The Duke's Suspicion (Rogues and Rebels)
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Cover Copy
An English war hero must unlock the secrets of an Irish beauty’s heart…
Named for the heather in her native Ireland, botanist Erica Burke dreams of travel—somewhere she won’t be scorned for her scientific interests. Instead, a storm strands her with cool and commanding Major Tristan Laurens, the Duke of Raynham.
An unexpected heir, Tristan is torn between his duties as an intelligence officer and his responsibilities as a duke. A brief return to England to set his affairs in order is extended by bad weather and worse news—someone is after the military secrets he keeps. Could the culprit be his unconventional Irish guest? He needs to see her journal to be sure, and he’ll do what he must to get his hands on it…even indulge in a dangerous intimacy with a woman he has no business wanting.
Erica guards her journal as fiercely as she guards her heart, fearing to reveal a side of herself a man like Tristan could never understand. But though she makes Tristan’s task infernally difficult, falling in love may be all too easy…
Also by Susanna Craig
Rogues & Rebels Series
The Companion’s Secret
The Runaway Desires Series
To Kiss a Thief
To Tempt an Heiress
To Seduce a Stranger
Table of Contents
Cover Copy
Also by Susanna Craig
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Author’s Note
Teaser Chapter
About the Author
The Duke’s Suspicion
A Rogues & Rebels Novel
Susanna Craig
LYRICAL PRESS
Kensington Publishing Corp.
www.kensingtonbooks.com
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Copyright © 2018 by Susan Kroeg
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Lyrical Press and Lyrical Press logo Reg. US Pat. & TM Off.
First Electronic Edition: October 2018
eISBN-13: 978-1-5161-0402-4
eISBN-10: 1-5161-0402-1
First Print Edition: October 2018
ISBN-13: 978-1-5161-0403-1
ISBN-10: 1-5161-0403-X
Printed in the United States of America
Dedication
To the doctors and nurses who kept me—and my writing dream—alive.
Acknowledgments
You know you’ve assembled a great support network as an author when you find yourself thanking the usual suspects. My heartfelt gratitude to Jill Marsal; Esi Sogah and the team at Kensington/Lyrical; the members of The Beau Monde chapter of Romance Writers of America, especially Bill Haggart, for thoughtful feedback and helpful information on military matters; Amy Hay and Cynthia Tennent, for their insights and sage advice; and last, but never least, my husband and daughter, for their grace, patience, and love in helping me survive much more than the usual deadline panic this time around.
Chapter 1
As dark clouds rolled over the Cumbrian sky and thunder rumbled in the distance, Erica Burke discovered she had made a serious error in judgment. Several errors, in fact.
The most serious error, obviously, had been leaving her journal inside the inn where they had stopped to rest the horses. She was often forgetful. Careless, other people called it. But in truth she cared a great deal. Losing her journal would have meant losing months of work, losing the record of every botanical observation she had made since coming to England.
It would have meant losing a piece of herself.
To be fair, though, she would never have left her journal at a posting inn if she hadn’t been traveling. So hadn’t the real error in judgment been agreeing to accompany her sister? True, a lady often took a female companion on her wedding trip, a custom grounded in the assumption that the activities and interests of men and women, even newly married ones, were entirely separate. But Cami’s insistence on Erica’s joining her had had very little to do with convention. And as far as Erica could see, her brother-in-law, Lord Ashborough, had only one interest: his new bride. The only activity in which he wanted to indulge was… Well.
With a wary eye toward the sky, Erica hopped from the coach without explanation and hurried back across the filthy inn yard, blaming the sudden wave of heat that washed over her on the exertion. She had been promised the chance to explore the plants and flowers of the Lake District, and she was determined not to be put off by the occasional moment of embarrassment, or by the knowledge that her presence was entirely extraneous. Her only concession had been to ride in the baggage coach on occasion, with Mr. Remington, Lord Ashborough’s manservant, and Adele. Try as she might, Erica could not bring herself to think of the French girl as “Lady Ashborough’s maid.” It would have required her to concede that Cami was now a lady, and not simply her overbearing elder sister.
On the threshold of the inn’s dining parlor, she was forced to reevaluate her assessment once more. A group of rowdy young men now filled the table at which she and her party had been seated only moments ago. Avoiding as best she could the men’s eyes, hands, and voices, Erica pressed forward to retrieve what was hers. Perhaps the most serious error had been leaving Lord Ashborough’s mastiff, Elf, in Shropshire with the new vicar and his wife. Elf was neither fierce nor especially brave, but even half-grown she was enormous, and Erica had no doubt that her mere presence would have sufficed to forge a path through the room.
