Acquiring Trouble

you.
    He is the new Duke of Stanthorpe , honorable, and wealthy beyond your needs. Tell him of your enemy, I implore you, for he will help.
    You suffered as the wife of my late half-brother, and for that I make recompense. I shall call you my beloved sister into eternity. Yours, Hawksworth .

 

     
    CHAPTER ONE
    London, November 3, 1815
     
    By this time tomorrow, he would be wed.
    Gideon St. Goddard, Duke of Stanthorpe , was having second thoughts. Though he approached his Grosvenor Square home for the first time in months, more dread than anticipation filled him, for beyond the black enameled door of number twenty three , his mystery bride awaited.
    With a curse for fate and a tug on his horse Deviltry’s reins, Gideon slowed his pace, wishing the house stood empty of all but his few loyal retainers. Loyal—odd choice of words, especially for him. But, yes, they were, because he paid them well to be so.
    Loyalty, constancy, fidelity; he did not possess the natural capacity to inspire those virtues, and he did not need another upon whom to test that ability and fail.
    He did not need anyone.
    Stanthorpe Place, tall, bright white and inviting in the gentle winter sun, was not his best nor his biggest home. But Gideon had chosen it to house the woman he had agreed sight-unseen to marry, because of its proximity to the pleasures of London. If worse came to worse and he found himself leg-shackled to an antidote, he could always send her to the country to rusticate and bear his progeny, while he remained in town.
    The realization that he need not bother with her more than once or twice a year might actually serve to relieve his anxiety, if the specter of his parents’ almost-perfect marriage did not crook its come-hither finger so beguilingly.
    At least, Grandmama was pleased about his marriage. After his estranged brother’s scurrilous and untimely demise, her letter informing him of his unexpected ascendancy to the title had caught up with him in Belgium on the eve of battle. Even now, the Grande Dame believed that her letter insisting he “ Hie thee home and get thee a bride,” rather than the fall of Napoleon at Waterloo, had ultimately brought him back to England.
    In actuality, her promise to make him her heir, if he did so, had more to do with it than her insistence, that and the mighty and mercurial hand of fate.
    His coffers, while never empty, always needed topping-off. His first bride—though she never got quite that far—ran off with a wealthier bridegroom, reminding him that as far as money was concerned, one could never have enough. And Miss Whitcomb, according to her brother, needed a husband to protect her from a life of indigence. “So,” he told himself as he made his way ‘round to the mews, “‘tis all for the best.”
    Nevertheless, as he left Deviltry to the eager stable-lad’s tender ministrations, Gideon’s heart beat like a drummer-boy’s timorous tattoo.
    In an effort to divest himself of travel grime and don his best armor before meeting his intended, Gideon chose the service entrance so he could take the backstairs to his bedchamber.
    In the kitchen, Cook was not to be found but a luscious wench looking set to pup shrieked when she saw him.
    Arrested by an eerie sense of recognition, though he had never seen her before in his life, Gideon did not duck fast enough to evade the flour she tossed in guileless self-defense. Reduced to dusty ignobility, he bit off an oath that turned into a sneeze, and added spirited to luscious in his estimation of her.
    Dusting flour from his shoulders, Gideon gave his attacker a slow sweeping perusal. Judging by the manner, if not the style, of her dress, the nymph was no servant. Round in all the right places, and then some, she obviously belonged to someone else. But who? And what was she doing in his kitchen?
    “Where the devi —” A second sneeze diluted his vexation, to the point that Gideon sighed and gave it up. “Where is Cook ?”
    His attacker’s miffed mien turned sympathetic. “Oh, you must be hungry.”
    Yes, he was, suddenly and inexplicably, but not for food, he decided, chagrined over his reaction to her. He did not normally lust after women in her interesting condition, though there had been that one incredible time.
    Gideon cleared his throat. “And you are?”
    He must appear as wide-eyed and assessing as she, he mused, even as he tumbled headlong into the bottomless depths of the most amazing violet eyes he had ever