by Cora Lee
The Duke of Darkness
A Legend To Love
Cora Lee
Copyright © 2018 by Cora Lee
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner.
ISBN 9781944477073
More Than Words Press
PO Box 480 042
New Haven, MI 48048
http://coraleeauthor.wordpress.com/more-than-words-press/
Cover by Teresa Sprecklemeyer, Midnight Muse Designs
Editing by Jude Simms.
Special thanks to Miranda Bly, Karen Simpson, Lori Farner Dykes, Heather Cuva, Regina Thewise, Peggy Collins, Frankie Reviews, and Roxane Twisdale for help with Rhuddlan’s name.
Men’s evil manners live in brass; their virtues we write in water.
—William Shakespeare, Henry VIII
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Author’s Note
A Legend To Love series
Excerpt: His Duchess At Eventide
About The Author
Other Books By Cora Lee
Chapter One
North Wales
September 1819
Thump
The Duke of Rhuddlan’s hand flew to the back of his head as he pitched forward over the neck of his horse. Stars exploded before his eyes and pain spread through his skull, while sticky warmth began to ooze through his fingers. He managed to sling an arm around the horse’s neck to keep himself from falling off, but only just. The sudden clinch made the poor beast panic and it started thrashing about, determined to dislodge Rhuddlan. The tighter he held on, the harder the horse bucked, until it succeeded in dumping its ducal rider onto the muddy road.
Rhuddlan landed on his side, his head bouncing mercifully off his arm—flung up at the last moment to shield his face from the impact—rather than the ground. He lay there for a moment or two with his eyes closed, trying to clear his mind and take stock of his body.
But when he opened his eyes, he saw only darkness.
He held a hand up to his face, close enough for him to smell the damp earth on his fingers, but his eyes registered nothing. Rolling onto his back, he spread his arms out wide and shut his eyes again, hoping that the next time he opened them his vision would be restored.
It wasn’t.
“Your Grace!” a voice called from somewhere far away. “Your Grace, are you hurt?”
He struggled to sit up, loath to appear weak before a stranger. But a great wave of dizziness washed over him and knocked him back to the ground.
Fabric swished in his ear as if someone in a gown or long robe had knelt down beside him. A cool, calloused hand smoothed his brow, stroked his cheek. The blackness began to fade when he opened his eyes once more, but it was replaced by a world twirling like a demented ballerina and he shut them tight again.
“Your Grace, don’t move for a moment. You’ve had a nasty fall.”
The voice was feminine, English, and he heard its owner suck in a breath when her fingers met the blood oozing from his wound.
“I assure you, madam, that I—”
“I beg your pardon, Your Grace,” the voice interrupted, “but if you’re about to tell me you’re perfectly well, then you can save your breath. I can see very well what kind of state you’re in.”
Her tone was brusque but polite and Rhuddlan’s world was still spinning, so he held his piece. He was clearly in need of assistance, and if this girl had plans to finish him off she’d have done so by now.
“Very well,” he murmured, heartened that his words were properly enunciated, not slurred and sloppy like his thoughts. “What do you suggest?”
He heard a second figure join the first, kneeling on the road beside him. “First, we stop the bleeding, Your Grace. Can you sit up if we help you?”
Another woman, older by the sound of her voice and Welsh. Rhuddlan started to nod, then thought better of it. “I believe so.”
Two arms slid across his back and slowly levered him into a sitting position, holding him there as someone pressed a cloth to the base of his skull.
“How bad is it?” he asked, hoping the women didn’t hear the apprehension in his voice.
They were both silent for a long moment before the younger one spoke. “It’s messy.”
“Head wounds do tend to bleed a lot,” he returned slowly. He’d certainly seen enough of them on the battle field to know.
“Do you know what happened, Your Grace?”
He pressed his lips together. It could have been a random attack. God knew Rhuddlan tried to take care of the people who depended on him, but not everyone appreciated his methods. Yet he was nearly certain his brother Nick was behind this, quite possibly the Duke of Cumberland, too. The pair of them had been thick as thieves for the past three years, united in a single purpose: to remove Rhuddlan from power and gain control of the dukedom’s finances.
But Rhuddlan said none of that aloud. “I didn’t see who it was,” he answered instead, which was true enough. “I didn’t even see what was thrown.”
“We should get you out of the road, Your Grace,” the older woman said. “Do you think you can walk?”
He opened his eyes, keeping them cast downward toward the dirt. The road was still spinning, but not as fast as it had been. He cautiously lifted his lids and tried to focus on the women assisting him, but the effort—and the glaring sun—only nauseated him. “Slowly, perhaps.”
They got him to his feet and helped him shuffle from the road to a nearby cottage, while a black blur that might have been a dog led the way. The distance must only have been a dozen yards or so but they seemed to take hours to cover it, and Rhuddlan was exhausted when at last they set him in a hard wooden chair. The older woman disappeared with a glance at her associate that he couldn’t quite make out.
