My Fair Duchess Read online

  Dedication

  To Scott and Rhys. I love you.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Author’s Note

  Letter

  Chapter 1

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  Chapter 2

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  Chapter 3

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  Chapter 4

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  Chapter 5

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  Chapter 6

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  Chapter 7

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  Chapter 8

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  Chapter 9

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  Chapter 10

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  Chapter 11

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  Chapter 12

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  Chapter 13

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  Chapter 14

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  Chapter 15

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  Chapter 16

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  Chapter 17

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  Chapter 18

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  Chapter 19

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  Chapter 20

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  Chapter 21

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  Chapter 22

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  Chapter 23

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  Chapter 24

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  Chapter 25

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  Chapter 26

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  Chapter 27

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  Chapter 28

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  Chapter 29

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  Chapter 30

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  Chapter 31

  Announcement

  About the Author

  By Megan Frampton

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks to my editor, Lucia Macro; my agent, Louise Fury; my critique partner, Myretta Robens; and my first reader, Erin Cox. You guys all make my writing so much better, and I am so grateful.

  Author’s Note

  Yes, it is extremely improbable that a woman would inherit a duchy. But it is not unprecedented! The first Duke of Marlborough had two sons who predeceased him, and four surviving daughters. He was able to get a special act passed through Parliament that would allow his eldest daughter to inherit the title. How cool is that? I started thinking about what it would mean if a woman were to inherit but no one had thought to train her up for it.

  Letter

  Dear Aunt Sophia,

  How are you? I am desperate. I am doing well. As you know, I am now the Duchess of Blakesley. Don’t ask me to explain how an unmarried woman could inherit such a title. The solicitors explained it four times, and from the little I understand, it seems my ancestors received some special dispensation to allow any direct heir to inherit, regardless of gender. My father, God rest his soul, was too errant to prepare me for that, or any, possibility, and I have no choice but to appeal to you. Since that ridiculous scenario has occurred, I am at the London town house preparing to take on my new position for which I was never prepared. I am writing you to ask if you have any advice for navigating societal waters; I am quite adept at swimming (the second footman taught me when I was twelve), but this is a very different kind of pond. A veritable ocean, one might say. And I am drowning.

  If you would be so kind, please send along any recommendations for anything hiring staff, assembling a proper wardrobe, how not to annoy the Queen, managing several country estates, and any other thing I might have overlooked in my desperation. Have I mentioned I have no idea what I am doing?

  Normally I would consult a book if I were at a loss in any situation, but there don’t appear to be any manuals on what to do if you are an unexpected duchess.

  Sincerely,

  Genevieve Duchess

  P.S. If there is such a book, please do share the title!

  P.P.S. Even though I will probably fall asleep, those kinds of books are so dull.

  Chapter 1

  1845, Lady Sophia’s Drawing Room

  “There’s only one solution,” Lady Sophia said, passing the letter to Archie as he felt his stomach drop. And his carefully ordered life teeter on the verge of change. “You’ll have to go to London to sort my goddaughter out.” She embellished her point by squeezing her tiny dog Truffles, who emitted a squeak and glared at Archie. As if it was his fault.

  He resisted the urge to crumple the paper in his hand. “But the festival is in a few weeks,” Archie said, hearing the desperate tone in his voice. He did not want to ever return to London. That was the purpose of taking a position out here in the country after leaving the Queen’s Own Hussars a year prior. His family was there, and his father, at least, had made it clear he never wanted to see him again. What’s more, he did not want to assist a helpless aristocrat in some sort of desperate attempt to bring order to their lives. Even though that was what he was doing in Lady Sophia’s employ. But working for her had come to have its own kind of satisfactory order, one he did not want to disrupt.

  “There is work to be done,” Archie continued, hoping to appeal to his employer’s sensible side.

  Although in the course of working for her he had come to realize his employer didn’t really have a sensible side, so what was he hoping to accomplish?

  “Didn’t you tell me Mr. McCready could do everything you could?” Lady Sophia asked. “You pointed out that if you were to get ill, or busy with other matters, your assistant steward could handle things just as well as you.”

  That was when I was trying to get one of my men work, Archie thought in frustration. To help him get back on his feet after the rigors of war. And Bob had proven himself to be a remarkably able assistant, allowing Archie to dive into Lady Sophia’s woefully neglected accounts and see into her investments, neither of which she paid any attention to.

  Lady Sophia placed Truffles on the rug before lifting her head to look at Archie. Who knew, in that moment, that he was doomed. Doomed to return to London to help out a likely far-too-indulged female in the very difficult position of being a powerful and wealthy aristocrat.

  Perhaps it would have been easier to just get shot on the battlefield. It certainly would have been quicker.

  “It’s settled.” She punctuated her words with a nod of her head, sending a few gray curls flying in the air. “You will go see to the new duchess and take care of her as ably as you do me. Mr. McCready will assist me while you are away.”

