Text copyright © April 2018 Emily Windsor
All Rights Reserved
This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination. All characters are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in book reviews.
This book is written using British English spelling.
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
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
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Epilogue
Previous Books
Biography
Chapter One
Kindle not a fire that cannot be extinguished.
(English proverb. 1584)
Lady Castlethorpe’s ball. No. 15 Berkeley Square. April 1815.
Full. Chiselled. Resolute.
Those delicious lips drew near. Slow, too slow, and her heart thudded with apprehension and hope. His eyes, a deep emerald, gleamed with want in the faint lantern light.
It would be perfect.
The gentleman breathed her name, husky and low in the sombre shadows, and he leaned closer, pressing her body to the fluted column at the concealed edge of the terrace, hands raised to her shoulders with an assured touch.
Her eyes fluttered closed in anticipation as breath drifted over her skin, warm and with a hint of…
Liver?
Aideen cracked open an eye.
The viscount’s boyish face appeared comically contorted as he pursed those full lips, rather like a pug straining for a sausage. The scent of liver puffed over her once more, causing her nostrils to twitch, but this time it intermingled with citrus cologne and a faint hint of damp linen.
Memories of a more potent kiss surged before her eyes, and with it came the scent of chocolate and leather.
Clean. Darkly bitter-sweet. Male.
Aideen hurriedly pulled away. “I’m so sorry, Lord Sherburn, but I just…cannot.”
Stuttering, the poor chap opened befuddled eyes, arms dropping to his sides. “No, no. I… I should not have presumed, Miss Quinlan. Your Irish beauty has quite stolen my wits.”
Pretty words to be sure, but Aideen sighed nonetheless.
The best part of a year ago, she’d been the recipient of her first kiss. A kiss she couldn’t seem to forget, no matter how hard she tried.
Indeed, never did she think to receive such an embrace ever again as there was always something wrong with the gentlemen she met: too short, too broad, blue eyes, fat nose and now this. Liver and damp linen.
Lord Sherburn coughed, straightening his pleated cuffs. He was such a nice boy – eager and kind.
So why did visions of that enflamed kiss invade her mind so? Especially as the benefactor had been the glowering, priggish, pompous Duke of Rakecombe.
Perhaps it was because the top-lofty man had kissed in the same way he conducted himself – fierce but controlled. Ruthless. Those teeth grazing her neck, bruising passionate lips, his strong hands tang–
“Shall we make our way to the light, Miss Quinlan?” The viscount’s gentle face smiled, eyes considerate. “We have tarried but a moment, and guests will presume we’ve merely been promenading. I can find your chaperone, should you so wish?”
Shaking her head, Aideen twirled a curl betwixt her fingers. “I believe I’ll stay in the darkness a tad longer…to compose myself. Besides, do I hear your mother calling?”
The young man’s countenance creased in worry and, sketching a hasty bow, he darted towards the glow spilling from the French doors.
Aideen slumped against the Doric column, wishing she’d never come to this awful ball.
Except for Lord Sherburn and a scarce few others, most of the gentlemen viewed her status as lower than a strand of slimy Irish seaweed, and she’d been regarded through female quizzing glasses so many times in the candlelight that surely her dress was scorched with little burn holes.
Mama may have been an English lady, but Aideen’s wild black hair and Irish lilt proclaimed her da’s lineage loud and clear.
Proper English ladies, of course, didn’t wander onto terraces with young viscounts either, but all the guests had been too busy either disparaging or enjoying the scandalous waltz to notice a stray nobody.
A swift movement in the sooty night caught her eye and she straightened, peering into the austere garden. Topiary seemed to be the prevalent fashion in this abode and tortured bushes twisted and strained, casting shadows of dragons and demons fighting their eternal battles.
The cravat appeared first. Stark white and stiff.
Thereafter, a tall black form coalesced around that snowy immaculateness, upright and commanding. A determined cane tapped on the York stone flags.
“For shame, Miss Quinlan,” a deep aristocratic male voice drawled, “I am surprised the young pup did not wag his tail and yelp goodbye as you patted his head and sent him away.” He raised a gloved hand to his ear. “And hark, I hear no beckoning mother.”
Aideen yearned to place her twitching fingers around the throat that uttered those sardonic words.
And squeeze, tightly.
Then kiss him senseless, smothering those firm, non-liver-breathing lips with bites until he gasped – although whether that was due to the kiss or her ever-tightening hand around his throat, she hadn’t quite decided.
But over the past months, her distant relative and hostess for the Season, Mrs Beckford, had been teaching her poise and patience, so garnering all her newly learned expertise, she instead stepped forward and smiled pleasantly.
“Better a devoted young Labrador than a snarling old wolfhound…Your Grace.”
Perhaps not exactly how Mrs Beckford expected her to greet a duke, but at least she’d managed not to curse him to hell…yet.
Aideen also remained mindful that to curtesy would be appropriate, curtesy and leave, as any unchaperoned young miss would not hesitate to do, but the little red devil who squatted permanently on her left shoulder whispered that was dull. Mrs Beckford’s advice was, after all, purely that.
