The Duke: A Standalone Royal Billionaire Novel

by Laurence, Selena

  Then I hear a screech out of her, and she throws her arms up in the air. "Fine then," she yells at her friend. "I quit!"

  People on the sidewalks of Chicago are now staring at the red-headed monster I’ve just married. Probably because she’s screaming at a flamboyant-looking black man towing two rather large suitcases and wearing a t-shirt with the Union Jack flag on it.

  I sigh and rub my temples, feeling a headache the size of my new inheritance coming on. I stride through the sea of curious passersby and get to Kat, taking her not entirely gently by the elbow and pulling us into a nearby gap between two buildings. The tiny space is ripe with the smell of garbage and I see her rather cute little nose wrinkle in disgust. Luckily, her friend follows close behind and stands with his back to the sidewalk, screening us from the world walking by.

  "Did you hear me?" she asks indignantly. "I quit!"

  "You can’t quit, Ms. Monroe. We’re married, in case you don’t remember that very brief ceremony yesterday. You’ve signed a contract, everything has been set in motion, and we have a plane waiting for us."

  "Hon," her friend says.

  "Who are you?" I interrupt, finally gathering enough of my senses to realize I have no idea who this guy is.

  "Darnell," he says, cheerfully, "the bestie."

  Ah. Ok. "Lovely to meet you," I say politely.

  We shake hands then he turns his attention back to Kat, whose gaze is ping ponging between us.

  "Now, she gets like this when she’s stressed," he tells me as if Kat isn’t standing right there. "Alcohol usually helps, but in the meantime—" He pins her with a severe look. "Honey, you promised to be the Duchess, and while this you is fabulous—" he waves his hand up and down in front of her, "the Duchess you is going to be even more fabulous. You don’t have to be scared. Your man here is going to take care of you." He pauses and looks at me with a steely gaze. "Aren’t you?" he asks, his tone full of warning.

  "Absolutely," I respond dutifully.

  A sob breaks out of my new wife, and I stare in horror as she begins to cry.

  Darnell pulls her to him and pats her on the back maternally as she buries her head in his chest. "There, there, baby doll," he croons. "It’ll all be fine, I promise." He looks at me over her head. "The rage always comes before the tears," he tells me. "She’ll be fine in a minute."

  And, sure enough, a few awkward moments later, she lifts her head, sniffs loudly, then growls, "Where’d you put the damn dress?"

  "It’s hanging up on the closet door," Darnell answers. "The shoes are right below it, coordinating jewelry is on the top of the dresser, and there’s a flask of tequila there, too. One shot, not two."

  She nods morosely, gives me a dirty look, then trudges off into the apartment building next door.

  9

  Kat

  "Would you care for anything else, Sir?"

  I watch as the tall, willowy, flight attendant with her perfect British accent brushes a hip against my husband’s shoulder, flashing a set of perfect white teeth at him. I may barely know the guy, and yes, I secretly call him the Duke of Douches, but he’s still my husband, and I’m sitting right freakin’ here. I mean, how much nerve do you have to have to flirt this outrageously when the wife is six inches away?

  Unfortunately, my new husband doesn’t seem to mind a bit as he gives her a charming smile that I’ve never seen before and laughs at some inane thing she’s just said.

  "I’d like some more champagne," I demand, leaning around the Duke so she can’t ignore me, and holding out my empty glass. Yes, when you fly first class they give you champagne in real glasses.

  She stares at me as if I’m a piece of lint on her ever-so-pristine navy blue uniform.

  "Please," I add, smiling like a mean girl would to her worst frenemy.

  She stiffens, and glances at the Duke, who has a funny smirk on his face. "Of course, right away."

  As she moves off down the aisle, my new husband turns to me. "I do believe you were jealous, Ms. Monroe."

  I huff out an angry breath. "I just don’t like being disrespected. I mean, I don’t care what you do with her—" I gesture in the direction the flight attendant went. "But it’s rude to do it in front of the woman who’s supposed to be your wife."

