How to Find a Duke in Ten Days
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2017 by the respective Authors
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Cover Design by Ivan Zanchetta
ISBN: 978-1-937823-61-0
All rights reserved.
About How To Find a Duke in Ten Days
Three Historical Regency Romance Novellas
The Will to Love by Grace Burrowes
His lordship has been looking for a rare manuscript in all the wrong places, but he might just find true love!
How to Steal a Duke (in Ten Days, Give or Take a Few Days, But Definitely in Less than a Fortnight) by Shana Galen
A haughty duke and an impoverished lady turned cat burglar travel to the wilds of Cornwall in search of a castle, a mad earl, and an arcane manuscript.
The Viscount’s First Kiss by Carolyn Jewel
Viscount Daunt and the painfully shy Magdalene Carter turn friendship into love in their search for a legendary medieval manuscript.
Dedication
If you pre-ordered this anthology early enough, you might have seen a version of the cover with four authors’ names on it, and a version of the price that was somewhat higher. Miranda Neville was instrumental in creating the overarching premise for Ten Days and in helping us develop the framework for our stories. The timing hasn’t worked out to include a story from Miranda in this volume, though we are very much in her debt. If you enjoy these tales of bibliophiles in search of old manuscripts and new love, please know that the concept and early research was Miranda’s, and that’s why we dedicate this anthology to her.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
About How To Find a Duke in Ten Days
Dedication
Prologue
The Will to Love
Grace Burrowes
How to Steal a Duke
Shana Galen
The Viscount’s First Kiss
Carolyn Jewel
Epilogue
Prologue
“I find it untenable, insupportable, and entirely unacceptable that we haven’t unearthed a single quire of the Liber Ducis de Scientia.”
Dominick Spencer, Duke of Tremayne, had both the consequence and the physical presence to speak in emphatic polysyllables. He was big, dark, decisive, and could accomplish with a single scowl what others failed to achieve in entire polemics. The wiser members of the Bibliomania Club had given up debating with His Grace years ago.
Seton Avery, Earl of Ramsdale, knew for a fact that Tremayne could be wrong. As Tremayne’s friend since boyhood, and as a man who valued the present arrangement of his own facial features, he kept that news to himself.
“We’ve tried,” Ramsdale said, topping up Tremayne’s brandy. “We’ll keep trying. Between the three of us, we have means, influence, connections, and expertise. If the Duke’s Book of Knowledge still exists, we’ll find it.”
“Don’t forget charm and good looks,” Harry Fordyce added from the depths of the library’s sofa. “Also grace on the dance floor and stamina in the saddle.”
Harry, recently burdened with the Daunt viscountcy, kept a superior intellect well hidden behind humor and stunning good looks. He was tall, brown-haired, and deceptively good-humored—a sleek, self-confident housecat of a viscount, to appearances—while Tremayne prowled and growled around the library’s perimeter.
They were equally formidable men, each in his own way, and Ramsdale regarded part of his role in their trio as that of referee.
“Trying won’t do,” Tremayne retorted. “For two hundred years, the best minds on the Continent have been trying to find that manuscript. A compendium of all the knowledge known to the sharpest intellects of the Renaissance doesn’t just disappear.”
Not only the sharpest intellects of the Renaissance, but those deemed worthy of memorialization by Lorenzo de Medici, often referred as Lorenzo the Magnificent. Under his patronage, the Liber Ducis de Scientia had developed as a perfect blend of the scribe’s art and the scientist’s knowledge.
Harry sat straight. There were rumors about one of the volumes of the lost Duke that involved a fellow bibliophile and friend of his. None of the club members believed Harry’s friend had had anything to do with the incident, but rumors did persist.
“Your Grace’s patience has disappeared,” Harry observed, taking a sip of his brandy and setting the glass on the carpet. “If the Duke has remained well hidden for two centuries, what has you all a-swither now, Tremayne?”
Ramsdale studied his drink, for Harry must be allowed his entertainments. Adjusting to an unwanted title was—appropriately enough—a daunting task.
“I am not all a-swither, your lordship.”
And Tremayne must be allowed his.
“Daunt makes a point,” Ramsdale said. “We’ve searched, we’ve sent out correspondence, we’ve followed up on possibilities. I’m taking another look at my uncle’s will, in fact, and I suspect the two of you are also on the scent of yet more clues. Why the urgency now, Tremayne?”
Though with Tremayne, everything was always urgent—except recreation, relaxation, diversion. Those trivialities had ceased to matter long ago. Ramsdale worried that Tremayne had become so obsessed with acquiring valuable books that he’d forgotten the pleasure of actually reading the damned things.
He’d also forgotten the necessity to acquire a duchess somewhere along the way.
“Peebles has announced his retirement,” Tremayne said. “He’ll step down in less than a fortnight.”
“Ambushed us,” Harry said, rising in one lithe move, drink in hand. “Damn it.”
