Exiled Duke
An Exile Novel
A Regency Romance
K.J. Jackson
Copyright © K.J. Jackson, 2021
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, Living or dead, is coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any forms, or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the author.
First Edition: March 2021
ISBN: 978-1-940149-52-3
http://www.kjjackson.com
~
Never miss a new release, freebie or sale! Sign up for my VIP Email List. You’ll get my FREE starter library when you sign up—three full-length books!
~
More of my Books
Historical Romance
If you haven’t already, be sure to check out my other historical romances—each is a stand-alone story and they can be read in any order (here they are in order of publication):
Stone Devil Duke, Hold Your Breath, currently free!
Unmasking the Marquess, Hold Your Breath
My Captain, My Earl, Hold Your Breath
Worth of a Duke, Lords of Fate
Earl of Destiny, Lords of Fate
Marquess of Fortune, Lords of Fate
Vow, Lords of Action
Promise, Lords of Action
Oath, Lords of Action
Of Valor & Vice, Revelry’s Tempest
Of Sin & Sanctuary, Revelry’s Tempest
Of Risk & Redemption, Revelry’s Tempest
To Capture a Rogue, A Logan’s Legends Novella, Revelry’s Tempest
To Capture a Warrior, A Logan’s Legends Novella, Revelry’s Tempest
The Devil in the Duke, Revelry’s Tempest
The Iron Earl, Valor of Vinehill
The Wolf Duke, Valor of Vinehill
The Steel Rogue, Valor of Vinehill
The Heart of an Earl, Box of Draupnir
The Blood of a Baron, Box of Draupnir
The Soul of a Rogue, Box of Draupnir
Exiled Duke, Exile
Wicked Exile, Exile
Paranormal Romance
Flame Moon #1, currently free!
Triple Infinity, Flame Moon #2
Flux Flame, Flame Moon #3
– For my favorite Ks
Contents
{ Prologue }
{ Chapter 1 }
{ Chapter 2 }
{ Chapter 3 }
{ Chapter 4 }
{ Chapter 5 }
{ Chapter 6 }
{ Chapter 7 }
{ Chapter 8 }
{ Chapter 9 }
{ Chapter 10 }
{ Chapter 11 }
{ Chapter 12 }
{ Chapter 13 }
{ Chapter 14 }
{ Chapter 15 }
{ Chapter 16 }
{ Chapter 17 }
{ Chapter 18 }
{ Chapter 19 }
{ Chapter 20 }
{ Chapter 21 }
{ Chapter 22 }
{ Chapter 23 }
{ Chapter 24 }
{ Chapter 25 }
{ Chapter 26 }
{ Chapter 27 }
{ Epilogue }
{ Prologue }
1809 Belize Town
He stared at her. Her light blond hair—what he’d always thought was sunshine caught and woven—now pulled back into a tight bun. Green eyes wide as she looked at him. Tiny mouth ajar as she panted from running through the streets to find him.
She looked fed. Strong.
Far better than she ever looked when it was just the two of them and it had only been three months she’d been with them. Even if they beat Pen, she had food in her belly now. The black rings about her eyes had disappeared. The ones that had lined her big eyes for nearly a year because she could never sleep for the pain in her stomach—pain that had sent her small hands clutching her belly deep into every night.
He'd watched it for too long. Longer than he should have.
In the nine years he’d had with them, his parents had raised him better than that. For a year Pen had always made him eat more of what little they could scrounge from the streets. She’d stopped growing while he hadn’t. And she’d never once complained about the food she didn’t have. She would keep her mouth closed, the pain in, until her dying breath, if it was up to her.
She stayed with him and she would die.
For as much as he wanted—needed—the first, he couldn’t have the second.
It was time to do what his parents would have wanted. Valor. Honor. Courage. Everything his father had ever taught him.
Strider pulled his shoulders back, trying to make himself far bigger than her. Far older than his ten years. Far wiser. Never mind that they were the same age, born just days apart. “You need to go, Pen. They beat you every time you do this. Go back before they do it again.”
She shook her head, her arms clasping across her chest and the ugly black dress she wore. “You don’t know that.”
“I do. I sit outside the Flagtons’ house. I can hear you crying. I can hear the snap of that leather.”
“So?” Her chin jutted out. “I’ll run away every time, no matter how they beat me. I can’t leave you, Strider. Mama June said we were to stay together. So we do.”
“You don’t get it, Pen, I don’t want you.”
Her arms unthreaded and jutted out at him, ready to grab him. “Strider, don’t say that, don’t—”
“Don’t what?” He pulled his top lip into a sneer. “Pretend I want you as a burden any longer?”
Her head snapped back, her arms dropping to her sides. “You don’t mean that.”
“I do. I know what it’s like now to not have you around.”
She bent over, her hands going down to the bottom of her black skirts, searching along the hem. “But I have to give you—”
“Give me what? You’ve got nothing—nothing I need or want, Pen.”
She dropped her skirt, her body jerking upright as her voice pitched high. “What are you doing—you—you do not mean what you’re saying, Strider. You don’t.”
