The Tattooed Duke

by Maya Rodale

  The Tattooed Duke

  Maya Rodale

  Dedication

  For my friends at the Rodale Institute.

  I miss y’all, but Timbuktu was calling.

  and

  For Tony,

  my very own long-haired, pierced, and tattooed duke

  brilliant and dashing ’round-the-world explorer.

  XOXO,

  Your writing girl housemaid wife

  Contents

  Dedication

  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

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Fashionable Intelligence

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Romances by Maya Rodale

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Chapter 1

  The Duke Returns

  London, 1825

  The docks

  They said he had been a pirate. It seemed utterly believable. The other rumors about Sebastian Digby, the Duke of Wycliff, were equally riveting. It was said that he had charmed and seduced his way across countries and continents; that there existed no law or woman he couldn’t bend to suit his whims; that he had lived among the natives in Tahiti and swam utterly nude in the clear turquoise waters; that he had escaped the dankest of prisons and thoroughly enjoyed himself in a sultan’s harem.

  A gentleman he clearly was not.

  And now this charming, adventurous, scandalous duke had returned home, to London.

  Miss Eliza Fielding had joined the throngs on the dock to witness the long-awaited return of this duke, as per the orders of her employer, Mr. Derek Knightly. She wrote for the monstrously popular newspaper he owned and edited, The London Weekly. In fact, she was one of the four infamous Writing Girls who wrote for the paper. For the moment, at any rate.

  If she didn’t get this story . . .

  Eliza tugged her bonnet lower across her brow to protect against the light drizzle falling and dug her hands into the pockets of her coat.

  “If you don’t get this story,” Mr. Knightly had told her plainly as she stood in his Fleet Street office just yesterday, “I can no longer employ you as a writer for The London Weekly. I cannot justify it if you are not submitting publishable works.”

  It was perfectly logical. It was only business. And yet it felt like a lover’s betrayal.

  Knightly didn’t need to say that she hadn’t been turning in any decent stories—they both knew it. Weeks had turned into months, and not one article of hers appeared in its pages.

  Oh, she used to write the most marvelous stories—a week in the workhouse undercover to expose the wretched conditions, exclusive interviews with Newgate prisoners condemned to death, detailing the goings-on in a brothel to show what the lives of prostitutes were really like. If there was a truth in need of light, Eliza was up to the task. If adventure, danger, and the dark side of London were involved, so much the better.

  Lately she hadn’t been inspired. The words wouldn’t come. Hours, she spent with a quill in hand, dripping splotches of ink of a blank sheet of paper.

  But this story . . .

  Knightly’s assignment was plain: to uncover every last secret of the Duke of Wycliff. All of London was panting for the intimate details of his ten years abroad. It wasn’t just that he was a duke—and the latest in the long line of “Wicked Wycliffs,” as the family was known. That alone would have required column inches of ink. But all those rumors . . .

  Had he really been a pirate? Was it true about the harem? Had he been made the chief of a small tribe on a remote island in Polynesia? What of mountains scaled, fires started, and lands explored? More importantly to the ton, was he looking for a wife?

  The questions were plentiful. The answers were hers to discover. But how?

  “But how?” she asked Knightly. “He’s a duke and I am quite far from that. We don’t exactly move in the same circles.”

  Julianna, Countess Roxbury—fellow Writing Girl and gossip columnist—was far better suited to the task.

  “Do you not want this story?” Knightly asked impatiently. She saw him glance at the stack of papers on his desk awaiting his attention.

  “Oh, I do,” Eliza said passionately. It wasn’t the money—Knightly’s wages were fair, but not extravagant. There was something about being a Writing Girl: the true friendship, the thrill of pushing the boundaries of what a woman could do in this day and age, the love of chasing a great story and the pleasure of writing, excruciating as it occasionally could be.

  She made a living by her own wits, dignity intact, and she was beholden to no one. She would not give that up lightly.

  “Figure something out,” Knightly told her. “Become his mistress. Bribe his staff. Or better yet, disguise yourself as one of the housemaids. I care not, but get this damned story.”

  Knightly didn’t need to say “or else!” or bandy about idle threats to make his point. The truth was there, clear as day: this was her last chance to write something great or there would only be three Writing Girls.

  Thus, she was now here, on the docks along with a mob of Londoners vying to see this long-lost pirate duke. All manner of curiosities were hauled off the ship: exotic creatures, exquisite blossoms and plants, dozens of battered crates with words like Danger or Fragile or Incendiary branded on the boards.

  Interesting, to be sure, but nothing compared to the man himself.

