Marry Christmas. Jane Goodger

heir and a spare. Not yet. Hell, he was only twenty-seven years old. He’d thought he had at least another decade of work in the military before settling down to a calm country life with a pretty English girl. English, being the key word. He would happily have been Lord Blackmore for the rest of his life. Now he would be something else entirely. Good God.

      He’d had to sell out his commission with the Life Guards and return home to take up his new duties, only to find out that his first duty as duke would be to find a way to save his beloved Bellewood, one of the grandest estates in England. At least it used to be. Now, thanks to poor investments and outrageous expenses, Bellewood was a shell of what it had been. When he’d been called home to his brother’s deathbed, he’d been shocked by what had happened to the great house. The library, filled with nearly forty thousand volumes dating back to the fifteenth century, had been decimated. Paintings, furniture, tapestries, all sold to pay for enormous debt. Indeed, Bellewood resembled a large and quite empty museum. The staff had been nearly all dismissed, which left the house to fall into disrepair, not to mention that vast amounts of dust floated everywhere.

      Worst was the stables, the pride of his grandfather, whose love of horses surpassed all else. Bellewood was famous in the British Isles for producing some of the best racers in the world. The stables, the pride of the Blackmores, were an empty shell, the horses long ago sold off to pay for debts or God knew what else. His childhood memories of Bellewood were centered around the stables, hanging about the tolerant stable master and the intolerant grooms. Rand had been happiest in those stables, watching foals being birthed, hefting hay, oiling the tackle. He hadn’t realized he shouldn’t be in the stables at all, never mind working there. Walking into those stables, hearing nothing but the wind hissing through a hole in the roof, had been heartbreaking.

      The grounds were overgrown, the beautiful gardens his mother had taken so much pride in, nearly obliterated by neglect. Strangely, it was the loss of his mother’s garden that affected him the most. It might have been his fond memories of his mother doting over her roses, the warm afternoons when he, as a young boy, would escape his tutor and find her there. His mother had been a strict disciplinarian in most things, but she never could bring herself to give him up when he found his way to her. Looking back, he supposed she justified allowing him to stay by giving him a lesson in horticulture. He would pretend interest when all he really wanted was to be near her.

      Rand hadn’t yet told his mother that to save Bellewood he would likely have to marry an American heiress. The Dowager Duchess was such a stickler about everything, except little boys who wandered into gardens. She had envisioned for him the daughter of an earl or duke from a family she knew and respected. No doubt, she’d had a list for his brother, one, to her great frustration, Tyler had chosen to ignore. Rand never knew why his brother had not married. Perhaps it was the knowledge that he would die before he was ready. It wasn’t as if the dukedom would be lost or go to some unsavory cousin, for he had a younger brother. Rand had never talked about marriage with Tyler. They’d talked of women in general, the need of them, and horses, the joy of them. Now that he was dead, Rand would never know how Tyler had felt about leaving nothing behind, no legacy but unending debt, no children to remember him. Nothing but a brother, who didn’t want to be a duke, and a mother who’d been crushed by his death.

      His mother was blissfully and almost tragically unaware of his financial difficulties. Shortly after his brother’s death she lamented how she wouldn’t be able to hold her annual ball. “I talked with your brother about it before he grew so ill and we’d agreed that this year we’d spare no expense. I’m so sick of watching every penny we spend. Of course, now that he’s gone…” Her voice had trailed off, overwhelmed with the realization that never again would she plan even the smallest event with her oldest son.

      Rand had felt his body go completely numb, for he’d just learned from his solicitor that the only way to pay off the astronomical debts accumulated by his father and brother was to sell every bit of property they owned, including the dowager house where his mother had happily lived since his father died three years before.

      He found he could not do it. He could not sell his mother’s home from beneath her and put her in something far less grand. His mother was a duchess from the diamond-encrusted tiara on her head to the silk stockings on her legs. Those diamonds had long been replaced with paste, to pay for a new breeding mare his brother had to have, but his mother’s eyesight was so poor, thankfully she could not tell the difference.

      Already the family’s London town house and three country estates had been sold to pay for too many years of extravagance and ignorance. It had been a shock, but perhaps it should not have been. If he had spent more time at home, more time paying attention to what was happening around him, he would not have been so blindsided.

      And now he would have to pay for two generations of neglect by marrying an heiress, and an American heiress at that.

      Chapter 3

      August 1892, Newport, Rhode Island

      Elizabeth stared in the mirror and tried out a smile. It had been so long since she’d used those particular muscles, smiling felt foreign to her. Her eyes were no longer red rimmed and swollen, but her face was unusually pale, her eyes missing something. Life, perhaps. Still, she did finally have something to smile at. Her long, tedious imprisonment was about to end. The Duke of Bellingham was set to arrive today to meet the woman who would most likely be his wife.

      Elizabeth still could not believe what was happening to her. All her life she’d not been allowed to make even the simplest decision, being reminded again and again that she was incapable of such a task. Now, though, she would be married, in charge of a vast house in England, directing servants, taking care of tenants, planning parties and balls and so many other things she couldn’t even fathom. This she was expected to do when even now her mother wouldn’t let her pick out the gown she would wear for tonight’s dinner with the Duke.

      “Ruled with an iron fist, that one is,” she’d once over heard a maid say to another. The servants pitied her, even the lowest scullery maid would look at her with sorrow clear in her eyes. As many times as she’d been humiliated by her mother, this by far eclipsed them all.

      “You look lovely,” Alva said from behind her. “I knew that blue would suit you.”

      Indeed, the blue of her gown matched the color of her eyes. It might seem a wonderful coincidence unless one was present when her mother was picking out the fabric in France a year ago. It had taken nearly an hour, and Elizabeth had sat there, back straight, hands folded on her lap, as the poor girl held swatch after swatch against her cheek.

      “Thank you.”

      “Your hair,” Alva said, narrowing her eyes. “I wonder if that’s the best we can do.”

      Her maid had spent nearly an hour on the intricate style, threading delicate strands of impossibly tiny pearls through it. By the end, her hands had been shaking with the effort and Elizabeth had to tell her to stop, that her hair was beautiful and could not possibly be improved.

      “I suppose, given the horrible brown you were born with, it will have to do,” Alva said, and Elizabeth wondered if her mother was even aware that Alva’s hair, before it had become salted with gray, was exactly the same color as her own. Still, she sent up a silent prayer of thanks that her hair had passed inspection.

      “The duke will arrive within the hour. I think we should be in the Rose Salon,” she said, as if she hadn’t choreographed the entire evening a dozen times in her head. “You should sit in the cream chair. When His Grace enters the room, stand and curtsy. Let me see it,” she commanded.

      Elizabeth stood gracefully and gave a small curtsy, looking up at her mother expectantly.

      “Perhaps a bit deeper? Oh, I don’t know of these English things. Curtsies and the like. Just be polite. And silent unless he or I address you. This is by no means final, and you could still ruin it by saying or doing some thing foolish.”

      “Yes, Mother.”

      “Try to be pleasant. And smile. You do have a pleas ant smile at least.”

      Elizabeth