Duke of Midnight

by Elizabeth Hoyt

  “It’s too bad,” she murmured. “Phoebe loved Harte’s Folly, and I rather liked it, too. It was such a magical place. Why do you think Lord Noakes set it alight in the first place?”

  “Presumably to cover the fact that he’d just murdered his nephew,” Maximus replied.

  “What?” She thought about the blood on Lord Noakes’s hands. “Poor man!”

  “Well, he was trying to blackmail his uncle,” Maximus said drily. “If he’d just told me that he’d gotten the pendant from his uncle’s house in the first place, he’d be alive right now.”

  “Mmm.” She picked at the coverlet. “Well, I suppose I wouldn’t have been going to Harte’s Folly again in any case.”

  “Why not?” he asked absently. “Was the play not to your liking?”

  “We didn’t get that far.” She sighed. “Penelope had rather a fit when we first arrived and caused a scene. I’m surprised no one told you.”

  He turned slowly. “What?”

  She looked at him. “She called me a whore.”

  “Damn it.” He scowled at his hands. “That rather destroys my plans.”

  “Plans for what?”

  “When I was swimming through that foul water, I decided.” He went to his lockbox and opened it. “I was going to have it remade before I asked you. It seemed symbolic somehow.” He glared at her. “Now I’ll just have to do without.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “I’m sorry?”

  Then Maximus did something very strange: he went on one knee before her.

  “This isn’t right at all,” he said, continuing to glare as if he found it all her fault.

  She sat up. “What are you doing?”

  “Artemis Greaves, will you do me the honor of—”

  “Are you insane?” she demanded. “What of your father? Your conviction that you must marry for the dukedom?”

  “My father is dead,” he said softly. “And I’ve decided the dukedom can go hang.”

  “But—”

  “Hush,” he snapped. “I’m trying to propose to you properly even without my mother’s necklace.”

  “But why?” she asked. “You think my brother is mad.”

  “He seemed sane enough to me the last time I saw him,” Maximus said kindly. “He tried to attack me.”

  She goggled. “Most would take that as confirmation of his madness.”

  He shrugged, reaching into the lockbox for the pendant she’d worn about her neck for so long. It lay next to the other six emeralds, all recovered now that the last had been taken from Noakes’s dead body. “He thought I’d seduced his sister.”

  “Oh.” She blushed, still uncomfortable with the thought of Apollo knowing about… that.

  “I know that this is rather disappointing,” he said as he slipped off his signet ring and threaded it on the chain the pendant still hung on. “But I intend to make you respectable.”

  “Not because of what Penelope said?” she protested.

  “No.” He put the necklace over her head, settling the ring and the pendant between her breasts with care. The brush of his warm fingers made her nipples peak. “Well, yes, in a way. I don’t want you to think that I would allow anyone to call you such. I vowed it to myself when I was searching for you underwater. That if I could get you out alive…” He cleared his throat, frowning. “Anyway, you can wear the necklace at the wedding.”

  “Maximus.” She took his face, making him look up at her. “I don’t want to marry you simply because you want to protect my name. If—”

  Her heartfelt protest was interrupted by him lunging at her and taking her mouth. He kissed her thoroughly, openmouthed, until she had trouble remembering what exactly they’d been talking about.

  When he broke the kiss, he still held her tight, almost as if he were afraid to let her go. “I love you, my Diana. I’ve loved you, I think, since I discovered you walking barefoot in my woods. Even when I thought I couldn’t marry you, I fully intended to keep you by my side forever.” He pulled back to look at her and she saw to her absolute astonishment that there was a trace—a very small trace—of uncertainty in his expression. He smoothed a thumb down the side of her face. “You mustn’t leave me. Without you there’s no light in the world. No laughter. No purpose. Even if for some silly reason you don’t wish to marry me, promise me at least—”

  “Hush.” She cupped his face in her hands. “Yes, I’ll marry you, you foolish man. I love you. I suppose I’ll even wear your mother’s extravagant necklace—though it won’t look nearly as good on me as it would’ve on Penelope. I’ll do anything you want, just so that we can remain together. Forever.”

