Page 1 of The Duke I Wished For (A Maypole in Mayfair #5)

L ady Daffodil Underhill tilted up her chin to the bright late April sun as she stared at a tall pole before her, ribbons dancing in the breeze.

A lock of her blonde hair slipped from under her bonnet, brushing across her face, but she paid it no mind as she assessed the centerpiece of Mayfair Square.

The maypole.

May Day was only a few short days away and the pole had been strung with fresh ribbons for the festival that would happen. But today, the square was quiet.

Her younger sister’s fingers slipped into hers as Delilah whispered, “It’s so tall.” She threaded their fingers together. Though Delilah was only ten months younger than her, Daffodil had always seen it as her duty to protect her sweet and timid sister.

“It is. You don’t realize just how large it is until you’re right up next to it,” Miss Jocelyn Barrow answered as she reached up a hand to catch one of the fluttering ribbons.

Across from the three of them stood Daffodil and Delilah’s cousin, Lady Jane Wrightmore, and their new friend, Lady Isabelle Carrington.

All students at Madame Bellafonte’s finishing school, they’d been sent to Mayfair to learn the art of being a lady with the intent of finding a husband.

Daffodil frowned at the thought, reaching up and catching a dancing ribbon of her own. She didn’t wish for a husband. At least not any of the men her mother had paraded before her. And the latest… She gave a distinct shiver despite the warm sunshine dancing along the rim of her bonnet.

“Cold?” Delilah asked, her hand tightening on Daffodil’s.

“No, I’m fine.” She gave her sister a falsely bright smile, not wishing to burden Delilah with her inner turmoil. Both of them would have to marry well to keep the family from falling into financial ruin. Delilah had her own worries, she didn’t need to hear Daff’s.

The silk of the ribbon slipped through her fingers and she tightened her grip, watching the long string dance in the breeze. Just above her face a lone butterfly danced about the bright pink ribbon, its delicate wings as beautiful as they were fragile.

“Why did we come out here again?” Jane asked, cocking her head to the side. Her thick coiffure of auburn hair glinted in the sun as she looked up at the white pole, a slight frown marking her brow. “My riding lesson is in twenty minutes.”

Isabelle looked heavenward, as though rolling her eyes. “Why do you even bother? We all know you can ride like the wind. Why take those boring lessons at all?”

Jane shrugged as a ribbon wrapped about her body. Her movements ever fluid, she unwound the ribbon from her middle, also holding the fabric in her hand. “At least I’m outside when I’m on a horse. Since coming to this school, I spend so much of my time indoors…”

The other girls nodded. Madame Bellafonte had recently expanded the school, her demand for acceptance higher than ever. The woman had a reputation for training all ladies so that they made successful matches, but she specialized in the unfortunate.

Thanks to several investors, she’d doubled the size of the building, purchasing a second property on the square.

Madame Bellafonte had taken on lots of ladies with excellent potential like Jocelyn and Isabelle, but she’d left room for girls like Daffodil and Delilah as well.

Girls who had some flaw, whether it be failing social skills or lack of dowry.

Daffodil had hoped that attending the school would lend her a reprieve from her mother’s attempts at matching her with a string of increasingly rich but also increasingly abhorrent suitors, but much to her dismay, she’d received a note from her mother just this morning.

There was a dinner that Daffodil was to attend tomorrow evening. She was to wear her lavender gown that highlighted the pinks of her skin—her mother’s words, not hers. The directions had gone on as to which gloves she ought to choose and how best to coif her hair.

Directions that specifically meant one thing…her mother had identified another suitor. She held in her shudder, knowing that he would be awful.

The last one, Mr. Charles Pennywind, had been beyond disastrous, pinching the behinds of every woman he caught unawares. It had been tawdry and awful, but he’d offered her parents a ridiculous sum to wed Daffodil. Her parents might be impoverished, but her father was an earl.

Men of the merchant class clamored to buy their way into the peerage in the form of brides like Daffodil.

The ribbon in her hand danced again, the butterfly still flitting about. She’d only narrowly escaped marriage to Mr. Pennywind when he’d managed to ruin a baron’s daughter and the two had wed. Poor girl.

“It is difficult to be here when you wish to be somewhere else, isn’t it?” Isabelle nodded, her dark brown hair showing the tiniest bits of blonde in the sun as it peeked out from her pink bonnet.

Daffodil attempted to regain the thread of the conversation, having been lost in her own thoughts. What had they been discussing?

“Where would you be if not here?” Delilah asked, her grip tightening further on Daffodil’s fingers as she stared at Isabelle intently.

Daffodil felt a moment of relief, realizing what they were discussing before her stomach tensed again. Thinking of the future always managed to disconcert her.

