Page 4 of A Widow for the Beastly Duke

“How do you even know its name?” Emma asked, already feeling a throbbing in her temple.

“I heard one of the footmen call him that,” the little boy replied with a cheeky smile that did nothing to quell the pain that had taken over her head.

Where did this little imp learn to be so sly?she thought to herself with one hand notched on her hip.

“I have brought him some of Cook’s chicken,” Tristan explained, holding up a napkin that contained what appeared to be the remnants of his dinner. “I noticed him at the boundary yesterday, looking hungry, and I promised I’d come back with something better than my biscuit.”

So, he had touched his supper, just not for himself. Ah, yes, her child was going to be the death of her, that much was true now.

Emma sank to her knees beside her son, trying her best to keep her temper.

“You came all this way—crossed into the Duke’s lands—to feed a… dog?”

“He’s a very special dog,” Tristan insisted, his brown eyes blinking too innocently back up at her. “Look how clever he is. He can sit and give his paw and everything, Mama!”

As if to demonstrate, Argus extended a large paw which Tristan shook solemnly.

Calm down, Emma. You are a lady. The Dowager Countess. Keep your manners,she thought to herself, talking herself down from losing her temper with her young son.

“Tristan, do you have any idea how worried I have been? The entire household is searching for you!” Emma grasped her son’s shoulders, giving him a little shake. “We must leave at once. This is the Duke of Westmere’s property. We are trespassing, and if he finds us?—”

“Argus wouldn’t let anyone hurt us,” Tristan said confidently, slinging an arm around the dog’s neck. “Would you, boy?”

The dog responded by licking Tristan’s cheek, causing the boy to giggle. The sound, normally so precious to Emma, now only increased her anxiety.

“That is beside the point, Tristan, and you know it. How many times have I warned you about… about the Duke?” She bit the words out as though they were granite stones between her teeth. “We cannot be?—”

But the words quickly died in her throat as the cottage door swung open with a creak that seemed unnaturally loud in the stillness of the garden.

Lamplight spilled out, silhouetting a figure so large it nearly filled the doorframe.

And the dog—Argus—bolted from the arms of his new friend, bounding instead toward the man with evident joy, tail wagging furiously.

And when the man stepped into the garden, Emma’s worst fears were confirmed.

Because, even in the uneven light of his lantern, there was no mistaking the scar that bisected his face, running from his right temple down to his jaw, twisting his features into a perpetual half-grimace.

The Duke. The Beast of Westmere.

Oh, dear God.

CHAPTER2

“What is this?” Victor Aldridge, the Duke of Westmere, couldn’t help but feel amused as he spoke in a low pitch.

A woman, clearly of some standing despite her disheveled look, was kneeling beside a young boy who had his small arms wrapped around his traitorous dog.

That damned dog.

Victor heaved a sigh, even as he observed the scene with a cold detachment, his frame still filling the doorway.

The woman, dark-haired and curvy in all the ways that mattered to a man—yes, evenhim—was speaking in a hushed, urgent tone to the child. Her hair was coming loose from its pins, dark brown tendrils framing a face that, even in distress, betrayed the refined bone structure of gentle breeding. She had clearly rushed through his estate, taking no heed to the damage to her attire.

It was just the sort of impulsiveness that Victor had little patience for.

He let the lantern light illuminate his form, making no effort to angle his face to hide the scar that cleared the right side. He’d seen enough of war to have lost whatever hubris he’d once held for his looks. Now, he expected only one type of reaction from the rest of Society.

And the woman reacted exactly as he expected—the immediate recoil, the terror dilating her pupils when her eyes caught and held his, the way she pulled the boy closer to herself, her body tensing like a bowstring strung taut.

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