Stolen Encounters with the Duchess

by Julia Justiss

  She would rather burn in his presence than pine in his absence

  Faith Wellingford Evers, Duchess of Ashedon, is tired of society’s endless gossiping about her failings and her late husband’s infidelities. Seeking escape one night, she’s attacked by ruffians, but is saved by an unlikely figure from her past!

  Having risen from penniless orphan to Member of Parliament, David Tanner Smith is no longer the quiet boy Faith once knew. With the first spine-tingling kiss, their old friendship is transformed. And in its place is an explosive mix of illicit encounters and forbidden desire…

  Hadley’s Hellions

  Four friends united by power, privilege

  and the daring pursuit of passion!

  From disreputable rogues at Oxford

  to becoming masters of the political game,

  Giles Hadley, David Tanner Smith,

  Christopher Lattimar and Benedict Tawny

  live by their own set of unconventional rules.

  But as the struggle for power heats up, so too,

  do the lives of these daring friends. They face

  unexpected challenges to their long-held beliefs

  and rigid self-control when they meet

  four gorgeous independent women

  with defiant streaks of their own...

  Read Giles Hadley’s story in

  Forbidden Nights with the Viscount

  Already available

  Read David Tanner Smith’s story in

  Stolen Encounters with the Duchess

  Available now

  And watch for more Hadley’s Hellions stories, coming soon!

  Author Note

  As readers and writers, sometimes secondary characters get stuck in our heads. Intrigued by the glimpses we’ve been given of them, we want to know their whole story. Where did they come from, and what will happen to them?

  Such was the case with David in From Waif to Gentleman’s Wife. An orphan taken in by an elderly widow, he becomes involved in the lives of Sir Edward Greaves and Joanna Merrill, the penniless governess who ends up on Ned’s doorstep. When David saves Joanna from danger, a grateful Ned takes him under his wing, impressed by the orphan’s courage, ingenuity and intelligence.

  By the time I’d finished Waif, I knew he would grow up to be a Parliamentary leader, instrumental in moving England toward a more egalitarian future with the great Reform Bill. I also knew that he would fall in love with Faith, the youngest Wellingford daughter (sister of Sarah, heroine of The Wedding Gamble), a girl far above his station. But how could they find a happy ending?

  In Stolen Encounters with the Duchess, David has become that leader, still in love with the girl he met when he was just beginning his career. When they meet by chance ten years later, he is an influential force, while Faith is a new widow, estranged from her family and Society. Although painfully aware that she is still far beyond his touch, David vows to reawaken in her the joy, optimism and self-confidence years of being a scorned, neglected wife have crushed. But love is a force that resists being contained...

  I hope you will enjoy Faith and David’s story.

  Julia Justiss

  Stolen Encounters

  with the Duchess

  Julia Justiss wrote her first ideas for Nancy Drew stories in her third-grade notebook and has been writing ever since. After publishing poetry in college, she turned to novels. Her Regency historicals have won or placed in contests by the Romance Writers of America, RT Book Reviews, National Readers’ Choice and Daphne du Maurier. She lives with her husband in Texas. For news and contests, visit juliajustiss.com.

  Books by Julia Justiss

  Harlequin Historical

  Hadley’s Hellions

  Forbidden Nights with the Viscount

  Stolen Encounters with the Duchess

  The Wellingfords

  The Wedding Gamble

  The Proper Wife

  A Most Unconventional Match

  One Candlelit Christmas

  “Christmas Wedding Wish”

  From Waif to Gentleman’s Wife

  Society’s Most Disreputable Gentleman

  Ransleigh Rogues

  The Rake to Ruin Her

  The Rake to Redeem Her

  The Rake to Rescue Her

  The Rake to Reveal Her

  Silk & Scandal

  The Smuggler and the Society Bride

  Visit the Author Profile page

  at Harlequin.com for more titles.

  Get rewarded every time you buy a Harlequin ebook!

