Free A Duchess by Midnight by Jillian Eaton

why she was mopping floors and dusting chandeliers and hemming her stepsister’s petticoats.   
    “I will not let anything happened to you,” Clara whispered as she pressed a tender kiss to Agnes’ forehead. “You will have a home here at Windmere for as long as you wish. I promise.”
    The housekeeper’s lashes fluttered, but she did not wake. Grabbing a handful of cheese – she’d forgotten to eat breakfast – Clara tip-toed from the room and closed the door silently behind her.
     
    “This cannot continue.” Standing in the middle of the formal drawing room with her arms held rigidly at her sides and her prominent nose held high in the air the Dowager Duchess of Thorncroft stared down both of her sons without blinking.
    At fifty-seven years of age the dowager duchess was every bit as intimidating as she had been in her youth. For even as a debutante dressed in virginal whites with her hair in soft curls no one had ever dared describe Annette as ‘beautiful’ or ‘lovely’. Strong was used instead. Strong and tenacious and determined. As the fourth daughter of a viscount with no means of furthering herself up the social ladder aside from her own wit and charm she’d had to be.
    It was that strength and tenacity that had seen her through the death of two husbands and the birth of two sons. Two sons, she reflected darkly as her gaze shifted from Andrew to Adam and back again, who have been trying to deliver me to my deathbed ever since they emerged from my womb.
    She loved her boys. They were infinitely precious to her. More precious than her estate in the country or her house in town or her countless jewels and furs, all bestowed upon her by her late husband… and the few discreet lovers she had taken since his death a decade ago. But there was no doubt that the last seven years had sorely tested just how deep that love ran.
    She was not asking for much. Just that her boys – most specifically Andrew – settle themselves down with pretty wives who would give them handsome sons to continue a ducal line that had started nearly five centuries ago.
    “Get up,” she said, a hard edge of steel sharpening her tone as her gaze dropped to the blue velvet sofa where her youngest son lounged as though he hadn’t a care in the world.
    Adam had always been the more devil-may-care of the two. It was in his nature to be wild and a little reckless. Because she had Andrew – and by turn Katherine and Robert – the dowager duchess had turned a blind eye to his philandering ways. But her daughter-in-law and grandson were both gone now, taken far before their time, and if she could not free Adam from the claws of dark despair that had snatched him away from her then it would fall to Andrew to produce a viable heir.
    A troubling thought indeed.
    “Get up at once and do something productive with your life or so help me God I will write you out of the inheritance!”
    Adam lifted his head and looked sideways at his brother. “Can she do that?”
    Standing up out of the chair he’d been sitting in for the better part of an hour while his thoughts drifted – as they always tended to do – to the wife he’d loved and lost, Thorncroft looked down at his brother with vague amusement. “No, but I can. Do as she says, brother, before you send her into another fit of apoplexy.”
    The dowager duchess glowered. “I have never succumbed to a fit of apoplexy in my life.”
    “And we wouldn’t want you to start now.” Springing off of the sofa with surprising ease given the amount of brandy he’d imbibed the night before, Adam grinned at their mother and pressed a smacking kiss to her cheek. “What would people say about us then? The cold-hearted duke, his ne’er-do-well brother and the fainting dowager duchess. We could be our own sideshow.”
    Thorncroft risked a glance at their mother, the corners of his mouth tightening to suppress a smile when he saw her expression. If a single look was capable of killing a man