The Duke of Hearts

by Jess Michaels

  “Isabel,” her uncle whispered, his tone heavy and mournful.

  She continued, “Are you truly planning to destroy the last good thing in your daughter’s life just to make yourself feel momentarily better?”

  He stared at her, his eyes now full of a desperate plea for help. She saw it there, and she said, “Please, Uncle Fenton, put the gun down. Don’t hurt me. Don’t hurt him. It’s all I ask of you.”

  His hand shook, harder than ever, and then he lowered the pistol and sank to his knees. Loud sobs racked him and she dropped down beside him, hugging him as she pushed the gun out of reach and let him cry. She looked up at Matthew, his eyes soft with pity and dark with fear and relief. He touched her shoulder, his fingers pressing into her before he strode to the door and rang the bell for Portman to come.

  Matthew stood at the dim light of dawn that sparkled through the windows into his study. He had never been so happy to see another morning, to face another day and know that Isabel was still alive in it.

  As if he had conjured her, she entered the room and came to a stop. He stared at her, with the shadows beneath her dark eyes, with the evidence of her tears still lined on her face, with her lower lip trembling. And then she made a soft sound and crossed the room to him. She fell into his arms, her entire body shaking as he held her. And he shuddered too as the gravity of what they’d just endured hit him squarely in the chest.

  He had lost one woman he loved. To lose another would have killed him. He knew that. He felt it to the very bones in his body, and he crushed her closer out of pure protective instinct.

  They stood there a moment and then he pulled away. “You are exhausted. Come sit by the fire.”

  She followed silently and settled onto the settee, resting her head on his shoulder as he smoothed his hands along her side. She let out a long, shuddering sigh. “You were kind not to report my uncle to the authorities,” she said. “Kinder than perhaps he deserves.”

  He pressed his lips together hard. “I did it for you,” he said. “And for her.”

  “Angelica,” she whispered.

  He nodded and pressed a kiss to her temple. “Where will they take him?”

  She sat up and turned toward him. “They are distant cousins, but they were eager to help him. He’ll go to the country for a while. It will be good for him to be away from his shrines. Perhaps he’ll be able to sit through his grief at last and come out the other side to the man I once knew.”

  “I will ask for reports regularly,” Matthew said, setting his jaw. “To be certain he never threatens you again.”

  She touched his face. “He was threatening you, Matthew. Not me.”

  “Hard to recall when the barrel of the gun was pressed into your chest,” he said, his tone sharper than he’d meant it to be. It was hard to meter it when the terror flared up again. “I should have listened to you when you warned me of his intentions. When I think of what could have happened. How I could have lost you…”

  He trailed off, for he wasn’t ready to voice those words out loud yet. They had too much power in his head.

  “It must have brought back terrible memories,” she said gently. “Of losing her.”

  He shook his head. “It wasn’t memories that troubled me, Isabel. It was thinking about my future without you that drove me mad. It had nothing to do with Angelica.”

  Her lips parted and she stared at him, her face bright with disbelief. He hated to see it there, but why wouldn’t it be? He hadn’t let her in over the weeks they’d been thrown together. He hadn’t trusted her or allowed the growing connection he felt toward her to flourish.

  The love that he had realized almost too late.

  He took her hand, smoothing his thumb over it as he tried to find the words to explain. He had to say those first, before he spent the rest of his life performing actions to prove himself to her. “You said something to me on our wedding night. Something that has weighed on my mind ever since.”

  She tilted her head. “What did I say?”

  “You asked me what the chances were that we would find each other at the Donville Masquerade.”

  She shrugged. “It was an offhand comment, though.”

  “What were the odds, Isabel?”

  She jolted at his insistence and shook her head. “One in a hundred, perhaps?”

  “Perhaps one in a thousand,” he offered. “There were dozens of steps that had to be taken by each of us so that we would both be taken to that place that night. The path was almost impossible.”

  “I don’t understand, so it was chance, what about it?”

  “It wasn’t chance,” he whispered.

  She drew back, and her utter confusion was adorable and heartbreaking all at once. “What else would it have been, Matthew? You said you believed I didn’t plan the encounter, I know you didn’t. So how could it be anything but chance?”

  “Angelica,” he said.

  She tensed and tugged at her hand, but he held fast. She couldn’t run now, he couldn’t let her. Not until she understood that he wasn’t comparing her to the woman he’d lost.

  “She loved me,” he said. “And she loved you. Is it so hard to believe that she might look at us from the beyond and want us to find each other?”

  Her bottom lip had begun to tremble again. “Why? For what purpose?”

  “Because she knew we could love each other,” he suggested.

  Her eyes went wide. There it was, sinking in, a better understanding of what he was implying. Of what he wanted and needed from her. But she still didn’t quite have faith. Doubt still ruled.

  “Don’t,” she whispered.

  He touched her chin. “Look at me.”

  She faced him, her lips pressed together, her hands clenched against his.

  “I love you, Isabel.”

  Matthew’s words were like the shot to her heart her uncle hadn’t taken, and she recoiled from their power. But he wouldn’t let her run. He held her gently, watching her, waiting for her to steady herself.