“Mrs. Davies will fetch a physician, Your Grace, and see to your horse.”
Rhuddlan twisted around trying to look at the younger woman as she stood behind him, but she turned his head back and bent it slightly forward.
“You must be the healer, then,” he said.
“The healer?”
He felt a cloth once again pressed against his wound and suppressed a grunt of pain. “I assume that’s why you stayed with me while...”
“Mrs. Davies,” she supplied.
“...while Mrs. Davies finds my physician and horse.”
“Mrs. Davies is better with horses than I am. It takes no great skill to hold a cloth to a wound.”
He’d been left in the care of a girl devoid of competence? He propped his elbows on his thighs and dropped his face into his hands. “Who are you, then, if not a healer?”
“Miss Stone, Your Grace. I mostly make my living with a needle and thread.”
At least he’d have someone to sew up his scalp if the physician failed to appear. “You live here with Mrs. Davies?”
“I live here. She lives next door.”
This stretch of land was part of the Rhuddlan estate—small farms and c
ottages with kitchen gardens leased to families that couldn’t afford to purchase property of their own. “My tenants, then.”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
“Have you ever met my brother?”
“Which one?”
Rhuddlan pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes. His elder brother—the one who should have inherited the dukedom—had been killed fighting at the Battle of New Orleans four years ago. Rhuddlan didn’t think of him as often as he used to, but the memories still hurt when they surfaced.
“Lord Nicholas,” he answered tightly. Thoughts of his younger brother were painful, too.
“I haven’t had the pleasure.”
She said it with no great enthusiasm in her voice, yet no hostility either. He supposed she could have been lying, but came back to the realization that if she’d wanted him dead or incapacitated she could easily have seen to it by now.
“Perhaps you should lie down, Your Grace. My bed is just through that door—”
He wanted to protest, but between the dizziness and pain he couldn’t bring himself to react with anything except relief. “Yes, thank you.”
She took one of his hands and clamped it to the back of his head, holding the cloth in place, then slipped one arm around his waist and hoisted him to his feet. She was several inches shorter than he and Rhuddlan wasn’t sure how she managed to keep him from crashing to the floor, but he was delivered safely to a narrow bed and sank down onto it, taking extra care to lie on his side.
The next hour was a blur of misery. His wound eventually ceased bleeding, and the cottage finally stopped spinning long enough for Rhuddlan to take in his surroundings. But the nausea refused to retreat, nor could the physician seem to banish the feeling when he arrived. The man set his case on what looked to be a crude dressing table, pushing a plain wooden hairbrush and some faded ribbons aside to make room for his phials, but the concoction he mixed up was as foul tasting as it was useless.
Rhuddlan dismissed the man, and carefully laid back down on the surprisingly soft sheets until Miss Stone roused him an indeterminate time later. By then the scent of his own blood had overpowered the smell of mint that seemed to be infused into the sheets, and he was ready to return to his own home.
“Your carriage is here, Your Grace,” she said softly, laying a hand on his shoulder. “The coachman has brought a stable lad with him to see to your horse, as well.”
“Good. Thank you.” He allowed her to help him sit up, then to stand. “I will not forget the kindness you’ve shown to me today.”
Her gaze drifted to the floor. “I only did what any decent person would do.”
“Nevertheless,” he replied, watching a few loose strands of blonde hair slide across her cheek. For a brief moment, he wondered if her hair was as soft as it looked or if his vision was still distorted. “I will remember it.”
The coachman came in at that moment, and took over the support of Rhuddlan from Miss Stone, loading him into the carriage for the short drive back to Rhuddlan Hall. His head had cleared a little more by the time he arrived at the front door, and his principal secretary, Ian Vaughn, who appeared moments after the footman shut the big front door behind his master, was barely spinning at all.
“Your Grace.” Vaughn dipped his head in a short bow. “Would you allow me to assist you—”
“I can walk on my own,” Rhuddlan replied. His voice sounded gruff, but after nearly ten years in service to Rhuddlan, Vaughn was no doubt used to his employer’s moods. “Come along, we have much to discuss.”
Once the door of the study was closed, Rhuddlan made for the green velvet sofa and lowered himself upon it, motioning to Vaughn to close the heavy curtains that framed each window. He wasn’t about to lie down in the presence of another person, particularly a subordinate, but the soft cushions would be more comfortable for his aching body than the stiff oak chair at his desk, and the darkness helped relieve the discomfort of the harsh sunlight.
“Where would you like to start, Your Grace?” Vaughn asked, settling himself at his own, smaller desk covered in stacks of books and papers. “With the incident this afternoon?”
“What do you know about it?”
Vaughn cleared his throat. “I spoke to Mrs. Davies when she came here. She told me that you’d been injured, but didn’t know the particulars.”
“A blow to the back of the head,” Rhuddlan clarified.
“You think it was Lord Nicholas?”