Isabelle gave a delicate shrug. “It’s not where I would be but what I would be doing, I suppose.

You know that meeting all of you has been so wonderful, but if I had my choice, I’d be working on my library of books for the poor.

It’s so needed and yet I waste my time…” The other woman allowed her words to taper off.

Daffodil winced in sympathy. It must be frustrating to so clearly see a path forward and not be allowed to take it. Still, she admired her friend’s goal. So noble that Isabelle wanted to help people in need.

But the tiniest bit of jealousy niggled in her stomach.What a gift to have a purpose. Avoiding marriage was hardly the same. Daffodil wasn’t moving toward any goal. She was more avoiding the future her mother had chosen…

The smallest sigh escaped her lips.

“I know the feeling. I’d be back in the country, racing my stallion along the country roads if my parents hadn’t insisted that it was time I curbed my wayward tendencies.” Jane wrinkled her nose. “Their words.”

Jocelyn gave Jane a knowing smile. “I understand. I too have things I would rather be doing.”

“What is that?” Delilah asked. “You love society and everyone loves you.”

Jane gave a nod of agreement. “That’s right. Everyone knows that you’ll make the perfect match.”

“Thank you,” Jocelyn said. “But before I do, there’s one thing I want.”

Jocelyn drew out the silence, casting her friends a mischievous sidelong glance as they waited for her to finish. Finally, she said. “The perfect kiss.”

Isabelle gasped. Delilah giggled.

Jocelyn lifted a shoulder. “I just want to know what all the fuss is about before I settle down with some perfectly appropriate—” Here she paused to feign a delicate yawn, making the others laugh. “And perfectly proper gentleman.”

Daffodil looked at her friend, wondering if Jocelyn also felt trapped by her own fate. She’d never imagined her vivacious friend as being anything other than glowingly happy. The butterfly flitted around her bonnet and in front of her eyes, dancing on the breeze.

“What would you want, Delilah?” she asked her sister, even as Delilah finally let go of her hand and reached for a ribbon.

She wound the silk around her fingers. “I don’t know.

” Her tongue darted out to lick her lips as she looked upwards, appearing lost in thought.

“Does running away from my life count as a goal?”

The other girls laughed. “I don’t think so,” Jane said.

Daffodil’s own cheeks heated at their mirth. Like her sister, Daffodil didn’t have a real goal either. Other than prolonging the inevitable as long as possible, that was.

She’d just narrowly avoided matrimony with Mr. Pennywind, but she couldn’t expect a second reprieve. At some point, her parents would force her to marry. Delilah too.

The thought made her spirits sink, but beside her, Delilah’s shoulders straightened. “In that case, I’d like to be in a fairy tale. One where I’m like Red Riding Hood or Snow White, and I go to a cottage deep in the woods and?—”

“Nearly get eaten by a wolf?” Jocelyn interrupted with a cock of her brow.

“Eat a poisoned apple?” Jane added with an indelicate snort. “Besides, who wants to be rescued? I’ll save myself, thank you very much.”

Delilah made a face at both of them. “I wouldn’t mind being rescued. Perhaps a handsome woodsman could save me from the wicked witch.”

“Oh, you mean our mother.” Daffodil nodded in understanding.

That had all the girls laughing. But Daffodil meant the words to some extent.

Her mother had put so much pressure on them as children, had instilled such a need to be perfect, that Delilah had grown ever more timid and Daffodil had developed a stutter in her early years as she’d tried to live up to those expectations.

Jocelyn looked thoughtful as she assessed the pole. “My sister-in-law, Rose, swears that this pole is magical. That she and her friends wished upon it and found their happily-ever-afters because of those wishes.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Jane huffed. “There is absolutely no way that a magical pole exists in Mayfair.”

Still a silence settled over them.

“How did they wish?” Delilah asked, her voice so soft, it was hardly above a whisper.

“Well,” Jocelyn tugged on her ribbon. “They each had a ribbon I think, and they danced around…”

The girls looked at one another, all of them having collected a ribbon in their hand at some point during the conversation. Without a word, they began to move.

“And then what?” Isabelle asked, her own feet gliding gracefully along right before she did a pirouette.

“I’m not certain,” Jocelyn said with a shake of her head. “They just wished, I suppose.”

“Out loud?” came Daffodil’s croaking voice. She watched the butterfly finally flit away, its colorful wings spread out against the backdrop of blue sky. A wish came to her then. She’d like to be that butterfly, dancing away from her life, flying free and easy on the wind.

Then she could escape a future which included pinching husbands only interested in her social position or mothers who only cared about how much money her match might bring to the family.

She wanted a future all her own. A path forward that took her far away from this life. She closed her eyes and cast her wish…