One-Eyed Dukes Are Wild

by Megan Frampton

  “No, thank you,” Vortigern replied.

  He turned his head to watch as the butler left the room, then let out a deep breath as the door shut. “I have the most remarkable staff,” he said. “I have never had—well, this,” he said, gesturing toward her, “and yet they are behaving as though everything is entirely normal. Remind me to give them an extra bit of Christmas cheer this year.”

  So not only was he not in the habit of bringing ladies home, he was perhaps imagining that they would still be . . . acquainted in December.

  Those two things shouldn’t have made her so pleased, but they did. They absolutely did.

  He took her hand and guided her to the sofa, making sure she was comfortably settled before sitting himself. She turned to regard him, then let out a noise that she muffled quickly. “We should switch sides.” She was on his left, which meant his blind side.

  He looked embarrassed, although why he should be was beyond her. After all, they both knew he had a missing eye. He had already made mention of it being something people noticed—as of course they did—so why it should startle him when she said something didn’t make sense.

  But then again, there were more layers to the Impenetrable Piratical Duke than she had ever imagined on first meeting him.

  They swapped seats, and Margaret leaned her head back—scandalously, no lady would ever be seen in such a relaxed position—and turned to look at him, feeling herself smile as she caught his eye.

  “Would you like some tea, my lady?”

  As though they were having a proper visit at a proper time with proper chaperones. As opposed to all this, which was the most improper thing she could think of.

  No, wait, she could think of many more improper things. She shouldn’t do that, not now, not when he just wanted to serve her tea.

  “Yes, please.” He reached for the pot and poured, then set the teapot back on the table.

  “Milk? Sugar?”

  “Mm-hm,” Margaret said, relishing what a novelty it was to be waited upon by a man. This man, in particular.

  Because of course she’d been waited on by men before, but always by servants. Certainly never by a gentleman, much less a duke.

  Knowing that he wanted to please her—to make her happy in how he prepared her tea—gave her a flutter of excitement entirely unrelated to the beverage in question.

  “Thank you,” she said, taking the cup.

  He made quick work of his own cup, but instead of drinking, he placed the cup on the table and leaned his head back, as she had done. She mirrored his action so that they were both resting their heads against the back of the sofa, just looking at each other.

  “Tell me more about your work in Soho and the other slums of London.” He raised an eyebrow at her. “I didn’t get many of the details since I was too focused on you not getting beaten by that drunkard.”

  “And hiring the Beecham girls. Are they here? How are they doing?” Until he’d mentioned it, she’d entirely forgotten that he’d told those girls to come to his house for employment. What did that say about her, that she’d neglected to ask about their welfare, too engrossed in what the duke might look like naked and if there was hair on his chest?

  She didn’t think it said anything good, that was for certain. And she still hadn’t gotten the answers to all her questions.

  Which definitely didn’t say anything good, either, that that was the first thing she thought of.

  “They are fine,” he said in a soothing tone. “They are both working as scullery maids; my cook is likely browbeating them at this very moment.”

  Margaret popped up on the sofa, her eyes wide. “Browbeating them? That will not do,” she exclaimed, starting to rise.

  He put a hand on her arm. “You cannot solve everyone’s problems. When I say browbeating, I mean Cook is demonstrating her sympathy for the girls by worrying about them.” He grimaced. “I wish I could speak what was in my head at times.”

  Margaret relaxed again, feeling her mouth widen in a grin. “If you could speak what was in your head—if anyone could, actually—Society would be a much harsher place.” She tilted her head. “More honest, but definitely harsher.” She looked at him, raising one brow. “What would you say if you could speak whatever was in your head?”

  He had to be expecting her to ask that, but judging by the expression on his face, he absolutely wasn’t.

  So perhaps he didn’t quite mean it himself when he said they understood each other. She didn’t think she would point that out at this particular moment.

  “I—I don’t know. I should rephrase that, as usual,” he said in an irritated tone of voice. “I think I mean I should like to know what I think, definitively, about something. Rather than weighing all the sides, considering all the possibilities. Imagine how easy and wonderful it would be if I could just know.”

  She rolled her eyes. “If you just knew, you would have made up your mind before even hearing something. It says just what an intelligent, considerate person you are that you are so conflicted about things.”

  He looked doubtful. “So you are saying that my inability to make up my mind is a representation of my intelligence?”

  She poked him in the arm. “You can’t tell me you are unable to make up your mind. Of course you decide things, you make myriad decisions every day. What bills to support in the House of Lords, what to spend on certain expenditures, whether or not to follow young ladies who might get into trouble into dangerous neighborhoods of London . . .” She paused, waiting for his retort,

  “And a very good decision it was, too,” he said, folding his arms over his chest.