Rhuddlan closed his eyes briefly, fighting a wave of nausea when he opened them again. “It could have been random.”
Vaughn frowned, glancing at his shoes before meeting his employer’s eyes again. “It could have been anyone, Your Grace. But given your brother’s hostility toward you, and the encouragement he receives from the Duke of Cumberland...”
Rhuddlan sighed, more heavily than he’d intended. Nick was nearly nine years younger than he was, and had been his constant companion when they were boys despite the difference in their ages. They’d drifted apart a bit as they grew older, further still when Rhuddlan and their oldest brother purchased commissions in the Royal Army and marched away to fight in Britain’s wars. When their father died and Rhuddlan inherited the dukedom, Nick had turned to Prince Ernest Augustus, the Duke of Cumberland and the King’s fifth son, to fill the void.
“Cumberland, yes.” The complete opposite of Rhuddlan, who no doubt promised Nick power and wealth that his own brother wouldn’t give him. “Any sightings of him?”
“No, Your Grace. As far as anyone knows, he’s still in Hanover.”
“That’s good, at least.” Not that a little thing like distance would stop him—or Nick, for that matter—but it was something. “Have there been other incidents today?”
Vaughn shook his head. “Nothing since the mill fire.”
Rhuddlan turned slightly sideways and rested his temple against the back of the sofa, inhaling the scent of the leather-bound books on the shelves behind him. A fire had been deliberately set three days ago in a grain mill on another part of the estate. It had happened in the middle of the night and no one had been hurt, but every person employed there was now looking for a new way to provide for their families.
“And no proof who set the fire?” He knew very well there wasn’t, but he couldn’t help asking.
“No, Your Grace,” Vaughn repeated. “Though the food baskets were delivered today. The next set will be delivered a week hence.”
That made Rhuddlan’s mind a little more easy. At least his people would eat. “Good. I have another task to add to your list—find out everything you can about a woman named Stone who lives in one of the thatched cottages near the road to the village. And discover what you can about Mrs. Davies, as well. She is Miss Stone’s next door neighbor.”
Vaughn scribbled across a piece of paper on his desk. “Do you think they had anything to do with your attack?”
Did he? Rhuddlan shook his head, then winced as the pain overtook him. “No,” he answered, closing his eyes tightly. “I doubt they would have helped me if they were the ones who caused me harm in the first place.” It was more likely that at least one of them would come begging a favor of him, and he wanted to be prepared. “But I need to be sure.”
“I will see to it, Your Grace.”
“Good.” Another weight lifted, at least for the time being. “What else have I missed today?”
~~~
“What a mess he made of your sheets,” Mrs. Davies lamented, running a hand over a section of embroidery that hadn’t been bloodied.
Olivia Stone suppressed a sigh. She’d worked for weeks on the pillowcases alone, pillowcases that were now covered in patchy stains from the Duke of Rhuddlan’s head wound. “They may yet come clean,” she replied, though even she could hear the lack of conviction in her voice.
“Certainly, and I may yet become a duchess,” Mrs. Davies said with a wink. Then she sobered, asking quietly, “Do you have another set, my dear?”
Olivia pictured t
he soft linen she’d purchased last week, already sewn into sheets and decorated with carefully stitched honeysuckle vining along some of the edges. She’d saved for months to buy that material, planning to make the sheets a Christmas gift for neighbors.
And they were the only other sheets she possessed.
But Olivia didn’t want Mrs. D. to worry—she did enough of that on Olivia’s behalf as it was. “I do, yes.”
“Good. You’ll be over for supper tonight, won’t you?”
Another reason for the Christmas gift: if not for Mrs. D. issuing her almost nightly invitation to dine with her and her live-in companion, Miss Hatch, Olivia would likely go to bed hungry more often than not. She earned money each month taking in sewing to provide for herself and her big black dog—curled up contentedly by the front door—but too many of her customers had begun patronizing the new dressmaker’s shop in the village, and her income had steadily been declining. The generosity of her neighbors lessened the strain on her tight budget, and giving them good quality linen with Olivia’s own embroidery was a way of saying thank you.
“I will, just as soon as I get these stains soaking in some cold water.”
She bid Mrs. D. farewell and grabbed two buckets, heading toward the small stream that flowed a quarter mile behind her cottage. The water in it was always cold as melted snow, and it might be enough to get the blood out of her sheets.
Olivia was halfway home again with her buckets filled nearly to the brim when a shadow fell across her path. She sucked in a breath and held it, recognizing the smell of his expensive cologne before her eyes reached his face.
Sir George Grayson. He claimed to have been courting her for the past several months, except his addresses were anything but courtly...and even less welcome. He treated her more like prey than a potential wife, despite his professed love for her. Olivia knew it was her connections he loved, though, not her. If not for her relation to Viscount Teverton—never mind how distant it was—Sir George wouldn’t have given her a second thought.
