The Art of Stealing a Duke’s Heart: Thieves of Desire Book 1
Page 1
The Art of Stealing a Duke’s Heart
Thieves of Desire Book 1
Ellie St. Clair
Contents
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
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Epilogue
A Jewel for the Taking
Chapter 1
Also by Ellie St. Clair
About the Author
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Also By Ellie St. Clair
Thieves of Desire
The Art of Stealing a Duke’s Heart
A Jewel for the Taking
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Chapter 1
London ~ 1812
“You can try as hard as you like, but you will never blend in.”
Calliope fixed an annoyed gaze on her sister, who so easily slipped into the shadows unnoticed that Calli hadn’t even seen her approach.
“We are supposed to be avoiding one another.”
“That’s what Arie said, yes, but then Arie isn’t here, now is he?”
One corner of Calli’s lips tugged up into a smile. Diana was right, but while she had always been the forgotten one, she was also, in her own way, the most rebellious.
While Calli would far prefer to be recognized for proving her worth.
“You’re supposed to be searching the house by now,” Diana said from the corner of her mouth. “Why are you still here in the ballroom?”
Calli sighed as she turned from her sister, staring out across the dance floor in front of them, at the swirls of colorful gowns draping the women’s bodies, and the dashing gentlemen who held their partners in close embraces.
“I just… wanted to watch the dancing. I’ve never seen a waltz like this before.”
“We learned it, though.”
It was true. It had been part of all of their lessons. Lessons on how to be one of these people, how to fit in and make everyone believe their lies.
“But to dance it, here, in such a room, with the angels watching from paintings above, surrounded by white stucco pillars, my feet on marble, it would be like I was dancing among the gods and goddesses themselves.”
Diana choked out a bark of laughter at Calli’s fanciful words, and Calli found her face growing hot at the fact that she had actually said them aloud.
“This is not your world, Calli. It never will be. We are here for one purpose, and one purpose only. Do you understand?”
Calli gave a quick nod before turning from the scene in front of her. Diana was right. She had a job to do. One she could hardly believe that Arie had actually trusted her with. Calli smoothed her hand down the grey muslin of her skirts, created for this very function. She was to fit in, to make all believe she was a companion, not a debutante who would be expected to be making her acquaintance with young gentlemen or stepping onto the floor in a waltz.
“Besides,” Diana said, her voice softening as she stared at the woman who was her sister in nearly every sense of the word, “if you were to step out onto that dance floor, every person — man or woman — would not be able to help but notice you. You would be the talk of Society.”
“I would not,” Calli said with a roll of her eyes, looking down at her inconspicuous garment. They had swept back all of her riotous black curls, doing their utmost to tame them into a harsh knot at the back of her head, while her face was devoid of anything that might highlight her prominent features.
“You told Arie you could do this,” Diana continued. “So are you going to follow through, or not?”
“Of course I am,” Calli said, straightening her spine. She was determined to show her brother that she was as capable as any of them at accomplishing success in the family business. “Here I go.”
Diana nodded in approval. “I’ll keep watch.”
Calli slipped through the crowds, closing her eyes for a moment as she reviewed the map of the grand London townhouse in her mind. She would start in the drawing rooms, then move back through the house. She was sure to eventually find her quarry. She just had to make sure she did so unnoticed.
The key to accessing entry, she reminded herself, hearing Arie’s words in her head, is to convince everyone around you that you belong.
She nodded with a small smile to the maid she passed as she walked through the foyer, and the girl nearly ran away. Calli wondered if she was supposed to remain hidden from the guests.
While each of her siblings possessed their own extraordinary skill, they had all learned the ways of the nobility so that they would fit into their surroundings when the occasion called for it. Calli had never quite grasped the way the upper crust treated those who they considered below them — especially the people who worked for them.
But no matter. That was why she should feel no guilt over what she was about to do.
Besides, if she did her job correctly, no one would ever be the wiser, and the duke could continue to enjoy his fine artwork.
She cracked open the first door, finding the drawing room ready for visitors, but currently unoccupied. She slipped in, rounding the room and finding plenty of paintings that would fetch a good price, but none that she was looking for.
A parlor and dining room later, she was still without success.
Trying not to panic, reminding herself that she was trained for this and would be just fine, she pushed open the last door before the end of the small corridor.
