And the Miss Ran Away With the Rake

Prologue

Sensible gentleman of means seeks a sensible lady of good breeding for correspondence, and in due consideration, matrimony.

An advertisement placed in the Morning Chronicle

Earlier in the Season of 1810

“No! No! No!” Lord Henry Seldon exclaimed as their butler brought a second basket of letters into the morning room. “Not more of those demmed letters! Burn them, Benley! Take them out of my sight!”

His twin sister, Lady Juniper, the former Lady Henrietta Seldon, looked up from her tea and did her best to stifle a laugh as poor Benley stood there, wavering in the doorway, grasping a large wicker basket overflowing with correspondence. “Set them beside the others and ignore his lordship, Benley. He is in an ill humor this morning.”

Ill humor? Try furious, Henry would have told her. Instead, he vented his anger toward the true object of his ire. “I am going to kill you for this, Preston.”

Preston, being Henry and Henrietta’s nephew, who was also the Duke of Preston and the head of their family, ducked behind his newspaper at the other end of the table, feigning innocence in all this.

If only he was innocent in deed.

Hardly. Currently, he was the bane of Henry’s existence. Not only had Preston’s rakish actions—having ruined no less than five young ladies in the past few weeks—put the duke on the “not received list” but now that taint had spread to Henry and Hen, for suddenly they’d joined the ranks of “barely received.”

Guilty by association, as it were.

“You cannot kill Preston,” Hen said, wading in. She wiped her lips with her napkin and set it down beside her breakfast plate. “You are his heir. It would be bad form.”

“Yes, bad form indeed, Uncle,” Preston said over the top of his paper. Preston only called Henry “Uncle” when he wanted to vex him further—there being a difference of only six months in age between the three of them—Preston’s grandfather having added the twins to the nursery at an indecently advanced age.

And making Henry the uncle to one of London’s most notorious rakes.

So if Preston wanted to play proper nephew, then Henry would oblige him by glaring back, taking the bait against his better judgment. “Bad form was what you and that idiot friend of yours, Roxley, displayed when you placed that ridiculous advertisement in the Morning Chronicle.”

That one small advertisement, a drunken joke, had now garnered an avalanche of responses.

Henry was being buried alive in letters from ladies seeking husbands.

“You should be thanking me,” Preston pointed out. “Now you can have your pick of brides without ever having to set foot in Almack’s.”

“Thanking you? I don’t want to get married,” Henry declared. “That is your business. Why don’t you marry one of these tabbies?”

Preston glanced up, an odd look in his eye. “Perhaps I’ve already found my own tabby.”

“Oh, there’s a lark,” Henry sputtered. “Are you telling us that you intend to marry that vicar’s daughter you’ve been dallying after?”

Before Preston could answer, Hen chimed in, “You should be thankful, Henry, that Preston didn’t place that unfortunate jape in the Times.” Her lips curled into a smile before she took one more sip from her tea and settled back in her seat. “Personally, I found Preston’s ad rather dull myself.”

“Dull?” Preston complained, snapping his paper shut and eyeing his aunt. “I am never dull.”

“Then tedious,” she corrected. “I can’t imagine anyone replying to such nonsense, let alone want to marry a man who describes himself as ‘sensible.’ ” She glanced up at Benley, who was placing the basket of correspondence next to the one that had arrived earlier. “Just how many lonely hearts are there in London?”

“This will make over two hundred, my lady,” Benley said, warily eyeing the collection that carried with it a competing air of rose water and violets. “My lord,” he said, turning to Lord Henry, “Lady Taft’s footman would like to know how you are going to settle the bill for the outstanding postage. Her ladyship is quite put out at having to pay for a goodly number of these—apparently the newspaper has now reached the outlying counties.”

Hen’s eyes widened. “The letters are arriving at your house?”

“Yes, they are,” Henry told her.

“I wasn’t so foxed that I’d use this address,” Preston supplied. “Can you imagine the clamor and interruptions?” He shuddered and returned to his paper.

“Which is exactly why Lady Taft is not amused,” Henry said. “I promised her when she took my house for the Season that it was the quietest of addresses.”

The house in question, on the very respectable and previously sedate Cumberland Place, was a large residence that Henry had inherited from his mother, though he had yet to live in it. He, Preston and Hen (when she was between husbands) lived quite comfortably in the official London residence of the Seldons on Harley Street, just off the corner of Cavendish Square. With such a good address and all the comforts of a ducal residence, Henry saw no reason to strike out on his own.

