The Tattooed Duke

by Maya Rodale

  The maid couldn’t restrain a bubble of laughter. Definitely listening.

  “If you want a wife and an heir, you’ll have to venture to Almack’s. Brave that, or else everything shall go to me!” Basil said with a touch of glee. “Sure would please my missus.”

  Wycliff glanced at the maid, who lifted her brow, silently suggesting that he’d do best to take a wife rather than leave an entire dukedom to Basil, for Lord’s sake.

  “Not that there is much to inherit, given the bothersome creditors by your door,” Basil added. “Still, my missus would fancy herself a duchess.”

  Wycliff’s expression darkened. Then he reminded himself that he wouldn’t care about Basil inheriting because he himself would be dead. Quite frankly, that was the Wycliff tradition: worry not, for the heirs shall sort out the mess with the mortgaged estates, rampant debt, rebellious tenants, etc, etc.

  Bastards.

  The maid kept dusting—had it not been done in years?—moving on now toward his desk. Being bored and women-starved, Wycliff freely ogled her bottom and the hourglass shape of her hips. Her eyes, though—he wished to see her eyes. A man could tell so much about a woman by her eyes.

  “But you must take a wife, if only for the fortune,” Basil continued, and Wycliff did not disagree with him. “First, you’ll need to cut your hair, visit Saville Row for proper attire—”

  Wycliff wore plain buckskin breeches and a shirt that was open at the collar and rolled at the sleeves. His boots had carried him through Africa, pounded the decks of dozens of ships, waded through swamps and seas alike. Frankly, his clothing looked like it had suffered all that and worse.

  “I thought it was enough to be a duke,” he interrupted rudely.

  “Sometimes it is,” Basil replied. “But if you are desperate . . .”

  “I am not desperate.”

  In fact, he had no intention of shackling himself. He had other plans for his time in England—namely, to plan and seek funding for the expedition of a lifetime, before he set sail once more. But Basil would not accept this, so he didn’t even bother to try to persuade his cousin otherwise. Instead he allowed him to carry on.

  “Well you ought to find a wife,” Basil said. “I’d be delighted to assist you, introduce you around, etcetera.”

  If he was planning to take a wife, Wycliff mused, telling his idiot cousin would be the first mistake. That was the path to matchmaking disasters and other high society atrocities.

  “Thank you, cousin. So very kind of you.”

  And with that Basil slurped one last sip of tea, set down the cup, and stood to go. Finally, this visit would be over and he could get on with reacclimating himself to his native country. Beginning with the brothels.

  Basil ambled through the study, slowing as he neared the desk. Wycliff swore under his breath.

  “Don’t look,” Wycliff muttered. Basil looked. Of course he looked.

  “I say, are those drawings of your travels?” his cousin exclaimed. He then took the liberty of lifting one up for a better view.

  “Blimey, cousin! What the devil—” Basil’s eyes nearly bugged out of his head.

  It was a portrait of a girl named Miri; she had graciously allowed him to draw her, including the tattoos that covered her hands, which were clutching her full, luscious breasts. She was laughing in the picture, and he couldn’t recall why; he would never know now, unless he sailed back to ask her.

  He ignored a pang of longing, like homesickness.

  “Tattooing,” Wycliff explained. “It’s a Tahitian custom that involves sharp bone tapping ink under the skin. It takes days. It’s excruciating—” He stopped when Basil’s skin adopted a greenish hue, matching his waistcoat.

  The maid was angling for a look at the drawing, too, and he grinned, and allowed her to see. He watched her eyes widen and look up to him, searching for answers.

  The look knocked the smile off his face and kicked his breath away. Blue. Her eyes were gray-blue like the ocean, where he longed to be.

  “I suppose one would expect such customs from the savages,” said the idiot cousin. Wycliff rolled his eyes.

  “They’re not savages, Basil, they are people who happen to live by a different set of cultural practices,” he lectured.

  “Of course, given your travels you may have a different perspective, but really, no one on earth surpasses the British,” Basil replied, rifling through more sheets.

