Heartless Duke
League of Dukes Book Two
By
Scarlett Scott
He’s a heartless cad. A relentless rake. Dangerous to know. As cruel as can be.
He’s the Duke of Carlisle, leader of a secret branch of the Home Office charged with keeping the peace amidst great peril and upheaval. By day, he hunts anarchists and murderers with savage intensity. By night, he rules over London’s darkest, most depraved souls.
But he’s about to meet his match in his latest prisoner.
She’s a strong, independent woman. Fearless and determined. Unlike any lady he’s ever known. As unfettered and plucky as can be.
She’s Bridget O’Malley, a trusted member of the underground organization to gain Irish independence. By day, she is a respectable young woman of modest means, attempting to make her way in the world through honest employment. By night, she is embroiled in a world so treacherous and dangerous even she finds her own life at risk. To save herself, she will commit any sin.
When the heartless duke and the fiery rebel clash in a fierce battle of wills, unexpected passions flare to life. Threats lurk at every turn, and no one is as they seem.
Will they be each other’s ruin?
Or is love enough to become their salvation?
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Dedication
Dedicated to the memory of J.S. and to everyone who suffers from depression. You are not alone.
Table of Contents
Title Page
About the Book
Dedication
Epigraph
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Epilogue
Author’s Note
Excerpt from Dangerous Duke
Don’t miss Scarlett’s other romances!
About the Author
Copyright Page
Know, that I would accounted be
True brother of a company
That sang, to sweeten Ireland’s wrong,
Ballad and story, rann and song;
Nor be I any less of them,
Because the red-rose-bordered hem
~“To Ireland in the Coming Times”
William Butler Yeats
Chapter One
Oxfordshire, 1882
The Duke of Carlisle landed at his half brother’s estate in Oxfordshire with a small cadre of servants and one armed guard, dusty, travel-worn, and weary. It seemed wrong somehow to arrive at Clay’s wedding after having spent the previous night surrounded by the most depraved and licentious acts imaginable.
Or at least those imaginable to Leo, and his mind was blessed with a boundless creativity for the wicked.
But here he was, prepared to do his duty.
Duty was everything to him, for it was all he bloody well had.
He was also late, the hour approaching midnight, but he had allowed himself to be distracted at a tavern blessedly in possession of a hearty store of spirits. It was possible that he was drunk as well, having consumed roughly enough ale and wine to float the Spanish Armada.
A poor decision, that. He ought to have arrived earlier like a gentleman.
He flung open his carriage door and leapt down without waiting for it to reach a complete stop. Fortunately, he was blessed with a cat’s stealthy reflexes even when bosky, and he landed in the gravel on two booted feet with effortless grace.
Farleigh, one of the men standing guard over Harlton Hall whilst his brother’s wife-to-be continued to be in danger, approached him first. The political assassination of her husband had left her a target for a particularly ruthless ring of Fenians.
An unfortunate business indeed. One Leo was doing his utmost to rectify. The criminals would be brought to justice by his hand, one way or another. Death was just as swift a sentence as prison. He would choose death for the miscreants over imprisonment every time.
“Your Grace,” Farleigh said, bowing. “You ought to take better care. You could have been injured.”
Leo flicked a cold gaze over the man. “Yet, I was not. Is the entire household abed, sir?”
“There are some who have awaited your arrival. They will see to it that your belongings are taken to the proper chamber and you are settled.”
Leo’s lips thinned. Apathy, as vast as it had ever been, was a chasm inside his chest, threatening to consume him. Likely, he ought to find his chamber, order a bath, and scrub himself clean of the stink of London and the road.
But all he truly wanted was more liquor and some distraction, not necessarily—but preferably—in that order.
“Have there been any incidents since the relocation from London?” he asked sharply.
Even in his cups, he could not shake himself of the burden of his duties. He was the leader of the secretive branch of the Home Office known as the Special League. The safety and well-being of England’s citizenry was in his hands. And the plague of the Fenian menace was evidenced everywhere these days: bombs exploding across England, vicious murders carried out, all in the name of Irish nationalism.
Some days, he needed to over imbibe.
He allowed such a weakness once per month, no more.
“There have been none, Your Grace,” Farleigh confirmed. “The decision to leave town and come here with Her Grace was a wise one.”
“Of course it was,” Leo drawled. “I made it.”
Aware of his rudeness and not giving a good goddamn, Leo stalked past Farleigh, his long legs taking him up the stairs leading to Harlton Hall. He did not bother himself with the details of his trunks or even which chamber had been assigned him. Instead, he went in search of his quarry.
Whisky. Brandy. Ale. Holy hell, even Madeira would do at the moment, and he disliked it intensely. He was in a foul mood, and he did not know why, other than that the Fenians continued to outmaneuver him.
No one outmaneuvered the Duke of Carlisle, by God.
