The Duke Who Didn't (Wedgeford Trials, #1)

by Courtney Milan

Was there anything in life more pleasurable than the sensation of striking a dark line through an item on one’s list with a pencil?

Finishing a list had an almost talismanic quality, as if the act of turning intentions into words, then words into deeds, carried a subtle magic.

He looked the way laughter sounded; he was tapping his lips with one finger and smiling down at her with unholy glee.

He was tall and dark and handsome. The perfect storybook hero, if storybook heroes had ever been half-Chinese.

It had been three years since Jeremy Wentworth, the Duke of Lansing, had last come to Wedgeford, and in that time he’d thought about Chloe Fong and her lists. He’d thought about her a lot.

Have you made any progress at all? Or are you still—you?” It was as if she’d heard his thoughts. “No progress at all,” he admitted. “I regret to inform you that I will always be me.”

didn’t come here to play fair.” “What did you come here for?”

came here to convince you to marry me. Then to tell you who I am. And finally to convince you that you should still marry me anyway, after you realize what a bad bargain I would be.

Still, the idea of making Jeremy, of all people, a list to help him find a woman to marry… That made something in her want to lash out like an angry, cornered ferret. But that something was nostalgia and old, small dreams. All of those needed to die anyway, and this would be the best way to murder them.

The sauce, the sauce to end all sauces. The base of the sauce was broad beans fermented with white qu over the course of months. To that, her father added soy sauce, honey, a hint of ground spice, red yeast rice, and some potato vinegar that he also brewed. It was an alchemical triumph, turning bland crops into delicious magic.

His cooking had always been excellent, but the addition of spite to every recipe had brought an extra level of brilliance.

But Jeremy had been living…not in Wedgeford. Where people looked at him askance and whispered about his eyes and his nose when he was present, and asked ridiculous questions—such as whether his blood was red or yellow—when they became comfortable.

He should have told them who he was years ago. Instead, he was precisely as they’d named him. He was the duke who didn’t.

I am going to be very busy for the next decade or so, and I should like to be kissed at least once. You are ideal for this endeavor. You will disappear in a few days. You know what you are doing. You are unlikely to develop unseemly emotions that will entangle me into a relationship that will ruin my business, as you’ve failed to do so thus far. You also have every motive to avoid detection.”

“Chloe,” he said again. “It’s your decision. But please. Please never kiss a man who doesn’t think you deserve his effort.”

“As you said,” she snapped. “It’s my decision. If I want to kiss someone as unworthy as you, it should be allowed.”

“I shall have to disappoint you with your lack of disappointment in me. But I think we have traveled far afield. You weren’t bargaining about the kiss; you cared about what comes after. I offer this as compromise: I won’t despoil you unless you make a numbered plan leading up to the event.”

You’re not easy. You never have been.” She exhaled. “No.” A good reminder. “You have always been worth the effort.”

“And you’re not prickly. You’re decided. You’re the last thing from hard and prickly; you’re the most thoughtful person I know.”

“I want my wife to intimidate me. I want to know that her enemies will all fall before her. That’s the kind of woman I want by my side. She had better be intimidating.”

He was brilliant like the sun. He made her laugh. He smiled at her. When he was in her company, he made her feel like she was the only woman on the planet. And he left. Every year that she’d seen him, he’d said goodbye and he’d left.

My list has all your characteristics. Not just some of them. All of them. It does not differ from you in any particular. Not a single one.”

“You left, Jeremy.” He almost wished she were angry instead of this sadness. “Every year, you came. You charmed me. You made me feel as if I were the center of your universe. And then—five days, a week later, it never mattered—you left. I wouldn’t hear from you again, not until the next year. For three hundred and sixty days out of the year, I didn’t exist to you. And yet I was here, waiting.”

His lips were soft and teasing. It felt like too much, the way his mouth moved against hers, and yet too little all at once, his breath warm against her lips.

“Chloe.” His voice was hoarse. “You must know—I may not be serious about anything, but about you? I am.”

“You’re not wrong about me,” Jeremy said eventually. “I’m like… I’m like White and Whistler’s Pure English Sauce. I’m not English at all, no matter what it says on the label. I’m an unrefined fake, falsely labeled. Chloe deserves…” He swallowed. He wasn’t quite sure how to extend the metaphor. “She deserves… Something that’s not British sauce. Something like this, whatever she names it.”

“You see, qu grows everywhere. We cannot see it, not with our eyes, not until we’ve given it time to grow into molds, to know whether it will become poison or leavening or an agent of fermentation. People have known this since the dawn of civilization. The things that cause fermentation… They exist everywhere, as long as you give them a place to grow.”

This sauce is British. This taste has been here all this time, waiting for Britain to discover it.”

“The place you are,” Mr. Fong said, “is not permanent. Stop waiting. Work with what you have and who you are to make what you want to be. I am waiting to see what you will discover.”

“Just because I want to do everything doesn’t mean I think I can.”

“Tipsy and tired.” She smiled at him. “Doesn’t matter. Here’s a secret: I always want you to kiss me.” Maybe she shouldn’t have said that. “I like you. I shouldn’t, but I do.”

am not cute,” she said between stamps, glaring at him. “I am mean and harsh and you will respect that.”

“The question has never been who my list is about,” Jeremy told her. “It’s been about whether she’ll have me.”

“The sound of feathers—quiet, yes, but ascending on wings. Free. Not weighed down by anything that we went through. That’s what she wanted for you.”

“Let me help,” Chloe said. “Let me protect you as much as you have protected me. It will not weigh me down to love you. It will set me free.”