  He surged up over her at that, capturing her mouth, surrounding her with his strong, possessive arms.

  When at last he allowed her to draw breath she saw that he was frowning sternly at her. “We’ll marry in three months. You’ll wear the Wakefield emeralds and the earbobs I’ll have made, but mark me well, you are confused. No one would look better in those emeralds than you. Your cousin might be a pretty face, but you, my darling, courageous, maddening, seductive, mysterious, wonderful Diana, you are the Duchess of Wakefield. My duchess.”

  Epilogue

  Tam cried out his sister’s name, expecting Lin to turn to ash before his eyes. But a strange thing happened when Lin touched the earth: nothing at all. She bent her head and whispered something into the ear of the little white dog, whereupon the animal leaped from her arms to the ground and stood wagging his tail. Immediately the wild hunt’s horses and riders fell from the sky, each one assuming his mortal shape as he landed on the earth. The last to descend from the sky was King Herla himself. He stepped from his horse and as his booted foot touched the ground he drew a deep, shuddering breath, tilting his head back to feel the rays of the dawning sun upon his face.

  Then he smiled and looked down at Lin, his eyes no longer pale. Now they were a warm brown. “You’ve saved me, brave little maiden. Your courage, cleverness, and unwavering love has broken the curse set on me, my men, and your own brother.”

  At his words the men of his retinue threw their hats into the air, cheering.

  “I owe you everything I have,” King Herla said to Lin. “Ask what you will for your reward and it is yours.”

  “Thank you, my king,” Lin said, “but I want for nothing.”

  “Not jewels?” asked King Herla.

  “No, my king.”

  “Not land?”

  “Indeed not, my king.”

  “Not horses or cattle?”

  “No, my king,” Lin whispered, for King Herla had stepped closer as he had questioned her and she had to tilt back her head to look him in the eye now.

  “Nothing I have will tempt you?” King Herla murmured.

  Lin could only shake her head.

  “Then perhaps I should offer myself,” Herla said as he sank to his knees before her. “Wonderful girl, will you have me as your husband?”

  “Oh, yes,” Lin said and all about her the King’s men cheered again.

  Then King Herla married Lin in a ceremony that was quite nice but not nearly as grand as his first wedding so many centuries before. After that, he cleared the dark wood of brambles, tilled the fields again, rebuilt his crumbling castle, and caused fat cattle to graze upon his lands. The people were once again content and well-fed. And if King Herla ever felt the urge to go a-hunting, he ignored it and turned to see the smile of his wise queen instead, for he’d already found and captured the best quarry of all.

  True love.

  —from The Legend of the Herla King

  MEANWHILE…

  “Nine fucking years.”

  Apollo sat on an overturned tin pail and watched as his good friend, Asa Makepeace, thrust the bottle of wine gripped in his fist into the air, a defiant salute.

  “D’you hear me, ’Pollo?” Asa demanded, waving the bottle so wildly he nearly boxed Apollo’s ear with it. “Nine fucking years. I could’ve been whoring or drinking or pottering about the contin
ent, seeing places, and instead I was working, nay, slaving on this very pleasure garden, building and planting and coddling fickle actresses and more fickle actors and now, now it’s nothing but a smoldering pile of shit. I say again: nine fucking years!”

  Apollo sighed and drank from his own bottle as Asa continued to repeat his profane refrain. Apollo’s bottle was half gone, which was good since he no longer cared that the wine stank of smoke. They sat in the only part of Harte’s Folly still standing: the actor’s dressing rooms behind the stage.

  Or what had once been the stage. That part of the theater, and indeed the rest of it, was a still-smoldering blackened mess of fallen beams and debris, too hot to sift through to see if anything could be recovered, although Apollo was very doubtful on that score.

  It might have been nine years of Asa’s life lost tonight, but it was also the last bit of capital Apollo had to his name gone, too. Just before he’d woken that dreadful day to find three of his acquaintances bloodily slaughtered around him, he’d taken that capital—a tiny legacy from his father—and invested the lot in Harte’s Folly. At the time it had seemed a sound financial move: he was terrible with money while Asa seemed on the verge of wealth and prosperity with the pleasure garden. Apollo hadn’t expected too much—maybe enough made in interest to keep himself and Artemis.