  Waiting for her to believe what was entirely impossible. A dream that she had accepted would never be reality.

  But he offered it to her now. Why? She didn’t know, but she feared it was not because those feelings were true.

  “You are overwrought,” she said past a thick tongue. “You are grateful you didn’t die and feel obligated because I stepped between you and my uncle.”

  He smiled. “I am not overwrought.”

  “You are—”

  “Very well, if you believe that then I shall simply take you upstairs and make love to you in my heightened emotional state, and tomorrow I will start this conversation over. If it doesn’t work then, I will try the next morning and the next and the next.” He cupped her cheeks. “Until you believe me.”

  Her heart swelled as he brushed his nose against hers, gentle. Intimate. Sweet and so loving. Almost enough that she could have faith in what he said.

  “I don’t understand,” she said at last. “How could you love me?”

  He drew back a fraction. “The better question is, how could I not? You are…everything, Isabel. Intelligent and kind, strong beyond measure, even to a fault, as you proved today. You are beautiful and alluring. You have awakened all the best parts of me, even the ones I thought no longer existed. You make me want to live. To wake up every day and see you across my breakfast table, to dance with you at balls, to bring you home…or even sometimes to the Donville Masquerade if you’d like to be very naughty, and make love to you.”

  She blushed hot even as his words seared into her soul. Could she believe them? Believe him?

  He shook his head. “I realize I have given you no reason to return my feelings. I recognize your declaring yourself earlier was a ploy to stop your uncle.”

  She couldn’t hold back the bark of laughter at the very idea. “A ploy? No, not at all. From the first moment a stranger stepped between me and a man bent on harm and destruction, I
have been falling in love with him. With you.” She stared at him. What he was suggesting was the greatest risk, the greatest leap she would ever take. But with the biggest payoff of all. “I-I love you,” she said.

  “You do?” he repeated, and sounded just as confused as she had felt just a few moments before.

  “Yes!” she burst out, and began to laugh. Because there was so much joy to be had and happiness, so much light in the future they’d share. “Must I prove it?”

  His eyes lit up and he dragged her closer. Into his lap and his arms and fully into his life. He smiled. “I think so.”

  She wrapped her arms around his neck and pressed her forehead to his as all the joy in the world filled her. “With pleasure,” she murmured before she claimed his lips.

  Epilogue

  Three month later

  Isabel sat in Ewan and Charlotte’s parlor. She was meant to be playing whist with the other duchesses, women she had come to see as friends, sisters. Instead, she was staring across the room at her husband.

  Matthew perched Ewan and Charlotte’s baby, Jonathon, in his arms. He looked utterly terrified, like at any moment the baby would burst into flames or hurtle from his arms. She laughed at the expression and the care and love that was behind it.

  She smiled at her friends as she laid down her last card and then got up to cross the room to her husband. He looked relieved as he handed the baby off to Baldwin and reached out to take her arm.

  “Need a little air?” she asked, guiding him toward the terrace and away from all the ears in the parlor.

  He nodded and took a long sigh. “I have no idea what to do with a baby, I swear. Am I supposed to be comfortable? I do not feel comfortable.”

  She couldn’t help but laugh at his nervous ramblings. Then she touched his face. The past month had been utterly blissful. There was no mistaking his love for her, or his passion. There was no hiding her own. And with that acceptance, their future looked so very bright.

  “You’ll have several months to practice with all the children of our friends, I suppose,” she said, raising her eyebrows at him. “And I think most papas are more comfortable with their own, at any rate.”

  He blinked, staring at her blankly as he tried to digest what she meant. Then his mouth dropped open. “Are you telling me you are pregnant?”

  She nodded, and before she could ask if he was happy, he caught her in his arms and spun her around the terrace with a whoop of pleasure. She laughed as she dropped her mouth to his. What had started with a secret, a mask, a lie…was now more than she ever would have dared hope for.

  And she couldn’t wait for the next chapter of her life with him.

  Enjoy an exciting excerpt from

  The Duke who Lied

  out August 2018

  Hugh swung down from his horse, jerking out a nod at the servant who rushed down to take the animal. With a long sigh, he looked up at the fine estate before him. His London estate, though it had never fully felt like his. None of the estates felt like they were, no matter how long he had been duke. It still felt like he was living a stolen life. A fraud who would be discovered at any moment when his own father returned from the dead.

  How disappointed he would be in his son. Hugh knew that more than he knew anything in the world.

  The door to the house opened and his longtime butler, Murphy, stepped out. Hugh forced himself out of the melancholy that had tracked his every move for over a year and climbed the steps two at a time to reach his servant.

  “Welcome home, Your Grace,” Murphy intoned as he took Hugh’s hat and gloves. “I hope your trip to Brighthollow was most excellent.”

  Hugh barely contained his flinch at the benign words. He’d been at his country estate in Brighthollow for the past fortnight, tending to a bit of business and checking in on Lizzie. He’d begged her to come to London with him. She had refused.

