An
unexpected duchess proves that behaving
badly isn't exclusive to the Dukedom.
MY FAIR DUCHESS
Dukes Behaving Badly #5
Megan Frampton
Releasing Feb 28, 2017
Avon Books
In Megan
Frampton's most recent installment of The Dukes Behaving Badly series, an
unexpected duchess proves that behaving badly isn't exclusive to the Dukedom.
The Unexpected Duchess
Archibald
Salisbury, son of a viscount, war hero, and proficient in the proper ways of
aristocratic society, has received orders for his most challenging mission:
Genevieve, Duchess of Blakesley. How she inherited a duchy isn’t his problem.
Turning her into a perfect duchess is. But how can he keep his mind on business
when her beauty entices him toward pleasure?
It was
impossible, unprecedented…and undeniably true. Genevieve is now a “duke”, or,
rather, a duchess. So what is she to do when the ton eyes her
every move, hoping she’ll make a mistake? Genevieve knows she has brains and
has sometimes been told she has beauty, but, out of her depth, she calls on an
expert. And what an expert, with shoulders broad enough to
lean on, and a wit that matches her own. Archie is supposed to teach her to be
a lady and run her estate, but what she really wants to do is unladylike—run
into his arms.
Excerpt
1845,
Lady Sophia’s Drawing Room
“There’s
only one solution,” Lady Sophia said, passing the letter to Archie as he felt
his stomach drop. And his carefully ordered life teeter on the verge of change.
“You’ll have to go to London to sort my goddaughter out.” She embellished her
point by squeezing her tiny dog Truffles, who emitted a squeak and glared at
Archie. As if it was his fault.
He
resisted the urge to crumple the paper in his hand. “But the festival is in a
few weeks,” Archie said, hearing the desperate tone in his voice. He did not
want to ever return to London. That was the purpose of taking a position out
here in the country after leaving the Queen’s Own Hussars a year prior. His
family was there, and his father, at least, had made it clear he never wanted
to see him again. What’s more, he did not want to assist a helpless aristocrat
in some sort of desperate attempt to bring order to their lives. Even though
that was what he was doing in Lady Sophia’s employ. But working for her had come
to have its own kind of satisfactory order, one he did not want to disrupt.
“There
is work to be done,” Archie continued, hoping to appeal to his employer’s
sensible side.
Although
in the course of working for her he had come to realize his employer didn’t
really have a sensible side, so what was he hoping to
accomplish?
“Didn’t
you tell me Mr. McCready could do everything you could?” Lady Sophia asked.
“You pointed out that if you were to get ill, or busy with other matters, your
assistant steward could handle things just as well as you.”
That
was when I was trying to get one of my men work,
Archie thought in frustration. To help him get back on his feet after
the rigors of war. And Bob had proven
himself to be a remarkably able assistant, allowing
Archie to dive into Lady Sophia’s woefully neglected
accounts and see into her investments, neither of which she
paid any attention to.
Lady
Sophia placed Truffles on the rug before lifting her head to look at Archie.
Who knew, in that moment, that he was doomed. Doomed to return to London to
help out a likely far-too- indulged female in the very difficult position of
being a powerful and wealthy aristocrat.
Perhaps
it would have been easier to just get shot on the battlefield. It certainly
would have been quicker.
“It’s
settled.” She punctuated her words with a nod of her head, sending a few gray
curls flying in the air. “You will go see to the new duchess and take care of
her as ably as you do me. Mr. Mc-Cready will assist me while you are away.”
Archie
looked at the letter again. “This duchess is your relative?” he asked. That
would explain the new duchess’s equally silly mode of communication. An
“unexpected duchess,” indeed. What kind of idiot wouldn’t have foreseen this
circumstance? And done something to prepare for it?
“She
calls me aunt, but she is not my actual niece, you understand,” Lady Sophia
explained. “She is my goddaughter; her mother married the duke, the duchess’s
father. It is quite unusual for a woman to inherit the duchy.”
“Quite,”
Archie echoed.
“But
it happened, somehow, and since I don’t know anything about being a duchess . .
.” Because I do? Archie wondered. But there wasn’t anybody
else. She wouldn’t have asked Lady Sophia, of all people, unless there was
nobody else.
Or
if she was as flighty and confident as her faux-aunt. A scenario that seemed
more and more likely.
“The
only thing Mr. McCready can’t do is attract as much feminine interest as you
do, Mr. Salisbury.” She sat back up and regarded him. “Which might make him
more productive,” she added. She leaned over to offer Truffles the end of her
biscuit.
Archie opened his mouth to object, but
closed it when he realized she was right. He wasn’t vain, but he did recognize
that ladies tended to find his appearance attractive. Lady Sophia received many
more visitors, she’d told him in an irritated tone, now that he’d been hired.
Bob,
damn his eyes, smirked knowingly every time Archie was summoned to Lady
Sophia’s drawing room to answer yet another question about estate management
posed by a lady who’d likely never had such a question in her life.
Archie
responded by making Bob personally in charge of the fertilizer. It didn’t stop
Bob’s smirking, but it did make Archie feel better.
“And
you will return in a month’s time so you can be here for the festival.”
“Sooner
if I can, my lady.” If this duchess needed more time than a month, there would
be no hope for her anyway. Country life suited him; he liked its quiet and
regularity. It was a vast change from life in battle, or even being just on duty,
but it was far more interesting than being the third son from a viscount’s
family. A viscount who disowned his third boy when said boy was determined to
join the army.
Meanwhile,
however, he had to pack to head off to a new kind of battle—that of preparing a
completely unprepared woman, likely a woman as flighty and often confused as
Lady Sophia, to hold a position that she was entirely unsuited for.
Very
much like working with raw recruits, in fact.
Megan
Frampton writes
historical romance under her own name and romantic women’s fiction as Megan
Caldwell. She likes the color black, gin, dark-haired British men, and huge
earrings, not in that order. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her husband
and son. You can visit her on her website, @meganf, and at Facebook.
