Page 1 of A Temporary Bride for the Duke

Chapter One

“What is that noise?” Lydia asked whilst peering down the hall curiously.

Daisy whipped her head around, her pulse accelerating. She recognized one of the raised voices. Her heart sank as she realized it was her father.

“Fiddlesticks,” she hissed to herself as she hurried down the hall. She walked faster and faster as the voices grew louder until she was flat out running. She could hear her father’s voice get more and more belligerent.

“No, no, no, Father,” she whispered as she turned the corner. “Please…”

She skidded to a halt as she saw her father, the Earl of Claymore, grappling with another gentleman in the foyer. The other gentleman was laughing mockingly, pushing her father away.

He stumbled, clearly inebriated, and almost fell.

“Bastard!” he slurred and then stumbled forward, towards the other gentleman. Daisy realized that it was Lord Chambers, one of the men her father played cards with occasionally.

“I’ma bastard? You dare say such a thing to me when you’re nothing less than a card sharp and a scoundrel? Everything you touch fails. You are a complete wretch, and I shall not waste another single minute on you.”

“Villain!” Her father lunged at Lord Chambers with an incoherent cry.

Before she knew it, they were grappling viciously, the Earl’s face a rictus of effort.

Daisy’s face heated with embarrassment. Her father was constantly getting into a spot of bother, and it always started with him losing a wager or some other gambling kerfuffle. She was quite sick of it.

It was times like this when she really missed her mother. The Earl had been quite a different man when his Countess was alive. Daisy remembered those first years of her life with nostalgic fondness and quite a bit of pain, knowing she would never be able to go back there again.

Her father had been quite a different man then. He barely indulged in either wagering or drinking as he was too absorbedin Daisy’s mother and the life they were building to have time for such meaningless trifles.

Since then, Daisy often wondered if the Earl had only loved her because her mother did, and when she died, he lost all interest in his daughter’s well-being. He often seemed to forget that he was not the only one who had lost someone.

Strands of her straw-colored hair escaped from the severe bun she’d pulled it into and fell into her eyes. She tossed her head, blowing irritably at the wisps of hair obscuring her vision.

Her moss green eyes narrowed as she watched her father flail about, causing minor damage but a lot of embarrassment to himself and her. She would give anything to jump on him and box his ears and somehow get him to behave, but ever since he’d descended into a cycle of dissolution and gambling, she had lost the ability to get through to him.

“Father!” she shouted as Lord Chambers flung the Earl against the wall. He hit it hard enough to create an audible thump.

The Earl ignored her, his reddened eyes so similar yet completely different from her own, glaring at Lord Chambers. She stumbled forward, hands outstretched, wanting to check the back of his head, but he jerked away from her.

“Leave it, girl!” he snapped while lurching at the other man.

Lord Chambers nimbly stepped aside, causing the Earl to stumble and fall. Daisy hastened to his side, reaching for his hand to help him up.

Just then, the Viscount Kerwood, who was hosting them all for dinner, stepped into the room, his face like thunder. His eyes fell on the Earl, who was swaying drunkenly, as Daisy tried to steady him, while Lord Chambers looked on with contempt.

“I do not know what you think you’re about.” Lord Kerwood swung a sharp glance around the room, granting all those in attendance a look of disdain and displeasure. Then, he growled, “But I will not tolerate such inebriated, brutish behavior in front of the ladies and in my home. What has come over you, Claymore, to behave in such a manner in front of your daughter?”

A frown furrowed the Viscount’s brow, and the Earl had the grace to seem ashamed, though Daisy doubted he truly was.

Her father had no care for anything except his debauchery.

Another man stepped into the room, and to Daisy’s eye, the place seemed to darken perceptibly. It was Baron Dulforth, a particular acquaintance of her father’s, and the bane of her existence. Every time she spoke to him, she had the urge to take a bath afterward as if his smarmy avarice might have rubbed off on her and infected her spirit.

She stretched her lips into a feeble smile as he helped her set her father on his feet.

He peered at the back of Lord Claymore’s head and frowned. “We will need bandages here.” Baron Dulforth looked at the Viscount first, but when the host made no offer to move, Dulforth gestured to the gentleman’s butler to come forward and assist.

The butler led Daisy, her father, and the Baron to a private room adjacent to the foyer and bade them sit.

“I’m quite all right.” The Earl said, “No need for all this fuss.”