  Of someone else’s private property. Idiot. Cousin.

  The maid bit her lip. She wanted to speak, and Wycliff was very intrigued.

  “Well that one is quite a stunner,” Basil said, referring to a watercolor of Orama, a lovely woman with soft lips and a warm embrace, who had allowed him to sketch her nude form as she rose like Aphrodite from the ocean with the turquoise water lapping around her hips. She was breathtaking, and it was some vile mistake that his idiot cousin Basil should be able to look at such raw beauty.

  Out of the corner of his eye Wycliff saw the little maid’s cheeks turn pink. He’d forgotten how adorably prudish and modest English women could be.

  Wycliff took the sheet away from Basil, and the other sketches, “For all your talk of civilized behavior in England, it seems quite uncivilized to sort through a man’s personal papers.”

  “Indeed, indeed. I say, my apologies. One just has such a curiosity for all things exotic. You’ll have to join me at my club, cousin, and tell my friends of your travels,” Basil offered. Wycliff muttered something like agreement, even though he had no desire to sit around a stuffy old club with stuffy old men.

  Finally, after much ado, Basil was gone and he was alone with the maid. She curtsied awkwardly before him, murmured “Your Grace” and asked if there was anything she could provide him with. All with that little pink mouth of hers. Wicked thoughts crossed his mind, but he would not give voice to those, even though it would be such a typical Wicked Wycliff thing to do.

  “If you can, I’d like that hour of my life back,” he said frankly.

  “If I had the ability to turn back time, I’d have no need of your wages,” she replied tartly as she gathered up the tea things. It ought to have been a simple affair, but china cups clattered against sauces and silver spoons clinked across the tray and she spilled the milk. She also swore under her breath, which delighted him. She must have met Harlan already, he thought, or had some unsavory past of her own.

  Thus far this little maid with the sea blue eyes and salty language was the only thing of interest in England.

  “What is your name?” he asked.

  She hesitated before answering. “Eliza.”

  With her arms laden with the tea tray, she managed a short, awkward curtsey on her way out, treating him to a splendid view of her backside, again.

  Once she was gone, he pulled the key from the leather cord he wore around his neck and used it to unlock and open the door leading from the library to a room otherwise cut off from the rest of the house. It was here that he kept those things he wished no one to see. Not yet.

  Chapter 3

  In Which the Nudity Is His Grace’s

  Later that day, dusk

  Eliza stood outside the door to His Grace’s bedchamber, summoning the gumption to walk in unannounced while His Grace was in a bath. Naked. It wasn’t as if she’d never seen a naked man before. She wasn’t some sheltered missish thing.

  The protocol for a situation like this eluded her: a naked duke, in the bath, without a drying cloth. She probably shouldn’t go in. Or should she? Having never grown up with servants, nor having been one herself, Eliza was learning everything about her new job the hard way.

  She had filled that damned bathtub—hauling heavy buckets of boiling water up three floors—with the help of another housemaid, Jenny. The task required moving fast enough to keep the water warm, but not so fast that they’d spill it. It had been excruciating. The duke had better enjoy his damned bath.

  In Eliza’s haste and inexperience, she had forgotten to leave a
drying cloth. She did not yet know if he was the type to roar and holler in anger, and she did not care to find out, because he was an imposing, intimidating hulk of a man and because she was the type to roar and holler back. That spelled trouble. That spelled fired, and she could not lose this position or her story for The London Weekly.

  Get the story. Get the story.

  Thus, she debated. Leave him without a drying cloth? Or interrupt?

  He hadn’t arrived with a valet, or hired one yet, which meant there was no one else to attend to him . . .

  Such was the life of a writer, undercover and in disguise. The things she did for Mr. Knightly, and for The Weekly! If she had to go to such lengths to get a story published—employed as a housemaid in the most scandalous household in town—then by damn, she would. She would not lose her position. Not over this.

  She ought to go in, she reasoned. She would not pay attention to him, and he would do the same because she was a servant and thus utterly beneath his notice. That much she knew about master and servant relations. Yet she had a feeling it would not be so simple.

