A Duke She Can't Refuse Read online

  Alexander leaned in. “Survival is not good enough. I will not allow you to ruin your reputation while it lies in my power to repair it.”

  “That is kind of you. Doubtless kinder than I deserve. But I have no desire to be rescued from a stain on my reputation at the expense of my future happiness. A few catty whispers are not enough to frighten me into giving up all hope.” Daisy clasped her hands together in her lap. “My brother worked too hard and risked too much to ensure I would have the means to marry for love.” She came close to betraying Ralph by hinting at his past struggles. He had taken great pains to make sure that the financial troubles their father had left them never became public knowledge. But there was no other way to make Alexander understand. She didn’t only owe it to herself to reject Alexander’s offer; she owed it to her brother.

  Alexander nodded, one hand propped under his chin. “I am glad to see you appreciate his efforts so deeply. Let me assure you that I would never dream of invalidating them. What I suggest is an engagement in name only. I will not hold you to any promises. The moment you find a more desirable match, I will release you on the most amicable terms.”

  “That will make you look like a fool.”

  “Dukes are never foolish, Miss Morton.” At last, he gave her a genuine smile. It transformed his stern features the way sunlight transformed a grey winter’s day. “Nor, it seems, are we ever at a loss for feminine companionship. The truth is that this temporary arrangement will benefit us both. Ever since I inherited the dukedom, I have been plagued by young ladies desperate for nothing more than my title. Worse still, I find my political endeavours continually frustrated by the suggestion that I make a marital alliance with some family or another. I have no wish to marry at present.”

  Daisy nodded slowly. “So you intend to use me to keep the matchmakers away?”

  “At least for my first Season as duke. I believe you will make a tolerable companion while I establish myself in my new position. We will treat each other with just enough affection to make it appear that I am in love with you, while keeping your honour unquestionably pristine. And at the end of the Season, when the rumours about you have been forgotten, we will announce our separation. I will be able to claim a broken heart to avoid any further suggestion that I should marry for political gain. And you will be free to marry for love.”

  “You believe I will be… tolerable?” Daisy repeated, cocking her head to one side.

  “Should I dare hope for more?” A spark of amusement glimmered in his eyes.

  She had never known the solemn Alexander Balfour to tease before. Those eyes, a misty grey, had always seemed cold as slate. Mysterious, at best. Never mischievous.

  “You do not seem to have considered whether your company will be tolerable to me, Your Grace.”

  He laughed, a warm, rich sound, and settled back in his chair. “Oh, I can waltz as well as any man. I can turn pages at the pianoforte, listen to poetry, and look dashing in a topcoat at the opera. What more do you require?”

  Daisy’s list of requirements for her future husband would have filled the pages of a novel. Alexander’s suggestions made a fine beginning, but he had omitted, for starters: a sharp wit, a hunger for books, an assiduous writer of letters, charitable to the poor, patient with the elderly, confident in public speaking, and, naturally, besotted with Daisy, but not to the extent that he sought to curtail her freedom.

  Since her teenage years, she had devoted a great deal of imagination to enumerating her future husband’s good qualities, and much less in determining whether such a heavenly being existed on the face of the earth.

  “That will do,” she said. “For now.”

  “How fortunate.” Alexander crossed his arms across his chest. “In return, I ask only one thing of you.”

  “I suppose I ought to agree to it. You are going to the trouble of saving me, after all.”

  He held up a finger. “I am quite serious, Miss Morton. I will do all I can to appear helplessly in love with you. I will play the part of the ardent admirer so well that no one will doubt that my affection for you is real. But I will only do this on the condition that you are honest with me. There is no possibility of our engagement progressing to marriage. I will feign love for you, but no more. If your feelings ever develop beyond friendship – if there is any risk of our arrangement causing you to suffer – you must tell me at once. I prize honesty above all other qualities.”

  His steady gaze was suddenly difficult to meet. “Have I given you reason to doubt my honesty?”

