Page 10 of His Duchess' Wicked List

His voice seemed to fill the carriage as she recalled his shocking conditions. He knew he held the power. He had the list, and he wasn’t going to surrender it easily. Apparently, he was going to make her work for it. And she had only one day to agree to his demands.

The pressure was intense. The thought of her list being leaked to a scandal sheet was enough to give her a conniption. Her parents would be so mortified that she doubted they wouldeverspeak to her again!

Maddie put her head in her hands, squeezing her eyes shut. Whatwasshe going to do?

CHAPTER 5

“Good morning, Milady.” Jane’s voice was irritably chirpy as she drew the curtains in Maddie’s bedroom. “It is time to rise and shine!”

Maddie lifted her head from the pillow, scowling. She had a slight headache as if she was coming down with a fever. She toyed with the idea of just telling her mother she was sick and staying abed for the entire day while she wrestled with how to deal with this impossible situation.

But she knew it would never work. Her mother ran the household as if she were a general in Napolean’s army. Maddie knew she would have to be suffering from the pox, or some equally hideous and potentially fatal illness, before her mama would let her idle a day away in bed.

“What time is it, Jane?” Maddie mumbled, groaning.

“Just past eight,” Jane replied, walking to the wardrobe. “Which gown would you like to wear today, Milady?”

Maddie collapsed back onto the pillow. She couldn’t even begin to think about such things as gowns and the like. Her whole world was threatening to collapse around her. And all because of a certain diabolically handsome gentleman who seemed determined to toy with her.

“I do not care,” she groaned, shielding her face with a hand to block out the light streaming in from the windows. “I give you carte blanche to choose at your discretion, Jane.”

“Very well then, Milady.” Jane rustled through the wardrobe and then emerged with a pea-green morning gown with delicate embroidery on the bodice. “This color looks lovely on you, so it does!”

“If you say so.” Maddie sighed, struggling to rise. She swung her legs over the edge of the bed, squinting. “I cannot even think.”

Her mind was working furiously as Jane briskly dressed her, pulling and turning her around as if she were dressing a doll, trying to arrive at a solution to her problem. But Maddie just couldn’t seem to work out anything.

She tried to forcibly retrieve the list the night before, but that didn’t work. She could try rummaging around Selina’s house, to steal it back, but what were the chances the Duke of Everly would leave it anywhere obvious? He probably had a secret compartment in that desk where he had hidden it. She knew herfather secured some valuables in that way, to protect them from theft.

As Jane brushed her hair, securing it into a chignon at the nape of her neck, Maddie stared at herself in the mirror of her dressing table, still pondering the problem. A pale, pinched face gazed back at her, tight with worry. Itwasimpossible. It truly seemed as if she might have to agree to his shocking terms, in order to get the list back safely.

The maid had just finished clasping a necklace around her neck when the door opened. It was Augusta, dressed in a plain navy blue gown that might have suited a nun.

Maddie’s sister didn’t believe in ostentatious dressing, saying it weakened women, playing into society’s expectations that women could only be pretty and frivolous.

“You may leave us, Jane,” Maddie said, trying to smile at her lady’s maid.

Jane bobbed a curtsey, before withdrawing from the room, closing the door firmly behind her.

Maddie rose, gazing at her sister. Augusta was still so lovely, despite the fact that she was getting closer to thirty rather than twenty. And despite her admiration for her sister’s courage to express her unconventional views, Maddie sometimes wondered if Augusta was lonely, beneath it all.

It took a lot of pluck to be so blatantly anti-matrimony in their position. Even though Maddie knew the reasons why Augusta held so firmly onto her convictions, was part of it just bravado? Underneath it all, did Augusta secretly crave a loving husband and family, while simultaneously pushing the idea of it away?

She studied her sister’s familiar face carefully. Augusta always wore a slightly closed expression now, as if she were constantly on the defensive. Maddie hoped they were as close as they had been before, but there were certain things she just couldn’t talk about with Augusta anymore—like the past. That was off-limits.

“You certainly riled Mama last evening.” Maddie shook her head ruefully. “You know she will make good on her threat now, do you not?”

Augusta looked mutinous. “She will try. But that does not mean she will succeed, Sister.” Her face darkened further. “I will simply run away again if she tries to force me into matrimony, you know that.”

Maddie gaped at her. “And do what? Exist in penury as a governess in someone else’s home? Try to make your living as a seamstress with your basic talent for embroidery?” She shook her head again. “You would do far better to simply pick your own husband, Augusta. Choose your own life.”

Augusta’s shoulders slumped as if all the fight had abruptly left her. “I cannot choose a man. I will not.” She looked so weary and sad that Maddie’s heart lurched. “It is impossible, and you know why. But I suppose you are right—if Mama forces me, I shallhave no choice but to capitulate. I am woefully under-skilled to earn my own living, as all ladies are. They raise us to exist within gilded cages. I am doomed.”

“It might not be so bad,” Maddie assured in a soft voice, reaching out to touch her sister’s arm reassuringly. She hated seeing Augusta upset. “It could be a good marriage. Itispossible.”

Augusta shook her head vigorously. “No. If Mama makes me, then I will be forced to do it, but I will not willingly walk into the institution of marriage of my own volition, Maddie.”

Maddie sighed. Her sister’s views were implacable, and she wasn’t going to waste her time trying to change them. She didn’t have the emotional strength this morning. Her head was still spinning violently with her own predicament.

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