The Dangerous Duke

by Christine Wells

  The end justifies the means.

  A fortnight earlier, he wouldn’t have hesitated. Do it! said the hardened operative inside him. What are you waiting for?

  But . . .

  He wasn’t an operative anymore. A man of honor wouldn’t take the simple course, because it wasn’t right. He wouldn’t let this sick, sad boy die by his own hand.

  The resolution lent him a surge of strength. Max locked hands around Perry’s wrists, forcing him to point the pistol to the ground. He managed to squeeze the trigger. The gun exploded, and Max used the momentum of the recoil to twist the useless weapon out of Perry’s grip.

  Jardine materialized in an instant, taking Perry into a painful, incapacitating hold. Still, the boy struggled as much as he could, screaming at Kate. “I’ll kill you! I’ll do it if it takes me the rest of my days, you bitch!”

  Jardine roughly thrust him outside.

  Max stood there watching their receding backs, his chest heaving. He stared down at the pistol in his hand. If she didn’t come back to him now, he might as well shoot himself.

  “Max!” Kate ran out from behind a screen, joy and relief flooding her voice. She hurtled into his arms. He closed them around her and buried his face in her hair.

  “I’m so glad you came!” she babbled. “I had a plan, and it might have worked, too, if he’d missed his first shot.”

  Max tightened his arms around her. “Don’t even think about it. My God, woman. You’ll be the death of me yet.”

  She gazed up at him, and his heart turned over at the love that shone in her eyes. “You stopped him. You didn’t let him die.”

  With that simple statement, he realized she’d sensed his struggle in those few seconds when he’d wanted to choose the easy path. Bright, intelligent, intuitive woman that she was, she knew what it had cost him to let Perry go. And despite the kidnapping and attempted murder, Kate’s generous heart was glad at Max’s choice. She prized his honor and his conscience over revenge for Perry’s misdeeds.

  How could he be so lucky? After all he’d put her through, Kate loved him still. He tightened his embrace and set his lips to hers.

  Louisa ran past them to the stage door. “Where is Jardine taking—”

  A gunshot burst through the quiet, obliterating the rest of her sentence.

  “Stay here.” Max dashed outside, passing Sukey, who cowered in the wings next to the stage. Of course, the women hurried after him. They all stopped short.

  Perry lay dead on the grass. Jardine looked on, holding a smoking pistol.

  Max quickly gathered Kate and Louisa into his arms and turned their faces into his chest. Sukey sobbed noisily behind them.

  Despite his noble intentions, the boy had died anyway. Max couldn’t help the wave of relief that flooded him, but there was an equal mixture of guilt. Should he have predicted this? He’d been too caught up in Kate to consider what Jardine meant to do with Perry.

  “No!” Louisa struggled and broke free.

  “Louie, don’t—” Max watched Louisa run to Jardine and hit him, pummeling his chest with all her might. “How could you? How could you? You’ve killed him, you murderer!”

  With an oath, Jardine gripped her by the shoulders and shook her into silence. “If I had, it would have been a mercy, like shooting a rabid dog. But I didn’t kill him, Louisa. He carried a second pistol. He shot himself.”

  To Max, looking on, the statement bore the ring of truth. There was even a tinge of chagrin in Jardine’s tone, as if he were furious with himself for letting it happen. Jardine never made mistakes. But it seemed this time, he had.

  Louisa had stopped hitting Jardine, but she jerked from his hold and stepped back, white-lipped and shaking. “ I don’t believe you,” she whispered. “You could have stopped him. You make me sick, do you hear me, Jardine? Sick to my stomach. I want nothing to do with you, ever again.”

  Jardine’s expression was grim as he studied the gun in his hand. He looked up. “I know, Louisa. You made that quite clear when last we met. But we are destined to be together, my love.” He flashed her a bitter smile. “And nothing I do and nothing you say will ever change that.”

  THE door flung open and Kate and Max fell into her bedchamber, kissing so hard and urgently, their teeth clashed together, ripping off each other’s garments as fast as they could.

  Max kicked the door shut behind them and spun Kate around, cursing under his breath at the waste of time unlacing her stays.