  Alexander held out his hand. “Where is the duchess’s vase?” he asked.

  Ah.

  Daisy lifted her chin and looked him in the eye. She had no need to feel embarrassed – especially since the fault for the broken vase lay with Edith – but she was sorry to think of the duchess losing a memento of her beloved husband, and it saddened her to know that Alexander would blame her for it. “I am afraid it is in here.” She opened her reticule and took out a shard of orange and blue-painted pottery.

  Alexander regarded it for a moment. “I see.”

  “It was an accident.”

  “Accidents have a way of happening when people are not where they are supposed to be.”

  Daisy bit the inside of her cheek hard enough to take her mind off the unfairness of it all. She came closer than ever to simply telling him the truth. Edith would have to accept her punishment, and Daisy…

  Well, Daisy would still be the girl Lady Shrewsbury caught hiding in a duke’s bedroom. There was no helping that now. Any explanation she gave would seem a mere excuse in society’s eyes – even if it was the truth.

  But even if she had been the one to break the vase, what right did Alexander have to chastise her? Had he never been caught doing something he shouldn’t?

  Her fingers tensed around the broken pottery.

  “Be careful!” Alexander sprang from his chair and caught up her hand.

  Daisy looked at her finger, and only then noticed the pain. The sharp point of the broken vase had sliced through her glove and into her fingertip. A bead of dark blood stained the white silk.

  Alexander took the shard from her with one gentle hand and drew a spotless handkerchief from his pocket with the other. He pulled off her glove and wrapped her finger up so quickly that Daisy did not even have time to gasp as he applied pressure to the wound.

  The last thing she had expected was that his visit would end with Alexander on his knees before her, her hand clasped in both of his. There was something peculiarly gratifying about it. The serious expression he always wore, that look that was always halfway to a frown, now softened with concern for her. It was touching. It was oddly pleasant.

  “Does it hurt?” he asked, still pressing her finger tight.

  “Not at all.” It was the truth. She doubted she would have felt a mortal wound, with Alexander’s touch to distract her.

  He tilted his head to one side, his eyes searching her face for the answer to a question she did not know he had asked. “Caution is not one of your finer qualities.”

  “No.”

  Slowly, Alexander raised her bare hand to his lips and kissed her knuckles, still holding her gaze. The warmth of his mouth spread into every one of Daisy’s fingertips. Her stomach fluttered.

  “The bleeding has stopped,” he said, too soon, and unwrapped her hand. Daisy took it back slowly, cradling it in the other – not to soothe the pain, but to try to keep hold of the wonderful sensation of his lips against her skin.

  Alexander remained on his knees before her. That unlooked-for sparkle returned to his grey eyes. “Well, Miss Morton, since I’m down here – will you be my false fiancé?”

  What else was there to say but yes?

  3

  Alexander paused before getting into his gilded carriage, removing his hat and letting the fresh night breeze ruffle the hair his valet had so carefully arranged. Yet another ball awaited him at the end of this brief drive through Mayfair. Another evening spent re
ceiving compliments nobody really meant, politely declining veiled offers of political alliances, and fending off ladies who did not truly want him.

  As the breeze picked up, he permitted himself a smile. That last problem, at least, would soon be taken care of.

  “Alex?” Selina leaned out of the carriage. “People will notice if we’re late.”

  And his hosts would be mortified. His name had been used to lure in half the guest list, after all.

  He settled the hat back onto his head. “Then we had better arrive on time.” He might resent being the trump card in the endless games of social one-upmanship played by the ton, but that was no excuse to be rude.

  Gleeful laughter rippled out from the second carriage, where the three younger Balfour girls were travelling under the less-than-watchful supervision of their elderly Aunt Ursula. Which unlucky would-be suitor was the victim of their mirth this time? Perhaps it was better not to know.

