How to Catch a Duke in Ten Days by Violet Hamers
Chapter One
“Ido not think you realize just how tarnished your reputation is, Hermione.” Her aunt’s words made her flinch in her seat in the carriage. She lifted one hand to the locket she carried around her neck, clinging to it tightly, whilst the other hand was encased in her sister’s fingers.
“Tarnished? Pah!” her father scoffed at the words, earning her gaze. Rufus Rogers, the Earl of Branigan, had once been both a handsome and an extremely wealthy man, one of the most eligible bachelors in the ton. The years had taken its toll, and though he still bore the coifed fair hair and startling green eyes that once made him attractive, his face was haggard with his age, and his accounts had withered too.
“It is destroyed. It lays in tatters, about as ripped to shreds as her veil was on that dreaded day,” he said, gesturing to Hermione.
She recoiled away from his words, trying to sit straight in the seat and take their censure on the chin, but it was nigh on impossible. She’d suffered their chastisement and reprimands for the last week and a half since the event that had turned her life upside down. She didn’t imagine they would ever stop now.
“What follows next must be handled with tact and care, My Lord,” her aunt said kindly, placing a gentle hand on his arm. The simple touch seemed to take the wind of anger out of him. Since their mother had passed some years ago, their mother’s widowed sister, Mrs. Cordelia Atkins, had moved in with them. “As long as everything goes according to plan, she will be married before anyone can find out what happened in London.”
“And you do not see the problem with your plan?” Hermione asked, finding her voice at last.
“Hermione, don’t,” Phoebe whispered at her side, pleading with her. Hermione looked to her sister, just long enough to see the petite and slender girl with just as piercing green eyes as their father shaking her head. “Do not argue with them any further.”
“I am sorry you have to hear it, Phoebe, truly, I am,” Hermione said, squeezing her sister’s hand tighter. Her sister had always been more of a sensitive soul, and Hermione usually went through life trying to shield her sister from the harsher things in life. Sadly, she could not protect Phoebe these arguments from anymore. “Yet, something has to be said.”
“You wish to argue with me more?” Rufus thundered, his face blushing bright red as did his neck around the cravat he was wearing. He moved forward to the edge of his seat, his body frantic and tensed with evident anger.
“You wish me to trap a man into marriage,” Hermione stressed the words, glancing between her father’s and her aunt’s faces. “Do you not hear how awful that is? You wish me to deceive a man, not only forcing him into marriage, but persuading him to believe I am an ideal woman too? With a reputation intact?”
“You no longer have the virtue of actually having a perfect reputation. That was your own doing,” Rufus snapped the words. Horrified, Hermione’s lips parted, just as Phoebe at her side cowered back into the seat, trying to hide from his anger.
“It was not my doing,” Hermione matched the vigor in her father’s tone, moving to the edge of her own seat. Placed directly opposite her father, she stared him down, refusing to look away from his calculating gaze.
“You did nothing wrong? Nothing wrong!” her father roared the words.
“Please be quiet, My Lord, or the coach driver will think something is amiss,” Cordelia pleaded with him. He glanced once at her, breathing deeply in the obvious attempt to control his anger before he looked back to Hermione again.
“It astounds me you still deny all blame in this situation.” Her father spoke much quieter this time, though with just as much venom in his voice as before.
“And I will continue to deny it,” Hermione said, snapping her gaze back to him.
“Why do we have to continue this same argument all the time?” Phoebe pleaded, looking between them. Hermione could feel her sister’s hand trembling. “Are we incapable of talking of anything else?”
“Phoebe, you will need to toughen up to hold your head high in this world,” Rufus said tiredly, pinching the bridge of his nose.
“How can you speak to her like that?” Hermione asked, horrified. “She is hurt by our argument because she feels things keener than you ever could. She has more heart than you have in your breast–”
“Do not you dare talk to me with such insolence!” Rufus raged, dropping his hand from his face. “The point is, Hermione, you do not have a choice in this matter.”
The vigor of Hermione’s argument was taken out of her, and she sank back onto the cushions of the carriage, just as the coach jolted back and forth across potholes, making them sway from side to side.
“Your father is right, Hermione,” Cordelia said with a softer tone. With some reluctance, Hermione looked up to her aunt, waiting for her next words. “It is not easy to hear, yet it is imperative. Your damaged reputation does not only affect you but all of us. Especially Phoebe.”
At these words, Hermione turned to her sister, seeing Phoebe looking down at her lap, biting her lip, and avoiding Hermione’s gaze.
“Your sister’s name will be tarnished too. The only way to ensure Phoebe makes a good marriage now is if we marry you off and marry you off well,” Cordelia said plainly, as though the solution were an obvious one.
“The Duke of Benson is the perfect candidate,” Rufus said with animation, leaning forward toward her with his hands outstretched. “He has never married and was betrothed himself before, so he should not be so choosy.”
“He is very wealthy,” Cordelia said with widened eyes. “Immensely so.”
“That is important, is it?” Hermione asked, unable to resist challenging the two of them. “Since when is money the cause of a happy marriage?”
“Try living without it, and you’ll find out,” Rufus said harshly. The words were spoken so sharply that Phoebe shifted in her seat beside Hermione.
“The Duke’s mother is the Dowager Duchess, Rose Stenham+,” Cordelia explained. “She is a good friend of mine, and we have known each other for many years. She explained to me recently in a letter her wish to see her eldest son married. It is the perfect opportunity.”
