Free Why Dukes Say I Do by Manda Collins Page A

excitement over the clothes. Now Belinda clapped her hands with glee at Eleanor’s transformation. “You will have a dozen beaux before the week is out,” she pronounced, unconsciously mimicking a ton matron bent on marrying off her daughter.
    “Perhaps not the week, oh ancient one,” Isabella said with a laugh, “but by the end of the summer, certainly.”
    “Do you really think so?” Eleanor asked, her eyes alight with excitement.
    Isabella remembered what it was like to be a motherless girl at this age, and she could only guess how difficult it was to have no female relatives about to guide Eleanor. She wished that she could do more in her short visit.
    “I do think so,” she said aloud. “I predict you will have at least one beau. Now, let’s see what the pink sarcenet looks like. It was always a bit too short for me, so it may not need as much alteration.”
    “Lady Wharton,” Belinda asked, “do you have any sisters of your own?”
    Startled, Isabella turned to look at the girl. “I do indeed. How did you guess?”
    To Isabella’s amusement, she shrugged. The child was as world-weary as an elderly matron. “I don’t know,” Belinda said, a tiny furrow between her brows. “You just seem sisterly.”
    Helping Eleanor out of the sprig muslin, Isabella nodded. “I have one sister. She’s actually your cousin by marriage. She was married to the late duke.”
    “Before he died?”
    Thinking back to the disastrous night of the Ormonde ball, Isabella repressed a shudder. “Yes,” she said after a moment. “She’s a lovely person. I hope that one day you’ll be able to meet her.”
    “Not likely,” Eleanor said, her ebullience at the gowns dampening slightly. “Trevor will never let us go to London. Certainly not while he’s still the duke. He hates London.”
    “I hate it, too,” Belinda said, loyalty to her brother stiffening her backbone.
    “You don’t even know what it’s like,” Eleanor argued. “You just hate it because you wouldn’t be able to run wild there like you do here.”
    “I do not run wild,” Belinda retorted. “I am a free spirit.”
    Eleanor rolled her eyes. “You’re a hoyden.”
    “I am not!”
    “Girls, girls!” Isabella held up a silencing hand. “Enough! This is not how well-bred young ladies behave. When we have a difference of opinion, we maintain our composure and discuss the matter like rational beings.”
    Though they looked as if they’d like to argue, Eleanor and Belinda nodded and to Isabella’s surprise said, “Yes, Lady Wharton.”
    Not wishing to look her gift horse in the mouth, Isabella nodded. “Thank you. Now, let’s fasten this gown and see how it looks.”
    When it was secured, Eleanor twirled before the looking glass. As Isabella had predicted, the gown was only a little long, which would mean that it would need the least alteration.
    “I think it looks quite well on you, Eleanor,” she pronounced. She handed the other two gowns to Sanders and instructed her to take them in and helped Eleanor to remove the pink gown so that she might wear it to dinner that evening.
    “I can’t wait to see what Trevor says,” Belinda said with relish. “He’s going to be so surprised. I think you should wear your hair up, too, Ellie.”
    But Isabella wasn’t so sure. “I do not wish to antagonize your brother,” she began. “If he’s going to be annoyed by this, then we shouldn’t do it.” She was a great proponent of the adage about catching more flies with honey than with vinegar. Lending gowns to Eleanor was honey. Helping her put up her hair—a style he disliked for her to wear—might be closer to vinegar than Isabella was willing to go.
    The girls had no such problem, however.
    “He needs to be made to see reason, Lady Wharton,” Eleanor said firmly. “If Trevor continues to hide me in the country and treat me as a schoolgirl he’ll never see me as the adult I am. And I am an adult. Almost.”
    Sighing inwardly, Isabella