  As the corset fell to the floor, he squeezed her breasts through her chemise and bit her neck hard. She shuddered helplessly, almost climaxing there and then, but she needed to feel him, skin to skin, so she stepped out of her petticoat and ripped the chemise over her head.

  Max moved away to take off his boots and shed his other clothes. She watched him, coveting every inch of skin, every hard muscle, every scar he revealed. When he was completely naked, she remembered her shoes and stockings.

  She turned and set her foot on the stool of her dressing table. As she bent to undo her garter he came up behind her, smoothing his hands over her shoulders and down her back in an entirely possessive way.

  “Leave them on,” he growled, hot breath in her ear. “I like the way your legs look in them.” He tweaked one of the ribbons on her garter, brushing her thigh with his fingertips. “Like a present, waiting to be unwrapped.”

  She shivered, and he continued to speak explicitly about the things he’d do for her, with her, to her, until she could barely stand for excitement. He urged her to kneel on the stool and she held on to her dressing table for support in a clatter of scent bottles and cosmetics.

  But his hands, those big hands, roamed her body, not gently, but hard and demanding, just as she wanted, at least this time. They’d share many quiet, gentle nights in the future. Their recent escape from death made the drive to celebrate life and their love in the most primitive way overpowering.

  “Don’t be shocked.” Lyle dipped his fingers into her soft, wet folds, positioning the head of his erection between her legs from behind. “But I’m going to come inside you now.”

  Kate shuddered. The idea seemed wicked, decadent, and also strangely thrilling. Intrigued, trusting him completely, she waited, tense with anticipation. His member nudged her entrance, opening her, and the slow slide of his shaft as it forged its way inside, stretching and filling her, made her gasp and grip the dressing table tightly to anchor herself. She closed her eyes, reveling in their closeness, in the sweet agony that rippled through her body as he inched forward.

  Involuntarily, her inner muscles gripped him. He gasped and paused, breathing hard.

  When he didn’t move, when the longing became unbearable, she opened her eyes and saw his reflection in the looking glass, all broad shoulders, muscular chest, and flat, taut stomach. The sight of his big hands splayed so possessively over her hips made her tremble. Those hands . . .

  How she loved him, loved the feel of him inside her. And she didn’t need to hide it any longer. Boldly, Kate met his eyes in the glass. “Please,” she whispered.

  Holding her gaze in a searing connection that sizzled right to her toes, Lyle gathered himself, then surged home with one powerful thrust, ramming against her womb. She cried out at the potent, sweet mix of pleasure and pain, wanting it to go on and on.

  He gripped her hips and stroked a slow, steady rhythm, rubbing an exquisitely sensitive place inside her that made her insides clench, desperate to keep him there as long as she could.

  His eyes were shut now, and the expression on his face, not of strain but something close to awe, touched her heart. This was the lover she’d seen in him from the first. This was the man she’d wanted all along.

  Bending over her so his body spooned hers, he growled in her ear, “And now, my dear, I’m going to ride you harder than you’ve ever been ridden before.”

  And he did, while she watched. And it was glorious.

  HOURS later, Max and Kate lay together, naked, sated, and spent.<
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  Kate turned on her side, snuggling her back into the hard, muscled warmth of Lyle’s chest. He kissed her shoulder and she sighed. His palm skimmed up her torso and came to rest possessively over her breast.

  “There’s still one thing I don’t understand,” Lyle murmured into her hair.

  “Really?” she said sleepily. “What’s that?”

  He squeezed her nipple, sending a jolt of ecstasy through her. “If you like the way I . . . love you, why did you write differently in your diary? Your phantom lover was slow and gentle. Why fantasize about something you didn’t really want?”

  That question had occurred to her also, and she’d realized there was no simple answer. Kate picked up a lock of her hair that lay spread across the pillow. She pulled it taut and pretended to examine it. Then she gave a small, embarrassed shrug. “I suppose the truth is I didn’t know what I wanted. My marriage with Hector was . . . uneasy. Difficult. He did not desire me at all, you see.”

  The big hand stilled on her breast. “Was he mad?”

