A Delightful Arrangement Read online

  A DELIGHTFUL ARRANGEMENT

  The Gentlemen Next Door

  Book 1

  by

  Cecilia Gray

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  Phillip has a duty to marry Francesca. He has always protected his former neighbor and childhood companion, and now that she is of marriageable age, he will give her what she needs most—a real home where she is welcome and wanted.

  Unfortunately for him… she is finished with being dutiful. After years of being an obedient daughter to a hateful father, Francesca jumps into her first Season. Francesca is ready to dance every dance, flirt with every bachelor, and snatch what she wants most—a man she loves who will make her swoon.

  Unfortunately for her… he now sees making her swoon as his duty, too. And Phillip takes his duties very seriously.

  * * *

  This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons living or dead, or places, events, or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are products of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.

  Copyright 2011 by Cecilia Gray

  Cover Image Copyright ~ Olga Griga

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written consent from the author/publisher.

  Published by Gray Life, LLC

  READ. LEARN. LIVE. REPEAT.

  * * *

  Praise for Cecilia Gray’s Novels

  “Absorbing… refreshing… commendable.” —Kirkus Reviews

  “A compelling mix of action, drama and love.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

  “Four Stars!” —San Francisco Book Review

  “Gray’s characters are so full of life, hope and dreams, it’s a pleasure to read about them.” —Schenni’s Book Nook

  “This series is definitely worth reading.” —A Whisper of Thoughts Reviews

  “Cecilia has a talent for instilling warmth and weight into her characters.” —Romancing the Book

  “Will have you captivated from beginning to end.” —Can’t Put It Down Reviews

  The Couldn’t-Have-Done-It-Without-You Page

  Thanks Monica, Alix, Ingrid and Lisa for the reads. And thank you even more for never making me speak of it again.

  Monica - thank you for the sexy bits. Seriously.

  Shelley, Shelley, Shelley. I wish I could clone you and keep you in my basement. (That sounds creepy. I don’t really have a basement, I swear. It’s just hyperbole.)

  Most importantly, thanks to Gigi for being inspiring and super hot.

  It’s the being hot part that matters, you know.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Cecilia’s Booklist

  About Cecilia

  Chapter One

  January 8, 1815

  Lorring, England

  There had never been reason for the ducal estate of Lorring to be closed for the Season. While the Duke made his home in London to fulfill his duties in the House of Lords, his wife and daughter remained in the countryside, save for the occasional week-long sojourn to join him.

  There was speculation as to why the Duchess, who had been such a popular fixture in ballrooms and saloons prior to her marriage, would choose to forsake the Society that had made her popular, not only for her elegant looks and gentle nature, but also for her ladylike accomplishments in music and painting. Some said the joys of motherhood turned her to simpler pleasures. Others whispered it was because her daughter, Lady Francesca Warrington, had been a sickly babe unable to manage the London air for long periods.

  Once the Duchess took to bed, rumors as to the cause of her own ill health filled the books at White’s as did, distastefully, speculation as to the date of her death, which passed on an April morning in 1813.

  Francesca remembered the aftermath in dark, hazy spurts. Her gowns dyed black. Oppressive and heavy curtains hung throughout. Phillip, her childhood friend and neighbor, and his comforting weight by her side as he led her through the procession.

  In the following years, instead of attending to her first Season as a young lady of her age was wont to do, she remained at Lorring, the lack of sensations pressing upon her. The lack of her mother’s lavender perfume. The lack of their nightly peppermint tea as they painted side by side in the moonlight. The lack of her mother’s encouraging shouts when Francesca dared to slide down the stair banister.

  The house, bare of the scents and sensations she so loved, became unbearable.

  For nineteen years, forces had conspired to keep Francesca in a home she hated for reasons so numerous she could refill all the books in the library with them. She had many memories on the grounds, not the least of which included her with her nose pressed to the glass panes of her bedroom window as her father’s coach thundered on his escape to London.

  But no longer. Not any more. She had thrown off her black gowns and replaced them with simple dresses of light gray and soft lavender. She was to journey to London for her very first Season. During which she expected to fulfill many other firsts. Her first ball. Her first dance. Her first flirtation. Her first kiss…well…first kiss that counted. She could hardly credit that slimy mess with her Phillip when they were six.

  But before all those firsts, there was to be this one.

  “Let me,” Francesca said, grabbing an end of the white, billowing sheet from one the maids, who relinquished it with a curious smile. With a nod at the other maid, who held the other end, Francesca pulled her corner tight. She yanked the sheet overhead and pulled it up and over the gilded gold frame of the oil painting of her father – the Duke of Lorring.

  “Thank you, my lady, but he’s waiting for you.” The maid urged her towards the library.

  She breathed a sigh of relief as she noted Phillip’s father, the Earl of March, was also present beside her father. If one ignored temperament, the aging noblemen could be mistaken for brothers, given their matching sets of silver-streaked hair, patrician noses, and ice blue eyes. But they were nothing alike in temperament. Thank goodness.