“If the professor doesn’t want any fuss or bother, then we should respect his wishes,” Ramsdale said, for fuss and bother surely numbered among the deadly sins.
Peebles had tutored each of them at some point in a difficult public school education. The professor’s passion for old books, and his endless reserves of biscuits, patient counsel, and humor had earned him the lasting loyalty of many a lord’s heir. The Bibliomania Club would have faltered in its early years, but for Peebles’s enthusiasm.
The Duke’s Book of Knowledge, was the professor’s greatest passion, also his greatest frustration. Some claimed to have seen the Duke, or portions of the manuscript, others—an increasingly vocal portion of the club’s membership—had begun to claim the Duke was a hoax.
“Peebles retirement will involve a banquet of some sort,” Tremayne said. “Imagine how that evening will be for him, if not a scintilla of evidence is produced proving that his life’s work is a literary fact.”
Harry stood before the fire, an unwitting study in male pulchritude. “Tarkington is saying it outright: The Duke is a hoax, a fable made up by Peebles for his own aggrandizement.”
“Tarkington had best not stay that in my hearing,” Tremayne replied.
Ramsdale rather wished Tarkington would make that error. Mr. Tarkington, an earl’s son, was that most irksome of combinations, stupid and arrogant.
“I might be able to make some progress in the next two weeks,” Ramsdale said. “Even a single quire of the manuscript would vindicate Peebles’s research.
”
Tremayne turned a brooding gaze in Ramsdale’s direction. “We need all four quires.”
No, they did not, but Tremayne must carry every task to its perfect completion.
“All four quires would be the best gift we could give Peebles,” Ramsdale said, “and our fellow book lovers.”
“My time is spoken for over the next two days,” Harry said, expertly plying the poker to re-arrange the coals on the hearth. “I’d have ten days to find the Duke. Those are not good odds.”
“Those,” Ramsdale said, “are the odds we have. I’ve already placed a few advertisements, and I promise you gentlemen I will exert myself to utmost over the next ten days to find all or part of the Liber Ducis de Scientia. Are you with me?”
Tremayne touched his glass to Ramsdale’s, then to Daunt’s. “We were Peebles’s favorite students, the best of the lot. How hard can it be to find a Duke in ten days?”
He flashed a rare and frighteningly fierce smile, while Ramsdale sipped his drink. Peebles had told every boy that he was the best of the lot. Now it was time to live up to the professor’s expectations.
“To finding the Duke in ten days,” Ramsdale said, touching his glass to Daunt’s. Ramsdale infused his words with confidence, though what he offered was as much a prayer as a toast. The Duke had remained hidden for two centuries. What hope did even the most determined book lovers have of finding such a treasure in a mere ten days?
The Will to Love
by
Grace Burrowes
Contents – The Will to Love
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Author’s Note
Excerpt from Too Scot To Handle
Chapter One
‡
If you can read Magna Carta, association with the undersigned could be lucrative for you. Inquire at the Albion.
“How is a lady to inquire at the Albion,” Philomena Peebles muttered, “when that blighted bastion of male bloviations refuses to permit a female foot to cross its threshold? Have you seen my cutwork scissors?”
Jane Dobbs peered into the workbasket on Philomena’s lap. “How can you find anything in there? Use mine.” She passed over a tiny pair of scissors on a silver chain. “Why would you want to go to the Albion Club, other than for the obvious pleasure of shocking the dandiprats?”
Jane was twenty years Philomena’s senior, part companion, part poor relation on Mama’s side, and all friend. She’d joined the household shortly after Mama’s death, though nobody had explained exactly how she and Mama were related.
Philomena hadn’t cared then and didn’t care now.
She trimmed out the newspaper notice and passed it to Jane. “I can read Magna Carta and am in want of funds to finance my search.”
“You always turn up alliterative when you’re restless. Are you off to hunt for the Duke again?”
“Of course. All the evidence points to at least parts of the manuscript being right here in London, and Papa’s retirement banquet is a mere ten days away.”
As Papa’s amanuensis, Philomena had memorized every scrap of information known about The Duke’s Book of Knowledge, or the Liber Ducis de Scientia. Papa was considered the international expert on the manuscript, though being an expert on a book nobody had seen for two hundred years was a vexing contradiction. Some said Liber Ducis didn’t exist, and the good professor had been hoaxing his academic associates for years.
“If the Duke is here in London, what do you need funds for?” Jane asked, giving the notice back to Philomena.
“Research is costly. Everything from cab fare to bribes to the occasional male escort takes a toll on a lady’s exchequer.”
In Paris, a woman could walk the streets without fear of being either judged for her independence or attacked for her coin. London, self-proclaimed pinnacle of human civilization, was generally considered unsafe for a genteel lady on her own.
Some civilization.
“It really is too bad that nice Tolerman fellow went off to Peru,” Jane said, threading her embroidery needle with gold silk. “He let you drag him all over creation and nary a word of protest. The poor man was quite devoted.”
