Dukes By the Dozen полностью

Her heart panged as she turned the ring over in her hand. A token of love. A real love that required the man to make this ring rather than simply buy a fancy one from a shop in Lincoln. That was the same kind of love her own parents had shared before her mother died three years ago. Before her father grieved so hard for her that he was soon to follow her to heaven.

She glanced around, holding her breath and listening—

Nothing. No one was near who might have dropped it.

She bit her lip. She couldn’t keep it, wouldn’t keep someone else’s token of love. But she also couldn’t take it to the manor house to inquire of its owner without admitting that she’d been trespassing on Monmouth land. God only knew what kinds of crimes the duke or his agent would accuse her of committing, simply so he could remove her from Little London and have no one to stop him from tearing down the mill. Worse—to have no one there to take care of her father.

But if she returned it to the ground or placed it on top the stone wall, would it become lost again, never to be found by its owner when she realized it was gone and traced back her steps to hunt for it?

No. Monmouth might be a vile, selfish peer who gave no consideration to a person’s property. But she would never be like that.

Taking from her pocket the pencil she used to mark the orders at the mill, she unfolded the crumpled letter and tore off a strip of paper across the bottom of the page. She laid it onto the rock wall and wrote,

I found this on the path. I hope the love it symbolizes leads you back to it.

Not daring to write her name for fear of being arrested if Monmouth found the note before the ring’s owner, she removed a pin from her hair and speared the note to the trunk of the nearest tree. Then she slipped the ring over the pin, to let it dangle in place by the note, and hurried on toward the mill.

JOHN DANIELS, Duke of Monmouth, called to the dogs to stay close by his heels as they ran ahead down the lane. He rolled his eyes when they glanced back at him, then ignored him and went bounding onward.

But of course they did. Even the hounds were smart enough to realize that he was nothing more than an imposter in duke’s clothing.

The pretense of his new life would have been laughable, if not for the fact that it was killing him.

Christ! How was he supposed to lie around, doing nothing? But that was exactly how his new life as a duke was meant to be led. Sitting around Bishopswood like a damnable piece of furniture. Having servants waiting on him at all hours, answering whatever tiny need he had and acting offended if he dared do it himself. Being told that a man of his newly acquired rank and influence wasn’t supposed to do anything even remotely resembling work, including running his estate and overseeing his business interests when he employed land agents and accountants to do it for him.

He was a man of action, his body built for hard work, and that was exactly how he’d spent most of his life—picking up a sledge hammer, a pick or shovel, an axe…whatever tool was needed as he built a series of warehouses across England that capitalized on the country’s improved transportation during the past two decades. The son of a mercantile owner, he’d started into business with only a shovel and the muscles in his back, saving his money until he had enough to buy his own warehouse along Bridgewater’s newly built canal from Birmingham. Only four walls and a questionable roof, but it was enough to earn a trickle of income that he could roll into purchasing another warehouse, which led to another and another, until he had a string of them. Soon he’d moved beyond the canals and bought several buildings in the port towns along the coast. More buildings, more income—enough to live a life of comfort.

But that life had been nothing compared to the unfathomable wealth that buried him alive last winter when an unknown cousin he’d never met died unexpectedly without an heir, slamming a fortune and dukedom onto his shoulders.

Overnight, he went from being a man of work and accomplishment to one of forced leisure, a peer who not only never had to work again but was expected not to. And he hated every moment of it.

His secretary Watson assured him that he couldn’t refuse the title. That no one in the history of England had ever refused the inheritance of a dukedom. It simply wasn’t done! Wasn’t certain it could be done, even if he insisted on it. Then the man had stared at him as if he’d fallen off a turnip wagon and wasn’t smart enough to get out of the road.