“We’ve got a visitor,” he said. Selina turned, squinting.
“Who could that be?” she wondered. “Is that Lord Sandbourne, come all the way back from Italy?”
“I believe it is,” he said, offering her his arm. Stephen had warned him, in a recent letter, that he might be returning to Gillingham County for a short time.
“Come! Let’s go and welcome him back!” Selina said, excitedly.
They both met Stephen, just as he stopped his horse in front of the house. Stephen looked well for the first time in a very long time. He had a little bit of golden color to his skin, and it looked as though he’d put on a little bit of weight.
“It appears that Italy has treated you well, Lord Sandbourne,” Selina said.
Stephen dismounted. “So it has, Your Grace.” He handed the reins over to one of the grooms.
“Please,” Selina said. “We’re old friends, My Lord, call me Selina.”
“Of course, but only if you call me Stephen,” he replied jovially.
Jasper smiled. Stephen hadn’t been this genuinely content since their school days.
“Come, let’s head inside,” he said. “My mother will want to see you, as well.”
They were all settled in the parlor and had ordered tea to be brought. They had also sent word up to the Dowager Duchess, who had retired to her rooms.
“Tell me what’s been going in the countryside since I’ve been gone?” Stephen asked, taking a sip of his tea.
“Not much,” Jasper replied. “Thankfully. Things are back to their usual, boring state.”
“Indeed,” Selina agreed, her arms hugging her belly, as though she were cradling their baby. “I think that we’ve had enough suspense for a long while.”
“Agreed,” Stephen said, nodding, his eyebrows raised.
They were all silent for a long moment. In the space of it, Jasper considered what they were all leaving out, for delicacy’s sake. Reuben was in prison up in the North, where he would remain for the rest of his days.
As Duke, Jasper had been required to attend his brother’s trial. He recalled the cold individual whom he had faced in the courtroom. Gone was the glowing, happy Reuben who he had grown up with. The mask had been torn away to reveal the true version. Jasper had looked his brother in the eyes, as he’d asked the magistrate not to sentence his brother to be hanged.
“He’s my blood, as such,” Jasper had said. “I would not see him put to death.”
“Too weak in the stomach, Your Grace?” Reuben had demanded, haranguing him. “Can’t bear to see me swing? You know, Lady Langley begged for her life. I don’t plan to do the same.”
Jasper had turned to the white-wigged and dark-robed Magistrate, ignoring his brother’s cruel words. “It would be the easy way out for him, Your Honor,” he’d explained. “He needs time to sit and contemplate his pathetic existence.”
He’d been required to attend Lady Leah’s trial, as well. She’d looked frail and frightened—her hands shook. She had lost significant weight. Even for her, he’d asked for a little lenience. Thus, Lady Leah had served her six-month sentence in prison, and then had been returned to the care of her parents.
Her constitution had been declared fragile by the local physician, and no one had seen or heard anything more of her. It was rumored that her parents had purchased a remote cottage in the countryside for her, where she’d been sent to live alone with only a housekeeper.
Lord and Lady Kirby themselves had become very retired, not going out among society quite so often as they had done previously. Lord Kirby had sold most of his horses, keeping only what was necessary. Selina visited them both. From what she said, it was as though they were both still mourning the downfall of their only daughter.
The Dowager Duchess came in. “Stephen!” she said, beaming. “Welcome back!”
“Thank you, Your Grace,” he said. “I have to say, Selina was right—the food in Italy is certainly very good,” he added.
“It is! Isn’t it?” Selina beamed.
“We’ve agreed—as soon as the baby is able, we’re all to go on holiday,” the Dowager Duchess said, very excited to travel. She had never gone farther away than London.
“Yes!” Selina said. She began to pour more tea for everyone.
Jasper watched her—she had settled into her duties as Duchess as easily as a fish to water. Every day that passed, he fell even more in love with her, something which he hadn’t realized was possible. But he learned new things about his wife, all the time.
“It’s good to be back in Gillingham County,” Stephen said, sitting back in his seat.
“Are you going to return to Sandbourne?” Jasper asked, curiously.
Stephen inhaled. “No,” he replied, shaking his head. “Not for a while. I’ve heard that the neighborhood loves having Captain and Mrs. Smith.”
“We do adore them,” Selina admitted. She had become very good friends with Mrs. Smith, the two of them sharing their traveling stories.
“If you’d like, the hunting lodge is always available,” the Dowager Duchess said. “No one’s lived in there, since…well, you know.”
“That would suit me just fine,” Stephen agreed.
“Excellent, we’ll have Reuben’s hiding hole patched up for you,” Selina offered.
“Oh, no—leave it,” Stephen said. “I’ll need somewhere to put the swan.”
