by Jenna Hart
For K,
You're golden
Contents
Dedication
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
EPILOGUE
COPYRIGHT
FROM THE AUTHOR
CHAPTER ONE
Surrey, 1812
The Jaded Dagger Inn
One Year Later
The large glass sailed past the Duke of Averton's head, shattering into the old, wooden wall behind him.
"How dare you... you…you... pompous, arrogant fool," Lady Charlotte Wooldridge screamed, unable to control herself any longer. Grabbing another glass, she launched it forward.
Another near miss.
Hadden cornered the woman- a now feral, dangerous creature looking to claw her way out of the walls closing in around her. She was much different than the innocent girl he had known in his youth.
But then again, Charlotte had never been innocent to him.
"If you think you have won because you have me here," Charlotte hissed, "you are an even bigger fool than I thought!"
Hadden sighed.
His patience was growing thin, and he knew Charlotte was stalling.
Not that there was any point. She wouldn't be able to go anywhere. His men surrounded the inn, and it would be impossible for her to escape.
Hadden and his men had chased her from England to Italy, to France, and now, back here. For months, she had eluded him. And he finally caught up with her in a small inn outside of London.
He needed to end the chase now, while he had the upper hand.
"It's only just begun! And they will come for you and everything you hold close to you! Do you think your title is going to protect you, or your brother?"
The threat struck its mark, at the mention of his brother. Hadden took a step towards her, closing the distance between them. He all but had to reach out, and his hands would be around Charlotte's throat.
"Or perhaps you think it safe now to marry the Danerly bitch?"
It had taken nearly five years to chase her down, and Hadden would see her pay for her crimes.
If she were smart, she would turn her cohorts in, and take comfort in a swift death for herself.
He knew she would not take that route. She would beg for mercy in the end.
"I am many things, madame, but I assure you, a fool is not one of them," Hadden replied.
He stared at her, his expression bored, leading Charlotte to believe he had tired of their cat and mouse game.
Charlotte would never see the storm stirring inside him. Hadden had mastered hiding his feelings early in his youth, and it had served him particularly well in instances such as this.
Hadden removed a small piece of cloth from his coat pocket, dabbing at his face to wipe the liquid away that landed on him from the shattered glasses.
Danger poured from the man. The exterior was calm, a silent storm brewing under the waves. It was not the type of threat that made hearts quicken or a breath catch between forbidden lovers worried about being found.
Charlotte had experienced that danger with him before, those feelings years ago.
No, this was the type of danger that accompanied Death, serving as its welcoming party.
She had to get away from it, away from him.
Charlotte searched the room, looking for an exit. Hadden would not stop hunting her until she was swinging from the gallows.
Grabbing the last glass in front of her, she prepared to throw it at him, before a crashing revelation set in.
A slow smile crept across the woman's lips. She set the glass back down on the old wooden bar and started laughing. "You cannot prove anything!"
"YOU are my proof, and when they're finished with you, you will wish you had taken my advice the first time."
Charlotte stared at the man.
He was one of the most handsome men she had ever seen. Since she had seen him last, he had only grown to be more powerful and lethal, his youthful, boyish features hardening into that of a man.
His full lips were the same, and his green eyes, eyes that once had clouded with desire for her, now clouded with something she couldn't place.
Such a shame he'd be dead soon.
She'd love to get him in her bed again, even just once, before she'd slide her dagger across his throat. Right now, she had to think of a way to bide herself some more time.
"Just let me go," Charlotte said softly, batting her long, hooded lashes at him and unbuttoning the top button of her sapphire blue riding dress, "or, just take me right here as payment for my crimes. I wouldn't fight you."
She undid two more buttons, revealing her creamy flesh and pink nipples. Hadden's eyes never left Charlotte's face.
Nothing in the world would tempt him to look at Charlotte that way again.
"Button your dress up and have some respect for yourself," Hadden said.
The sooner he got her to London and into the hands of the authorities, the better of he would be.
Despite her commoner background, Charlotte managed to bed and wed an influential member of the ton. Lord Bernard Wooldridge, Hadden's maternal uncle, married the three decades younger Charlotte, in the latter stages of his life, much to the dismay of both Hadden, who fancied himself in love with Charlotte at the time, and Wooldridge's only child, Olivia.
A few months after their wedding, Lord Wooldridge's body was discovered in his bed by servants and stabbed to death, with his young wife long gone.
Nothing of the girl he remembered stood before him, only the remnants of a woman driven by greed and power.
Time had been kind to her, and she was still beautiful, he supposed, with shining raven hair and pale grey eyes.
But Hadden knew her beauty was only skin deep, her heart black and cold.
"You should have never come back here, Charlotte." Hadden's eyes narrowed, staring into hers. "You could have made it to America and disappeared," Hadden taunted.
