Page 2 of Don’t Let Your Dukes Grow Up To Be Scoundrels (Dukes in Disguise #1)

Chapter Two

Hal sprawled on a tall chair by the bar, stretched his tired legs out in front of him, and enjoyed the view.

After a long day of helping one of the Havilocke estate’s tenant farmers mend a broken plough, which had led to helping shore up the crumbling wall of the pigsty and digging out a new well, Hal had earned his afternoon’s entertainment watching the long-absent owners stand in the middle of his local pub to flap and squawk like the hens did when the mail coach came through.

At the moment, the three ladies were an indistinguishable froth of black bombazine topped off by that truly ludicrous hat. The stuffed crow bobbed and jerked above the fray.

But Hal was uncomfortably aware that he could recall the finest details of the face of the young woman he’d spoken to in the carriage. It was an extraordinary face: a perfect oval with high cheekbones, pretty pink lips curved in such a way that they would always hold a hint of a smile, and an unusual—and highly kissable—divot in the center of the small chin. Her dark blue eyes had been wide with something like shock or despair, framed by excessively long lashes and set off by strong, straight brows.

All three ladies had the pale, satiny skin that spoke of a leisurely life lived primarily indoors.

Although from the way they were eyeing the comfortably worn interior of the Five Mile, they were accustomed to somewhat more luxurious indoors than this.

“Oh Gemma, what shall become of us? What are we going to do?” The older lady wailed suddenly, breaking out of the knot of distressed ladies to fling herself onto one of the squashy old armchairs arranged around the hearth.

Gemma. Her name is Gemma.

The ladies had yet to introduce themselves, but Hal found it interesting that though it was the woman with the dead bird on her head who had to be Her Grace, Lady Henrietta Lively, the Duchess of Ashbourn—whose name was on the official papers granting her ownership of the coaching inn—yet she deferred to her eldest daughter. Gemma. Who was even now hurrying to her mother’s side and sliding a comforting arm around the older woman’s trembling shoulders.

The deep mourning they wore made him wonder who they’d lost—and what it might mean for his hopes of buying the Five Mile.

“Mama, don’t take on so. The plan hasn’t changed. I’ll get us out of this, don’t worry.”

Lady Henrietta continued to quake as the other daughter, the one who appeared to be barely out of the schoolroom, came around to perch on the other arm of the chair. “I don’t see how your plan can work now, Gemma. Look at this place. What are the odds that an unattached duke is going to wander casually in and allow himself to be seduced?”

Hal startled, managing to turn his shocked laugh into a cough at the last moment.

Shooting her sister a quelling look, Lady Gemma Lively suddenly seemed to remember they weren’t alone in the public room of the inn.

She swiveled her head and her gaze clashed with Hal’s, her eyes narrowing as she took in his unabashed eavesdropping.

Lifting that damnably dimpled chin, she said, “You there. My mother is unwell. Could you perhaps see to a cup of tea for her, and then our things will need to be brought in from the coach. The coachman will spend the night and return to London tomorrow morning.”

Her voice was clear and cool, like the well water Hal had splashed over his head and the back of his sweaty neck after an hour of shoveling and shifting rocks. It trickled down his spine and sent a pleasant thrill along his skin—along with the dawning realization that she thought he worked at the Five Mile.

Arrested by the thought, Hal glanced down at himself. He was wearing what he always wore to work with the farmers: sturdy brown trousers, white linen shirt long since dirtied to a dull beige, covered by a dark green waistcoat that clung to respectability by a single button.

He’d rolled his sleeves up to the elbow in the midday heat, he’d lost his hat somewhere between the plough and the pigsty, and he’d used the kerchief he usually knotted around his neck to wrap the handle of the shovel at the well.

So he could see where he perhaps looked somewhat disreputable, but it had been so long since he’d met anyone who didn’t already know who he was, he hadn’t?—

“Are you listening to me at all? By all that is holy, what will it take to get some tea for my mother? Must I find a kettle and boil the water myself?”

