“Puppies.” Another page turn.

“Kittens have their own qualities: slender little tails that jut out like shaky sticks, squeaking mewls, tiny paws. Are you certain?”

“Puppies. Always.”

Her heart tripped over itself. “Boys or girls?”

“For puppies or kittens?”

“Neither.” A smile curled at her lips as she spoke. “Children.”

Whump! Hands and paper dropped at once to the table. William regarded her with tentative excitement, his brows poised halfway up his forehead. “Dare I ask what could inspire such a question?”

She rose from her seat and let her fingers tenderly stroke her lower midsection. “I’m sure you can guess.”

“I want to hear you say it.”

“Our family will be growing by one more in the next few months.” The emotion bubbled up from Julia, and she laughed at the sheer joy of sharing such news. “We’re going to be parents, William.”

“Are you certain?”

“I waited two months after I missed my courses to be certain.” She stopped beside him.

His gaze fell to her stomach. “The physician never came.”

“He did.” She moved her hand, took his, and placed it over the very small bump. “I waited until you would be out. I didn’t wish to worry you, and I didn’t want to tell you until I knew for certain.”

“You clever minx.” He cupped his large hand over her stomach. His brow furrowed, and he was silent for an extraordinarily long moment.

A trickle of fear nipped at her enjoyment. “Happy? Or displeased?”

“Happy.” He looked up at her with a glossy gaze. “Immeasurably happy.”

This small baby within her womb had moved her brave and powerful husband to tears. She felt her own eyes prickle with heat.

“I love you, Julia.” He got to his feet and pulled her into his arms. Immediately he snapped back and regarded her stomach.

She laughed through her tears. “You won’t hurt him.”

He drew Julia against him once more, this time tender and tentative. “Or her.”

“Oh? Is it a girl you want, then?” Julia snuggled into her husband’s strong arms.

He held her to him and cupped the slight swell of her stomach once more, cradling his entire family in one embrace. “That depends.”

“On?”

“On what this baby is.”

“I think that’s the perfect answer.”

And it was. The perfect answer, for the perfect life and the perfectly wonderful husband she was grateful to have taken the time to discover.




FROM MADELINE MARTIN


Thank you so much for reading Discovering the Duke. I hope you’ve enjoyed it! This was such a fun project to take part in and I am honored to have been included. To find out more about me and my books, you can go to my website: http://www.madelinemartin.com

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If your curiosity is piqued about Noah, you can read his story in Mesmerizing the Marquis:

A reclusive marquis.

An heiress determined to save him.

A passion neither can deny.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR


Madeline Martin is a USA TODAY Bestselling author of historical romance novels filled with twists and turns, adventure, steamy romance, empowered heroines and the men who are strong enough to love them. She lives in sunny Florida in her own happily ever after with her two daughters and a man so wonderful, he’s been dubbed Mr. Awesome.




THE DUKE AND THE APRIL FLOWERS



APRIL


GRACE BURROWES






PREFACE


The Duke of Clonmere must marry one of the Earl of Falmouth’s three giggling younger daughters, but Lady Iris—Falmouth’s oldest, who is not at all inclined to giggling—catches Clonmere’s eye, and his heart!




CHAPTER 1




“YOUR SAINTED papa promised you’d choose your duchess from among my daughters, Your Grace. They are the loveliest trio of young ladies to waltz through Mayfair’s ballrooms in ages, so you needn’t bother fuming about your fate. Polite society will feel not even a scintilla of pity for you.”

The Earl of Falmouth, father to that trio of young ladies, bent to sniff a pot of daffodils. Henning, Duke of Clonmere, barely restrained himself from shoving his lordship’s face into the flowers.

“The pity,” His Grace said, “should be reserved for a woman yoked to a partner who comes to the union unwillingly.”

Falmouth was a lean, white-haired fellow with an easy smile and shrewd blue eyes. Clonmere’s father had claimed that as a boy at public school, the earl had befriended every ducal heir he’d ever met, and let not a one of them forget it.

Amid a back garden coming into its full spring glory, Falmouth looked benign, just as his daughters probably looked demure and biddable.

Clonmere had sisters and a mother. He knew better.

“You are young,” Falmouth said. “You might come to the altar unwillingly, but you’ll come to the marriage bed readily enough. If you’re anything like your father—”

Clonmere rose from the bench rather than let that reminiscence blunder into the light of day. “I am nothing like the last duke.” For one moment, he loomed over the older man, which was not well done of him. Six feet and three inches of duke should be too well mannered to loom over even a schemer like Falmouth.

The earl had turned one old letter into a binding promise of a proposal. Papa had probably sent half a dozen such letters, drunken, sentimental maunderings that posited a desire to see “my dear boy with one of your sweet, lovely girls at his side…”

Fortunately for Clonmere, English law considered bigamy a felony.

