Her Deceptive Duke (Wicked Husbands Book 4)

by Scarlett Scott

  “Go to h-hell,” Kit swore when he could at last makes his lips and tongue create the words. “The b-bloody both of you.”

  “Oh Christ, is he bleeding?”

  Kit’s eyes sank closed, and he couldn’t seem to open them. He was not even certain who had asked the question. Carlisle? The not-butler half brother? He wasn’t sure he cared. Darkness beckoned him. The abyss called for him. Yes, he could sink into that blackness. Lose himself. Forget. This was what he needed.

  Rest.

  We fear your identity has been compromised.

  Leeds?

  An attempt against your duchess…

  Fuck, that is a great deal of blood.

  Ring for the doctor at once.

  Jesus, what is that cacophony?

  The sound of a dog barking. A large dog.

  His duchess’s voice, clear and shrill.

  Gentlemen, I demand entrance.

  More barking. More oaths. More blood. He could feel it leaving him now. Some unseen force slammed into his wound, and it hurt like hell, but he was so far gone that he couldn’t even defend himself.

  He tried to speak.

  Tried to open his eyes.

  It was a losing battle, and so…

  He surrendered.

  To the darkness.

  n that fleeting moment between opening her eyes and shaking off the last vestiges of slumber, the sensation of being observed pricked Georgiana’s consciousness. Golden light pierced her lids. It was early morning. The familiar, quiet shuffling of servants beginning their days reached her ears, and nothing seemed amiss. Except that she could feel it, like the ghost of a touch on her skin. Someone was watching her.

  There could only be one someone. Her back ached from another night spent in a chair at the duke’s bedside. With a groan, she opened her eyes. A bright-blue stare burned into her.

  He had survived the blood loss and the subsequent round of stitching by Dr. Gage.

  Thank you, God.

  The rogue prayer fled from her before she could even question its origin or attempt to subdue it. She had no intention of being thankful for his survival.

  Ludlow’s cryptic words returned to her, sending a shiver down her spine. Your husband is a failed spy. He betrayed his source and got himself wounded for his efforts. Was it possible that Leeds was capable of such treachery? He did not look like a traitor to her, she thought now.

  He was not as pale as he had been the day before, though he was still gaunt, his cheeks and strong jaw heavily whiskered. She stared at him, unable to speak or move, mesmerized—and not for the first time in their brief and agonizing acquaintance—by his sheer beauty. Even rumpled and ragged, bearded and weak, he took her breath.

  But perhaps that was a combination of his broad, bare chest, which seemed to steal her attention with an equal pull. She had bathed him last evening while he had once more been subdued by morphine, and had eschewed his dressing gown in favor of not attempting to move his large frame on her own. On previous occasions, Ludlow had assisted her. But, well, Ludlow was decidedly out of her favor given his deceptions.

  Even if they had been perpetrated in the name of her defense. That was supposing, of course, that Ludlow and the Duke of Carlisle were to be believed. She was not certain she ought to accept a word either man said as truth.

  She frowned at Leeds’ chest. Who knew the male form could be so enticing? And particularly when it was accompanied by such a dreadful personality?

  “Why are you here?”

  The low demand, issued in a gravelly voice sharp with accusation, startled her. Evidence of said dreadful personality numéro un.

  She sat up straighter, hand going instinctively to her lower back, kneading the knots from it. “I beg your pardon?”

  Neither his tone nor his countenance softened. “Why are you in my chamber?”

  Georgiana blinked, dragging her gaze from his admirable chest back to his wintry blue gaze. “This is my chamber, Leeds.”

  “As I recall, you are housing mongrels in my chamber, and since I am the Duke of Leeds and Leeds House is my home and you have attempted to all but burn it to the ground in my absence, I am commandeering the duchess’s suite for my own.” He paused, his eyes raking her form. “In which case, you are trespassing where you are not wanted, madam.”