  That dream had just turned to ash.

  “ ’Spect I’ll have to live on the street now,” Asa was saying mournfully to his bottle. “My family isn’t too fond of me, you know. And I haven’t any talent or trade save the ability to talk people into things—like I talked you into giving me all your savings, ’Pollo.”

  Apollo would’ve corrected Asa’s misconception—he’d made the investment decision of his own free will—but he still couldn’t speak, and he wasn’t sure it mattered anyway. Asa seemed to be almost enjoying wallowing in his own tragedy.

  “Hullo?”

  They looked at each other at the call from without.

  Asa’s eyebrows rose comically high on his forehead. “Who d’you think that is?” he asked in a very loud whisper.

  “Ah, there you are.” The prettiest man Apollo had ever seen picked his way through the trash strewn around their little shelter. He was exquisitely dressed in a silver waistcoat and a pink satin coat and breeches, but it was his hair that drew the eye: shining golden curls drawn back by a huge black bow.

  Fop, thought Apollo.

  “Who the hell are you?” Asa asked belligerently.

  The fop smiled and Apollo’s eyes narrowed. He might be pretty, but this wasn’t a man to be underestimated.

  “I?” The fop fastidiously laid a lace handkerchief on the remains of a bench and perched on it. “I am Valentine Napier, the Duke of Montgomery, and I have a proposition for you, Mr. Makepeace.”

  OTHER TITLES BY ELIZABETH HOYT

  Lord of Darkness

  Thief of Shadows

  Scandalous Desires

  Notorious Pleasures

  Wicked Intentions

  To Desire a Devil

  To Seduce a Sinner

  To Beguile a Beast

  To Taste Temptation

  The Ice Princess

  The Serpent Prince

  The Leopard Prince

  The Raven Prince

  PRAISE FOR ELIZABETH HOYT’S MAIDEN LANE SERIES

  Lord Of Darkness

  “Lord of Darkness illuminates Hoyt’s boundless imagination… readers will adore this story.”

  —RT Book Reviews

  “Hoyt’s writing is imbued with great depth of emotion… heartbreaking… an edgy tension-filled plot.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Lord of Darkness is classic Elizabeth Hoyt, meaning it’s unique, engaging, and leaves readers on the edge of their seats, waiting for the next book… an incredible addition to the fantastic Maiden Lane series. I Joyfully Recommend Godric and Megs’s tale, for it’s an amazing, well-crafted story with an intriguing plot and a lovely, touching romance that I want to enjoy again and again and again… simply enchanting!”

  —JoyfullyReviewed.com

  “I adore the Maiden Lane series, and this fifth book is a very welcome addition to the series… [It’s] sexy and sweet all at the same time… This can be read as a standalone, but I adore each book in this series and encourage you to start from the beginning.”

  —USA Today’s Happy Ever After Blog

  “Beautifully written… a truly fine piece of storytelling and a novel that deserves to be read and enjoyed.”

  —TheBookBinge.com

  Thief Of Shadows

  “An expert blend of scintillating romance and mystery… The romance between the beautiful and quick-witted Isabel and the masked champion of the downtrodden propels this novel to the top of its genre.”

  —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

  “Amazing sex scenes… a very intriguing hero… This one did not disappoint.”

  —USA Today

  “Innovative, emotional, sensual… Hoyt’s beautiful blending of the essential elements of a fairy tale into a stunning love story enhances this delicious ‘keeper.’ ”

  —RT Book Reviews

  “All of Hoyt’s signature literary ingredients—wickedly clever dialogue, superbly nuanced characters, danger, and scorching sexual chemistry—click neatly into place to create a breathtakingly romantic love story.”

  —Booklist

  “When [they] finally come together, desire and long-denied sensuality explode upon the page.”

  —Library Journal

  “With heart and heat rolled into one, Thief of Shadows is a definite must-read for historical romance fans! Hoyt really has outdone herself… yet again.”

