Dukes By the Dozen полностью

“I did come here to be with you…for the most part.” Taylor moved a chair and helped her friend sit down. “But if I wasn’t bubbling over with news, it’s because there’s nothing to bubble about. And besides, I didn’t see any point in mentioning my problem because I’m hoping it will disappear on its own while I’m…well, away.”

“What problem?” Millie breathed deeply and pressed the side of her belly.

“The problem with my father and this proposal. Yes, I have a suitor, but I want him to disappear.”

“Taylor, a real suitor doesn’t simply disappear.”

Lord knows, Taylor was aware of that.

“And people are saying you’re engaged.”

“Falsehoods, I swear it. A real engagement involves a proposal of marriage and an acceptance. It is a verbal agreement between a man and a woman. Not a father pressuring someone to take his unsightly harpy of a daughter off his hands.”

“You are neither of those things. You make me so angry when you talk about yourself like that.”

“Be angry all you want, but I need you to support me in this.”

Millie sat quietly for a moment. “I know almost nothing of the details, but from what I understand, the man is a duke. How can the earl influence someone of that rank?”

“The man stepped into a trap.” Taylor wrapped her arms around her waist, recalling the most embarrassing moment of her life. “The duke came upon us after a carriage accident and, out of sheer kindness, stopped to help. Naturally, my father thought it was the perfect time to throw me at him. I believe he tried to sweeten the deal with pair of goats.”

Millie smiled. “You’re being ridiculous.”

“I wish I were. I’m all too familiar with his methods. Influence, plead, beg, promise, lie, embellish. Stay after him like a hound on the scent of a fox. Whatever he had to do, he did over the weeks that followed…and somehow managed to succeed.”

It was only when they’d returned to Edinburgh that she’d been able to find out more information about the duke.

“Franz Aurech, the Duke of Bamberg, is financially strapped. His estates are on the verge of collapse.”

“I see.” Millie paused, her brow drawing together. “And he’s looking for a rich wife?”

“An heiress,” Taylor answered. “His Grace is looking for a woman with substantial wealth. And from what I gather, the moment he arrived and his intentions were known, he had invitations to every salon and assembly from London to Bath to Edinburgh. The social circles are still abuzz with a list of prospects.”

“But I doubt there’s any woman richer than you.”

Taylor cringed to think what exactly her father had revealed to this total stranger.

“Why would the earl want this?” Millie asked. “You and I both know that without you handling the business of the family estates, Lord Lindsay and your brother would be…well, ruined.”

It was true. They’d be lost. While Taylor was growing up, her mother had controlled the finances of the family. And when she’d grown ill, Taylor had taken over her role. She had an aptitude for it. She enjoyed the manipulation of funds and stocks, as well as the budgeting of estate revenues. Her father, who had absolutely no interest in such responsibilities, had been off somewhere serving in some ceremonial capacity during the war when her mother passed away. Since then, under Taylor’s management, the family’s fortunes had grown, and Millie was correct that the two men would squander their fortunes in no time without her.

“I imagine he expects that I’ll somehow continue to do from a distance the same thing I’ve been doing. But more important, having a duke in the family tree is a prize beyond his wildest dreams. Never mind that it settles the question of his daughter’s future,” she explained. “I believe in his own twisted way, he worries about me. My fortune is independent of his. He’s said outright that it’s only matter of time before some no-good, penniless swindler will seduce me and steal all my money.”

“He doesn’t know you very well, does he?”

Wealth brought attention. But Taylor was invulnerable to the flirtations of fine-looking men. At least, she thought she was, until she met Bamberg. That chest. That accent. “You’re correct. He doesn’t.”

“What else do you know about the duke? Other than his name and that he’s looking for a rich wife?”

“To be honest, he’s quite accomplished. He’s an explorer. A world traveler. I’ve been trying to learn what I could, aside from the gossip, and there’s actually quite a bit of information out there. Lord Bamberg is highly celebrated in academic circles. After the war, he partnered with Prince Maximilian of Wied-Neuwied in an expedition into the jungles of Brazil. He’s even published journals on the ethnography of people living in the Amazon.”

“I’m surprised. I was half expecting you to tell me he was a ne’er-do-well, living a dissipated existence in gaming hells all over Europe.”