The Duke

by Katharine Ashe

  “No.” He pushed up onto his elbow.

  Her gaze went to his arm. A flush of pink began on her cheeks then trailed down her neck to her chest where, beneath his gaze, her nipples were stirring to peaks. She breathed deeply, swallowed, and her eyes shifted back to his.

  “I—” she said, and drew another thick breath. “What were we talking about?”

  He wanted to laugh. Instead he said, “Tell me what you desire.”

  A dart wrinkled the bridge of her nose and she lowered her gaze.

  “I am—I am not accustomed to speaking my desires in the bedchamber,” she said quick and quietly, and then firmer: “Anywhere. I am not accustomed to speaking my desires anywhere. Too often I have been told they are wrong. Misguided. Ill-conceived. Improper. Unchaste.” She lifted her eyes and defiant fire sparked in the cloverleaves. “I think perhaps that I run because I do not wish to be told that I may not.”

  “You want me,” he said. “Tell me how.”

  “What if you do not want what I want?”

  “There is nothing you could want o’ me that I dinna want. Trust me.”

  “Trust you,” she whispered as though tasting the words. “That,” she said abruptly, looking down. “I want that.”

  “My arm?”

  “That muscle. There. The one you use to chop wood.” Her lips were quivering.

  “It requires more than the use o’ one muscle to chop wood.”

  “That one is . . .” In the candlelight the dark flush was a shadow across her face and breasts. “It is beautiful.” She met his gaze and her shoulders rose and fell on swift, hard breaths. “I want to bite it. And lick it.”

  “My God, woman, what are you waiting for?”

  She laughed and the joy in the music of it made him mad to touch her. He turned her onto her back and kissed her mouth, then her throat, then the luscious curve of her breast. Slipping his hand between her legs, he stroked her. She sighed, and then moaned, and rose to him.

  “What—” She gasped. “What of my request to bite and lick—oh-ohh—that muscle?”

  “You needna request, lass. Just do.”

  Springing up, she did, grabbing hold of his arm and pinning her beautiful lips to his skin. Then her hands were on his chest, pressing him back as she lavished him with her teeth and he felt it in his hardening cock.

  Mouth on his arm, she straddled his waist, spread her thighs, and pleasured herself on him. It was stunning, the passion of her body, her fluid eagerness, the hunger in her mouth. When she began whimpering, he surrounded her buttocks with his hands and pressed his finger inside her.

  She gasped and cried out, crying again as she accepted him deeper, and then letting him ease her against the shaft of his cock. Then the tremors rose in her, and she sobbed, the sound breaking from her throat as she bore down on him, her body entirely open, shuddering, his.

  “Now,” she said. “Make another of my dreams come true.”

  She let him take her, rocking herself onto him, bucking when he touched her and matched his caresses to his thrusts. She called his name and he told her he loved her, twice, and then a third time because she asked him to.

  She was wrapped in his arms with her back against his chest and their legs tangled, and she had finally caught her breaths when he said, “I made a pact with the devil.”

  She turned her head and her cheek brushed across his whiskers.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “’Tis I who should beg yours.”

  She swiveled around in his arms and placed her palms on his chest.

  “Perhaps you should explain.”

  “Seven months after I left Kingston, Theia came into a fierce storm. She was breaking apart. I’d eighty-four men aboard. I made a pact with the devil.”

  “I see.”

  “You’re no’ shocked.”

  “I have read a lot of scripture.” Her lips were beautiful. “What was the pact?”

  “I told him that if he brought all my men through the storm alive, I’d give him what I wanted most in the world.”

  “Let me guess: a golden ship. Or, no—a chest full of gold. Or—” She gasped. “You did not promise Haiknayes!”

  “No. Something I wanted much more than Haiknayes,” he said. “Someone.”

  She blinked. “Me?”

  “I promised him that if I ever had you for a single night, an entire night, he could take me away after that an’ I’d no’ resist.”

  She did not speak for a full minute.

  “Only the one night?” she finally said.

  “Aye.”

  “Not the day too?”

  He screwed his brow up. “Well, at the time I was still plenty angry with you.”