  Everything about him would cause a scandal.

  Then she saw him.

  His dark hair was unfashionably long, brushing his shoulders and pulled back in a queue save for some windswept strands that whipped around his sharply slanting cheeks.

  His skin was still sun-browned. A tantalizing patch exposed at the nape of his neck—which a gentleman would have covered—begged one to wonder how much of his skin had been exposed to the sultry tropical sun. Had he stripped down to his breeches, baring his chest? Or had the lot of his clothing been deemed too restrictive and discarded?

  He wore no cravat at his neck; instead, buttons were left undone on his linen shirt, offering a glimpse of the bare skin of his chest. His gray jacket was worn carelessly opened, as if he did not even notice the drizzling rain.

  When he moved, one might catch a glimpse of a sword hanging at his side. One would be wise to assume he
carried a knife in his boot or a pistol in his coat pocket.

  The story. The story. The story.

  Even on this damp afternoon, Eliza felt like her nerves were smoldering, sparked by equal parts excitement and fear. It was the feeling she always had at the start of a mission, but this time there was something else.

  Something that left her breathless. Something that made her feel the heat all over, even in this cool, wet weather. Something that made it awfully difficult to breathe for a second. Something that made it impossible to wrench her gaze away from the man, the duke, the story.

  Two men, garbed in dark, rough coats next to her in the crowd began a conversation that Eliza freely eavesdropped on as she kept her gazed fixed upon her quarry. She leaned in, the better to listen to their gruff voices.

  “I heard that his household is looking to hire, but chits aren’t exactly lining up for the job. I know I told my sister under no circumstances was she to take a job there, duke’s household or not.”

  “Aye? Why is that?” This man’s posture and tone said he thought it stupid to refuse a job, particularly from a duke.

  “Everyone knows the Wicked Wycliffs like to tup their housemaids and then send ’em packing when they’re with child,” the other said authoritatively. She wondered where he’d heard gossip like that. Probably from The London Weekly.

  “More than usual?” the man said, thus pointing out that this was hardly unusual behavior.

  “Aye, they’re legendary for it. They don’t call ’em the Wicked Wycliffs for nothing. And this one, particularly—look at him. Would you want yer sister or your missus working under the same roof as him?”

  In unison the three fixed their attention on the duke. He boldly paced the ship’s deck with determined strides, coat thrown open to the elements and white shirt now wet and plastered across his wide, flat chest and abdomen. Heat infused Eliza’s cheeks and . . . elsewhere.

  The duke paused to converse with a rough-looking man with one arm in a sling and one eye covered by a black patch. The very definition of disreputable company.

  The duke turned to give an order to the crew as they carried off precious cargo. Eliza knew that he was not captain of the ship, but lud, if he didn’t act like he was the lord and master of everything around him.

  To say the duke was handsome did not do it justice—even from the distance she viewed him at. He was utterly captivating. Danger, indeed.

  “No,” the man next to her said. “I wouldn’t want any of my womenfolk gettin’ near the likes of that.”

  Eliza smiled, because she would dare to get close. She thought again of Knightly’s flippant, impatient words: Or better yet, disguise yourself as one of the housemaids.

  Her heart pounded as she pieced that together with the gossip she had shamelessly overheard: I heard that his household is looking to hire, but chits aren’t exactly lining up for the job.

  Shivers of excitement. The thrill of the chase. Her job on the line.

  Get the story. Get the story. Get the story . . .

  On the spot, she made a decision. In order to save her position as one of The London Weekly’s Writing Girls, she would disguise herself as a maid in the household of the scandalous, wicked Duke of Wycliff.

  The very next day, wearing a plain dress and with fake letters of reference from her fellow Writing Girls, the Duchess of Brandon and the Countess Roxbury, Eliza found herself at work in Wycliff House—dusting the library bookshelves, in particular, while His Grace entertained a caller—where she would have unfettered access to the duke, his household, and his secrets . . . and to the shocking story she needed in order to remain a writer at The London Weekly.

  Chapter 2

  In Which There Is Nudity

  Wycliff House

  Within four and twenty hours of his return to English soil, Sebastian Digby, the new Duke of Wycliff, had a caller. His idiot cousin Basil had come to visit. Worse, Basil brought a decade’s worth of gossip and a deplorable inability to discern the interesting from the mundane.

  Sebastian—still not used to the name Wycliff applied to himself—had once been held in an Egyptian prison with a man who insisted on telling the long, excruciatingly dull history of herding cattle in the desert. Basil’s company and conversation rivaled that for sleep inducing properties.