  He shifts in his seat so he’s turned toward me. "The woman who is my wife," he says, his voice low. "And you’re right, of course, I apologize. It’s in the contract that neither of us will involve ourselves with others so that appearances are maintained. I’m not used to this, either, so if I have the occasional slip up, please feel free to correct my behavior."

  I look at him, and for the very first time I see genuine emotion on his face. He really is sorry, and he didn’t actually do anything.

  "In other words, remind you not to flirt with other women?" Something in my chest aches a little that he finds me so unappealing that he has to be reminded to pretend to like me.

  He clears his throat. "No, you won’t need to remind me of that…just if I’m not as entirely attentive as I should be. I might need a little nudge every now and again."

  I nod. Fair enough.

  Then he continues. "I’ve spent most of my life building businesses. I’ve never really had a serious relationship, if you will. So I’m probably very bad at it. Even though this isn’t real, I have every intention of treating you with the respect my Duchess deserves. And if I don’t, you have my permission to tell me so, Ms. Monroe."

  And even though he says it with his stuffy accent and his stiff upper lip or whatever, it’s kind of…sweet. It’s refreshing to realize there’s a real person in there, and I almost feel sorry for him, because I don’t think he gets many opportunities to be real. I think a lot of people have a lot of expectations of him, and maybe no one ever just lets him be him.

  Maybe I can be that person. Maybe we can be friends.

  "You’re really going to have to start calling me Kat," I tell him, smiling. "People will think it’s odd if you call your wife by her maiden name all the time."

  "You’re correct." He smiles back. "And I’m Winston, although, if you’re speaking to the staff at the estate or the townhome you will hear them refer to me as 'His Grace’."

  I put out my hand. "It’s nice to meet you Winston," I say.

  "It’s nice to meet you, as well, Katherine." I see the gleam in his eye as he waits for my response. And while I’ve hated being called Katherine for most of my life, and tolerate it from my mother and no one else, I realize right then that I don’t mind it from him. And worse than that, I want to live up to it. I want to be good at being Katherine, Duchess of Surrey. It’s a job, I tell myself, like any other. It’s natural you’d want to be good at it. You’ve never been one to do things halfway.

  But deep inside I know it’s more than that. Deep inside, I want Winston Cauldwell to like me. And if that’s not a problem, I don’t know what is.

  10

  Winston

  It’s late at night when we deplane, and I can see my normally fiery wife is fading fast. Jet lag is a bitch, and the multiple glasses of champagne she drank onboard probably haven’t helped. My main focus is to get her to the townhouse so she can sleep it all off before we have to face the rest of the world.

  I elected not to tell anyone I’ve married ahead of my arrival. I know my cousin David, who is next in line to the title, will be a complete pain in my arse. I wouldn’t be surprised if he questions my marriage. Luckily, Diego has sent on all the documentation to the legal team in London. Not the contract with Katherine, of course, that’s our little secret, but the marriage license, all the information on the judge who married us, laws related to reciprocity between the US and the UK, the list goes on. Hopefully, it will stop David from pursuing anything contentious.

  As we stand in line at customs, I see Katherine wobble a touch on her heels. Her eyes are droopy and her shoulders sag with exhaustion.

  I put a hand under her elbow and she jerks a touch, standing up straighter.

  "S
orry," she murmurs. "I don’t think I’ve ever been this tired before."

  "Jet lag," I tell her. "Your body clock is bloody confused. Unfortunately, it can take a couple days to work itself out. As soon as we get to the house you can go to sleep. I’ve scheduled things in the morning as late as possible so we can sleep in a bit, but we’ll still need to be at the attorney’s office by nine thirty to sign paperwork and go over the details of my grandfather’s services."

  "Were you close?" she asks then, sort of settling against me as we stand in line, her hand wrapping around the crook in my elbow as if it were the most natural thing in the world. She yawns, and I find I don’t even mind when her head rests against my shoulder.

  "With my grandfather?" I huff out a bitter laugh. "No. We were anything but close. His interest in me was only as his heir, and then it was only to bend me to his will."