  Archie looked at the letter again. “This duchess is your relative?” he asked. That would explain the new duchess’s equally silly mode of communication. An “unexpected duchess,” indeed. What kind of idiot wouldn’t have foreseen this circumstance? And done something to prepare for it?

  “She calls me aunt, but she is not my actual niece, you understand,” Lady Sophia explained. “She is my goddaughter; her mother married the duke, the duchess’s father. It is quite unusual for a woman to inherit the duchy.”

  “Quite,” Archie echoed.

  “But it happened, somehow, and since I don’t know anything about being a duchess . . .”

  Because I do? Archie wondered. But there wasn’t anybody else. She wouldn’t have asked Lady Sophia, of all people, unless there was nobody else.

  Or if she was as flighty and confident as her faux-aunt. A scenario that seemed more and more likely.

  “The only thing Mr. McCready can’t do is attract as much feminine interest as you do, Mr. Salisbury.” She sat back up and regarded him. “Which might make him more productive,” she added. She leaned over to offer Truffles the end of her biscui
t.

  Archie opened his mouth to object, but closed it when he realized she was right. He wasn’t vain, but he did recognize that ladies tended to find his appearance attractive. Lady Sophia received many more visitors, she’d told him in an irritated tone, now that he’d been hired.

  Bob, damn his eyes, smirked knowingly every time Archie was summoned to Lady Sophia’s drawing room to answer yet another question about estate management posed by a lady who’d likely never had such a question in her life.

  Archie responded by making Bob personally in charge of the fertilizer. It didn’t stop Bob’s smirking, but it did make Archie feel better.

  “And you will return in a month’s time so you can be here for the festival.”

  “Sooner if I can, my lady.” If this duchess needed more time than a month, there would be no hope for her anyway. Country life suited him; he liked its quiet and regularity. It was a vast change from life in battle, or even being just on duty, but it was far more interesting than being the third son from a viscount’s family. A viscount who disowned his third boy when said boy was determined to join the army.

  Meanwhile, however, he had to pack to head off to a new kind of battle—that of preparing a completely unprepared woman, likely a woman as flighty and often confused as Lady Sophia, to hold a position that she was entirely unsuited for.

  Very much like working with raw recruits, in fact.

  Dear Duchess,

  You are probably surprised to receive correspondence from a gentleman you’ve never met. I assure you, I am not in the habit of addressing strange women, either. Lady Sophia shared your letter with me, and asked that I pen a reply, since your aunt is scattered naturally quite busy. I hope to God you aren’t as silly as she, but judging by your letter, that is a forlorn hope.

  I am your aunt’s steward, and my duties include assisting Lady Sophia with any planning and business dealings. I am on my way to London to see how I might be of assistance to you.

  You can expect me in three days’ time.

  Respectfully,

  Mr. Archibald Salisbury, Capt. (Ret.)

  “Three days’ time?” Genevieve heard herself squeak. When did she start squeaking? Squeaking was not something she had ever done before.

  Then again, she’d never been a duchess before. Maybe it was some understood thing that duchesses squeaked, and now that she was one, she did as well. And if that was the case, then she wouldn’t need Mr. Archibald Salisbury, Capt. (Ret.) after all. It would just be intuitive. Rather like when she just knew that choosing to read The Miser’s Daughter was far preferable to Threshing and Other Exciting Farm Things or whatever other boring tomes resided in the library.

  “What is happening in three days’ time, dear?”

  Genevieve turned and smiled at her grandmother, who was sitting in what was now referred to as the duchess’s sitting room, even though it had been her father’s study. Apparently female dukes—also known as duchesses—didn’t need to study.

  But she would. She did wish there was some sort of book she could just read on the subject, as she’d asked her godmother. Duchessing and Other Very Specific Occupations, or perhaps How to Duchess Without Being a Dullard.

  “A Mr. Archibald Salisbury”—Captain, Retired, she added in her head—“is Aunt Sophia’s steward. And she is sending him here to answer some questions I have.”

  “I can answer questions,” her grandmother said indignantly. “Why, just this morning Byron asked for breakfast and I gave it to him.”

  Byron looked up from her grandmother’s lap and regarded Genevieve sleepily, one paw stretched out.

  “If only it were that simple, Gran,” Genevieve replied in a fond tone. She looked back at Mr. Salisbury’s letter. “We will have to see if this gentleman can be of assistance.” And if he couldn’t, she would just have to blunder along as she had been.

  Her grandmother lifted her head in Genevieve’s general direction. Her grandmother was almost completely blind, which made it difficult to ask her opinion about anything Genevieve might wear. Among other things. “You will know best, I am sure.” She accompanied her words with a warm smile and a pet on Byron’s head.

  It was heartening, if also terrifying, that her grandmother had such confidence in her. That the staff back at home in Traffordshire—where she had spent the first twenty years of her life—were also so confident, even though she had had no training in how to be a duchess beyond having Cook address her as Your Highness during the two weeks Genevieve had insisted she was a princess from the country of Snowland.

