Dangerous Duke

by Scott, Scarlett

  Dangerous Duke

  League of Dukes Book Three

  By

  Scarlett Scott

  He’s lethal and ruthless.

  Suspended from his work as an agent for the Crown, Griffin, Duke of Strathmore, exists under a dark cloud of suspicion for crimes he didn’t commit. He’s on a desperate race to clear his name by any means, until a grave error lands him under house arrest with the last sort of distraction he needs.

  She’s the sister of his nemesis.

  Lady Violet West is about to be married to the most boring man in England. When the disgraced Duke of Strathmore lands in her lap—literally—she decides he is the answer to her longing for adventure. Though her brother is convinced of Strathmore’s guilt, Violet isn’t as certain.

  Falling in love is out of the question.

  Griffin doesn’t want her interference. Violet won’t take no for an answer. So begins a secret partnership between the fallen duke and the determined lady. Their quest to uncover the truth leads to danger and desire. But the most perilous risk of all is losing their hearts.

  Dedication

  Dedicated to my wonderful in-laws in Alberta, with much gratitude for all your love and support.

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  About the Book

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  Excerpt from Shameless Duke

  Don’t miss Scarlett’s other romances!

  About the Author

  Copyright Page

  We are what the seas

  have made us

  ~Lorine Niedecker

  Chapter One

  1882

  Violet had not intended to trip the Duke of Strathmore.

  Nor had she meant for him to land in her lap.

  But as his large body pitched forward into her silken skirts, one hand finding purchase on her bosom, she could not deny it was the most interesting thing to have happened to her since…well, ever.

  Far more exciting than listening to her betrothed, Charles, drone on about horticulture. Unless she could eat it, she had no desire to know the name of a plant. And even then, the name truly did not signify, unless she was required to ask her brother’s chef to prepare it for dinner.

  Yes indeed, Strathmore tumbling into her lap was infinitely better than spending the afternoon reading a book, while Great Aunt Hortense snored into her needlework. Or a bleary morning, with only herself for company, because Lucien was far too busy with whatever nonsense recently interested him at the Home Office.

  Bemused, she stared down at the giant she had inadvertently felled with her crocheting. His left hand had landed upon her right breast, and his right hand was buried in her skirts.

  Was it her imagination, or did his fingers deliberately tighten upon her, as if he were testing the size and weight of the bosom he had unintentionally discovered?

  She ought to be horrified. Shocked.

  His shoulders were shaking, she realized, vibrating beneath his coat.

  Oh dear.

  Was he injured? Weeping?

  Violet laid a hand gingerly upon his biceps, startled to feel its flexed strength beneath her touch. “Duke? Are you hurt?”

  His head raised.

  Her heart did something odd. It stumbled, then galloped. Her breath caught. Here was her first sighting of their infamous house guest, in proximity.

  His dark hair was too long, his eyes astoundingly blue, his lips far too full for a man’s mouth, his jaw covered in a neatly trimmed beard.

  When he had first entered the salon, she had been struck by how handsome he was. But he was not just handsome. His face had character. It was intriguing; from the bump on the bridge of his nose, to the lines bracketing his vivid eyes. The air of tarnished elegance he exuded somehow magnified his masculine beauty. She had never seen a duke—or any gentleman for that matter—like him.

  “I am relatively unscathed,” he said at last, removing his hand from her breast.

  That was when she realized, belatedly, he had not been weeping or in pain at all. Rather, he had been laughing.

  And a smile on that mouth was something to behold.

  She blinked. Tried to summon up thoughts of Charles. Her betrothed, too, was undeniably handsome. Well-titled. The Earl of Almsley, Viscount Nattingworth, Baron Erstwhile.

  Or was it Viscount Nattingwhile and Baron Erstworth?

  She could not seem to recall. Mayhap it was the overly large duke, who was still all but in her lap, addling her wits?

  Perchance it was the unseasonably warm weather: late spring, but hotter than July.

  Where was a fan when she needed it? Why would the duke not stop trapping her in that brilliant gaze? What would the bristle of his whiskers feel like beneath her fingertips?

  No.

  That is wicked, Violet. You must not think such thoughts.

  What would those lips feel like pressed to hers?

  She was willing to wager they would not be arid and cool like Charles’s. Instead, they would be warm and supple, coaxing, and perhaps even demanding…

  Drat it, Violet. Cease this at once.

  “I am sorry about the crocheting,” she said, needing to say something so her whirling thoughts would quiet. “I did not mean to catch you with it.”

  She did not even like crocheting, but Aunt Hortense deemed it a suitable activity for a lady because the queen herself enjoyed the practice. Admittedly, Violet’s appreciation for the skill was hindered by being dreadful at it.

  “I should have watched where I was walking.” A rueful grin flirted at the corners of his lips now. “I did not expect anyone to be within, and I am afraid I was rather preoccupied with my own thoughts. I did not notice your string until it had felled me.”

  His hand was still in her skirts, and he remained on his knees before her. She resisted the urge to reach for his left hand and place it back upon her breast. Why had the weight of him, that forbidden touch, felt so irresistible?

