Page 18 of Dukes All Night Long

“I still think you should tell Lord Wolverton that Sir Thomas Carter is trying to blackmail you,” Jenna said.

She might as well have saved her breath.

Each time she suggested her sister trust her most ardent suitor, Sabina shook her head or even burst into tears.

“I cannot. How can I? I could confess to the letters, I think. If he proposes. But the drawings?” Here come the tears, welling up in Sabina’s lovely blue eyes and dripping down her face without in the least marring her beauty.

“How could any man forgive the drawings?”

“You didn’t pose for them,” Jenna reminded her, patiently. Jenna knew this for a fact. All that summer, when she was thirteen and Sabina fifteen, she had been required to join Sabina for every drawing lesson and to remain with her sister for every moment the drawing master was present.

Hence the letters. Sabina, silly girl, had become infatuated with the handsome young man, and had secretly written to him.

Romantic, gushy, tripe no doubt. Apparently, the drawing master had also committed his own infatuation to paper.

Hence, the drawings. Created from his imagination, Sabina claimed, and Jenna believed her, but with Sabina’s face.

“Of course I did not pose for them. But that beast Carter says no one will ever believe it. Not with the letters as proof.” And now the wail.

“Not when he sh-sh-sh-shares them with his friends!” She buried her face in her handkerchief.

From behind it, she added, dolefully, “Ruin. For all of us. Your marriage with the Duke of Dellborough’s grandson will be off.

None of the others will find a husband.”

That was undoubtedly the truth. If Sabina was thought to be unchaste, it would affect all six of Congleton’s daughters.

Not that Jenna would not mind if her father’s agreement with the Duke of Dellborough fell through—it was the nineteenth century, after all, and arranged marriages were positively medieval.

Jenna had not even met Lord Versey. Or many other gentlemen, for that matter. But even if she did not want to wed a stranger, she did want to marry one day. And the letters complicated things.

Most people would not believe for a moment that the sheltered and demure eldest daughter of the Earl of Congleton had posed naked for a series of portraits in provocative poses. If the letters did not exist to lend some credence to the drawings, that is.

“Provocative” was what their unprincipled next-door neighbor had called the drawings when he demanded Sabina accept his marriage proposal or face the consequences. He only wanted Sabina’s dowry, of course. He was a poor manager of his lands, and refused to invest in them or anything else.

Indeed, how he funded his lifestyle had been a mystery to her until he tried to blackmail Sabina. Now she wondered what other secrets he had ferreted out and used to enrich himself.

He had somewhere laid his hands on Sabina’s letters and the art tutor’s drawings, and now he was here every day—calling in the afternoon and staying way beyond the bounds of good manners, returning again for dinner.

He ignored her coolness and Sabina’s, smiled his smarmy smile, and leered at Sabina—and also Jenna and their next two sisters by age.

He was clearly waiting for Sabina to refuse Wolverton and accept him.

Wolverton already had doubts—Jenna could see it. The way he looked at Sabina had changed in the two days he had been here. And no wonder. Sabina was avoiding him, desperate not to be forced into the decision that would change her life forever.

Carter knew it, too, and he looked more smug and more triumphant every day. And Wolverton more anxious, more uneasy, as he watched Carter watch Sabina. What was he thinking? Did he believe that Sabina was fickle?

If he left, it would break Sabina’s tender heart, and yet Jenna could not talk her sister into confiding in Wolverton, and perhaps she was right. Especially now that he was already questioning Sabina’s feelings.

Jenna was going to have to fix it. Sabina might be the eldest, but the whole family knew that Jenna was the one in charge of looking after all of her sisters, and the whole household. And she knew just what she needed to do to stop that villain Carter.