  Laughter cracked from her. Smiling, he drew her tight against him.

  “Did all of your men live?” she said quite soberly.

  “Aye.”

  “Yet here we are.”

  “For now.”

  “This is not our first entire night together.”

  “At Kallin—”

  “I left after dawn,” she said. “That was our first night.”

  He ducked his head to look into her eyes. “Sailors are a superstitious breed, lass.”

  “Apparently.” She traced a fingertip along his jaw.

  “That night, in the chapel,” he said, “I needed you to marry me.”

  “Needed?”

  “So that if you had me that night, as beneath the stairs you’d said you wanted, I would know that if the devil took me afterward, everything I had would be yours.”

  Her eyes filled with tears.

  “You needn’t have feared,” she whispered, as he kissed her brow and cheeks and the tip of her nose. “For it was not the devil who saw you through that storm.”

  “No?”

  “I prayed for you. Every day.”

  His lips stilled on her hair.

  “For your safety at sea,” she said. “Every day for months and months, even though you had abandoned me. I could not cease loving you.” She reached up and drew his mouth to hers. “So you see, Devil’s Duke, all of this time you have been misnamed.”

  “It seems so,” he said, and smiled through her kisses. “What name will you invent for me now that all the others no longer suit?”

  She tasted his mouth again, then again, and pressed her nose to his skin and breathed him in.

  “A name that I think has suited you all along.”

  “Aye, lass? What’s that?”

  She whispered, “Mine.”

  Epilogue

  Home

  26 May 1823

  HMS Patriarch

  Lat. 41, Long. –35

  Dear Gabe,

  Who knew sailors could be so tetchy when woken in the middle of the night by the wails of a colicky child? I have instructed Luke’s nurse to bring him to me when this occurs, for—astonishingly—I have a calming effect on him.

  He will soon be in the arms of his aunts and grandmother, and I will be on my knees begging their forgiveness so they might award me the continued care of him—if I am not imprisoned. A fine is more likely—gold for a man’s life—which will never, however, remove the stains from my soul. I fear, cousin, that, years from now when the time comes for us to depart this earth, our paths will finally diverge forever: mine downward, yours in the opposite direction.

  Until then, your duchess has requested regular news of her nephew, which I shall gladly supply.

  J. S. B.

  9 June 1823

  Haiknayes Castle

  Dear Emmie,

  Have you ever shorn a sheep? It is fantastically difficult! I made a hash of it, with tufts of wool flying all over the place. I laughed until I actually fell on the ground. Gabriel had to pick me up and carry me home.

  I am thrilled by the news that Brittle & Sons will print a second edition of Tabitha’s memoir so soon! She writes to me that Thomas is already scheduling more of her public lectures throughout England—they are drawing enormous crow
ds. With the profits she wishes to establish a modiste shop in Edinburgh. She often speaks of returning to Jamaica for her sisters, whom she misses dreadfully, and freeing them if she is able. Thomas intends to accompany her. The depth of their love has surprised them both, I think.

  My best to Colin, and Gabriel’s to both of you too. (He sits beside me now, paging through the shipping report. Once a sailor, always a sailor—which suits me perfectly.)

  With love,

  Amy

  October 1823

  Haiknayes Castle

  Midlothian, Scotland

  “They will come!” Amarantha entered the library waving a letter.

  Lifting his attention from the pages strewn before him, Gabriel smiled. She came to him, slid onto his lap, and took his face between her hands. He encircled her waist with his arms and she kissed him.

  “Who will come?” he murmured when she finally released his lips.

  “The Duke of Loch Irvine’s most accomplished baker and her husband, Bess and Angus Allen. We will have the most delectable cakes in all the land.”

  “You invited them here? To stay?”

  “There is no blacksmith for miles around, which is ridiculous, and Nathaniel declined to come since Mary Tarry invited him to live at the Solstice. Now there is a romance of which we can be proud.”

  “Aye.” His hands moved lower.

