Page 3 of An Inconvenient Duke

~Claudia

Danielle Williams bit her bottom lip as she read the note, dread and guilt pouring through her in equal measure.

God help me.

There was no refusing this invitation.

One

May 1816

Charlton Place, London

Marcus Braddock stepped out onto the upper terrace of his town house and scanned the party spreading through the torch-lit gardens below.

He grimaced. His home had been invaded.

All of London seemed to be crowded into Charlton Place tonight, with the reception rooms filled to overflowing. The crush of bodies in the ballroom had forced several couples outside to dance on the lawn, and the terraces below were filled with well-dressed dandies flirting with ladies adorned in silks and jewels. Card games played out in the library, men smoked in the music room, the ladies retired to the morning room—the entire house had been turned upside down, the gardens trampled, the horses made uneasy in the mews…

And it wasn’t yet midnight.

His sister Claudia had insisted on throwing this party for him, apparently whether he wanted one or not. Not only to mark his birthday tomorrow but also to celebrate his new position as Duke of Hampton, the title given to him for helping Wellington defeat Napoleon. The party would help ease his way back into society, she’d asserted, and give him an opportunity to meet the men he would now be working with in the Lords.

But Marcus hadn’t given a damn about society before he’d gone off to war, and he cared even less now.

No. The reason he’d agreed to throw open wide the doors of Charlton Place was a woman.

The Honorable Danielle Williams, daughter of Baron Mondale and his late sister Elise’s dearest friend. The woman who had written to inform him that Elise was dead.

The same woman he now knew had lied to him.

His eyes narrowed as they moved deliberately across the crowd. Miss Williams had been avoiding him since his return, refusing to let him call on her and begging off from any social event that might bring them into contact. But she hadn’t been able to refuse the invitation for tonight’s party, not when he’d also invited her great-aunt, who certainly wouldn’t have missed what the society gossips were predicting would be the biggest social event of the season. She couldn’t accept and then simply beg off either. To not attend this party would have been a snub to both him and his sister Claudia, as well as to Elise’s memory. While Danielle might happily continue to avoid him, she would never intentionally wound Claudia.

She was here somewhere, he knew it. Now he simply had to find her.

He frowned. Easier said than done, because Claudia had apparently invited all of society, most of whom he’d never met and had no idea who they even were. Yet they’d eagerly attended, if only for a glimpse of the newly minted duke’s town house. And a glimpse ofhim. Strangers greeted him as if they were old friends, when his true friends—the men he’d served with in the fight against Napoleon—were nowhere to be seen.Thosemen he trusted with his life.

These people made him feel surrounded by the enemy.

The party decorations certainly didn’t help put him at ease. Claudia had insisted that the theme be ancient Roman and then set about turning the whole house into Pompeii. Wooden torches lit the garden, lighting the way for the army of toga-clad footmen carrying trays of wine from a replica of a Roman temple in the center of the garden. The whole thing gave him the unsettling feeling that he’d been transported to Italy, unsure of his surroundings and his place in them.

Being unsure was never an option for a general in the heat of battle, and Marcus refused to let it control him now that he was on home soil. Yet he couldn’t stop it from haunting him, ever since he’d discovered the letter among Elise’s belongings that made him doubt everything he knew about his sister and how she’d died.

He planned to put an end to that doubt tonight, just as soon as he talked to Danielle.

“There he is—the birthday boy!”

Marcus bit back a curse as his two best friends, Brandon Pearce and Merritt Rivers, approached him through the shadows. He’d thought the terrace would be the best place to search for Danielle without being seen.

Apparently not.

“You mean the duke of honor,” corrected Merritt, a lawyer turned army captain who had served with him in the Guards.

Marcus frowned. While he was always glad to see them, right then he didn’t need their distractions. Nor was he in the mood for their joking.

A former brigadier who now held the title of Earl of Sandhurst, Pearce looped his arm over Merritt’s shoulder as both men studied him. “I don’t think he’s happy to see us.”

“Impossible.” Merritt gave a sweep of his arm to indicate the festivities around them. The glass of cognac in his hand had most likely been liberated from Marcus’s private liquor cabinet in his study. “Surely he wants his two brothers-in-arms nearby to witness every single moment of his big night.”