How to Catch a Duke in Ten Days by Violet Hamers

Chapter Three

“Our father is not a subtle man, is he?” Phoebe asked as she helped Hermione to unpack in her chamber.

“Not remotely,” Hermione agreed, casting her eyes to heaven in exasperation. “The poor Duchess, I was startled to see she didn’t take note of our father’s impertinence.”

“She seems a very sweet lady.”

“Very sweet,” Hermione agreed. “That was why our father’s rudeness upset me so.” She turned to add more gowns to the closet, amazed at the sheer space inside the wardrobe. The Dowager Duchess had sent a maid to do the job for them, but Hermione had sent the woman away again, craving some privacy with her sister.

The room she had been given to stay in was grander than her own back home, but their own house was not what it used to be. Where opulent décor and fine furniture used to be, there was now old-fashioned furniture in desperate need of updating and missing furniture pieces that had been sold to help pay their father’s debts. The room she now stood in felt a world away from what her own home had become.

The bed itself was an over-the-top affair with so many blankets and pillows Hermione thought she might suffocate in it. The duck-egg blue colors were matched by the rococo style settee at the far end of the room and the curtains that were draped in front of the windows.

“So, do you still find the place a little creepy?” Hermione asked, turning to her sister. Phoebe wrinkled her nose as she looked around the room, her eyes darting between the stone window frames and the plaster molded ceiling. “I’m going to take that as a yes,” Hermione giggled. “It is not so bad.”

“I beg to differ,” Phoebe sighed as she passed her sister the last gown. Before Hermione could try to comfort Phoebe anymore on the subject, there was a sound beyond the closed chamber door. “What’s that?”

“Footsteps, I think,” Hermione said, listening as the fast patter of steps hurried up the corridor. When they reached her door, there was no knock of warning, and the door was merely flung open, revealing Cordelia beyond. “Aunt, what is wrong?” Hermione asked, watching as her aunt blustered forward with flushed cheeks.

“The window– take a look. Hurry!” she urged, waving her hands madly.

Phoebe was the first one to reach the window and peer beyond the curtains. “It’s a carriage,” she said, pressing her face to the glass.

Hermione felt the curiosity burn inside of her. Despite knowing that trying to trick a man into marriage was awful, she wanted to know just what he looked like. She hurried to her sister’s side, just as Cordelia did as well, and the three women gazed out of the glass.

Far below them on the pebble driveway was a tall black carriage. When the door opened, a young man stepped down, tilting his face up enough that in the moonlight they could see a glimpse of his features. With brown hair coiffed stylishly large eyes, and rounded features, he had a charismatic deportment.

“That must be him,” Cordelia said excitedly. “The Duke!”

That is the Duke of Benson?

Hermione couldn’t stop the feeling of disappointment that rippled in her chest. Whilst he appeared pleasant looking, she felt no attraction, none at all. Involuntarily, her hand lifted to the locket she always wore round her neck and clutched tightly to it.

“Hermione, it is your first glimpse of your future husband. What do you think?” Cordelia giggled, full of animation.

“I…” Hermione struggled for words as she watched the man turn away. He was talking to someone else who stepped down from the carriage, a man dressed in poor clothes who may well have been a footman. “I do not know.”

“I think he’s very handsome,” Phoebe said in a sing-song voice as she pressed her cheek against the glass.

“Do you?” Hermione asked with a small smile. Phoebe pulled her face back off the glass and lowered her gaze, blushing. “You do not need to feel embarrassed, Phoebe. It is only natural to be impressed by a gentleman’s looks.” Hermione wished she could say the same for herself.

Well… perhaps I could learn in time to find him attractive?

She had to hope it was the case, for both hers and Phoebe’s sakes, or they’d be packed off to live as spinsters together.

“We must begin our plans tonight,” Cordelia said, hurrying away from the window, back toward the door.

“Tonight? Aunt, no!” Hermione flicked her head away from the window and chased her aunt across the room. “We have retired for the night, as has the Dowager Duchess. To make an introduction now would be rude indeed! Abominably so.”

“When it comes to ensnaring a man in marriage, Hermione, we cannot worry so much about propriety,” Cordelia said with mischief as she reached for the handle.

“Aunt, listen to yourself!” Hermione pleaded as she placed a foot against the door, jamming it and preventing it from opening. “Do you not see the error of talking so? I refuse to be a part of this. I will be introduced to the Duke tomorrow at a normal hour, not in the depths of night.”

“Nonsense. You are too proper for your own good sometimes. Now, wait here.” Cordelia pulled the door open, shoving Hermione’s foot out of the way.

“Ow!” Hermione snatched her foot back as Cordelia disappeared through the door. She hobbled to lean on a wall nearby as she flexed her toes, turning to see Phoebe staring at her.

“I’m so sorry,” Phoebe said miserably from where she still stood by the window. “Maybe you could still talk your way out of a meeting tonight?”

“Maybe I’ll be unable to walk there because of our aunt,” Hermione said with humor as she pointed down at her injured foot. To her delight, Phoebe’s worried countenance lapsed into a giggle.

The two fell into silence, but it did not last long for Cordelia was back again, hurrying through the door with anxiousness in her manner as she waved her hands in Hermione’s direction.

“He has just gone into the study,” Cordelia said, taking her elbow. “You must go and join him.”

“Aunt, I will not,” Hermione declared with vigor, standing her ground. “I cannot walk in on a man and invade his privacy. What would I even say? My apologies, Your Grace. I have just happened upon you in your study because I wanted to look through your papers,” she stated mockingly. “What plausible reason could I have for being in his study?”

“Say you lost your way.” Cordelia steered her toward the door. “Appear helpless, like a lost lamb.”