  “And I cannot eat one more of Mrs. Hook’s terrible biscuits. Thus, my invitation.” She swiveled on his lap to peer at the papers and felt the bulge of his desire pressing into her behind. Closing her eyes she shifted against it. “How is it that you can be doing dull correspondence, yet this.”

  “I have but to see you.” His palm surrounded her breast and he drew aside her hair and kissed the nape of her neck. Amarantha leaned into it.

  “What is the dull correspondence?”

  “A letter to the architect we will engage for the property in Edinburgh,” he said muffled against her skin. “So it seems we are at cross purposes with Bess and Angus.”

  “Absolutely not,” she said on a little sigh. His fingers were doing what she liked best on her breast. “We will be fabulously eccentric and convey our baker and blacksmith around with us like ancient kings did.”

  “Practical.” His mouth was hot and deliciously good on her throat.

  “Isn’t it? Mm. But—architect? We cannot afford an architect. We cannot afford a new house!”

  “We’ve come into a bit o’ money.”

  With a twist of her body, she forced him to meet her gaze. “From where?”

  “Your father.”

  “My father? How? When?”

  “Last November, in fact.”

  Her eyes widened. “Did he—oh, no—my mother—good heavens—did he—did my father make you an offer for me? Last year?”

  “He did.”

  “Yet you did not tell me?” She leaped off his lap. “I cannot believe it.”

  “You are justified in your disbelief, love.” He smiled and proffered a letter. “I read it for the first time just now.”

  She snatched it and read.

  “It seems your sister told him that you went to Kallin before even returning to Shropshire.”

  “Yes, of course.” She glanced up from the letter.

  “Because you couldna stay away from me,” he said with a one-sided smile of pure masculine confidence. “Because you loved me even then.”

  “It was luck that took me there,” she said, drawing both of her lips tightly between her teeth.

  “’Twas strategy,” he replied.

  Her eyes twinkled. She looked again at the letter. “Why did you read it only now?”

  “It went missing in a pile o’ correspondence while I was traveling. I’ve only just found it.”

  “It is a lot of money.”

  “Still opposed to dowries?”

  “The exchanging of money for women? Yes.” A mischievous smile graced her lips. “Perhaps we could call it a wedding gift.”

  “Aye,” he said.

  “We could lay the new fences on the southern hill,” she said.

  “Aye.”

  “And repair the—”

  “Aye.”

  “And rebuild the—”

  “Aye.”

  “And still have—”

  “More than half left to send to Kallin.”

  She climbed back onto his lap and encircled his shoulders with her arms.

  “How kind of my father to give us such a substantial wedding gift.”

  “You dinna mind it?”

  “If it will make you happy, I am happy.”

  “Woman, you are all I need to be happy.”

  She let him draw her close. Eyes closed, she felt the even cadence of his breathing and the hard beating of his heart, the solid muscle and bone of him, and his arms so strong around her. Joy pressed outward beneath every inch of her skin.

  “Am I glowing?” she whispered.

  “Glowing?”

  “I have swallowed the sun.”

  His arms tightened.

  “Now,” he said into her hair, “I’ve a gift for you.”

  She leaned back. “For what occasion?”

  “Our anniversary.”

  “Married five and a half months does not an anniversary make,” she said skeptically.

  “Come.” Lacing his fingers through hers, he led her from the room and down the narrow winding stairs, then out of the keep and onto the hill.

  They walked hand in hand through the grass and the cool, sunny brilliance of the day was all about them, golden and red leaves drifting from the trees, the hillside emerald, the music of autumn in the wind that curled her skirts about her legs and carried the birds’ songs.

  Months earlier in the summer, on the apex of the highest hill within sight of the castle, he had strung a carved wooden swing from a branch of a big old tree. Here, he said, she could pause in her travels about the estate, and from the castle he would be able to see her.

  To this tree and swing they now came. On the seat was a small box of very fine wood. She opened it.

  “A backgammon set! It is our anniversary,” she exclaimed, and looked up into his eyes full of shadows that she adored.

  “I love you, Captain.”

  “An’ I you, wild one.” Bending his head, he laid the softest of kisses on her lips. Then another kiss, somewhat more ardent. And another. Then they were in each other’s arms and entirely oblivious to the breeze and the sunshine and everything but the pleasure of each other.

