“I was hoping you’d attend the meetings with me.” He wrapped his arms around her and she sighed.

“We will cause talk, won’t we?”

“A love match usually does.” He kissed her again, and she kissed him back, and while they did cause talk—a lot of talk—it’s also true that the marriage of Eleanora and Elsmore resulted in the addition of one plus one totaling not two, but rather…seven, and every one of them was both ferociously good with numbers and ferociously charming.

A Preview of A DUKE BY ANY OTHER NAME

Keep reading for a peek at Althea Wentworth’s story in

A DUKE BY ANY OTHER NAME

Coming in Spring 2020

Chapter One

“Lady Althea Wentworth is, without doubt, the most vexatious, bothersome, pestilential female I have ever had the misfortune to encounter.” Nathaniel Rothmere was prevented from pacing and shouting by the sow sniffing at his boots, but his store of pejoratives concerning Lady Althea was bottomless.

The sow was a mere four-hundred-pound sylph compared to the rest of the herd milling about Nathaniel’s orchard, though when she flopped to the grass, the ground shook.

“Have you?” Treegum asked with characteristic delicacy. “Encountered the lady, that is?”

“No.” Nor do I wish to.

Another swine, this one on the scale of a seventy-four gun ship of the line, settled in beside her sister and several others followed.

“They seem quite happy here,” Treegum observed. “Perhaps we ought to simply keep them.”

“Then her ladyship will have an excuse to come around again, banging on the door, cutting up my peace, and disturbing the tranquility of my estate.”

Two more pigs chose grassy napping places. Their march across the pastures had apparently tired them out, which was just too damned bad.

“Has the time come for a Stinging Rebuke, sir?” Treegum asked, as a particularly grand specimen rubbed up against him and nearly knocked the old fellow off his feet. Treegum was the butler-cum-house steward. Swineherding was not in his gift.

“I’ve already sent her ladyship two Stinging Rebukes. She probably has them displayed over her mantel like a privateer’s letters of marque and reprisal.” Nathaniel shoved at the hog milling before him, but he might as well have shoved at one of the boulders dotting his fields. “Her ladyship apparently longs to boast that she’s made the acquaintance of the master of Rothhaven Hall. I will gratify her wish, in the spirit of true gentlemanly consideration.”

“Mind you don’t give her a fright,” Treegum muttered, wading around swine to accompany Nathaniel to the gate. “We can’t have you responsible for any more swoons.”