Page 14 of The Dark Duke's Virgin

“Guess again,” Caroline laughed, taken by how energetic this little girl was. She might have looked like the Duke, but she could not be further from him.

Isabella scrunched her face as she considered. “Oh! Oh! I know!” She clapped her hands together. “You are Grandmother’s companion, yes? She told me of you.”

“Good guess!” Caroline clapped her hands along. “I am Miss Dowding, but you may call me Caroline.”

“Caroline!” She could not have looked happier. “It is so nice to meet you. Grandmother was telling me all about you.”

“Grandmother?” Caroline asked.

“Oh, well, she is my great-grandmother, yes. But she has asked that I call her as such.” A shrug. “I do not know why, But she did tell me that the two of you are staying here for at least a month!”

“At least.”

“Oh!” She took Caroline’s hands. “Let’s be friends. Can we? Be friends. I would like that so much.”

“I don’t see why not,” Caroline laughed, feeling a sense of kinship with this little girl because her energy was intoxicating. Again, it was hard to believe that she was the Duke’s daughter. “And in the interest of friendship…” Caroline pretended to get low as she cast a glance about them. “I must ask what it is you are doing out here. Something tells me that if your father found out…” She raised an eyebrow at the little girl.

The little girl grinned wickedly. “I am supposed to be getting ready for breakfast.”

“And you decided to climb on the roof of the carriage instead?” Caroline laughed.

“I wasn’t going to…” She then sighed. “… and I do not mean to be so disobedient, but when father came to see me this morning, I thought he might apologize for sending me to bed last night without supper.”

Caroline had to stop herself from snorting, for she did not think His Grace was the type to apologize for anything. “And did he?”

“He wanted me to apologize!” she cried. “Can you believe it! I refused, so he left me to think about what I had done and…” She grimaced. “Here I am.”

“So…” Caroline considered as she glanced about, “my feeling is that as of this moment, your father is looking for you? Probably up a tree somewhere.”

Isabella’s nose curled. “Oh. I have no doubt that he is, but he can keep looking for all I care. I hate him.”

Caroline leaned back. “Oh, surely you do not mean that.”

“I do!” she said again. Caroline raised an eyebrow at Isabella, and the poor little thing bowed her head as if in shame. “I do not hate him,” she admitted, sounding embarrassed with herself. “I love him, I do. Just sometimes… he makes it so hard! It is as if he wants me to hate him.”

“I promise you that he does not.”

“Then why does he treat me like… like I am a prisoner! I am not a child anymore, yet he insists on making me feel like one. I cannot even go outside without his permission. He won’t let me have any fun!”

“I do not know your father so well,” Caroline began carefully as she considered what to say. A part of her agreed with Isabella’s assessment, for it did seem as if he was a tad harsh on her. But at the same time, Caroline could not help but remember what the Duke had said earlier, understanding well enough where he was coming from, for she was of the ton, also, and knew the pressure it brought. “But as I am to understand it, he is simply worried about you.”

“Worried?” she scoffed. “He wants to control me.”

“He wants you to be happy,” she corrected. “Remember, it is not so easy to be a single father, and he has seen what this world does to little girls…and young women,” she added bitterly. “My feeling is that everything he does, he does because he wants the best for you. He is just a little…” She smirked. “… hard around the edges.”

She could not believe that she was defending the Duke. And that she meant what she said! As cold and callous and awful as the man was, there was no doubt that he loved his daughter. A thought which warmed Caroline because that was something she had never gotten from her own father. Love.

“I’ll say,” Isabella sighed. “Did you know that he has fired ten governesses in the past two years. Ten! Some of them I did not care for, but some I did! And does he care? Does he even think of how it makes me feel?”

“I suspect that is all he thinks about.”

She grimaced. “I know that what you say is the truth, I just wish… Why is he so mean to them? Did you know that some of them did not even need firing? They simply left because they could not stand to be around him. It is at a point now that it does not matter who he hires next as I know they will be gone soon.”

“Have you tried saying this to your father?”

“Of course!”

“With a level voice?” Caroline laughed softly. “I find that soft conversation is often a perfect replacement for shouting. And something about your father tells me he does not like being shouted at.”

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