An Unlikely Duchess by Mary Balogh

even in the future tense was the detail about their having fallen deeply in love. In love with this brainless little lady who could lie like a Drury Lane actress? Oh, Lord! He had never in his life met anyone so lacking in conduct and a sense of proper decorum. She was blushing and smiling and removing the pins from her hair. “I will sleep on the floor tonight, sir,” she said. “It is only fair, and really I do not mind at all.”
    “You will sleep on the bed, Miss Middleton,” he said, watching, fascinated, as heavy curly hair cascaded almost to her waist. It must weigh as much as she did. It was really rather magnificent. She should always leave it loose. He repressed the thought, though, when he suddenly had a mental image of her sitting beside him in his curricle, waving to the dandies on the roofs of the stages, her curly locks blowing in the wind.
    Oh, Lord.
    “Really,” she said, and she flushed a deeper shade of red, “there is no need for either of us to sleep on the floor. It is rather a large bed, and we could both keep over to our side. I think it would be silly for you to sleep on the floor.”
    Mitford did not think it would be silly, but he knew it would be deuced uncomfortable.
    “I will leave you for ten minutes,” he said, watching her hands go to the neck of her dress and then fall to her sides again. He picked up his recently discarded coat. “Sleep well, ma’am, and don’t worry about me. Tomorrow is likely to be a long and busy day again.”
    He wandered down to the taproom and ordered a pint of ale. He hoped none of the Hennessys would decide to come down for a nightcap. It would look strange indeed that he had abandoned his bride after eleven o’clock on the second night of their marriage.
    What a coil! All he would need now was to run into someone he knew.
    It really was quite shocking how easy it was to lie when one felt the necessity of doing so. And it had been necessary. He did not care to imagine the looks on the faces of Miss Middleton’s friends if they had known that she was traveling alone with a man who was not her husband, and had discovered that she was sharing a room at the inn with him.
    Good Lord, was that what was really happening? Could it possibly be that he, Paul Villiers, Duke of Mitford, not to mention his string of lesser titles, was really involved in such an indiscretion? And the word indiscretion was such an understatement that it was laughable.
    He was never indiscreet. Or improper. Or impulsive. Or reckless. He could go on and on. He was never anything but perfectly respectable. How could he be otherwise? He had held all those titles since he was seventeen years old, and one for much longer than that, and all the responsibilities that went with them.
    A junior branch of the Sussex Villiers, indeed. Good Lord, he was head of the family and had been for eleven years. It had been a sticky moment when Mr. Hennessy had asked that. And now that he was thinking on the subject, did Miss Middleton not know that the Duke of Mitford’s family name was Villiers? Apparently not.
    Half an hour passed before he returned to their room. It was not one of his traveling companion’s quick ten minutes. Perhaps he should not have left the room at all, he thought as he dawdled his way up the stairs. Going back in there was probably the most difficult thing he had done in more than twenty-four hours. Even entering her room, shoulder first, the evening before had not been so difficult because he had had no time to think about the matter.
    But he had had half an hour to think about this one. He was about to share a room with an unmarried young lady. It was a hair-raising prospect. He had never even spent a whole night in Eveline’s room. And that had been different, anyway. Eveline had been a widow, and one year older than he, and a woman of the world. And she had been his mistress.
    Good Lord, what was he about? He really should have returned her to her father the night before.