Runaway Duchess (London Ladies Book 1)

by Jillian Eaton

  Gavin swallowed with visible difficulty and Charlotte took his hand. How odd it felt, and yet how right at the same time, to be the one giving comfort. It steadied her, grounded her, and without speaking she leaned up on her tiptoes to press a soft kiss to his cheek. “I am going to have a bath drawn,” she whispered into his ear, “and go lay down in our bed. Will you come to me when you are done with this?”

  “I need to know why—” he began, but she silenced him by pressing a finger to his lips.

  “I will tell you everything,” she promised. “But first, I need to bathe and change and you need to arrange to have him taken away.”

  He gave a hard, tense jerk of his head which she took for a ‘yes’. Looping her arms around his neck she squeezed him tight, as though to reassure herself of his realness, before she stepped around and left the room without sparing Dobson a second glance.

  Gavin waited until Charlotte had closed the door behind her to kneel over Dobson. Staring down at the bruised, battered face of his butler he felt neither regret nor sympathy for the beating he had inflicted. Dobson’s wounds would heal with time; his nose worse for wear, his jaw never working quite right again, but he would recover, and he would live if the court so wished it. One thing was for certain: he would never touch Charlotte again.

  “If not for her I would choke the life out of you with my bare hands. You hurt the one person most precious to me in the entire world. If you had killed her…” Unable to finish the threat for the rage pulsing through him, Gavin stood up.

  He made the necessary arrangements, and Dobson was dealt with accordingly. Still unconscious he was loaded into a carriage and taken to Newgate where Gavin’s money and influence would ensure he remained imprisoned for the rest of his miserable life. He sent Ernie along to ensure the butler ended up where he was supposed to and went upstairs to find Charlotte.

  She was sleeping curled up on his side of the bed, her hands tucked between her thighs and a line of worry creasing her brow. Smoothing away the line with a kiss, Gavin silently undressed and stretched out beside her.

  She had changed into a ivory nightgown with a high neck and long sleeves trimmed with lace, but the soft fabric was unable to cover all of her bruises. They were already turning purple and would be darker still by morning, temporary tattoos that spoke silently of the abuse she suffered.

  There had been bruises on Dobson as well, he recalled. Bruises not delivered by his own hand. Charlotte had fought for her life. Even faced with outstanding odds she had not given up, nor given in. She was a true warrior, both inside and out. It would be a foolish man who ever thought he could stand against her. Thankfully Gavin did not consider himself foolish.

  If his soul had not already belonged to her he would give it to her now. She deserved it. She deserved everything: his love, his adoration, and his devotion. Without her he was only half of a whole, and while it had not taken her near death to make him realize what he felt in his heart was real, it was the urging he needed to tell her his true feelings, for the thought of something happening to her without her knowing the depth of his love was more than he could stand.

  It was early yet – the sun was only just setting – but with his arms wrapped protectively around her slight body and his eyes drifting closed, a deep sleep claimed him within moments.

  Charlotte’s dreams were of Gavin.

  His voice. His touch. His heartbeat.

  He consumed her, and when she woke it was not in a blind, fearful panic, but slowly and softly, summoned by the gentle stroke of his fingertips along the long, sweeping curve of her arm.

  When her eyes blinked open she stared into his eyes, and when he smiled she smiled, and when he kissed her she kissed him back.

  “Good morning,” she murmured sleepily once they had broken apart.

  “Good morning,” he returned, his voice husky and deep.

  For a long time they simply basked in the glow of each other as they had never done before; accepting and receiving each other’s love in a silent ebb and flow that filled Charlotte with contentment. When Gavin’s expression grew serious, she took a deep breath and shared what had happened with Dobson as thoroughly as she could, leaving no part, no matter how trivial, unspoken.

  He listened without question, his face expressionless save the darkening of his eyes when she divulged the duke’s involvement.

  “Paine will never plague you again,” he vowed when she was finished. “You have my word.”

