Dangerous Duke

by Scott, Scarlett

  She could guess the reason. When he had shared his mother’s background with her, he had been hesitant. Ashamed not of his mother, a woman he clearly loved, for the way his face had lit up with tenderness at recalling her, but of her lack of blueblood.

  The grandparents he spoke of, the former owners of the tidy little home they had spent the previous evening in, could not have been the parents of his father, the duke, and so they must have been his mother’s parents. His mother, who had been a cook before wedding the duke. Now that she thought upon it, she had a vague recollection of whisperings of a scandal concerning the former Duchess of Strathmore.

  “Why did you buy it?” she asked as the cart swayed and rumbled on behind their ancient mount.

  “It was a piece of my mother’s history, and having it when I no longer had her, felt like the right thing to do.” He cast her a quick sidelong glance, as if to gauge her reaction. “But also because I enjoy having one place that is mine, and mine alone, not a part of the entail one day to be passed on to another, not filled with servants. There was also a time, after…after Paris, when I could not bear to be in large rooms. When small chambers comforted me. I lived there for almost a full year.”

  His rough-voiced admission sent an answering pang straight to her heart. She wondered if Paris was the place where he had received his scars. Where he had been tortured. She hated that word, in conjunction with him. Hated to think what he must have endured.

  But he was a proud man, and she knew he would not want her pity. She chose her response with care, waiting for the cart to rattle a bit farther down the road as she formulated her response. He was so complex, possessing so many layers, and she could not shake the feeling she had yet to even penetrate his tough outer shell. She wanted to, desperately, but she would have to proceed with caution, wearing kid gloves.

  “What happened to you there?” she dared to ask. “In Paris?”

  For a long time, he did not speak, and she feared she had gone too far. That despite their intimacy of the evening before, he would not entrust such a painful memory to her. She tamped down a spear of disappointment, telling herself in time, perhaps he would be more forthcoming. Perhaps after they got to know each other better, after they were husband and wife, his battlements would lower.

  “There was turmoil in the region,” he said suddenly, startling her once more. “I was green, new to the League. They sent me to be their eyes and ears, to monitor the tension between the French and the Germans. Tension turned into war, and I ended up not only trapped in Paris during the siege, but double crossed by a French agent. The French accused me of spying for the Germans and clapped me in irons.”

  Her gut clenched at the thought of him, young and alone, imprisoned and suffering the kind of torment that would leave the scars she had seen scoring his flesh. She did not know what to say, how to properly convey all the emotions whirling through her. So she did the only thing she could think of doing. She scooted nearer to him on the bench they shared and slid her arm around his side, catching him in a half embrace.

  He stiffened at first, and she braced herself for words barbed with censure, for a distance he would want to construct between them once more. But then he leaned against her, almost as if he needed the comfort of her presence, her tucked against him. Something inside her broke, and perhaps it was the last cord keeping her from giving herself to him completely, the final tie.

  Whatever it was, she moved forward, leaving it behind. She gave his large upper body a reassuring squeeze and waited patiently to see if he would share more, or if the slivers he had revealed would be all she could have for now. Either way, she would accept it, for he had told her much more about himself in the past day, than she had known about him since he had first fallen into her lap.

  “I am sorry you suffered,” she told him at last, breaking the silence of the horse’s plodding hooves and the rumble of the cart wheels.

  He shot her another quick, sidelong look, and there was something in his expression that took her breath and made her heart leap. It was the same intensity he had shown her yesterday on the stairs. How he had made her come so thoroughly undone, changing her entire world as she knew it, only to calmly lead her to her chamber for the evening, as if he were the world’s most perfect gentleman, would forever be beyond her. She had half expected him to join her in her chamber, or to sweep her into his arms and claim her. She would not have objected.

  “Thank you, Violet,” he said softly, before turning his attention back to the road.

  Overhead, the sky was a beautiful shade of blue, untroubled white clouds traveling with torpid grace above them.

