His Three-Day Duchess. Laurie Benson

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       Prologue

      London—July, 1819

      As she sat across the desk from her solicitor, it was beginning to feel as if Lizzy had been waiting all her life for Mr Simon Alexander. And as the newly widowed Duchess of Skeffington, she wasn’t accustomed to waiting for anything or anyone. Her husband had died months ago and she had yet to meet Mr Alexander, her husband’s heir or, as he would be referred to now, the Duke of Skeffington. His tardiness today at the reading of her late husband’s will was doing nothing to help the annoyance she already felt towards a man she had never met.

      ‘I’m sure he won’t be much longer,’ Mr Nesbit said, furrowing his grey brows and glancing at his pocket watch for what must have been the fifth time since she had arrived at his office at promptly one o’clock in the afternoon.

      Lizzy toyed with her emerald necklace and didn’t even try to hide her irritation. ‘At least one of us is confident in that. You’re certain he knows where we were to meet?’

      ‘I was very specific in my letter. He knows.’

      She glanced down the table to Rimsby, the impeccably dressed old man who had served as butler of Skeffington House here in London for as long as Lizzy had been married. This was a man who valued protocol and proper behaviour, and she imagined he was just as displeased with his new employer’s tardiness as she was. Mrs Thacker, who was seated next to Rimsby, had an odd blush about her at the mention of the new Duke—a blush that in the twelve years that the woman had been her housekeeper, she had never seen brighten her normally sombre countenance.

      ‘Do we still have to wait for him?’ She directed her question to Lord Liverpool, the executor of her husband’s estate, who at the moment was standing by the window looking out at the busy London street. ‘We know he finally is in London after all these months. Can’t we just begin and Mr Nesbit can give him a brief summary of what he missed when he arrives?’

      He stepped away from the window and turned to face her. ‘Skeffington was very insistent that the will was to be read only when everyone who benefited was present and Mr Alexander, as the new Duke, must be present.’

      Beside her Mr Mix, her late husband’s secretary, shifted in his chair. The leather gave a considerable creak, which was surprising in light of his small, wiry frame. The gentleman, who was about twenty years older than Lizzy’s twenty-nine years, continued to sit silently, offering no indication on how he felt about the tardy behaviour of the new Duke. But as he had worked with her husband for all those years, she assumed he was accustomed to keeping his opinions to himself. He sat staring at his clasped hands on the table and she wondered once again why he had been content to be berated by her husband for so long. Certainly, there were other members of the House of Lords who would have welcomed his services. He could have put the Duke’s company behind him long ago, unlike Lizzy who had been forced to endure it since she was seventeen.

      ‘Do you know if Mr Alexander will be retaining your services, Mr Mix?’ Lizzy asked him to pass the time.

      ‘I СКАЧАТЬ