BONUS CHAPTER

BRINGING DOWN THE DUKE

JULY 2021

BY EVIE DUNMORE

1

©Evie Dunmore

All rights reserved. No part of this chapter may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without written permission of the author, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages for review purposes only.

This chapter is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

2

“Your Grace. It appears that Miss Archer… is gone.”

“Gone,” Sebastian repeated, confounded. He stood next to his desk, his left arm still formally behind his back, having anticipated his butler to be in company of Miss Archer when the man entered his study.

The harried expression from an hour ago had returned to Bonville’s long face. He had failed at a perfectly simple task: to bring Miss Archer to the study so that Sebastian could make his apology.

“We found a note,” said Bonville awkwardly. “On the vanity table in Miss Archer’s room.”

“A note.” Sebastian frowned - he was beginning to sound like a parrot.

“Your Grace.” Bonville held out the small silver tray he was clutching with the fingertips of both hands. Rather too surprised by Miss Archer’s unexpected absence, Sebastian hadn’t paid tray and note much attention. Until now. He crossed the rug in two strides and took the letter. It was unsealed, a neatly folded square of thin paper with a few hastily scrawled lines. A scholarly penmanship, missing aesthetic appeal but very functional. The inverse of the author of this note – Miss Archer was supremely easy on the eye but seemed to lack all rational faculties. She hadn’t just left her room. She had left Claremont. On foot. Alertness shot through Sebastian hot like an electric current, and his lips pressed together to hold back a curse.

“I assume Miss Archer did not have a coach readied for her departure,” he said, only because the possibility of her successfully ordering his staff around seemed fractionally less outlandish than her just… walking away.

Bonville shook his head. “No, Your Grace.”

“Have the other ladies returned? Lady Catriona and Miss Greenfield?”

Another shake. “The ladies are still out riding in the park with Lord Peregrin.”

Peregrin. The root of this mess. Well. Not all of it. His unhinged brother might have brought Miss Archer onto the premises, but it had been he, Sebastian, who had misjudged the situation and had spoken to the young woman rather too harshly in any case. He hadn’t quite been himself; a vague yet visceral annoyance had spread from the pit of his stomach when he had (wrongly) concluded that Miss Archer was his brother’s paramour. This had coloured their entire exchange in the library. He had felt something when she had mocked him, when her impertinence and unfavourable judgement shouldn’t have affected his mood.

However, the final decision in this chain of foolish decisions that normally preceded a disaster had been Miss Archer’s: she had left, and was now out there, alone, in the heaviest snowfall recorded in decades. A walking liability on his property, and a hazard to herself. To think that she could have remained warm and safe in her room and not cause him trouble…

He took a deep breath.

3

“She is on her way to Hawthorn,” he told Bonville, holding up the note between his fingers. “Tell Stevens to send someone to fetch her. Someone competent, on horseback,” he clarified, because the last thing he now needed was more misunderstandings resulting in a delay in Miss Archer’s retrieval.

In a few hours, the sun would begin to set. Would the snow-covered dirt road even be visible to someone unfamiliar with the estate?

Bonville had hesitated infinitesimally, clearly keen to ask a question.

“Since Madam set out into the wild without a chaperone,” Sebastian said dryly, “I assume Madam might have no compunctions about letting my staff guide her back to Claremont without a chaperone.”

Bonville bowed. “Sending a scout out at once, your Grace.”

The silence following Bonville’s departure was briefly deafening. It felt weighty, too, like guilt. Not an emotion Sebastian knew well. He rarely mis-stepped, or so he liked to think, and when he did, he owned it and corrected the matter. But an apology would only correct the offence he had caused Miss Archer, and not the equally bothersome fact that he had allowed a stranger to affect his behaviour. One of the first skills a man in a public position acquired was immunity to external influences, for if he were to allow the opinions of inconsequential people or even the important ones to affect him, he might as well never leave his bed. It must have been the travel fatigue – the recent journey from the Bretagne was still heavy like lead in his bones. It had made him irritable.

Miss Archer’s face hovered before his mind’s eye, a striking composition of gentle lines and precise angles, but what he remembered most clearly now were the faint hollows beneath her cheekbones.

Was it tiredness? She had a steely bearing but was hardly sturdy. And yet she had left. On foot. He rubbed his temples. What was wrong with her? She was either shockingly impulsive, or too proud; willing to cut off her nose to spite her face. Both options were equally unappealing. He gave a shake.

Whether Miss Archer was appealing should not preoccupy him.

He settled back behind his desk, into the crunching dark leather of his chair; a place where he was the one in charge of the surprises. Besides, a rather large pile of correspondence had accumulated during his forty-eight-hour stay in France, and he wouldn’t have much time to sift through it. Even if Miss Archer had managed to keep to the road to Hawthorn, she could have hardly gone far. He would not have to wait long for her safe return.

The knock on his study door came far later than expected.

He put down his pen. “Enter,” he said, his cold tone masking whatever emotions he might feel.

“Bonville,” he then said, noting that again, his butler stood very, very alone in the doorsill.

“There has been a complication,” Bonville announced, red in the face.

“She’s missing,” Sebastian said, his chest suddenly feeling cold, too.

“No,” said Bonville, “not quite. I understand she had been found.”

He stared, and Bonville cleared his throat. “She is still on her way to Hawthorn. Apparently, she refuses to return.”

At first, that statement made no sense. One did not simply refuse his orders.

Travel fatigue. He must be very fatigued.

“I see,” he said. He came abruptly to his feet. It seemed he had to pay a visit to the stables.

4

“She was immovable, your Grace.” The allegedly competent scout, a red-haired groom-gardener by name of McMahon, was crushing his cap between nervous fingers. Head groom Stevens stood next to him, his weathered face set in stone for he was the one who had chosen McMahon for the mission.

The horses in the boxes near them sensed the tension and were disturbing the sweet, dusty air with agitated scraping and snorting.

Sebastian looked the young man in the eye. “Did you make it clear that it was I who had asked for her return?”