She Fell Asleep in the War Duke’s Bed—While 59 Women Waited Below

Chapter 3

There was a breath in it that was not his.

Julian turned his head slowly. Near the bed, his spaniel Nell’s tail gave one lazy thump against the counterpane. The dog was on his bed — an offense, but not a crisis. Then the counterpane shifted, and a small puppy rolled against a spill of pale blue silk.

For a heartbeat, his mind refused to interpret what he was seeing.

Blue silk. Dark hair scattered across his pillow. A gloved hand curved loosely around one sleeping puppy. A second puppy tucked beneath the curve of a girl’s chin. Nell, his faithless, usually suspicious spaniel, rested her head across the stranger’s skirt as though she had appointed the girl guardian of the litter.

Julian took one step closer, then another. The firelight caught the girl’s face.

It was her. The one from the end of the line. The one who had looked at his mother’s entire marriage campaign as if she found it personally offensive. The missing debutante — the one his mother had counted and recounted, the one who had reduced the evening’s total from sixty to fifty-nine — was asleep in his bed.

He stood there for several long seconds, utterly without strategy.

He had come upstairs for brandy. He had come upstairs for silence. He had come upstairs to reclaim the one room in the house where no one wanted anything from him. Instead, curled in the center of his bed with his spaniel and her puppies gathered against her like conspirators, was a young woman who could destroy her reputation, his reputation, and half the evening’s careful arrangements simply by being found here.

From the corridor beyond his door, footsteps passed. Voices drifted faintly from the landing below. His mother’s voice was not among them. Not yet.

Julian turned back to the sleeping girl. The puppy beneath her chin twitched in its sleep. Nell opened one eye and thumped her tail again, as if to say: I have made my choice. Deal with it.

Julian exhaled once, very slowly.

“Of course,” he said under his breath.

The girl did not stir.

He crossed the room to close the door — it stood open two inches, enough for a servant to notice, enough for a mother to pause, enough for ruin to look inside. Then the girl murmured something in her sleep.

“Martha, if Barnaby is in the linen press again, tell him I am dead.”

Julian stopped.

“Of course,” he said again, to no one. “Because the stranger sleeping in my bed is dreaming of a man named Barnaby.”

He returned to the bedside. “Miss. You must wake.”

She frowned. “I refuse.”

“You are not being asked.”

Her eyes opened.

For one second, she stared at him without understanding. Then she gasped. She scrambled backward, struck the bedpost, and grabbed the nearest thing — which happened to be Julian’s waistcoat. He reached for the puppy before she crushed it. His knee hit the mattress. Nell barked. Another puppy rolled between them.

The room became a tangle of silk, limbs, dogs, and disaster.

The girl drew breath to scream. Julian covered her mouth.

“Do not scream.”

Her eyes widened with outrage. He released her at once.

“You are in danger,” he said.

She looked around at the dark room, at his knee on the bed, at her hand still gripping his waistcoat, at the puppies between them.

“Where am I?” she whispered.

“My room.”

Her face changed. Before she could speak, the door moved.

A woman in plum silk stood in the opening, wearing the expression of someone who had discovered exactly the scandal she had hoped to find.

“Your grace,” Mrs. Harcourt said, her voice dripping with satisfaction. “I see the competition was not conducted in the ballroom after all.”

Julian rose with controlled calm. “Mrs. Harcourt. You will leave this room at once.”

“Oh, my dear,” Mrs. Harcourt said, her gaze fixed on the girl in the bed. “I am certain this is not what it appears.”

Her tone made it clear she believed the opposite. Julian saw the calculation in her eyes — she was already spreading the story downstairs, already tasting the triumph of bringing down the Duchess’s perfect evening.

The girl sat up, her face pale. “I followed a dog. I swear it — I followed a dog and I lost my way.”

Mrs. Harcourt stared at her. “A dog.”

Nell thumped her tail.

“How inventive,” Mrs. Harcourt said, and the word inventive landed like a slap.