  Charlotte did not ask what he intended. That chapter of her life was closed, and she was ready for the next to begin. Whether Gavin liked it or not she was going to tell him exactly how she felt. She knew he loved her. She knew it. Whether he chose to share his own feelings would be up to him. Her depth of love for him would remain unchanged either way, and having faced down a man drowning in the depths of insanity she rather thought telling her own husband she loved him would be quite easy by comparison.

  “Gavin, I have been meaning to tell you—”

  “Charlotte, there is something I must say—”

  Wide-eyed they stopped speaking at the same time, and Charlotte laughed. “Go on,” she said, gesturing with her free hand. The other was tucked snugly against Gavin’s chest. She rested her head comfortably on his pillow, breathing in his scent, a scent that had become as familiar to her as her own.

  Gavin leaned up on one elbow. He stared down at her, his expression softened by the light in his eyes, and said, “I know what I am and I know what I am not. I am not a high born lord, no matter how hard I strive to play the part, and I know I do not deserve a high born lady as my wife.”

  “Oh, for goodness sake—”

  “Hush.” His scowl was fierce and completely feigned. “I am speaking, woman.”

  “Woman, is it?” One russet eyebrow arched. “Say that again and we shall see if you can speak without a tongue in your mouth.”

  He grinned. “You take down one butler and turn blood thirsty. The poor man never had a chance.”

  “He didn’t, did he?” she agreed happily. In the light of day with Gavin by her side, she felt as though she could have taken on a hundred Dobson’s. “But go on. I am sorry for interrupting.”

  Gavin tugged on her hair, now contained in one long braid that looped over her shoulder. “Where was I?”

  “You were telling me how you do not deserve me. Which is positively absurd. I could have been a duchess, you know, and if titles and status meant a farthing to me I would be one now. But I am not. I am not because a handsome stranger came to my rescue and swept me off my feet. You are not a lord, Gavin. You are a knight. A knight who rescued a damsel in distress.”

  He snorted. “I am about as much of a knight as you are a damsel in distress.”

  “You do not think I am a damsel?”

  “A red haired hellion more like it.”

  She bared her teeth and struck him lightly on the arm. “Be nice.”

  “I am trying. You are making this exceedingly difficult.”

  “I am making what difficult?”

  Gavin grimaced. “I am trying to tell you that I love you, but you will not be quiet enough for me to get the words out.”

  For the first time in her entire life, Charlotte was shocked into true and absolute silence. Her mouth opened and closed, but no sound came out. Then, to her utter humiliation, she burst into tears.

  “Charlotte.” All of the blood drained from Gavin’s face. “I did not mean to upset you. I… Please stop crying.”

  “You – you – you love me,” she wailed.

  “I do. I mean, I do not, not if you do not want me to. You do?” he asked uncertainly when she nodded her head frantically up and down. “Then why are you crying?”

  “Because I am so h-h-happy.” Hiccupping, Charlotte used the edge of the sheet to blot at her face and took a deep, shuddering breath. “I love you too. I have loved you, almost since the beginning.” It felt as though something were blooming inside of her chest. Something bright and bea
utiful and oh so perfect. Smiling through what remained of her tears she nestled into the crook of his arm. “Even when I was so angry at you I could scream I still loved you. You make me very angry sometimes,” she confessed in a low whisper.

  “You make me angry as well.”

  “I do not suppose that will change.”

  “No, I do not suppose it will.”

  Wanting to say everything that was in her heart, she gazed up at him in earnest. “And I truly do not care that you are not a lord. That does not matter to me. It never did. I love you for who you are, not what you are. If you never worked another day in your life and I had to – to bake bread I would do it with a smile on my face, as long as you were next to me.”

  Gavin rubbed his chin. “If you know how to bake bread, why am I paying for a cook?”

  “You are impossible.”

  “But you love me,” he said with a contented sigh.

