Page 1 of Tamed By her Duke

PROLOGUE

“Might I say, Lady Grace,” intoned the Duke of Hawkins in the tone of a man who considered himself to be bestowing a very great favor with his mere presence, “that you are looking quite pretty tonight?”

Grace pasted her Society smile on her face as she looked up at the duke and?—

Oh. Well, he was attempting to gaze directly down the front of her gown. How lovely.

She ensured that her smile stayed fixed. “How kind, Your Grace,” she said with all the polish that a duke’s daughter had to offer—and that was a great deal of polish, indeed. She would hazard that not even her three closest friends would be able to tell, from seeing her expression, how intensely she regretted dancing with the Duke of Hawkins, who was not merely a profligate, but one old enough to be her father.

Fortunately, he didn’t seem to need much else from her besides her simpering agreement.

He went on elucidating his ideas onyoung ladies these days, whom he evidently found to be inadequate.

“Nice to see a girl know her place, it is,” he proclaimed. “Not with all these ideas about whatshewants from a marriage. What she gets is a man’s name and a roof over her head. In exchange, she provides the heirs. If those wallflower types could just accept how simple it is, they wouldn’t indulge themselves with all the sulking and hiding.”

Grace—who, for what it was worth, thought this man was talking utter nonsense and was friends with several perfectly lovely wallflowers, thank you very much—let his words wash over her like so much hot air. Her upbringing had taught her a great number of useful things, but one of the most frequently valuable was the idea that sometimes it was just best to let a man talk himself out.

Just because she knew this, however, didn’t mean she wasn’t grateful when the waltz came to an end, and she was able to get away from the odious fellow.

“Well,” she muttered to herself as she ducked and weaved through the throngs of partygoers. “Lesson learned, I suppose.”

This was, overall, how Grace was choosing to think of her debut season—as a quest to learn as much as she could, so that she could understand gentlemen as a speciesbefore deciding whichqualities she did or did not want in a husband. The only thing she knew for certain at this point was that the termspecieswas correct, as she often felt, when looking at the gentlemen of theton,that she might as well be looking at one of those great apes that she’d recently seen in a traveling menagerie: they both had certain familiar features, but they remained utterly mysterious to her.

At least the gentlemen (unlike the ape, as its keeper had gleefully informed anyone who would listen) didn’t have the habit of flinging unmentionable things at the people in their path. Or…at least not physical things, she thought with a giggle. The Duke of Hawkins certainly hadn’t had a problem flinging his wretchedopinionsat her.

Most of the time, Grace found this investigation rather fun. She would flirt—just enough to enjoy herself, but not enough that her father would rail about the risk to her reputation…or his. She would dance with as many people as she could. And then she would, with no detail spared, report it all to her three closest friends, Diana Fletching, Emily Rutley, and Frances Johnson.

But first, she needed some air. Something that would help her take the dance with that awful duke and turn it into some witty story for her friends’ entertainment, instead of a tragic indictment of the sheer audacity of gentlemen.

“Good evening, Lady Grace,” said a shrewd-eyed older woman as Grace passed. The Dowager…something of something. Grace couldn’t recall. One of her elder brother Evan’s friend’s mothers.

“Good evening,” she said back, sending the woman the same smile she’d given to the Duke of Hawkins.

Grace didn’tneedthe reminder—she was a politician’s daughter through and through—but the woman calling out her name had given her one anyway: she was always being watched. Her Season of fun could vanish in an instant if her reputation carried so much as the faintest whiff of scandal.

Thus, her quest for a cool breath of air didn’t carry her all the way out to the veranda, where ruination lurked at the hand of vicious gossips. No doubt some loose-lipped old biddy would simplyloveto crow that she’d seen Lady Grace Miller step out for a moment’s peacewithout a chaperone.

With an inward roll of her eyes at the absurd rules that young ladies were meant to follow, she instead stopped at the very cuspof the veranda, so she could feel the breeze through the open doors while remaining technically in the ballroom. It was the difference of half a step—but to theton, that could mean everything.

Or it could mean nothing at all. For as Grace turned, eager to let the spring night caress the back of her neck, revealed by her high, pinned coiffure, someone reached out from behind andgrabbed her.

Grace’s squeak of surprise was drowned out by the quartet striking up the first notes of the next dance—for years to come, she would rage over that moment, that last opportunity to callout loudly enough to draw attention, before the gloved hand clapped over her mouth.

“Now, now, my lady,” crooned a voice she couldn’t identify, low and mocking. “Don’t struggle now. Wouldn’t want me to slip.”

Grace’s heart stuttered in her chest as something cold and metal andsharppressed into the side of her neck, just beneath her ear, in the place where her pulse thundered against delicate flesh.

“Gently now, gently,” her assailant said, sounding practically gleeful. Her instincts screamed at her to do something—anything—as he drew her, step by step, away from the noise and light of the ballroom, deeper and deeper into the dark. But that cold pinprick reminded her that doing so would be very stupid, indeed.

So instead of fighting back—and yes, this would haunt her, too, during the long nights she would spend huddled in a space too small to be called a room, shivering too hard to sleep—she followed, meek as a lamb being led to the slaughter.

In order to keep his hand firmly on her mouth and the knife at her throat, her assailant had to press her head back into the curve of his shoulder. It made her position awkward, their movement together precarious. She was moving forward while arched half backward, not able to look down at her own feet properly as she was led down the veranda steps and across the lawn, which grew dark, then darker.

Despite not being brave enough to try anything, not with that knife a constant threat, fate intervened, however briefly, on Grace’s behalf. The dark garden path was uneven, Grace’s step unsteady. She tripped, stumbled, fell. It was only by the grace of God that she didn’t get her throat slit on the way down. Even so, a small, sharp line of pain lit up where the knife had been pressed.

Grace ignored it. She was on the ground now, out of reach. This was her chance—her one chance. Her mind raced as she scrabbled backward in the dirt. She sucked in a lungful of air and let out a single, piercing scream?—

And then the villain tackled her, the dense, sweaty weight of him knocking the air from her. His gloved hands were merciless as they grabbed her, seeking her face, covering her mouth again.

---