  Eliza recalled the way His Grace had looked at her in the study this afternoon, and how his gaze felt like an intimate caress. The man left her breathless.

  “Bother it all,” she muttered, and entered his chambers. Then she stopped short.

  She saw the duke in the bath, as expected. But it was no ordinary sight. His hair was wet and slicked back from his face, showing off strong, hard features. His mouth was full and firm and not smiling. Even in this pose of relaxation, he put her in mind of a warrior: always aware, always ready.

  The water lapped at his waist, his chest a wide, exposed expanse of taut skin over sculpted muscle. As Eliza stepped toward him and saw more of the man illuminated by the burning embers in the grate and the flickering of candles, she noticed that his chest was covered in inky blue-black lines. Tattoos, like the drawing.

  She gasped. His eyes opened.

  “Hello, Eliza.” The duke’s voice was low, smoky, and sent tremors down her spine. The window was slightly ajar and the cool breeze made the candle flames dance wildly, casting slate-colored shadows, making the room seem like some strange, magical, otherworld.

  “Your Grace,” she murmured, and bobbed into a curtsey.

  “Have you come to join me?” he asked in a rough voice, and she could not tell if he was serious or bamming her.

  “My wages don’t cover that, either, Your Grace,” she replied, not yet having mastered her subservience, but she was rewarded for her impertinence when his mouth curved into a grin.

  Eliza’s gaze inevitably drifted back to his nudity. The tattooing covered the broad expanse of his muscled chest, wrapping up over the shoulders and generously covering his upper arms, even inching onto his forearms. A million questions were poised on the tip of her tongue. Yet her mouth was suddenly too dry to form words.

  “Tattoos,” he confirmed, reading her mind. “It’s a Tahitian custom. When in Rome . . .”

  “You mentioned that it was painful,” she said, referring to the exchange earlier. “It seems like it must.”

  “Like the devil.”

  “Why would you do it, then?”

  “Because to not do so is considered cowardly,” he explained in a low voice.

  “That’s all? Because you do not wish to be seen as weak in front of men on the far side of the world?”

  The duke laughed. “You don’t understand men, do you?”

  “Apparently not,” she replied dryly.

  “The sketches are one thing to see; this is another entirely. Wouldn’t you agree?” Eliza nodded yes. “It’s a record of my travels, and one of many artifacts that I have collected and brought back to England. There’s a whole world out there, beyond London. People should know that.”

  “Can I look closer?” she asked in a whisper, because it seemed too illicit to ask a duke for an intimate glimpse of his person. But she had to see the tattoos up close. If she could touch them, she would. This was the sort of thing The Weekly would love. But also, her own curiosity impelled her to seek satisfaction.

  Eliza knelt by the tub to see the tattoos, but her attention was also drawn to the scar she noticed on his upper lip, and the stubble upon his jaw. He had a clean, soapy scent that was at odds with the air of danger around him.

  His head was close to hers, his mouth only inches away.

  She wanted to touch his skin, to know if the tattoos left it rough or smooth. To feel the hard muscles of his arms and his chest underneath her palms. For The Weekly, of course.

  As if the duke could read her mind, he took her hand and rested it on his bicep, just above where the tattoo began.

  With a glance at him for permission, she traced her fingers along the lines—some straight, some jagged, some swirling up and around the curve of his shoulder and leading her down to the expanse of his torso. She splayed her palm across his chest and felt his hot skin and pulsing heartbeat.

  The duke’s hand closed over hers.

  The candles were still wavering, throwing shadows. Steam rose up from the water, making the air hot and humid between them. His lips parted—to kiss her or rebuke her for being so forward?

  Her own lips opened to tell him that she was not that kind of girl. Yet Eliza was in the habit of ignoring common sense and better judgment when it came to satisfying her curiosity, chasing a story or embracing adventure. Or men. She had secrets and stories to prove it.