  A perfect spring day. Almost too perfect and dreamlike to be true.

  “You need not thank me for caring for you,” she said, her head still resting upon his shoulder.

  In their harried escape from Lark House, there had been no time for niceties, and she had neither a fresh dress, nor proper headwear, to be traveling beneath the sun. She could only hope her complexion would not turn. Sunshine had a knack for making the freckles on her nose re-emerge.

  “The French spy who double-crossed me was a woman.”

  How silly she instantly felt for worrying over some spots. Whatever Griffin had experienced in France, it must have been horrific, and now came the realization he had suffered because of another woman.

  She bit her lip as jealousy flared unexpectedly to life. Somehow, she had not envisioned the spy as a female, but as a male. She hugged him even tighter, as if protecting him from the nameless, faceless woman. “I hope she paid for her treachery.”

  “I do not know. I never saw her after the day she betrayed me, nor did I expect to. I was foolish for trusting her. For believing she was not a threat to me. I learned many lessons from her, and I have not forgotten them.”

  There was steel and ice in his voice, underscored by bitterness. Whatever the Frenchwoman had done to him, Violet knew their relationship had not been a mere friendship. It had been more, far more. But she would not allow herself to contemplate it, for everything he spoke of had happened long before she had ever met him.

  “What lessons?” she dared to ask then, knowing she shouldn’t. Unable to stop herself.

  “To never truly trust anyone but myself.” His jaw, in profile, was rigid, clenched. “To never allow my heart to be vulnerable. To never again land myself in hell because I believe a woman when she says she loves me.”

  She swallowed the knot that had risen instantly in her throat at his words. It was a confirmation of her fears, that he had cared for the woman, and she had repaid him with not just betrayal, but a defection that led to his incarceration and torture. Unease blossomed inside her like a fresh July rosebud.

  His heart was closed off to her. Perhaps forever. But she did not love him, she told herself, and it ought not to matter. For she had not loved Charles either, and yet she had been preparing to wed him.

  Why should the Duke of Strathmore be any different? Why should his inability to love her or believe in her love for him haunt her so? Why should it make her feel so ill, as if someone had delivered a blow to her midsection, and she was now gasping for breath?

  None of it made sense, and she told herself so. Their marriage would be an arrangement, and she wanted to wed him because he made her feel alive. Dwelling upon his past would only be a detriment to them both. She could not rewrite his history, and neither could she erase the scars on his heart and his skin.

  They came to each other as they were, and that was that. She could not hope for more.

  But you can try for more, Wicked Violet reminded her. You can make him soften for you in other ways.

  Yes, she could.

  But today was not about being wicked and wild, or rebellious and passionate. That had been yesterday. Today was about being the Violet who would take this man as her husband. It was about finding a man with scars and damages and pain running deeper even than her own. And it was about letting him know she was here for him. They were
cut from the same cloth, after all, and that was probably what had drawn her to him from the start.

  That and his mouth, chortled Wicked Violet. And his face. And shoulders. And broad chest. And lean waist. And long legs. And—

  “I suppose I shall just have to work extra hard to convince you to change your mind,” she told him, interrupting Wicked Violet’s extensive taunt.

  Because yes, she found the Duke of Strathmore hopelessly irresistible, and it was undeniably true. If she had not been so incredibly drawn to him, if she had not felt the deep, inexplicable connection she felt to him, she would not be sitting alongside him now, hurtling along on the course to an unknown destination.

  For a long time, he said nothing, merely staring straight ahead, his attention upon the road and their horse, who had a marked tendency to stray from the road and slow every few minutes, in search of grass he could devour. And then, just when the questions roaring inside her reached their pinnacle, her worries and her fears colliding, he spoke once more.

  “I have a feeling you could change anything you wanted, Violet,” he said softly. “Anything in the whole damned world.”