  His words stung more than they should, and she hated herself for the weakness that allowed the Duke of Leeds to foray past her defenses with such inveterate ease. This man had always had an ability to affect her, regardless of how desperately she attempted to remain aloof. Most irritating of all was the source: not his undeniable physical lure but the fact that some part of her foolish, naïve heart still wanted him to like her. To look at her with something more than flinty determination and icy condescension.

  For him to gaze upon her as if she were a person worthy of his presence and time rather than a disgusting nuisance to which he’d been subjected. Her immense dowry of three hundred thousand pounds had been the necessity.

  There had been little courting, and her father had been only too happy to relieve himself of the burden of his only child. She may have been eccentric, but she was also pragmatic. She had been sold by one man who did not want her to another man who also did not want her. An even exchange, with only her heart and her pride and her happiness being the forfeit.

  Only everything.

  But she would not be bitter.

  No. Her animals gave her a sense of purpose. She had a roof over her head, a lovely home in which to live, fancy dresses—not that she required them—and a means of aiding as many of London’s forgotten creatures as she could.

  “Madam?” His exacting voice cut through her introspection once more.

  Her eyes narrowed on him, and she wished in that moment that his outward appearance matched his insides. For inside, he was dark and ugly and vile. “I have been tending to you, you ungrateful jackanapes. And you cannot commandeer my chamber. I gave it to you. Freely. Because you were injured and very much in need of a bed, whilst I have mopped your brow, bathed you, spooned broth down your throat, changed your linens myself—”

  “You have acted in the capacity of a servant.” His lip curled. “I did not require it of you, madam. Anyone else would have served just as well if not better.”

  Anyone else.

  Oh. No. He. Had. Not.

  She stood, ignoring the protest of her stiff muscles, poking an irate finger into the air and not giving a damn if it was unrefined. If she was unrefined. She was an American duchess, abandoned and unwanted, but she still had a heart.

  Unlike the man before her.

  “See here, Leeds.” She towered over him, relishing the moment because it was the only time she would ever be able to do so. He was tall, drat his eyes. “I am not interchangeable with anyone else. I am your wife. When you arrived here bleeding and weak from fever, I tended to you. I called for a physician I trusted because yours was a relic with dirty instruments who wanted to feed you a milk diet and go home to his brandy. I tended to you because even though I do not like you, I didn’t wish you to die. I have slept in this chair for five nights. I have prayed for you.”

  “You ought not to have wasted your time or your breath.” Bitterness tainted his tone.

  She flinched. His indifference temporarily robbed her of her momentum. But she regained it and sailed on, leaning over him so that he could not look anywhere else. So that she and her outrage were all he saw. “How dare you feel sorry for yourself? Look at you, a duke from one of England’s most venerated families. Look at the opulence around you. Look at me. You have never even uttered a single kind word in my direction, and yet I have treated you with the respect and care any injured creature in this world would deserve.”

  He raised a brow, his expression a study in arrogance, and she wished she knew how he managed it. How could a man be so beautiful, so debonair, so awful, all while on his sickbed? It defied logic. Defied reason.

  “Perhaps you have confused me with one
of your mongrels, Duchess.” He paused, his gaze seeking and intense. “I am not a creature. I am the Duke of Leeds.”

  “I am aware of who you are,” she gritted. “Or rather who you claim to be. Between you and Ludlow and the Duke of Carlisle, I cannot fathom what is truth and what is lies spun to protect your deceptions.”

  “You do have an imagination, Your Grace.” His lips thinned, evidencing his displeasure. “Seat yourself, if you please. Your discomposure is most unbecoming, and I cannot have you looming over me like some sort of bloody specter. Half of me is wondering when you will attempt to skewer me with a blade.”

  Most unbecoming.

  Skewer me with a blade.

  She stared. The Duke of Leeds was a proliferation of insults, mockery, and snide snobbery. How could she ever survive a marriage to such a man until she could procure a divorce? His injury had not rendered her any less determined to free herself of their untenable union, after all. She had managed to scrabble through the dirt and thickets, on hand and knee, had sat by his side, nursed him, cared for him, had only looked after his best interests…

  And he woke angry and haughty and cold.

