Page 72 of No Duke of Mine

She backed out of the sitting room and faced her future as Duchess of Ravenswood, something she had trouble imagining on the journey here. How would she ever feel at home in this vast house with so much opulence everywhere she looked? The sheer grandeur of her bedchamber took her breath—and her composure—away.

She ducked behind a dressing screen and found water to splash on her face.

When she emerged, she felt slightly steadier when she looked around, but her father’s trunks and her traveling case looked too shabby for anyone else to see.

She carried her lighter case into the large empty dressing closet she found, but on the way back for the trunks, she tripped and fell flat on her face on the Persian rug.

Her door burst open, and her new brother-in-law, Stratford, rushed into the room. “Maggie?”

“I’m fine, Stratford,” she promised, pushing herself up to sit, and then taking his hand to get to her feet. “Just a moment of clumsiness.”

“That used to be me,” he admitted, grinning.

“Your head was always trying to go faster than your legs could carry you.” She glanced at the empty doorway he’d come through. “What were you doing, lurking at my door?”

He grinned. “Algernon said to wait for you.”

“Am I expected somewhere?”

“No.” Stratford shrugged. “But it’s what they say when they want to exclude me from any serious conversation.”

“That’s terrible.”

“No. Not really. Their discussions tend to be long-winded and I don’t have the patience for them anyway. Algernon will tell me what I need to know in the end, or Jasper will.” He smiled at her shyly. “So you are finally my sister.”

She showed him her wedding ring. “To be your sister is the sole reason I accepted your brother’s offer.”

“Ha, unlikely,” Stratford exclaimed, grinning back. “You’re probably in love.”

“I am.”

“Good. Algernon deserves that after all he’s been through,” Stratford announced. “Can I help with anything?”

She glanced at the trunks and nodded. “You can pick those up for me and carry the left one to the sitting room, and the right one to my dressing closet.”

“Happy to,” he promised, but as he gallantly hefted the left, and heaviest, into the air, groaning, the bottom fell out of it. All her father’s journals, along with the letters Maggie wanted to keep, were scattered across the floor…

Along with the unexpected glint of old metal and crumpled paper.

Maggie gaped at the mess. Stratford stared at the glittering contents on the floor, wide-eyed. “That was supposed to happen, wasn’t it?”

“No.” Maggie bent down and picked up a gold coin. She stared at it in shock, and then at the other money at her feet. “Does that trunk have a false bottom?”

“Had a false bottom,” Stratford corrected, and crouched down opposite her. He hefted the broken trunk closer to look at it. Then he handed her a wad of banknotes that hadn’t yet fallen out.

Maggie nearly swooned before she’d finished counting.