Page 11 of Seven Nights with the Wicked Duke (Regency Beasts #3)

B eing the center attention of a lot of eligible suitors ordinarily would be the dream of every noble young lady of marriageable age.

But that dream could be somewhat nightmarish, if said young lady had a certain grumpy older brother breathing down her neck, sniffing his disapproval of every and each suitor.

"You do not have to hold her hand to give her the flowers," he growled at young Lord Hightown, who had been courteous enough to arrive at her door, a bouquet of roses in hand unlike the other suitors said brother had chased away already.

The young lord in question shrank back in fear clearly not expecting such a sharp reprimand at his arrival. After all he had only held her hand to kiss it in greeting. It was easy to dismiss the young gentleman to be a coward for such a reaction, but Cecilia understood.

Her brother might be a man of nobility, but he was built like a street side wrestler, that in combination with a foreboding look that seemed to be permanently etched on his face and animosity in his voice, and he became a threat that any intelligent person would do his possible best to avoid.

The menace that exuded just standing there in the sitting room fell off him in waves.

At this rate he might just drive away all her suitors.

Cecilia resisted the urge to huff and scold him then and there because she didn't want their family drama becoming news for the gossip blogs. Instead, she shot her brother a glare that she hoped was warning enough.

She would definitely be giving him a piece of her mind when the day was over but for now, she had a handsome suitor to charm.

Lord Hightown had recently inherited his title and was moderately handsome with a head of golden blonde hair and blue eyes a girl could get lost in. he was also well mannered and had a love of horses much as she did.

They had danced at a few balls together and he had courteously asked her permission to come calling on her. She hadn't thought to inform her brother as she felt he would approve but the man seemed more displeased than she had imagined he would be.

"Lord Hightown was just greeting me." she said with a smile, looking up at her brother, making sure that her eyes conveyed her displeasure as much as she could. "And I am thankful for his kind gesture. The flowers are lovely. I thank you," she added to Lord Hightown.

He nodded and smiled at her, the smile quickly fading when her brother growled softly in his throat.

Whether he got her hint or not was irrelevant, because his next words told her he didn't care what she thought.

"He did not have to hold your hand so long to offer a greeting," he said frowning even harder if that was even possible.

Lord Hightown must have realized just how hostile the environment was, because he pressed the bouquet of flowers into her arms with a hasty bow, turning on his heel and hurrying towards the entrance he just came through.

"Perhaps I will visit some other time. I bid you a good day, Lady Cecilia," he said just before he stepped through the doors of their townhouse.

Cecilia knew that he was never going to come back from the dust he kicked up as he rushed from her home. Men like that had fragile egos to match their fragile physique and being intimidated by the brother of a lady they were interested in was not conducive for the ego.

She held no affection for him, but the young man was a potential suitor for her and was quite likable. While his departure was no great loss to her, there was a chance that if Magnus continued this way, she would be soon without any suitors and remain solidly on the shelves in the years to come.

Already, gentlemen of the ton had started to shy away from her for fear of Magnus arriving to threaten them or positively embarrass them and it had been no easy feat securing the connections she had so far.

If he continued his tyranny of all her suitors, she would damn near be forced to marry one of his choosing. If he picked anyone like him to be her husband, then she would much prefer to be a spinster instead.

"You do know that you did not need to do that, Magnus," she said slowly, trying to control her annoyance, as she turned to her brother. "You were positively rude."

"Do what?" he asked nonchalantly, leaning against the wall of the drawing room, looking for all the world, like he planned to set up shop on that spot, with no plan to leave anytime soon. "Teaching a young man how to behave properly with an unwed lady?"

"You scared Lord Hightown away."

"No. I was protecting your virtue and it says a lot of his strength of character, if he could be that easily scared by a mere reprimand," he said with a sniff of disgust. "You do not need such a weak man. Besides he just wants to marry you so he could get his hands on your dowry."

