Meeting him had been impossible. Apparently, he did not have time for debutantes. Even debutantes who’d once deposited frogs in his shirts.
No, no. He was tooimportantnow.
Too grand as the Duke of Stone.
She had grown accustomed to the quiet life of her pianoforte and her lessons in Vienna, an opportunity given to her by her father, who had loved the instrument dearly and sensed her affinity.
Now, after spending four years abroad with her family, she’d been brought back to London. After such a fulfilling time in Vienna, she was to be trotted out onto the marriage market. A husband of significance to buoy the family coffers was required, after all.
Coffers which had been emptied upon some exceedingly poor choices by her father in his bold investments. All of this had culminated in a moment in which her father had, in a fit of shock, read the news of his beloved family’s ruin in the news sheet at breakfast, collapsed…and had never risen.
The whole family was still reeling more than a year hence.
In short, in but a single day’s time, they’d lost almost everything. Even her brother, Alexander, was most alarmed by his sudden position out in the cold as a marquess with virtually no inheritance and bailiffs sending rather alarming missives.Daily.
Their mourning had been forced into the background as Alexander had tried to make sense of the bills.
She was not the only Peabody who needed to marry for wealth.
So, full of ire and purpose, and ready for battle, she lifted her gaze to the meddling man standing before the fire, brandy snifter in hand, brows arched in arrogant surprise.
Except as she caught sight of him, she realized that she was not actually prepared for this war.
For one brief moment, she couldn’t recall why she’d done this. Why such an endeavor had seemed so entirely important. All thoughts were driven from her mind.
Good God.
He was beautiful.
She didn’t remember him being quite this beautiful. Had he always been so exquisitely handsome, so perfect in body, so alive in person?
The Duke of Stone stood languid, handsome, perfect,massive. She found herself fairly gaping at the impossibility of his…well…his masculine magnificence.
Jacqueline was used to exceptionally tall, strong men. All of the men in her family were gifted by the gods, so to speak, but this was different.Hewas different. Singular. And it struck her then that she had not been so close to him in more than five years.
In all her years in England and abroad, Jacqueline had not seen a man of such consequential musculature. Yes, the only comparable examples of male prowess existed in the Herculean statues within the British Museum.
And those fellows were not real.
They were made of stone.
He was most definitely not made of stone.
He was living, breathing flesh and positively transfixing. So transfixing, she realized, she had not drawn breath for several seconds.
She drew in a quick, fortifying breath. She was not a silly miss, and to be put into such a state of awe at his person was most off-putting.
The Duke of Stone eyed her as if she had gone completely out of her wits. He all but growled, “Do I need to call for my servants? If you’re a burglar, you’ve bungled it quite badly.”
“I am not a burglar,” she announced firmly, blinking. For his voice… That growl? It sent positively delicious, and simultaneously annoying, shivers over her skin.
“Do you not know me?” she challenged, strangely wounded that he did not.
Stone blinked, cocked his head to the side, and took her in, a very slow state of affairs, much to her surprise. And when he caught sight of her face and the hair tucked up underneath her cap, a look of pure horror mixed with amazement overtook his stunning visage.
Hedidknow her. He had to with that look.
A strangled note of alarm slipped past his lips. “Bloody hell.”