“And the Dowager Duchess does not care about my tarnished reputation?” Hermione asked, frowning.
“Well, I did not mention that in my letters,” Cordelia said pointedly. “Did you think I would? It’s shameful!”
At her words, Hermione turned to look out of the window another time. She still knew she had done nothing wrong, but it seemed she was condemned forever more now. She lifted a hand to the locket at her neck, holding onto it once more as an image flashed in her mind.
She was standing at the doorway of the church with the bouquet of flowers in her hand, then the bouquet fell to stone floor, scattering petals and leaves.
“I also did not mention a suggested betrothal between you,” Cordelia was speaking again. “I simply said that it would be lovely to see my friend again after all this time, and she fortunately invited the whole family to stay for a month.”
“A month?” Phoebe repeated as Hermione turned back to face her family. “You expect Hermione to make the Duke of Benson fall in love with her in a month?”
“Who mentioned love?” Rufus said snidely. “We said marriage. There are many ways to make a man marry a woman. You have a month to ensure the Duke of Benson proposes. By that time, the gossip will have spread from London. You have to do this, Hermione.”
“What if I was to refuse?” Hermione said, lifting her chin higher.
“Then I will take you and Phoebe back to our country home in Norfolk, and you will both live out your days as spinsters. Alone.” His harsh words made Hermione and Phoebe snap their gazes toward each other.
Hermione reeled with this news. Her ability to make a marriage was not just about her own happiness anymore; it was about protecting Phoebe from a life alone.
“So, Hermione?” Rufus said, smirking wickedly as he evidently knew he had her backed into a corner. “Will you do this for your sister? Or will you condemn her to be alone for the rest of her life as well?”
Silence descended in the carriage. For a minute, Hermione couldn’t find words. She just let the coach jostle her from side to side as she concentrated on the feeling of Phoebe’s palm within her own. Beyond the carriage windows, the sun was setting firmer, no longer visible above the trees at all. What she could see of the sky was streaked in red and orange hues.
“I have no choice,” Hermione said, turning back to her father. “I’ll do it.”
* * *
As the carriage slowed, Hermione leaned out of the window to see just where they had arrived. In the grey dusk that had fallen across the hills, she could just about see the ocean in the distance, lapping wildly with white foam. Much closer to her and across the grass lawn was a manor house overlooking Lyme Regis Bay. The house itself was tall, grey and imposing, something rather out of one of Hermione’s gothic novels, with tall windows like the slits in cat’s eyes staring across the scenery.
“It’s rather spooky looking, isn’t it?” Phoebe asked, still holding tightly onto Hermione’s hand.
“I rather like it,” Hermione admitted as a smile crept into her cheeks. The place had drama about it. As the carriage veered toward the house, more of the trees slipped away, revealing how the cliffs dropped down to the ocean far below with waves crashing against the rocks.
“It’s a good job you like it,” Rufus said, his tone urging Hermione to look back at him. “It could be your new home soon.”
Hermione swallowed as she sat back against the coach seat. She didn’t want to do this. She had never met the Duke of Benson before. The mere idea of not only marrying a man she didn’t know, but deceiving him and tricking him into marrying her when her reputation was tarnished, was awful to her. It felt against her nature.
One should only marry for love.
As the thought struck her, she released the hold on the locket she was wearing around her neck, barely having realized she had taken hold of it again.
The carriage turned toward the house along a curve in the driveway before slowing completely and coming to a soft halt by the front of the door. As Rufus descended out of the carriage, he offered a hand to help Cordelia down first, then Hermione and Phoebe followed.
The two sisters stood close together with Hermione making a point of pulling the pelisse Phoebe was wearing tight around her shoulders, trying to keep her sister warm just as the wind rushed up from the ocean buffeting their hair.
“I still think it’s creepy,” Phoebe whispered to her.
“I am sure, it will look much finer when it is light again,” Hermione said, trying to summon a smile. She fussed with her sister’s pelisse a little more until she was certain Phoebe was warm, then the front door of the manor house opened, earning her attention.
As double oak doors parted, a grand woman stepped through, wearing an empire-length gown in a bold midnight blue color, draped in refined pearls that hung down past her chest toward her stomach. The regal countenance of the woman told Hermione exactly who the lady was, even without an introduction.
“Mrs. Atkins, there you are!” The Duchess ran forward, scurrying in such a way to show that her dress was restricting her movement. “I have been looking out of the window every five minutes since lunch.” In her effort to reach her friend, she nearly tripped, saved only by Hermione reaching out to grab her arm. “Oh, thank you dear. That was sweet of you.”
“Forgive me, Your Grace,” Hermione said, retracting her hand when she realized that she had grabbed hold of a Lady of such standing.
“Think nothing of it,” the Duchess said, turning to her friend again. “Mrs. Atkins, it has been far too long.”
“That it has,” Cordelia said, taking her friend’s hands. “Allow me to introduce my family. This is my brother-in-law, the Earl of Branigan.” At Cordelia’s gesture, Rufus bowed deeply. “And these are my nieces, Lady Hermione Rogers and Lady Phoebe Rogers.” The sisters curtsied in turn, just as Rufus cleared his throat to speak.
Hermione could see the indelicacy coming before her father even spoke, for he was peering past the Duchess, trying to get a better view of the door. She winced, preparing herself for his next words. He hadn’t even said a single word to the Duchess yet, and the first thing he was to say would be impertinent indeed.
“Where is the Duke?” he asked.
