Between the Duke and the Deep Blue Sea

by Sophia Nash

  He chuckled. “There’s to be no more dying for husbands. Although . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “Although I would ask you to wear a ring.”

  “A ring?” She looked at him skeptically. “But I don’t particularly like . . . What I mean is that Mémé already gave me a lovely ring.”

  Mémé cleared her throat. Loudly. “Et bien, cherie, since you will remain here with Edward, perhaps I should ask for it to be returned.”

  Roxanne sighed and shook her head. Mémé stuck out her hand, palm up.

  Alex tugged off Mémé’s band only to replace it with . . . simply the most extraordinary ring. She inhaled in surprise. An enormous rectangular diamond was flanked by two luminous sapphires. “It’s—it’s . . . exquisite,” she breathed.

  “Admit it”—Alex smiled and his eyes sparkled—“for just the merest moment, you were worried it might be hideous.”

  She shrugged her shoulders casually in his French manner and then gave up all pretense and threw her arms around his neck. “I should have known you had a plan,” she whispered ruefully for his ears alone.

  Eddie suddenly dashed into the hall, his nails not gaining much purchase on the final curve before he jumped into the couple’s arms, and began barking and howling his approval.

  It was the most perfect wedding ceremony Roxanne could have ever envisioned. And she had no doubt the supreme clergyman would verify it no matter how abbreviated it had been.

  The archbishop slapped the book closed and trundled off to bed, wondering once again why he had ever chosen this profession.

  He also wondered why in hell there was none of that particularly wonderful stuff called absinthe to be found in the cellars here. He had but one last cellar to check to be certain.

  He went off not knowing that he would hit the mother lode that very night.

  And Roxanne and Alex? Was there any question what became of them?

  One thing was certain. They had both paid hell twice over in their lives. From this day forward there would be no further torment—only heaven on earth for the two of them—surrounded by the oddest assortment of relations, friends, and canines, which no one would ever deny are the very best sorts to love for a lifetime on a magnificent mountain of granite pulled from the sea, with little plant life to tend.

  Acknowledgments

  Great thanks to all who inspired me: Peter and Alexandra Nash, Georgiana Warner Kaempher, Arthur and Kim Nash, Philip and Renata Nash, Philip Mallory Nash, Jean Gordon, Len Lossaco Fogge, Laurie and Eddie Garrick, Philippe and Christina Gèrard, Kim and J. P. Powell, Le Comte et Comtesse d’Aurelle de Paladines, Barbara Kehr, R. T. Williamson, and to a very special circle of girlfriends: Anne Kane (many thanks for reading the first draft), Amy Conlan, Mary Lee Reed, Cathy Maxwell, Jeanne Adams, Kathryn Caskie Parker, Annie Abaziou, Lanette Scherr, Pam Scatteragia, Lisa Schleifer, Irene Schindler, Kathy Weber, and Heather Maier.

  And to the two people who guide me through the publication process with such expertise: Helen Breitwieser of Cornerstone Literary, and HarperCollins Executive Editor, Lyssa Keusch. Special thanks to Liate Stehlik, Carrie Feron, Pam Spengler-Jaffee, Mike Spradlin, Susan Grimshaw, John Charles, Michelle Buonfiglio, and Emily Cotler for your continued encouragement.

  And to my children for continually showing me the meaning of joy and life.

  Now you know what happened to Alexander Barclay, the Duke of Kress,

  after the most extravagant royal bachelor party of all time.

  But what about his friend Roman Montagu, the Duke of Norwich?

  Roman has two rules: never marry, and never go to sea.

  So he’s stunned to find himself the morning following the party

  aboard a storm-tossed ship and locked in the arms of a proper lady.

  Esme March, the Countess of Derby, has two rules too: never give away your heart,

  and never let anyone get in the way of your life’s deepest passions. But Esme cannot resist Roman

  when all seems lost at sea. Yet when their ship returns to London, everything will be forgotten . . .

  as long as they can keep their secret from the Prince Regent. For if the future king commands them to marry,

  all their fondest dreams will be ruined. But where love is concerned, some rules are made to be broken . . .