On the bench closest to the window sat a man with greasy dark hair. If the sight of him thumbing idly through the pages of her journal had not blanketed her vision in a red haze of anger, she might also have noticed his red coat. His militia uniform.
“Kindly unhand my journal.” Though she spoke quietly, she thrust out her hand, palm upward, so forcefully that the muscles of her arm quivered.
He did not rise, and a lazy smile revealed rather mossy teeth. “What have we here? An Irish rebel—?”
The words sharpened her senses, brought the moment into vivid relief.
As if observing her
own actions from a great distance, she watched her hand sweep the journal from his grasp and then swing back. The sturdy leather binding—no delicate lady’s commonplace book, this—struck along his jaw, effectively wiping the grin from his face.
One of his fellow soldiers guffawed, and suddenly the noises and odors of the room rushed back to full force, threatening to overwhelm her. Her narrow pinpoint of focus expanded from his uniform, grimy from travel and frayed around the collar and cuffs, into a swath of chaos. Clutching her journal in one hand and her skirts in the other, she ran from the room.
Hitting him had been yet another mistake. She could not even say what had prompted her to do it. Her distrust of soldiers? His disdain for Ireland? Perhaps a bit of both. Oh, why could she never seem to control her temper, her impulses? Was he following?
Outside once more, she paused only to scan the inn yard for Lord Ashborough’s coaches. But the yard was empty. Perhaps around the corner? No? Well, surely that was his carriage, standing by the church…
Oh, no. Now she understood her most serious error. When she’d discovered her journal missing, she’d hopped from the baggage coach without telling Mr. Remington to wait. He must have assumed she had decided to ride the rest of the way with her sister. Erica’s absence would likely not be noticed for hours.
She was stranded.
She could almost hear Cami’s voice telling her to wait right where she was. But Erica’s hasty reaction to the soldier’s sneer had rendered this village’s only lodging less than hospitable.
Regrettably, she had a great deal of experience with crises. Most, like this, of her own making. And sitting still had never been her preferred method of coping with any of them.
She furrowed her brow, trying to recall the map in the guidebook. People came from all over Britain to visit the Lake District. There would be signposts to Windermere. Surely even she, with her notoriously poor sense of direction, could find it. With another glance at the threatening sky, she began to walk.
What was a little rain?
For the first mile or so, she watched the clouds tumble toward her, listened to the peals of thunder as they swelled and grew, seemingly born of the earth as much as the air. Mud from an earlier rain dragged at her hems and sucked at the soles of her walking boots. At the second mile, she gave up the roadway in favor of the grassy verge. Cold, thick drops began to fall, speckling her dress and face. Hardly had she managed to stuff her journal into her pelisse when the sky opened and water poured down in sheets, whipped by the wind like clothing on the line, blinding her.
Something sharp snagged at her skirts, jabbed at the chilled flesh of her thigh beneath. The hedgerow. A flash of lightning showed her a gap in its tangled branches, barely wide enough for her to pass through. And a little way beyond it, an abandoned-looking stone cottage. Would its roof provide shelter? She could not tell until she reached it.
Head down, she pushed onward. The wind snatched at her sodden bonnet. Nearly strangled by its ties at her throat, she scrabbled with numb fingers to loosen them. Once free, the bonnet whirled into the storm and was gone.
The twenty yards standing between her and her goal seemed to take almost as long to travel as the two miles she had already come. At last, its stout slab door stood before her. Here, in the shadow of the low building, the wind still lashed, but it no longer threatened to carry her away. As she leaned her head against the door to fumble with the latch, she felt a movement. Not of her own making. Not the rumble of the storm, either. The door swung inward and she collapsed onto the dirt floor at the booted feet of a stranger.
The cottage was not abandoned, after all.
Even a cursory glance told her these were not the sort of boots generally worn by cottagers, however. The supple leather was not muddy or scuffed as it would have been if the man were a laborer or had recently trudged across the open field. Perhaps he had been traveling on horseback. Or perhaps he simply had been wise enough to take shelter before the rain began.
Without speaking, he stepped around her to shut the door, muffling the storm’s noise and closing out its murky light, casting the single room into near darkness.
Oh, God. This was it—her most serious error in judgment. Ever. Erica scrambled to her feet and whirled about to face him, her rain-sodden skirts slapping against her legs. But he was already moving past her again.
“Wait there.” His voice was pitched low, audible beneath the storm.
Gradually, her eyes were able to pick out his shape, now on the far side of the small room. A narrow seam of light formed a square on the wall behind him—a window, blocked by wooden shutters. She heard a rattle, a scrape, a hiss. Flame sparked to life in his hands then became the warm, flickering glow of a candle.
