The Duke Goes Down (The Duke Hunt #1) by Sophie Jordan

Her pulse jumped against her throat and she hurried her descent, carefully staying to the right of the front door, but to the left of the parlor’s wide mullioned windows. It would not do at all to be spotted climbing down the trellis like a hoyden escaping her cage. Even if she was.

She did not give herself time to consider the madness of her actions. Papa would simply think she had slipped from the house to complete an errand without them noticing. Mrs. Garry might wonder how she had not noticed Imogen departing, but she would never believe she had done anything so rash as to slip out her window.

Dropping down on the ground, she shook her skirts back into place and then dusted her hands on the fabric, carefully wading through the front flowers, trying not to crush them as she stepped up beside the window.

She was careful to remain out of sight as she peeked into the parlor.

Papa was standing at the hearth beside Mr. Fernsby and Winnie was seated on the sofa, speaking in a lofty manner to Molly as she tugged off her velvet gloves. Molly was their occasional maid who helped out Mrs. Garry a few days a week. She looked a little apprehensive as she faced the full force of Winifred.

Imogen could not hear her cousin’s words but she could surmise she was instructing the girl on some matter or another. Perhaps instructions for their bedchamber, or the tea service yet to be served to them. Winnie had always excelled at bossing others around.

“That was quite the most singular way I’ve ever observed someone exit a house.”

Imogen spun around with a gasp to find Mr. Butler standing not two yards behind her, his head cocked at a curious angle as he studied her.

“Do you never announce yourself?” she hissed, hopping clear of the window, again taking care not to stomp on her flowers.

He first surprised her in the Blankenship gardens, then in her very own home, and now here again. She had never seen so much of him before, day after day after day. The man needed to wear a bell around his neck.

“I thought I just did.”

She cast a worried glance over her shoulder, fearful she might be detected by the occupants inside her house, then stepped hurriedly forward, determined to put as much distance between herself and her cousins as possible.

Oh, she would have to face them. She knew that. But it didn’t have to be now. And it didn’t have to be like this. If she could minimize all time spent with them until they departed, the better for her. It would mean less time pasting a pretend smile on her face.

Mr. Butler dogged her heels as she circled the vicarage and opened the side gate that cut through the vicarage cemetery.

It wasn’t as morbid as one might think a cemetery to be. It was full of blooming rosebushes and flowers, and a beautiful old oak tree sprawled at the center of the graveyard. As a child, when she first moved here, she had climbed that tree and sat high in its branches, looking out in awe at the vicarage and the surrounding fields and trees, the myriad rooftops in the nearby village, and the distant smoking chimney at the Henry farm.

The cemetery grounds were very green and well tended. Fresh vases of colorful blooms sat at several of the graves. Papa saw to that. Well, rather, he once saw to that when he had remembered to do such things. Now she remembered to do it, and the task fell to her along with the rest of her increasing duties.

The gate had a longer than usual delay before it clanged after her, and she sent yet another worried glance over her shoulder to confirm she wasn’t being followed by Fernsby—an irrational fear perhaps, but she felt the flash of it, nonetheless.

Indeed, she was not being followed by Edgar.

Mr. Butler was there, passing through the gate after her, his handsome expression cast into grim lines.

“Are you stalking me?” she demanded.

“As you are fleeing and not stopping for a much needed discussion, then yes. I am following you. Indeed, I am.”

She felt herself scowl. “Go away.”

The arrival of her cousins made fresh the humiliation she had thought she buried years ago. She needed to find someplace to lick her wounds in private and compose herself.

Mr. Butler’s presence did not help in that endeavor.

She had scarcely spent any time in his company whilst he was a duke, but now that he was plain and simple Mr. Butler he was everywhere. She could not escape him. As soon as she had the thought another intruded. There was nothing plain or simple about this man.

He had kissed her and she had kissed him back and she had never felt as alive as she had in that moment when his mouth had locked on hers.

Shaking her head, she was determined to put that behind her. It was an aberration. A thing that had simply happened in a flight of temper. It didn’t mean anything.

She wove a path between tombstones and stone crosses and crypts. “Why won’t you leave me be?” She felt an odd mixture of dread and elation at his persistent attention. It baffled her and she clearly was not in a state to make sense of it.

“I want to know everything. No more evasions. No more lies.”

Everything? All her truths? That gave her a jolt of alarm. The pulse at her neck gave a skittering leap.

Because the truth was this: Kissing Peregrine Butler had brought forth feelings and sensations she had never felt before. Not even when she was ten and eight and believed herself in love. Even besotted as she had been all those years ago, a kiss from Edgar had never made her feel as splendid as she had felt with Peregrine Butler and that was dangerous.