“ANYONE WHO LOVES ROMANCE MUST READ SABRINA JEFFRIES!”
—New York Times bestselling author Lisa Kleypas
“JEFFRIES’S ADDICTIVE SERIES SATISFIES.”
—Library Journal
Praise for the first book in The Duke’s Men, the enthralling new series from New York Times and USA Today bestselling author
SABRINA JEFFRIES
WHAT THE DUKE DESIRES
“A totally engaging, adventurous love story . . . with a strong plot, steamy desire, and an oh-so-wonderful ending.”
—RT Book Reviews
“This unusual tale of interlocking mysteries is full of all the intriguing characters, brisk plotting, and witty dialogue that Jeffries’s readers have come to expect.”
—Publishers Weekly, starred review
Turn the page to read rave reviews of the acclaimed, “exceptionally entertaining” (Booklist) novels of the
HELLIONS OF HALSTEAD HALL
“Another sparkling series” (Library Journal)!
Critics adore Sabrina Jeffries and her five wonderful installments of the Hellions of Halstead Hall!
A LADY NEVER SURRENDERS
“Jeffries pulls out all the stops. . . . With depth of character, emotional intensity, and the resolution to the ongoing mystery rolled into a steamy love story, this one is not to be missed.”
—RT Book Reviews (41/2 stars, Top Pick)
“Sizzling, emotionally satisfying. . . . Another must-read.”
—Library Journal (starred review)
“Brimming with superbly shaded characters, simmering sensuality, and a splendidly wicked wit, A Lady Never Surrenders wraps up the series nothing short of brilliantly.”
—Booklist
TO WED A WILD LORD
“Wonderfully witty, deliciously seductive, graced with humor and charm. . . .”
—Library Journal (starred review)
“A beguiling blend of captivating characters, clever plotting, and sizzling sensuality.”
—Booklist
HOW TO WOO A RELUCTANT LADY
“A delightful addition. . . . Charmingly original.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Richly imbued with steamy passion, deftly spiced with dangerous intrigue, and neatly tempered with just the right amount of tart wit.”
—Booklist
A HELLION IN HER BED
“A lively plot blending equal measures of steamy passion and sharp wit. . . .”
—Booklist (starred review)
“Jeffries’s sense of humor and delightfully delicious sensuality spice things up!”
—RT Book Reviews (41/2 stars)
THE TRUTH ABOUT LORD STONEVILLE
“Jeffries combines her hallmark humor, poignancy, and sensuality to perfection.”
—RT Book Reviews (41/2 stars, Top Pick)
“Lively repartee, fast action, luscious sensuality, and an abundance of humor.”
—Library Journal (starred review)
“Delectably witty dialogue . . . and scorching sexual chemistry.”
—Booklist
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To the wonderful Dru and the crew at my local Starbucks who keep me well supplied with iced coffee and everything bagels. You are true gems, every one of you! Thanks for letting me hang out and write.
To my niece Isabel “Isa” Martin and my nephew Craig Martin, thank you for brightening my days.
And to my brother Daren Martin, whose sage advice at a crucial point in my marriage altered my life forever. Thank you, and I love you.
PROLOGUE
Amsterdam
1818
DARKNESS HAD FALLEN a while ago. Eighteen-year-old Isabella Cale clung to her new husband Victor’s neck as he carried her into her old room at her sister Jacoba’s house. Isa hadn’t wanted to come here, but it was safer than having Jacoba look after her in their apartment. She didn’t want her sister nosing around for the imitation diamonds that Isa kept hidden from her husband. And Victor refused to leave Isa alone while she was sick.
She winced. She hoped this pretense of being ill succeeded. And that he never found out it was a sham. It had been hard enough to keep it up all day, when she was supposed to have been working at the jeweler’s shop, but Victor’s concerned glances now made it even more difficult. After only a week of marriage, the last thing she wanted to do was deceive him.
But she had no choice. It was for his own good. And hers.
“Are you sure she’ll be fine?” Victor asked Jacoba as he laid Isa gently in her old bed.
“She just needs rest and coddling.” Jacoba pulled the covers up over Isa. “She’s had these awful sore throats since she was a girl. They never last more than a week. You were right to bring her here. It’s not good for her to be alone.”
Her older sister’s soft words used to make her feel safe. But that was before their clockmaker father had died six years ago. Before Papa’s apprentice, Gerhart Hendrix, had married Jacoba and taken them in. Before Gerhart had begun gambling.
Isa and Jacoba were no longer as close as they once were.
“I’m not so ill that I’ll expire while you’re at the shop,” Isa told Victor in a raspy voice.
Victor worked temporarily as a night guard at the jeweler’s where she was a diamond cutter. Since their conflicting shifts didn’t allow them much time together, it had been pure bliss staying home with him today. Well, except for the pretending-to-be-sick part.
Shadows darkened Victor’s lovely hazel eyes. “I’m sorry to have to leave you, but at least Jacoba can look after you.”
Oh, how she wished she weren’t too much of a coward to tell him the truth! But it would devastate her if it changed what he thought of her. Better to avoid the problem entirely.
