The Daring Duke
(The 1797 Club Book 1)
By
USA Today Bestseller
Jess Michaels
The Daring Duke
The 1797 Club Book 1
www.1797Club.com
Copyright © Jesse Petersen, 2016
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
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Dedication
To my Mom, who wanted me to say that she is neither a grasping social climber nor a drunk. She does help me with copyedits and is one of my biggest fans, which makes writing that much more fun. Love you Mom!
And to Michael. Twenty years of marriage and you're still my best friend and the person I want to share all my moments with. Thank you for being my everything.
Author's Note:
When I had the idea for the 1797 Club series in February of 2016, it started off as a bit of a joke between historical romance writer friends. "Why not a series of ALL DUKES?" we joked around during a conference.
By the time the weekend was over, I had rough plotted out a series concept. Now over the last year that has developed quite a bit, but I'm so pleased to present to you this ten-book series about a group of friends who vow to help each other as they each inherit one of the highest titles in the land. I have fallen in love with these men, these brothers in spirit, and I hope you'll love each and every one of them and their feisty and fierce heroines, as well.
Enjoy!
P.S. – Join the Club! www.1797Club.com
Prologue
Spring 1797
James Rylon stiffened as he watched his father stride across the lawn at Braxton Academy toward him and his two best friends. His heart began to race, he felt the blood drain from his face. The once monthly visits from the Duke of Abernathe were something he dreaded immensely.
“He always looks so cross,” James’s best friend Graham muttered.
James swallowed, trying hard not to allow his fear to enter his face. At fourteen, he didn’t like showing that kind of weakness, even to his best friends. “He is always cross,” he whispered.
His other best friend, Simon, shook his head. “Makes me appreciate my own father a bit more. He mostly just ignores me.”
James bit his tongue, unwilling to say what was on his mind. Unwilling to let a crack enter his voice when he admitted that his own father despised him.
The Duke of Abernathe reached them at last and scowled at his son. “Pulham.”
James flinched. Since he was ten, his father had insisted on calling him by his courtesy title. But he wasn’t the Earl of Pulham. He was James. His sister called him James. When his mother was sober enough to be awake, she called him James. All his friends and teachers called him James.
The title felt like a yoke his father put around his neck. A weight he could hardly bear with his skinny body.
“Father,” he responded.
His father reared back and slapped James across the face hard enough that for a moment James saw stars before his eyes. He couldn’t hold back a humiliating gasp of pain as he jerked his hand up to cover his stinging cheek.
“You shall call me Your Grace or Abernathe, or at minimum, sir.” His father shook his head. “You are far too old for this Father nonsense.”
James jerked out a nod. “Y-yes, Your Grace.”
The duke quickly glanced at his friends, and James did the same. Simon had turned his face and was staring intently at a spot far off in the distance. Graham, on the other hand, was standing ramrod straight, hands fisted at his sides, glaring at James’s father. And being the only one who had begun to grow into a man’s body, it was a rather intimidating sight.
But Abernathe only chuckled at the challenge in the other boy’s stare. “Mind yourself, boy. You’re not a duke yet.” He turned his attention back to his son. “Come, Pulham. Walk with me.”
James swallowed past the lump in his throat and did so, stepping into line beside his father as they took their monthly turn around the garden behind Braxton Academy. As always, his father did not ask after him or his studies. He simply barked out questions, ones about the House of Lords, ones about managing estates, ones about title. And, as usual, James stammered answers, most of them wrong, while his father screamed and threatened.
When the customary quarter of an hour visit was over, Abernathe stopped in his tracks and turned to look down at James.
“You are hopeless,” his father said with a shake of his head. “Not all my sons were failures. A shame the one who will take my title is. Good day, Pulham.”
He turned on his heel then and walked away without so much as a backward glance. James stared after him, his chest brewing with a combination of rage and heartache and guilt. Tears stung his eyes and he bent at the waist, breathing shallowly as he tried to fight them. Fight the weakness. Make it go away.
The bell at the door was being rung, signaling the time had come to cease in sport and exercise and return to classes. James let out a pained grunt. He had to go back. He’d have to face all the others in his classes, his teachers. They would see this weakness. The one he usually hid with good humor and playfulness.
The weakness that rotted him out from the inside where no one could see.
“James?”
He tensed, straightening at the mention of his name. He turned to find Simon and Graham standing a few feet away. He wiped at his eyes, heat filling his cheeks that they’d seen him in such a state.
“What?” he barked, much louder and more urgently than he should have.
Simon stared at him a long moment, then came up and slung an arm around James’s shoulder. “Come on. Let’s sneak off to the creek.”