“That blast of wind blew it out,” he explained with a glance past her at the door. Was it her imagination, or was there an accusatory note in his voice?
The candle lit his features from below, giving them a sardonic cast. Impossible to tell whether he was handsome or plain, dark or fair, young or…well, his voice, his ease of movement, certainly did not suggest an old man. And he was tall—taller than Papa. Than either of her brothers or her brother-in-law. Taller even than Henry…
Oh, why, in this moment, had she thought of Henry? But so it always went, her mind flitting from one idea to the next, fixing on precisely the things she ought to forget, and forgetting the things she ought to—
Her journal!
With a shudder of alarm, she slithered a hand between the wet, clinging layers of her pelisse and her somewhat drier dress and pulled the book from its hiding place. As she hurried toward the light, the man drew back a step. With the candle between her and her journal, so the stranger could see nothing but its binding, she turned the book over in her hands, then thumbed through its pages to assess the damage. The leather cover was damp; rain had wetted the edges of the paper here and there. It would look worn and wrinkled when it was dry, but so far as she could tell, the journal’s contents were miraculously unharmed. A sigh of relief eased from her.
When she laid her journal on the tabletop, the candlelight once more threw itself freely around the room. The stranger was looking her up and down, his expression both incredulous and stern. A familiar expression. Cami wore it often in Erica’s presence.
Of course she looked a mess. Who wouldn’t, under these circumstances? Icy rivulets ran from her hair down her face, and beneath the howl of the wind, she could hear the steady patter of water dripping from her skirts onto the floor. If this were a scene in one of those novels her sister denied reading, the hero would probably invite her to strip off her drenched clothing and dry herself before the fire. Something shocking would likely follow.
But there was no fire. And this man showed no intention of acting the part of a hero.
As if to confirm her thoughts, he shook his head and folded his arms across his chest. “What in God’s name are you doing out in a storm like this?”
* * * *
When Major Lord Tristan Laurens asked a question, he expected an answer. He certainly did not expect the subject of his interrogation to bristle, fling a lock of wet hair over her shoulder—spraying him with rainwater, almost dousing the candle—and reply, “I might ask you the same.”
Unblinking, she faced him across the table, communicating quite clearly that if he was waiting for her to bend first, he might wait forever. He had some experience coaxing information from unwilling sources, and he knew better than to begin by barking at them. But her arrival had caught him off guard. He had never liked surprises.
The silence that stretched between them was eventually broken by her fingers drumming against the cover of the book she’d unearthed from her bodice. She radiated a nervous kind of energy that refused to be contained. When another moment had passed, she plucked up the book, tucked it against her breast, and began to move around the room. Its narrow compass, crowded wit
h ramshackle furniture, prevented her from pacing.
Or perhaps the predictable, orderly, back and forth motion of pacing was anathema to this woman.
She put him in mind of a bedraggled spaniel, with her slight build, rapid movements, and curling hair hanging limply on either side of her face. Though, admittedly, far more attractive than any spaniel he had ever seen. The precise shade of her red hair was difficult to determine under such dim and damp conditions. He tried to imagine what she might look like bathed in the warmth of a shaft of sunlight but gave it up as a bad job. Sunlight was unlikely to be granted them anytime soon.
When her wandering feet brought her within arm’s length of him, he held up one hand in hopes she might cease. Her jerk of surprise made him wonder if she had forgotten his presence entirely.
“The storm doesn’t show any signs of abating. Perhaps we ought to begin again.” He made a crisp bow. “Tristan Laurens.”
Her gaze raked over him, and for a moment he thought she meant not to respond. “Mr. Laurens,” she said after a moment and curtsied.
Ought he to correct her? At the very least, he might have introduced himself as “Major Laurens,” as he’d not yet resigned his commission. “Lord Tristan” was entirely incorrect now, of course. Both Father and Percy were gone, had been gone for some time. Still, it felt strange to think of himself as a duke, stranger still to call himself “Raynham.” Men of seven and twenty did not usually acquire new identities in quite so abrupt a fashion.
In the end, he let her assumption stand. After the weather cleared, they would go their separate ways, and his rank would be irrelevant.
Her fingertips danced over the book she was holding. “Miss Erica Burke.”
“Erica?”
It was not a given name he had heard before, and her inclusion of it hinted at the existence of an elder sister who generally took precedence as “Miss Burke.” Her Irish accent was distinct but not unpleasant. From Dublin, if he had to guess. And his guesses were usually correct.