  A giggle caught in her throat. “No, he just couldn’t seem to, er, harden. Down there.” She blushed, refusing to meet Lyle’s eye. Despite all they’d done together, she still didn’t feel comfortable discussing such things.

  Lyle grunted. “I assure you, the problem was entirely his. If he said it had anything to do with you, he was a damned liar.”

  Her chest burned with the knowledge. How like Lyle to cut to the heart of her fear. “H-he said I was too eager, too bold. My wanton behavior disgusted him. He didn’t like his wife to behave like a common trollop.”

  Lyle gave a shout of laughter. “What a cod’s head.”

  Kate nodded, sinking into him, relishing his warmth. “I believe now that he did have a problem, but at the time . . . Well, at the time, I so desperately wanted someone to love. Someone who would be kind.”

  She turned in his arms to face Lyle and ran her palm over his chest. His gray eyes lit with tenderness, warming her heart. She lowered her voice to a whisper. “I didn’t know what real passion was until I met you. I didn’t know what I wanted until you gave it to me.”

  To her delight, a slight flush tinged Lyle’s lean cheeks. He tilted her chin and took her mouth in an aching, sweetly carnal kiss.

  Lyle’s lips drifted to her ear. “To think if it weren’t for that diary of yours we could have had this so much sooner,” he breathed. Thrills skittered down her spine. He kissed his way down the tender skin of her throat.

  “If you hadn’t read my diary,” gasped Kate, arching back.

  His palm brushed over her nipple, rolling it to a hard peak, then pinching it with exquisitely judged pressure. “No, I don’t regret that. Reading your fantasies was one of the most erotic experiences I’ve ever had.”

  Kate pulled back to study him. “Is that true?”

  He nodded.

  The knowledge didn’t seem to trouble her anymore. With a secret smile, she ducked her head to kiss his chest. “Perhaps I shall begin a new diary.” She trailed the tip of her tongue along his collarbone, tasting salt and man.

  “So that I can read it?” Lightning fast, Max rolled her onto her back, pinning her down with his hips, a wonderful, solid weight.

  She reached up to cup his jaw with her hand, imprinting this moment in her mind. “So I can remember nights like this. Always.”

  Turn the page for a look at the next novel by Christine Wells

  Indecent Proposal

  Coming soon from Berkley Sensation!

  London, 1814

  WOULD she see him? She could hardly believe she’d found him at last.

  Sick with anticipation, Lady Sarah Cole smoothed her worn gloves, gripped the strings of her reticule tighter, and made herself step down from the hackney cab.

  As she emerged from the carriage, the stench of rotting fish assailed her with full force. She almost lost her footing on the uneven cobblestones and stumbled again as a large rat shot across her path, its naked pink tail twitching. Battling rising nausea, Sarah held a lavender-scented handkerchief over her mouth and nose to filter the fetid air.

  After a few moments, she decided she’d mastered her uneasy stomach and returned her handkerchief to her reticule. Beneath the brim of her plain straw bonnet, she swept a glance up the street.

  Ragged children played some sort of ball game against the crumbling wall of a dilapidated shop front. The tavern on the corner did a brisk, noisy trade, even at this hour. A hawker pushed his cart and cried his wares, adding to the general commotion. Sarah discerned from his barely intelligible bawl that he was selling cat meat.

  She shuddered. It was a depressed, filthy part of London, located a stone’s throw from the Billingsgate wharfs. The lady she’d once been wouldn’t have dreamed of visiting such a place. She shouldn’t have come.

  But she’d never admitted defeat when matters grew difficult, and she wouldn’t start now. Dismissing the cab driver’s warning about the rough neighborhood, Sarah paid him the fare and a little extra and asked him to wait.

  She caught up her skirts to keep them clear of the rubbish that lined the street and picked a path to the front door of a tall, grim house. As she inquired the way of a sharp-eyed young girl, she tried not to show her dismay. She’d imagined him in circumstances far better than this.

  Sarah thanked the girl and gave her a shilling. Glancing up, she saw a small face shimmer in the grime at a third floor window then disappear. Her pulse jumped. Was it he?

  No reason why it should be. Slum lords crammed as many bodies as they could into houses such as this.