  He woke with threats and demands and dismissals on his perfectly formed lips.

  Five nights in a chair. Days of worry, of hope, of attempting to give him the best care she could garner. Of doing everything she could to ensure that he would survive. And did she receive his thanks? A kind word? A sentence of praise? Even a smile?

  No.

  Instead, he gave her his disdain. Instead, he mocked and inspected her with that insufferably blue gaze that seemed to see far too much.

  She did not seat herself as he had demanded. Instead, she said the first sentence that rose to her mind. “You, sir, are a miserable cur.”

  “Answer me this, madam.” His deep voice dropped an octave, resonating with an emotion she could not define. “For how long has the bloody butler been warming your bed? Was it the day I left? A sennight later? Do tell.”

  Georgiana gawped at Leeds, certain he had gone mad. Was he with fever once more? Before she could think better of it, she leaned over him and pressed her hand to his forehead. His skin was warm, but naturally so. Not hot or sweaty or clammy. Which meant he was not with fever. The infection had not returned.

  What, then, was his excuse for such lunacy?

  “I do not have a fever,” he growled, his gaze burning with a profundity she found most distressing. He jerked his head from her touch, as though she had burned him. “Well? Have you nothing to say for yourself?”

  She imagined herself upending the basin of lavender water she’d used to bathe his brow all over his maddening head. But she tamped down the instinct with extra care. “I will not dignify your accusation with a response.”

  “You will answer me,” he bit out. “I understand that our union has been… uncommon, but I will not be made a cuckold by a man in my employ. And especially not by that barbarian. Lord knows I never would have married you in the first place had it not been a necessity.”

  How good of him to remind her.

  She pursed her lips, considering how to respond, a discomfiting emotion stabbing her. Sadness? Disappointment? Hurt? She couldn’t be certain. She had expected nothing from Leeds, had not even anticipated his reemergence from whatever secretive labyrinth to which he had disappeared in New York. “Ludlow is the butler.”

  Or, to be more precise, she had thought he was the butler.

  Apparently, he was something else, something more, something that remained much enshrouded in mystery. The Duke of Carlisle had withheld most of the story from her. Of that much, she had no doubt. But the snippets he had revealed suggested that Ludlow had been tasked with the protection of Leeds House, herself included. The reason he and Leeds had been at each other’s throats was a puzzle that neither Carlisle nor Ludlow had solved. Not a word had been spoken regarding her husband’s occupation as a spy, though she did not need anyone to confirm her suspicions. They were as good as fact. His abrupt disappearance, his wounding, the coded letters she’d uncovered, and the aura of secrecy all told the tale better than a confession could.

  When she’d returned with Alice, ready to burst through the door and allow her mastiff to knock Carlisle on his bottom, the duke had been placating. His eyes remained hard, his expression harsh, but his words had been ambiguous and mollifying.

  I am afraid I must withhold further details.

  This is a delicate matter.

  Your discretion must be exercised in all things.

  These were the particular brand of vague responses Carlisle had ready for her while they waited for the doctor to stitch Leeds’ wound once more. To Georgiana, what Carlisle hadn’t said explained a great deal more than what he had. And by no means did she accept Ludlow’s subterfuge without consequence. She had considered him a friend. Had imagined he cared for the strays she took in every bit as much as she did. But now she wondered. She doubted.

  She was in a strange land. A strange home. Surrounded by people she dared not trust. Only her animals could be trusted. She had not a single friend aside from the Duchess of Trent.

  “Yes, he has been tasked with aping a butler,” Leeds agreed, his expression dark. “But he is not a true butler. And he is far too familiar with you. From this moment forward, you will cease all communication with him.”

  Georgiana searched her husband’s gaze, finding it surprisingly sharp for a man who had been through as much as he had in the few short days following his arrival back in London. He watched her now with a cold detachment she did not like. “Ludlow is the butler. How am I to refrain from speaking to him?”