  "Like making you get married in order to have your inheritance."

  "Exactly. Unfortunately, my grandmother died when I was still very young and my mother’s family isn’t close, either."

  "That’s too bad," she murmurs, smoothing down the skirt of her navy blue sheath dress that is highly appropriate. Darnell assured me that the items he packed for her will all pass muster and she’s been left with no options for sartorial rebellion. Her red curls are still nothing like the standard smooth, glossy hair of the women I’m used to, but I’m finding that I quite like them. They suit her, and the colors that shine when the light hits them are more beautiful than anything I’ve ever seen in hair before.

  "Do you have grandparents?" I ask softly, letting my cheek brush against some of those lovely, soft curls.

  "Three. Well, two now, but three while I was growing up. My grammy Murdoch on my mother’s side, and grandma and grandpa Monroe. Grammy Murdoch was my favorite. She passed last year, but she was the one who bought me my first mixing equipment." She smiles and lifts her head to look up at me. "She used to make videos of me singing and dancing when I was little. Everyone else thought I was this goofy kid who’d never amount to anything, but Grammy always told me that it didn’t matter what you loved so long as you loved it with all your heart—that was how you find your place in the world."

  A deep pang burns inside my chest, and I pull her a fraction closer as she rests her head back on my shoulder.

  "I’m sorry," I tell her, "that you lost your favorite grandmother."

  "I’m sorry you never had one," she replies.

  * * *

  Forty-five minutes later, we make our way toward the airport exit, a porter toting our baggage. The estate is supposed to have sent the car for us, so I’m standing at the exit to Heathrow, scanning the various modes of transportation, looking for my grandfather’s Rolls Royce that he kept on hand for being driven around London. I spot it just as the back door opens and a long slim leg slides out. Katherine reaches my side, and begins to ask if the car has arrived, when the rest of the body attached to the leg rises out of the Rolls, and my heart shrivels into a dark, sticky ball.

  I stare in horror at the cool blonde wearing a Chanel suit and Laboutin pumps, even though it’s midnight at Heathrow. She approaches and my gut erupts in burning acid.

  In the periphery of my vision, I see Katherine looking at me because I’m bloody frozen, unable to react fast enough I’m so shocked.

  Then she’s there, her long hair in some sort of updo, her makeup flawless, her eyes the same shade of cornflower blue they were the day she left me standing at the altar.

  "Hello, Winston," she says. "I’m so glad you’re home."

  11

  Kat

  For the second time in twenty-four hours, I’m looking at a woman who is ready to eat my new husband for breakfast. And while I really shouldn’t care — I’ve spent all of two days with the man — it still bugs the hell out of me that this really gorgeous woman obviously knows him in the biblical sense.

  "Jessa," he says, sounding a little strangled. "What are you doing here?"

  "I went straight to your mother when I heard," she coos. "She told me you’d be arriving now, so I went ahead and grabbed a ride with Murdoch."

  I look past her shoulder and see a very proper chauffeur standing alongside the elegant Rolls Royce. His mouth is drawn in a tense line, and when Winston looks at him, he gives the slightest of shrugs and looks sort of ill all at the same time.

  "You shouldn’t have come," Winston tells Jessa the Jezebel. "I have more than enough to deal with, at the moment. I don’t need your theatrics on top of it."

  Without even a glance back at me, he begins to stride toward the car. I stand and watch him for a moment, anger bubbling up, building pressure for what’s going to be one hell of an explosion. Blondie follows alongside him, looking completely unperturbed at his hostile tone.

  "Darling," she says, tucking her hand into the crook of his elbow — the same elbow I was leaning on a mere half hour ago in customs. The elbow that felt surprisingly comfortable and was connected to biceps that really are very firm and appealing. "I didn’t come for theatrics. I came for you. I know this will be such a difficult time for you. I only want to be here to help ease your pain, provide a soft spot for you to land after long days with all the paperwork and people wanting a piece of the new Duke."