He stalked through the entry and main hall, and was about to acknowledge defeat, when he strode into a darkened chamber and collided with something soft. Something feminine and deliciously scented.
Ah, lemon and bergamot oil.
Something—his hands discovered a well-curved waist—or rather someone.
“I beg your pardon,” the lady said with a huff and the slightest lilt to her accent he could not place.
“You may, but perhaps I shall not grant it,” he said, feeling like the devil tonight.
“Grant what, sir?”
“My pardon.” He dipped his head lower, drawn to her warmth. Though he could see only faint outlines of her as his eyes adjusted to the dim light—a cloud of dark hair, a small, retroussé nose, a stubborn chin—he was nevertheless intrigued. “Have you done something requiring it?”
She made a sound of irritation. “Release me, if you please. I have neither the time nor the inclination to play games with a stranger who arrives in the midst of the night, smelling of spirits.”
“Allow me to introduce myself.” He stepped back, offering her an exaggerated bow. “The Duke of Carlisle, m’lady. And you are?”
She moved forward, into the soft light of t
he hall. With the gas lamps illuminating her fully at last, he felt as if he had received a fist to the gut. She was striking, from her almost midnight hair, to her arresting blue gaze, to the full pout of her pink lips. And she was proportioned just as he preferred: short of stature, yet shapely. Her bosom jutted forward in her plain dove-gray bodice.
Damn him if the woman wasn’t giving him a cockstand here and now, at midnight in the midst of the hall with the hushed sound of servants seeing to his cases fluttering around them. They were not alone, yet they might have been the only two souls in the world.
Her eyes sparkled with intelligence, and he could not shake the feeling she was assessing him somehow. “I serve as governess to the young duke.”
Governess.
That explained the godawful gray gown.
It did not, however, explain his inconvenient and thoroughly unwanted attraction to her. He did not dally with servants.
More’s the pity.
Leo frowned. “What is the governess doing flitting about in the midst of the night, trading barbs with a stranger who smells of spirits?”
He could not resist goading her, it was true.
Her brows snapped together. “You waylaid me, Your Grace.”
He would love to waylay her. All bloody night long.
But such mischief was decidedly not on the menu for this evening. Or ever. He had far too many matters weighing on his mind, and the last thing he needed to do was ruin a governess. He had come to celebrate his brother’s nuptials, damn it, not to cast the last shred of his honor into the wind.
“Whilst you are being waylaid, perhaps you can direct me to the library,” he said then. “I am in need of diversion. My mind does not do well with travel.”
The truth was that his mind was not well in general, and it hadn’t a thing to do with trains and coaches. But that was his private concern, yet another weakness he would admit to no one.
He expected the woman to inform him which chamber he sought and how he might arrive there. He did not expect her frown to deepen, or for her to turn on her heel and stride away down the hall in the opposite direction.
“Follow me, if you please,” she called over her shoulder. “I shall take you there.”
Leo followed, admiring the delectable sway of her hips as they went.
The governess intrigued him far too much, and he hoped to hell it wasn’t going to become a problem. As it stood, he would only be at Harlton Hall for a few days’ time. What could possibly go wrong?
A whole bloody lot, answered a voice inside him.
He ignored it. A faint hint of lemon taunted him. Nor could he wrest his gaze from her. She was exquisitely formed.
And a governess, he reminded himself.
When had he last been intrigued by a female?
It had been years. It had been Jane, to be precise. Her name still curdled his gut, even after all the summers and winters since she had married Ashelford, back when Leo had been a callow youth still foolish enough to believe a woman’s heart could be steadfast. Good of her to rectify his ignorance. His allegiance belonged to the League now and forever, just as it always should have done. Crown and country. The safety of England.
Not the tempting swell of the governess’s lower lip. So full and bewitching, that succulent pink flesh. He longed to sink his teeth into it. The spirits he had consumed were making him maudlin and randy in equal measures, he decided as they entered a long, narrow chamber with shelf-lined walls. A bloody terrible, dreadful coupling. He required more liquor at once, for nothing blunted the furious grip of lust like the obliteration to be found at the bottom of a bottle.
The gas lamps were low, bathing the room in a soft sensibility which did nothing to alleviate the inappropriate bent of his meandering thoughts. His brother had yet to fill the shelves. The books were scarce, though the carpet was new, and a banked fire crackled in the hearth.
She stopped on the periphery of the chamber, spinning toward him, hands laced together at her waist. He noted the bones of her knuckles, white through her skin. Her shoulders were stiff, neck rigid, and her entire body appeared immobile, almost as though she stood on a slippery slope and didn’t wish to move lest she go tumbling down.
Leo was trained to observe. He trusted no one but his brother Clay and the woman he considered his true mother. Everyone else was suspect.
What could a pretty little governess like her have to hide? What did she fear?