  Keep reading for a sneak peek at The Art of Duke Hunting,

  the second book in the Royal Entourage series by Sophia Nash, available April 2012 from Avon Books!

  Roman Montagu, the seventeenth Duke of Norwich, knew he would end up at the bottom of the sea. He’d known it for almost two decades.

  Yet, he never complained about his fate. For God sakes, no. Why, he had cheated death longer than most of the devilishly long line of Norwiches before him. He even considered himself lucky.

  For a Norwich.

  Indeed, almost everyone in England knew why there had been a dizzying number of Norwich dukes in two hundred years. They were cursed. Every last one of them had found death prematurely.

  It was said the first bloodthirsty duke had damned the family by publicly accusing a young lady of witchcraft after she had refused his ham-handed offer of marriage. But really, who could blame her for her less than enthusiastic response? The duke had not brought jewels to profess his affection. No, he had brought a half dozen ill-plucked fowl to her family and proclaimed her the luckiest lady alive due to the honor he would bestow on her. That did little to impress the young lady, or rather, the young witch, whose powers might not have saved her from persecution, but had managed to damn each and every Norwich thereafter.

  Roman had learned to live with this familial noose by adopting the blackest sense of humor concerning his forebears’ early visits by the Grim Reaper. Indeed, he could recite the family’s history by rote.

  1. The first duke stuck his spoon in the wall when he choked on a giblet in his favorite duck stew not two days after his not-so-beloved burned at the stake, while cursing all Norwich dukes.

  2. The second unfortunate duke ate grass for his last breakfast when a bolt of lightning struck his duck blind in which he was silently perched at dawn in the pouring rain. It was then that the whispers of the curse began.

  3. The third, fourth, fifth, and sixth dukes vowed to give a wide birth to all birds to stay alive. Instead, they dampened their insatiable thirst for hunting by pursuing the dangerous fairer sex in London’s ballrooms. While they might have been well-endowed with passion for the wives and daughters of their class, sadly, they were not well-talented with dueling pistols or swords borne by the husbands and fathers. The line devolved to a far less romantic branch with better aim.

  4. The seventh duke tried to avoid the curse by daily readings from Johnson’s sermons. He tumbled from the rolling ladder in Norwich Hall’s famous, but mostly unread (especially by dukes III through VI) library while looking at an illustrated guide to geese hidden between Johnson’s pages.

  5. The adventurous eighth duke tossed away all sermons and took his dirt nap after sinking in a Scottish bog in search of a rare merganser, which barely looked like water-fowl at all. He had wrongly assumed the curse would not cross the border.

  6. The ninth, tenth, and eleventh dukes were never seen or heard from again when they heroically went to war against the French. At least they were brave. Then again, when you knew you would die young, why not embrace your fate and die like a hero instead of a demented bird-brained predator?

  7. The twelfth duke refused the call to arms. Indeed, he refused to put one toe out of bed in an all out effort to avoid his fate. He cocked his toes in an acute case of gout within a twelve-month. Most said it was the duck paté enveloped in goose fat.

  8. The thirteenth duke knew he stood not a ghost of a chance given his number and family history. He went out in a blaze of pleasure, at full cry, with one of his seven mistresses, who tickled him with duck feathers.

  9. The foppish fourteenth duke sacked a host of valets before he inadvertently strangled himself
whilst fashioning a new knot for his Widgeon-colored neckcloth the scandal sheet dubbed “The Norwich Noose.”

  10. The fifteenth duke decided to confound the curse by befriending the enemy. He raised a pet mallard, who quacked on command and followed him everywhere. But whilst taking a short lie-down under a willow tree, a poacher aimed for the sitting duck and killed the dreaming duke instead.

  Only Roman Montagu’s father, the sixteenth Duke of Norwich, had lived past his fourth decade. Some said it was due to a tragedy of which he never spoke, or his avoidance of all spirits and hunting. Indeed, the stern aristocrat refused to sin in any fashion whatsoever.

