Page 1 of The Dark Duke's Virgin

CHAPTER ONE

“Mr. Jenkins!” Caroline called after the head butler of Linfield Estate. “Mr. Jenkins!”

Mr. Jenkins was making his way down the grand staircase that wound into the entrance foyer but paused mid-step when he heard his name called. “Ah, Miss Dowding,” he said with an affectionate smile. “You look lovely this morning. And clean.”

She rolled her eyes at him, for it was the exact same greeting he had given her every morning for the past two years since the first day she had moved into Linfield Estate. A little inside joke between them both as the first time they had met, Caroline had been covered from head to foot in mud and sludge, looking the very opposite of ‘lovely and clean.’

“Have you seen Esther this morning?” she asked as she approached Mr. Jenkins. “She was not in her room, and I worry that she has gone riding without me.”

Mr. Jenkins groaned. “She best not have. The Dowager knows better than to do so.”

“Has Esther ever been known to do what she is told?” Caroline chuckled.

“A very good point.”

“I’d like to believe that she would not be such a fool as to do that…” Caroline bit into her lip as she considered the very real possibility that the elderly Dowager, in a bid to prove a point, had indeed taken her horse for a ride. “Although she also may have.”

Mr. Jenkins rubbed his temples as if in pain. “I shall check the stables.”

“And I shall check the library. Hopefully, she has simply lost track of time and forgotten that we had plans today. Plans which most certainly did not involve putting her life at risk by riding atop a horse.”

He chuckled. “She never used to be this way, you know.”

“When she was younger, you mean?”

“No, no,” he sighed. “Before you came along is my meaning. Then, she seemed to understand that at seventy years of age, certain things were expected while others were downrightimpossible. Why, to look at her then, one might have even called her boring.”

Caroline snorted. “I cannot imagine a world where Esther would be considered boring.”

“As I said…” He raised an eyebrow at Caroline. “… she was before you came along.”

Caroline leaned back and squinted at Mr. Jenkins as she searched out his true meaning. “Is this a rebuke, Mr. Jenkins?”

“Quite the opposite,” he said with a wink and a smile. “Boring is as the name suggests, boring. But your presence here has injected the Dowager with a vigor that we all thought she had lost since the passing of His Grace. And assuming she has not fallen off the back of a horse and broken her neck, I dare say that your companionship has added years to her life.”

Caroline felt her cheeks blush, and she had to look away for how embarrassed she felt. “The stables, Mr. Jenkins. And I shall search the library.”

“As you say, Miss Dowding.” A short nod of the head, and he started down the steps.

“Oh!” she called after him. “And will you ask the staff to check that they have not left the hearths burning from last night. It is as hot as an oven in this house!”

Mr. Jenkins indicated that he would do so as he swept through the front door, calling out to a member of the staff to run ahead to the stables in case the Dowager was still there.

Caroline shook her head to herself as the door closed behind him. To think that when she had first met Mr. Jenkins two years ago, he had detested her because he had assumed that she was a street urchin looking to steal her way inside the estate, likely with the intent on robbing from his employer everything that she could get her hands on. And now, well, the two were as close as father and daughter. How things had changed.

Caroline started down the staircase and then made her way quickly to the library at the back of the estate in search of Esther, who she prayed to find there. And as she did, she could not help but ponder these last two years and all that had happened to her, the changes in her life and the happiness said changes had brought.

Mr. Jenkins called her Miss Dowding, for he thought that to be her name. And indeed, the entire staff, as well as the Dowager, thought the same. When she had appeared on the doorstep of the Linfield Estate two years past, Caroline had lied about who she was and her reasons for being here, desperate that they not learn the truth for that would ruin her.

For two years now, she had remained hidden, living at Linfield Estate as the Dowager’s companion, committed to this new life in a way she might never have dreamed possible.

The library was empty which struck fear into Caroline. She had only been joking about Esther taking one of the horses for a ride, but Esther was as eccentric as she was unpredictable, and it would be just like her to do such a thing for no other reason than to prove that she could.

“Miss Dowding,” a soft voice spoke from the door of the library.

Caroline spun about to see Miss Spencer standing there, one of the few maids who worked for the Dowager. She was older than Caroline’s twenty and six years but still young when compared to the Dowager.

“Miss Spencer!” Caroline hurried toward her. “Tell me you have seen?—”

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