Marvelous! Meg clapped her hands in glee. I’m sure your husband can find a few other ways to entertain you.Įve flushed scarlet and became extremely interested in inspecting her new desk’s empty drawers. Please tell me you’re no longer spending your nights hunched over a printing press. She spun toward her friend with a mischievous shake of her finger. If you’re going to be cooped inside this enormous, luxurious new office all day and night, you need a bit of beauty to offset all those mountains of paper. Here, she announced, as she began strategically arranging stems of yellow flowers. Wasn’t that just the raisin in the pudding? Meg couldn’t think of anyone more deserving. Instead, the castle solicitor had put long-suffering and hardworking Eve in charge. Marlowe Castle had purchased the Cressmouth Gazette from Eve’s father, who’d wanted to shut it down when he retired. Eve had married Sébastien le Duc to the dismay of every unwed woman for miles, and now had her very own newspaper. Meg’s bosom friend Eve had fallen in love with one of the dashing le Duc brothers-the slightly less ridiculously handsome one, in Meg’s studied opinion, although she wouldn’t tell her bosom friend that. This had been one of the least boring months in recent history. Oh, very well, Meg had technically been christened Miss Margaret Damaris Brouillard Church, but who wanted to waste time on anything that stuffy and boring? With her arms full of fresh-cut flowers nicked from the castle greenhouse, Meg Church burst into her best friend’s gorgeous new office.

The Duke's Desire by Erica Ridley