How to Ditch a Duke E-Book

May McGoldrick

• Herausgeber: Book Duo Creative
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Seitenzahl: 85

Beschreibung

A PENNINGTON FAMILY NOVELLA   Lady Taylor Fleming is an heiress with a suitor on her tail. Her step-by-step plan to ditch him is simple. But there is nothing simple about the Duke of Bamberg. Taylor tries to escape to sanctuary in the Highlands, but her plans become complicated when the duke arrives at her door and her loyal allies desert her. And even with the best laid plans, things can go awry…

Leseprobe

HOW TO DITCH A DUKE

PENNINGTON FAMILY SERIES

MAY MCGOLDRICK

BOOK DUO CREATIVE

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used factiously.

How to ditch a duke

Copyright © 2020 by Nikoo K. McGoldrick & James A. McGoldrick

Previously part of the anthology Dukes by the Dozen.

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Cover Art by - Covered by Melinda

Created with Vellum

CONTENTS

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Edition Note

Author’s Note

Also by May McGoldrick, Jan Coffey & Nik James

About the Author

To the May McGoldrick Bookies

With Heartfelt Thanks

1

How to Ditch A Duke

– Step 1 –

Neglect Your Appearance in Important Situations

Angus, the Scottish Highlands

April 1820

Lady Taylor Fleming stood with her maid a few yards off from the stranded coach-and-four. The hard downpours had eased to a miserable, drenching rain, and water had long ago soaked through her boots. She was chilled to the bone. From the sound of the teeth chattering next to her, Taylor knew her maid wasn’t faring any better. She took the satchel, allowing the older woman to warm her hands.

A thick grey cloud had been chasing them since she and her family left the Lowlands. The accident could not have happened at a worse place, for the chance of help arriving anytime soon was unlikely. She’d traveled this road a hundred times, and she knew there wasn’t a crofter or a village for miles. They were stuck.

They’d needed to leave Edinburgh. Sporadic outbreaks of violence had followed the social protest assemblies earlier in the week, and the clashes had spooked her father. The weavers’ guilds and other reform groups had been shutting down business in cities from Manchester to Glasgow to Edinburgh to Aberdeen, and the authorities were retaliating everywhere with military force to suppress the voices of protesters. When a pitched battle had spread to a hospital surgery near the university, killing a doctor, it had been the last straw.

Their escape had hardly been an easy one, but the sodden road going west toward the family hunting lodge had been a nightmare ever since they left the coach road at Montrose. Then, nearly an hour ago, a rear wheel slid into the ditch. They’d been fortunate the carriage didn’t turn over, but the wretched thing was sunk in the mud up to the axle.

So now, they were marooned on an isolated road in the Highlands.

“Lift the blasted thing. Put your backs into it.”

The querulous voice was getting on everyone’s nerves. The men were trying. Taylor looked from the driver, urging the tired horses, to the two grooms and the pair of valets struggling to keep their footing in the cold muck. Her father and brother stood beneath the solitary oak tree beside the road. The Earl of Lindsay and Viscount Clay. Both men were completely ignorant of how much horse and manpower it took to move the heavy weight of a carriage from a predicament such as this. But that didn’t stop the incessant directions.

“Lighten the load, you fools!”

The trunks and other luggage were sitting in a pile, having been unloaded immediately after the accident. Taylor seethed as her father continued to berate the men.

“Lay a whip to those horses. This is no Sunday ride in the park. Show them who is master.”

Her skin burned with irritation. Incessant harassment was the earl’s standard response whenever things didn’t go as he wished. As the only daughter, Taylor had been on the receiving end of his carping for as long as she could remember. Since her mother’s death seven years ago, however, she’d learned that the secret to dealing with him was to keep her distance when she could manage it and pay no heed to him when she couldn’t. Of course, her aptitude when it came to investing and managing their money played in her favor too. So long as she took care of her father’s and brother’s expenses and didn’t bother them about their exorbitant spending, a fragile peace was maintained.

“Blast you all! We don’t want to be out here all day.”

The men’s faces were streaked and spattered with mud, and their clothes were soaked and filthy. They continued to push as the driver pressed his tired team. The horses snorted and pulled, and the carriage groaned and rocked dangerously, but a moment later the contraption settled back where it was. They were getting nowhere.

They needed help.

Just then, one of valets, a slight, middle-aged man, slipped and went down, sliding into the roadside ditch.

