Free The Pretender by Jaclyn Reding

especially Caro,sweet eight-year-old Caroline, who had always looked upon her eldest sister as her champion. She could never do anything to hurt them. Never.
    “Father wouldn’t do that.”
    “He would. He already said as much when he charged me with taking you to Lord Purfoyle. Oh, Bess, don’t you see? Father would have no choice but to make you marry someone after this. Who would you rather it be? Lord Purfoyle, or Mr. MacKinnon?”
    Elizabeth thought about it. “I’d sooner marry a goat than Lord Purfoyle.”
    “Well, at least Mr. MacKinnon isn’t any goat.” Isabella’s voice softened. “You are doing the right thing, Elizabeth. Everything will work out. You’ll see. We’ll have a quick breakfast, get you married, and then head straight back to Drayton Hall. We should be able to make it there by supper if we make good time, and then, once we’re home, Father can figure out what to do next.” She finished dryly, “He might even make you a widow.”
    Elizabeth stared solemnly at her feet as the enormity of the situation finally began to sink in. Isabella was right. She had brought this on herself almost from the day she’d been born. All her life, Elizabeth had acted without thought for the consequences, mostly because having been born to the privilege and protection of the name of Drayton, daughter to a duke, the consequences had never been anything more than a stern reprimand. This time, however, the risk was considerably higher. Because now it had cost her her freedom.
    The one thing she had vowed never to lose.

Chapter Five
    Back in 1727, when Alaric Henry Sinclair Fortunatus Drayton succeeded to the dukedom of Sudeleigh, he inherited seven homes, over one hundred and twenty-five thousand acres of land, and a legion of servants to maintain it all. There was a townhouse in London on fashionable St. James’s Street, a sizeable property in Surrey near the sea, as well as a handful of other holdings strewn all about the English countryside. Few, however, would disagree that the thirty-five thousand acres which comprised the Sudeleigh ducal estate was the very finest of them all.
    It was a vast property thick with woodland of oak and pine, and rivers that threaded their way through verdant parkland and rugged countryside alike. Seeing to the estate’s transformation after generations of neglect by former dukes had been the first project he had undertaken. On the advice of his friend and colleague, the Earl of Burlington, Alaric had hired famed garden architectWilliam Kent, sparing no expense in the creation of a landscape replete with Roman statuary, grottoes, and a “natural” fountain. Crowning it all was an extravagant tower folly set upon a picturesque hillock sloping down to a tranquil swan’s pond and known as Drayton’s Milepost because it stood exactly one mile from Drayton Hall.
    It was there on that same hillock, at the foot of that tower, that the duke stood now, one hand holding the hilt of a sword he’d never used and the other at rest in the pocket of his waistcoat. His wife, Margaret, was seated beside him, her pale silk skirts elegantly arranged around the feet of a Queen Anne chair, while their three youngest daughters, Catherine, Matilda, and Caroline, circled their feet. In the distance behind them, rising from a forest that had once been hunted by kings, stood the smoky redbrick façade of the hall.
    It was the close of what had been a near-perfect day. The birds were nattering in the trees and horses from the Sudeleigh stable grazed lazily on distant pastures in the ebbing sunlight. The duke and his family were dressed in their very finest for the sitting of the “official” portrait of the family of the fifth Duke of Sudeleigh.
    For the occasion, the duke had engaged the services of famed portrait artist Allan Ramsay. It had taken some time and a good deal of persuasion, but Alaric had managed to convince the artist to fit a stop at Drayton into his already busy schedule.