  But Roman knew better. The man had avoided a premature rendezvous with his maker by sheer bloody pigheadedness. Yes, the sixteenth duke had been nothing if not inflexible. But even the most wary and stubborn Montagu man could not avoid his destiny. At least Roman’s father’s death had been dignified. It was hard to find humor in a fall from a horse. Then again, the sixteenth duke had not possessed a shred of wit. Roman never told his sister or his mother that there had been feathers nearby, indicating his father’s horse had most likely bolted from the sudden appearance of a migrating flock.

  And so Roman Montagu, “Seventeen” to his intimates, did not worry overmuch about his future since it was already written. He would be the first Norwich to sink to the ocean floor—just like his elder brother before him, who should have been duke. He did not know how a duck would cause it, but of his fate he held not a feather of doubt. The other point on which he was decided, was that he would be the last—the very last—Norwich. There were no males left in the line—not even a fourteenth cousin twenty-four times removed.

  And so, Roman Montagu went about the process of life in a simple manner. He avoided ducks, and he did not enter bodies of water larger than his bath. The rest he left to chance. He worked on his grand schemes, and seized every moment of every day with gusto for who knew when the lights would go out.

  But at this very moment in time, it appeared he was about to break the record of shortest title-holder. Well, at least it did not involve a damned duck.

  Or did it?

  Sheer unadulterated terror rained down on Roman Montagu, the Duke of Norwich. He was in the grip of a hellish nightmare—on the one thing he had vowed never to set foot on again . . . a ship. He shook his head, and it seemed to spin endlessly in the gale wind. Seawater lanced his eyes as waves crashed and retreated over the railing, while clips rattled against the masts over the roar and whine of a storm.

  Hell and damn. ’Twas not a dream. His brother was not some ghostly figure haunting him. No. Roman was wedged in the windward corner, unable to move. His fingers clawed the quarterdeck, only to find one hand tied to the sodding taffrail. His blood seized and stood still in his veins.

  Blindly, he freed his wrist, and managed to crab-walk away from the stern. The vessel rose and violently shifted on a massive wave and he slammed into the mizzenmast. The blow sent a shower of white hot pain sparking through his brainbox. He lunged for the aft mast again. It was his only chance.

  Safety was up in the rigging, where he would wait for the hair-raising crack of the deck’s wooden beams giving way to shoals—when the sea always won her game with foolish mankind who tried to tame her. Up one of the three masts, he would be the last to lose.

  As the ship violently creaked and rocked in the kaleidoscope of the summer storm tumbling through the inky darkness, he tried mightily to make the muscle of his brain flex. He had not one particle of an idea of how or why he was on this bloody wreck in the making. Flashes of insane evening revelry with his fellow dukes in the Royal Entourage crackled through his mind as he was tossed away from the mast.

  Well, damnation, he knew how to swim. He’d once proved he could outswim fate. Maybe he could do it again.

  It was worth a try.

  Esme March, the Countess of Derby, peered out of the rain-riddled porthole of the door leading to the ship’s deck. She was probably the only passenger not terrified or ill. Yet.

  Well, at least she was not afraid. Never would be after the last year. But she feared she might become as green as a pea if she didn’t inhale a few gulps of bracing sea air instead of remaining in her small cabin. Her gaze swept the murky seascape as she gripped the door handle to keep her balance.

  For a moment, she could have sworn she had seen something odd—likely just a poor sailor whose task it was to secure a line. The deck would be impossible to negotiate given the pitch and sway.

  There he was again. A ghostly image of a man, his hair whipping his face in the storm. She inhaled sharply as he slammed into a mast and fell back.

  Good God. The man regained his footing and swayed dangerously as an enormous wave crashed over the railing. He reached wildly for the mast but the wave dragged his body toward the edge of the ship.

  Esme bolted past the door, knotted a line about her, and dashed for the man about to be lost to the sea. She couldn’t breathe for the ferocity of the wind and the freezing sheets of rain.

  She grasped the man’s wrists just as he would have been tossed into the deep blue. Esme prayed for strength. His hands gripped her arms as another wave crashed over them both, the white foam glowing in the darkness.