The last time she had seen Alexander Westhide, the Duke of Rakecombe, he had been sailing into the sunset, literally, after he’d rescued her from a nasty little kidnapping Frenchman. She had thought they’d parted amicably but since then, she’d not seen sight nor sound of him. Nigh on a year without his cold burning stare.
She had thought he might…
Alas, her cousin Sophie had mentioned his reappearance in London late last summer, but their paths had not crossed, he had not called upon her, and Aideen had left town for the cold winter months in Ireland, certain he had forgotten their amorous encounter.
And, admittedly, there was the fact she’d informed him that he kissed like a wet fish, so perhaps the fault was her own.
The moon cast its opalescent glow upo
n them, as though it had decided a little romance was necessary, and Aideen groaned at the unfairness of her perfect memory as his face became real.
She had hoped his eyes couldn’t possibly be as intense as she recollected, or that he wasn’t so forbiddingly tall. But needless to say, he was. All that and more, the damn English bug.
If she had to quibble, she would say his nose was a fraction overlong and possibly too thin, slightly hawkish, but sensuous lips, moulded cheekbones and lush lashes more than made up for any nostril disadvantage. Besides, she liked the way they flared with a brisk inhalation when he disapproved of something – mainly her.
As far as she could tell, the lone difference from last year was a certain leanness to his cheeks, but then Napoleon had escaped Elba in the previous month, war beset England once again, and she knew the duke was up to his neck in shady foreign affairs.
Leanness simply enhanced his callous stare. She shivered, and it wasn’t through fear.
“Did you enjoy the young pup’s attentions, Miss Quinlan?”
“Er…”
The Duke of Rakecombe stepped forward, jet-black cloak swirling about him. She wasn’t entirely sure how to answer, or in point of fact, why he had asked at all. But then, they never seemed able to have a normal conversation. He always riled with mocking words, and with her temper, she responded with blunt antagonism.
“Do you desire his callow touch?” he pressed again.
Aideen gulped as the black figure circled her, cane drumming on the stone, demanding an answer. She didn’t turn. Didn’t so much as move a muscle.
Two months of Mrs Beckford’s etiquette lessons and not one half hour had dealt with how to reply to a haughty duke leaning far too close and taunting her with impertinent questions.
Warm breath disturbed the ringlets at her nape. Had his lips brushed her skin? The scent of chocolate floated over her shoulder, and she closed her eyes, every nerve humming his proximity.
“Did the pup quieten your shrewish tongue?” the duke whispered in her ear, and Aideen’s eyes snapped open.
She spun to confront him, their faces close. His cravat bobbed as he swallowed heavily.
A shrewish tongue had been the only way to be heard growing up, the only protection against her da’s bitter comments. He had a voice like cannon fire and if you didn’t stay sharp, the constant complaints and needless rebukes rubbed until you dulled like an overused hunting knife.
“Shrewish, am I? Well, may savage dogs eat your fee–”
“You have already used that curse.” His lips quirked, so fleeting that if she hadn’t been so close, so aware, she would have missed it.
“I beg your pardon?” she growled.
The Duke of Rakecombe sighed and slicked back his hair with a firm hand.
What was he doing? What was it about this woman? And why had he even made himself known from the shadows?
No one answered.
All he did know was that he wanted to delicately carve up Lord Sherburn with the sprung blade nestled inside his ebony cane.
“You used that particular curse in Vauxhall Gardens, I recall, and I do not believe they serve twice.”
Her livid eyes narrowed, and he cursed his own tongue with words more vulgar than dogs eating feet.
Vauxhall Gardens was where he’d first kissed her. He hadn’t meant to. The plan, such as it had been, had involved distracting Miss Quinlan from her cousin’s side in order that his comrade could arrange a tryst.
But it had all gone to hell.
Miss Quinlan had tripped in the dark and he’d halted her fall, but slender fingers had clutched at his lapels, full breasts had pressed at his chest, and before he’d been able to gain control, his wayward lips had been kissing her, all rational thought upended.
Purely the clattering of his fallen cane had brought back his senses.
And then she’d had the gall to slap his face and inform him he kissed like some aquatic creature – the wretched jade.
“I’m flabbergasted, Your Gracelessness,” she retorted, “that you recall anything of that night. I can only suppose you’d imbibed too much punch. Some men cannot hold their drink.”
Oh, how he wanted to punish that insulting mouth. Miss Quinlan had no restraint, no decorum, no veneration for his noble title.
He ought to stay far, far away.
He should stride off now.
He leaned down, lips meeting her heated cheek. “I remember everything, sweet cherry. The scent of violets clinging to your hair, the softness of your mouth despite the flow of blasphemies from your lips, the silkiness of your skin.”
“And I recall,” she snapped, that silky but stubborn chin turning, “how you looked nauseated as you wiped a hand across your mouth. How you called me a capricious saucebox and told me I kissed like a shrew.”