The cutting voice, accompanied by an actual snap of Lady Gemma’s fingers, brought Hal’s head up sharply. “Make the tea yourself, with your own fair hands? Oh no, your ladyship. That would be unthinkable.”

She went a little pink in the cheeks and those fine eyes of her flashed blue fire. She really was uncommonly pretty. “I won’t tolerate insolence.”

Hal smiled, as slowly and insolently as he could, just to see if her cheeks would get any pinker. They did. “What will you do? Dismiss me without references?”

Straightening up to her full, not-terribly-impressive height, Lady Gemma put her hands on her hips and said, “If I must. We are the owners of this establishment. And you cannot be the only man in the county capable of pouring an ale.”

In point of fact, the Five Mile had been without a dedicated publican for almost three years, since the last one left to take over his father’s sheep herd—a prospect that offered more hope of financial stability than the meager budget the pub could afford. There was barely enough income to pay Bess Pickford, the cook, who acted as a sort of general manager.

They were lucky to be able to keep the pub going when most people hereabouts were struggling to hold onto their farms after the neglect and outright mismanagement of their string of terrible landlords, the Montroses, Dukes of Havilocke.

With no owner on the premises for decades, the Five Mile had become a sort of unofficial community hub. People gathered there for a drink and a good meal after a day of arduous labor, yes, but they also came together to laugh about their children’s antics, to talk over new farming methods, and to commiserate over the unpredictable English weather.

Hal had been coming to the Five Mile since he was old enough to toddle there on his own. Beyond its function of receiving the mail coach, it was a fixture of Little Kissington, an indispensable part of what kept the town going.

These spoiled, silly women didn’t belong here. Hal couldn’t let them run this place into the ground.

He wasn’t technically employed by the Five Mile, but he had a responsibility to the community and the town and the people here that he took very seriously.

There was really only one thing to be done.

Standing up, Hal braced his hands on the bar and swung over it in a practiced move, well-honed from nights of pouring his own pints and helping out when Bess got busy in the kitchen.

Landing lightly enough on his feet to keep his grimy boots from leaving clods on the floor, Hal looked up when the younger sister murmured, “Are you absolutely certain you need to marry a man with a title, Gemma?”

All three ladies were staring at him, rapt, and even as warning bells clanged in his mind, Hal gave a slow grin and braced his bare forearms on the scarred, pitted oak of the bar.

“What’s your pleasure, ladies? We have cask ales and cider, though I wouldn’t recommend the cider. It’s made from the local apples and it’s a bit of an…acquired taste.”

“Tea,” was his new employer’s sharp reply, “preferably with a jot of brandy to steady the nerves. But I suppose I might as well ask for the moon as a bottle of good French brandy in this place.”

Hal stroked his beard thoughtfully to hide his amusement. “Reckon so,” he allowed while he smoothly pulled the bottle of fine Armagnac off the shelf and stowed it behind the bar. He’d kept that one bottle back when he’d sold off the other contents of his brother’s fine cellars, and he wasn’t about to share it with these spoiled creatures.

For a moment, a look of stark despair tightened her lovely features. “I can scarce imagine what will pass for accommodation in this godforsaken hovel.”

Her words stripped away any sympathy her misery might have garnered. Hal curled his lip.

He had no idea what had possessed these women to come here in person all these years after buying the Five Mile, but the sooner they went back to London, the better. This pub had been Hal’s refuge for years. The last thing it needed was a trio of interfering, ignorant ladies swanning about and running the place down.

And the last thing Hal needed was to spend any time in proximity to a husband-hunting debutante with dreams of landing a duke—and the most exquisite curves Hal had ever laid eyes on.

Instead of going to the kitchen to ask Bess for a pot of tea, Hal continued to lean on the bar. He liked watching Lady Gemma try to hold onto her fraying temper. “Now that you’ve seen the old place for yourselves, how long are you planning to stay?”

Leaving her mother to the care of the younger daughter, Lady Gemma approached the bar, eyes narrowed. “Pray tell me how that is any concern of yours.”

