The Duchess Hunt. Elizabeth Beacon

slightly overlong, curling hair catching all sorts of devilish lights in the candles’ glow and the starkly male beauty of his sensual mouth added to that hint of a smile in his gold-rayed green eyes, he might look like the answer to a maiden’s prayer, but she couldn’t dream the dreams other well-born society ladies indulged in.

      Somehow she fooled herself he was a run-

      of-the-mill gentleman who had stopped for a polite conversation to stop herself colouring up like every other idiot he smiled at in that way. Jack Seaborne wouldn’t want her if she was presented to him naked on a platter with an apple in her mouth, like the wild boar’s head at Christmas. The very idea of him prostrating himself at her imperfect feet made her smile so wryly to herself that she met his enquiring gaze with a fading memory of it on her lips.

      ‘That’s good,’ he said blandly and she cast him an even more suspicious glance, ‘because I came to issue an informal invitation to a house party my darling aunt has got it into her head to organise at Ashburton this summer. We dearly hope Miss Pendle and her lovely mama, along with her rather-less-lovely sire, will join us in Herefordshire for a fortnight, as soon as this fiasco is finally over and done for another year,’ he said lightly, then looked almost serious as he met Jessica’s eyes with something that might have been a plea in his own, if she wasn’t who she was and he were not the most eligible duke in the land. ‘You’ll be as welcome as the flowers in spring; you always talk to me as a human being and not merely a duke. Won’t you agree to come and make the whole business a little more bearable for us all?’ he coaxed shamelessly.

      ‘If I’m sure of only one thing in life, your Grace,’ Jessica said as lightly as she could manage when the sincerity in his eyes made her want to grant him anything he wished, ‘it’s that you’re perfectly capable of looking after yourself.’

      ‘Not this time, Princess. I suspect my dragon grandmother has put out an edict that I must be wed post haste, now I’m racing towards thirty and nigh in my dotage,’ he said, a touch of bitterness in his deep voice that made Jessica look a little more carefully at him than she’d dared to until now and note the lines of strain and tiredness about his firm mouth and the faint shadows under his eyes that spoke of a deeper weariness than anything merely physical. ‘Won’t you join us at Ashburton for a few weeks and add a little spice to a leaden occasion, Princess Jessica?’ he went on. ‘You will be such a relief from the sweet little débutantes my aunt is threatening to inflict on us. I’ll soon be choking on too much undiluted sugar,’ he appealed almost earnestly.

      Not sure whether to be flattered or insulted, she told herself he’d spoilt his plea by using the nickname he inflicted on her when his aunt gave her the ground-floor Queen’s Room at Ashburton after her accident to save her climbing the stairs.

      ‘I have asked you not to call me that so often I shall soon start saying it in my sleep,’ she told him acerbically.

      ‘Say you’ll come to Ashburton for a few weeks this summer and I’ll try very hard not to do it any more, Miss Pendle,’ he urged.

      ‘And you promise you won’t hold me up to ridicule?’

      ‘I would never do anything so unfriendly,’ he said as if he found the idea impossible to even contemplate, despite all the teasing she’d endured in the old days. ‘You will be an honoured guest and anyone who dares consider you otherwise will soon discover their error and a pressing engagement elsewhere.’

      His words should have warmed her, so why did she suddenly want to cry? Because it wasn’t every day a lady was asked to a house party as a sort of female jester, she supposed. ‘I doubt very much Papa will agree to leave Winberry Hall and the hay harvest once he is back in Northamptonshire again at long last,’ she managed to say coolly enough.

      ‘He would tear himself away if that were all that was keeping him home, my dear, but don’t forget his latest grandchild is about to come into the world and your father is a far more doting father and grandfather than he would have everyone believe,’ her mother put in ruefully.

      ‘Surely we cannot be from home at such a time either, Mama? This will be Rowena’s first child and she is sure to need us even more,’ Jessica protested.

      ‘Rowena has many weeks to go and is robust as ever, despite that air of fragility her husband is clearly taken in by even though he’s been married to her for more than a year now,’ her mother argued. ‘Both he and your father are worry warts, but I’ve no intention of sitting about clucking like a mother hen solely to make them feel better. A relaxing fortnight at Ashburton before I immerse myself in my grandmotherly duties once more sounds wonderful to me, so thank you for asking us to be your sadly pampered guests there once more, your Grace,’ Lady Pendle said with an air of finality.

      It seemed that Lord and Lady Pendle and their last unmarried daughter would be present in Herefordshire this summer to watch his Grace the Duke of Dettingham pick out his duchess, whether that daughter wanted to be there or not.

      ‘I’ll be very grateful for some leaven to add to so much dough, then,’ Jack said with a lopsided grin that could charm a gorgon.

      Jessica found herself unworthily hoping one of the young ladies invited to be looked over like fillies before a sale would turn him down flat when he asked them to marry him, but supposed that was too much to expect. Jack Seaborne was a temptation any sensible woman he wasn’t planning to marry ought to avoid like pure sin, but even Jessica couldn’t ignore a direct appeal for support. Yet why was he meekly going along with his grandmother’s scheme to marry him off like this? His air of disillusioned cynicism usually kept all but the most maniacally determined husband hunters at bay and he had carefully avoided unsophisticated young ladies, however lovely, until now. So why had he decided to marry, after all the effort he’d put in to avoiding that state? Sighing at the unfathomable nature of Jack Seaborne’s thoughts and motives, Jessica decided she’d find out quite soon enough.

      ‘Perhaps I could stay at home, just in case Rowena needs me,’ she said in a last-ditch attempt to escape.

      ‘Why would she when she has a devoted husband ready, willing and able to look after her far more closely than you ever could now she is wed? At least we need you, Princess, so if you insist on being useful to somebody it might as well be us Seabornes,’ he said and this time she could sense the steel under the velvet of his deep voice, as if he truly did need her to be there this summer while he picked out a bride for some peculiar reason all his own and was determined she would be close by.

      ‘You don’t need me and I would be out of place at such a gathering,’ she insisted, her internal warning bells clanging.

      ‘Not so,’ he insisted tersely and she felt apprehension shiver down her spine as she met the challenge in his green-gold eyes.

      ‘I’m not an uncritical little débutante,’ she warned.

      ‘Were you ever one of those, Princess?’ he asked with a smile that threatened to undermine her defences.

      ‘And I’m even less wide-eyed and naïve now than I was then.’

      ‘I think we all know that.’

      ‘Then you must also know I’m not the sort of person you want at Ashburton if you’re intent on persuading one of the guests to become your duchess,’ she said recklessly and knew the instant it was out of her mouth that it was a dare too far.

      His green-gold eyes darkened until they resembled obsidian and his mouth hardened into the look of arrogant superiority that had always raised her hackles. His unspoken contempt for her plain speaking was intimidating, as if she’d lost his good opinion so effectively it wasn’t even worth him explaining why. Her hand shook and her breath hitched as she bit back the apology threatening to tumble from her lips.

      ‘Perhaps you’re exactly the sort of female I need to goad me into finding your exact opposite, Miss Pendle,’ he said after a pause that somehow made it worse.

      He was offended and furious, but at least she’d hidden her instinctive horror at the idea of him taking a lovely and obliging female to wife. This was exactly