Leslie Lafoy by Her Scandalous Marriage Page A

across the table at him and said, “I’m afraid that you’re going to have to explain all that. It’s simply too intriguing to leave as a mystery. How could you not have known you’d someday be a duke?”
    He’d explain anything the provocative little siren wantedto know. “You weren’t aware that you had a brother? And that he was killed some six months ago?”
    “No!” she gasped, her eyes wide.
    Drayton nodded. “His name was Daniel. I suppose it says a great deal, though, that he was always known as Dinky.”
    “How horrible. How could they do that to him?”
    “The name fit him. Like a glove.” He cocked a brow and added pointedly, “A very small glove. With sequins.”
    “Oh,” she said, her eyes sparkling.
    “Yes, oh. Dinky lived most of his life in Paris.”
    “Where he’d be far less likely to cause the family embarrassment.”
    He lifted his glass to her and, as she sipped her wine, he went on, saying, “When Geoffrey died, Dinky was informed of his social elevation and went out with friends to celebrate. According to the French authorities, he was accidentally strangled to death in a drunken . . . encounter.”
    “Well,” she offered with a little chuckle, “it can’t be said that the family is boring.”
    “There being no other direct descendants,” he continued, watching her take another sip and wondering what sort of tolerance she had for alcohol, “the queen’s men went to the archives and starting tracing the lineage backward, looking for someone to fill Dinky’s spangled shoes. In a stroke of pure, rotten luck, my name was the first one that came up.”
    “No one can make you wear anything you don’t want to wear.”
    “
Au contraire, ma petite
. Two men arrived at my barracks, informed me of my misfortune, stripped me out of my uniform, stuffed me into an ill-fitting suit, and hauledme off to the office of a barrister. All within the span of three hours.”
    “You were in the military?”
    “Like my father and uncles before me,” he supplied, “I was an officer in Her Majesty’s Royal Regiment of Artillery. Which, as it turns out, was of very little practical preparation for fulfilling the duties of a duke.”
    Her heart racing at a ridiculous pace, Caroline grinned.
This
was what Simone had been talking about when she’d said that Drayton was a “regular” man. No airs, no prigginess. Oh, but Simone had so much to learn about men. Drayton Mackenzie wasn’t regular in any way at all.
    “Ah, you only think you’re speechless now,” he said. “Wait until you hear the rest of it.”
    “This would be the part of the story relating to the conditions set in the will?”
    “Oh, you can’t possibly appreciate the conditions of the will until you understand the conditions of the estate in general.”
    “Which are?”
    “Abysmal.”
    She laughed and drank a bit more wine. “I suspect that our respective definitions of ‘abysmal’ are wildly different.”
    “Well, let’s just see, shall we?”
    “All right,” she laughingly challenged. “Tell away.”
    “There are three physical properties in the estate,” he began, absently swirling his wine in the glass. “The first is the London town house. It’s in Hyde Park. Very fashionable, you know. It has a staff of sixteen and a payroll that hasn’t been fully met in the last eight months. I can only assume that the staff hasn’t moved on to other positions because the grocers have continued to deliver foodon a regular basis, putting the bills on what is now
my
tab.”
    He was positively adorable in his frustration. “Sixteen people could consume a great deal of food.”
    “And they do,” he assured her, grinning. “Additionally, because God forbid that anything in this be a pleasant surprise, dear ol’ Geoffrey spared no expense in building this monument to his importance, but chose a builder who spent no tuppence he didn’t have to in hiring the workers who actually constructed the damn