The Duke Gets Desperate by Diana Quincy EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
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- Author: Diana Quincy
- Language: English
- Genre: Women’s Historical Fiction
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Yorkshire, England
1886
As far as funerals went, this was one of the more aggravating.
Standing by the graveside as the vicar droned on, Anthony Carey, Duke
of Strickland, resisted the urge to swat a fly that buzzed past his nose. He
felt like a fraud presiding over the entombment of a woman he detested. But
there was no one else to bury his stepmother. The late Duchess of
Strickland had no children and her blood relatives were an ocean away.
Deena Darwish Carey was proving a nuisance in both life and death.
“This turnout is pathetic,” murmured the Honorable Mr. Guy Vaughan. “I
do hope more than a dozen people show up when they put me in the
ground.”
“You should probably try to be nicer to people,” advised Basil Trevelyn,
Earl of Hawksworth. The three men, close friends since university, stood
shoulder to shoulder. They were joined by a handful of servants and
villagers who came to attend the duchess one final time.
To Strick’s surprise, he experienced a pang of sympathy for Deena. He’d
never wondered whether the flamboyant American ever felt lonely in
England with no family or close friends. Strick assumed she’d take a string
of lovers after losing her much older husband, but Deena led a surprisingly
quiet life after being widowed two years earlier.
“At least Strick finally gets his castle back.” Guy spoke quietly.
“Assuming Deena kept her word and left Tremayne to you.”
“It should have been mine all along,” Strick muttered. The bitterness of
losing his childhood home to a foreign interloper lingered. As did the shock
of discovering his late father had deliberately allowed the entail on the
castle to lapse so he could leave the property to his wife, rather than his son
and heir to his title.
“Who else would the late duchess leave the castle to? She has no
relations in England.” Hawk waved a hand in front of his face. “Damn
flies.”
“True,” Guy put in. “And Deena did say, on more than one occasion, that
the late duke wanted the castle to stay in the family.”
Hawk shooed another fly away. “Let’s hope she obliged him.”
Anticipation shot through Strick’s veins. The reading of the will was
scheduled for immediately after the funeral. Castle Tremayne, home to
eight generations of Careys, was in Strick’s blood. He knew every turret,
each battlement and every inch of the bailey by heart.
He and his sisters had played attack on the castle countless times as
children, defending Tremayne against imaginary invaders, only to have
Father surrender the castle to one very real transgressor. Hopefully, the
Deena disaster could finally be put into the past, a tiny blip in the long
history of Castle Tremayne and the Dukes of Strickland.
Strick surveyed the familiar faces assembled in the churchyard—some
somber, others obviously bored. The mourners included Tremayne’s butler
and housekeeper, the local seamstress and her husband, who ran the village
tavern, and Elton Foley, the local railroad factor who wanted to lay tracks
through Strick’s property. An offer Strick repeatedly rebuffed.
A loud sniffle cut through the air. Strick looked in the direction of the
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