  She could not account for the presence of Phillip’s father but welcomed it. Her father could be quite unpredictable with the back of his hand when there were no witnesses to make account of his predilections.

  “Hello father.” She came to a stop a few feet before him.

  He wrinkled his nose at the wrinkles in the skirt of her gown.

  ‘I’ve been assisting in preparations.” Explanations rarely made things better but she still felt compelled to justify herself. “There is much to do before my Season.”

  “But you’re not to have a Season, my dear.”

  Despite the finest tutors and governesses to ensure elegant behavior, at her father’s bold declaration, Francesca’s mouth dropped open and her jaw nearly unhinged in disbelief. She met her father’s cold glare with a supercilious lift of an eyebrow. She would never have dared such impudence with only him present.

  It was only under the implied protection of the Earl that Francesca felt she could respond to her father’s incredulous statement. “Why am I not to have a Season?”

  She was nineteen. Past her due for a Season. Not to mention the daughter of a duke. Why else had she suffered through a decade of dance lessons with the length of a broomstick set rigid against her spine while Phillip begrudgingly twirled her under the grimace of her dance master?

  Phillip had been cavorting around London and taunting her with tales of city lif
e for years as she languished in the countryside—granted, while honoring the period of mourning for her mother. She wouldn’t have been fit for company. Sometimes even now, when she thought too much of her mother—

  Francesca snapped her mouth shut and blinked back her tears. Her mother wouldn’t have wanted her to cry until she was long in the tooth, and emotional sentiment would be wasted on her father anyhow. Now was not a time for tears. Now was the time for her to have her Season. Now was time she leave the cold and drafty estate to make her own life. Far, far away from her father.

  She crossed her arms in front of her chest and drummed her fingers against her cap sleeves as she awaited his answer. She could not resist lengthening her spine. She was horribly disadvantaged in height and did not like people towering over her. Phillip did it incessantly precisely for this reason.

  The two men glanced at each other, a look passing between them. The familiar look of men who have made decisions for women without involving the women in question and while simultaneously wondering why the affected women may object, or, god forbid, have questions.

  It was the Earl who spoke first, “My dear—”

  A low snarl curled the Duke’s lip. Even the Earl seemed to fade into the mahogany panels and dark spines of the duke’s arcane book collection at the sound.

  Spittle flew from the corners of her father’s mouth as he spoke with deceptive calm between gritted teeth. “Would you have me waste the ducal coffers on ballgowns and flim flam to appease your vanity? You shall have no Season, because you have no need to find a husband.”

  Francesca twisted the muslin fabric of her sleeve around her fingers, which tightened into a fist. No husband? Am I to remain single? Forever? Left to wither while locked inside these stone walls so we could see who dies of loneliness first? Or so I might watch you take another wife and fail again to make an heir? How will you punish her for your shortcomings, father? Unless…oh, dear Lord. You can’t mean…

  “You can’t send me to a convent.” Although that was a lie—he could. He would. Not the worst of fates, she decided. Although she would miss Phillip terribly. He would write, though. He always wrote.

  “We wouldn’t think to send you to a convent, my dear,” the earl interjected soothingly.

  Francesca relaxed as the earl’s pleasant tone smoothed her anxious brow. The earl and his wife had always been more than mere neighbors—they were the parents she never had. In recent years, her mother’s frail health had forced a perpetual state of bed rest and her father had no use for the only child cruel fate had granted him. She had spent more nights in the neighboring March home than in her own.

  “You are already betrothed,” the duke said, casting a disparaging look at the earl for his kind manners.

  “I am?” Francesca resisted the urge to shake out her ear, convinced she’d misheard.

  “You are promised to Phillip, my dear,” the earl explained.

  Francesca laughed, and as she did, acknowledged how the sound, the feel of genuine laughter felt so good. It had been foreign to her these past few years. Her folded arms dipped to clutch her aching stomach. She didn’t bother to contain her mirth. She should stop laughing, truly, lest the duke snap, but she couldn’t. Marriage to Phillip? It was too much. “Phillip? Are you mad?”

  “Francesca Warrington!” The duke slammed the heel of his black Hessian boot against the cold marble floor and the boom echoed through the library. He turned to the earl. “Would you grant us a private moment?”

  She swallowed her amusement and for a moment, felt the familiar chill of fear tiptoe down her spine. He wouldn’t dare a rage. Not with the earl in the hall, so close within hearing. At least she hoped not.

  “Francesca, you should be grateful,” the duke spat. “You may be the daughter of a duke but a Season would prove fruitless. Your coloring is unfashionable. Your manners are atrocious. And your behavior is lacking for a lady of your stature. I blame your mother.”

  She bit back the retort that the late duchess could hardly be blamed for the sickly constitution that had made her more child than nurturer. Francesca couldn’t, unfortunately, stop her hand from wandering to smooth her wayward red curls at the insult to her coloring. Red curls that no one else in the impressive ducal pedigree held and which were equally as damning as her clear green eyes—a color that had never graced the ducal lineage.