“How attractive,” Hermione sneered at the idea.

“Do not be snarky, Hermione.” Cordelia pushed her in the small of her back, out into the corridor. Hermione only had chance to glance back once to Phoebe, who was looking at her sister with worry, before Cordelia closed the door behind them. Her aunt took Hermione’s hand tightly and dragged her down the corridor, past candles set against the walls toward the tall staircase that was in the center of the building.

“Through there.” Cordelia released her niece’s hand and pointed through a gap in the banister down to the lower floor and a door that was now closed.

“Aunt, please…”

“Hermione, you know you must,” her aunt turned to her with a gentle tone and took her hand softly. “For Phoebe’s sake as much as your own. Please, go.”

Seeing the pain and hearing the pleading tone, Hermione found herself nodding. With nerves on edge, she moved toward the staircase, and began to descend, holding the skirt of her dress high above her ankles to allow herself to walk. When she reached the halfway point on the stairs, she looked up to see Cordelia waving at her with enthusiasm. As she reached the bottom, she turned to the closed door that Cordelia had pointed out, breathing deeply.

I have to do this. For Phoebe. She repeated the words over and over again in her mind, but still her body did not move toward the door. She glanced back to the landing above, and when she found Cordelia was no longer there watching, she saw an opportunity to escape.

Little by little, she backed up from the study door across the hallway, heading toward a different room entirely. When the Dowager Duchess had given them a tour earlier that evening, there was a particular room that had caught her eye: the library.

Collecting a candle off one of the hallway tables, she carried the brass holder down a slimmer corridor that peeled off the first, hurrying to the far end. Set within the wall was a double doorway that she opened, revealing the library beyond.

Just as she had done earlier that evening, she paused and gasped at the sheer expanse of the room. Where her father’s library was small, damp with mold, and missing books, this was the opposite. It was vast indeed with so many bookshelves, not just lining the walls but set within the center of the room, that a labyrinth had been created. The ceiling height was great too, at least twice her height.

“It’s a maze of books,” Hermione whispered under her breath in awe. She stepped into the room and closed the door behind her.

She wandered between the shelves for many minutes, searching through the literature the room had to offer, before she found a book she had longed to read ever since its publication the year before: The Modern Prometheus.

Taking the book within her hands, she moved to a fireplace and sat down in an armchair pulled close to its side. It was a grand wingback chair with the arms curving around her like an embrace. She settled within it, placing the candle on a table beside her and pulling the book into her lap. As she peeled back the front cover, she felt the first genuine smile she’d experienced for the last week and a half pull at her lips. She may not have been able to escape her father’s insistence on marriage for good, but at least she could escape it for one night.

* * *

Antony was certain he had heard noises on the staircase of someone moving around. Yet, as he moved back to the hallway, he found nothing except the empty stairs. Confused, he picked up a candle off a table and held it aloft over the staircase, wondering if he looked a little harder whether he would be able to find the source of the sound. Yet, the light bounced back at him off the empty steps.

Despite his mother’s insistence on their return home, by the time they had arrived back at the house that evening, both the Dowager Duchess and their guests had retired for the night. Antony didn’t mind too much as he was glad of the peace.

“Did you hear something?” Fergus’ sudden voice made Antony jump and spin round. Fergus didn’t hold back his laughter. He chuckled as he stood in the doorway of the study, looking at his brother. “Apologies, I didn’t mean to make you jump.”

“I thought I heard something too,” Antony explained, looking back at the staircase. “Perhaps, we are imagining things.”

“Maybe so,” Fergus said, leaning on the doorframe as he tilted his head to the side, analyzing Antony.

“What is it?” Antony asked, shifting under his brother’s gaze.

“Well, you do look rather a mess,” Fergus pointed out. In answer to these words, Antony turned to look at the nearest mirror stationed on the wall of the hallway. In the candlelight, he could see just what Fergus meant.

The brandy the bawd had spilt over his trousers was beginning to stain, and the jacket he had borrowed made him look more like a groundskeeper than a Duke at all, with the torn cuffs and the smears of dirt.

“I’ll clean up later,” Antony said, turning and walking away from the mirror.

“Later! It is already late,” Fergus pointed out as Antony walked past him.

“This from the man who has gone to the study to work,” Antony said wryly.

“I’m just looking over my next orders for the navy,” Fergus said. “What are you going to do?”

“Read,” Antony called back to his brother as he passed from the mail hallway into a narrow corridor beyond. The library was a place he found solace in when the depths of night were upon him. There, he could lose himself in tales of beings whose lives were so different to his own, and he could imagine he lived in their shoes for a short while.

As he pushed open the library door soundlessly, he was startled to find there was already a candle in the room, for the orb was visible, streaming through the gaps in the bookshelves. Curious, he didn’t head straight for the book he was currently reading. Instead, he started to wander through the labyrinth of shelves, searching for the source of the light.

When he caught sight of the candle perched on a table beside an armchair, his feet stopped abruptly beneath him. Someone was in his father’s favorite armchair. The thought was too abhorrent. Since his father’s passing, he didn’t allow anyone to sit there.

He hurried forward again, rounding one of the bookshelves until he caught sight of just who had been so bold as to sit there.

It was a woman. Dressed in a pale blue gown with a deep neckline and sleeves that reached her elbow, he could see even sitting down she was petite with soft curves. Her legs were crossed delicately, showing the length beneath the gown. She hadn’t noticed his approach for she was too busy reading the book in her lap.

She turned a page in her book, resting one of her hands on the arm of the chair. The movement shook Antony out of his ogling of the stranger, reminding him of the brazen disrespect of the moment. A stranger had made herself at home in his father’s chair.

“Who are you? And what are you doing there?” he asked, finding his voice.