He could see Charlotte's face turning red with anger and knew he had to keep pushing at her, hoping she would spill some small bit of information.
"You thought you could just come back here and hide?" Hadden asked, already knowing the answer to the question. "Maybe you thought your friends who conspired with you to kill my uncle would take you in and offer you shelter."
His body appeared relaxed-a trick that often made him hard to read and one that he had mastered in his seven years of service to the Crown.
"Or perhaps, you thought I'd help you." Hadden did laugh at that thought.
"If you would just tell me who helped you and who your cohorts are, I'm sure we could arrange for your death to be swift." Hadden finished his statement as Charlotte grabbed the last glass again.
"To hell with you, Averton, you son of a bitch!"
Charlotte's desperation returned at the mention of her death and fueled her anger and need to survive.
Swish!
Hadden didn't have time to duck this time, and the glass struck his right cheek, causing blood to gush out of the gaping cut it created. The hit wasn't hard enough to knock him out, but it stunned Hadden for a moment.
Charlotte's chance to escape came as quickly as her capture had, offering her a brief reprieve that she took without hesitation.
She wasn't going to her death just yet.
"Good fortune, the glas
s missed your eye, Your Grace," Dr. Hadsburn said, pulling the cut closed with the last stitch.
Lord Devlin Bennett, the Marquess of Ryden, Hadden's closest friend, fetched the old doctor from the village and stood nearby, watching the man work.
"I've cleaned it deep, and the stitches are small as I could make 'em, but you'll have a scar, I'm 'fraid." The doctor frowned with this, worried the duke wouldn't take to kindly to a scarred face.
Hadden nodded. He hadn't spoken since Charlotte made her escape.
He was angry at his men for letting her slip by outside but madder at himself for underestimating the woman.
He had caught her. She was right there. And now, she had managed to slip away again.
She won't get far, he thought.
That was the only comforting thought he could muster up from the mess.
The harbors were closed off, and every ship bound for departure would be on the lookout for her. Whoever found her, would be paid more money than they would make in a lifetime twice over, working the docks and shipyards.
Hadden sent his runners out with word to resume lookout and offer whatever they had to for information on Charlotte.
With the instructions to kill anyone who got between themselves and Charlotte, the search continued again. This time, on their turf.
Hadden stood up, towering over the old doctor and thanking him for his quick response with a curt nod.
Devlin handed the doctor a small, heavy pouch filled with gold coins and followed Hadden outside.
When the doctor had made it far enough out of earshot, Bennett finally spoke.
"We'll get her, Bear," Devlin stated.
"With the amount of money out on her head, she won't be able to hide here," Devlin told him, unhitching his mount from the post.
Hadden knew he was right. Greed was a powerful motive, and it worked to both sides.
A large, black coach pulled in front of the inn, bearing Hadden's family crest. His footman stepped off, opening the massive door for him.
"Off to London you go, old boy," Devlin joked.
Grabbing Hadden's arm and squeezing it tight, he kept digging at him. "There will be many a mama tonight hoping to snare their wallflower daughters a duke."
"Fuck off!"
Hadden shoved Devlin back, continuing to curse him under his breath as he climbed into his coach and prepared for his journey into London.
He could still hear Devlin laughing as the coach pulled away.
Devlin mounted his horse, turning it into the opposite direction of Hadden's coach and started the journey for the Scottish border.
He would let the men there know that they would be paying triple their already substantial offer, for any valuable information on Charlotte or any connection to her. He would join Hadden in London as soon he finished.
Hadden rode in silence, thinking about the upcoming evening.
Many of his peers and their wives called him a rakehell and rogue. He heard the tales and used them to his advantage, sending out more whispered rumors of his conquests across Europe.
The rumors assisted in accounting for his absence from society after he ended his engagement with many saying that the rogue duke would never take a wife.
Others whispered that Lady Serena Danerly had been a mere conquest, and his proposal to her was a means to tempt the beautiful young woman into giving herself to him before marriage.
Once he had bedded her, he ended the engagement and moved on to the next. That was an even worse rumor regarding the situation.
Tonight, he would face the young lady whose reputation he had nearly destroyed. It was unintentional, for sure, but that was beside the fact.
Unable to remove the damage, Hadden fought to push back the memories of what had transpired the night he decided to marry Serena.
He knew he was going to marry her the moment he laid eyes on her.
That decision cemented further when he asked for her hand during a dance, and she laughed at him. Not in a way meant to make fun of him. He doubted she possessed a mean body in her body. Her laugh came from genuine surprise, not a fabricated expectation.
She wasn't the shy, blushing, virginal type that tended to fill the Season's marriage mart, nor was she a simpering and flirtatious twit that calculated their mental marriage games long before making their first moves.
Hadden knew how to spot and avoid those types of women.