“I do mean it. You’re not my family. Mama always tried to make it so, but you’re not my sister. You are charity my mama saw fit to save, that is all. And I can’t save you anymore. Her burden isn’t my burden.”
Instant tears spilled out of her eyes, streaming down her face. Rivers he refused to reach out and touch, quell.
“I am—I am your family.” She reached out, grabbing his forearm and shaking it. “You said it yourself, Strider. We have to stay together—stay a family for Mama June. She said that—stay together. We have to stay together.”
He sloughed her grip off his arm. “I was in shock after the fire. But it’s too much. You’re too much. I can’t have you weighing me down anymore. You’re just as worthless as when they handed you over to my mama.”
Her face crumpled, the words striking deep, wounding her down to her soul. Her head started to swing back and forth, her hand across her mouth holding back a sob as her feet shuffled backward.
She stumbled away from him and ran.
The breath he’d been holding deep in his lungs wouldn’t move. Wouldn’t exhale.
He wondered if it ever would.
~~~
Five years later, Port of Veracruz
Rune was going to kill him.
Strider said he’d be at the ship an hour ago. And now he only had ten minutes to make it to the dock where the Firefox was moored. A new life just minutes away—on one of the crown’s privateering ships, of all things. Food, wor
k, and Rune had said if they were lucky, they would earn some of the spoils if they took down any ships.
Strider dodged a wagon of fish as he ran across the street in the market at the wharf. Ten minutes to a future. A real future. The captain was supposed to be a good, honest man—and Strider couldn’t remember the last time he’d met one of those.
Three more streets and he’d be there.
He jumped in front of a team of horses and skidded to a halt.
A soul-freezing stop, every muscle, every nerve paralyzed.
Pen.
Pen in front of him, looking into an open carriage three coaches down from the one he’d just dodged in front of.
What in the hell had happened to her?
Tall—well, taller than she’d been. A woman’s height now, maybe a head shorter than him. Her blond hair still pulled back into a severe bun, a small black cap covering most of the golden strands. Dressed in stiffly starched black clothes—the exact same pattern he’d last seen her in when she’d run away from him in Belize Town. Simple, with little crisp black ruffles on the shoulders. All in black—black that did nothing to hide her body. Breasts. She’d gone and grown breasts that stretched against the black fabric that was too tight in her chest area.
His look returned to her profile. Damn, she’d grown into a beauty. The black dress, the hidden hair—none of it could conceal the fact that her beauty could stop the moon.
What in the hell was she doing in the Port of Veracruz?
His eyes locked onto her and he started forward, his legs anchors he could barely drag forward. His mouth opened, once, twice, before he could get sound out. “Wait, wait, Pen.”
He stretched his arm out. “Pen, Pen, wait.”
A man stepped in front of him, blocking his path. A man in a cassock and white collar. A clergyman, clutching a bible to his chest in one hand and a cane in the other. Mr. Flagton. His fist clutching the cane flew into Strider’s chest and Strider stumbled back two steps. The tip of the man’s cane lifted and centered on Strider’s neck. “Don’t you even think to look at her, you wretched little worm.”
The man looked down to the boy standing by his side. “You see, son, this is why we don’t send Penelope to the market alone—at least in a rat’s hole like this. She’ll be compromised by some dirty snake like this and then we’ll have to kick her out of the house and where will we be? Where will your mother be?”
The boy nodded and promptly turned around. He stepped behind his father’s back and pushed Pen up into the waiting carriage.
“Get back, scum. Back to the filthy hole you crawled from.” The man lifted his cane from Strider’s neck and swung it down, slamming it onto Strider’s shoulder. Once. Twice. Three times. It sent Strider down to one knee.
Mr. Flagton turned away, stepping up into the carriage that started to move away the second the door was closed.
Pen’s eyes. Her green eyes through the glass. Her eyes going wide as she recognized him. Recognition and then anger, her eyes going to slits.
She stared at him through the carriage glass, not saying a thing. Not defending him. Not making the slightest motion to escape from the carriage and run to him.
Nothing.
It wounded him to the core. No matter how they had last parted. He existed once as her family. He existed.
His head woozy, Strider staggered to his feet, running after the carriage. “Pen! Pen! Pen!” His voice not loud enough. His feet not fast enough.
And just like she appeared, she disappeared. Instantly.
Strider stood in the middle of the street, staring. Staring at the spot where he lost her carriage.
A horse brushed against his shoulder, sending him stumbling. He shook his head.
The ship.
Shit.
He spun, his toes tearing along the muck of the roadway.
Down the pier, his too-small boots thudding on the rough wooden planks.
The ship was gone.
It had been right here and now it wasn’t.
Gone.
He grabbed the nearest sailor, shaking him. “The Firefox—where—where is it?”
The sailor shoved Strider away from him. “It left port, mate. Ye missed it.”
Blast.