  The only person I see here who wants a piece of the new Duke, is you, I think as I begin to trudge down the sidewalk toward the car — alone.

  To his credit, Winston shakes off her clutchy hands, and when he reaches the car, he turns and crosses his arms, staring down at her, his brow furrowed. It’s a different kind of angry than the one I received when he fired me. That was an impatient, disgusted angry. This one is a wounded pride kind of angry. I wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of it.

  "Jessa, listen closely to what I’m going to say."

  She smiles at him calmly.

  "Two years ago, you left me standing at the altar. You refused to marry me because I wanted to go to the States and buy a hockey team."

  I gasp in disgust. Who the hell wouldn’t want to own the Norsemen? Is she nuts?

  "Now that I’m the new Duke, you come crawling back, trying to act as though you truly care about my well-being. I won’t have it. You can take your phony sympathy and go elsewhere. I neither need, nor want, your company."

  I resist the urge to pump a fist in the air. Go, Win, that’s the way to tell her.

  But the blonde barracuda takes a step closer, putting her hand out to smooth Winston’s tie. My anger turns to rage, and I, too, step closer to the two of them, yet oddly, neither of them seems to notice me. Winston is frozen like a deer in the headlights, and Jessa is gazing up at him with all her sultry sophistication. Stop, I scream inside my head, stop staring at her. She’s like Medusa, you’ll be turned to stone, lost forever.

  "I know you’re hurt, darling," she presses on, her index finger stroking the silk tie gently. "What I did was awful — unconscionable, even — but I’ve regretted it every day since, and all I’m after is to get back the friendship we had all those years before the talk of marriage and weddings muddled everything so horribly."

  I see him soften, just a touch.

  "We were friends first, Winston," she says in a softer voice. "I just want my best friend back."

  His whole body relaxes, and his head dips toward hers — then, as if someone jabbed me with an electric cattle prod, I jerk forward, thrust my hand in between the two of them and say much too loudly, "Hi! I’m Kat. Winston’s wife."

  12

  Winston

  It takes my poor jet-lagged brain a moment to catch up, but when it does, it realizes that my new wife, a woman I barely know, is trying to shake hands with Jessa, the only woman I ever loved, the one woman who has the power to break my heart —again.

  I hear Murdoch make some sort of a choking sound on the other side of me, and I snap back into action.

  "Forgive me," I say, stepping back from Jessa. "Allow me to introduce my wife, Katherine, the Duchess of Surrey. Katherin
e, this is Jessa Ferguson, an old friend from school."

  "Mmhmm," Katherine murmurs as she waits for Jessa to shake her hand. I can see how badly Jessa wants to snub the gesture, but she’s born and bred in the English aristocracy, and she can’t bring herself to ignore a Duchess.

  "Pleased to meet you, Your Grace," Jessa chokes out. Katherine looks positively feral as she smiles at Jessa. Jessa drops Katherine’s hand as quickly as possible, then turns to me with a forced smile. "Win, you’re married — do you think you might have told someone?"

  "Oh, we wanted something private and fun," Katherine says as she wraps her hand around my biceps and leans into me. "Win, here, isn’t into all the ceremony. But I am so excited to meet his friends and family—" she puts on a pouty face, "although I wish it were under happier circumstances."

  "Indeed," Jessa chokes out, her gaze darting between Katherine and me.

  "Thank you so much for bringing the car," Katherine says. And as if Murdoch is in league with her, he opens the back door and stands, waiting for us to climb in. "Do you need us to order you an Uber to get home?"

  I nearly choke and I see Murdoch smother a smile. Jessa’s gaze goes as cold as frost.

  "No, thank you, I have someone coming to get me," she says, lying like the pro she is.

  "Oh, perfect," Katherine responds, still smiling like she’s just stolen Jessa’s best jewels. "I’m sure we’ll see you at the funeral. Have a lovely night." And with that, she climbs in the back of the car, and I’m left with no option but to climb in after her, leaving Jessa standing on the sidewalk at Heathrow, stunned and alone, much the way I was at the chapel on our wedding day.