The Dukes of War: Complete Collection

by Ridley, Erica

  There were no neatly trimmed hedges, no manicured corners, no painted walking paths.

  The great stone wall surrounding the garden was as tall and imposing as Ravenwood House itself, but inside was a wonderland of delicate scents and untamed beauty.

  The trees grew as tall as they wished, in any direction they pleased. The flowers were not segregated in this section or that, but rather allowed to grow wild, flourishing in an ocean of riotous color rather than each species confined to small, defined squares.

  This was where Ravenwood felt most alive. Where he was most vulnerable.

  The one place he was truly himself.

  He kept his eyes on the pebbled path before them. “I…have a garden.”

  She nodded. “In the rear of the property.”

  Surprise drew him up short. “You knew?”

  But of course she did. He had personally instructed his staff to deny her nothing. He was the only one who hadn’t followed his own directive.

  He rubbed the back of his neck. “If you have no pressing engagements, perhaps you would like to visit it now?”

  Her face lit with surprise and pleasure. “I would love to.”

  His mouth dried. “Then it would be my great pleasure to take you there.”

  That, of course, was a blatant falsehood. He didn’t want to take anyone there.

  Yet Katherine, of all people, was the most likely to understand why he found it beautiful and peaceful.

  If for some reason she did not, if she found it silly and gauche, her derision would haunt the walls. Every time he thought of his secret garden, his sacred place, he would remember her rejection and no longer be able to find peace within.

  Even if she liked the garden, she might not understand it. Might not understand him. And his tongue would be too tied to convey how he felt.

  He searched for something, anything, to erase his growing nervousness as they neared his private garden.

  “I notice you have not visited your museum of late.”

  She bit her lip. “You’re correct. I’ve relinquished all daily duties to a competent overseer whilst I focus on my next project.”

  “Introducing artists to patrons?”

  “It’s more than that.” A bounce of excitement crept into her step. “Yes, patronage is important, but so is developing an environment where one needn’t hide their artistic inclinations. Scholars of both genders have the Bluestocking Society. Why shouldn’t there also be a Performing and Creative Arts Society, open to everyone?”

  “You’re not planning an event,” he said with sudden clarity. “You’re hoping to start a movement. Create a community.”

  She touched her fingers to her chest. “My dream is not only to spread awareness and interest in the arts, but to foster them. Improve them. Strengthen them. Anyone can sponsor anyone else. A place where poets can chat with earls and marchionesses can talk to actresses without their economic backgrounds preventing a connection—that is a community.”

  “Poets?” he echoed, as casually as he could.

  Until this moment, he hadn’t believed she would hold such a solitary endeavor in as high esteem as she held acting and music.

  She waved a hand. “I just said that as an example. Every third dandy believes himself the next Lord Byron.” She rolled her eyes with a laugh. “None of them would know good poetry if it bit them in the nose.”

  His chest tightened. He was careful to betray nothing.

  “In order to make the inaugural event the greatest success possible, what I really need are stunning entertainers. Actors, acrobats, jugglers, musicians, dancers. Astonishing, visceral performances that cannot help but open hearts or purses.”

  He could not deny that such an event could easily have London abuzz. “It seems you’ve thought of everything.”

  “I’ve tried to.” She smiled up at him.

  He was dubious a single gala would snowball into a serious community, but had no doubt the opening event itself would be just as astonishing as Katherine hoped. Everything she planned turned out better than expected.

  He had a longstanding distrust of change, because every time his life forked into a new direction, new troubles came with it. Inheriting a title meant the loss of his parents. Gaining a guardian meant the destruction of his home. Staying home from war to manage his dukedom meant watching his best friends return broken and bitter men.

  Time had also brought them better fortune, in the end. His friends had suffered great losses, but they’d ultimately gained love and peace.

  He hoped the same would eventually happen for him. That was why he was leading Katherine off the carefully cultivated public paths and along the dirt trail leading to his private garden.

  She stared up in obvious awe at the great stone wall protecting his private refuge. “Is this a garden or a castle?”

  “Both,” he answered simply. The moat was the dukedom surrounding the walls. The inner sanctum was where nature reigned, and he was its humble servant.

  Heretical thoughts. He paused with his key in the lock. His palms were sweating. This was a terrible idea. He was giving up his privacy. His solitude. His sanctuary.

  Katherine’s fingers tightened about his arm and she leaned closer in anticipation.

  He twisted the key in the lock and pushed open the heavy iron door.

  Happiness filled him at the familiar sight of his private garden. Enormous trees with wide, leafy branches provided plenty of shade from the morning sun. A profusion of varying flowers rippled in the breeze like colorful fish in a sea of green.

  So much ivy covered the interior side of the stone walls that the garden appeared not closed off, but rather endless, as if they were surrounded only by untamed hills of grass and flowers.

  Katherine’s mouth fell open in wonder. She clutched her hands to her chest and spun in a slow circle, her wide blue eyes drinking in every wild, unclipped section. The grass tugged at the lace hem of her day dress, but she seemed too entranced by the view to even notice.