  Click here to Join Harlequin My Rewards

  http://www.harlequin.com/myrewards.html?mt=loyalty&cmpid=EBOOBPBPA201602010002

  To Sue Ballard

  You light up a room with your smile and brighten my day with your cheerful optimism. Thank you for being the inspiration for my Faith and for me.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Excerpt from The Cinderella Governess by Georgie Lee

  Chapter One

  Setting off at a pace brisk enough to clear the wine fumes from his head, David Tanner Smith, Member of Parliament for Hazelwick, headed from the Mayfair town house where he’d dined with some Whig colleagues towards his rooms at Albany.

  The friends had urged him to stay for a few more rounds, but after a day of enduring the mostly irrelevant objections the opponents of the Reform Bill kept raising to delay bringing it to a vote, he was weary of political talk. He was also, he had to admit, somewhat out of spirits.

  His footsteps would echo loudly once he reached the solitary rooms of his chambers. Though he rejoiced that his best friend, Giles Hadley, had found happiness with Lady Margaret, he’d discovered that losing the companion with whom he’d shared rooms since their student days at Oxford had left him lonelier than he’d anticipated.

  Since the only woman he’d ever loved was far beyond the touch of a lowly farmer’s orphan, he didn’t expect he’d ever find wedded bliss himself. Being common-born, but sponsored by a baronet and a marquess, put him in an odd social limbo, not of the gentry, never acceptable to the haut ton, but as a rising politician in the Whigs, not a nonentity either.

  Rather a conundrum, which spared him attentions from marriage-minded mamas who couldn’t quite decide whether he would be a good match for their daughters or not, he thought with a wry grin.

  The smile faded as he recalled the stillness of Giles’s empty room back in Piccadilly. Who might he marry, if he were ever lonely enough? The daughter of a cit who valued his political aspirations? A politically minded aristocrat who would overlook the lack of birth in exchange for elbow room at the tables of power?

  He was rounding the dark corner from North Audley Street towards Oxford Street when the sounds of an altercation reached him. Slowing, he peered through the dimness ahead, where he could just make out the figures of two
men and what appeared to be a young woman draped in an evening cloak.

  ‘You will release me at once, or I will call the watch,’ she declared.

  ‘Will ye, now?’ one of them mocked with a coarse laugh.

  The other, grasping the woman’s shoulder, said, ‘The only thing you’ll be doing is handing your necklace over to us—and the bracelet and earbobs, too, if you don’t want that pretty face marred. ‘

  ‘Aye, so pretty that maybe we’ll take you to a fancy house after,’ the other man added. ‘They’d pay a lot for a tender morsel like you, I reckon.’

  ‘Take your hands off me!’ the girl shrieked, kicking out and twisting in the first man’s grip, as the second pulled on the ties to her cape.

  Davie tightened his grip on his walking stick and ran towards them. ‘Let the woman go!’ he shouted, raising the stick menacingly. ‘Now—before I call the watch.’

  For an instant, seeing his imposing size, the men froze. Then, city blokes obviously having no idea of the damage a strong yeoman could do with a stout stave, they ignored him and resumed trying to subdue the struggling female.

  He’d warned them, Davie thought. After having to restrain himself around buffoons all day, the prospect of being able to deliver a few good whacks raised his spirits immensely.

  With a roar, he rushed them, catching the first man under his ear with the end of the stick and knocking him away. Rapidly reversing it, he delivered an uppercut to the chin of the second. The sharp crack of fracturing bone sounded before the second man, howling, released his hold. Wrenching free, the lass lifted her skirts and took to her heels.

  Davie halted a moment, panting. Much as he’d like to round the two up and deliver them to the nearest constable, he probably ought to follow the girl. Any female alone on the street at this time of night was likely to attract more trouble—at the very least, some other footpad looking for an easy mark, if not far worse.

  Decision made, he turned away from the attackers and ran after her. ‘Don’t worry, I won’t hurt you!’ he called out. ‘It’s not safe, walking alone in London at night. Let me escort you home.’