If she could fool her sister and brother-in-law with her “illness” for just one night, it would all be over tomorrow. Then Victor would never have to learn of her family’s insane scheme to steal the royal diamond parure from the jeweler’s shop.
A lock of wavy hair the color of rich oak dropped over his brow as he bent to kiss her forehead. “I wish I didn’t have to leave you alone, but with the prince’s guard coming—”
“I know,” she said, cutting him off before he could reveal that the royal diamonds would be leaving the shop tomorrow. Jacoba mustn’t learn that the chance to steal them would be gone after tonight. “You may not have your post much longer, so you have to work while you can.” His post would end in the morning, when the jeweler handed the royal jewels to the prince’s guard.
“I will find work after this,” he said resentfully, “even if the jeweler doesn’t keep me on. Don’t worry about that.”
“I’m not,” she hastened to reassure him. He was such a proud man, and she hadn’t meant to wound him. Besides, who wouldn’t hire Victor? And the jeweler was an old friend of his mother’s; the man would surely find some way to keep Victor on. “I have faith in you.”
Victor looked only slightly mollified by her words. “You’re fretting over something. I can tell.”
“Don’t be silly.” Had she been that transparent? Oh, Lord, she had to get him to leave, before she gave too much away. She forced hoarseness into her voice. “And if you don’t go, you’ll be late.” His shift began at 8 P.M., when the jeweler went home. “Don’t worry about me. I’m in good hands with Jacoba.” She practically choked on that li
e.
But he didn’t seem to notice as he tucked the covers about her. “I’ll come fetch you in the morning when I’m done with my shift, Mausi.”
She winced at the German endearment. Victor often used foreign words—he spoke Dutch, Flemish, German, English, and French fluently, which impressed her. But she didn’t like being called “little mouse.”
Probably because she was a mouse, in every respect. She looked like one—nondescript brown hair that defied curling, boring brown eyes, and hips that were a touch too wide for her small bosom—and she acted like one, too. She would much rather cut diamonds or design jewelry than argue or make a fuss. It was how she’d landed in this mess in the first place.
It was also why she lay here silent while he headed for the door. She ought to call him back, tell him the truth, face the consequences. But it would be so much easier just to bluff her way through this night. Then she’d be free of her family’s machinations forever.
Because she was never creating another imitation parure. She wouldn’t have made this one if Jacoba and Gerhart hadn’t convinced her that they could sell it as a legitimate copy and earn some good money out of her talent for creating false diamonds. If she’d known they would take it into their heads to use it to commit a crime . . .
Stifling a groan, she turned onto her side and watched as Victor went out with Jacoba into the hall, murmuring instructions on how to care for his wife. He was so handsome, her husband, and so kind. She lived in terror that he would find out about the Hendrixes’ sordid plans and her part in them.
Her throat tightened. How had she even managed to snag his attention? He was a lion to her mouse. His many scars told her that he’d suffered a great deal during his three years in the Prussian army. And the pain of fighting at Waterloo still lurked beneath his clear hazel eyes. She suspected he had other dark secrets—he didn’t talk about his childhood or his family—yet he took each day as it came, persevering through whatever agonies lay in his past.
Meanwhile, she lay here pretending to be sick. Oh, what she wouldn’t give to be courageous and reckless, to stand up to Gerhart whenever he droned on about how he’d saved her and Jacoba from certain ruin after Papa died. It was true, but why should it mean that she had to risk her own happiness and safety? And why couldn’t she just say that?
Because then Gerhart would shout at her and shout at Jacoba, and she hated the shouting. And the stony glances. And the reminders that she wouldn’t even have her position at the jeweler’s if Gerhart hadn’t encouraged the talent for jewelry making and diamond cutting that she’d inherited from Papa.
She sighed against her pillow.
“So you’re not asleep,” Jacoba said, having padded back into the room with the quiet tread of a cat.
Isa tensed. “No, not yet. But I feel horrible, all weak and achy. And my throat hurts.” Tamping down her guilt, she slanted a glance up at her sister, who, being seven years older, had been like a mother to her.
Once.
Jacoba laid her hand on Isa’s brow. “You do seem a bit hot.”
That’s what came of lying under a pile of heavy covers. Though she prayed that the dampness of her brow wouldn’t give her away. “I can’t get warm,” she lied in a husky whisper. “It always starts with the chills . . .”
“I remember.”
Her sister cast her a hard look, as if she’d seen right through her farce, and Isa held her breath. Jacoba and Gerhart had been pressing her to substitute her imitation parure for the real one, now that the jeweler had finished it. All she’d have to do, according to them, was steal her husband’s keys while he was asleep and get into the strongbox while the jeweler was at lunch.
Betraying her husband and everything she believed in.
She’d put them off for days. But last night Gerhart had threatened to bring up the matter with Victor and get him to do the switching. Isa couldn’t have that; Victor would be horrified.
Let Gerhart rage about the injustice of her being sick on the last day she could have switched out the parure. Eventually he would resign himself to having missed his chance. He might even be able to sell the imitation parure, as he’d first intended, to some wealthy woman who wanted jewelry identical to that of the soon-to-be bride of the prince.