  She turned bright eyes toward him, her mouth parting as if he were just coming into focus. “Did you do this?”

  “I did nothing,” he said. “Like many things, nature is at its most beautiful when we don’t try to control it.”

  She stared at him for a heartbeat and then threw her arms about his neck and rose up on her toes. “What an incredibly poetic thing to say.”

  He couldn’t help it. He kissed her.

  This time was different. He wasn’t kissing her because she was his bride and therefore he was obligated to. Nor was he kissing her for base, lusty reasons—although it was true that he had never stopped wanting her.

  This kiss was because she was Katherine. Because here, he was not a duke, but Lawrence Pembroke, the man. The poet. The seeker of beauty.

  And he had found it.

  This kiss was because Katherine loved his lawless garden that by polite standards was not a garden at all. It was a wild thing. Lush and savage. Blossoms and thorns.

  This kiss was because she saw him. Saw him in the peonies and the cherry trees, in the ivy and the twisting branches.

  He kissed her because he wanted to. Needed to. Yearned for her. This garden wasn’t a mere hideaway—it was an extension of himself. He was every bird, every leaf. By letting her within its walls, he had let her into his heart.

  Katherine was perhaps the one person who wouldn’t find his unconventional side a detriment. She didn’t care what society thought. If life wasn’t how she wished, she simply made it so. She was free. As wild as the sea of flowers around them. And as impossible to ever truly tame.

  Gasping, he pulled away before he fell so far into their kiss that he would never find his way back home.

  She slid an arm about him and leaned her head against his chest. The pounding of his heart had to be deafening. He wrapped an arm about her waist and nestled his cheek against the top of her head.

  “You are like a dahlia,” he said softly.

  She tilted her head
up slightly. “Which one is that?”

  He pointed with his free hand. “The gold ones are here… The pink ones there… The orange ones over there. Dahlias are more than pretty. They’re strong and resilient. And new to my garden this year.”

  “They’re beautiful,” she breathed. “And they’re all so different.”

  “Just like you.” He plucked a small golden dahlia from its stem and tucked it behind her ear. She looked like a wood nymph, capable of seducing the coldest heart and then disappearing into the mist.

  “Thank you.” She snuggled close. “I love your garden.”

  He nodded, pleased.

  She made him happy and gave him hope.

  Chapter 14

  Kate swept into her great-aunt’s sitting room on a cloud of giddy romance.

  Aunt Havens clucked her tongue at the sight of the dahlia at Kate’s ear and the grass stains upon her hem. “Never say you left him behind to run off amongst the flowers.”

  Grinning, Kate shook her head and swirled about the room. “The opposite, Aunt. He whisked me off the walking path and into his hidden paradise.”

  Aunt Havens raised her brows in surprise. “That is unexpected.”

  Kate clasped her hands together. Ravenwood was much more than she had dreamed.

  The moment she’d realized how deeply his garden mattered to him—that he’d fully expected its unconventional wildness to fall short in her eyes, yet he’d bared it to her anyway—she had irrevocably fallen for him.

  What was not to love? His private garden was both his secret and his heart, and he literally opened it up to let her inside.

  He had the soul of a poet. She was the one who had been blind to his beauty.

  Guilt assailed her as she recalled how carelessly she had dismissed him, before they had even met. She had developed a casual contempt toward him based on nothing more than his title and impeccable reputation.

  She had assumed there was nothing more to him than what he presented to society, and judged him without a second thought. She had been wrong.

  He lived in the same world she did. He simply confronted it a different way. Outwardly, he became the most proper duke to grace England’s soil.

  Behind closed walls, he was drawn in a different direction. He did not allow society to dictate how he spent his private moments. When the world got too frustrating, he escaped into a secret jungle in his own backyard.

  And he’d invited her in.

  She pulled the dahlia from her ear and pressed it to her chest. “I could love him someday, Aunt.”

  “Could you?” Aunt Havens’ smile brightened.

  Kate gazed down at the dahlia and thought about her future.

  Ravenwood was wonderful. He was smart. Romantic. She didn’t know how he felt, what he might think or say. He didn’t give his approbation lightly, which increased its value all the more.

  She cared about his opinion. Everyone else liked her, but she wasn’t certain they necessarily respected her—or her ideas. His respect would mean more than anyone else’s. His love would mean the world.

  “He gave me this dahlia.” She held it out for her aunt to see. “He says it reminds him of me.”

  “Because you’re beautiful,” Aunt Havens guessed.

  “Because I’m different.” Kate gazed at the exotic flower as she remembered the warmth in his eyes.

  Debutantes were expected to adhere to the same rules, to follow the same fashions, to mimic each other in comportment and desires.

  She had been complimented on her French dresses and perfect ringlets her entire life, but no one had ever told her what they most appreciated about her was that she was different from the others. Until today.

  If she’d had any skill at all with watercolor, she would paint this beautiful flower to remember the moment forever.

  The day she’d discovered herself falling wholly and irreversibly in love.

