by Jane Ashford
Clayton and Tom protested in unison. Arthur ignored them as he faced the fact that he wasn’t eager to return to his home, with its all-too-familiar routine. Indeed, he was positively reluctant. The last few months had been full of novel events and deep satisfaction. All the young men he’d singled out were happily settled. He’d achieved the goal he’d set for himself last spring. Now he would do the same for Tom, as a sort of bonus to the rest. And another ending in a series of them. Then it would be all over.
Melancholy threatened to descend. Nothing waited for him at home but empty repetition, a pattern he’d carried out for years through force of habit. Of course he would be glad to see his children and their families for Christmas. His grandchildren were a delight. But the truth was that his wife had been the glue that held them all together. After her death they’d never seemed to achieve the same connection. There was respect, love, of course, but conversations tended to languish and grow forced. They exchanged news like interested acquaintances. No, that was unfair. They all tried very hard. He saw it in his family, and he knew he did all he could. Yet it remained an uphill battle.
Arthur gave himself a mental shake. He would simply have to make more of an effort. Some of his grandchildren were of an age for deeper conversations. He ought to know them better. He would make certain that he did!
Suddenly he found himself wondering about Miss Julia Grandison’s plans for the coming season. Just what did she have in store for her brother? He had no doubt the results would be…interesting.
“I hope you’re not angry with me, my lord,” said Tom. He looked worried.
“Of course not.” Tom had not been put on this Earth to amuse him, Arthur thought. He deserved a chance to carve out the life he wanted. Arthur vowed that he would do what he could to let him. And then he would see what came after.
If you enjoyed A Duke Too Far, you’re sure to love this enchanting Regency romance from Anna Harrington, first in the Lords of the Armory series.
Publishers Weekly says: “Harrington combines suspenseful mystery and charming romance in this compulsively readable treat.”
Available now from Sourcebooks Casablanca.
One
May 1816
Charlton Place, London
Marcus Braddock stepped out onto the upper terrace of his town house and scanned the party spreading through the torch-lit gardens below.
He grimaced. His home had been invaded.
All of London seemed to be crowded into Charlton Place tonight, with the reception rooms filled to overflowing. The crush of bodies in the ballroom had forced several couples outside to dance on the lawn, and the terraces below were filled with well-dressed dandies flirting with ladies adorned in silks and jewels. Card games played out in the library, men smoked in the music room, the ladies retired to the morning room—the entire house had been turned upside down, the gardens trampled, the horses made uneasy in the mews…
And it wasn’t yet midnight.
His sister Claudia had insisted on throwing this party for him, apparently whether he wanted one or not. Not only to mark his birthday tomorrow but also to celebrate his new position as Duke of Hampton, the title given to him for helping Wellington defeat Napoleon. The party would help ease his way back into society, she’d asserted, and give him an opportunity to meet the men he would now be working with in the Lords.
But Marcus hadn’t given a damn about society before he’d gone off to war, and he cared even less now.
No. The reason he’d agreed to throw open wide the doors of Charlton Place was a woman.
The Honorable Danielle Williams, daughter of Baron Mondale and his late sister Elise’s dearest friend. The woman who had written to inform him that Elise was dead.
The same woman he now knew had lied to him.
His eyes narrowed as they moved deliberately across the crowd. Miss Williams had been avoiding him since his return, refusing to let him call on her and begging off from any social event that might bring them into contact. But she hadn’t been able to refuse the invitation for tonight’s party, not when he’d also invited her great-aunt, who certainly wouldn’t have missed what the society gossips were predicting would be the biggest social event of the season. She couldn’t accept and then simply beg off either. To not attend this party would have been a snub to both him and his sister Claudia, as well as to Elise’s memory. While Danielle might happily continue to avoid him, she would never intentionally wound Claudia.
She was here somewhere, he knew it. Now he simply had to find her.
He frowned. Easier said than done, because Claudia had apparently invited all of society, most of whom he’d never met and had no idea who they even were. Yet they’d eagerly attended, if only for a glimpse of the newly minted duke’s town house. And a glimpse of him. Strangers greeted him as if they were old friends, when his true friends—the men he’d served with in the fight against Napoleon—were nowhere to be seen. Those men he trusted with his life.
These people made him feel surrounded by the enemy.
The party decorations certainly didn’t help put him at ease. Claudia had insisted that the theme be ancient Roman and then set about turning the whole house into Pompeii. Wooden torches lit the garden, lighting the way for the army of toga-clad footmen carrying trays of wine from a replica of a Roman temple in the center of the garden. The whole thing gave him the unsettling feeling that he’d been transported to Italy, unsure of his surroundings and his place in them.
Being unsure was never an option for a general in the heat of battle, and Marcus refused to let it control him now that he was on home soil. Yet he couldn’t stop it from haunting him, ever since he’d discovered the letter among Elise’s belongings that made him doubt everything he knew about his sister and how she’d died.
He planned to put an end to that doubt tonight, just as soon as he talked to Danielle.
“There he is—the birthday boy!”
Marcus bit back a curse as his two best friends, Brandon Pearce and Merritt Rivers, approached him through the shadows. He’d thought the terrace would be the best place to search for Danielle without being seen.
