by Eva Devon
Duke
Ever After
A Dukes’ Club Novel
By
Eva Devon
Bard Productions
This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters, and incidents are either the work of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events, or locales are entirely coincidental.
Duke Ever After
Copyright © 2016 by Máire Creegan
Kindle Edition
All rights reserved. No redistribution is authorized.
All rights reserved under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any electronic or mechanical means—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without written permission.
For more information: [email protected]
Noelle and Lindsey
You make every journey a dream!
Thank you for holding my hand.
And for my beautiful sons and husband
who as always have taught me the true meaning of love.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Prologue
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
Epilogue
Other Books by Eva Devon
Prologue
Derek was not like other little boys. After all, boys born to be dukes, veritable princes of the realm, were highly unusual little fellows. Now, not even two-day-old Derek was more unusual than most. Oh, it is true that on the day he was born, wine and beer were distributed to every village, every town, every household in the Duke of Aston’s province. Bands did march. Rejoicing was done. Announcements of gargantuan proportions were made.
But little Derek, the source of all this triumphal celebration?
Little Derek was alone in the perfectly appointed, pristine nursery, his tiny face screwed up and red from wailing. His hands curled in tight balls of confusion as they beat the air. The little heir had no idea where his mother was and he wanted her. He wanted her more than anything. More than food. More than light. More than life.
The wet nurse held him close, offering him her breasts, desperate to soothe the troubled little soul. But as if Derek knew from an early age that this world was not to be quite trusted, he wailed away, unwilling to be pacified by a stranger’s offering. No, he’d protest until he had his mother.
Sadly, his determined wait would never end.
For, the Duchess was also alone. Silent in her room, laid back on starched pillows, a simple, white, linen sheet draped her still frame.
After a labor which had been remarkably short, as though young Derek had been tremendously excited to greet the world and the voices he had been hearing for months, he had made a rapid and rather uneventful entrance. Still, his mother, who’d been of surprisingly advanced years for a first birth, had contracted a fever within hours of the birth and, much to the horror of all the servants, died.
The Duke was also alone. Alone that was, except for a large bottle of brandy and a precariously serious secret. One that had to be kept at all costs.
For little Derek, little, perfect Derek, was not the duke’s son at all.
Little, bastard Derek. That’s really who Derek Matthew Lawrence Penworthy, Earl of Trumore and future Duke of Aston, really was. For all those names, he was just a little bastard.
He would be the duke one day, of course. The Duke of Aston had arranged the whole thing so the world might stop laughing at his inability to produce an heir after twenty long years of waiting. Still, even though it was all his plan, he couldn’t quite help hating the little bundle in the nursery for not being his and worst of all for killing his beloved and dutiful wife.
The Duke of Aston had come to recognize one thing as he drank his brandy and listened to the high-pitched sobs of his deceptions which echoed through the cavernous ducal home. God was punishing him. God was punishing him for daring to do other than what God had planned.
And so there was really only one thing to be done. The duke would have to punish Derek, too, so that they all might be forgiven.
Chapter 1
The Duke of Aston had long ago learned that an outrageous and cheerful disposition often left those in his company completely gobsmacked. Whilst the subjects of his acquaintance attempted to gather their rather plebeian thoughts, he was allowed to go about his life with little interference. As a result, he’d become a master of the shocking on dit or riposte.
In fact, the more one gave him a side eye of propriety, the more likely he was to twirl his feathered hat and spout flamboyant inanities. It had taken him years to realize that behavior had such desirable results. Painful years. But one day, he’d simply stopped caring what such a parsimonious parent. . . People, not parent. . . Thought. And he’d reveled in realizing that he could drive his parent. . . People. . . Absolutely stark raving mad by blithely being as bad as one could be.
He’d cultivated a bon vivant air, a love for life, and a desire for all things mad-capped since his eighteenth birthday, the day he’d given up the straight and narrow. But ultimately, his always exuberant air? Well, it was all a bit exhausting and so he cherished his moments alone. Few that they were. But much to his surprise, Scotland seemed an ideal place for solitude and invigorating one’s epidermis.
The frigid water of the sea loch surrounded his naked skin and he stroked through the water, adoring every moment. Scotland had clearly been made by and for the gods. And here, in the salty, freezing, December water, he felt a god, indeed.
He rolled onto his back and stared up at the gray sky which had grown swollen and white. Snow. It would snow soon. God, it would be beautiful when it did. He stared up at the perfect sky, facing facts.
It was time to go abroad again. He knew it. He was forming far too close attachments as of late. It was hard not to admire his new friends and their wives. But with friendship came expectations and Derek knew full well that he was the bane of expectation.