  —UndertheCoversBookblog.blogspot.com

  “A balanced mixture of action, adventure, and mystery and a beautifully crafted romance… The perfect historical romance.”

  —HeroesandHeartbreakers.com

  Scandalous Desires

  “Historical romance at its best… Series fans will be enthralled, while new readers will find this emotionally charged installment stands very well alone.”

  —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

  “4½ stars! This is the Maiden Lane story readers have been waiting for. Hoyt delivers her hallmark fairy tale within a romance and takes readers into the depths of the heart and soul of her characters. Pure magic flows from her pen, lifting readers’ spirits with joy.”

  —RT Book Reviews

  “With its lush sensuality, lusciously wrought prose, and luxuriously dark plot, Scandalous Desires, the latest exquisitely crafted addition to Hoyt’s Georgian-set Maiden Lane series, is a romance to treasure.”

  —Booklist (starred review)

  “Ms. Hoyt writes some of the best love scenes out there. They are passionate, sexy, and blazing hot… I simply adore Ms. Hoyt’s books for her sensuous prose, multifaceted characters, and intense, well-developed story lines. And she delivers every single time. It’s no wonder all of her books are on my keeper shelves. Do yourself a favor and pick up Scandalous Desires.”

  —TheRomanceDish.com

  “Scandalous Desires is the best book Elizabeth Hoyt has written so far, with endearing characters and an all-encompassing romance you’ll want to hold close and never let go. If there’s one must-read book, especially for historical romance fans, it’s Scandalous Desires.”

  —FallenAngelReviews.com

  Notorious Pleasures

  “Emotionally stunning… The sinfully sensual chemistry Hoyt creates between her shrewd, acid-tongued heroine and her scandalous, sexy hero is pure romance.”

  —Booklist

  Wicked Intentions

  “4½ stars! Top Pick! A magnificently rendered story that not only enchants but enthralls.”

  —RT Book Reviews

  SEE HOW THE STUNNING MAIDEN LANE SERIES BEGAN!

  Please turn this page for an excerpt from the first book in this series,

  Wicked Intentions.

  C
hapter One

  Once upon a time, in a land long forgotten now, there lived a mighty king, feared by all and loved by none. His name was King Lockedheart.…

  —from King Lockedheart

  LONDON

  FEBRUARY 1737

  A woman abroad in St. Giles at midnight was either very foolish or very desperate. Or, as in her own case, Temperance Dews reflected wryly, a combination of both.

  “ ’Tis said the Ghost of St. Giles haunts on nights like this,” Nell Jones, Temperance’s maidservant, said chattily as she skirted a noxious puddle in the narrow alley.

  Temperance glanced dubiously at her. Nell had spent three years in a traveling company of actors and sometimes had a tendency toward melodrama.

  “There’s no ghost haunting St. Giles,” Temperance replied firmly. The cold winter night was frightening enough without the addition of specters.

  “Oh, indeed, there is.” Nell hoisted the sleeping babe in her arms higher. “He wears a black mask and a harlequin’s motley and carries a wicked sword.”

  Temperance frowned. “A harlequin’s motley? That doesn’t sound very ghostlike.”

  “It’s ghostlike if he’s the dead spirit of a harlequin player come back to haunt the living.”

  “For bad reviews?”

  Nell sniffed. “And he’s disfigured.”

  “How would anyone know that if he’s masked?”

  They were coming to a turn in the alley, and Temperance thought she saw light up ahead. She held her lantern high and gripped the ancient pistol in her other hand a little tighter. The weapon was heavy enough to make her arm ache. She could have brought a sack to carry it in, but that would’ve defeated its purpose as a deterrent. Though loaded, the pistol held but one shot, and to tell the truth, she was somewhat hazy on the actual operation of the weapon.

  Still, the pistol looked dangerous, and Temperance was grateful for that. The night was black, the wind moaning eerily, bringing with it the smell of excrement and rotting offal. The sounds of St. Giles rose about them—voices raised in argument, moans and laughter, and now and again the odd, chilling scream. St. Giles was enough to send the most intrepid woman running for her life.