  The duke’s brows snapped together into a vicious frown. “He will not be the butler for long.”

  “You cannot dismiss him,” she countered, taking up the cudgels for Ludlow even though she did not trust him either. The devil she knew, however, seemed a preferable option to the devil she didn’t. Perhaps his concern for Lady Philomena Whiskers—who had still yet to have her litter of kittens—was a pretense, but there was no denying that the giant of a man was gentle and patient with her animals. And they trusted him. To Georgiana, that spoke volumes.

  Of course, Lady Philomena had also taken a puzzling liking to Leeds.

  So perhaps not every feline, mouse, canine, or squirrel possessed a discerning mind after all.

  Leeds raised an arrogant brow. “You will cease all relations with him. I will not tolerate it beneath my own roof with a domestic who is in my employ.” He paused, frowning. “Strike that. I will not tolerate it with anyone.”

  Was the man that determined to believe her false? The anger he exuded suggested he believed she had been unfaithful to their marriage. Ludlow was her butler and her friend. Her feelings for him were decidedly platonic.

  But Leeds didn’t need to know that.

  All the worries and fears she’d attempted to suppress during the months of their marriage—months he had spent in another country—returned, heavy as a team of work horses upon her heart.

  She skewered him with a searching look of her own. “And what of you, Duke? Have you been unfaithful to our vows? Is that the reason you suspect me of adultery? Tell me, Leeds, what have you been doing in America? On your hunting trip? Do not think I’ve forgotten for a moment what Ludlow revealed to me.”

  “Ludlow is a lying swine, and you are to discount every word he says.” He scowled. The dark beard covering his jaw rendered him rakish. “Furthermore, what I was about in America is none of your concern.”

  “I am your wife,” she insisted. “Naturally, it is my concern.”

  “No.” His tone dripped with scorn. “It is not. I find myself famished. Will you ring for a tray or shall I?”

  She smoothed her skirts and straightened her back, giving him the most withering glare she could summon. “You shall. I have suffered enough of your overbearing conversation.”

  “Madam—”

  “Good day,” she interrupted, her voice biting. Ang
ry. Resonating with rage.

  And then she turned on her heel, and quit the chamber.

  Her chamber.

  Lord, she needed to hug a dog, to run her palm over silky fur, to feel a wet nose press into her ear. To hear that silly canine sigh of satisfaction. She fled from the forbidding man she’d married, ignoring any protest he cast after her departing form, and flew instead to the dog chamber.

  The former ducal apartment.

  She threw open the door and the hulking mastiff Alice bounded to her first, along with three corgis and one pug. Miller, Pardoner, Reeve, and Knight, respectively. Georgiana lifted her silk skirts and sank to her knees on the Axminster, arms open. Knight licked her ear. Alice breathed into her face. Pardoner rammed a snout into her midsection. Miller sniffed her hand, and Reeve accepted her right-armed embrace. She took a deep, calming breath, and absorbed the ready love her precious rescued dogs gave her so freely.

  The Duke of Leeds was a blighter. Let him ring for his own sustenance. Let him stew in his own anger. Let him be precisely as he deserved to be: alone.

  She buried her nose in Reeve’s soft fur and inhaled lavender and dog. This was what she could depend upon, the unfettered, unadulterated, true love and devotion of the animals she found. Humans were another matter entirely.

  A most troubling matter indeed.

  it disliked a great many things. Effusive emotion, kippers, the color green in general, oversized not-butlers who attempted to murder him in particular, uncomfortable shoes, cold baths, and being an invalid were among them.

  But depending on the mercy of others was taking precedence over all else at the moment.

  Which was why he’d hauled himself from his bed—or, to be more precise, his duchess’s bed—three days after he had been stitched together for the last time. For what he hoped proved the final time. He had been under strict orders to remain abed and avoid all vigorous activity for a week.