Besides, he could collect an indecent amount of rent for his well-situated Mayfair house—though now even that was in question. He glared at his nephew again, but Preston was too busy studying his newspaper to notice.

Probably examining it for more gossip about, what else, himself.

Really, who wouldn’t blame Lady Taft for threatening to quit the lease, what with a bell that was ringing constantly from the steady arrival of these demmed letters?

All addressed to A Sensible Gentleman.

Well, right now he felt anything but sensible.

Henry shoved his seat back from the table and got to his feet. Crossing the room in a few quick strides, he caught up the first basket and strode over to the fireplace.

“Good heavens!” Hen exclaimed, jumping up. “Whatever are you doing?”

Even Preston put down his newspaper and gaped.

“What does it look like?” Henry said, poised before the grate. “I am going to burn the lot of them.”

Hen dashed across the room, a black streak in her widow’s weeds, and yanked the basket from his grasp. “You cannot do that.”

He tried to retrieve it, but this was Hen, and she was quite possibly the most stubborn Seldon who had ever lived. She turned so the basket was out of his reach and glared at him.

“The ladies who wrote these letters did so with great care. They are expecting responses. You cannot just burn them to suit your mood,” she said, looking down at the basket of notes she held. “You must reply to them. All of them.”

Too busy hoping that the overwhelming eau du floral rising from the pages would leave his sister overcome, Henry gave scant regard to what she was saying. All he could hope was that when Hen was out cold on the floor, he’d have enough time to consign them to the flames before she came to.

But not even the happy image of these annoying reminders of Preston’s prank roasting over the coals could overshadow what Hen was saying.

What she wanted him to do: answer them.

Henry stilled. Answer them? All of them?

A notion that Preston found quite amusing. “Yes, Henry, I quite agree,” the duke said. “You wouldn’t want to disappoint so many ladies. That would hardly be sensible.”

Henry ignored Preston and faced down his sister. “You can’t seriously expect me to write to all those women?”

“But of course! Each one of these poor, dear souls is awaiting your answer. Most likely watching the post as we speak.”

He let out a graveled snort at the image of lovelorn spinsters all over London—and from the return addresses, a good part of England—sitting by their front doors in hopes true love was about to arrive in a scrap of paper, sealed with a wafer. “That is ridiculous.”

“It is not,” Hen said, in that tone of hers that Henry knew all too well meant she would brook no opposition. Hen carried the basket to the table and began sorting through the feminine appeals. “Do you recall what I was like when Lord Michaels was courting me and how distraught I was when I did not hear from him for two days straight?”

Both Henry and Preston groaned at the mere mention of that bounder’s name.

Michaels being her second husband. There had been three to date—with her most recent venture, Lord Juniper, having died suddenly nearly six months earlier. Hence the widow’s weeds and the onset of Hen’s sentimental side.

“I had no idea if he loved me or not,” she declared, clutching a few of the letters to her breast, as if to make a desperate point. That is until the competing florals doused over the letters made her sneeze and she had to surrender the missives back into the basket.

“Didn’t stop you from marrying him when he did bother to show up,” Henry muttered. Then again, he’d never approved of Lord Michaels. A mere baron and barely that.

Hen sniffed. “Be that as it may, those two days, when I knew not what he was thinking, those were the longest, worst two days of my life.”

“Really, Hen? Isn’t that doing it up a bit? The worst two days of your life?” Henry shook his head and glared at the basket of letters. They were making this the worst week of his life.

“You must answer these,” she repeated, wagging a finger at her brother. “If only to let these ladies know that they have been deceived, just as you were, and you are most sorry for any distress this will cause them.”

“Make Preston apologize,” Henry told her, pointing toward the real culprit in all this. “He placed the ad.”

“Yes, well, you know he will never do that,” Hen said with a dismissive wave.

“And I wouldn’t have placed it if you hadn’t been so prosy that night,” Preston complained. “Going on and on about how I’d ruined the family’s good name.” He picked up his paper. “I would remind you both, we are Seldons. We have never had a good name.”

“Exactly,” Henry said, latching onto the notion with an idea of his own. “When these ladies discover who has written them, and they nose it about how they’ve been ill-used by a Seldon, don’t you think, Hen, that this will only go to sully our family name further? Might even leave you cut from Almack’s.”

