Marry Christmas (Zebra Historical Romance) by Jane Goodger

he smiled gently as he watched them play put her slightly at ease. A cruel man would not smile at squirrels playing.
    “Your Grace,” she said, dipping a curtsy.
    He turned, smiling still, and for just an instant she saw what other women saw: a spectacularly handsome man. She pushed that thought firmly from her mind.
    “Miss Cummings,” he said, giving her the smallest bow. “Thank you for joining me.” His hands were by his sides, then he thrust them into his pants pockets, with drawing them instantly only to shove them behind his back. He’s nervous, she realized, and that made her feel slightly better as well. Elizabeth managed a small smile, and it was shaky at best. Her nerves were a jangled mess, and were not helped in the least by her father’s interview that morning and her bout of tears after. She realized, of course, that she did not hate the duke nor truly dislike him personally, if she were completely honest.
    She loathed that she was being forced to marry him, but probably not the man himself. See? She was being enormously munificent. She could admit she didn’t know him well enough to have even formed any opinion of him. She only knew she hated what he represented: an end to her dreams, her childhood, her life in America.
    An end to everything she’d known or ever hoped for, and he stood before her smiling as if he were bestowing upon her the greatest gift.
    “Please, sit,” he said, indicating a heavily carved chair with gold embroidered cushions and lion claw feet.
    The phrase “throw her to the lions” spun through her head and she had to stifle a bit of hysterical laughter.
    Still fighting a grin, Elizabeth dutifully sat, all her training being brought to the fore for this momentous occasion. She would not embarrass herself or her mother by showing one iota of emotion. She would act with the deportment of a future duchess—or at least a well-brought-up American girl.
    With a sense of inevitability, she watched as the duke got down on one knee and brought out a ring, and felt her stomach clench almost painfully.
    “I will try to be a good husband to you,” he said, his eyes on the ring. “We shall make the best of this.”
    Ah, the romance.
    He let out a small laugh. “I rehearsed what I was going to say. Something to put you at ease, perhaps make you smile. But I see I had better just get this over with.” He took her hand and opened her fingers gently, placing the ring in her hand. Elizabeth stared down at the ring, a pretty thing with a pink stone surrounded by diamonds. It wasn’t grand or gaudy or even very impressive. It was simply a very pretty ring. She slipped it on finding it only a tiny bit too large.
    “Will you do me the great honor of being my wife, my duchess,” he asked formally.
    Elizabeth swallowed past a growing lump in her throat. “Yes,” she said. She lifted her hand and couldn’t quite believe she had just agreed to become the Duchess of Bellingham. “What is this stone?”
    She looked down at him and found him studying her intensely, almost as if he were waiting for her to change her mind. “It’s a tourmaline.”
    “It’s very pretty,” she said, feeling she ought to say something nice to him. She wasn’t a completely horrid person, after all.
    He stood and dragged a matching chair next to hers and sat in it. He was so close the skirt of her pale blue day dress covered his shoes and she had to stay the urge to pull away.
    “I am not such an awful man, am I?” he asked, tilting his head and smiling.
    At that moment, she felt she was the awful one. For what, really, had the duke done to her except show up and offer to make her a duchess. She knew other girls would have been thrilled, other girls who had never fallen in love or made silly dreams in their heads of marrying their true love. “I have acted horribly, not you,” she said, looking down at her hands.
    “I daresay you had your reasons.”
    She looked up to him, surprised that he was