Scandalous Duke

by Scott, Scarlett

  Scandalous Duke

  League of Dukes Book Five

  By

  Scarlett Scott

  Felix Markham, Duke of Winchelsea, has devoted his life to being the perfect statesman and raising his daughter after his beloved wife’s death. But when devastating bombings on the railway leave London in an uproar, he is determined to bring the mastermind of the attacks to justice. He will lure the fox from his den by any means.

  In her youth, Johanna McKenna donned a French accent and stage name to escape the clutches of her violent father and became the darling of the New York City stage as Rose Beaumont. Her past comes calling when her brother’s reappearance in her life leads her into a dangerous web of deceit. She finds herself hopelessly trapped until she receives an offer she cannot refuse from London’s most famous theater.

  Felix’s plan is clear: bring the famed Rose of New York to London, secure her as his mistress, and drive his quarry to English shores. But the more time he spends in Johanna’s company, the more he realizes nothing is as it seems, least of all the woman who feels as if she were made to be in his arms. When he finally learns the truth, it may be too late to save both his city and the enigmatic lady who has stolen his heart.

  Dedication

  For Dad. You’re right. It all started with Trapping in Canada by John P. Elag. Thank you for the chicken soup during deadline week to fight off my cold, and for telling everyone you meet to read my books.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  About the Book

  Dedication

  Prologue

  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

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  Author’s Note on Historical Accuracy

  Excerpt from Fearless Duke

  Don’t miss Scarlett’s other romances!

  About the Author

  Copyright Page

  Prologue

  New York City, 1882

  “Johanna.”

  The voice was unmistakable, though the name, almost, was not.

  No one called her Johanna any longer. To everyone who thought they knew her, she was Rose. Mademoiselle Beaumont. The Rose of New York. Any of those would do.

  She had not been Johanna to anyone other than herself in years.

  She stiffened, a dull throb of foreboding blossoming to life in her gut at the familiar face and form before her. Unexpected and yet as recognizable as the back of her own hand, despite the intervening years.

  “What are you doing in my hotel room?” she demanded, her voice trembling, betraying her.

  She was confident in her talent as an actress, but some fear was far too real to be disguised. He looked much older now, his blond hair thinning. More like their father than she could have imagined.

  He smiled, as if this were a pleasant visit. As if he were a welcome guest. “I have my ways.”

  Of course he did. Drummond McKenna was a powerful man, as Michael McKenna had been. Leader of the Emerald Club. Scion of great wealth and great misery. The mere sight of her brother was enough to remind her of the stinging lashes she had endured for her disobedience.

  “How did you know where to find me?” she asked.

  “The Rose of New York?” He sauntered toward her, and she realized he was holding a framed picture in his hands. “Your face is everywhere, Jojo. Handbills, the papers, hell, nearly every carte de visite in the city has you on it.”

  “Do not call me Jojo,” she bit out, eying the picture he held once more. She recognized the frame, for it had cost her a small fortune. But the price she had paid to buy it was no comparison to the picture it held.

  That picture, the only one she possessed of Pearl, was priceless.

  “Why not?” He glanced down at the burled walnut frame he held. “It is your name, sister.”

  The hated pet name from her childhood reminded her of everything she had spent all the years since trying to forget. “I am Rose Beaumont.”

  Rose Beaumont hailed from Paris.

  She was fashionable. Sought after. An enigma. Rose Beaumont was the woman Johanna wished she were. A chimera, it was true. Another role she played.

  “You will always be Johanna McKenna to me,” Drummond told her. “Just as you will always share my blood.”

  “Tainted blood,” she dismissed. “I have no wish to claim it. I have done everything in my power to take myself as far from the man who sired me as possible.”

  Her mother was an innocent. Siobhan McKenna had died shortly after bringing Johanna into the world, leaving two children behind to face the tyrannical wrath of a man who had drowned his grief in whisky.

  “Hate Father as you must, but I am your brother, Jojo, and I need your help.” Drummond paused, then held up the picture. “She looks like you when you were a wee wisp, you know.”

  She closed her eyes for a moment, as a rush of profound grief hit her. “She did.”

  He inclined his head, studying her, expressing no hint of compassion. His face was, in fact, cold as stone. “She is dead.”

  Three stark words. Unfathomable and yet true all at once. Unlike the lashes on her back from so long ago, however, Pearl’s death was a wound that would never heal.

  Johanna flinched. “Yes.”

  “This picture is precious to you, then,” Drummond said, still holding it in his hands.

  “It is the only picture I have of her,” she admitted, before she could think better of the confession. But her mind and heart were one, desperate for him to give it back to her. “Please, Drummond. Do not—”

  He dropped it onto the floor. The crack of the glass was like a dagger piercing her heart. She cried out and rushed forward, dropping to her knees, uncaring about the glass, whether she cut her fingers. She was single-minded in her need to rescue that photograph, to keep it from further damage or harm.

  That one last memory of Pearl. The one that could never fade.