“You’ve had it fixed?” Jasper asked gladly. The demise of the clockwork swan, while not one of Reuben’s worst crimes, had been, nonetheless, a travesty. Jasper recalled Stephen’s dismay at its loss.
“Yes. I found a clockmaker in Zurich to take it on,” Stephen explained. “She’ll be on her way back to England as soon as he’s finished.”
The Dowager Duchess sighed, happily. “Well, at least there’s a good end to things.”
“It’s not the end, Mother,” Jasper said. “It’s just beginning.” He looked around at all the dear faces, gathered around him. Everyone always imagined that the wedding was the end of things, but it wasn’t. It was merely a happy beginning. There was still so much yet to look forward to. His eyes met with Selina’s, and they both grinned at each other.
The End?
Extended Epilogue
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The Duke she Desires
About the book
Raised as the daughter of a physician, Lavinia Bell has gained knowledge that defies society's rules for women. When forced to take her father's place during an emergency, she meets the most annoying yet devilishly handsome man she has ever seen…
Peter Cadden, Duke of Kingwood, comes back from war wounded, both physically and mentally. No one can stand his insufferable attitude or put him in his place...expect for the beautiful daughter of his physician.
But when the Duke's health takes an unexplainable turn for the worse, Lavinia realizes there is a traitor hiding among them that wants Peter dead.
Because breaking some contracts is a dangerous thing. And Peter just might have signed this one in his own blood...
Prologue
Siege of Detroit, 1812
“Get ready, men!” Major Brock shouted, turning back toward Peter Cadden and the other men standing near the cannon. Brock’s voice was always deeper in Peter’s dreams than in real life. The man was taller, too, even more imposing than he was in real life. Peter wasn’t sure why his mind altered the Major—perhaps to make the previous events more dramatic?
The battle needs no more drama, he always thought upon waking. It was enough of a tragedy on its own.
In his dreamscape, Peter watched the scene from abov
e, providing a view of himself. It had shocked him, the first time he’d dreamed in this way. It felt like he was helpless as he watched the tragedy unfold, unable to stop it. But after six weeks of this dream night after night, he had grown used to his role as the silent narrator.
He watched himself now as he turned to look at the faces of the men with whom he had spent so much of the last few months. In the dream, their faces were blurred, but he knew them by their hair color, their stature, the way they held themselves up to their fullest height.
There was Benny, short and white-blonde, the youngest of them but also the strongest. And Quenton, tall and lanky and always doubting himself, even though he was one of the Royal Artillery’s best shooters. Aloysius was broad and silent, though Peter knew the man always opened up when he had a few shots of whiskey in him.
There were twelve of them in all. Peter knew some better than others, but he would trust all of them with his life, and did so often, in every battle they entered. This was their third. There had been the Capture of Fort McKinley, and the Boston riots before that. Though he had only been a member of the Royal Artillery going on eight months, Peter already knew that these were to be his happiest, most fulfilling moments in life.
Whatever came afterward, he would never feel more useful to his country than he did when manning the cannon in the midst of a battle to ensure that America did not try to take over more land.
Peter and his team had often spoke of the inherent arrogance that seemed to spread like a disease among Americans. It was something that bonded them, this hatred for the newly independent nation. And it had encouraged them, as well, providing them energy and strength to keep fighting the Yanks when it would have been so much easier to just give up and go home.
Quenton muttered a curse about the Americans now, and as Peter watched himself laugh in the dream, he heard himself laugh outside it as well, the laugh breaking through the barrier between sleeping life and waking life, his chuckles ringing out in the silence of his chambers.
He had never been one to make noises in his sleep before the war, but now he talked, laughed, and cried out, often all in one night. It was the only time he was ever truly loud. It was the only time he was actually able to express how he felt. And he always heard it, that echo that transcended the boundaries of consciousness. It never failed to shock him, but it also never woke him up.
God, but I wish it would, he often thought. If he woke, then he could skip the next part of his dream, the part where it all went wrong.
Quenton and the rest of the men continued to man the cannon as they derided their opponents. Shots were fired in their direction, and the officers of the artillery responded in kind as quickly as they could. The shots were mostly unnoticed, the team too occupied with priming the cannon, fetching the gunpowder and providing the rounds. They all worked so seamlessly. Peter often thought it was like a dance, each man playing his part with grace and accuracy.
His gaze fell to his own legs, as it often did, marvelling at their ability to straighten and bend. All those little movements he had taken for granted before nearly brought him to tears now.
Peter saw his legs flinch with readiness as Brock looked back and shouted for them to ready the cannon for firing again. The team moved into position, focused entirely on the cannon. Their sense of touch was finely tuned to the piece of machinery, making up for the darkness and cacophony of sound that rendered them nearly blind and deaf for most of the battle.