And well, when one was born a bastard, really one might as well behave like one.
A dark swirl of thought entered his brain and, for a moment, the wind lashing over the loch sounded distinctly like the whistle of a cane swinging down.
He sucked in a breath and dropped beneath the bobbing surface.
After a long moment, he bobbed up and to his shock a slender body swam not three feet from him, delicate arm over arm, legs kicking against the waves.
He let out a bellow of alarm, for surely only a selkie, a mythical Celtic creature, would appear so suddenly in the sea water.
The swimmer paused, then her head appeared. Stunning red locks flowed down her back and framed an elfin face. She turned and blinked slightly almond-shaped eyes. She then grinned a most gamine grin, her lips, due to the cold, a striking red against her pale skin. “Lovely day for a swim!”
And with that, she struck off, her feet leaving a froth of water in her wake.
Aston gaped as she swam rapidly away.
He would have been certain she
was a figment of his imagination if it wasn’t for the fact that he could still see her swimming away from him, across the loch.
She certainly didn’t seem in distress. And yet, a young woman swimming naked in the sea loch in December? Where was her decorum? Where was her delicacy? Where were her brains?
Perhaps like he, she had none of these.
Well, he did have brains, but they seemed quite different from everyone else’s.
How marvelous! How could he let such a creature go? He couldn’t. It was as simple as that. Someone so deliciously odd had to be pursued.
It was true; logic suggested that he let her swim out of sight and that he not bother with her. Strange females in lochs were all well and good in legendary tales, but he had a sneaking suspicion they were the very devil in real life.
Yet, as he continued to stare, he found himself putting arm over arm, kicking firmly in her direction.
She was remarkably fast. In fact, even with his longer reach, she was keeping a good distance between them, until suddenly she stopped, twisted in the water and gave him a look.
There was no simple description for it.
Her crimson eyebrow shot up, her lush lips compressed and she stared at him as if he were a right idiot. Her stunning green eyes flashed with a temper that promised a passion as wild these Highlands.
“I do beg your pardon, mon, but are you following me?”
Her voice lilted and flowed over him like highly distilled whisky. It burned and soothed at once. It also immediately struck him that though she had a burr, her voice was that of his class. She was more and more mysterious by the moment. Young ladies did not, did not, swim naked in lochs any time of year, let alone December.
To her challenge he replied, “Uh. . .”
The look intensified.
Shockingly, it left him utterly flummoxed. Was she a witch then? With the evil eye? The power to stun her victims? For he’d never been so silenced or thoroughly amazed by a woman and her look.
She rolled her eyes and heaved a sigh of exasperation as if quite used to dealing with men whose wits had gone wandering.
“It’s most rude, you know. Following me,” she said. “Given I don’t know your intentions.”
He blinked. Aha. Well, of course. It had been rather thoughtless of him, big fellow that he was swimming after the nymph. For all she knew, he might be a crazed loon.
She didn’t look particularly concerned though.
“Are you deaf?” she asked, her brow lowering ever so slightly.
He shook his head and finally managed, “My intentions?”
As he continued to tread water, he realized he didn’t really know his own intentions. His instincts had simply insisted he follow and so he had.
“Aye. Do you mean to drown me in the loch, have your way with me, or were you planning to ask me to tea?”
A slow grin pulled at his lips. “Do you wish me to be frank?”
“I find it best and I’m starting to feel the chill.”
Feel the chill, indeed. They were both going to turn into bobbing human ices within the next minutes if they continued to float about like this.
“I’d like to ply you with drink,” he said honestly, “and have my way with you. But only if you were most enthusiastic about the whole business.”
Her eyes flared but then she laughed, a merry sound. “It’s glad I am to hear you want me willing, but no.”
“No?” He was captivated by the sound of that laugh. It was a laugh that promised joy in all things no matter how bad things got, and well. . . He knew things could become exceptionally bad in this life.
Her lips twitched as if she were fighting a smile. “No.”
He stared again. Flummoxed again. He didn’t scare her which pleased him greatly. In fact, he had the decided feeling that despite his masculinity and size, he amused her. He was used to amusing people. He’d made it his life’s goal to be amusing and, yet, it was more than that. She found him trivial. It was in her entire demeanor.
That, he didn’t care for.
“Now, good day to—”
“You’ll not even let me try to persuade you?” he cut in.
This time, both her brows rose, her pale face astonished. “Well, I can’t stop you from the attempt though it will only lead to your own frustration. Now, it’s freezing. Do you intend to keep following me?”
“I do.”
“I thought so.” She sighed again, her breath blowing white in the air. “I’m heading for my clothes. If you’ve a scrap of decency, you’ll let me get there a good distance before you.”