Propping his tall frame against the doorway, legs crossed in front of him, he had watched his future duchess spun around the ballroom in a cocoon of pink silk, a look of pure joy radiating across her angelic face.
No, his white-haired goddess was none of those things. She simply enjoyed life.
Slowly draining the last drop of brandy from his glass, he set the glass on the nearby tray and departed the Danerly house. The next morning, Hadden Bearingston, 8th Duke of Averton, had secured an engagement to Lady Serena Danerly.
They would wed in three weeks.
Hadden finally shook the intruding thoughts from his head.
Damn!
There was nothing he could do to change what happened. He chose to end their engagement, and he had done so with the well-being of everyone in mind, especially Serena.
Serena had done nothing to give him pause about marrying her, yet she faced the brunt of the aftermath. He would try to help rectify the rumors so that she could marry a respectable man.
He would have tried sooner, but his search for Charlotte had kept him away from England longer than he intended.
Tonight, Hadden knew that avoiding Serena would be hard. He was attending her sister's coming out, so she would most assuredly be there.
Everyone would be watching him and watching Serena, waiting for their encounter. What fantastic gossip that would make.
Tomorrow, he would continue the hunt for Charlotte and her cohorts, if he could make it through tonight.
CHAPTER TWO
Grosvenor Square, London
The townhouse of the 6th Marquess of Danerly
Life was cruel, and it had the most wicked sense of humor.
These were facts that Lady Serena Danerly learned the hard way.
She held the brown envelope in her hands and stared down at it. Although it weighed nothing, it felt like a boulder in her small, delicate hands.
Serena rubbed her thumb across the broken crimson seal-the ducal seal of Averton. It contained an acceptance reply to her parent's invitation for her sister's coming out ball tonight.
She would see Averton tonight for the first time in a year. The first time since he had broken their engagement and crushed her heart.
At the age of only nineteen, Serena consigned herself to an early, inevitable spinsterhood, with no other offers of marriage.
Not that she wasn't sure there was someone somewhere who would wed her. Serena held little interest in marrying anyone.
She refused to face another debacle, and subject herself to even more rumors.
She sighed, looking out her window and down into the street below.
Even in the misting rain, Grosvenor Square was still full of life. Elegant carriages filled the street, their passengers bound for the likes of the lavish, materialistic delights of Bond Street.
When it came time for invitations to be sent for Winter's ball, the household had been in an uproar after her papa had been ordered to invite Averton.
Her papa threatened to force her mama to send the invitation, and her mama immediately threatened to shoot the Marquess if he made her do it.
Serena wasn't sure who had been more surprised by her mama's threat…her papa or her mama.
They had to invite him, her papa pleaded, trying to get Judith to see reason.
The Prince Regent ordered Edward to correct things with Averton. He could not have two of his most prominent subjects fighting amongst themselves, especially with a war happening.
There would be no way around inviting Averton-her mama knew this. Judith understood the way of things a
nd orders that must be obeyed from the Crown. That did not mean she was going to let her husband off easy for forcing her to do it!
And so, the invitation had been sent to Hadden Bearingston, Duke of Averton-the man who had turned her world upside down and, albeit crippled her reputation.
Her papa hoped that it would lay to rest some of the nasty rumors that had been circulating about Serena and Hadden. He also wanted to be able to truthfully tell Prinny that he had tried to mend the rift with Averton when he asked.
Edward was just counting on Averton to DECLINE.
There had been no peace in his home since that acceptance reply arrived.
"This is your fault, Edward," Serena's mama had cried. "Poor Rena will be humiliated once again."
"Now, now, my love," Edward said, hugging his wife tight. "I'd never let that happen. What happened with the engagement was beyond anyone's control."
"Oh, Averton had control alright," Lady Danerly countered, daring her husband to argue.
The Marquess knew it was best to let his wife have her say. Hopefully, after tonight, this whole Serena and Hadden ordeal would be behind them all, and they would be celebrating some upcoming marriage proposals for both Winter and Serena.
With this being her sister's coming out season, their mama had commissioned London's most-sought modiste, Mademoiselle Letitia De Ellen, a month prior, to create two new, full wardrobes for Serena and Winter.
Mademoiselle De Ellen designed the most exquisite dresses and catered only to exclusive members of the beau monde.
Her mama, as always, was making sure they put their best foot forward. This ball would be one of the most important they had ever attended or hosted.
And her mama, Serena knew, was still hoping that Serena would find a husband, one who would love her as much as Serena's father loved her and didn't care about untrue rumors and gossip.
Winter's dress had arrived earlier that morning, delivered by Mademoiselle De Ellen's assistant, Lynette.
A slew of boxes had accompanied Winter's dress, filled with more slippers, bonnets, and six pairs of kid gloves. This made the 4th delivery the Danerly house had received that week. Lynette had assured the marchioness that Serena's dress would be arriving shortly.
