DUKES PREFER BLONDES
The Dressmakers #4
Loretta Chase
Releasing December 29th, 2015
Avon Books
Lady Clara, the fan-favorite character
from Loretta Chase’s New York Times and USA Today bestselling Dressmakers
series, finally gets her own happily ever after!
Convenient marriages are rarely
so…exciting. Can society’s most adored heiress and London’s most difficult
bachelor fall victim to their own unruly desires?
Biweekly
marriage proposals from men who can’t see beyond her (admittedly breathtaking)
looks are starting to get on Lady Clara Fairfax’s nerves. Desperate to be
something more than ornamental, she escapes to her favorite charity. When a
child goes missing, she turns to Oliver Radford—a handsome, brilliant,
excessively conceited barrister.
Having
unexpectedly found himself in line to inherit a dukedom, Radford needs a bride
who can navigate the Society he’s never been part of. If he can find one
without having to set foot in a ballroom, so much the better. Clara—blonde,
blue-eyed, and he must admit, not entirely bereft of brains—will do. As long as
he can woo her, wed her—and not, like every other sapskull in London, lose his
head over her…
Charing Cross
A short time later
“Look out!
Are you blind? Get out of the way!”
Clara
hadn’t time to see what she was in the way of when an arm snaked about her
waist and yanked her back from the curb. Then she saw the black and yellow gig
hurtling toward her.
At the last
minute, it swerved away, toward the watermen and boys clustered about the
statue of King Charles I. Then once more it veered abruptly off course. It
nicked a passing omnibus, struck a limping dog, and swung into St. Martin’s
Lane, leaving pandemonium in its wake.
Some inches
above her head—and plainly audible above the bystanders’ shouts and shrieks and
the noise of carriages, horses, and dogs—a deep, cultivated voice uttered an
oath. The muscular arm came away from her waist and the arm’s owner stepped
back a pace. She looked up at him, more up
than she was accustomed to.
His face
seemed familiar, though her brain couldn’t find a name to attach to it. Under
his hat brim, a single black curl fell against his right temple. Below the
dark, sharply angled eyebrows, a pair of cool grey eyes regarded her. Her own
gaze moved swiftly from his uncomfortably sharp scrutiny down his long nose and
firmly chiseled mouth and chin.
The day was
warm, but the warmth she felt started on the inside.
“I daresay
you noticed nothing about him?” he said. “But why do I ask a pointless
question? Everybody flies into a panic and nobody pays attention. The correct
question is, Does it matter?” He shrugged. “Only to the dog, perhaps. And in that
regard one may say that the driver simply put the wretched brute out of its
misery. Let’s call it an act of mercy. Well, then. Not injured, my lady? No
swooning? No tears? Excellent. Good day.”
He touched
the brim of his hat and started away.
“A man and
a boy in a black Stanhope gig trimmed in yellow,” she said to his back. Clara
was aware of the tall, black-garbed figure pausing, but she was concentrating,
to hold the fleeting image in her mind. “Carriage freshly painted. Blood bay
mare. White stripe. White sock . . . off hind leg. No tiger. The boy . . . I’ve
seen him before, near Covent Garden. Red hair. Square face. Spotty. Garish
yellow coat. Cheap hat. The driver had a face like a whippet. His coat . . . a
better one but not right. Not a
gentleman.”
Her rescuer
slowly turned back to her, one dark eyebrow upraised. “Face like a whippet?”
“A narrow,
elongated face,” she said. With one gloved hand, whose tremor was barely
noticeable, she made a lengthening gesture over her own face. “Sharp features.
He drives to an inch. He might have spared the dog.”
Her rescuer
looked her up and down, so briefly Clara wasn’t altogether sure he’d done it.
But then his expression became acutely intent.
She kept
her sigh to herself and her chin upraised, and waited for the wall to go up.
“You’re
certain,” he said.
Why should I be certain? she thought. I’m only a woman and so of course I have no
brain to speak of.
She said,
more impatiently than she ought to, “I could see the dog was barely alive. No
doubt boys would have tortured him or a horse would have kicked him or a cart
would have rolled over him soon enough. But that driver knew what he was doing.
He struck the animal on purpose.”
The
stranger’s keen gaze shifted away from her to scan the square.
“What an
idiot,” he said. “Making a spectacle of himself. Killing the dog was meant as a
warning to me, obviously. A master of subtlety he is not.” When his gaze
returned to her, he said, “A whippet, you say.”
She nodded.
“Well
done,” he said.
For an
instant Clara thought he’d pat her on the head, as one would a puppy who’d
learned a new trick. But he only stood there, alternately looking at her then
looking about him. His mouth twitched a little, as though he meant to smile,
but he didn’t.
“That man,
whoever he is, is a public menace,” she said. “I have an appointment or I
should report the incident to the police.” She had no appointment. Her visit to
the Milliners’ Society was a spur-of-the-moment decision. But a lady was not to
have anything to do with the police. Even if she got murdered, she ought to do
it discreetly. “I must leave the matter to you.”
“Firstly,
nobody was injured but a dog it’s obvious nobody cared about,” the gentleman
said. “Otherwise the creature would have been a degree more alive to begin
with. Secondly, one doesn’t pester the police about the demise, violent or
otherwise, of a mere canine unless its owner is an aristocrat. Thirdly, it’s
now clear the fellow was aiming for me when you stepped in the way. I couldn’t
see him clearly through the”—he gestured at her hat, his mouth twitching
again—“the whatnot rising from your head. But Whippet Face . . .” Now he
smiled. It wasn’t much of a smile, being small and quick, but it changed his
face, and her heart gave a short, surprised thump. “He’s been trying to kill me
this age. He’s not the only one. Hardly worth troubling the constabulary.”
He gave her
the briefest nod, then turned and strode away.
Clara stood
staring after him.
Tall, lean,
and self-assured, he moved with swift purpose through the sea of people surging
over the streets converging on Trafalgar Square. Even after he entered the
Strand, he didn’t disappear from sight for a while. His hat and broad shoulders
remained visible above the mass of humanity until he reached Clevedon House,
when a passing coach blocked her view.
He never
looked back.
He never looked back.
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Loretta Chase has worked in academe,
retail, and the visual arts, as well as on the streets-as a meter maid-and in
video, as a scriptwriter. She might have developed an excitingly checkered
career had her spouse not nagged her into writing fiction. Her bestselling
historical romances, set in the Regency and Romantic eras of the early 19th
century, have won a number of awards, including the Romance Writers of
America’s Rita. For more about her past, her books, and what she does and
doesn’t do on social media, please visit her website www.LorettaChase.com.
1 comment:
Thank you so much for featuring DUKES PREFER BLONDES
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