“I love you, Your Grace,” she whispered.

“I love you, Mrs. Courtland,” Ash said in his low rumble. “Helena. My fine lady. Thank you.”

He did not say for what, but Helena understood. Her loneliness fled in a wash of joy, and she knew his shattered as well.

More yells pulled their attention toward the house. Lewis and his sisters were leaping into the air, waving, laughing. They’d seen the kissing. Guy looked on, arms folded, appearing very pleased with himself.

Ash laughed. Helena hadn’t heard such a jubilant sound in a long time. He waved at his family, then caught Helena around the waist as the two of them headed for the waiting children, and home.



ABOUT THE AUTHOR


New York Times bestselling and award-winning author Jennifer Ashley has written more than 95 published novels and novellas in romance, fantasy, mystery, and historical fiction under the names Jennifer Ashley, Allyson James, and Ashley Gardner. Her books have been nominated for and won Romance Writers of America's RITA (given for the best romance novels and novellas of the year), several RT BookReviews Reviewers Choice awards (including Best Urban Fantasy, Best Historical Mystery, and Career Achievement in Historical Romance), and Prism awards for her paranormal romances. Jennifer's books have been translated into more than a dozen languages and have earned starred reviews in Publisher’s Weekly and Booklist.


More about Jennifer’s books can be found at

https://www.jenniferashley.com


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DEAR DUKE



OCTOBER


ANNA HARRINGTON






PREFACE


When the new Duke of Monmouth, decides to put through a canal, he isn’t prepared for an old mill owner and his stubborn—but beautiful—daughter to stand in his way. War is declared, and the only person who seems to understand him is the anonymous pen pal to whom he’s been pouring out his heart, a woman not at all who she seems…




CHAPTER 1




October, 1808

Little London, Lincolnshire

OH, that man! That horrible, arrogant, power-hungry—

“Son of a duke!” Cora Bradley bit out as she stomped down the lane that wound its way along the river. The same river that the Duke of Monmouth now wanted to turn into a canal to aid the factory owners whose works were being built upstream on the River Welland in Spalding. Because while the Welland flowed fast enough to run their machines, it didn’t allow for carrying to port the products those same machines produced. The new duke’s answer? Build a lock. One that would permit barges to move easily along the river and join in with the new canal recently constructed from Boston.

The same lock that would destroy the free flow of the river through the village and put her father’s grist mill out of operation.

Apparently, the new duke was a staunch believer in progress and innovation. Her father’s mill, with its creaking old timbers and humming grindstones—a mill based upon the ancient Greek mills, in fact—was certainly not that.

Apparently, Monmouth also believed he could run roughshod over anyone who got in his way.

She reached into her pocket to give a good squeeze to the letter that she’d already crumpled in her fist that morning when the duke’s latest attempt to close her father’s mill arrived at their doorstep by liveried footman. The same letter that had snapped her patience and sent her stomping right up to Monmouth’s fancy front door at Bishopswood, demanding to speak with His Grace.

She grimaced at herself. She shouldn’t have confronted the duke like that, leaving the mill in such a hurry that she hadn’t changed and still wore her heavy work apron over her worsted wool dress. Should have given herself a day or two to tamp down her anger and reply in writing instead of confronting him. Should have been able to formulate enough words to make her case for why the mill needed to remain in place, even if just until the end of the year, instead of the angry We will never surrender! that tore out of her as if she were a British general facing down the French and had him staring at her as if she’d just sprouted a second head. Should have stayed rather than turning red with mortification and fleeing from the house. Even now she shouldn’t be cutting across Monmouth land and giving the duke or his agents cause to have her arrested for trespassing.

Instead, she should have gone to her local member of Parliament, a man who had always fancied her and would fall over himself in his rush to provide assistance. In fact, only Samuel Newhouse’s interference on her behalf had kept Monmouth from forcing construction of his lock before now.

But this letter—oh, this one had been the last straw!

To think that he could threaten her by convincing Parliament to pass a new canal bill, giving him rights to destroy whatever structures necessary to ensure the building of His Majesty’s canal, just so he could earn a pretty penny in profits from tolls and warehouses—well, His Grace certainly had another think coming! Not when her father had dedicated his entire life to that mill, not when the next closest mill was nearly ten miles further downstream and therefore difficult for most of the villagers to use. Not even when the duke had offered to buy the mill and at far more than its fair value, which was decreasing more and more every day as a result of her father’s sickness. So much so that she feared the mill would soon be in debt and its grindstones up for auction to the highest bidder.