  The girl gave a quick glance over her shoulder, but apparently unconvinced, fled on. Hampered by her skirts, she wouldn’t have been able to outrun him for long, but before he could catch up to her, she tripped on something and stumbled. With a cry, she fell to her knees.

  Reaching her in a few strides, Davie halted at her side and offered a hand to help her to her feet. The girl took it, but then suddenly jerked away with such violence that, when Davie hung on instead of releasing her, the force of the ricochet slammed her back into Davie, chest to chest.

  Swearing under his breath, Davie held fast to the lass, who immediately began struggling again. ‘Stop it!’ he said sharply. ‘I told you, I don’t mean to hurt you.’ Lowering his voice, he continued, ‘We’ll sort this out, miss, but not on a public street. Let me take you somewhere safer, and you can tell me how to get you home to your family.’

  With a deep sigh, the girl ceased trying to pull away from him. ‘Please, Davie,’ she said softly, ‘won’t you just let me go?’

  The dearly familiar voice shocked him like the sharp edge of a razor slicing skin. ‘Faith?’ he said incredulously.

  * * *

  To his astonishment, as he turned the woman’s face up into the lamplight, Davie recognised that it was, in fact, Faith Wellingford Evers, Duchess of Ashedon, he had trapped against him.

  Before he could get his stunned tongue to utter another word, the lady pulled away. ‘Yes, it’s Faith,’ she admitted. ‘I was on my way to find a hackney to take me home. Couldn’t you pretend you hadn’t seen me, and let me go?’

  As the reality of her identity sank in, a second wave of shock, sharpened by horror over what might have happened to her, held him speechless for another moment. Then, swallowing a curse, Davie clamped a hand around her wrist and began walking her forward. ‘No, Duchess, I can’t let you—’

  ‘Faith, Davie. Please, let it be Faith. Can’t I escape, at least for a while, being the Duchess?’

  It shouldn’t have, but it warmed his heart that she would allow such familiarity to someone who’d not been a close friend for years. ‘Regardless, I can’t let you wander on your own, chasing down a carriage to get you back to Berkeley Square. The streets in Mayfair are better, but nowhere in London is truly safe after dark, for anyone alone. To say nothing of a woman!’

  ‘You were alone,’ she pointed out.

  ‘Yes, but I was also armed and able to defend myself,’ he retorted. ‘I was going to take the young lass I’d rescued to a tavern and discover how to help her, but I can’t do that with you. Not around here, where we are both known. You’d better let me summon the hackney and escort you safely home.’

  She slowed, resisting his forward motion. ‘You’re sure you can’t just let me go?’ After his sharp look of a reply, she said softly, ‘I didn’t set out to be foolish or irresponsible. I am sorry to have inadvertently got you involved.’

  She swallowed hard, and the tears he saw sparkling at the edge of her lashes hit him like a fist to the chest. How it still distressed him to see her upset!

  ‘Well, I’m not. Can you imagine the uproar, if you had summoned the watch, and they discovered your identity? Far better for it to be me, whose discretion you can depend upon. If you don’t want to find out what society would say about a duchess wandering around alone on a Mayfair street, we better return you to Ashedon Place as soon as possible, before someone in a passing carriage recognises you.’

  When she still resisted, a most unpalatable thought occurred. ‘You...you do trust me not to harm you, don’t you, Faith?’

  She uttered a long, slow sigh that further tore at his heart. ‘Of course, I trust you, Davie. Very well, find us a hackney. And you don’t have to hang on to me. I won’t bolt again.’

  Without another word, she resumed walking beside him. The energy that had fuelled her flight seemed to have drained out of her; head lowered, shoulders slumping, she looked...beaten, and weary.