  Her brother’s booted foot pressed down on the frame, trapping it beneath his weight. More glass crunched beneath his sole.

  “No,” she cried out, the denial torn from the depths of her. “Remove your foot. This is the only image of her I have. My sole remembrance.”

  “At last the mask slips,” he drawled from above her, his tone unconcerned. “You are not as immovable as you pretend. If only everyone could see the famed Rose of New York thus, on her knees, crying over some broken glass and an old photograph.”

  “I am not crying,” she denied. But her eyes were welling and desperation was setting in. She wanted his foot removed before he did further damage. She wanted Pearl’s picture back. “Take your boot off, Drummond.”

  He chuckled, but there was no levity in his tone. “Yes, you are, sister. And no, I will not. Not until you give me something in return.”

  Everything inside her froze. “What do you want?”

  She would give him anything in that moment, in return for the photograph trapped beneath his merciless boot. She would accept lashes. Torture. Any punishment for the way she had fled the McKenna family.

  “Good of you to ask, sister dearest.” Though his tone was cheerful, she had no doubt the intent behind his words was decidedly the opposite.

  “What is it?” she
demanded, her patience snapping.

  How had she imagined she was free of this? She had feared, as her name had become well-known and as her likeness was spread so prolifically, that she would be recognized. But the years had gone on, and no one had ever come for her. The silence had lulled her into the foolish belief she was finally free.

  But she was a McKenna, was she not?

  She would never truly be free of the shackles of misery which had been hers since birth.

  “How do you think your adoring public would see you if they knew you were a liar?” he asked, giving the picture another grind beneath his boot. “Do you think they would be understanding of the manner in which you have deceived them, pretending to be a French émigrée? Changing your name. Changing everything about yourself. Why, it is almost as if you have been playing a role, Jojo.”

  Most actresses took stage names; it was commonplace. Not all, however, assumed nationalities as she had. Most did not affect an accent. But she had been young at the time she had begun her career, so very young. And she had not contemplated the ramifications of her decisions.

  She tilted her head back to study her brother, aware her hands were in shards of broken glass, as were her knees. She did not care. “Are you threatening me, Drummond?”

  “Threatening is such a painful word,” he said slowly. “Hardly apt in this instance. I am your brother, delighted to have found you after so many unnecessary years spent apart. Naturally, I require your assistance in a few small matters. If you cannot aid me, I will, regretfully, be compelled to share your real name and true heritage with the public who adores you.”

  Her patience was gone. Her hands were on his boot now, cut and bloodied from the broken glass she had found her way through. Blood smeared over the leather, but she did not care. Desperation clawed at her.

  She had to have Pearl’s photograph, just as she had to protect the persona she had created in Rose Beaumont. She had worked all her life, fought and fumbled, played hundreds of roles, memorized thousands of lines, studied great actors and actresses. She had done everything she could to find success. To make something of herself. To become Rose.

  She could not risk having the truth revealed. Could not bear for the public to realize Rose Beaumont was a fiction, that she was not French at all but rather an Irish immigrant who had run away from home at the age of fifteen and found her way to a traveling company. If she did not have the stage, she had nothing left at all. No means of supporting herself, no hope for the future. Death would be a preferable option, for at least then she could join Pearl.

  But though she tried with all her might, her brother was taller and stronger than she was. Hands slippery with blood and made painful by glass splinters proved unsuccessful at removing his boot-shod foot.

  “What do you want me to do?” she asked desperately, resigned to her fate.

  She could only run from the past for so long until it caught her.

  Chapter One

  London, 1883

  From the moment he first saw Rose Beaumont grace the stage that evening, Felix had known why she was the most celebrated actress in New York City. He also knew why Drummond McKenna, the Fenian mastermind behind the explosions on the London railway, would want her in his bed. And he knew he was going to do his damnedest to use the beauty to lure McKenna to the justice awaiting him.

  But for now, he would settle for champagne.

  He took a sip, watching his quarry from across Theo Saville’s sumptuous ballroom where the company of The Tempest and the city’s most elite patrons of the arts had gathered to fête the Rose of New York. Trust Theo to throw a party lavish enough for an emperor. The servants were aplenty, the food was French, the champagne likely cost a small fortune, and the company was elegantly dissolute.

  As a duke from a line that descended practically to the days of William the Conqueror, wealth and ostentation did not impress Felix. As a man who had lost the only woman he had ever loved, women did not ordinarily impress him either.

  Rose Beaumont, however, did.

  In the light of the gas lamps, she was a sight to behold. Dressed in an evening gown of rich claret, her golden hair worked into an elaborate Grecian braid, there was no doubt she commanded the eye of every gentleman in the chamber. Rubies and gold glinted from her creamy throat, her lush bosom and cinched waist on full display.