  “But I love you,” she agreed. “Every stubborn, disagreeable inch of you.”

  “And I love every stubborn, disagreeable inch of you.”

  In the end, it was not the perfect declaration of undying love Charlotte had always dreamed of. But it suited her far better, and in the years that followed, when their stubbornness led to arguments and their arguments to fights and their fights to lusty bouts of lovemaking, she often thought of that morning and was content in knowing that she would not have changed a single word.

  About the Author

  Jillian Eaton grew up in Maine and now resides in Pennsylvania. When she isn't writing, Jillian is doing her best to keep up with her three boys under four. She loves horses, coffee, getting email from readers, ducks, and staying up late finishing a good book.

  She isn't very fond of doing laundry.

  www.jillianeaton.com

  The London Ladies

  Four stories about four independent, high-spirited

  women and the men who capture their hearts…

  Runaway Duchess

  Spinster and the Duke

  Forgotten Fiancée

  Lady Harper

  Read on for a special sneak peek excerpt at

  Spinster and the Duke, available for preorder now!

  Spinster and the Duke

  PROLOGUE

  June, 1785

  Ashburn Estate

  The ring felt heavy on her finger.

  Staring down at the thick gold band with the Ashburn family crest engraved into the middle, Abigail blinked back tears. Do not cry in front of him, she ordered herself silently. Don’t you dare.

  “Abby, I… I am sorry.” Looking supremely uncomfortable, Rocky – better known to his peers as Reginald Browning the Third, Marquess of Rutherford and future Duke of Ashburn – ran his fingers through his thick brown hair and scowled down at the floor. “I never wanted it to end like this.”

  Abigail never wanted it to end at all, even though some small part of her knew – had always known, perhaps – that it would. She was the daughter of a baron. Rocky was the sole heir to a dukedom. Their love was never meant to last.

  “I want you to take the ring,” she said softly.

  “No, Abby, you keep—”

  But it was already off her finger. She clenched it tight in her fist, feeling the weight of it, the smoothness. It had felt so right on her hand that she’d let herself believe… but no. Some things were simply not meant to be, no matter how much you wished it otherwise.

  “It was never mine to keep.” She opened her fingers and the ring fell with a quiet plink onto the table between them. Straightening in her chair Abigail gazed past Rocky to the window. It was partially open, allowing a warm breeze to flutter through the stuffy parlor. She pulled at the high collar of her gown and took a deep, steadying breath. “I should be going now.”

  For one fleeting moment she thought Rocky was going to change his mind. A tiny flame of hope flickered within her, only to be abruptly extinguished when he stood up and formerly offered his arm as though she was a passing acquaintance instead of the girl he had pledged his heart to.

  Do not cry. Whatever you do, do not cry.

  Her chest aching with the force it took to hold her tears at bay, Abigail walked beside him in stiff legged silence. When they reached the grand foyer she hesitated, her gaze trained on the door that would not only take her outside to the carriage that waited to take her home, but out of Rocky’s life forever.

  “Abby…”

  She detested the quiet plea in his voice. He wanted her to leave without a fuss so he could go on with his life as though she never existed. So he could sweep the memory of her beneath the rug as though she were dust.

  Abigail lifted her chin. She may not have been the woman the Dowager Duchess of Ashburn wanted her eldest son and heir to marry, but that did not make her dirt. She was not some secret mistress or scandalous affair. She was Rocky’s fiancée – or at least she had been, before she took his ring off her finger and put it on the table.

  “I am going to live with my sister in Leeds,” she informed him. “She has a young daughter and is need of a governess.”

  Reggie’s blue eyes went wide. “I do not want you to leave.”

  Abigail regarded him steadily, schooling her countenance to hide the fact that she was perilously close to tears. “But you do not love me enough to want me to stay.”