“You are more your father’s son than you know,” Falmouth said, pushing to his feet. “You think he engaged in one mad lark after another because he was bored and self-absorbed. In his way, he was as stubborn as you’d like to be. All that wagering and wenching was a refusal to be guided by wiser heads. You’re tempted to err in the very same direction, to ignore your father’s wishes out of simple pique.”

Clonmere was tempted to leave for Portugal, where the spring sunshine was wonderfully hot, not this thin English light that the merest breeze could turn chilly.

But he’d spent the past five years in Portugal, and Mama had put her foot down. Clonmere was stubborn, had a good opinion of himself, and had invested in a few risky ventures, but he wasn’t stupid enough to thwart the duchess on the topic of the ducal succession.

“A desire for marital harmony is the farthest thing from pique,” Clonmere said, striding down the gravel path. “As a father, you should want at least that for your offspring.”

Falmouth chortled, the condescension in his mirth scraping Clonmere’s last nerve. “My daughters are paragons, Your Grace, but they’re also sensible. Give them a tiara, give them the opportunity to count a duke among their in-laws, and they’ll be more than content.”

Falmouth would be content, in other words, because he would have scored a social coup.

“How old are they?” Clonmere asked, regretting the question as soon he’d spoken.

“Lily is twenty-three, Holly and Hyacinth are twenty-one. Old enough to be sensible, young enough to present you with plenty of sons.”

Portugal wasn’t far enough way. Peru wasn’t far enough away. The ladies might indeed be paragons, diamonds, incomparables and all that other twaddle applied to pretty women with titled families, but Clonmere was horrified to think of having Falmouth as a father-in-law.

Women were not livestock, and children were not proof of virility. They were noisy, expensive, messy, and loud, and one heir and one spare were all that duty required of anybody. And yet, duty did require that much. Clonmere was thirty-two, neither of his younger brothers had married, and Mama’s patience was at an end.

“I’m willing to meet your daughters, Falmouth, but I won’t have them paraded before me like fillies at Tatt’s. I’ll send you a list of the social engagements I’ll attend over the next few weeks, and you can make introductions to me and to my mother in the normal course.”

Falmouth plucked a sprig of rosemary from the border beside the garden gate. “You’ll rely on your dear mother’s judgment in this matter?”

“I’ve agreed to be introduced to your daughters, my lord, nothing more. There is no matter, there is no engagement, there might well be no proposal. If you indicate otherwise to your daughters, I’ll know it, and find myself forced to attend to pressing business in the Antipodes.”

The piney scent of rosemary filled the air, supposedly an aid to memory. Clonmere might have already met Falmouth’s paragons, but if so, they’d made no impression on him.

Being a duke, particularly a wealthy, single duke, required the ability to make small talk while considering whether to plant the Surrey estate in flowers or corn, and to play cards while deciding which eager young cleric should be awarded the living in Derbyshire.

Clonmere might have stood up with every blossom in Falmouth’s bouquet at some point. At least one of them had been out before he’d gone to Portugal. As he took his leave of Falmouth, he had the sense that he’d neglected to ask some important question or establish some salient fact…

The niggling, where-are-my-spectacles feeling stayed with Clonmere on the short walk to his townhouse. He kept mostly to the alleys, because the day was sunny, and the carriage parade would start within the hour. Bad enough he would be waltzed off his feet for the next month; but then… Falmouth had only the three daughters, and most hostesses only planned two waltzes per evening.

Perhaps the next month wouldn’t be that taxing after all.

“BUT PAPA,” Lily wailed, “what did you tell him about us?”

“And what did he say about us?” Hyacinth asked, gesturing with her fork.

“Did you let him say anything at all?” Holly added. “You aren’t his papa, you know. Clonmere is a duke. He doesn’t have to listen to you. Hy, please leave me at least a teaspoon of apple compote or my breakfast will be incomplete.”

Iris let her sisters chatter, which they did prodigiously well, and she let the earl deal with their anxiety rather than intervene. As the oldest of his lordship’s unmarried daughters—a venerable twenty-six years—Iris usually played the role of peacemaker.

Not this time. Papa had gone too far, dragooning a duke to the altar, and Papa could deal with the consequences.

“Clonmere is a man of considerable self-possession,” Papa replied, holding his plate out to the footman. “Also a fellow with great sense. He expressed delight at the prospect of meeting you all, and said he looked forward to standing up with each of you over the next few weeks.”

Papa produced his signature beaming patriarchal smile, and Iris worried for her sisters. They’d each had at least three Seasons, Lily had had four, missing a year because of her mother’s death. In the parlance of polite society, Falmouth’s daughters were approaching spinsterdom rather than the altar.

The footman set a plate heaped with a steaming, fluffy omelet before Papa, and the benign smile disappeared.

“Where is my bacon? How am I supposed to choke down these boring, half-cold eggs without bacon? What do I pay you for, Thomas?”