Both he and Preston eyed her speculatively. For while Preston was in name the head of the family, neither of them naysaid Hen. Not if they knew what was good for them.

And it very nearly worked.

Nearly.

“There is no reason for you to sign your own name,” she pointed out. “Sign it . . .” She tapped her fingers against her lips and then smiled. “I know! Sign it ‘Mr. Dishforth.’ ”

“Dishforth!” Henry exclaimed, for it had been some time since that name had been uttered under their roof.

“Dishforth! Of course! I don’t know why I didn’t think of it myself, Hen,” Preston said with an approving nod. Of course he would approve. Dishforth—Henry’s invention when they were children—had become Preston’s shining hero. If something got broken or the apple tart disappeared and all that was left was a plate of crumbs, the always culpable and ever rapscallion “Mr. Dishforth” was blamed, much to the annoyance of their nannies and tutors.

Dishforth had been the cause of any number of tragedies. And now, it seemed, he could take the reckoning for this newest one.

“That doesn’t get you off the hook, Preston,” Henry told him. “You are going to answer those letters.”

“Trust me to do that?” Preston said, waggling his brows and winking at Hen.

“Preston won’t have the time, Henry. You’ll have to see to this yourself,” Hen advised her brother. And her nephew.

“He won’t?”

“I won’t?”

“No,” she replied. “I don’t see why you are complaining, Henry. I know very well you will assign the task to your secretary and be done with the matter.”

Henry had the good sense to look sheepish, as this was what he had planned from the very first moment she’d suggested he respond to the letters.

Not that Preston was going to escape her wrath either. Looking the duke in the eye, she said, “You will have nothing more to do with this, as you are going to be too busy finding a wife. A respectable lady to bring your reputation—and ours—up out of the gutter.”

“Good God, Hen! Not this again,” Preston moaned. “What if I told you I had already discovered such a paragon? The perfect lady to be my duchess.”

“I wouldn’t believe you,” Hen replied, arms crossed over her chest.

Henry grinned over his sister’s shoulder at Preston, only too pleased to see the tables turned on the scalawag of a duke. For once.

But Henry hardly got the last laugh in.

As Hen was dragging Preston from the morning room, the duke turned and pointed a finger at his uncle. “Best answer those quickly. Lady Taft is known to gossip. Terrible shame if it were nosed about Town that you’ve been advertising for a wife.” He waggled his brows and was then led off by Hen to whatever fate she had in store for him.

For a moment, Henry spared his nephew a twinge of guilt—what bachelor wouldn’t at the sight of a fellow comrade being led to his demise?—though his sympathies didn’t last for long. Not when he realized that Preston would find it all that much more amusing to spread his joke about Town, albeit via Lady Taft.

Bother him! He would do just that. Probably get that jinglebrains Roxley to spill what they’d done and then he, Henry, would be the laughingstock of London.

He hadn’t even considered that horror.

Now in a regular pique over the mere threat of this humiliation becoming public knowledge, Henry realized he needed to nip it all in the bud.

And quickly.

Going to retrieve the first basket, he noticed one of the letters had fallen to the floor, the wax seal having come loose and the page wide open.

Inside, a vivid, albeit feminine, hand caught his eye, her bold script jumping off the pages.

Dear Sensible Sir,

If your advertisement is naught but a jest, let me assure you it is not funny. . . .

Despite his mood, Henry laughed. This impertinent minx had the right of it. There was not one funny piece to the entire situation. Glancing at the letter again, he realized most of the first page was a censorious lecture on the moral ambiguities of trifling with the hearts of ladies.

A composition that would scald even Preston’s thick skin.

Not even realizing what he was doing, Henry sat down at the table, entirely engrossed in the lady’s frank words. Pouring himself a fresh cup of coffee—for while Hen and Preston loved tea, Henry much preferred coffee, and Benley always made sure there was a pot on hand—he propped his feet on Hen’s chair and read the entire letter. Twice.

And laughed both times. Good God, what a handful of a minx. He tossed the letter down on the table, but his gaze kept straying back to the last lines.

However, if your wishes are truly to meet a sensible lady, then perhaps . . .

He paused and looked at that one word. Perhaps.

No, he couldn’t, he thought, shaking his head. But then he glanced at the letter again and, against every bit of sense he possessed (for Preston had been correct about one thing; Henry was overly sensible), he called for Benley to bring him a pen and some plain paper.