Season. Can’t you see that this house, Aunt Minty, our very reputations, are at stake? If any of us are impugned, if anyone were to discover the lengths we’ve gone to…well…”

“You’ve
gone to,” Tally corrected. “I’m not the one getting transported for any of this. Besides, I’m with Pippin on this, Duchess. I’d prefer to find my own husband, not one of your approved dullards. I want a man like Captain Dashwell, who will kiss me senseless and leave me willing to dare anything.”

Well
,
of all the ungrateful…
Felicity drew an even breath. “Please do not wax poetic about kissing pirates in my presence!
Why, it isn’t done. Not by us. You both must marry well—for how can I have a cousin, least of all a sister, who isn’t as well-connected as I am when I am Hollindrake’s bride?”

Tally set Brutus down. “When? Don’t you mean
if
?”

Felicity shot her sister a hot glance. “I will marry the duke and no one else.”

“But dearling—” Tally was cut off by the bell at the front door, the insistent and unexpected clamor causing them both to start. “Heavens, who could that be?” Then she froze, her face growing pale as she glanced around the salon that served as their day room. “You don’t think…that someone has discovered—”

“Certainly not!” Felicity said, though not completely convinced. “But I suppose we must see who it is.”

“I’m not going to jail, Duchess,” her sister repeated, as she had every day since they’d come to Town.

“Yes, Tally, I know,” Felicity replied. She gathered up her shawl from the back of the chair and tossed it over her shoulders before she left the warmth of the upstairs sitting room—the only warm room in the house, Tally liked to grumble—to do what one usually left to a servant.

Only they hadn’t any.

Tally followed hot on her heels, and where Tally went, so did Brutus, who never let his mistress get too far out of his sight. He barked and growled, setting up a loud ruckus that echoed through the mostly empty Mayfair mansion they’d taken for the Season. Though of noble breeding—his grandsire, Tally liked to tell anyone who would listen, had belonged to Marie Antoinette—Brutus possessed the manners of a spit dog.

Felicity glanced over her shoulder at the parade behind her and shook her head. “Keep him from chewing on whoever it is, will you, Tally? I am still trying to determine how we will pay for the damage to Mr. Elliott’s boots.”

Her sister groaned. “Some solicitor. Served that old pinch
purse right.” She cleared her throat and when she spoke again it was with the man’s stoic pitch. “‘A Season? Why, a dreadful waste of money. Economize, dear girls. Now that’s the best course of action given your situation—’” she sputtered and growled, not unlike the noise Brutus was making. “That cheap, wretched bast—”

“Thalia!” Felicity heaved a beleaguered sigh. Not that she didn’t share her sister’s sentiments about their solicitor, but she preferred to take a more ladylike stance on the matter. “Remember what Nanny Bridget always said. ‘The rare man is the one who looks toward a lady’s future.’”

“Yes, well Nanny Bridget wasn’t living in an empty mansion scratching by on her pin money, now was she?” she muttered back, but still she scooped Brutus up as they turned at the landing and soothed the little beast with some softly spoken assurances.

Another pair of boots would cut dearly into their already meager budget.

As the bell jangled with yet another insistent and discordant peal, Tally heaved a sigh. “Heavens! How terribly rude they are. Why don’t we have Mrs. Hutchinson get that?”

“Mrs. Hutchinson…is…indisposed,” Felicity supplied.

There was a indelicate snort from behind her. “Mrs. Hutchinson isn’t indisposed, she’s tangle-footed.”

“Could you be a bit more discreet?” Felicity said over her shoulder as she rounded the second landing. “What if someone heard you? How would it look if word got out that our household has some…some…irregularities?”

“We live in an empty house, my dearest Duchess,” Tally replied. “It won’t be long before
someone
notices. And that housekeeper you hired does us no favors. The woman is a tosspot, a drunkard, top-heavy, a high goer—”

“Yes, yes, so she’s got a slight penchant for brandy, but her wages are what we can afford.”

“Nice of her to work for brandy, I suppose,” Tally said. “And thank God we were able to liberate so many bottles from Uncle’s cellars before we left Sussex or we’d be up to our necks in debt with the spirit merchant’s bill.”

Felicity did her best to ignore Tally’s lamentations. “Don’t be so dramatic. Mrs. Hutchinson is merely unavailable to answer the door. And that is all it is.”

“Yes, if only that was all,” Tally said, sharing a skeptical glance with Brutus.

The bell jangled again, and whoever was on the other side, had an annoyingly persistent way of yanking it into such a discordant clamor, it was getting on Felicity’s nerves. “When I am the Duchess of Hollindrake…” she muttered as visions of an endless supply of coal, servants, and respectable housekeepers danced before her eyes.

“Yes, wouldn’t that be lovely,” Tally agreed quickly. “We’ll be living around the corner on Grosvenor Square, warm and snug without the least bit of economies.” She paused for a moment and let a wicked little grin tip her lips. “And most likely employ a housekeeper who doesn’t drink. What do you think? Do you think the duke’s housekeeper drinks, because—” She stopped mid-sentence, her mouth falling open in a wide moue. “You don’t think that perhaps
he
drinks and that’s why you haven’t heard from him in so long? With his grandfather’s death, maybe he’s fallen into a dark and dangerous decline. Oh, dear, Felicity, what if he’s turned into a rumpot and intends never to marry?”

“Piffle!” Felicity declared. “Aubrey Michael Thomas Sterling, the tenth Duke of Hollindrake, would never turn into a rumpot. He hasn’t such a nature.” With her nose in the air, she did her best to set aside the niggle of doubt her sister had managed to plant inside the armor she wore when it came to all matters pertaining to the duke.

“How do you know?” Tally argued. “You’ve never met the man.”

Felicity wheeled around. “Not know him? What a ridiculous thing to say. I’ve been corresponding with him for four years. I believe that counts as ‘knowing’ him.”

Tally reached over, took her sister’s hand and squeezed it. “Dear Duchess, he hasn’t written in months. Not since his grandfather died. Even you must admit that something has…” To her credit, she didn’t say
gone wrong.
“…changed,” she finally finished.