Miss Quinlan’s snarled repetition of his words that night reminded him of his motive for uttering them.
There were reasons far beyond her comprehension as to why he couldn’t enjoy her acquaintance, and yet his treasonous body still refused to obey, his feet snubbed the order to walk in the opposite direction, his hands trembled to touch.
But his brain…his brain he could command. He wasn’t known as a staid heartless prig for nothing.
This ruthless reputation hadn’t been cultivated on some whim but to protect against closeness, against temptations such as Miss Aideen Quinlan.
With his perilous activities for the Crown, invoking dislike was wisest for all concerned.
So he stiffened his spine. Forced his eyes to winter. “And I meant every word,” he stated coldly.
Most women would have cowed before his insult. Mayhap their lip would have quivered, or a bright tear might’ve gleamed in their eye. They would have vowed never to speak to him again, presuming him a callous bastard, and his world would once again become safe.
They would become safe.
Of course, he should have known that Miss Aideen Quinlan would do no such thing.
When kidnapped last May, she’d scratched her ire into the Frenchman’s face, and Rakecombe couldn’t help the surge of protectiveness and admiration that assaulted him in equal measure as he recalled her strength, her wrath, her fire.
Miss Quinlan’s lips firmed, and coyly, she peeped up at him. “To answer your earlier question, Your Grace, I did enjoy Lord Sherburn’s attentions. So gentle and tender. Such soft hands. He knows how to delight a lady.”
Jealousy and esteem warred within as he stared at those insubordinate coal eyes. “But like a mild doe, some women require delicate handling. Spitting cats, I have found, need firmer treatment, a strong hand at their scruff.”
Her eyes flared and his whole body coiled in anticipation, awaiting…
“And churlish, covetous wolfhounds need a tight leash and muzzle. Mayhap I should purchase both for any future encounter we may have. Preferably in black to match your foul moods and clothing. Good night, Your Grace.”
Rakecombe watched Miss Quinlan sashay across the terrace and into the light, a saucy swing to her hips.
So, she’d seek to tame him with a leash, would she? He wanted to laugh out loud but that wasn’t very ducal.
“You can come out now, Bluey,” he barked instead.
A lathy man materialised from behind a topiary cockerel, a smirk on his foxy face, and Rakecombe’s eyes crossed as he attempted to observe both the retreating Miss Quinlan and the emerging informant.
They had agreed to convene here as Bluey had business in the area – he wouldn’t ask what – and he himself had promised to accompany his mother home from this ball. Dear mater was bound to have a litany of complaints in the carriage regarding his absence from the ballroom, his unmarried state, his disappearances, but at least it was only a short ride back to Grosvenor.
But then, as fate would have it, he’d spied the tame Sherburn drooling over the wild Miss Quinlan and temptation had beckoned.
“My apologies, Bluey, for the delay.”
“No
worries, Guv. I would’ve done the same. I likes a woman with bottom. And what a bottom,” he said with appreciation.
Rakecombe momentarily considered poisoning Bluey with the secondary device in his cane, but he was an inordinately useful informant for the Crown, so instead he followed the chap’s gaze.
The impudent Miss Quinlan swished through Lady Castlethorpe’s French doors, that silk-clad bottom lovingly etched in the candlelight.
Indeed.
Chapter Two
Such a hullabaloo.
“Why did Miss Gibbon faint when I asked her to pass the platter of chicken thighs? Saints and their harps, she nearly toppled the entire supper table.”
In answer to her question, Aideen received an exasperated purse of the lips from her friend Cordelia and a voluble sigh from Mrs Beckford.
Tapping her chin, she asked again, “Should I have requested the footman do it? But the thighs were only at her left elbow.”
Mrs Beckford looked up from her embroidery hoop with puckered brow, a perfect silk lion adorning the material. “You should have requested the services of a footman, yes, but that was not the reason.”
Cordelia, who’d capably sewed a magnificent rabbit, scooted close on the pink-striped sofa. “It was because you used that word.”
“Which word? Chicken?”
“No,” Cordelia replied, smiling wanly, although whether it was at chickens or Aideen’s embroidery efforts, she wasn’t sure. “The…body part,” she whispered. “Body parts are unmentionable.”
Bejabbers.
Aideen had suspected that might be the reason, but really?
Stabbing the white silk with her needle, she added a lolling tongue to her Irish wolfhound, a personal joke at the Duke of Rakecombe’s expense, but the wolfhound jeered at her and more likely resembled a fire-breathing dragon.
They all sat in the drawing room of the Beckford house on Conduit Street, endeavouring to while away the morning fashioning cushion covers.
Never having had the patience for sewing, however, Aideen threw her hoop to one side and watched Cordelia as she dextrously twiddled her needle to produce an elegant French knot.
Without doubt, her young friend was extremely gifted at proper ladies’ accomplishments and ’twas no wonder she’d become betrothed to Viscount Oakdean so early in the Season – embroidery aside, she also sang like an angel, played pianoforte like Mozart and had a peaches and cream complexion.
Let Sleeping Dukes Lie Page 1