  Nevertheless, in proper English fashion they took tea before the fireplace on another damp, gray March afternoon.

  A maid dusted the bookshelves. She had a very nice backside. Such was the saving grace of the afternoon.

  Basil rambled on. He reported all the major scandals—marriages, a divorce, duels and deaths—and briefly mentioned news regarding Lady Althea Shackley. At the mention of her name, Wycliff shifted uncomfortably in his chair.

  Basil then mentioned the creditors plaguing the household and loitering in front of the house. News that the duke had returned spread like the plague, and hordes of merchants crawled out of the woodwork to demand payments owed for services rendered by the previous duke, or that had accumulated whilst Wycliff was adventuring on the far side of the world.

  Wycliff knew he would have to do something about them. Pay them, presumably.

  Or swiftly depart for lands unknown. He was leaning toward the latter. Timbuktu, in particular.

  “We had all given you up for dead,” Basil began. “Though rumors would float back every now and then.”

  “We?”

  “Myself, my missus, the rest of the ton,” Basil explained. “But then we all heard rumors of your adventures and whereabouts. Is it true that you spent a week in a harem ravishing a hundred concubines of the sultan?”

  Gossip apparently was not much troubled by distance.

  Nearby, the maid with the lovely bottom slowed with her dusting, as if she were eavesdropping. He assumed so; anyone would be. Dull as Basil might be, he was far more interesting than dusting.

  Wycliff grinned at the memory of the one exquisite night of unbridled passion kindled by the grave threat of discovery. Some things were worth risking life and limb for.

  “It was only one night,” he clarified. The maid coughed. Aye, she was listening. And doing the math.

  “That’s the sort of rumors and gossip that will have the ton matrons in a tizzy,” Basil remarked. He bit into a biscuit and brushed the bread crumbs from his puce-colored waistcoat.

  “That’s what I do, Basil,” Sebastian replied. He always had. It’s what the Wycliffs had done for generations. There wasn’t a more outrageous, debaucherous, devil-may-care clan in England’s history. The men were notorious for dallying with the household maids, for spending fortunes on mistresses, and for generally being a drunken, undisciplined lot. Oddly enough, they tended to marry stern, practical, cold wives. The sort that might manage to impose some order and civilizing behavior. None had ever managed to do so.

  His own parents were no exception. By some miracle, he had inherited his mother’s rigid self-control, and it warred constantly with his Wicked Wycliff blood.

  “I suppose it doesn’t take much to upset the ton,” Basil conceded. He clearly took after the other side of the family. The dull side. “Now what about those rumors that you were a pirate?”

  “What about them?” Wycliff asked, lifting his brow suggestively just to provoke his cousin. He ought to invite Harlan to join them. Basil would surely be aghast at the man’s eye patch, injured arm, and pirate charade. He wondered if the parrot had survived the journey from Fiji to London to Wycliff House.

  “Will you not deny it?” Basil asked, his voice tinged with glee. “And do tell about Tahiti. I heard that’s where they found you.”

  “Warm crystal blue waters sparkling on white sand beaches, incessant sunshine, loose, barely clad women. It gets a bit boring after a while,” Wycliff said with a shrug. Monroe Burke, friend and rival, had found him there with the news of the previous duke’s passing. Or, the news that he had a reason to return after a decade abroad.

  “You were bored in a tropical paradise and r
eturned to England to claim your dukedom,” Basil stated. “Hmmph.”

  “Such is life . . .” Wycliff mused. He was supposed to feel guilty about his travels and adventures, but he had refused. He knew he was supposed to thank his bloody stars he’d been born a duke, but more often than not it felt more like a burden than a blessing. Instead, he went after what he wanted in life, dukedom be damned. Was that such a crime, or was it a well-lived life?

  The maid glanced over her shoulder, and even with her face in profile he could see her scowl. That, and her delicate English features and a creamy complexion. A little pink rosebud of a mouth. Her hair was dark and pulled into a tight knot at the base of her neck. Wycliff wanted to see more. He wanted to see her eyes.

  “Well, best of luck to you upon reentering society,” Basil said, casting a critical eye on Wycliff’s appearance. “You’ll have to cut your hair, of course. And you will never get into Almack’s with . . . with . . . that earring.”

  Little did Basil know, the small gold hoop—a sailor’s traditional burial funds—was the least of the decoration he’d picked up on his travels.

  “Of all the placed I’ve traveled to, from Africa to Australia, and Almack’s is the one that’s inaccessible to me,” Wycliff drawled. “Pity, that.”