  Alexander sat opposite Selina and rapped on the ceiling, signalling the driver to leave. The carriage moved off, its thickly stuffed cushions lending its occupants a certain degree of protection from the uneven cobbled streets. A duke’s fortune certainly had its benefits.

  Selina pursed her lips and reached out to straighten Alexander’s hat. She had dabbed her wrists with the lilac perfume that never failed to summon the memory of their mother. “Daisy Morton will be at the ball tonight.” It was more than half an accusation.

  “I expect so. I sent her a note telling her I would be there.”

  Selina breathed out an exasperated sigh. “Alex, I am not blind. When are you going to tell me what was going on in your bedchamber the other day? I know there is nothing romantic between you. Well – on her part, I suppose, there have been some signs of admiration, but you have always been too blockheaded to notice them.” She smiled. “Don’t look surprised. Daisy is a very sweet girl, but I fear she has never learned to be subtle.”

  “Admiration? Really?”

  Selina leaned forwards and rapped his knee with her knuckles. “You did not propose to her simply because I happened to notice she admired you. Tell me what really happened.”

  “You know most of it already. I am not keeping any great secrets from you. Some hare-brained scheme was underfoot at the tea party – a scheme which I am sure involves Edith, though I am not yet certain how – and Daisy Morton was discovered in a compromising position in my bedchamber. Don’t say you would rather I let her suffer the consequences. Society can be cruel to women who don’t obey the rules.”

  Selina rested her chin on her hand and studied him keenly, the pearls in her hair glimmering faintly as they passed under a streetlamp. “You are risking an awful lot, Alex.”

  “On the contrary, I do not see any risk on my part at all.”

  “Really? You are not the sort to take these matters lightly. What if this false engagement damages your own chances of happiness?”

  He turned his gaze to the window, watching the dark trees of the leafy avenue pass by. “That sort of happiness is not for me, Selina. You know that.”

  The cushions creaked as she sat back. When he risked a glance at her, her eyes were round and sad.

  “I thought that once you inherited the dukedom you might begin to see things differently. To see a future for yourself.”

  He took her hand and squeezed it. “There is plenty of good in my future without all that. As there is in yours.”

  She shook her hand free of his and folded it over the other in her lap. Poised and prim: the image of the society heiress. He knew exactly what lay beneath that glacial demeanour, and he knew still better that the moment before a ball was not the time to discuss it.

  “You must waltz with Daisy,” she said. “And take her into supper. Fetch her refreshments before she knows she’s thirsty. Laugh when she makes a joke.”

  “I will be the perfect suitor.”

  Selina arched an eyebrow. “Of course you will. In every way but the one that counts.”

  The offhand reference to Daisy’s supposed admiration nagged at him. If such an admiration existed – and he was not certain that it did – it was an unwanted complication. The worst thing he could do would be to fill an already infatuated girl’s head with romantic fantasies.

  But surely Selina was mistaken. Daisy was too candid, too outspoken, too sure of herself to nurture a secret fancy. She might admire him for his title, or his wealth, as so many other girls did, but his character was in so many ways the opposite of hers that it was laughable to imagine she had developed a partiality. Her heart was safe.

  Which was just as well, since Alexander could never give her his.

  As he entered the ballroom, Selina on one arm and his elderly aunt on the other, the first thing that struck him was the overbearing heat and the smell of too many heavily perfumed bodies in one space. No one would have known it was a private affair judging by the crush of guests. Fortunately, in the weeks since he became the duke, crowds had taken on an alarming habit of parting before him. He found a space amid the crush with relative ease.

  Anthea, Isobel, and Edith quickly dispersed into the crowd, each moving in a different direction. Aunt Ursula had abandoned any hopes she had of watching over them long ago. She made a beeline for the card tables, where Alexander supposed she would remain until suppertime.

  “Try not to devastate too many gentlemen,” he said to Selina, as she prepared to follow their sisters’ lead and seek out her own particular friends. “It is traditional to dance at least once at a ball.”

