(…we pick up the story in chapter two…)
“Do you know where you are?” Ally asked her grandmother. This was the first question she always heard those T.V. doctors ask to see if people were crazy.
“Why we’re in London, dear.”
“What year is it?” Ally asked.
“1812. What’s the matter with you?”
“Who am I?”
“Why, you’re my granddaughter, Princess Alexandra.”
Oh, dear.
“And now that you’ve turned sixteen,” Granny Donny continued, “it’s high time we found you a husband!”
Ally’s stomach hit bottom. “Granny, this is Manhattan. It’s 2009. And I’m twenty-four. Twenty-five tomorrow.”
“Oh, don’t be ridiculous, darling. You’re not that old! Out to pasture! On the shelf! Certainly not!” Granny Donny rose, slow and unsteady. “Now, I must be getting home. I wanted you to meet the duke so that you would see how lovely it will be when all of us retreat to my country estate, Carleton House, for the summer. London is no place for a girl of the ton after the season. Especially one in need of a husband. We’ll have a house party and a ball and we’ll see to your future, Alexandra!”
June gasped. “Wait! Carleton House. Princess Alexandra. A dissolute duke. I read this book.”
Ally looked at her friend, but couldn’t find words.
“It’s The Dulcet Duke, by Genevieve Lancet,” June explained. “I must have read it fifty times. It’s been on my keeper shelf for years!”
“Grandma,” Ally said, her voice cracking. “Have you been reading The Dulcet Duke?”
“I have no idea what you’re gabbering about, dear.”
“Gabbering. That’s pure Lancet,” June said. “Which means he’s Duke Blackmoore.” June pointed at Sam. “He looks just like him. Tall and dark and dissolute.” June caught herself. “Not that you’re dissolute. I’m sorry, I don’t even know you.”
“Of course I am,” Sam assured her. “Horridly dissolute.”
“Even the messy hair fits. And those burgundy lips…” She trailed off, lost for a moment in her memories of Duke Blackmoore and his lips. She shook herself, her dancer’s control making the action startlingly erotic. “He is trouble.”
Sam straightened proudly. “Am I? Sounds devilish and fun. What do I get to do?”
“Wenching. Gambling. Drinking. Dueling. The usual.”
“I don’t duel. But I could start.”
“And you, Ally–I mean, Princess Alexandra–are the good woman who has to reform the duke. Oh, it’s such a romantic, lovely story!”
“But why would a good woman want anything to do with a man like Duke Blackmoore?” Ally asked.
“Because he’s very, very hot,” June said.
Sam smiled. “Merci, Mademoiselle.”
June blushed. “Not you. Duke Blackmoore.”
“So the princess is a hormone-addled moron?” Ally asked.
“No. She’s smart as a whip. See, she has to marry him to inherit the cash to support her oodles of siblings and he has to marry her to get the wanna-be Mrs. Dukes off his back.”
“I don’t have any siblings,” Ally pointed out, inexplicably relieved.
“I don’t have any wanna-be…wait…oh. Bloody hell, I am the duke. But reformed? That’s not a romance, that’s a tragedy.”
Buy Now From:
READ AN EXCERPT here.