He moved nearer to her, driven by suspicion. Driven by need. Driven by the darkness inside him. By desire. Today, he could not rein himself in. He stopped just short of her, crowding her with his considerable height. She scarcely reached his shoulder.
The deeper note of bergamot hit him. Her eyes widened. They were not pure blue. Flecks of gray adulterated them. Her brows were fine and dark, elegantly arched. A flush stole over her cheeks at his silent regard.
“Here we are, Your Grace,” she said softly. Her voice was husky, like a plume of fine cigar smoke, unfurling to envelop him. “The library, just as you requested.”
She remained so still and tense. A doe in the wood poised for flight.
Was he the hunter, his arrow nocked?
He was too intrigued to step away. Too intrigued even to search for more spirits. Surely Clay had whisky, and he would find it at his leisure. First, there was something about this blasted governess. Something he could not shake.
“Your name.” He meant to ask her in the form of a question, but he was not terribly adept at polite conversation. He led his agents. He hosted depraved fêtes at his townhouse. He did not speak to governesses, pay social calls, or whirl about at balls. He was a machine. And like any machine, he was beginning to show wear.
“Palliser, Your Grace.”
“Miss Palliser,” he repeated, thinking the name familiar. He searched the dusty corners of his mind before lighting upon it. “Glencora, by any chance?”
It was meant to be a sally, a reference to the Anthony Trollope character—an irregularity for him, as he had not much cause for levity in his life—but the governess paled, her lips parting. “Jane Palliser, Your Grace.”
Christ.
There was that hated name again. Surely, this was the Lord’s idea of a cruel jest. A means of retribution for the vast catalog of sins Leo had committed in the name of serving his queen. Why else would a governess with the face of an angel and the body of a courtesan be placed before him on this day of weakness, bearing the same name as the woman who had nearly been his ruin?
His lip curled. “Jane.” The name felt heavy on his tongue, acidic and bitter, the taste of disillusionment, and even though this was a different Jane before him, he could not separate the emotions from the moment. “You do not look like a Jane to me.”
Her eyes widened almost imperceptibly. “And yet, that is what my mother chose to name me, Your Grace. I am so sorry to disappoint you.”
He did not miss the undercurrent in her voice, a strange hint of something suggesting Miss Jane Palliser harbored secrets. Perhaps he would make it his mission to uncover them during his brief stay at Harlton Hall.
Leo raked his gaze over her in an assessing fashion, unable to resist the urge to discomfit her. “I doubt you could disappoint me, Miss Palliser.”
The Duke of Carlisle had come to Harlton Hall. It was almost not to be believed, far too fortuitous a circumstance to be ascribed to anything other than fate. And he was not just here, within her presence, within her reach, standing near enough to touch in the barren library, but he was flirting. With her, or at least with the woman he presumed her to be. Pretty London lass Jane Palliser. Nothing but a fiction.
The anxiety she had known upon his sudden proximity and odd queries—the dark, plumbing gaze of his that seemed to see far more than she wished, cutting straight to the heart of all her desperate prevarications—lifted. She was accustomed to men who thought they could have everything they wanted. She had spent her life in their shadows.
She gritted her teet
h and forced herself not to allow her hatred to show. He wanted her, and if there was one thing she had learned in her life, it was the power a woman wielded over a man. One twitch of her skirts, the revelation of an ankle, the flit of her tongue over her lips, and he would be in the palm of her hand.
Precisely where she wished him.
For she may have arrived at Harlton Hall as Miss Jane Palliser, but in truth, she was Bridget O’Malley, and she had come to fight a war.
Sármhaith. She favored him with a slow smile and lowered her gaze to his mouth, which was—she reluctantly admitted—sculpted with a perfection that defied reality. “I am certain I could prove a source of great disappointment for you, Your Grace.”
One dark brow quirked. “Indeed, Miss Palliser? Do tell.”
Oh, she could tell him. But that was not part of her plan. Baiting him, however, was. “My position here is new, sir, and I do not dare jeopardize it. If it is female companionship you desire, I suggest you return to the place that stinks of cigar smoke and stale ale.”
His eyes were almost obsidian, his gaze probing, searing. For a moment, she fancied he could see all the bruises she hid beneath her skin, and then she shoved that nonsense into the ether where it belonged. If a trill of something unwanted went down her spine at his perusal, it was a mere natural reaction to him as a man and nothing more.
She could not deny he was handsome. Large and strong too, just as she preferred. His body radiated with an intensity she had never before seen in another man. But this man was her enemy. He was different from all the others.
This man, like the rest, she could not trust.
But this man, unlike those who had come before him and those who would come after, she was destined to defeat. She had no choice. Everything she did now was for Cullen’s sake.
“And how do you know I came from a place stinking of cigar smoke and stale ale?” he asked at last into the heavy silence.
“Your jacket reeks of it,” she said. “I must retire. If you will excuse me, Your Grace.”
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