  As the seawater receded, for just a moment hanging in time, she chanced to see his face; harsh lines etched the corners of his mouth and forehead. But it was his translucent pale eyes that frightened her.

  She recoiled. It was the only time she’d ever spied death. The ship pitched to advantage, and they were hurtled in the direction of the door to the cabins.

  For some odd reason, the gentleman appeared to pull away from her. She used the last remaining strength she possessed to navigate him over the threshold before he sagged. She had but a moment to open her door before he lost consciousness.

  Esme struggled to move his leg from the doorjamb, and then shut her cabin door and locked it. She paused, dripping puddles on the bare wooden floor. She pushed back her wet, tangled hair from her eyes.

  Lord, he was so deathly pale; his lips waxy and almost blue. Wind-whipped strands of dark hair threaded with premature gray plastered his noble profile. He looked like a weary archangel felled to earth while she probably looked like a drowned rat.

  He could not be dead. It would be too much to witness twice in one year. No, his chest was rising and falling. Without thinking, she slipped the door key into the top of one of her sodden calfskin half boots.

  She grasped his nearly frozen hand and felt for his pulse. Not that she’d know what to do if she found it. She had not an idea if it was too fast or slow. She was tempted to slap his face to revive him since cold water would obviously not work on someone who’d just endured a wall of seawater.

  Just then, with a rushed gulp of air, he came full awake, scrambling like a wild animal looking for escape. The unearthly pale blue eyes that met hers were intensified by an intriguing web-like line weaving through each iris. Lurching to one knee, he flinched away from the touch of her hand and half crawled toward the door. He wrestled with the brass lever.

  For some absurd reason, he wanted to get out. Thank God she’d hidden the key just as she had on so many other occasions with Lionel. But this man was another case altogether. She had not a chance of holding him back. He might be her height, but his torso was immense and he was clearly as strong as a bull stampeding the corridors of Pamplona in August.

  “Hey,” she said, gripping the back of the one sturdy chair in the cramped cabin, “wait a minute.”

  He again rattled the handle, his shoulders flexing with the effort to rip the door from the frame.

  She had a terrible thought. “Is there someone else out there?”

  “Key,” he shouted. “Where is the bloody key?” They both stumbled sideways when the ship heaved starboard.

  “But you’ll die out there.” There was not a single melodramatic note in her words—just stated fact.

  He didn’t deign to turn to face her, but at leas
t he paused, a sign he was finally listening to her. He then jammed down the brass lever so violently, a screw gave way and the handle failed to return to its position. The oath he swore was so blue it almost made Esme cringe.

  “Fool,” he gritted out, still not looking at her. “Death is in here, not out there.”

  Esme stared at the back of his coat. The stitches at the center seam were stretched to the limit. The drenched blue superfine clung to the striated muscles of his shoulders.

  “Please look at me,” she said quietly.

  “I’ll find it myself,” he choked, finally turning to stare at her. His eyes swept down her tall frame.

  “Who are you?” She’d never backed down from a threat in the past, and no matter how intense his glare, the clothes of a gentleman were a good calling card.

  He marched toward her, his black riding boots with the arched outer edge molded to his calves. The seawater-soaked leather soles made smacking sounds as he walked. He extended his palm.

  “All right,” she said softly. “I’ll tell you where it is if you tell me who you are and what you were doing out there.”

  “I’ll have the key and then I might tell you.” He grasped her arms and Esme felt the strength in him as his hands squeezed her. He was a mere half inch taller than she, so she looked almost directly into his light blue eyes that almost glowed in the static air.

  “Are you going to growl now?”

  His eyes narrowed.

  “Look, the storm is waning. There’s no need to go out there.” And, indeed, it was true. Even the howl of the wind seemed muted.

  He released her abruptly, but the wildness in his eyes did not disappear.

  “You’ve a cut on your forehead.”

  He refused a reply.

  She continued her tried and true methods of speaking calmly in the face of insanity. “I’m freezing.” She reached for her two blankets and offered him one. “You must be too.”