“You’re in luck. I’ve just a scrap.” Which wasn’t true. He didn’t actually even have that but he wasn’t about to tell her such a thing.
With that, she turned and started back upon her path across the loch.
The towering mountains, or as they said in the Highlands, bens, were touched with snow and shored up directly on either side of the loch.
He wondered where she was headed until he spotted the little cove up ahead with a small, stone beach.
Though he, too, felt the cold biting into his limbs, just the thought of her made waiting bearable. His desire to linger in her strange company was as much a mystery to himself as she was. After all, females liked him. In general, they had a tendency to giggle and go all soft when he was about. He didn’t mind. But this was far more interesting.
Bloody hell, but she was a stunner.
And while he had agreed to give her time to get out of the loch, even from this distance, he couldn’t miss her perfect, pale body emerge from the waves.
She ran up the pebbled shore, causing her bum to bounce delightfully. My God, he’d love to cup those rounds in his hands.
A wiser man would have swum in the other direction given her interesting discourse, for she had been neither a siren tempting him to sin nor a chaste saint castigating him for his devilry. Truth be told, she’d taken their whole meeting in stride as if coming upon naked men in the loch was a daily occurrence. Yes. There it was again. She found him to be trivial. Someone not to be overly bothered about.
Yes. She was odd. It was the only explanation for her strange behavior. Odd was good. Odd was bloody marvelous. In fact, he found himself suddenly longing to expose just how odd he was to her so that he might finally feel as though he wasn’t quite so alone. Impossible, of course, but he couldn’t deny the temptation.
Temptation wasn’t something he usually resisted.
He liked women. He always had. All kinds of women and, so over the years, he’d become a bit of a connoisseur but, at present, he was having a damnable time putting his finger on just what sort of young woman had come across his path this day.
She crouched down to a bundle on the rocks and whipped a long, billowing gown over her head, shoved her feet into some shoes, then wrapped a long tartan about her body.
Could she be a peasant? He’d dismissed it earlier, but from her shabby dress was it possible? Not on his life. So, what then did her simple clothes say?
A woman down on her luck? Perfect. He’d make himself useful in more ways than one.
Feeling buoyed by this thought, he started for the shore now that she was clothed.
As he took his first steps onto the pebbles, he didn’t miss that her eyes had turned into twin rounds of amazement as she swept her gaze up and down his form.
He reveled in it. Finally, something about him had impressed her.
Her white cheeks bloomed crimson as her gaze rested on his cock.
He liked his cock and he wasn’t at all ashamed of it. Now, it did suddenly occur to him that if she was a young lady of a certain sort of birth, a man emerging from the waves completely naked might be a bit of a shock. Still, it was too late to go back now and, really, the sooner she got used to the sight of him naked, the sooner he could please her until all her wits had melted with mutual bliss.
“You’re not exactly modest, are you?” she asked, her gaze still locked on his groin.
> He laughed. “No. Should I be?”
“If you must know, I don’t have enough knowledge to make any sort of comparison. So, I can’t. . . I can’t tell you if your confidence is warranted. But you do seem. . . Seem. . .”
“Yes?” he prompted.
She swallowed and dragged her gaze up to his eyes. “To be exceptional.”
“Why, thank you.”
“Now, don’t get all fluffed up like a cock in the hen house. It’s an observation, not a compliment.”
“You don’t like it then?” he asked.
She opened her mouth, apparently to give him some sort of blistering set down but then she stopped and allowed her gaze to lower again. “Intellectually, I’ve no idea if I should like it or not. If you must know.”
He laughed again. In all his life, and in all the conversations he’d had, none had gone quite like this. “Intellectually? How about physically?”
She pursed her lips in contemplation. “You’re causing a reaction I’ve never experienced.”
“Am I, indeed? A pleasant one? Or a horror-struck one?”
“A most strange one.” She frowned, her chest noticeably rising and falling in quick breaths.
She did find him attractive. Whatever else, the primitive part of her was moved by his presence.
“Aren’t you cold?” she burst out, as if desperate to distract herself.
“With your eyes on me? How could I be?”
“I don’t think I understand that and as fascinating as all this is, I’m not sure this conversation is a good idea.”
“And why is that?”
“Because this is not a dramatic novel. I am not about to let some strange man ruin me in December, on a shore. I have standards.”
He gaped. “You’re not opposed to ruination then? Just these circumstances.”
She snapped her mouth shut and folded her arms under her breasts. The action, given his years of experience, should not have been distracting. It was. In fact, he felt about fifteen again, desperately wishing to see his first nude woman.