Read Online The Duke's Holiday by Maggie Fenton - Free Book Online Page A

and try to find Stevenage.”
    Coombes’ eyes widened to saucers. “Your Grace !” he whined.
    Montford cocked an eyebrow. Coombes lowered his head in
despair. “Yes, Your Grace.”
    With a growl, Montford strode outside the bedroom and down
a corridor. Only when he reached a wall with no exit did he realize he hadn’t a
damned clue where he was going. He turned around and began in the opposite way.
Eventually he came to a stairwell that looked somewhat familiar and descended
to the bottom floor.
    After several wrong turns and a dozen muttered oaths, he
finally reached an open door with light beyond it. He looked around the edge of
the door and found himself staring into the cluttered parlor he had entered
earlier in the day. A fire was lit in the grate, and the old-fashioned wall
sconces blazed with light, casting flickering shadows around the room.
    Two women sat by the fire. One was the old woman with the
enormous French pompadour. The other was initially unfamiliar, dressed in a
shabby-looking gown that must have once been green. It was modestly cut but
looked ill-fitting and a shade too small on the woman’s rounded, voluptuous
body. He hadn’t the foggiest clue why such an ugly garment should make him sizzle
with heat and could only assume that it was due to starvation. He’d not eaten
since breakfast, and all of that meal was strewn about the roadside running
south.
    But then the woman rose to her feet, and the fire caught in
her blood-red hair, which was haphazardly wound and pinned in a crooked bun at
the nape of her neck. Recognition flooded through him. The pig-woman from the
garden. Of course. She seemed to be in charge around this godforsaken place.
    She graced him with a perfectly executed curtsy, which
niggled him, because he somehow knew she was mocking him. “Your Grace. How
lovely for you to join us.”
    The old woman didn’t bother to rise but peered at him
through a quizzing glass. “Is this a
Duke, then, Astrid?” the woman inquired in a stage whisper.
    “Yes, aunt,” the woman answered, never looking away from
him, her lips curving into an enigmatic smile, her mismatched eyes dancing with
deviltry, daring him to set down an old lady.
    The old woman bobbed up and down in her seat with delight.
“Oh, what fun!” she exclaimed. She gestured towards the Duke. “Well, come here,
young man, and let’s have a look at you.”
    Montford found his legs moving forward of their own accord.
The old woman leaned forward in her seat and gave him a once over with her
monocle. Her gaze paused right in the vicinity of his nether regions. Then she
dropped her quizzing glance and turned to the other woman. “He looks like a man to me, gel.”
    “My good woman…” he began, clenching his fists.
    “Your Grace, please have a seat. You must be exhausted
after your … ordeal,” the younger woman cut in, indicating a rather threadbare
settee near the fire.
    Montford was suddenly too tired to protest, and he crossed
the room and sat down stiffly.
    The redhead settled in the seat across from him. “I am Miss
Honeywell. And this is my aunt, Miss Honeywell,” she said, inclining her head
towards the old woman. “We are honored, of course, that you have deigned to
grace us with your illustrious presence. Tea? Biscuit?” She gestured towards
the table in front of them.
    Oh, God, she was mocking him all over the bloody place. The
little … “Miss Honeywell …” he began.
      “However,” she
interjected, ignoring him completely and reaching for the teapot, “I am sure it
was completely unnecessary for His
Grace to come all this way over a misunderstanding that could have been easily
rectified by post.”
    He watched in horror as she commenced to pour the tea
without the slightest delicacy over the table, managing to get more onto the
surrounding saucers and tray than the actual cups.
    Clearly she’d not gone to a finishing school where ladies
were taught the proper way to handle a teapot.
    “Do you