Yes, Lord Hightown was definitely a coward.

That much was true.

But that didn't mean Magnus should have behaved the way he did.

She had only approached him to lengthen her list of potential suitors which was drastically reducing as the day went on.

He was the kind of man she could never profess genuine attraction towards, but the man had hardly done anything out of the ordinary.

Members of noble society over the centuries have always married for either titles or fortune, in some cases it was even for both reasons.

Lord Hightown, even if he was a fortune hunter; was only doing what his predecessors had always done.

He had hardly done anything to deserve the poor treatment he had received.

"That is not enough reason to be as rude as you were," she said in a low voice.

She would never agree openly with him or he would grow smug and infuriate her even further.

"Perhaps you might spare some of your good manners for Lord Finch. He would be a good match for you. He is a scholar just like you are, quiet and possesses a modest fortune. He would suit you quite nicely."

Of course how could she have forgotten Lord Finch who was her brother's latest prospect for her?

He was definitely quiet and studious, and it was for those two reasons that she knew he could never make a good suitor for her. Magnus on the other hand, was so sure that the man was her soulmate. The reason why he thought that way was not so far-fetched.

She had realized that there was only one way she could help her brother return to some level of normalcy on his return from war and that was to become less of a burden, quiet and unassuming so as not to be just another disturbance in his already chaotic world.

Over time, pretending to be quiet and unassuming, she became so seamlessly one with this persona that she had created, that she no longer even knew who she really was under the layers of pretense.

She truly believed that she had become this person, the quiet unassuming young lady, who liked to study and stay indoors.

That was until the moment when she realized that her brother meant to marry her off soon.

She felt the locks on her gilded cage getting reinforced and she suddenly regretted the amount of time she had wasted trying to make herself small enough to fit into Magnus's life.

It was now clear to her that she was in no way quiet and unassuming.

She wanted to explore life to the best of its limits, as far as she could go without true ruination, before she submitted to the final lock on her cage.

The fact she thought of marriage as a prison was ironic, considering that she had friends who became truly free and happy through the same institution.

But then, not everyone got to be so lucky and if there was one thing she was sure of, it was the undeniable fact that marriage to Lord Finch would be a prison with a different jailer.

Lord Finch was a young man with a much older appearance, balding, with beady little eyes that always seemed to be appraising her every move, and finding her lacking every time.

The few times they had conversed, he had found a thing or two to critique and made her feel much the same Magnus did when he began one of his lectures on her conduct.

He was the second son of a duke who was assigned a modest fortune by his father, which made him an eligible suitor in Magnus's eyes, especially because he had no use for a woman's fortune.

But Cecilia would rather marry a fortune hunter who respected her than one who looked down on her for superficial reasons.

It was no surprise that he had not come to see her this morning, because he had told her that he had no reason to stand in a queue, insinuating that men who do that were without purpose and had no self-respect.

That arrogance might be a character trait that would be admired by some clueless debutante who had the misfortune of being timid as well, but certainly not for her.

She had lived long enough to know what she wanted and it definitely was not a boring life with an equally boring man that thought of himself as God's gift to women.

"And what if Lord Finch decides that he doesn't want me?" she asked quietly. "What happens then?"

She had mentioned his sour character to her brother but the man wrote them off as initial misunderstandings.

"You will come to like him once you know him better," he had said before launching into a tirade of the man's prospects.

She had only seen red and wished she could accidentally spill some punch on the man's pristine shirt.

"That would never happen," Magnus replied distractedly. "He knows what he stands to gain from this match."

"And what would that be, pray tell?" she asked her tone coming out sharper than she would have wanted.

"He gets to marry the sister of a duke and consolidate power, in addition to having someone of a similar temperament as a spouse," he answered as if it was the most obvious thing.

Heaven forbid that she shared the same temperament with the easily aggravated and constantly disapproving Lord Finch.

She would definitely grow mad with repressed rage.