  He dropped her arm and stepped back, his jaw tightening and clenching as he fought to disguise his own emotions. At twenty-two, Reggie was a boy on the verge of manhood. He was undeniably handsome with dark hair, piercing eyes the same color of the sky on a cold winter’s day, and chiseled features. He would be handsomer still in time, and Abigail felt a renewed sense of loss as she realized she would never know the man he would one day grow to be.

  “Do not do this Abby,” he said gruffly. “We said our goodbyes. There is no need to make this harder than it already is.”

  There was every need, but Abigail merely nodded. The time for words had passed. There was nothing else she could say. Nothing else she could do. “I hope you have a happy life.” Shoulders pulled back, hazel eyes sparkling with unshed tears, she took a deep breath and walked out the door.

  CHAPTER ONE

  September, 1815

  Marseilles, France

  The funeral was short and bittersweet.

  Standing over the freshly dug grave of the woman he had called his wife for twenty seven years, Reginald disguised his quiet grieving behind a mask of stoicism. The stiff autumn air pulled at his cloak, sweeping it off his shoulders. Beneath the swath of black fabric he stood tall, a formidable man even at the progressed age of fifty and two.

  His hair was more gray than brown now and wrinkles creased his face, but time had treated him fairly and aged him well, rather like a fine wine that grew more potent as the years passed it by.

  Murmuring a quiet prayer, Reginald knelt to lay a single white rose on the overturned earth and with one final, lingering glance bowed his head and walked away from Theresa’s final resting sight. She was beside her parents now, which he knew she would have vastly preferred to being brought back to England and buried at Ashburn, an estate she had never cared for nor frequented more than a handful of times.

  Their lives had been in France, much to his mother’s everlasting dismay. It was where they built a home. Where Theresa bore him three daughters. Where one of them died before her fifth birthday. Where they learned to live, and even occasionally laugh, together. Their union was never intended to be a love match, but there had always been affection and respect both given and received.

  If they found physical comforts beyond the marriage bed neither complained and in the later years of their marriage when they lived separate lives, both of them were content in the knowledge they had always been kind to one another.

  Leaving the small, well-tended graveyard behind Reginald followed a narrow footpath to the bluffs that ran along the edge of the property. It was a cold, blustery day and the salt air stung his eyes, summoning tears he wi
ped briskly away.

  Soon it would be winter. Theresa’s beloved gardens would go dormant and the cold would gnaw mercilessly at his aching bones. Pinching the bridge of his nose, Reginald wondered when the bloody hell he’d grown so old.

  This winter would be his fifty second. It was a lifetime for some. A fleeting second for others. Where had the time gone? To a wife he cared for but did not love. To children he loved but did not know.

  With Theresa dead and buried, there was nothing left for him here. His two daughters had moved on years before, drawn back to England to begin and raise families of their own. He missed them, but as he stood on the edge of the cliff and stared down at the waves crashing violently in a spray of raging white surf against the rocks below, Reginald did not think of his daughters or his grandchildren or even his deceased wife. He thought, as he always had, as he always did, of Abby.

  And he yearned.

  Abigail had only one thing on her mind.

  Crumpets.

  Bustling through her small, tidy townhouse – the passage of the time may have given her more gray hairs than she would have liked, but it had done nothing to dull her energy – she zipped through the parlor, whisked through the foyer, and came up short in the kitchen, an expression of horror slowly dawning on her face as she took in the porcelain plate sitting empty on the table.

  “The crumpets. What happened to the crumpets?”

  “I ate them all.” Stepping out from behind an open cupboard balancing a stack of white serving plates trimmed with delicate pink roses, Lady Dianna Foxcroft – Abigail’s beloved niece and apparent devourer of sweet – smiled innocently at her aunt.

  A remarkably pretty young woman with short blond curls, a heart shaped face boasting two matching dimples, and cornflower blue eyes, Dianna lived on the other side of the park with her parents but frequented Abigail’s townhouse more than she did her own. The two shared a close bond, one that had been forged during Dianna’s childhood when her parents dedicated more time to their various social causes than they did to their only child.