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The duke paid no heed to his rejoinder "Are you going to allow yoursome other heiress," James said finally "But I will not marry Daisy" Theodora Saxby--known to James alone as Daisy--was his dearest friend, his childhood companion "She deserves better than hted family"

There was silence behind him A terrible, warped silence thatJaht I would be able to replace it in ahis cheeks suddenly so that he looked positively used up

Jaainst the door "How one?"

"Enough" Ashbrook dropped his eyes, at last showing son of shame "If she marries anyone else, I’llI’ll face trial I don’t know if they can put dukes in the dock The House of Lords, I suppose But it won’t be pretty"

"Oh, they can put dukes on trial, all right," Jairl entrusted to your care since the time she was a mere infant Her mother was married to your dearest friend Saxby asked you on his deathbed to care for his daughter"

"And I did," her father replied, but without his usual bluster "Brought her up as ht her up as my sister," James said flatly He forced himself to cross the roo from her"

"Not all the time," his father protested "Just in the last year Or so The majority of her fortune is in funds, and I couldn’t touch that I justI just borrowed fromwell, I just borrowed some I’m deuced unlucky, and that’s a fact I was absolutely sure it wouldn’t come to this"

"Unlucky?" Jairl is getting a proposal or two, I don’t have the tiot to take her It’s not just that the estate and this town house will have to go; after the scandal, the na, either Even if I pay off what I borrowed fro the estate, the whole wouldn’t cover h his head were flatly blasphemous

"It was easier when your mother was alive," the duke said, after a minute or two "She helped, you know She had a level head on her shoulders"

Ja himself to answer that, either His mother had died nine years earlier, so in under a decade his father hadfrom Scotland to Staffordshire to London And he had embezzled Daisy’s fortune

"You’llinto a chair opposite James "She already adores you; she always has We’ve been lucky so far in that poor Theodora is as ugly as a stick The only men who’ve asked for her hand have been such obvious fortune hunters that her e as the season wears on She’s a taking little piece, once you get to know her"

Jaround his teeth "She will never love me in that way She thinks of me as her brother, as her friend And she has no reseot limmer of vanity underscored his words "Your eneration"