Page 484 of From Rakes to Riches

“I suppose I am a woman,” she admitted, grudgingly. “Beneath it all.”

“And won’t the Duke of Rakesley know it?”

Gemma removed her hat and took a long look at herself in the mirror. A riot of thick red-gold curls. That was her untamed hair—a force to be reckoned with. And in combination with the delicate features of her face…

Liam was, of course, correct.

Rakesley, with his fathomless black eyes that pierced and assessed, would see through her sooner rather than later.

An idea stole in. A bold idea…

Who was to say she had to keep all this hair, anyway?

She wasn’t some ingenue about to make her debut with the intent of securing a lord for a husband.

She was a bastard on the run, trying to secure a future free of fear for herself and her brother.

Was there anything that woman wouldn’t do?

Right.

She turned on her heel and made straight for the door.

“Where are you going now?” Liam called out to her back.

“To procure a pair of scissors.”

2

SOMERTON MANOR, NEXT MORNING

Rake stepped inside the breakfast room drenched with morning sunshine at precisely seven o’clock—as he did every day.

The first to arrive, too—every day.

His was an ordered life. It was the same for any man who ran a successful stable. Horses—particularly Thoroughbreds—thrived on structure and had a keen distaste for disorder.

He took his usual place at the head of the gleaming mahogany table that sat a modest twelve—this wasn’t the dining room, after all—and settled back into his chair, allowing the servants to perform their jobs: one footman placing the morning papers and correspondence to his left, another pouring coffee to his right, and yet another footman setting his breakfast before him—a plate bearing fruit, two boiled eggs, and a bowl of honeyed porridge. The same meal every morning.

Rake shuffled the turf newspaper to the bottom of the stack and began flipping through letters while he sipped his coffee, on the lookout for one missive in particular. It wasn’t there. In fact, this was the fifth consecutive day he’d been expecting the letter and it hadn’t arrived.

The Dowager Duchess of Acaster was playing the tease.

A ploy he could respect.

Her deceased husband, the Duke of Acaster, had been in possession of the second finest racing stable in England—second to Rake’s, of course. A year had passed since the old lech’s death, and Rake didn’t like the idea of all those fine Thoroughbreds sitting around and going to fat—or worse, being sold off in a Tattersall’s dispersal sale, which widows were prone to do with their deceased, horse-mad husbands’ stables.

Rake would write her again today. She had a five-year-old mare named Silky Sadie he was keen to have for Somerton. Silky Sadie was descended from the Darley line and had won at Doncaster as a three-year-old. No matter their lineage, Rake only bred mares who were race winners, which was how he maintained the excellence of his stud.

At least, that would be the surface of his letter to the duchess. In truth, he was considering taking her to wife. The two of them were of an age, and she was a fine-looking woman to boot. It had been her bad luck to have had an ambitious father, willing to sell her off to a decrepit old duke desperately in need of a legitimate heir after a lifetime of licentiousness. The old roue hadn’t succeeded, which was Rake’s gain. He wouldn’t have to worry about raising another duke’s duke.

Most importantly, however, there was the duchess’s second-best stable to consider. No matter he and she had only spoken once—more than a decade ago at a ball when she’d been a debutante on the hunt for a duke and he’d been a duke with no interest in being caught.

Not after the mistake he’d made with Felicity.

But ten years was a long time, and he was in a different place in life. As a man approaching his thirties—a mere six months away, in fact—he had heirs to consider and a bloodline to continue. An alliance with a woman like the Duchess of Acasterwas the ideal solution. Neither of them would hold any illusions about marriage or that love need be involved. Two people couldn’t have been more perfectly matched.

Movement at the doorway caught the edge of his eye, just as a familiar voice rang bright, “A good morning to you, brother.”

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