  She could not quell the smile on her face. From him, it was the greatest praise. And on this day, she would accept it as victory. For today, it was more than enough. He had shared some small parts of himself with her, and she was nothing if not persistent. She would win this man, one way or another. She may be abominable at crocheting, but she excelled at loving people. And she was beginning to suspect she was falling in love with the Duke of Strathmore after all.

  Over and over again, as Violet held herself to him, her left breast crushed into his side, her warmth and scent—sweet, musky woman, rose petals, Violet—overwhelming him, Griffin told himself he had made a mistake. That her gentle caring, her compassion and tenderness, would not appeal to him as much if he had already sank his cock deep inside her. That he should have bedded her last night.

  The softening inside himself for her, the tenderness and caring she brought out in him, was beginning to concern him. It was all-consuming. He had shared more about himself with her than he had with any other woman, and he did not even know why. Yes, she was going to be his wife, but in his world, the love his parents had shared was an anomaly. In his world, marriages were based upon bloodlines and riches, upon alliances and duties, and not even mutual respect was required, let alone something as gauche as feelings.

  If he had only gotten her out of his blood, out of his head, out of his…everything…perhaps the journey to Oxfordshire and Harlton Hall would have been easier. Perhaps it would not have left him with shaking hands, trembling confidence, and the uneasy realization Lady Violet West had the sort of power over him he had never before experienced.

  Not with anyone else.

  Ever.

  But he could not face any of that now. Not when the pathetic excuse for a horse and cart he had been able to buy for their conveyance—a rickety farm wagon and a horse who should have been put to pasture long ago—was approaching the front doors of the impressive old edifice Clay Ludlow had made his home.

  Ludlow was a former League member and half brother to the Duke of Carlisle. It had been Carlisle who, in his final hours as leader of the League, told Griffin to seek out Harlton Hall and Ludlow should he ever require aid. At the time, Griffin had almost dismissed the suggestion outright as utterly ludicrous.

  Today, he was heartily glad he had not.

  For he had nowhere else to turn. Cut off from his connections as he had been, as Arden’s prisoner at Lark House, he no longer knew which of his homes were being watched. Perhaps all of them were. He had not dared to go to any of the places where Arden would have instantly suspected he would have gone, which meant he could not seek out his good friend Sebastian, the Duke of Trent.

  He needed Ludlow. He needed aid. Christ, he needed a friendly face. The last fortnight had sent him straight to hell. True, this time, there had been no knife-wielding Frenchman, no whips, no terror.

  But he was running just the same. And this time, he was not running alone. He was running with Lady Violet West, an innocent who had defied her brother to defend him. The knowledge of it still robbed his breath and made his heart perform disconcerting feats in his chest.

  Griffin stopped the horse and threw down the reins, dismounting from his side of the cart. He skirted the hapless vehicle and went to her side, extending his hand in as gentlemanly a fashion as he could muster.

  She accepted it, and took his help, stepping down from the cart in a rush of silken skirts that were notably incongruous with the quality of conveyance they had been forced to accept. Thank God they had not passed anyone on the road, for they must have been quite the spectacle, and as such, would have been noted and recalled with ease, rendering it that much easier for Arden to hunt them down.

  “Where have you brought me?” Violet asked then, taking in the sprawling edifice curiously.

  “I have brought you to the place where we will be married.” He did not release her hand, but instead, raised it to his lips for a reverent kiss. Even her skin here smelled of roses, and he was convinced she bathed with rose soap. It was the only explanation. And Lord God, she was driving him wild with that delicate, womanly scent. “It is called Harlton Hall.”

  He wanted to fall to his knees before her and worship her with his mouth as she deserved. But it was daylight, he reminded himself, and they were approaching the double front doors, hand in hand, as if they were incapable of being parted. And he did not know what awaited him on the other side of those doors.

  “Is it yours?” she asked.

  A reasonable question, considering the home they had spent the previous evening in had been. “It is the home of a friend. Someone we can trust.”