Certainly not when her father was now dying and had only his memories of a life lived in that mill to cling to. Memories of his late wife most of all, when they’d lived and worked right there on the mill site, which had been the happiest days of Cora’s life. If the mill was destroyed, her last connection to that time would also be destroyed, and happiness for her father’s last days right along with it.

She swiped an angry hand at her stinging eyes. If the newly minted Monmouth thought he could simply bully her and her father into—

Her toe caught. She pitched forward and lost her balance as she stumbled three giant steps forward before she as able to right herself. Stopping, she glanced down.

A small, dirt-covered circle stuck up from a small bump in the path. She reached down for it and brushed away the sod clinging to it.

“A ring?” Or at least, she thought it might be a ring. The oddest thing…a ring, fashioned out of what looked like an old spoon handle that was bent to encircle a woman’s small finger. Surely it had once been silver, complete with an etching of some kind on its surface. But time had tarnished it to black, covering the etching until it was no longer recognizable.

Her heart panged as she turned the ring over in her hand. A token of love. A real love that required the man to make this ring rather than simply buy a fancy one from a shop in Lincoln. That was the same kind of love her own parents had shared before her mother died three years ago. Before her father grieved so hard for her that he was soon to follow her to heaven.

She glanced around, holding her breath and listening—

Nothing. No one was near who might have dropped it.

She bit her lip. She couldn’t keep it, wouldn’t keep someone else’s token of love. But she also couldn’t take it to the manor house to inquire of its owner without admitting that she’d been trespassing on Monmouth land. God only knew what kinds of crimes the duke or his agent would accuse her of committing, simply so he could remove her from Little London and have no one to stop him from tearing down the mill. Worse—to have no one there to take care of her father.

But if she returned it to the ground or placed it on top the stone wall, would it become lost again, never to be found by its owner when she realized it was gone and traced back her steps to hunt for it?

No. Monmouth might be a vile, selfish peer who gave no consideration to a person’s property. But she would never be like that.

Taking from her pocket the pencil she used to mark the orders at the mill, she unfolded the crumpled letter and tore off a strip of paper across the bottom of the page. She laid it onto the rock wall and wrote,

I found this on the path. I hope the love it symbolizes leads you back to it.

Not daring to write her name for fear of being arrested if Monmouth found the note before the ring’s owner, she removed a pin from her hair and speared the note to the trunk of the nearest tree. Then she slipped the ring over the pin, to let it dangle in place by the note, and hurried on toward the mill.

JOHN DANIELS, Duke of Monmouth, called to the dogs to stay close by his heels as they ran ahead down the lane. He rolled his eyes when they glanced back at him, then ignored him and went bounding onward.

But of course they did. Even the hounds were smart enough to realize that he was nothing more than an imposter in duke’s clothing.

The pretense of his new life would have been laughable, if not for the fact that it was killing him.

Christ! How was he supposed to lie around, doing nothing? But that was exactly how his new life as a duke was meant to be led. Sitting around Bishopswood like a damnable piece of furniture. Having servants waiting on him at all hours, answering whatever tiny need he had and acting offended if he dared do it himself. Being told that a man of his newly acquired rank and influence wasn’t supposed to do anything even remotely resembling work, including running his estate and overseeing his business interests when he employed land agents and accountants to do it for him.

He was a man of action, his body built for hard work, and that was exactly how he’d spent most of his life—picking up a sledge hammer, a pick or shovel, an axe…whatever tool was needed as he built a series of warehouses across England that capitalized on the country’s improved transportation during the past two decades. The son of a mercantile owner, he’d started into business with only a shovel and the muscles in his back, saving his money until he had enough to buy his own warehouse along Bridgewater’s newly built canal from Birmingham. Only four walls and a questionable roof, but it was enough to earn a trickle of income that he could roll into purchasing another warehouse, which led to another and another, until he had a string of them. Soon he’d moved beyond the canals and bought several buildings in the port towns along the coast. More buildings, more income—enough to live a life of comfort.

But that life had been nothing compared to the unfathomable wealth that buried him alive last winter when an unknown cousin he’d never met died unexpectedly without an heir, slamming a fortune and dukedom onto his shoulders.

Overnight, he went from being a man of work and accomplishment to one of forced leisure, a peer who not only never had to work again but was expected not to. And he hated every moment of it.

His secretary Watson assured him that he couldn’t refuse the title. That no one in the history of England had ever refused the inheritance of a dukedom. It simply wasn’t done! Wasn’t certain it could be done, even if he insisted on it. Then the man had stared at him as if he’d fallen off a turnip wagon and wasn’t smart enough to get out of the road.