“Get up, man. Come out of there this instant, or you’ll feel my cane.”

That was all she could take. Taylor peeled off her gloves and handed them, along with the satchel, to her maid. As she stalked toward the tree, the muck sucked at her shoes and her cloak dragged behind her, but she didn’t care.

“Help them, Clay,” Taylor ordered when she reached them. “We’ll never get out of here without extra help for the men.”

Her brother, standing beside the earl, gazed into the distance, pretending not to hear her.

“Push harder. Lift!” The earl shouted a string of curses when the valet was too slow in regaining his place.

“The horses and the men are tired,” Taylor said to her brother. The rain continued to beat down on her, but neither man shifted an inch to make room for her under the tree’s branches. “They’re no closer to moving the carriage than they were an hour ago.”

She wanted to shake Clay. He continued to disregard her, brushing water droplets from his cloak.

“Don’t ignore me,” Taylor persisted. “You need to go out there and help them.”

“You must be daft.” He glared at her. “Help them how?”

“Lend a hand. Help push the carriage onto the roadway.”

“No bloody chance of that. I’m wet enough as it is.”

She hated to admit it, but her brother was becoming more and more like their father every day. “We’re all wet. They need more muscle.”

“Have you forgotten my shoulder? The deuced thing will never heal if I don’t give it a rest.”

“You tripped climbing two steps six weeks ago, and it hasn’t stopped you from fencing at the club or rolling dice with your friends.”

“You’re a cold fish. You have no sympathy. No heart. You couldn’t care less about the pain I’ve endured.”

Taylor definitely had no patience for the drama that came part and parcel with every interaction with her brother. Four years older than Clay, she wasn’t his mother. She wasn’t his keeper. And she was tired of the jealousy that lay just beneath the skin of every comment he directed toward her. During arguments, he made no attempt to veil his hostility and resentment. She knew the source of his antipathy. Over five years ago, her mother’s brother had left a fortune to Taylor. Not to his nephew, not to his brother-in-law, but to his niece. And any moment now, she knew Clay would bring up the topic.

“I wouldn’t even be here if you weren’t such a tight-fisted harridan. If you’d paid my way to Bath—”

“Save your complaining for another day. They need you now.” Taylor pointed at the men struggling in the storm. “Go.”

“I think not!” Clay shot back hotly, turning to the earl. “Father, speak to her. If you don’t curb her, she’ll have us driving the carriage ourselves.”

Lord Lindsay looked down his nose at her, at his son, and back again at Taylor.

“Look at you. You’re as tall as your brother. Wider in the shoulders. And you’re surely twice his weight. Too bad you’re not a man, because you’re hardly a woman.”

Her throat closed. Her eyes burned. Her skin flushed in anger. His barbs were nothing new. She’d been the target of his demeaning comments about her size and shape for all her adult life. During the years when she was paraded out in front of society’s eligible bachelors—only to be treated as if she were invisible to them—he’d have the same sharp jabs. She could ignore the scoffing efforts at wit from strangers, but not from her own kin. She could pretend her father’s gibes didn’t sting, but the hurt never went away.

Throwing the hood back and shedding her cloak, Taylor shoved it into Clay’s stomach and turned on her heel, moving down toward the carriage.

“What are you doing?” The earl’s shout followed her. “Come back here this instant.”

Tears escaped but immediately washed away, mingling with the droplets of the rain. She wouldn’t allow them to see her cry. She wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of knowing they could still hurt her. Her anger regarding their carelessness and lack of responsibility, they were accustomed to. Her temper, when unleashed, was the only thing they feared and respected. And in moments like this, she valued it, as it provided her with a shield.

One foot sank into the mud, followed by the other, as she trudged toward the carriage. With each step, she tried to silence the haranguing voices behind her and instead focus on the men who’d paused for breath. They were all staring as she approached.

“Shall we?” she asked, rolling up her sleeves to the elbows.

“M’lady, you shouldn’t.” The driver glanced uncertainly at his master and back at her.

She shook her head at his soft-spoken words. “I believe I should. Let’s do this now. Let’s show them how it’s done.”

Ignoring the murmurs of protest coming from the others, she put her shoulder against the rear of the vehicle. She braced her feet, and after a moment’s hesitation, the men returned to their places.

On three, the driver shouted his commands to the horses and they all pushed. But the carriage remained anchored in place.