  Good thing he had to be mindful that some ton notable might at any minute drive by, else he might not have been able to resist the strong impulse to pick her up and carry her. After a few more minutes of brisk walking, they arrived at a hackney stand where, fortunately, a vehicle waited. Still not entirely believing he was accompanying his Faith—no, the widowed Duchess of Ashedon, he corrected himself, never his—he helped her in, guiding her back on to the seat.

  After rapping on the panel to signal the driver to start, Davie looked back at the Duchess. ‘Are you all right? They didn’t hurt you? What about your knees? You took quite a fall.’ If they had harmed her, he’d track them down and take them apart limb from limb.

  ‘No,’ she said in a small voice. ‘I was frightened, and furious; my arm got twisted, but I’ve nothing more than bruises. I think I landed a few good kicks, too.’

  ‘Thank heaven for that! Before we get back to Berkeley Square, can you tell me how you ended up alone on the street at this time of night?’

  ‘Can’t you just let me return, and spare the exposition?’

  He studied the outline of her profile in the light of the carriage lamps. ‘I don’t mean to pry. But finding you alone, practically in the middle of the night—well, it’s disturbing. Something isn’t right. I’d like to help fix it, if I can.’

  To his further distress, the remark brought tears back to her eyes. ‘Ah, Davie. You’ve always wanted to make things better, haven’t you? Compelled to fix everything—government, Parliament, society. But this can’t be fixed.’

  She looked so worn and miserable, Davie ached to pull her into his arms. Nothing new about that; he’d ached to hold her since he’d first seen her, more than ten years ago. Sister-in-law of a marquess, she’d been almost as unattainable then as she was now, as the
widow of a duke.

  Unfortunately, that hadn’t kept him from falling in love with her, or loving her all the years since.

  ‘What happened?’ he asked quietly. ‘What upset you so much, you had to escape into the night?’

  She remained silent, her expression not just weary, but almost...despairing. While he hesitated, torn between respecting her privacy and the compulsion to right whatever was wrong in her universe, at last, she shrugged. ‘I might as well tell you, I suppose. It wasn’t some stupid wager, though, if that’s what you’re thinking.’

  ‘I’m sure it wasn’t. You may have been high-spirited and carefree as a girl, but you were never a brainless ninny, or a daredevil.’

  ‘Was I high-spirited and carefree? Maybe I was, once. It’s been so long.’

  Her dull voice and lifeless eyes ratcheted his concern up even further. Granted, these two unlikely friends had grown apart in the years since the idyllic summer they’d met, he twenty and serving his first stint as secretary to Sir Edward Greaves, she a golden-haired, sixteen-year-old sprite paying a long visit to her cousin, Sir Edward’s wife. But even on the occasions he’d seen her since her marriage, her eyes had still held that warmth and joy for life that had so captured his heart the first time he set eyes on her.

  ‘You were carefree,’ he affirmed. ‘Which makes the fact that I found you alone on the street, seeking transport home, even more troubling. What drove you to it?’

  ‘Ever since Ashedon’s death—by the way, thank you for your kind note of condolence—his mother, the Dowager Duchess, has been making noises about how she must support “the poor young Duchess and her darling boys” and see that the “tragic young Duke” receives the guidance necessary for his elevated status in life. A month ago, she made good on her threat and moved herself back into Ashedon Place. She’s been wanting to do so for years, but though his mother doted on him, Ashedon knew how interfering she is and wouldn’t allow it. It’s enough that I must tolerate the sweetly contemptuous comments of other society matrons at all those boring, insipid evenings I’ve come to hate! Now, I have to live with the Dowager’s carping and criticism as well, every day. Then, tonight, when I accompanied her to the party she insisted we attend, I discovered her younger son, my brother-in-law Lord Randall, was there. When he caught me alone in the hallway on my way to the ladies’ retiring room and tried to force a kiss on me, I’d had enough. I knew the Dowager wasn’t ready to leave, and would never believe anything derogatory about her precious son, so there was no hope of persuading her to summon the carriage. But remaining was intolerable, so I decided to walk towards Oxford Street and look for a hackney.’