And found herself swallowed by the darkness of a decidedly masculine room.
While embers still burned in the grate, this room was not ready for visitors, and Calli received the impression more than ever that she was trespassing. She crossed to the desk, where a candle awaited in a surprisingly plain small holder. She lit the wick before lifting it high as she crossed the room, beginning at the door as she made a slow circle, casting the flickering light upon the walls.
This was never going to work, she thought, shaking her head. Even if she found the painting, she would never be able to study it. Not in this light. Most certainly not with enough detail to ever do it justice.
She sighed. She would have to return and tell Arie she had failed. She could already see the disappointment on his face as he sighed and told her that he never should have trusted her. If only there was another way.
Just as Calli was about to turn to the door, color glimmered from across the room, where her ligh
t had reflected off a painting on the far wall. Her heart began to drum excitedly in her chest. There it was.
She began to step closer to the painting, the swells of the sea drawing her, when the door swung open, freezing her footsteps. She closed her eyes, wishing that by doing so she could hide completely, but she was far too old to believe such a thing.
She turned, ever so slowly, waiting to see who had caught her in their trap.
Only to find two blond-haired, blue-eyed children, their cherubic chubby faces seemingly having come to life from the murals in the ballroom, staring at her with grins on their faces.
* * *
This had been a mistake.
Although, so were most of the decisions Jonathan had made in his three decades so far on earth.
None, perhaps, had such serious repercussions as the throwaway promise he had made to his sister.
“Of course, I’ll look after them,” he had said when she had asked if he would take care of her twin children if anything were to ever happen to her. “I wouldn’t expect you to trust any other more than your brother.”
At the time, he had never expected that his exuberant, carefree sister was actually planning her own departure, that she was leaving her children, already devoid of a father who had died too young, for a life of adventure. It still caused rage to rise within him every time he remembered reading the note. The note that explained she was running away to America, but that it was too much to take her children. That she was never meant to be a mother, and would Jonathan please look after them?
Jonathan’s own mother had been so beside herself that Jonathan was left arranging their care alone. He had hired the best of governesses, determined to provide them a home and a proper education, but knew nothing more of what he was to do.
But now, his mother was insisting that the children required a mother figure. This ball was supposed to help him find one. Of course, his mother herself, who far preferred Bath, had not even bothered to attend, but that was actually for the better.
For the thought of tying himself to one of these women for the rest of his life made him ill. None of them seemed capable of becoming a mother as most of the young ladies vying for his attention were little more than children themselves. And the twins were not exactly the most… docile of creatures.
Speaking of the little hellions…
He caught a glimpse of a blond head from across the ballroom, and it was not the elaborately coiffed hair of one of the young ladies. No, this was wild, bouncing blond hair that was running away after being caught somewhere it didn’t belong.
“Damn it,” he said, his grip on his glass so strong he nearly crushed it.
“Everything all right, Hargreave?”
Belatedly, Jonathan remembered his friend, Davenport, who was standing beside him, surveying the room in front of him with a smirk on his face. He had always been the carefree sort, a trait that Jonathan envied. For Jonathan cared all too much.
“Fine,” he said tersely, knocking back his drink before setting it on the empty tray of a passing servant. “I must go attend to something.”
“Would that ‘something’ be a precocious six-year-old?”
Jonathan eyed him sharply. If Davenport had seen either of the children, then he couldn’t be sure who else had witnessed their presence.
“They must have outwitted Mrs. Blonsky again,” he said with a sigh. “She told me she couldn’t keep up. I should have listened to her.”
“Why do you have your housekeeper watching them?” Davenport asked, one of his black eyebrows lifted.
“The new governess failed to arrive this morning.”
“How many is that now?”
Jonathan eyed him sharply, sensing the amusement in his friend’s voice. But this was no laughing matter. He had spent far too many hours hiring governesses and then listening to their complaints as they quit. He was through with it. At least a wife wouldn’t be able to leave the situation.
Davenport was still waiting for an answer.
“Six.” Jonathan muttered.
“Six! One a month, then.”
“So it is. Excuse me.”
He set out of the ballroom, hoping that the little monkeys hadn’t invaded the dance floor, but were somewhere on the periphery. Not sensing them or any commotion made by them in the big room, he continued through the ground floor of the house, observing each room as he went, interrupting one scandalous affair that he basically ignored before moving on.