  She might be like a dahlia, but he was like his secret garden. Tall and imposing, with great stone walls and a locked iron gate to keep others out. Wild, untamed beauty within.

  A smile that felt like sunshine upon her soul.

  They could not get an annulment. She would stay married to him no matter what it took. Even if that meant someday having his child. Or trying to.

  She brought the dahlia to her chest and closed her eyes. Terror gripped her.

  Ravenwood was not an unreasonable man. He’d invited her into his garden. Surely he would understand her need to be intimate with him for the first few times without the specter of childbirth casting its shadow over the marriage bed.

  He was a duke. He had resources beyond her imagination. He would not let anything happen to her—or their baby. She opened her eyes and nodded firmly.

  Next year would be soon enough to think about children.

  She crossed the room to the bell pull in order to ring for a vase. Her mind was already planning where to place the dahlia so that she would see it every morning when she woke and every night before falling asleep.

  Even when Ravenwood was too busy to spend time with her, she would be able to look at the dahlia and remember how it had felt to kiss him in his garden.

  When she turned back around, Aunt Havens was on her knees, peering beneath the chairs and side tables.

  Kate strode forward, frowning. “Did you lose something, Aunt?”

  “I’m afraid so.” Aunt Havens let out a deep sigh of frustration. “I can’t find that dog anywhere!”

  Kate’s smile wobbled. The blasted dog again. This was the second time in as many weeks.

  There had to be something Kate could do. Playing along wasn’t working. Nor did explaining the dog had long since died. What Aunt Havens might need was a new dog. A real one.

  And perhaps what Kate needed…was Ravenwood.

  Chapter 15

  After spending a delightful afternoon with Katherine in the garden, the last thing Ravenwood wanted to do was set off for Parliament and spend the next eight hours shuttered inside the Palace of Westminster with the House of Lords.

  But he was a duke who knew his duty, so as much as he might have preferred to stay home and see what the evening might bring, his country needed him. The ridiculous Coinage Committee needed him.

  As much as he hated being cooped up with so many people, so many voices, he often feared the whole system would fall apart if he were not present to herd the lordlings back into line every time they strayed off course and out of hand.

  Tonight, however, instead of suffering through the usual anxiety of what to say and how to say it, his mind kept slipping back to his garden. The fear of rejection, the relief of acceptance, the joy that had filled them both so vividly that she’d thrown herself into his arms and—

  “Wouldn’t you say, Ravenwood?”

  “Er…” Ravenwood blinked at dozens of curious faces. Heat climbed up his neck at the unexpected attention. “I would need to…consult some figures.”

  “You and your figures, Ravenwood!”

  The men turned from him to begin arguing amongst themselves again.

  He rubbed his face and forced himself to pay attention. Just a little while longer. These meetings rarely went later than one or two in the morning. Katherine was infamous for going out every evening. She would still be awake when he got home.

  Except she wasn’t.

  No light shone beneath the crack of their adjoining door. She was in bed, asleep.

  Come to think of it, she hadn’t gone out a single time since becoming his wife. No theatres, no dinner parties, not even a stroll in St. James Square. He frowned.

  Was she unhappy? Was it his fault?

  Pensive, he maintained his habitual silence as his valet removed his boots and dress clothes and prepared his bed.

  Until that afternoon, he had never explicitly given Katherine permission to do as she pleased, in or out of Ravenwood House. In all honesty, it had never occurred to him that explicit permission would be necessary. She was his duchess. A duchess
could do as she liked.

  More to the point: she was Katherine. Katherine always did as she pleased.

  Or did she?

  He sat on the edge of his bed and cast a long, speculative gaze at the closed door standing between them.

  This union had not been in either of their plans. However, in Ravenwood’s case, he had always wanted to get married. To have a wife, children, a family. To find love.

  On their wedding night, Katherine had made it perfectly clear that she did not share those sentiments. She had not longed for a husband, least of all Ravenwood. And she certainly wasn’t delighted to bear his children. She wasn’t willing to entertain the idea at all.

  Which left them with what? He leaned back onto his bed and stared up at the tester.

  The one thing he wasn’t willing to risk was a chance at love. Their wedding night had proven that she felt physical desire for him. This afternoon in the garden had proven that they could connect at a deeper level.

  She might not have chosen him at first—but if he gave her time and space, there was still a chance that she might.

  He didn’t want her to simply accept his presence in her bedchamber. He wanted her to want him. All of him. His mind, his body, his heart. He wanted her to want to create a family together just as badly as he did. He wanted them to be a family. Partners in life and love.

  He also wasn’t a saint…or a fool. It was possible that their marriage might become the sort of union he’d always yearned for—and it was just as possible that it would not.

  He rolled on his side to face away from the adjoining door.

  For the next several weeks, he would be too busy with the House of Lords to do much courting, even in his own home. He could afford to give Katherine a month to adjust to her new role, but he would not pine for his wife from no more than a few feet away. The dukedom required an heir.

  If she was not ready to come to him by the time the Season ended, he would go to her.