Free Love Letters From a Duke by Elizabeth Boyle Page B

strangled sort of expression that made everyone laugh.
    “I didn’t do that,” Felicity protested, pulling the lap blanket higher and glancing out the window to gauge their progress. In her opinion, they couldn’t get to the Thames quick enough. Flirting with a footman, indeed!
    It wasn’t like that in the least…
    “You should have just sacked him,” Tally said, settling back into her seat. “Now you have the poor man befuddled.”
    “He is not,” Felicity retorted. “Besides, I didn’t do it for those reasons. I only wanted him to stay on so we could go to the Frost Fair.” If she could have bit back those words, she would have, for this always happened when she started arguing with her sister.
    “So you did use the look on him,” Tally said, pouncing on her sister’s confession and sending a triumphant glance toward the others. But as quickly as her victory occurred, she paused and then turned slowly and cast a dubious glance at Felicity. “Nanny Jamilla said it only works when you have a tendre for a man.” She took a quick glance up at the roof and then back at her sister.” And if it worked, then I must surmise that you—”
    “Thalia Langley, you take that back!” Felicity said, rising out of her seat, that is until the carriage bounced over a pothole and she flew back with a rude thump.
    “You like Thatcher?” Pippin whispered, her words aghast.
    “No!” Felicity exploded with more vehemence than was necessary. Worse yet, she felt her cheeks run hot, adding more flames to Tally’s imaginative bonfire. “I just met the man yesterday, and the notion that I am in love with him is utterly ridiculous.” She turned on her sister. “You’ve read too many French novels of late—they’ve turned your mind to a pot of romantic mush.”
    Her twin only preened under the admonishment. “I know what I saw, and you gave that man Nanny Jamilla’s look. And it worked.”
    “Which one was this Jamilla?” Aunt Minty asked. “The Russian doxy or the bit of skirt from Italy?”
    Felicity shook her head. “Neither. Nanny Jamilla was with us when father was attached to the embassy in Paris. And really, Aunt Aramintha, none of our nannies were a ‘bit of skirt,’ as you so indelicately put it. Father took great care every time we moved to a new posting to choose lovely women of good breeding to keep our household and bring us up while he went about his duties as His Majesty’s representative.”
    Aunt Minty blew out a long breath. “Sounds like a fine bunch of gammon to me.”
    It was, Felicity knew. At least she did now. While it was true her father had been a diplomat, he’d also been one of England’s most apt spies—something she and Tally had only learned in the last few years.
    And their nannies? Well, with a bit of hindsight and the perspective that being one and twenty gave a lady, Felicity had come to realize that perhaps their nannies’ obligations may not have ended when she and Tally were trundled off to bed. But she wasn’t about to admit to such a thing and only add to what was already considered an unconventional upbringing.
    Why, the gossips and old cats of the ton would have a field day if it was bandied about that they’d been raised by their father’s romps.
    So instead Felicity raised her defenses. “Oh, heavens no, Aunt Minty! Take our Nanny Tasha—she was a distant cousin of the tsar.”
    “A what?” Aunt Minty asked.
    “The tsar,” Pippin repeated. “Like a king or an emperor.”
    “Harrumph! Most of them are half mad, so it’s hardly arecommendation to my way of thinking,” Aunt Minty declared.
    Tally chimed in. “And Nanny Lucia was a respectable widow. Her husband was a duke who’d been the finance minister to the King of Naples. Papa adored her because he said she made him laugh.”
    Pippin joined the chorus of approval. “Wasn’t your Nanny Jamilla the daughter of a famous Arabian doctor?”
    “She was,” Felicity nodded. “And her mother a