How To Unlock A Duke's Heart

Chapter 6

He also couldn't help but let his mind wonder to the impenetrable widowed Lady Pearson. There was something perplexing captivating about her. She had barely uttered a word during dinner but when she had she was truly unprecedented. Those magnetic dark brown eyes, the entrancing beauty that radiated from her small pink luscious lips. She wasn't the conventional beauty like Lucia had been with her seductive Spanish accent, beautiful blonde ripples for curls and tainted sea blue eyes and even though she was another man's property his heart still tugged at him and how he'd once been bewitched possessively by them. He then shuddered to himself. That would never happen again.

He stalked across the room eager to gaze out the window for a moment. He thought back to the day he saw Georgia in the garden with Luella running around her ominously and how she had appeared to be drawing something, but what truly intrigued him was the length of her hair. It was so very long and dark, silky and black with light waves ripping through the wind, and for some reason he had the oddest sensation to want to run his fingers through it. Maybe, he felt he was over exaggerating a bit as he continued to think silently to himself, but he blamed it on the fact that it had looked like very soft hair in the end.

He sipped on his glass of port whiskey allowing his thoughts steal him away for a moment longer and then he saw something most unordinary as he gazed upon the meadow of open field that was a mix of his land and the Willoughby's. There was a swift commotion in the field in the dead dark of night. He squinted his eyes closely following the riders path noting that the rider rode through a hedge and down into what he presumably noticed was his own land which instilled some kind of enraged fury inside him. He had dealt with robbers before in the past and there would be no way in hell, he would have this same problem at Granville.

He stalked out of the room jaw clenched, temples throbbing, and footsteps loud enough to notice a thunderstorm when you heard one. Except it wasn't a thunderstorm and could only be the footsteps of a very very upset man, or Duke, if you will.

"Your grace?" Jasper inquired as the Duke wistfully passed him in the corridor.

"Jasper not now, it seems to be a robber of some sort I will need to deal with this immediately if I am not back in thirty minutes you and Verdie send for me." He told him before taking a side exit to the stables.

"But your grace?!" Jasper called after him from the side door threshold. He had been there before with the Duke when he watched him deal with a gang of robbers once at his London residence. The Duke valiantly protected his home and while gallantly managing to save his entire household.

All the servants were thankful of course, the Duke always had a good sense for instincts and his surroundings always careful all his life to take caution. His father was killed by a mob of robbers seven years ago, that's when he'd got news that he'd received a title and inherited his father's dukedom being his father's eldest son. At one point in his life the poor man almost feared for it, mostly after inheriting the dukedom, of course.

"Jasper, do as I bid." The duke said without even looking over his shoulder taking wide paces to grab and saddle the first mount he saw. He wasn't even sure what the horses name was before swiftly hoping on the reins with a stern kick a galloping full pace into the night.

"That way boy!" The Duke said grunting out his teeth as he appeared through the hedge and rounded a corner.

Georgia had been pacing silently over to herself after arriving to her most secluded spot out in the gaping meadow of field that no doubt happened to also be a piece of the Duke of Richmond's vast unguarded lands. She didn't know it of course, the Duke hadn't lived in Granville, well in never really and she had found this spot years ago. It became her safe haven, and it was a wonder that she had stumbled upon it one evening exploring the vast lands and it was more than anything she'd had ever seen before.