  “Precisely. What you are saying is that you wish you were so stupid you could just make a decision with no information. But you really don’t wish that.”

  “I suppose I don’t.” He edged closer to her on the sofa. “But I was also honest when I said I didn’t wish to be entirely proper anymore. I want to do what is right.” He took her hand in his and bent his head to regard their hands. “This is right.”

  And then he looked up, with an expression that blended hope, and desire, and want, and a fierce strength that made her knees buckle all over again, no matter that she was seated.

  “It is,” she replied. “Whatever this is, it is right.”

  Georgiana and the Dragon

  By A Lady of Mystery

  “First I’ll need you to cut me.” The princess produced a knife from somewhere about her person and held it out to Georgiana.

  “Why?” Georgiana asked, even though she thought she knew the answer.

  “Only the blood of a true princess can heal me,” the dragon said softly.

  Georgiana rolled her eyes. “Of course. A beautiful princess, no doubt?”

  If dragons could shrug, this one would have. “The princess can be beautiful or not beautiful. She just has to be a princess.”

  “Here,” the princess said. She’d rolled her sleeve up and held her arm out. “Just there. I’ll hold it over the wound.”

  “I have a bucket,” Georgiana said, looking around wildly. The bucket had to still be here, didn’t it?

  “Never mind the bucket. Just get the blood.”

  Georgiana shuddered at just how gruesome it sounded, but took hold of the knife and slashed the princess’s arm.

  The blood started to flow immediately, bright red drops falling onto the wound.

  The dragon cried out, as though in pain.

  Chapter 20

  Lasham swallowed, his throat thick with the wanting. The needing. But more than that, he felt—welcomed. Odd, not to always feel welcome, but he didn’t. Hadn’t ever, as far as he could remember.

  He was tolerated. Wanted at events because of his prestige, but not truly welcomed.

  And even in his own home, which they were obviously in now, he wasn’t welcomed, because he was the only one who could welcome anybody. The rest of the people who lived here were here merely on his sufferance, and couldn’t welcome anybody at all.


  But she could. She sat on his sofa, in his library, in his house, and he felt as though she had let him in, and not the other way around.

  He wanted to touch her, of course, but he also wanted to gather up everything about her he could, every tiny drop of knowledge sucked into his brain like the most intoxicating beverage. He would get drunk on it, on her, finally able to forget—as wine was not able to make him do—what it felt like not to be him, at least not what he was, for a few moments.

  “What are you thinking about?” She sounded as though she were truly interested, not as though she wanted to hear he was thinking about her, as many women would have wanted.

  The irony, of course, was that he was thinking about her.

  He shifted, picking up his teacup and taking a sip. The tea was lukewarm now; he’d let it sit too long. He shook his head and returned the cup to the saucer.

  “I was thinking about you.”

  She blinked. “Really? I hadn’t meant—”

  “I know,” he said. He smiled at her. “I do know.” He put his right ankle on his left knee and slumped down farther on the sofa. A posture he knew was shocking even if he had been alone, but with her it was downright—well, whatever was worse than shocking. Perhaps a word so scandalous it had never been uttered.

  He would have to ask her what that word might be, given that she was a writer and all.

  “What were you thinking?” She raised her eyebrow in challenge as well as flirtation. The quintessential Margaret, he was coming to understand.

  He shrugged. “Just that I am impressed by how you’ve taken it upon yourself to try to make a difference. It is not often that anybody from our world pays attention to what happens in those kinds of neighborhoods, at least not without a speech to make in the House of Lords.”

  “If I could go speak in the House of Lords,” she replied quickly, “I would.” Now it was her turn to shrug. “Only I can’t, and I also can’t just leave them to suffer there.”

  “Why not? Why is it so important to you?” He held his hand up as her mouth snapped open. “Not that it is not what should be done, what people should do, but I haven’t seen any ladies doing what you’re doing. With or without my fearsome presence.” He paused, hoping he could explain himself. “I—I admire what you’re doing. Initially I thought it was foolhardy, and it might still be, but at least you’re seeing a problem and doing something about it.” Like me, he thought, only his problem wasn’t that people in the world were suffering, but that he wasn’t happy. Far less important in any context, but it felt important to him. He already knew he was doing his best to help ease the world’s suffering, or at least the part he could affect, and now, perhaps, it was time to focus his attention on himself.

  What would it be like if he were truly happy?

  She seemed to understand him, since her expression changed into a thoughtful one. “I think it is because those women could so easily have been me.” She waved her hand in a dismissive motion. “Not that I would have ended up there, not really, because my sister would look out for me. But those women, they have the barest support, and still they survive. When I was away from London, I thought a lot about the difference between living and survival. I want people to be able to live, no matter who they are.”