  “What did Phillip say when you told him this news?” He would not like being married, if his bawdy tales of single life were any indication. Late-night carousing with friends. Weekend getaways to exotic locales.

  “Phillip will do as he is told,” the duke assured her. He called the earl back into the room, and Francesca allowed the man to embrace her as if her engagement was a forgone conclusion.

  Phillip hadn’t been told the grand news. She wouldn’t want to be in the room when he was given the ultimatum—Phillip had quite a temper where the duke was concerned. He made no secret of the fact that he disliked her father intensely. In fact, it was one of the reasons he and Francesca got along. Phillip would never allow the duke to bully him into this union.

  “And where is my dear betrothed?” she asked, masking her amusement.

  “He has been summoned from March House in London, dear,” the earl said. “He’ll arrive by morning.”

  Francesca hid a smug smile.

  She wouldn’t have to lift a finger to fight this. Phillip would soon cure their families of any silly notion that the two of them should be married.

  * * *

  “Of course we’re to be married.” Phillip didn’t even favor her with a glance up from the leather-bound book that lay across his thighs, as he casually crossed his legs atop the oak desk in his father’s study.

  “Phillip, have you lost your mind?” Francesca lashed out to push his legs off the desk and onto the Persian rug, where they landed with a thud. She estimated she had twenty minutes to confront him before a member of the March household surreptitiously entered to give their discussion a modicum of respect. She was so often treated as his blood sibling that she herself forgot the impropriety they were allowed.

  Phillip grabbed the book, which teetered precariously on his knees, and threw it on the desk. “What is the matter?”

  She planted her hands on her hips. “You cannot be serious. You? Married? To me?”

  Phillip smiled, his blue eyes twinkling under black, sooty lashes. “I am serious, Franny. I’m twenty-four years of age and have an earldom to consider. It’s the sensible thing to do. For both of us.”

  Here he was, acting as if it were natural that they marry. Both families were in agreement. Perhaps something about her turn of mind was wrong. Perhaps her wits were addled. It wasn’t a very encouraging thought.

  “I honestly don’t see a sensible thing about the arrangement.” Francesca flung herself into the chaise across from Phillip, unceremoniously crossed her arms and legs in an unladylike fashion, and scowled. “What exactly are you getting out of this ridiculous betrothal?”

  Phillip leaned back in his chair. “You, of course.”

  As the words rolled off his tongue, a shiver tickled the back of her neck. It was the oddest feeling, but decidedly pleasant. She couldn’t help the arch of her back, the tip of her head as the shiver made its way down her spine. She barely managed to whisper, “What nonsense.”

  “Not at all. I need someone whose wits aren’t addled to bear an heir, and I want a wife I can tolerate for decently long periods of time. Experience has shown I can tolerate you for months on end.”

  Ah, and then that pleasant sensation was replaced by a drop in the pit of her stomach as though she’d eaten rotten fruit. “I’m flattered, to be sure.” Francesca did not bother to roll her eyes. Phillip was adept at catching her sarcasm.

  “Franny, be reasonable. We could have a delightful arrangement. We know each other as well as we know ourselves. We’re friends. Everything can be just as it is.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “O
h, you know. Our relationship will be reasonable.” He gave her a wicked smile. “You won’t fly into a fit over my card games, or the nights I spend at the club, or the hunting weekends with my friends.”

  “Now, just a moment!” Francesca shot up in her chair. “This is unacceptable. Everyone is having fun except for me. Chastity is enjoying her second Season as we speak. You’ve spent countless years in London. Even after our marriage, you’ll be having all the fun. I’m certain I shan’t be allowed any late-night card games or time at the club or…or…hunting!”

  Phillip bellowed with laughter, and Francesca noted for the first time his clean, white teeth made for a beautiful smile. She hadn’t seen his face in recent months, much less his smile, and although she’d seen other smiles from gentlemen at the local parsonage, those smiles were not so white, not so charming.

  What was wrong with her? What was so charming about teeth, for goodness’ sake?

  “Franny, darling, that’s why you should marry me. I’m willing to tolerate much more from you than another man would. Within reason.”

  Francesca narrowed her eyes. “What is within reason?”

  Phillip leaned back in his chair and lifted his legs to rest again on top of the desk. “I don’t see how the occasional card game would hurt. As long as you didn’t lose too heavily. And as for nights away with your friends—of course! All mature, sensible couples have nights away.”

  “Not all of them,” she said quietly.

  “Oh, Franny, I didn’t mean…” He reached for her helplessly.

  She waved him off and settled deeper into her chaise. With a simple look of affection, she forgave him the insensitive remark. He might not have meant infidelity, but it always brought to mind the accusations the duke had hurled at her poor mother.

  “I would never treat you with anything but respect and honor,” he said as he retook his seat. “As I always have. Franny, think of it. What is it that you want from a marriage? Or a husband?”