Free The Spinster and the Duke by Jillian Eaton

tucked them, quick as a wink, inside her white apron. “Do you know where in Sussex?” The name Graystone sounded familiar, but he could not immediately place it. He knew Abigail had a niece, a girl by the name of Dianna, if memory served, but he could not recall much more than that.
    “Miss Abigail sent word yesterday for additional trunks to be delivered to an estate outside of Brighton. That is all I know. It is ,” the maid insisted when Reginald raised one eyebrow. “What is all this to you, anyways?”
    “I am in love with her,” he said simply.
    The maid frowned. “Since when?”
    “Always.”
     
    “What do you mean, you are having a ball?” Clutching the invitation in one hand and the edge of the curved banister in the other, Abigail froze halfway down the stairs to glare accusingly at her niece’s best friend. “You never said anything about a ball when we arrived.”
    Charlotte merely smiled. “It was an impromptu decision,” she said. “To celebrate Gavin’s birthday.”
    “Gavin is not here.”
    “A fact he will thank me for when he returns. He loathes balls, you know.”
    “ I loathe balls.”
    “Do you?” Charlotte blinked. “I had no idea.”
    The girls, Abigail decided immediately, were up to something. Trotting down the rest of the stairs with the invitation held high above her head she sailed past Charlotte and out the front door. The late morning sun greeted her and she raised her arm against it, looking this way and that before she spied Dianna lounging in the shade of a beech tree. Picking up her skirts to protect the hem from the dew still clinging to the grass she marched across the lawn with all the precision of a military officer.
    “Good morning, Aunt Abigail,” Dianna said pleasantly, although there was no mistaking the mischievous twinkle in her blue eyes nor the slight hitch in the corner of her mouth she couldn’t quite disguise. “How are you today?”
    “I found this ” – she thrust the invitation at Dianna – “while I was looking for paper to write a note.”
    Leaning up out of her reclining chair, Dianna plucked the invitation from Abigail’s grasp and read it aloud. “You are cordially invited to an end of the summer ball to be held at the country residence of Mr. and Mrs. Gavin Graystone on the seventeenth of this month in celebration of Mr. Graystone’s thirty second year.” She shrugged. “What is wrong with that? I think it is lovely.”
    But Abigail wasn’t finished. From within her beaded reticule she plucked another piece of paper. This one was long and rectangular in shape with a list of names scrawled down the middle.
    “You found the invitation list.” Dianna sat up a little straighter and swung her legs onto the ground. Beneath her yellow skirts her small feet were bare, a freedom allotted only in the country. Resting her chin her hands, she sighed. “I had to invite my parents, Aunt Abigail. I know you and my mother do not always see eye to eye, but it would have been horribly rude not to. Trust me,” she said with a grimace, “I do not want her here either. Hopefully they will not be able to attend.”
    “I do not care about Martha and her husband!” Abigail screeched. Crumpling the paper into a ball, she threw it at the grass in a fit of frustration. She had endured Dianna and Charlotte’s schemes in the past, but this time they had gone too far. “Why on earth would Reginald’s name be on this list?”
    “Is it?” Dianna asked innocently. “So many people were invited I fear I quite lost track.”
    Abigail growled.
    “Well if I suppose his name is on the list, it’s only because Charlotte’s husband often does business with nobility.”
    “But Charlotte’s husband is not even going to be here!” Abigail cried.
    “I suppose we did not think of that.” Looking rather like the proverbial cat who had just swallowed the canary, Dianna smiled and said, “It is much too late to rescind the invitation, of course. Not to