Read Online Mad About the Duke by Elizabeth Boyle - Free Book Online

mire.
    â€œI think why Lady Standon would marry mewould be obvious.” James rose, taking the stance he preferred, tall and proud, as was expected. “Look around, madame, this is hardly Seven Dials.”
    This room, like all the others in the duke’s town house, nay, mansion, were elegant to the point of intimidating. Gold leaf on the cornices, Italian marble on the floor, Turkish carpets, and rich, brocaded curtains. No drafts, no smoky fireplaces. Just the finest furnishings that money and excellent taste could buy.
    â€œThis is your answer? If having all this was the answer,” Miranda told him, “don’t you think you would have been on her list in the first place?”
    â€œAn oversight, obviously,” he said, though he suspected it wasn’t.
    â€œAnd that is all you want, Your Grace? A grateful wife? A man who hasn’t considered marriage in all these years.”
    A grateful wife. Those words chafed at him. He could almost hear Vanessa’s incoherent cries.
    I must marry Parkerton. I must. My father insists. The duke is our only hope to save us from ruin.
    But she hadn’t been speaking to him. In her fever-induced ravings she’d been confessing all to the phantom lover who’d still held her heart.
    James shook off those echoes from the past and said, “Perhaps Clifton’s blow has given me a new perspective.” He certainly felt different. In fact, the entire world seemed different.
    Since he’d met her…
    But Miranda wasn’t done. “Don’t you think Lady Standon deserves a man who sets her heart afire? Don’t you deserve the same?”
    She leaned forward and poked him in the chest. Actually stabbed her finger into his coat as if he werea chicken on the spit. Rather like Lady Standon’s harridan of a housekeeper.
    â€œI would think,” she said, “a man in your position would want more. So much more.”
    More ? Whatever did that mean? More ?
    He had no idea what she was talking about.
    But in a flash he had a devilish inkling of what she meant.
    He wanted his name on that demmed list. And at the top. And he wanted Elinor to look at him, nay, gaze at him as if he were the only man in the world capable of saving her.
    Meanwhile, Miranda gave up on him, turning on one heel and stomping out of the room in a flurry of furious female vexation.
    For a moment James and Jack just stood there, both of them afraid to move lest the noise stir some other thought in her and bring her flying back in to lecture them further. Well, James, that is.
    But as it was, she tromped up the stairs. When she was well away, James turned to his brother and said, “My apologies, Jack.”
    To James’s shock, Jack stood there, rocking back on his boot heels, grinning like a drunken fool. “Apologies? Whatever for?”
    â€œFor sending your wife off in such high dudgeons.”
    Jack laughed. “That? That is just a prelude.”
    James glanced back out the door and toward the stairs. “You mean she’ll be even more furious?”
    â€œOh, she’ll be in a rare mood for some time.” Jack walked over and punched James in the shoulder like James had seen other men do with friends, but something Jack had never done to him before.
    Their stations in life, James’s title and Jack’s former wild ways had always put such a distance between them, but in the last day suddenly something had changed.
    James had changed.
    â€œIt is I who should be thanking you, Parkerton,” Jack told him, strolling toward the door.
    â€œWhatever for? I just riled your wife into a rare state.”
    â€œI know.” There it was, that rakish grin of Jack’s. The one that was always the harbinger of trouble. “And I think I’m going upstairs to take advantage of her rare state.” Then he winked and bounded quite happily up the stairs, taking them two at a time.
    Then it hit James what Jack was actually