  At least, he hoped it was. He and Ludlow had been acquaintances more than friends during their League days, and Ludlow had resigned his commission recently, one more casualty to marrying a woman and finding love. But there was no guarantee he and Violet would find a welcome here. It was, however, his last, best resort. But he did not dare reveal any of that to the woman at his side.

  Up the steps they went, hands still clasped.

  He knocked on the door soundly.

  The butler on the other side of the portal was stern, steel-haired, and frowning as Griffin was convinced all butlers were trained from birth to wear as their natural, resting expression.

  “The Duke of Strathmore, I presume?” he asked, his countenance unperturbed.

  What the devil?

  He had not given advance warning for this leg of the journey.

  “None other,” he forced himself to say. “But I do not believe I am expected.”

  “You are indeed expected by Mr. Ludlow and the Duke of Carlisle, Your Grace.” The butler stepped back, allowing Griffin and Violet in his wake to enter. “If you and the lady would follow me?”

  Bringing Violet’s hand to the crook of his elbow, he nodded. He did not know how Carlisle and Ludlow, soon to be Lord Stanwyck, a peerage created for services rendered to the Crown, expected him or awaited his arrival. When he had sent word ahead to his connections with Violet’s aid, he had not thought of delivering a message to his former leader.

  Now, it seemed very much like something he ought to have done.

  In silence, Griffin and Violet followed the butler to a brightly colored salon overlooking the gardens of Harlton Hall. The butler ushered them within, then closed the door, leaving them in complete privacy. Ludlow and Carlisle, both behemoths of men and half brothers, rose upon their entrance, offering bows to Violet.

  “Strathmore,” Carlisle greeted him. “What brings you here?”

  “Arden,” he said succinctly, “and the small matter of my imminent incarceration.”

  “It took you the better part of an hour to make it down the drive in that ramshackle cart,” Ludlow added. “Was that a donkey pulling you, or an old mule?”

  He gritted his teeth. “A horse. A very old and decrepit and
nearly lame one. Were the two of you watching my painful progress?”

  “Aye,” Ludlow confirmed without a hint of compunction. “We haven’t much to occupy us these days since we have both resigned from the League. Watching you struggle to guide an old mule up the drive was most entertaining.”

  “Horse,” he corrected grimly.

  “Precisely what he said,” Carlisle chimed in, grinning.

  Bloody hell, he was already regretting his choice. Far from the most feared men in the League, cutthroat agents with histories that would make hardened soldiers blush, Carlisle and Ludlow both seemed appallingly happy and domesticated and…content.

  “But you have a lady accompanying you. Very remiss of me.” Carlisle could be debonair when he chose to, and at that moment, he turned the force of his rare charm upon Violet, and damn if it didn’t make every one of Griffin’s possessive hackles stand on end. “Good evening, my lady. I am the Duke of Carlisle, at your service.”

  “This is Lady Violet West,” he said pointedly. “Sister to the Duke of Arden.”

  “Damnation,” Ludlow breathed.

  “Arden’s sister?” Carlisle barked, his grin fading.

  “Precisely what I said,” Griffin shot back at the pair. “My betrothed, to be specific.”

  “Betrothed.” Both brothers repeated the word simultaneously.

  “Yes.”

  “You brought Arden’s sister here to us?” Ludlow asked.

  He sighed, for he was beginning to realize not one part of his plan would prove as simple as he had hoped and imagined it would be. “Yes.”

  Carlisle frowned. “Is not Lady Violet betrothed to the fellow who loves plants? I could have sworn Arden was bragging about the match when last I saw him. Who was it now, the Earl of…Alderly? Elmsworth? Natterly?”

  “Flowerpot,” he said, before Violet could correct the duke, and because the man’s true title did not matter any more than he did at this point. He was long gone. Part of Violet’s past. That she had kissed the blighter, and recently, still made his body coil with the need to strike in serpentine fashion.