  And though he observed her to hone his strategy, he could not deny he was as helplessly in awe of her as the rest of the sorry chaps gaping at her beauty. He had watched her perform, so mesmerized by her portrayal of Miranda, he had forgotten he was attending the theater to further his goal. For a brief beat, he forgot it anew as she tilted her head toward Theo and laughed at something droll he had no doubt said.

  Theo looked pleased, and well he should, for though he had brought Rose Beaumont to his stage as a favor to Felix, there had been so much fanfare surrounding the arrival of the famed Rose of New York, that his already much-lauded theater was enjoying an unprecedented amount of attention. But he was also favoring Mademoiselle Beaumont with his rascal’s grin, the one Felix had seen lead many a woman straight to his bed.

  Felix had not painstakingly crafted his plan just so Theo could ruin it with his insatiable desire to get beneath a lady’s skirts. No, indeed. Felix finished his champagne, deposited his empty glass upon a servant’s tray, and then closed the distance between himself and his prey.

  As he reached them, he realized, much to his irritation, that Rose Beaumont was lovelier than she had been from afar. Her eyes were a startling shade of blue, so cool, they verged on gray. Her lips were a full, pink pout. Her nose was charmingly retroussé. Hers was an ideal beauty, juxtaposed with the lush potency of a female who knew her power over the opposite sex.

  Their gazes clashed, and he felt something deep inside him, an answering awareness he had not expected, like a jolt of sheer electricity to his senses. There was something visceral and potent in that exchange of glances. A current blazed down his spine, and his cock twitched to life.

  She smelled of rose petals. Rose had been the scent Hattie favored. The realization and recognition made an unwanted stirring of memory wash over him. He banished the remembrance, for he could not bear to think of Hattie when he stood opposite a woman who had shared the bed of a monster like Drummond McKenna.

  “Winchelsea,” Theo greeted him warmly. “May I present to you Miss Rose Beaumont, lately of New York, the newest and loveliest addition to the Crown and Thorn?”

  Her stare was still upon him. He looked at her and tried to feel revolted. But the disgust he had summoned for her when she had been nothing more than a name on paper refused to return. Her beauty was blinding, and he told himself that was the reason for his sudden, unaccountable vulnerability. That and the scent of her. Not just rose, he discovered, but an undercurrent of citrus. Distinctly different from Hattie’s scent after all.

  He offered a courtly bow. Though he no longer chased women, he recalled all too well how to woo, and he reminded himself now that this was a duty. One in a line of many he had spent in all his years as a devoted servant of Her Majesty.

  “Mademoiselle Beaumont,” he said when he straightened to his full height. “My most sincere compliments on your performance tonight. You were brilliant.”

  “Thank you,” she said, her gaze inscrutable as it flitted over his face. “You are too kind.”

  Her husky voice reached inside him, formed a knot of desire he did not want to feel. Why did she have to be so damn beautiful? He cast a meaningful glance toward Theo, who had been his friend for many years. And who knew what was required of him in this instance.

  “If you will excuse me,” Theo said smoothly, “I must check in with my chef. The fellow is French and quite temperamental. Mademoiselle Beaumont, Winchelsea.”

  Theo departed with the sleek grace of a panther, leaving Felix alone with Mademoiselle Beaumont. His friend’s defection occurred so abruptly, Felix found himself unprepared.

  “That was badly do
ne of him,” Mademoiselle Beaumont said in the same voice that had brought the audience to their knees earlier that evening. It bore the trace of a French accent, one which had been notably absent from her earlier performance.

  “I beg your pardon, Mademoiselle Beaumont?” he asked, perhaps in a sharper tone than he had intended.

  He was out of his depths, and he knew it. He had procured mistresses before. He had been a statesman for all his life. He had been involved in complex investigations, harrowing danger, the aftermath of brutal violence. He had witnessed, firsthand, the wreckage of the rail carriages in the wake of the bombs, which had recently exploded.

  But he had never attempted to make a Fenian’s mistress his mistress.

  “Mr. Saville,” Mademoiselle Beaumont elaborated. “He was giving you the opportunity to speak with me, was he not?”

  “I cannot say I am capable of speaking for Mr. Saville’s motivations,” he evaded.

  The statement was a blatant prevarication, for Felix did know precisely what spurred his friend in every occasion: money and cunny with a love of the arts thrown in for good measure.

  “Forgive me, but I have already forgotten your name,” she said. “Was it Wintersby?”

  “Winchelsea,” he gritted, though she did not fool him.

  He had seen the light of feminine interest in her gaze. She felt the attraction between them—base animal lust though it may be—as surely as he did. Some time may have passed since he had last engaged in the dance of procuring himself a bed partner, but it had not been that long, by God. And some things a man was not capable of erasing from his memory.

  “Of course.” She smiled, but it did not reach her eyes. “Winchelsea. I am not a naïve young girl. I know what you want.”

  His heart beat faster, and a chill trilled down his spine. She could not know who he was or what his true intentions were. Surely not. “Oh? I pray you enlighten me, Mademoiselle Beaumont. What is it I want?”