Read Online Under A Duke's Hand by Annabel Joseph - Free Book Online Page A

flesh and gouge it from the
bone. I don’t see any cave fires about.”
    She wanted to stab him. She wanted to poke
her fork right into his eye. Instead she cut another piece of duck
with exaggerated gentility, then left it to congeal on her
plate.
    “Much more prettily done,” he said. “No,
don’t frown at me that way. You must understand that life in London
will not be like life in Wales. You’ll only earn the regard of the ton with the finest social graces and impeccable manners.”
He looked her up and down, with that cool, dissecting gaze. “I
suppose you’ll do well enough once we get you a proper wardrobe and
some finishing lessons.”
    “I don’t need finishing lessons,” she said.
“I’m already finished. I’m twenty-two years old.”
    “Even so, you’ll be obliged to improve
yourself if I wish. Now that you’re a duchess, you’ll have to move
within the highest echelons of society.”
    “Oh, must I?” Irritation gave her an unruly
tongue. “Perhaps it would be more appropriate to keep me in the
barn with the pigs and chickens.”
    His gaze didn’t waver. “Why would I do
that?”
    “Why indeed? You behave as if I’m no more
cultured than an animal, wallowing in the mud and eating from a
trough.”
    “I mentioned a cave, not a trough.”
    The abominable man mocked her. “A barn. A
trough. A cave,” she snapped. “You might stow me anywhere out of
the way, so long as I don’t offend your aristocratic sensibilities.
Why, it would make the most sense to set me loose in the field with
the brood mares. They’d understand me perfectly.”
    His lips tightened. “Are you done with your
tantrum? Have a bit more duck.”
    “I don’t want any duck. I don’t like duck.”
She put down her silverware and glared at him. A servant came
bustling in to take her plate but the duke waved him off.
    “She’s not finished.”
    “I am finished,” she told the servant. “You
may take my plate.”
    The servant stared between them, goggle-eyed.
The glint in her husband’s eyes had frozen to hard blue ice.
    “Do not think to engage in a battle of wills
with me, Guinevere,” he said. “Not now or ever. You’ll always
lose.”
    “Do you believe so? I’m awfully willful,” she
retorted. “That’s why no one else would marry me.”
    “No one else would marry you because your
father is an ambitious opportunist who was wise enough to save you
for better things. I’m sorry if you were led to believe
otherwise.”
    He said these words calmly, and studied her
reaction as he studied everything else. Gwen wondered if he spoke
the truth. For so many years, no man had courted her. She’d
believed it was her appearance, her uncommon height, or her poor
skill at conversation. But according to the duke, her father had
kept her lonely and marginalized in order to fulfill his
ambitions.
    “Statecraft,” he said as she glowered down at
her plate. “It makes pawns of us all.”
    “I don’t care.”
    “You do, but it’s all right to deny it.” He
gave her a sympathetic look. “I know this is difficult, and that
you are being fractious as a form of protest. No matter. I’ll have
cured you of such tendencies within a few days. Eat something.”
    Gwen gripped her silverware in rigid fingers
and very properly cut the wee tiniest, most miniscule sliver of
duck any person ever carved, and brought the speck of meat to her
lips.
    The duke watched her chew it with wee, tiny
little bites, then beckoned the innkeeper, who hovered right beside
the door. The portly man hurried over and sketched an obsequious
bow. “How may I assist you, Your Grace?”
    He turned and smiled at the man. “If you’ve a
fresh birch rod anywhere on the premises, I’d like it delivered to
Her Grace’s rooms at the first opportunity.”
    The man nodded and bowed even lower. “I’ll
have one assembled, Your Grace, right now, fresh as anything. One
birch to Her Grace’s room without delay.”
    “Splendid.”
    Gwen found the bit of