  After her ordeal the previous spring, she had not been the same. It felt like she was folding up into herself and there seemed to be nothing at all he could do about it.

  “Uneventful,” he choked out, since Murphy was awaiting the barest politeness of a response. “Is there anything to report here?”

  He began to walk toward his study, the butler keeping up with him at his heels. “You’ve several invitations from the members of your club, Your Grace.”

  Hugh nodded. Of course he would. Since he was a boy he’d been the best of friends with a small group of men all destined to be dukes. The 1797 Club, they called themselves. He adored them all, but he could see the concern on their collective faces when he called on them. They knew something was wrong, he just hadn’t the heart yet to tell any of them the truth.

  How could he? How could he reveal his sister’s deepest shame, how could he tell these men of honor that he had done nothing to the man who had hurt her? They’d say they understood, of course. They would, on some level. And yet he would feel his failure all the more if he dared speak it out loud.

  So he kept it to himself and ignored their questions when they asked why he brooded, why he’d let his hair grow out and only shaved when Society required it. Why he hid in his castle in Brighthollow or his chambers here in London like a wounded beast.

  “I shall look at them. I assume you left them on my desk?” he asked as they entered the study together.

  “Of course.” Murphy indicated the small silver tray on the corner of Hugh’s desk, the one now brimming with correspondence in a variety of hands he knew so well.

  He ignored them and came around to his seat. As he took it, he glanced up at Murphy. “If there isn’t anything else…”

  Murphy cleared his throat. “Only two pressing matters, Your Grace.”

  Hugh arched a brow. “And what is that.”

  “You told me to treat any messages from Mr. Kendall as urgent. One arrived for you yesterday.”

  Hugh pushed back from his desk, his chair making a screech on the wooden floor that caused his butler to turn his face in displeasure. “Kendall?” he repeated. “Where is it?”

  He grabbed for the tray and began to slide his fingers through the letters there, shoving aside the ones from his friends in the search.

  “Here, Your Grace,” Murphy said, his tone suddenly hushed, concerned as he dug into his inside pocket and drew out a folded piece of vellum, sealed with red wax. “I-I held it aside for you.”

  Hugh snatched it and turned it over. His name was spelled incorrectly. But he hadn’t hired the man for his letter writing skills. “That will be all,” he said, his voice shaking as he turned it back and grabbed for his letter opener to break the seal.

  “Your Grace, there is one other thing-”

  “No!” Hugh waved him off impatiently. “It can wait. Thank you, Murphy.”

  The butler nodded and saw himself out, shutting the door firmly behind him. Once he had, Hugh rushed to the fire and took a seat there. It was a short message, thank God, for Kendall truly was a terrible writer. His handwriting was barely legible and his poor spelling made Hugh have to re-read each sentence to pick out its meaning.

  But there it was, in the end, in black and white. The nightmare Hugh had been waiting for the moment he hired Kendall over a year ago.

  Other Books by

  Jess Michaels

  The 1797 Club

  For information about the upcoming series, go to www.1797club.com to join the club!

  The Daring Duke

  Her Favorite Duke

  The Broken Duke

  The Silent Duke

  The Duke of Nothing

  The Undercover Duke

  The Duke Who Lied (Coming August 2018)

  The Duke of Desire (Coming October 2018)

  The Last Duke (Coming November 2018)

  Seasons

  An Affair in Winter (Book 1)

  A Spring Deception (Book 2)

  One Summer of Surrender (Book 3)

  Adored in Autumn (Book 4)


  The Wicked Woodleys

  Forbidden (Book 1)

  Deceived (Book 2)

  Tempted (Book 3)

  Ruined (Book 4)

  Seduced (Book 5)

  The Notorious Flynns

  The Other Duke (Book 1)

  The Scoundrel’s Lover (Book 2)

  The Widow Wager (Book 3)

  No Gentleman for Georgina (Book 4)

  A Marquis for Mary (Book 5)

  The Ladies Book of Pleasures

  A Matter of Sin

  A Moment of Passion

  A Measure of Deceit

  The Pleasure Wars Series

  Taken By the Duke

  Pleasuring The Lady

  Beauty and the Earl

  Beautiful Distraction

  About the Author

  USA Today Bestselling Author Jess Michaels likes geeky stuff, Vanilla Coke Zero, anything coconut, cheese, fluffy cats, smooth cats, any cats, many dogs and people who care about the welfare of their fellow humans. She watches too much daytime court shows, but just enough Star Wars. She is lucky enough to be married to her favorite person in the world and live in a beautiful home on a golf course lake in Northern Arizona.

  When she’s not obsessively checking her steps on Fitbit or trying out new flavors of Greek yogurt, she writes historical romances with smoking hot alpha males and sassy ladies who do anything but wait to get what they want. She has written for numerous publishers and is now fully indie and loving every moment of it (well, almost every moment).

  Jess loves to hear from fans! So please feel free to contact her in any of the following ways (or carrier pigeon):

  www.AuthorJessMichaels.com

  Email: Jess@AuthorJessMichaels.com

  Twitter www.twitter.com/JessMichaelsbks