  Selina scanned the room with a haughty eye. “I have yet to see anyone worth dancing with.”

  She was speaking in jest, but in light of their conversation in the carriage, Alexander could not help but feel a stab of guilt.

  There had once been someone whom Selina had wished to dance all her dances with.

  He forced a smile, knowing that the last thing she wanted was pity, and dropped her arm to go in search of Daisy Morton.

  It did not take him long to find her. Daisy was the sort of girl who surrounded herself with lively company wherever she went. Alexander, solitary by nature, did not relish the prospect of interrupting the excited circle of young ladies in pastel gowns with Daisy at their centre. Especially since he suspected he was the subject of their eager chatter.

  As he approached, and first one, then another girl noticed him, they fell silent and nudged each other in a way which suggested his suspicions were absolutely correct. The light sparkling in Daisy’s eyes as she curtseyed left Alexander convinced that he would rather not know what they had been saying.

  “Good evening, Daisy,” he said, using her first name so casually that an audible intake of breath rippled outwards through the assembled girls. “May I steal you away from your fair companions?”

  Daisy sailed forward to take his arm, allowing herself the luxury of a quick glance around to see the envy on her friends’ faces. It was rather sweet to see how much she enjoyed being the object of his attention.

  “My dear duke,” she said. “I hope you have not come to ask me to dance. My card is already so full that I won’t be able to sit down all evening.”

  He seized her hand and pressed it to his lips. A sigh went up from their giddy young audience. “I will fight any man who tries to take the supper dance from me.”

  Daisy raised a hand to her mouth in mock horror. “I could not possibly allow a fight on my behalf! The supper dance is yours.”

  “You are too kind. Shall I fetch you a glass of champagne?”

  “You may,” she said airily, waving goodbye to the girls as he led her away.

  Alexander lowered his mouth to her ear in the semblance of a lover’s whisper. “How was that? Convincing?”

  “Surprisingly enjoyable.” Daisy fluttered her fan near her mouth to hide what she was saying. “I never thought of myself as vain, but it seems I am not immune to a little self-satisfaction. Especially when I have not truly earned it.”

  Alexander took two gl
asses of champagne from a footman’s tray and passed one to her. “But you have earned the friendship those girls feel for you. They were more pleased for you than jealous.”

  “If only I believed that.” Daisy gestured back towards the gossiping huddle of ladies with her glass. “I did not fully understand what you meant when you spoke of how the dukedom had changed your life. I am a great deal more popular than I was yesterday, and the rumours about us have barely begun to spread.”

  “I am sorry to burden you.”

  She lowered her eyebrows and gave him a suspicious sideways glance. “Was that a joke?”

  “Partly.” One more at his expense than hers. His new position often felt like an iron chain around his neck. He could not move in any direction without hearing its painful clanking.

  “You should joke more often.” Daisy held her champagne up, admiring the way the candlelight glittered through the bubbles. “In fact, you should be altogether more cheerful and less…”

  “Less what?”

  “Less of a duke!” she blurted out. “You are so serious that it is sometimes a little bit frightening.”

  The idea of Daisy Morton, of all people, being intimidated by him was rather endearing. “Isn’t wooing you in public enough of a change to my character?”

  “Not if you never smile.” She took a sip of champagne. “You are much more handsome when you smile.”

  Alexander did not know whether or not to be offended. Worse, the beginnings of one of the smiles she had ordered from him was tugging at the corner of his mouth. He fought it back, on principle. “I did not realise I needed to be handsome. I thought I simply had to be –”

  “Hopelessly in love,” sighed Daisy. “And that requires you to smile.”

  Now he really could not help it. A slow grin spread across his face. Daisy noticed, her eyebrows shot up, and she smiled in return.

  This was far from wise. If Selina was right, and Daisy was harbouring a secret admiration, this behaviour would only encourage it. There was no need to smile at her when nobody was watching.