  She wetted her suddenly dry lips. “It is a bad habit, leaving the ball of wool halfway across the chamber, in the midst of the floor. If I had not pulled it toward me, with the intention of sparing you from falling over it, you likely would not have tripped in the first place. The fault is all mine.”

  “Nonsense, Lady Violet.” He rose at last, towering over her with his broad, strong frame. “I am the interloper here.”

  “Yes,” she agreed, before thinking better of it. Her cheeks went hot. “That is to say, you are a guest here in my brother’s home, Your Grace.”

  Should she stand?

  Craning her neck at him was dratted uncomfortable, but he remained near enough to her that if she stood, she would brush against him. And if she touched this man, she felt certain she may swoon.

  Where was a fan when she needed one?

  His smile faded, his jaw going rigid, expression hardening. “A forced guest is hardly a guest, Lady Violet. It would be more apt, perhaps, to say I am a prisoner.”

  “But Lark House is not a jail,” she felt compel
led to protest. In truth, it had been hers for four-and-twenty years, and it would remain so, until she left it for the next one. The thought of having to share a home with Charles’s mother was enough to make her eyes twitch.

  “We shall agree to disagree, my lady.” His gaze traveled down to her lap, leaving a path of fire in its wake. “What are you making?”

  Her flush increased, and she swore she felt it to the roots of her hair. “It is meant to be a seed pouch for my fiancé. He is a horticulturist.”

  Strathmore frowned. “That sounds deadly dull.”

  Her sentiments exactly, but that didn’t mean his dismissive tone did not nettle her, for it did. “On the contrary, sir. It is horribly interesting.”

  His lips quirked. “You have the ‘horrible’ of it right, I would reckon.”

  “To think I was feeling guilty for tripping you,” she snapped. Charles was as interesting as a pile of sawdust, but having this breathtakingly handsome, arrogant duke point out the shortcomings, which already grieved her, was irksome indeed. “There is no need to be cruel.”

  “Honesty and cruelty are two distinct beasts.” His stare worked its leisurely way back to hers, so intense, a shock of giddiness rippled straight through her.

  Ruthlessly, she banished it and stood, tired of him looming over her, the judgmental beast. But she miscalculated her haste and his nearness, which meant once she rose, she had nowhere to go but into his chest.

  So she did.

  Her palms flattened over the muscled heat of him. Even through the layers of civility, he was hot. Smoldering like a flame. And she was drawn to him.

  Why could she not stop staring at his lips? Why did she insist upon wondering what they would feel like upon hers?

  “Lady Violet?” His tone was darkly amused.

  Blinking, she raised her gaze back to his. “Yes?”

  “I would like to beg your fiancé’s pardon,” he surprised her by saying.

  There.

  That was better, was it not?

  The man had simply needed a reminder of how to conduct himself in a gentlemanly fashion. Suspected of treason though he may be, he was still a peer of the realm. A duke.

  “For insulting his love of horticulture?” she asked, telling herself she ought to remove her hands from Strathmore’s person. It was unseemly, the way she was touching him.

  “No.” He traced her jaw with a lone, long finger, stopping at her chin, tipping it gently up. “For kissing his fiancée.”

  Before she could say a word of protest, his sinful mouth was upon hers.

  Oh.

  Her imaginings could not compare. Nothing could have prepared her for the rush of sensation. Warm, full lips not just coaxing, but taking control. Dominating. Hot and soft and full, welcoming, inviting, delicious. She wanted more. So much more. And he gave it, opening, claiming. His tongue slid between her lips, his hands finding her waist.

  How wondrous a realization his tongue in her mouth was. She had not known such a pleasure was possible, had not realized men and women could kiss in openly carnal fashion, had been entirely ignorant kissing could make her feel hot and dizzy and achy and desperate, make her do things she shouldn’t.

  Things like sliding her hands up Strathmore’s chest to clutch his shoulders. Things like stepping into him, her body begging to be closer, so close they aligned from hip to breast. Things like running her tongue against his, tasting him, as he did her.

  Whisky was a bitter revelation on her palate. It was afternoon, and he had been tippling. Not so much she had smelt it upon his person, and not so much he seemed inebriated, but enough.

  Why? Could it be his troubles filled him with worry? Did he seek to escape? Take his mind off the allegations facing him?

  In the next breath, she lost the ability to wonder. Lost the ability to even think, as those sinful, beautiful lips explored the sensitive skin of her throat. He kissed her there, in a place she had never imagined she would wish to be kissed, and she was helpless to do anything but allow her head to fall back and give him free rein.

  Desire blossomed from her center, radiating outward, until even the tips of her fingers and toes tingled with it. Her lips burned from his kiss. The small sound of shocked pleasure—half gasp, half mewl—that echoed in the chamber was hers, but she scarcely recognized it.

  He kissed his way to her ear, and a fresh, molten wave of need washed over her. His teeth grazed the lobe and—Lord help her!—but when he caught her flesh and gave a gentle nip, she moved nearer still.

