Page 1 of How Not to Marry a Duke

Chapter One

The Return

The foil came within an inch of Frederick's throat before he managed to parry.

"You are distracted." Edward lowered his blade, scarcely breathing hard despite the past hour of combat. "That is the third occasion upon which I have very nearly killed you."

"You are the King." Frederick wiped the perspiration from his brow with his sleeve. "Killing me would occasion a diplomatic incident."

"Killing my dearest friend would occasion my wife speaking to me in that disappointed tone she learnt from her stepmother." Edward set his foil in the rack with the ease of long practice. "Far worse than any diplomatic incident, I assure you."

Frederick could not argue the point. He had witnessed the Queen's disappointment precisely once, directed at a footman who had served tepid tea. The man had looked as though he wished to drown himself in the offending pot.

"What has you so preoccupied?" Edward asked, tossing him a towel.

Estate business. Wedding arrangements. The slow suffocation of duty closing about my throat like a well-tailored noose.

"Nothing of consequence."

"You are a dreadful liar." Edward's mouth twitched. "It's rather endearing, actually. Like watching a puppy attempt to conceal a stolen sausage."

"I am a duke. We are not compared to puppies."

"And yet here I stand, comparing you to one." Edward clapped him on the shoulder. "The privileges of royalty. Come—Ella will have my head if I keep you perspiring in the practice room when there is tea to be had."

They walked through the palace corridors, Frederick attending with half an ear to Edward's complaints regarding Parliament whilst his mind turned over the week ahead like a stone he could not stop worrying. Tomorrow he returned to Carthedge Hall, where Lady Penelope Ashworth and her family awaited. Dinner on Tuesday. A tour of the grounds on Wednesday. Discussions of the wedding breakfast on Thursday.

He should feel something about this. He was certain that engaged men typically experienced some emotion regarding their impending nuptials. Anticipation, perhaps. Contentment. A mild fluttering of the pulse when contemplating their intended's face.

Frederick contemplated Lady Penelope's face. It was a perfectly adequate face. Pleasant, even. She had smiled at him during their second meeting, and he had felt...

Nothing.

He felt nothing.

This was, he supposed, perfectly acceptable. Advantageous marriages were not built upon something so unreliable as feeling. They were built upon contracts and connections and the satisfactory merging of estates. His mother approved of the match. Lady Penelope's father had been most enthusiastic about the alliance. Everyone was terribly pleased.

Frederick was certainly not going to be the one to point out that "terribly pleased" was not, in fact, the same thing as "happy."

A child's shriek cut through his thoughts.

Frederick's hand went to his hip before he could prevent it—reaching for the sword that was not there, his body still trained for battlefields even after months of peace.

"Peace." Edward's hand landed upon his shoulder. "That is merely the children. Charlotte has discovered the joy of terrorising her brothers."

"Ah." Frederick forced his hand to his side. "My apologies. Old habits."

"You needn't apologise for surviving a war," Edward said, rather more gently than his usual manner allowed. "Though I do wish you would stop attempting to impale the footmen when they enter rooms unexpectedly."

"It was one footman. And I merely startled."

"He resigned the following day."

"That seems an overreaction."

They rounded the corner into the east garden, and Frederick stopped dead.

A woman stood in the centre of the chaos—two children circling her like small, feral planets whilst she brandished a peacock feather as though it were a cutlass. Her morning dress was hiked above her knees, the fabric gathered and knotted with what appeared to be hair ribbons, exposing a frankly scandalous length of stocking and petticoat. Her golden hair had escaped its pins entirely, tumbling down her back and below her waist in wild waves that caught the afternoon sunlight.