Love Letters From a Duke by Elizabeth Boyle Page B

send Miss Browne a sincere note of condolence.
    —An excerpt from the Bachelor Chronicles
    Take off his coat? Obviously Miss Langley had failed to notice that it was snowing. Or she was simply mad.
    Never mind. One look at the wild light in her eyes and Thatcher knew the answer to his question. “Miss Langley, I will not—”
    His protest fell on deaf ears, for suddenly he found his topcoat being yanked off, his jacket following, and the livery he’d been carrying tugged up onto him.
    “Help me, Pippin,” the impossible little chit was saying. “This coat is devilishly tight.”
    For the second time in less than a day he wished that Lord Langley had been a bit larger in the chest, because right now he couldn’t breathe—but perhaps it was the fact that Miss Langley’s fingers were rifling up his chest as she frantically worked the buttons.
    As the two ladies set to work getting the coat on, Felicity made a hasty introduction. “Mr. Thatcher, this is my cousin, Lady Philippa Knolles. Pippin, this is our new footman.”
    This Pippin, like the Langley sisters, was fair and blue-eyed, but taller, with a reserve about her that her cousins would never be able to claim.
    “Nice to meet you,” Lady Philippa said, slanting him a bemused glance as Miss Langley pushed her cousin away so she could finish the task to her liking.
    He couldn’t remember a woman ever doing such a simple thing as buttoning his coat. And yet while Miss Langley worked with the efficiency and speed of the finest valet, her proximity left him reeling, for to stand so close to her was to catch a whiff of her perfume—a sensual, romantic scent that held more promise than a chit of perhaps twenty should ever know. To have her hands roaming over him with such abandon was to also feel the heat of her breath on this frosty day reach through the starch of his linen shirt and tease his skin. This close, he couldn’t avoid spying the pink of hercheeks and a wisp of hair escaping the prison of her bonnet, leaving him to wonder what the rest of her would look like, freed from the confines of her proper dress.
    This beguiling creature couldn’t be the woman his grandfather had chosen for him. It was impossible.
    And there was one other plaguing question. What the devil had she meant by finds out what we’ve done ?
    Really, what could a former Bath miss have done to inspire such a panic?
    “Please, sir,” she whispered. “If you could just be a footman, a silent one, for the next few minutes, I would be ever so grateful.”
    He had told his aunt the truth, that he was coming over here to set the record straight with Miss Langley, but the plaintive glance in those blue eyes turned out to be his downfall.
    “I can try,” he replied. Really, what would it hurt to continue the deception for a few minutes longer? Besides, there was another piece to this coil: If their father was dead, who was watching over the Langley sisters?
    Not that he cared. Not that it was any of his concern.
    “There,” she said, patting his chest and tossing him one of those devastating little smiles of hers. “You almost look proper now.”
    “Almost?” he managed to say, wishing he could look away from the starry depths of her blue eyes.
    She sighed, a bit more color to her cheeks than the crisp weather could be blamed for. “I fear, Thatcher, you will never be a proper footman.”
    He didn’t know whether to be insulted or relieved. Not that there was much that was proper, he had to imagine, about Miss Felicity Langley. And to his shock, that part of her intrigued him.
    More than he cared to admit.
    Meanwhile, Miss Langley had turned to face her adversary with a stance that would have impressed Wellington. And the closer the carriage got to her, the straighter the line one could have drawn across her shoulders.
    “Who is she?” he asked, ignoring the fact he was supposed to be an anonymous, and more importantly, silent, servant.
    “Miss Sarah Browne,” Felicity shot