“He’s off to Egypt, and he wanted to entice me away from Papa because I can transcribe notes in all the classical languages.” Beauford Tolerman had been a handy escort, until he’d confessed a violent passion for Philomena’s nose.
Not even her eyes—her nose, or in Beauford’s words, her pulchritudinous proboscis. She might have forgiven him his outburst, but then he’d tried to kiss the object of his ardor. Philomena had suggested to Professor Arbuthwhistle that Mr. Tolerman would make an excellent addition to the very next expedition to the pyramids.
Beyond the parlor door, a maid welcomed a caller. Visitors were frequent because Papa knew absolutely everybody who took an interest in ancient literature or philosophy, and many were paying calls to wish the professor a happy retirement.
For Papa, happy retirement was a contradiction in terms, hence Philomena’s determination to find the Duke, or at least the portion of the manuscript that dealt with secrets of the human heart.
The Duke knew all the answers, if Papa’s research had any validity. Page by page, the manuscript documented the most sophisticated thinking from all over the Renaissance world, grouped into four subjects: natural science, arcane medicine, fabled lands, and sentiments of the heart.
Philomena wished the entire manuscript would be found, but her personal objective was the treatise on human emotion, De Motibus Humanis. That tome was said to include recipes for tisanes for everything from grief, to jealousy, to melancholia. Perhaps she might find a potion that could help Papa attract a companion for his autumn years.
“Ladies, good day.” Seton Zoraster Avery, Earl of Ramsdale, bowed to the room at large.
Philomena slipped the little notice into her pocket. Ramsdale was skilled with modern languages and particularly skilled at using the English language to talk about himself. No need for his overly active mind to light upon a lowly newspaper advertisement.
Philomena rang for tea, schooled her expression to patience, and sent Jane a look: Please be gracious, for in the face of such unrelenting tedium when I have a duke to catch, that sacrifice is beyond me.
At least Ramsdale was interesting to behold—dark where the usual lord was fair, muscular rather than slim, and possessed of a voice Jane referred to as a bello basso—a beautiful bass. Philomena liked that about him.
And not much else.
*
Having dispensed with the tedium of a social call upon Professor Peebles’s household—the professor had literally stuck his head through the doorway, and that head had still worn a sleeping cap at midafternoon—Ramsdale sought out that haven of rational conversation and fine fellowship, the Albion Club. Its appearance was unprepossessing, the location just off St. James’s Street ideal.
And the quiet in the reading room was blessedly reliable.
This was a club for grown men, not raucous youths looking to make extravagant wagers or debate politics far into the night. The food was good, not merely expensive, and the service attentive rather than haughty. Ramsdale occasionally took rooms here rather than bide at his own town house, and thus nobody looked askance as he proceeded to the second floor and let himself into a familiar parlor.
“Good day, my lord,” said Pinckney, his valet and general factotum at this location. “Three more responses came while you were out. The first of the gentlemen is scheduled to arrive within the hour.”
Ramsdale turned so Pinckney could take his greatcoat. “That’s five altogether. Only five people in all of London, Oxford, and Cambridge can read medieval law Latin?”
For Ramsdale had advertised at the universities as well.
“Perhaps it’s the case that only five peo
ple who need coin can fulfill your request, my lord. But surely, from among a field of five, you’ll find one who’s acceptable.”
The Duke’s Book of Knowledge was reportedly written in plain, straightforward Latin, which owing to a lack of marching centurions or strutting gladiators, hadn’t changed much over recent centuries. The problem was not the long-sought Duke, but rather, Uncle Hephaestus’s will. Uncle had believed that medieval monks invented the crabbed, complicated law Latin to save on ink and parchment and that saving on ink and vellum remained a worthy goal.
Hence, he’d written his damned will in law Latin, and in the abbreviated version of the abomination still practiced by elderly clerks and particularly mean judges. Such was the incomprehensibility of that hand that, in the last century, it had been outlawed for court documents.
“Shall I ring for tea?” Pinckney asked.
Ramsdale had choked down two cups of gunpowder while maundering on in the Peebles’s parlor. He had no wish for more damned tea. Why did the ladies never contribute anything of substance to a conversation? They smiled and nodded and yes-my-lorded but never said anything?
“Order a tray with all the trimmings,” Ramsdale said. “If I’m to interview starving scholars, I’d best feed the poor devils.”
Then too, Pinckney would help himself to a biscuit and a sandwich or two, and nothing on the tray would go to waste. The footman and groom would see to that when supper was hours away.
The scholars, alas, proved a shabby lot. Two reeked of mildew, two could not fumble through a single sentence of Uncle’s codicil, and the fifth wanted a sponsor for yet another expedition to plunder the Nile.
Time was running out, and defeat was unacceptable.
“Have any more responses come?” Ramsdale asked when the Nile explorer had been sent on his way.
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