  And that was when she felt it, that which she had only felt once before, on a day when Charles had been feeling particularly amorous after returning from a trip to Asia in search of some rare orchid or other, and he had kissed her silly—though never with such open-mouthed, erotic abandon—and a rigid protrusion had prodded her.

  Charles had instantly stepped away, flushing and apologizing profusely for overstepping his bounds. This particular protrusion, however, was larger. More aggressive. Unlike before, this time, she was tempted to touch it. To take him in her hand and…

  Charles.

  The cooling waters of guilt doused the heat swirling inside her. She pushed at Strathmore’s shoulders and stepped away, disengaging, just as the door opened and Great Aunt Hortense shuffled through in her arthritic gait.

  She was dressed in her customary mourning attire, though Uncle Arnold had died when Violet was but a girl. Her skirts were full and belled, her hair parted severely beneath the cap she wore on her steel-gray head, two outmoded loops of hair covering her ears and framing her lined face like a pair of wings. Her white collar was the only source of brightness on her otherwise dour form, trimmed by a midnight black ribbon and her customary mourning brooch that contained a braid of Uncle Arnold’s hair.

  She looked, as always, as if she had napped through the last forty years and was, consequently, unaware life had changed whilst she’d stood still.

  “Aunt Hortense,” Violet greeted her nervously, rushing forward. Rushing away from the intense stare of the duke, whose kisses had left her transformed. There would now forever be the Violet before Strathmore’s lips touched hers and the Violet after. “I was just about to fetch you.”

  Aunt Hortense, no fool even if she did choose to dress as though she were firmly entrenched in 1842, pinned Violet with an assessing stare. “Lady Violet, what can you have been thinking, entertaining a gentleman alone in the midst of the afternoon? I cannot think Lord Almsley would be impressed to learn his betrothed is making herself far too familiar with duplicitous dukes.”

  “I beg your pardon, madam,” said the duke in question, offering an elegant bow. He embodied calm and charm. To look upon him now, one would never guess he had just been wooing her with such unbridled passion. “I believe you may be confused. I am the Duke of Strathmore, not the Duke of Duplicity.”

  Violet pressed two fingers to her lips to suppress a startled bark of laughter threatening to erupt from her. Aunt Hortense, on the other hand, was not so easily amused. She drew herself up, a veritable dragon when in full dudgeon.

  “I am precisely aware of who and what you are, Your Grace. I cannot fathom why Arden would allow you to darken these halls, but to our great misfortune, he has. The least you can do is relegate yourself to your chamber and cease importuning Lady Violet. Her reputation does not need to take on the stink of yours.”

  And for some reason, though she knew she should not, and that the last thing she owed the handsome devil before her was loyalty, Violet felt compelled to defend him. “I must insist you apologize to His Grace, Aunt. He was not importuning me in the least. Rather, it was I who importuned him. You see, I begged him to see if he felt, as a gentleman, that the seed pouch I am crocheting for Lord Almsley would suffice.”

  She deliberately avoided Strathmore’s gaze as she took Aunt Hortense to task. Partially because she feared what she would see there in his expression. Partially because she knew her face would flame if she looked directly upon him. He was her
Gorgon, but instead of turning her to stone, he would transform her into a mottled shade of undeniable guilt.

  “And what would a scandalous, treasonous blackguard know of seed pouches?” Aunt Hortense demanded.

  “I cannot answer for the fellow you describe, madam,” the duke said with calm and ease, taking up Violet’s sad attempt at fashioning a seed pouch. She had yet to snip the string, which meant the item in question had a lone tail protruding from it to the ball of yarn—ironically the same line which had tripped him not long ago. “As for myself, I can only say I must try out the seed pouch to judge its efficacy.”

  Violet bit her lip to stifle a laugh as she attempted to envision Strathmore testing the seed pouch. She already knew herself the misshapen little oddity would not function. It was merely an attempt on her behalf to appease Great Aunt Hortense and show Charles she cared for him.

  For she did care for him, she reminded herself.

  Of course she did. He was an exemplary fiancé and would make her a good husband. He was calm. Predictable. Intelligent. Kind. Safe. He adored her, doted over her. He was everything a lady could want in a husband.

  Except he had never set Violet aflame with his kisses.

  And after today, she was not convinced he could.

  She swallowed heavily, uncertain of what to do with that particular misgiving, and moved into action, tying off the yarn and using her small scissors to snip it free. In truth, the seed pouch was not finished. But she did not much care for crocheting, and she would be relieved to be free of the thing.

  “There you are, Your Grace,” she said, keeping her attention carefully trained upon the seed pouch.

  “Thank you, Lady Violet.” His voice, so deep and delicious and decadent it sent a frisson of desire through her once more, forced her gaze to his. His light-blue eyes burned into hers. “I shall test its mettle and report my findings.”

  Why, oh why, did such innocuous words make her feel as if she were aflame? And why was she staring at his lips once more, this time recalling what they had felt like moving over hers, with such sinful bliss?