He hadn’t needed to see or hear what was going on; it was his hands that did the work, and they knew the cannon so well, knew every divot in the rough iron chamber like the contours of a lover’s body. Even now, out of battle for weeks and far away from it all, he swore he could still feel the heat of the metal on his hands sometimes, when he grew lost in daydreams of another reality, another life.
In this reality, in his dream, he watched himself waiting for Brock’s signal, his body tensed with anticipation.
“Fire!”
Excitement pumping through his veins, he saw himself light the match and touch it to the vent, setting off the chain of reactions that resulted in the “boom” of a cannon releasing its iron ball straight into the fray, where it would hopefully hit at least a few Americans, lessening their numbers and making them that much easier to beat.
He saw the smile form on his face, knowing that at that moment he was thinking of victory, practically tasting it as he watched the gunners clean the piece and repack it with gunpowder. Peter remembered how confident Brock had been that morning when they began the bombardment. The rear of Fort Detroit was weak, and with the Shawnee Indians’ help, Brock was hopeful that they would have the Americans surrendering within days.
They did surrender, but Peter wasn’t there to see it happen. He never got to celebrate. Not in real life, nor in his dreams.
“Peter! Prepare to fire!” Brock said, and Peter once again saw himself ready the match.
He turned to look at Brock, but Peter saw his dream self falter. Something had hit his left leg, a small little pellet of a bullet no larger than the top half of his thumb. Surely something so small could not send him to his knees, but it did. He marvelled at that every time, the way a bullet hundreds of times smaller than himself could make him genuflect.
Peter watched himself fall, hitting his head on the cannon’s base as he collapsed onto the ground. His team, his men, those who he had called friends, those he had looked up to and those who had looked up to him, didn’t notice for a moment. They were trained on the cannon ball as it leaped from its home into the air.
But when they saw him, they rushed to his aid.
It was then that Peter usually woke up, torn away from the past and thrown rudely back into the present. This same process had occurred every night for the last month and a half. He fell, his men lifted him up and carried him away, and then his eyes opened and returned to his new life, one that was so very altered.
And every time he woke, his eyes struggling to adjust to the darkness, his mind struggling to adjust to the numbness of the lower half of his body, only one thought ran through his head as his eyes adjusted to the darkness all around him.
I wish they had left me for dead.
Chapter One
“Good morning, my lord, and a fine one it is indeed. The sun is shining, the birds are out, and the tallest oak tree in the garden has just begun to change its leaves. Why don’t I take you out there later, to admire it?” Stevens asked as he pushed open the door to Peter’s room with his shoulder.
In his hands was a tray piled high with delicacies of every sort. There was bread so fresh that Peter could still smell the faint scent of baked yeast coming off of it. There was cocoa, tea, shortbread biscuits, and teacakes with butter already spread on them and slowly melting into the studs of dried fruit that littered the cakes on all sides.
On another plate sat three rashers of bacon, two sausages, and a pile of coddled eggs big enough to feed a family of five growing boys with ravenous appetites.
It was, in short, a feast meant for a king. And Peter didn’t want to eat a single bite of it.
Stevens, having been his butler for some years now, sensed this, and dropped his affable expression in favor of the stern one for which he was so well known, and which kept the rest of the household staff in line.
“You must eat, Your Grace. You must. For your recovery, and, if I may be so bold, for Cook’s sanity. She has cried three days in a row now, Your Grace. You of all people know how hard she takes it when people refuse her food. If you do not eat all of this, I will be forced to, and you know how I feel about teacakes.”
“Indeed, I do,” Peter conceded, pulling himself up by the strength of his arms until he was sitting more comfortably against his pillows. “However, disregarding your prejudices toward the north of this country and their baked goods, this is a veritable feast. King Henry VIII would no doubt have wept at the sight of it, gout be damned. So please, Stevens. I beg of you. Leave me the toast and tak
e the rest of it away. Give it to one of the footmen if you must. They’re growing lads. No doubt they’ll celebrate the sight of so many edible delights.”
Peter was doing his best to say all this in as cheerful a tone as possible, but he was already weary, and he had only been up an hour and a half. Of course, most of that time had been spent staring at the intricate carvings on his ceiling and wishing for death, but despondency did take it out of a gentleman, particularly a gentleman in his condition.
“But Your Grace,” Stevens started, advancing with the tray, as though the scent of all the food might change Peter’s mind.
But Peter knew what the butler was up to. He’d known Stevens for most of his life.
“Stop,” he ordered, all friendliness gone from his tone as he glared at the tall, middle-aged man before him.
To his credit, Stevens did so, stopping so abruptly that the teacup balanced on the tray wobbled, sloshing liquid over the rim and filling the saucer below it with pale brown liquid.
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