Hal crossed his arms over his chest and arched a sardonic brow. “It’s quite a heavy load of boxes and trunks you’ve brought along. If you’re going to flee back to London after you spend a single night in this ‘godforsaken hovel,’ I’d just as soon not lug that lot up the stairs and then back down again merely to please your fancy. Miss.”

The ironic tug to his forelock that accompanied his final word was meant as a thinly veiled insult. He expected her to be affronted at being questioned by a menial; in fact, he was looking forward to seeing how she looked with rage sparking blue fire from those fine eyes.

What he hadn’t expected was a laugh. A short, rueful laugh and a shake of her head, as the dudgeon visibly drained from her stiff shoulders. “Yes, I suppose it must look like rather a mountain of luggage for three ladies. But I promise you, the vast majority of the boxes contain nothing more than bonnets, so they shouldn’t be terribly heavy. I’ve little doubt you can handle them.”

Her gaze dropped to the corded muscle of Hal’s forearms, and trailed slowly, deliberately up the lines of his biceps and across the broad planes of his chest. He felt every inch of himself come to attention under the heat of her look.

Surprise at her reasonable response and her leisurely perusal held Hal tongue-tied for a moment. Just long enough for the lady’s eyes to catch his once more. Whatever she saw in the depths of his gaze caused her to draw in a quick breath, and she stepped back a pace.

“At any rate, the boxes must come inside,” she said briskly, looking away from him. “Whatever the condition of the rooms upstairs, we shall have to make do. We certainly shall not be returning to London tomorrow with the coach. I think our time here will likely be of some duration.”

Not if I have anything to say about it , Hal thought.

A sighing moan from behind her made her turn to glance at her family. Hal watched her shoulders slump, and suddenly he saw her exactly as she was: a tired young woman in mourning, at the end of a long journey, who felt the weight of caring for not only herself but her mother and sister also.

Hal would have liked to help her. In some other life, if he were another man, he would. But Hal carried a weight of responsibility, too.

Many, many people were relying on him—and they were people to whom he owed the entirety of his care and his aid. They were people who depended on him to right the wrongs done by his ancestors, a Herculean task that would require every scrap of Hal’s strength, attention, and dedication.

Oh yes, the ladies had to go, Hal mused as Gemma went to check on her mother. The indecent sway of her hips in the black dress made him ache to discover the true shape of her body beneath the frills and furbelows—a deep, visceral ache that sent a warning all through him.

This woman was not for him. And he could not be the man she was so clearly looking for.

He hardened his heart against her. It wasn’t difficult; all he had to do was recall the other ladies and gentlemen of her class who had descended on Little Kissington and the Havilocke estate like a plague and nearly destroyed it with their selfishness and arrogance.

And as John Henry Deveril Montrose, the eighth Duke of Havilocke, went outside to start carrying in the luggage, he reminded himself of the solemn vow he’d made upon inheriting his family’s crumbling estate nearly a year ago.

I will do whatever it takes to save my home and my people from ruin.

Well. Whatever it took—barring a repeat of the sins of his father and forefathers.

Frowning down at the tower of hatboxes and trunks the coachman had unloaded from the carriage, Hal reflected that he really had no room to criticize Lady Gemma for being an admitted fortune hunter, when his family, going back generations, had relied on marrying well to shore up its crumbling finances.

But not Hal. He would find another way to rebuild his estate. It would undoubtedly take hard work and a bit of luck but unlike his cruel, irresponsible forbears, Hal was not afraid of hard work. And he was determined to give no thought to his own happiness until the future of his estate and the surrounding lands was secured.

It would take everything he had to carve out a life for himself, a new way of living in this place that he loved—with people who had been through quite enough at the hands of his family. Hal was still struggling to find his place amongst them, struggling to come to terms with the unexpected change in his circumstances that had made him duke.

He could not allow himself a distraction like Lady Gemma Lively, he thought grimly as he hoisted the first of many trunks onto his shoulder.

No matter how enticing a distraction she was.