Graham’s face lit up. “Oh yes, let’s do! I don’t want to go listen to Old Comey drone on and on about figures for the next hour and a half. I’d much rather fish.”
James nodded. “All right.”
They began to walk away from the school, through the garden, over a low spot in the wall that enclosed it and out into the countryside that surrounded Braxton Academy. They had been walking for over five minutes before anyone spoke.
“Why is he so cruel to you?” Graham asked.
Humiliation flowed through him. He’d spent a lifetime having his father harangue him in front of others, but never in front of Graham and Simon. He liked both boys—they had become fast friends, along with a group of others, since he began at Braxton Academy the previous year. He had thrived at the Academy, out from under his father’s shadow, out of his house where he felt so unwanted and unloved.
“No one else saw or heard him,” Graham assured him. “Simon and I simply followed. I was worried.”
“Worried about what?” James whispered.
“That he might strike you again,” Graham said, this time through clenched teeth.
Simon shot their friend a look before he said, “James, what did he mean when he said not all his sons were failures? You don’t have any brothers, do you?”
James took a long breath as they crested a low hill and reached the creek at the outer edge of the school property. As Graham dug behind a tree for the fishing poles hidden there, Jam
es pondered his response.
He had never felt safe to discuss his family dynamics. They were complicated and ugly. But with these two boys, he knew he could be more open. And at the moment he was too exhausted to be anything but.
He sat down on the creek’s edge and stared at the bubbling water as he said, “I did have an older brother, older by fifteen years. A half-brother, Leonard. I never met him, though. He died before I was born. That’s why my father married my mother at all, to produce another heir.”
Simon stared at him. “How did he die?”
“An accident,” James said with a shrug. “My father doesn’t speak of him, except to compare me to him. And I never win in the comparison. Apparently Leonard was perfect, you see.”
“So you’re the replacement?” Graham said as he handed over a pole, now ready with a worm on its hook.
James flinched and Simon reached out to slap Graham’s arm. “Bloody hell, Graham.”
Graham glared at him. “I don’t mean it to be cruel.”
“And he’s right, anyway,” James said as he tossed out his line into the waves. “I’m not the heir, I am the replacement. My father will never forgive me for that.”
“That’s why he’s so cruel,” Simon said softly.
The boys were all silent for a long beat, and then James shrugged. “It’s not fair. He’s despised me from the moment I was born and wasn’t Leonard. Actually, he despises all of us, including Meg and Mother. We’re not the family he wanted and he’s made it clear from as early as I can recall. He hates me so much, he won’t even teach me what I need to know, then he screams at me for not knowing it.” He shook his head. “I have no idea how to be a duke.”
Simon sighed. “I do. It’s all my father talks about with me, how to be the Duke of Crestwood one day.”
Graham nodded. “I, too, get the Duke of Northfield lectures on a regular basis. Mine even come in letter form.”
Simon and Graham exchanged a grin, and then Simon’s eyes went wide. “Wait, what if we helped you, James?”
James looked at him. “What do you mean, help me?”
“If he won’t teach you, why couldn’t we?” Graham said, sitting up straighter as he took to Simon’s plan. “We could form a little group, a club.”
“A Duke Club?” Simon said with a roll of his eyes. “Well, isn’t that a little trite?”
“There are quite a few boys in our class who are going to be dukes,” James said, setting his pole aside and rising to his feet. “There’s Baldwin…Lucas…”
“Hugh…not the future baron Hugh. The Duke of Brighthollow’s son Hugh,” Graham added. “And a bunch more in classes just below and just above our own.”
James rubbed his chin. All these boys, all with their knowledge, all helping each other as they prepared to take what was the highest title of the land without being royalty…just the idea gave him hope.
“We can’t call it a Duke Club,” James said. “Simon is right that it’s silly. But I like the idea of us banding together. Our fathers can be so useless…but together we could be stronger and better than they are.”
Simon grinned. “I certainly like that idea. But if not a Duke Club, what do we call it?”
James considered for a moment, then smiled. “The 1797 Club. For its founding year at this creek side.”
Graham tilted his head. “I like that.”
James let out a laugh, the sting of his father’s rejection fading for the first time thanks to the excitement of their plan. He paced the water’s edge, his mind racing.
“There will be much to do. We need to figure out who to invite. And what to do. Where to meet…”
Simon laughed. “Well, first you have a fish on your line. So catch that and then we’ll talk.”
James lunged for the jerking pole and began to drag his fish in. But he didn’t care about the wriggling beast. He only cared about what plans he and his friends had set in motion.
Chapter One
1810
One of the most exclusive and expensive parties that had ever opened a London Season was going on around James Rylon, Duke of Abernathe. There was a lively orchestra, and entertainers who floated through the halls, performing magic and other feats of fantasy. There were fine partners to be had in dancing, and for once the wine wasn’t watered down.