  She should have spent less time imagining that cold possibility and more time facing the reality that she would be inheriting the duchy.

  But it hadn’t seemed real. And that was the problem. Nobody had thought it would happen, even though long ago their family had had a bit of royal legerdemain that allowed women to become duchesses in their own right provided there was no direct male heir. Genevieve had male cousins, but she was the heir.

  She hadn’t even had a proper debut in Society; her father had ignored her letters asking about it, and she had been just as happy to stay in the country. Who would have helped her through such an event, anyway? And if the purpose was to find herself a husband, probably some man who would pay her father for the privilege of marriage to her? No, thank you.

  Her father had remarried after Genevieve’s mother’s death, and it seemed certain that her father would have a son to inherit the title anyway, so nobody had thought Genevieve would be the duchess. If they ever thought of her at all. But he had not had another child, and then his wife had died, and now he was gone, too. The only ones who had paid her any type of attention were the servants in the house she’d grown up in. Who’d loved her, and been kind to her, and who’d brought her books, and biscuits, and smiled as she explained the intricate plot of the novel she’d just read.

  But who didn’t have any clue of what it would take to be a successful duchess.

  Although she should be grateful she hadn’t learned how to be any kind of ducal entity from her father, who had apparently been terrible at the whole thing.

  He was far more interested in sampling London life to pay attention to pesky things like estate management. Genevieve’s strongest memory of her father was of him kissing her cheek and making some sort of inarticulate approving noise at her.

  Thankfully the estates were wealthy enough to withstand her father’s excesses, but she also guessed that they would need some assistance if they were to thrive. Another job for which she was ill-suited.

  Which reminded her that she was about to get some help in the form of the unknown Mr. Salisbury. Help that she sorely needed, even though apparently it also made her squeak.

  She rang the bell, making both her grandmother and Byron jump. She heard footsteps, then the door opened to admit her butler.

  “Your Grace?”

  Thus far, Chandler had treated her with the utmost external respect, but Genevieve had caught an expression of disbelief on his face at times he’d thought she hadn’t been looking at him.

  She couldn’t fault him for it; it was the same expression that she had when she looked at herself in the mirror.

  She pretended she was the princess of Snowland again. It was easier than dealing with the reality of who she was now. “A Mr. Archibald Salisbury is arriving in a few days,” she said in what she hoped was a suitably frosty tone. “He is my aunt Sophia’s steward, and he will be attending to my affairs until we locate a suitable person for the position.” Was she explaining too much to him? Not enough? Why didn’t she know? Oh, of course, because she hadn’t been raised to become a duchess. It had been thrust onto her, through a variety of mishaps and unfortunate demises.

  “Yes, Your Grace. I will place your guest”—and was it Genevieve’s imagination, or did the butler seem to sneer the last two words—“in one of the guest rooms on the third floor.”

  “Excellent. Oh, and,” she added, as though it was an afterthought, “Mr. Salisbury
is not precisely a guest. But he is to be treated as one for the duration of his stay.”

  “Yes, Your Grace,” he replied, bowing. She thought there was a tinge more of a thaw in his manner—because she was behaving as a duchess ought? And since when did she care so for the opinion of people she’d just met, and who worked for her?

  Since now. Since she’d recognized that even the barest hint of talk would undermine her position and her ability to carry out her duties.

  She hoped Mr. Salisbury was as stuffy, appropriate, and efficient, not to mention boring, as his letters implied. The last thing she needed was someone else to upset her peace of mind.

  “Your Grace?”

  Genevieve paused in the act of dropping a bit of cheese for Byron, whose expression of expectation turned to disgust as Genevieve’s hand stilled in mid-air.

  “Yes?”

  She and her grandmother were in the duchess’s sitting room again, since her grandmother was most comfortable navigating her way around the furniture here. Genevieve knew she would have to redecorate eventually—all the furnishings were worn, or old, or both—but she was hoping to be able to keep everything in the same basic location so her grandmother wouldn’t fall.

  “Your Mr. Salisbury is here.” Chandler’s sharp eyes focused on Byron, and his gaze narrowed. He had not said so in so many words, but he did not have to—it was clear he did not approve of Byron’s being in the household. Of course, he probably didn’t approve of Genevieve, either, so she couldn’t pay heed to his opinion on either of them.

  “Do show him in, Chandler.”

  She took a deep breath and settled her hands in her lap, her thumb and index finger rolling the crumb of cheese into a ball as Byron continued to glare at her. Drat, and her hair was likely untidy. She’d felt it unwinding when she came to the room, but then her grandmother had needed help with some yarn, and then Byron came begging, and now the likely very proper and properly dull Mr. Salisbury, Capt. (Ret.) was about to come in, and he would be shocked at her impropriety. And her hair.