  Jenny, the other housemaid, chose that moment to enter the room. There was a sigh of relief—hers, or the duke’s? Eliza snatched her hand away. The duke leaned back and closed his eyes as she stood and moved away from him to speak to the other maid.

  “I was just checking if His Grace was finished,” Jenny said in a whisper. “We’ll have to remove the tub and water tonight.” Then her eyes widened as she noted the Duke’s tattoos as well. “And you’ll need to turn down the bed, and all that. And have a care . . . you know his reputation.”

  Chapter 4

  The Writing Girls

  Offices of The London Weekly

  The following day, Wednesday

  Eliza dashed down Fleet Street. Her heart boomed in her chest. It hurt to breathe.

  It had been a trial to sneak out past Saddler, the butler, and the lot of footmen that stood about. Mrs. Penelope Buxby, the housekeeper, was easier to avoid once she started with the whiskey. It was late afternoon; she had begun at luncheon. Jenny agreed to cover for Eliza’s absence, saying that she was sweeping in the attic. No one would look for her there.

  Eliza arrived at 57 Fleet Street, breasts heaving and heart pounding. She nodded to Mehitable Loud, the enormous and terrifying-looking but friendly giant who protected the offices and all those in it, particularly Mr. Knightly, the owner-editor-proprietor of London’s most widely read, gossiped-about newspaper.

  Eliza had not fully composed herself when she finally dashed into the weekly meeting of the writers of The London Weekly. Late. Damien Owens and Alistair Grey stopped talking and heads swiveled to look in her direction. Knightly noted her attire with a lift of his brow.

  She wore a plain gray dress, with her white apron still pinned to the front, and a little white bonnet over her hair. There hadn’t been the time or place to change. Her hands were pink and raw from a morning spent scrubbing floors.

  It was Annabelle who gave voice to the question: “Eliza, why are you dressed as a servant?”

  “I have recently taken employ in the household of the Duke of Wycliff,” she answered, biting back a smile as the room erupted into murmurs and she noted the gleam in Knightly’s eyes and the grin tugging at his lips.

  They knew what this meant: a spy in the house that all of London was gagging to know about.

  Eliza had always written stories that took her undercover, often in disguise, to explore a side of London most never saw—and certainly one that other papers rarely covered. She wrote about the penny weddings of lower classes, or quack medicines, and on
ce even spent a few days in the workhouse in order to alert Londoners to the real conditions.

  It was nothing new for her to immerse herself so fully, to put her body and soul on the line for the paper. But this time it was different, because there was a scandalous, mysterious, unconventional duke involved. Even more pressing, this time her every column submitted could be her last.

  But not this one. She grinned. The one in her hand was gold.

  “ ‘The Tattooed Duke,’ ” she added, and The Weekly staff exploded with questions. Her heart was still beating fast and she felt light-headed. It wasn’t just the mad dash to arrive, but the novel sensation and heady feeling of being the center of attention.

  Eliza handed the sheet to Knightly, wincing at how it had become damp and crinkled during her race to the offices. He began to read.

  It was the best of times and it was the worst of times for the new Duke of Wycliff, recently returned to London to reclaim an old, notorious title. He looks nothing like a duke ought to. His hair is kept scandalously long; it is not the fashion now, nor was it when he quit England ten years ago. Like a common sailor, this duke wears a small gold hoop in one ear.

  But those are trifling things in comparison to the duke’s tattoos . . .

  Knightly skimmed ahead, settling on one line to read aloud: “ ‘His appearance is that of some wild, heathen warrior,’ ” and Eliza realized that her face surely took on fiery hue. Had she known Knightly would read the story—written feverishly late last night—she might not have written those words.

  She glanced at her friends. Dear Annabelle’s blue eyes were wide with shock, and Julianna’s delight was unmistakable. Julianna possessed an insatiable taste for gossip, and this was undoubtedly quenching it. Sophie was listening with obvious interest.

  “This is wonderfully scandalous,” Julianna murmured. She was the author of “Fashionable Intelligence,” the best gossip column in London. And she was Lady Julianna Roxbury, née Somerset.