And he was utterly, completely and unbearably bored. Oh, he smiled and chatted, and everyone had always called him the life of any gathering.
But he was bored.
He shifted as a group of ladies approached, smiling behind their fans, the mamas pushing to get a good position for their eligible daughters. He forced a pleasant smile onto his face.
“Good evening, ladies,” he drawled, searching his mind for names to go with the faces. He would find them, he had no doubt. Surface politeness and perfection were his specialties. What lay beneath was another story, and one he shared with very few others.
They were all talking at once now, tittering every time he said anything even remotely amusing, and he held back a sigh. He only smiled with something close to authenticity when he saw his best friends, Simon, the Duke of Crestwood, and Graham, the Duke of Northfield, approaching through the crowd. Both had an amused expression at finding him so besieged. Expressions that fell when the ladies caught sight of them and they were drawn into the trap just as he had been.
“There are so many dukes in your generation,” cooed one of the young ladies, who batted her eyelashes first at James, then at the other two. “And you’re all such good friends.”
Simon shrugged. “It is the time of the young duke, I suppose.”
“And yet none of you have chosen to marry,” one of the mamas said, her lip pushing out in a pout.
“That isn’t true,” James said, grabbing Graham’s arm and all but shoving him into the fray. “Northfield here will marry my sister Margaret. That has been arranged for years.”
He could see his words didn’t appease the small crowd of ladies, even as they offered a round of half-hearted felicitations nonetheless.
“Perhaps you will excuse us, ladies,” Simon said, his voice suddenly a little tight. “We have a bit of business to discuss before we all begin dancing.”
The carrot of future dances dangled before them, the ladies smiled and backed away, but James could still feel their stares on him from across the room. He let out a long sigh.
“Are you well?” Simon asked, tilting his head and examining James more closely.
James pressed his lips together. Trust Simon and Graham to see through to the truth. But it wasn’t a truth he as yet wanted to discuss. “Of course,” he said with a wide smile. “Though I can tell it’s going to be a challenging Season if the first night is already so intense.”
Simon shrugged as he looked off into the crowd, his expression now as serious as James, himself, felt. “We are of an age, I suppose. The expectations are upon us to wed and produce our heirs. It makes us lambs to a slaughter in rooms like these.”
James nodded. Oh yes, he knew of those expectations all too well. They rested heavily on his shoulders, weighing him down even when he was so practiced at pretending to be light and carefree.
“Well, I’ve no plans to be leg shackled any time soon,” he said with a laugh that felt very false. He turned to Graham in the hopes he could change the subject. “I’ll leave it to Graham to do the marrying first.”
Now his smile was real. When his father died eight years ago, his first act as duke was to arrange a union between Graham and his beloved younger sister, Margaret. He did it to solidify her future, but also so that Graham would be his brother in reality, as much as he was in spirit.
He expected Graham to smile at the talk of his future marriage, but both his friends looked strangely grim. Simon, especially, was now pale and almost looked sick.
“Excuse me, gentlemen, I need a drink,” Simon muttered, nodding to them both before he left without waiting for a response.
“I don’t know,” Graham said softly. “He’s been out of sorts lately. He refuses to talk to me about it, though.”
“Yes, I’ve noticed the same,” James mused.
“See if one of the others can get it out of him,” Graham suggested.
James smiled again. The others. Graham was referring to the men in their informal 1797 Club. All men destined to be dukes. They had helped James in so many of his darkest hours. They were the best of men and he was proud to call them friends and allies.
There was Graham and Simon, of course, his very best friends and the ones who had helped him form the group. They had soon asked Baldwin Undercross, now the Duke of Sheffield, to be a part of it. He’d brought along his cousin, Matthew Cornwallis, now Duke of Tyndale. From him, they had added Ewan Hoffstead, who had recently become the Duke of Dunborrow. He was also mute, but he had a keen intellect and was a good friend.
Lucas Vincent, now Duke of Willowby, had joined their set a year later. Now he was no longer in London. Truth be told, no one knew where he was at all, but when he returned James had no doubt he would fall right back into their friendship as if not a day had passed.
Hugh Margoilis, Duke of Brighthollow, and Robert Smithton, Duke of Roseford, had come in after Lucas. Their final member was Christopher Collins, currently the Earl of Idlewood. He was their only member who had not yet inherited his dukedom, though there was no disappointment in that fact, for his father, the Duke of Kingsacre, had been a kind influence on all the men over the years.
It was a large group, but incredibly tight. James knew he could depend on any one of them to help if he needed it. And he couldn’t imagine a scenario where anything could tear their longtime friendships apart.
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