At last Jacoba seemed to accept Isa’s ruse, and her expression softened. “Well, then, you’d better get some sleep. I’ll bring you something to soothe your throat.”
“Thank you,” Isa murmured, not bothering to hide her grimace.
She hated Jacoba’s medicine. But when her sister returned with the vile tonic, Isa knew she had to choke it down. If she refused, Jacoba would be suspicious.
Afterward, her sister surprised her, sitting by her bedside and wiping her forehead with a cold cloth until she dozed off.
♦ ♦ ♦
IT SEEMED ONLY minutes later that she awoke to the gray dawn seeping into her bedchamber. At first she was groggy and disoriented. Where was she? Why wasn’t she in her apartment? And where was Vic—
She bolted upright as last night’s events came flooding back. It was always dark when Victor’s shift ended at 6 A.M., but judging from the light, it must be well past seven now. He should be here. He’d said he would fetch her as soon as his shift ended!
A door opened and shut down the hall, and she heard voices. Before she could do more than throw her legs over the side of the bed, Gerhart and Jacoba entered her room.
“We did it, Isa!” Jacoba cried, her face flushed and her eyes bright as she performed a little jig. “We got them!”
When Isa stared in confusion, her brawny brother-in-law pulled a necklace from his pocket and held it up to catch the faint rays of morning light. “It’s ours now. We’ll break it down for the diamonds and sell them in Paris. I know a dealer who will pay us well for—”
“Stop it!” Isa said, horror growing in her belly. “What do you mean? You have the real diamonds?”
“Of course.” Gerhart exchanged a glance with his wife. “With you ill, we had to act on our own. Surely you didn’t think we’d let this opportunity pass? We made the switch ourselves.”
Her mind raced. “But how . . . Victor would have had to let you . . .”
“Yes.” Jacoba came over to lay an arm about her shoulders. “After I explained our scheme earlier, he agreed to help in exchange for our giving him the earrings from the parure. He and I left here to go look for the imitation at your apartment, and then he made the switch at the shop.”
A chill coursed through her. Was that the reason for all the furtive whispers in the hall earlier? Jacoba had actually spoken to Victor about the scheme?
“We were more than happy to allow him a share,” Gerhart put in, “given your part in the affair . . . and his. Sale from the earrings alone should provide the two of you with enough money to—”
“He wouldn’t do that!” Isa cried through a throat thick and tight with dread. Shoving free of Jacoba, she rose to face them. “He would never steal. I know him.”
“Apparently not as well as you thought.” Gerhart headed over to the window and opened the curtains to let in the weak winter light. “I told you he would listen to reason if you only broached the subject.”
Was it possible? Could she really have been that wrong about her husband? “I was waiting to mention it until—”
“Yes, we know,” her sister said, her tone sharp. “I’m sure you simply forgot to tell us about the prince’s guard coming this morning for the jewels. You weren’t really planning to let it pass without comment.”
“Of course not,” she mumbled, unable to meet her sister’s eyes. This couldn’t be happening.
“Thank God Victor said something as he was leaving here,” Jacoba said, “or we would have missed our chance entirely.”
Dear heaven. “Where’s Victor now?” Isa headed for the door. She had to find out if he’d really done this outrageous thing.
“He’s gone.” Gerhart tucked the necklace into his coat pocket. “He’s
the most at risk of being caught, so he had to head straight off to Antwerp as soon as his shift was over. They won’t expect him back at the shop until this evening, and perhaps not even then, given that his post as guard ends today. Meanwhile—”
“You’re saying Victor left me?” With her blood pounding in her ears, she whirled on them. “My husband left me?”
“Not exactly,” Jacoba said, oozing sympathy and concern. “After he sells the earrings in Antwerp, he’ll join us in Paris. That’s where we’re heading with the necklace, bracelet, and brooch. Victor suggested that we split up, in case anyone comes after us. They’ll expect two couples traveling together. They won’t expect you to go with us and him to go another way.”
“Not that we think your imitations won’t hold up under scrutiny,” Gerhart said, “but it’s better that we be well away, in case they don’t. The jeweler won’t expect you at the shop until tomorrow, since Victor already told him how sick you are—fortuitous for us. That gives us time to put some distance between us and here.”
“And the beauty of it is that if your diamonds do escape notice, no one will ever even know about the theft!” Jacoba crowed. The unnatural light in her eyes made Isa shiver. “Victor left a letter behind with your landlord saying that you both got lucrative positions in Frankfurt. The jeweler will certainly find that plausible, especially with Victor’s post coming to an end. It’s the perfect plan!”
“Except that I wanted no part of it!” Isa cried.
Gerhart narrowed his gaze on her. “That’s not what you said. You said you were waiting for the right moment.”
Her mouth went dry. “Well, I—I lied. I don’t want to be a criminal. I just want to cut diamonds and design jewelry and have a regular life.”
“What kind of regular life do you think you’d have with a husband out of work?” Jacoba snapped. “How long do you think it would be before you lost your position to some man? And then what?” She jerked her gaze from Isa as if disgusted. “At least your husband saw the sense of our plan.”
When the Rogue Returns Page 1