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Read an exclusive extract from The Duke’s Proposal For The Governess by Eleanor Webster. This is the story of a Duke who feels lost in life, and a Governess whose reputation gets put on the line.
In helping each other, can they find true happiness?
*
‘Marry me,’ Dolph said.
‘Huh?’ Abby felt winded, bereft of language.
Momentarily, she couldn’t react, like his words were solitary units of sound and could not be strung together to make sense.
‘We should marry,’ he repeated, his voice stronger.
‘Because…we…kissed?’ she asked, the words disjointed.
‘Yes, but more than that.’
‘What? I— You are not being sensible.’
She stood. Her movement was abrupt and yet she was also aware of the action of each limb and muscle as if needing to make a concerted, coordinated effort. Her body shook, vibrating with sensations and needs, making it foreign to her. Her emotions were equally chaotic, a confused mush of anger, vulnerability, desire…
Her world had been rendered unrecognizable. She couldn’t make sense of her own feelings—never mind this sudden, crazy, overwhelming proposal. She had only just discovered this foreign part of herself and now he was talking of marriage. Marriage?
It made her head spin. Like the time she’d drunk too much elderberry wine thinking it was juice. The feeling was dreamlike, euphoric, elating but foreign.
‘We can’t,’ she said, grasping on to this statement as a single immutable fact.
‘Why?’ He stood also. ‘Because we did not think of it before? You have another husband hidden in the closet?’
‘What? No.’ She paced across the grass. ‘No—no, of course not. But the idea is not sensible. I do not want to be a wife. I did not dream of being a wife.’
‘And dreams can’t change?’
‘No, I mean, I don’t think so. I am not social. I am a governess. We are too different. Our worlds are too different.’
‘You are only recently a governess and fit in this world better than I.’ He gestured towards the village and lake.
She shook her head. ‘I am adequate with children, nothing more. I am no duchess. I don’t want to be a duchess.’
‘I didn’t want to be a duke.’
*
The Duke’s Proposal For The Governess by Eleanor Webster
A wedding to save her from scandal
A bride to save his heart?
After the death of his beloved brother and mother, Randolph, Duke of Elmsend, feels his life is empty. So he’s in no mood to entertain the rumbustious Harrington family while they’re in London. Then he meets Abigail, their governess. When her reputation is in jeopardy he does the unimaginable—he proposes! But whilst Randolph can offer her a ring, can he ever offer her a real marriage…?
Read here.