Apparently not.
“You mean the duke of honor,” corrected Merritt, a lawyer turned army captain who had served with him in the Guards.
Marcus frowned. While he was always glad to see them, right then he didn’t need their distractions. Nor was he in the mood for their joking.
A former brigadier who now held the title of Earl of Sandhurst, Pearce looped his arm over Merritt’s shoulder as both men studied him. “I don’t think he’s happy to see us.”
“Impossible.” Merritt gave a sweep of his arm to indicate the festivities around them. The glass of cognac in his hand had most likely been liberated from Marcus’s private liquor cabinet in his study. “Surely he wants his two brothers-in-arms nearby to witness every single moment of his big night.”
Marcus grumbled, “Every single moment of my humiliation, you mean.”
“Details, details,” Merritt dismissed, deadpan. But he couldn’t hide the gleam of amusement in his eyes.
“What we really want to know about your birthday party is this.” Pearce touched his glass to Marcus’s chest and leaned toward him, his face deadly serious. “When do the pony rides begin?”
Marcus’s gaze narrowed as he glanced between the two men. “Remind me again why I saved your miserable arses at Toulouse.”
Pearce placed his hand on Marcus’s shoulder in a show of genuine affection. “Because you’re a good man and a brilliant general,” he said sincerely. “And one of the finest men we could ever call a friend.”
Merritt lifted his glass in a heartfelt toast. “Happy birthday, General.”
Thirty-five. Bloody hell.
“Hear, hear.” Pearce seconded the toast. “To the Coldstream Guards!”
A knot tightened in Marcus’s gut at the
mention of his former regiment that had been so critical to the victory at Waterloo yet also nearly destroyed in the brutal hand-to-hand combat that day. But he managed to echo, “To the Guards.”
Not wanting them to see any stray emotion on his face, he turned away. Leaning across the stone balustrade on his forearms, he muttered, “I wish I could still be with them.”
While he would never wish to return to the wars, he missed being with his men, especially their friendship and dependability. He missed the respect given to him and the respect he gave each of them in return, no matter if they were an officer or a private. Most of all, he longed for the sense of purpose that the fight against Napoleon had given him. He’d known every morning when he woke up what he was meant to do that day, what higher ideals he served. He hadn’t had that since he returned to London, and its absence ate at him.
It bothered him so badly, in fact, that he’d taken to spending time alone at an abandoned armory just north of the City. He’d purchased the old building with the intention of turning it into a warehouse, only to discover that he needed a place to himself more than he needed the additional income. More and more lately, he’d found himself going there at all hours to escape from society and the ghosts that haunted him. Even in his own home.
That was the punishment for surviving when others he’d loved hadn’t. The curse of remembrance.
“No, General.” Pearce matched his melancholy tone as his friends stepped up to the balustrade, flanking him on each side. “You’ve left the wars behind and moved on to better things.” He frowned as he stared across the crowded garden. “This party notwithstanding.”
Merritt pulled a cigar from his breast pocket and lit it on a nearby lamp. “You’re exactly where you belong. With your family.” He puffed at the cheroot, then watched the smoke curl from its tip into the darkness overhead. “They need you now more than the Guards do.”
In his heart, Marcus knew that, too. Which was why he’d taken it upon himself to go through Elise’s belongings when Claudia couldn’t bring herself to do it, to pack up what he thought her daughter, Penelope, might want when she was older and to distribute the rest to the poor. That was how he’d discovered a letter among Elise’s things from someone named John Porter, arranging a midnight meeting for which she’d left the house and never returned.
He’d not had a moment of peace since.
He rubbed at the knot of tension in his nape. His friends didn’t need to know any of that. They were already burdened enough as it was by settling into their own new lives now that they’d left the army.
“Besides, you’re a duke now.” Merritt flicked the ash from his cigar. “There must be some good way to put the title to use.” He looked down at the party and clarified, “One that doesn’t involve society balls.”
“Or togas,” Pearce muttered.
Marcus blew out a patient breath at their good-natured teasing. “The Roman theme was Claudia’s idea.”
“Liar,” both men said at once. Then they looked at each other and grinned.
Merritt slapped him on the back. “Next thing you know, you’ll be trying to convince us that the pink ribbons in you horse’s tail were put there by Penelope.”
Marcus kept his silence. There was no good reply to that.
He turned his attention back to the party below, his gaze passing over the crowded garden. He spied the delicate turn of a head in the crowd—
Danielle. There she was, standing by the fountain in the glow of one of the torches.
For a moment, he thought he was mistaken, that the woman who’d caught his attention couldn’t possibly be her. Not with her auburn hair swept up high on her head in a pile of feathery curls, shimmering with copper highlights in the lamplight and revealing a long and graceful neck. Not in that dress of emerald satin with its capped sleeves of ivory lace over creamy shoulders.
Impossible. This woman, with her full curves and mature grace, simply couldn’t be the same excitable girl he remembered, who’d seemed always to move through the world with a bouncing skip. Who had bothered him to distraction with all her questions about the military and soldiers.