His stare on the water, Strider trudged to the end of the pier. He sank down to the wood, sitting, his legs hanging off the edge and dangling above the water. He stared out at the sea, trying to make out which of the ships bobbing along the waters was the Firefox. The only true friend he had in the world was on that ship. And he was here.
But he’d been here before.
Alone.
Nothing but the one coin in his boot and the clothes on his back.
“Hoppler, what ye doin’ sittin’ there?” Gordy, the meanest of the mean fifteen-year-olds, kicked his side, the toe of his boot wedging into Strider’s ribs.
Strider smacked Gordy’s boot away from his torso. “Nothing. Watching the sea.”
Gordy looked out at the water. “There ain’t nothin’ good out there.” He looked down at Strider. “Where’s Rune?”
Strider couldn’t speak the words, only point out at the waters turning inky, darkening with dusk.
“Gone and left ye?” Gordy shrugged. “No matter. A crew of us is headed into the taverns to roll drunks. That ship from Spain made port eight hours ago, so that mess of sailors should be ripe fer pluckin’ ’bout now.”
Strider closed his eyes, shaking his head slightly. Rolling drunks was something he and Rune would never stoop to. They worked wherever they could, unloading ships, hauling goods. They didn’t steal.
But Rune was gone.
Alone. He was alone and no one survived alone.
He’d seen the bodies of those that tried.
His legs heavy, Strider found his footing along the edge of the pier and stood up. “I’ll come.”
Gordy nodded, his smile flashing, the one that looked like a snarl no matter how pleased he was for the gaping hole of three missing front teeth. Gordy liked others’ pain. Lived for it. Lived for the squeal of digging a knife into the already injured. He’d seen it on Gordy’s face too many times, the sick glee he took in it.
But no one survived alone.
And it was better to be on the back end of Gordy’s knife than the pointy end.
Above everything else, Strider was a survivor.
{ Chapter 1 }
August 1826, London
Penelope Willington scooted across the busy street, barely dodging a wild phaeton driven by a reckless fop singing—no, screaming—lines from a ballad over and over—“the wise are fools, with all their rules”—as he set his horse to trample anything in his path.
Pen caught her breath as she teetered on the edge of the street, then scampered into the deep shadow of a brick building, this one four stories high and leaning precariously to the side.
It couldn’t collapse right now, could it? Not in the middle of the night with her under it? People had to be living in it—she could hear them above. It couldn’t fall with people in it, could it?
She wasn’t about to stand still and find out.
Next street. Make it to the next street.
She had been repeating those words for the last hour as she made it across London, creeping through the darkest shadows of the night.
Just one more street. One more.
Her hand clutching the rough black fabric of her dress at her neck, she moved her feet forward, sliding under the shadows of buildings, stepping over drunks and the legs of people sleeping.
She’d seen despair. Poverty. She’d lived it. But this was beyond her. The stench, the filth, the deafening noise of horses and carriages and men and prostitutes and drunks filled her head and crammed every naïve thought of what she’d find here out of her mind.
One more street.
Pen squinted her eyes, searching amongst the bright splotches of lantern lights down the street. This had to be it. She had been counting. Counting like the fishmonger had t
old her.
Her fingers clutched onto the rough corner of the building she’d stopped next to and she squinted harder. There. On the opposite side of the street. A sign.
Den of Diablo. Horns atop a grotesque goat face curved up around the words.
No mistaking it.
Her heart skipped a beat, speeding it into mayhem for a moment before the thud of it fell back in line.
That building at least looked upright. Solid enough. Simple exterior. Painted black. None of the messes of balconies and laundry hanging from the windows as there were on seemingly every building in this part of town.
Just the black facade with nothing marring the expanse of it. Even the sashes of the windows were painted black, with black curtains blocking the light from the inside.
A black vortex, sucking in all who neared it.
What the blazes was she walking into?
But there was nothing to do now but keep forward. She needed this. Needed to find him.
That she’d even overheard that flower girl at the market mention his name had been a miracle. A miracle verified over and over—almost every seller she’d asked knew of him.
And this was where the fishmonger had said he was. So she had to chance this. She’d risked everything just to make it this far and turning back now wasn’t an option.
Her heart pounding, her steps hurried as she spotted a sliver of roadway between horses and carriages where she could cross the street and not get crushed. Jutting to her right, then her left, her feet slipped across the muck of fresh manure and she almost lost her balance and slammed into the side of a wagon. She managed to spin, twirling enough to land behind the wagon and she bolted forward, leaping onto the opposite walkway just as an enclosed black carriage skimmed her backside.
With a gasp of thanks that she hadn’t just been squashed, she rushed forward, bumping into a drunk that staggered toward her. “Sixpence, for ye, little puritan.”
Pen didn’t look at him, only sent her feet faster. That was the eighth proposal she’d had that night—no matter how careful she was, she drew attention. She should have drawn a black scarf fully over her head—as much as she’d secured her hair back and tucked most of it under her cap, her blond strands still reflected far too much light, even in the darkness.
Exiled Duke: An Exile Novel Page 1