  Decidedly breathless, she took his hand and, intertwining their fingers, drew him down to sit on the grass.

  “Now,” she said without releasing him, “concerning the question of luck versus strategy, I have come to believe that a combination of both is often the best approach . . .”

  Historical Inspiration & Thank-Yous

  A few decades ago sweeping historical romances were all the rage. As of the writing of this novel, however, “Regency” historical romances that include dozens of characters, span many years, and take place in multiple unfamiliar locations are far less common. But I was weaned on Dorothy Dunnett and John Jakes, as well as Tolkien and McCaffrey, and occasionally I adore writing big novels as much as I enjoy reading them. So when Amarantha and Gabriel and the women of Kallin explained the story they wished me to write for them, (despite not inconsiderable anxiety) I bowed to the request.

  To my readers who love my books, whether big or small or somewhere in between, I am so happy you found me and honored that you stay with me. And to my editor, Lucia Macro, who not only does not counsel me against writing books like this, but improves them immeasurably, as well as to everyone at HarperCollins who brings them so beautifully to bookshelves—especially my publisher Liate Stehlik, and Carolyn Coons, Shawn Nicholls, Caroline Perny, and everyone in the Production and Art Departments, among others—I offer thanks upon thanks.

  The history of the Caribbean in the early nineteenth century is incredibly com
plex. The actions of individuals, communities, and entire nations during this period are equally as horrifying and heartbreaking as they are fascinating and inspiring. Indeed I found in real history every inspiration for Gabriel’s project at Kallin and for Amarantha’s twisty, turny path toward understanding the wide world and her own heart.

  The story of the women of Kallin first took root in my imagination when I read The History of Mary Prince: A West Indian Slave, a short memoir by a former enslaved woman, in which she describes decades of abuse and suffering at the hands of her captors, as well as her religious conversion and marriage in the West Indies, and her escape during a journey to England. Olaudah Equiano’s earlier and much longer memoir, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, was wildly popular in England (eight editions were published between 1789 and 1797, while Equiano traveled throughout England giving lectures that were attended by hundreds), and helped inspire Parliament to pass The Slave Trade Act of 1807, which criminalized the trade from Africa. Both memoirs inspired in my imagination the idea for Torquil Sterling’s project—and Gabriel’s secret—as well as Tabitha’s story.

  Mary Prince’s narrative begins with a preface by Thomas Pringle, a Scotsman who offered her a paying job after she escaped her captors, and who saw to publishing her memoir as part of his petition to ensure her legal freedom wherever she might travel in Britain, including back to the West Indies. Pringle notes: “The narrative was taken down by Mary’s own lips by a lady who happened to be at the time residing in my family as a visitor.” This became the model for Tabitha and Amarantha’s writing project, which begins while Amarantha is living with the Shaws. Edinburgh bubbled with abolitionist fervor in the 1820s: the Edinburgh Abolition Society, established in 1823 by well-to-do merchants and professional men is the real historical social world in which I imagined John Shaw and Alice Campbell active.

  Most of the history one reads when studying abolitionism is not, however, positively inspiring. Paul’s disgusted words about how planters equated enslaved men and women to livestock is historical. A particularly relevant example: After the devastating hurricane of 1780, the governor of Barbados wrote, “The depopulation of the negroes and the cattle, especially the horned kind, is very great, which must . . . be a cause of great distress to the planters,” but that “fortunately few people of consequence were amongst” the thousands dead (quoted in Schwartz, Sea of Storms, p. 94–5). Likewise, when Paul tells Amarantha that enslaved people on Barbados demanded emancipation, he isn’t speaking of a new phenomenon. For decades already, enslaved people had been demanding their freedom in both small and large rebellions across the Caribbean. Plantation owners retaliated swiftly and brutally. The only successful slave revolt ever, however, began on the French colony Saint-Domingue in 1791. Upon wresting independence from France in 1804 that island nation became Haiti, the homeland of Gabriel’s partner, Xavier Du Lac.