Perhaps the children had actually returned to the nursery, or Mrs. Blonsky had found them, he considered hopefully, already knowing that either idea was too good to be true.
A peal of laughter confirmed that.
He hurried down the corridor to the study, his mind already running over all the kinds of trouble they could find themselves in. He tried to remember if he had locked his desk drawers. He was sure he had, and even if they did manage to break into his ledgers and destroy them, his man-of-business had another set, but still… there was only one man Jonathan completely trusted.
Himself.
Annoyed at the dismal affair, the disappearing governess, and the fact that his niece and nephew couldn’t even give him one night in which they would stay out of trouble, he was not entirely subtle when he pushed open the door, stepping through the opening with determination to end this madness and demonstrate to his niece and nephew exactly what happened when they disobeyed.
Only to find himself momentarily speechless.
For there, sitting demurely in front of the two chairs before his desk, were two little angels, gazing raptly, silently — for once — at the woman before them.
She spoke with exuberance, her hands flying in front of her, her face full of expressions as she spoke of animals and goddesses and nonsense tales.
The children seemed to be enjoying every minute of it.
So much so, that they hadn’t even noticed him. Not yet.
Until suddenly, the woman stopped mid-sentence before turning toward him with her hands still lifted, her mouth rounded in an O.
After the moment in which she was seemingly suspended in time, she threw back the chair so quickly she nearly knocked it over before running a few steps backward.
“My lord, I’m so very sorry, I—”
“Your Grace.”
“Pardon me?” Her cheeks flushed a most becoming shade of red.
“The correct address for a duke is ‘Your Grace.’”
“Yes, Your Grace, of course. My apologies. I did not mean to sit in your chair, it was just that the children told me they were not tired, and I thought perhaps I would tell them a bedtime story. It always used to help me, although ideally they would actually be in their beds and—”
Jonathan took a breath, closing his eyes for a moment as he held up a hand to quell her flow of words.
“You are late, Miss Donahue.”
“Pardon me?” she said again, her eyes wide, revealing the most stunning shade of violet-blue he had ever seen.
“I said that you are late. You are Miss Donahue, are you not?”
“I… Y-yes.”
“Very well. Welcome. Not only are you late, but you have arrived in the middle of a house party, and you are entertaining the children from my chair in my study. But, if you happen to suit with the children, all of that will be overlooked.”
“I—what?” She looked at him in surprise, and he wondered if most employers were stricter. Perhaps he would have to rectify that issue.
“Children,” he said to the twins, “meet your new governess.”
Chapter 2
Calli swallowed hard. Governess? Surely he must be joking. She had agreed, for she had no idea how else to explain her presence in his study, but she had immediately regretted doing so.
She looked down at the two children in front of her, whose smiles had somehow become wicked gleams at the words from their—father?
Panic rose in her breast as she tried to remember what Arie had said, to assume an
air of self-assurance. She tried to focus on the man — the duke’s — actual words.
He assumed her to be a late-arriving governess. Which meant… that she now had an opportunity. An opportunity to study the painting in question in detail. An opportunity to, if she was able to find the time and the right place, paint it to her liking and check it against the original. An opportunity to make her family proud.
She forced a smile onto her face, looking up at the man who wore his handsomeness with an arrogance she found rather off-putting. But she supposed that’s what came with being a duke.
“My apologies for my lateness, Your Grace,” she said, attempting sincerity. “I had… travel trouble. And then when I arrived to see the house party, I was unsure of whether to enter and meet with you, so I was awaiting you here when the children found me.”
It sounded like a perfectly plausible explanation… didn’t it?
“I would suggest that the best place to tell the children a bedtime story would be in their nursery.”
“Uncle, it’s not a nursery,” the boy said, the edge of a whine in his voice. “That is for children, and we are not children anymore.”
“What would you have me call it, then, Matthew?”
“The schoolroom and our bedroom,” he said with a nod of his head that was so confident it made Calli smile. Uncle, he had called this duke. Whatever had happened to these children’s parents?
“Very well. Up you go. In the absence of Mrs. Blonsky, wherever she may be, would you please show Miss Donahue up to her own room?”