  Sarah rapped with her gloved fist and the door creaked open, revealing a dim hallway with a row of doors either side of it and a central staircase zigzagging up and up, apparently to the heavens. No one came to ask her business, though the squalls of babies and rowdy voices assailed her, penetrating the thin, mildewed walls.

  Hitching her skirts a little higher, Sarah crossed the entry hall and mounted the first of several flights of stairs. Not long now.

  How would he look—her husband’s bastard son? Would he have Brinsley’s eyes, or his riot of curls? Years had passed since she’d wrung her hands over Brinsley’s tomcat proclivities, yet her heart stuttered at the thought.

  The boy was ten years old, conceived mere months after she and Brinsley wed. The old pain of betrayal, a pain she thought she’d buried, rose to slap her in the face.

  Pausing in her ascent, Sarah absorbed the sting with a clenched jaw, her hand closing like a vise around the worm-eaten banister. She took a deep breath, held it, then slowly let it out. The tawdry circumstances of his birth were not the boy’s fault. A child did not deserve to live in poverty merely because his father was a scoundrel. She had sold more perfume than ever, scrimped to save the moderate sum she carried in her reticule. All for him. The child she would never have.

  Many stairs later, Sarah found the place she sought. She knocked and waited for what seemed like an eternity. Finally, the door swung open and Sarah came face to face with the boy’s mother.

  “Maggie Day?” The name was branded on Sarah’s heart. The first in a long line of “other” women she’d prefer to know nothing about.

  “Aye, that’s me.” The woman leaned against the doorjamb, her expression wary. She shoved stray wisps of blond hair out of her face with the heel of a grimy hand, revealing a faint echo of former prettiness in her high cheekbones and the vivid blue of her eyes. Those eyes flared when Sarah introduced herself. After a slight hesitation, Maggie shifted aside to let her uninvited guest enter.

  This was not a social call. Sarah didn’t attempt pleasantries. “I’ve come about the boy. My . . . husband’s son.” She couldn’t yet give him a name. Brinsley hadn’t told her what he was called, and the address she’d found among his unpaid bills and notes of hand named the mother, not the child.

  Sarah tried not to betray her anxiety, the strange yearning that had gripped her once the hurt and anger at Brinsley’s taunts had subsided.
You’re barren . . . Useless, even as a breeder . . . I’ve already fathered a son.

  She forced down the image of her husband’s triumph and focused on the scene before her. A straw pallet lay in one corner, made up with a coarse wool blanket. That and a crudely fashioned chair furnished the tiny room. The place stank of boiled cabbage and rat urine.

  “Is he here?” Idiotic question. She saw for herself he was not.

  A derisive expression flitted across Maggie’s features, but she answered politely enough. “Nah, m’lady. Haven’t seen him since before sunup. Goes down to the fish markets early, but after that . . .” She shrugged.

  Sarah stared. Didn’t she know? The boy was ten years old and his mother didn’t know or care where he might be all day?

  Jealousy seeped like acid into Sarah’s chest. If he were hers . . . The corrosive burn spread through her, thickening her throat and pricking behind her eyes. She blinked hard and looked away.

  Her gaze snagged on a collection of empty bottles in one corner. Did the woman drink? Sarah bit her lip. It wasn’t her business; none of it was. But would Maggie use Sarah’s money to clothe and feed the boy, or to buy more gin?

  Disappointment flooded her, drowning her one small hope. She’d thought she could soothe her conscience by making this short journey—one small gesture to clean the slate. But not only was her mission flawed—she could not possibly hand her precious coins to such a female—she’d given herself one more problem to solve.

  She couldn’t compel Brinsley to provide for his love child. The pittance she made selling perfume was not enough to keep her and Brinsley, much less the boy as well.

  Equally impossible to leave the child in this situation. Honor and simple Christian charity demanded that she ensure his well-being if her husband, his father, would not. Something must be done. She saw her duty clearly enough, but what right did she have to interfere?

  Sarah offered her hand to Maggie, using every ounce of self-control to remain civil and calm. “I should—I should like to come again, if I may. To see him.”