Heiress Without a Cause by Sara Ramsey

needs, I do not want to see you again.”
    He thought of his plan, of his desire to go back to Scotland and leave the English properties in the hands of his stewards. “I cannot say anything yet, Ellie. Once the twins are married...”
    “So you intend to get rid of them through marriage? I never thought I would see the day, but you are becoming our father after all.”
    The words cut into him like a lash. He rose stiffly to his feet, not willing to acknowledge the truth behind the insult. “I will not turn into him, but I won’t sacrifice my life for his estate either. I need time — and I think we all need time — to understand what to do.”
    “Don’t kill yourself like Richard did,” she said nastily. “At least he took Father with him. Your death would just be selfish.”
    He bowed. “I will endeavor not to disappoint you again. Now, if you will excuse me, I shall continue my metamorphosis into our evil father by going off and sacrificing a goat.”
    Her lips quirked at their old joke about the duke’s satanic ways. He was glad to see the glimmer of a smile before she curled back into herself on the divan. His hand hovered above her hair, wishing they could say goodbye properly — but he had not said goodbye when he went to Scotland. She clearly did not want to hear it now.
    So he left, ambling down the stairs so he didn’t feel quite like he was fleeing. He had to find a way to make things right with Ellie — with all of his family — but that was not something he could achieve in a day.
    First, though, he had to decide whether to truly be the duke. Every instinct screamed for him to return to Scotland, take up the life he had built for himself rather than the life that his inheritance thrust upon him. Every moment he stayed in London felt like he was being bound more tightly to his title — and if he was already using the old duke’s favorite tactic of marrying people off to control them, how badly might he behave if he became the duke in earnest?
    But returning to his old life would not make things any better for his siblings — and it wasn’t enough to offer a woman like Madeleine.
    He cursed as Ellie’s indecently handsome butler showed him out the door to his waiting carriage. He couldn’t think of what to offer Madeleine because he couldn’t offer her anything — he needed to focus on getting her through the month with her reputation and virtue intact. Then, he would find husbands, or barring that, a better chaperone than Sophronia for his sisters, and go back to Scotland where he belonged.
    And he needed to stop thinking of Madeleine as though she was already his, before the temptation to keep her overwhelmed his tenuous ability to be a gentleman.

CHAPTER ELEVEN
    The next afternoon was Friday, and as usual, Prudence called on Madeleine and Amelia while their mothers shopped. It was an arrangement they made several years earlier, after all three girls mutinied and demanded one afternoon a week when they might be free of the usual house calls and shopping excursions to Bond Street.
    Lady Harcastle had declared that Prudence was wasting all her other chances to make a decent match, so she might as well lose her Friday afternoons as well. Aunt Augusta was more tactful, but she felt the same. Either way, the girls had won — and their little club was born. They dubbed themselves the “Muses of Mayfair,” and each week, they shared a bit of their recent work: Amelia read from her novel in progress, Prudence shared bits of her latest historical treatise, and Madeleine recited a monologue.
    As the years progressed, though, the meetings paled for Madeleine. Amelia published several novels under a male pseudonym with increasingly large sales. Prudence wrote to a variety of historians, again as a male — and they had all laughed uproariously when she started corresponding with Alex, who never guessed that many of those letters were composed in one of his own sitting rooms.
    Madeleine, though,