She laughed at something her aunt said, and her face brightened into a familiar smile. Only then did he let himself believe that she wasn’t merely an apparition.
Sweet Lucifer. Apparently, nothing in England was as he remembered.
He put his hands on both men’s shoulders. “If you’ll excuse me, there’s someone in the garden I need to speak with. Enjoy yourselves tonight.” Then, knowing both men nearly as well as he knew himself, he warned, “But not too much.”
As he moved away, Merritt called out with a knowing grin. “What’s her name?”
“Trouble,” he muttered and strode down into the garden before she could slip back into the crowd and disappear.
Two
Danielle Williams smiled distractedly at the story her great-aunt Harriett was telling the group of friends gathered around them in the garden. The one about how she’d accidentally pinched the bottom of—
“King George!” The crux of the story elicited a gasp of surprise, followed by laughter. Just as it always did. “I had no idea that the bottom I saw poking out from behind that tree was a royal one. Truly, doesn’t one bottom look like all the rest?”
“I’ve never thought so,” Dani mumbled against the rim of her champagne flute as she raised it to her lips.
Harriett slid her a chastising glance, although knowing Auntie, likely more for interrupting her story than for any kind of hint of impropriety.
“But oh, how high His Majesty jumped!” her aunt continued, undaunted. As always. “I was terrified—simply terrified, I tell you! I was only fourteen and convinced that I had just committed high treason.”
Although Dani had heard this same story dozens of times, the way Harriett told it always amused her. Thank goodness. After all, she needed something to distract her, because this evening was the first time she’d been to Charlton Place since Marcus Braddock had returned from the continent. The irony wasn’t lost on her. She was on edge with nervousness tonight when she’d once spent so much time here that she’d considered this place a second home.
“A pinch to a king’s bottom!” Harriett exclaimed. “Wars have been declared over less offending actions, I assure you.”
Dani had been prepared for the unease that fluttered in her belly tonight, yet the guilt that gnawed at her chest was as strong as ever…for not coming to see Claudia or spending time with Pippa, for not being able to tell Marcus what kindnesses Elise had done for others in the months before her death. But how could she face him without stirring up fresh grief for both of them?
No. Best to simply avoid him.
“Had it been a different kind of royal bottom—say, one of the royal dukes—I might not have panicked so. But it was a king’s bottom!”
She had a plan. Once Harriett finished her story, Dani would suddenly develop a headache and need to leave. She would give her best wishes to Claudia before slipping discreetly out the door and in the morning pen a note of apology to the duke for not wishing him happy birthday in person. She’d assure him that she’d looked for him at the party but had been unable to find him. A perfectly believable excuse given how many people were crammed into Charlton Place tonight. A complete crush! So many other people wanted their chance to speak to him that she most likely couldn’t get close to him even if she tried. Not that she’d try exactly, but—
“Good evening, Miss Williams.”
The deep voice behind her twined down her spine. Marcus Braddock. Drat it all.
So much for hiding. Her trembling fingers tightened around the champagne flute as she inhaled deeply and slowly faced him. She held out her gloved hand and lowered into a curtsy. “Your Grace.”
Taking her hand and bowing over it, he gave her a smile, one of those charming grins that she remembered
so vividly. Those smiles had always taken her breath away, just as this one did now, even if it stopped short of his eyes.
“It’s good to have you and your aunt back at Charlton Place, Miss Williams.”
“Thank you.” She couldn’t help but stare. He’d always been attractive and dashing, especially in his uniform, and like every one of Elise’s friends, she’d had a schoolgirl infatuation with him. And also like every one of his little sister’s friends, he’d paid her absolutely no mind whatsoever except to tolerate her for Elise’s sake.
Although he was just as handsome as she remembered, Marcus had certainly changed in other ways. The passing years had brought him into his prime, and the youthful boldness she remembered had been tempered by all he’d experienced during his time away, giving him a powerful presence that most men would never possess.
When he released her hand to greet the others, Dani continued to stare at him, dumbfounded. She simply couldn’t reconcile the brash and impetuous brother of her best friend with the compelling man now standing beside her, who had become one of the most important men in England.
Harriett leaned toward her and whispered, “Lower your hand, my dear.”
Heavens, her hand! It still hovered in midair where he’d released it. With embarrassment heating her cheeks, she dropped it to her side.
She turned away and gulped down the rest of her champagne, not daring to look at the general for fear he’d think her the same infatuated goose she’d been as a young girl. Or at Harriett, whose face surely shone with amusement at the prospect of Dani being smitten with England’s newest hero.
No. She was simply stunned to see all the changes that time and battle had wrought in him. That was all.
But then, Marcus Braddock had always been the most intense man she’d ever known, with brown eyes so dark as to be almost black, thick hair to match that curled at his collar, and a jaw that could have been sculpted from marble, like those Greek gods in Lord Elgin’s notorious statues that Parliament had just purchased. Broad-shouldered, tall and confident, commanding in every way…no wonder she’d not been surprised to learn of all his promotions gained from heroism on the battlefield or to read about his exploits in the papers. Only when she’d learned that the regent had granted him a dukedom alongside Wellington had she been surprised—not that he’d been offered the title but that he’d accepted it.