Page 11 of Good Duke Gone Hard

“Forty-nine.”

“Check”

“Fifty. Stalemate.”

Chapter 5

MARGARETSATONTHEmagenta settee against the cream and gold gilded walls in the parlor. Her mother, the dowager duchess, had been working steadily on her needlework all morning while Margaret flipped pages in her book without taking in any words.

“Have you avoided him long enough now?” Her mother didn’t need to explain whohewas.

“I’m not avoiding him. In fact, we just practiced shooting the other day. And played chess yesterday.” Margaret closed her eyes and nodded her head once.

Her mother continued to prick the needle through the fabric, working on a ruby red rose. “So have you ceased your eschewance then?”

Margaret rolled her eyes with her lids pulled down.

“I can still see that,” her mother said, still picking at the rose.

Margaret sighed. She hadn’t told her mother everything that had happened between her and Jonathan, but if anyone suspected something the summer she had turned eighteen, it would be her mother. She would be mortified if her mother knew the full extent of what happened. She would be ruined. There would absolutely, and terrifyingly so, be a scandal. Gregory would have to pull in favors to prevent it from spreading, if that were even possible. He would probably also have to increase her dowry. Then, she would likely be chaperoned wherever she went doing whatever she did, compared to the unconventional freedom she currently had. And this was understating it. Likely she would end up marrying the first willing man Gregory could find for her. Oh, it would be awful if anyone found out about how Jonathan had entangled himself with her.

“What are you suggesting, mother?” She knew exactly what her mother was suggesting.

“He’s just a man, dear.”

Just a man. What were those words supposed to mean?He was not just a man. He was, or had beenherman. And then he had become the missing man. And now he was the man who had returned from the dead, like Lazarus. She could now relate to Mary and Martha, except not at all because she had no soreital feelings for him. God, how she wished he was just a man. Knowing what she had to do would be so much simpler if he was just a man.

Margaret didn’t want to tread water in these thoughts any longer, “I’m going out.”

“Yes, dear.” With such focus, her mother’s current needlepoint project would brandish the most intricately threaded rendition of a ruby red rose the world had ever seen.

On her way out the door, Margaret flagged down Bugsby, the beanpole of a butler, and asked him of Jonathan’s whereabouts.

“I believe he is in the library, my lady. Shall I ring for him?”

“No, I’ll go find him myself.”

He bowed as she marched off. When she arrived at the library door, she didn’t hesitate to waltz in, swinging the door with perhaps more force than necessary.

It was a library, so of course it would make sense for Jonathan to be found reading a book. What Margaret didn’t expect was to find him without his cravat or jacket, poring over Debrett’s.

In his past life, Jonathan would have volunteered for a boxing match, a duel, perhaps even cleaning the stables, before willingly opening and studying the book of etiquette and social class.

Margaret felt a catch in her breath against her ribs and a heaviness sit there.I hear you, Fate, but damn you.

She had to coral her emotions, the ones given to pity, but more so the ones starting to heat up between her thighs as she longed to lean forward for a clearer view of the golden curls twisting at his collar.

She pointed to the book, “The weather hasn’t been that bad for that long, has it?” The weather. Always a safe opening.

Jonathan looked up and rubbed his thumb knuckles across his eyelids. When his once smooth, now calloused hands from the war had finished massaging life back into his eyes, she noticed the shadows pulling down on his face.

“Looking anywhere for clues and triggers.”

Margaret inclined her head.

“Dr. Walker encouraged me to pursue any and all possibly familiar trails as they could be the key to unlocking my memories. Or as he puts it, I never know when I might wake up.”

“Wake up? Does it feel like a dream then?”

---