  He reached for her hand, feeling impossibly tender, as though he were standing on the edge of a precipice, but one where he would fly if he leaped, not fall to the ground, shattered. I want people to be able to live, no matter who they are. That could apply to a duke as well as a chimney sweep.

  He took a deep breath. Knowing he would say this right, at least. Because it was so full in his heart, he had to let it out, or burst. “We talked earlier about happiness, and what it is.” He swallowed, keeping his gaze locked on her face. Watching the shifting of her emotions as she listened to him. “I think I was just surviving before. I think,” and here he paused, because it felt too much, “I think with you I might live a little.”

  She bit her lip and nodded, and it looked as though, for once, she was speechless.

  He didn’t want to kiss her at that moment. Well, he did, but he didn’t want her to think that was all this—whatever it was—was. So he just held her hand, stroking her skin with his fingers, tracing the calluses where she held her pen. Touching the inside of her wrist, the skin so soft there he wanted to rub his cheek against it.

  “I want to live also,” she said at last. She lowered her gaze and her voice got quieter. “Living is more than just existing.” She’d existed while she had been away from London. But now that she was back, and feeling useful, and seeing her sister again, and meeting her niece, and helping the women who needed help—that was living.

  And then there was he. His mere presence in her life shouldn’t make her entire life more meaningful—that would be to pin her life’s work to a man, and not doing that was what had brought her here in the first place, ironically enough. But somehow he did, he twisted her all around, he made her want to do more than live, even. But even as she thought it, her brain shied away from it, because the next thing up from live was love.

  She could not fall in love with him.

  Because even she couldn’t write a happy ending if that happened.

  Georgiana and the Dragon

  By A Lady of Mystery

  “What is it? Is it worse?” Georgiana cupped her hands under the princess’s arm, trying to catch the blood. Of course that didn’t work, and the blood spilled through Georgiana’s fingers onto the dragon, who was still moaning.

  “He’s recovering,” the princess said, pulling Georgiana’s hand away. “This is just part of the process.”

  “How can you be so certain?” Georgiana asked, rubbing her bloody palms on her gown.

  “This is not my first dragon rescue,” the princess said. She frowned in thought. “As I think about it, in fact, I believe this is my twelfth dragon.” She glared down at the beast. “And none of them have been princes.”

  But even as the words emerged from her mouth, the dragon’s shape started to change, the hidelike skin shifting into something softer, the scales falling away to reveal—

  A man. A naked man lying on the ground, curls of steam coming from his skin.

  The princess smiled as Georgiana shrieked.

  Chapter 21

  Margaret hadn’t expected this, any of this, to be as . . . intense as it was. Although she should have expected it, once she’d realized the Piratical and Proper Duke was full of layered depths, a fathomless well of feeling and repressed emotion. Likely so repressed he wasn’t even aware it was there. But she was. She could feel it every time he touched her, or kissed her, or regarded her with his burning gaze. It was almost a palpable thing, his emotion, and she wanted to bring it out, expose it to both of them, see what it would look like if they examined it closely.

  And wasn’t she fanciful? Likely as not he would shut down, as he had before, if she even mentioned it. He’d barely been able to tell her his name, after all. How could he show her what he was feeling?

  Although—although he had, hadn’t he? Shown her through his actions, if not his words.

  She swallowed. “I would very much like you to kiss me,” she said in a soft voice. His mouth lifted in a half smile, and she saw a familiar gleam in his eye.

  “I could do that,” he murmured, lowering his mouth onto hers.

  It was splendid, of course, because it was with him, and by him, and for once Margaret’s mind was stilled, entirely focused on what it felt like to be kissed. More importantly, to be kissed by him.

  His hands were cupped around her jaw, holding her softly, tenderly, but also as though he were in command, that this was what he wanted, and was going to make happen.

  He coaxed her mouth open—not that it needed much coaxing—and thrust his tongue inside, licking and savoring and generally making her feel as though she might just collapse under the deliciousness of it all.

  It was a good thing she was seated, since she knew her knees c
ould not take the pleasure.

  They kissed, just kissed, for what seemed as though it were forever as well as just a blink in time, and then he took his mouth away and leaned his forehead against hers, breathing heavily.

  “I never thought,” he began.

  “Nor did I,” Margaret said, lifting her fingers to his lips. He sucked her index finger into his mouth and licked it, sending shivers through her entire body.

  “Oh.” It was all she could manage to say, not without begging him to do something entirely outrageous. Not that they hadn’t tacitly agreed to outrageous behavior, but it was one thing to have it in one’s mind, and another entirely to just say it.

  He moved his hand to her neck, running his fingers along her skin. “You are so soft,” he said in a wondering tone. “So lovely.” He drew his head back and met her eyes. “I want to savor this. Savor you,” he said, trailing his fingers over her skin. “So that even though there is nothing I wish more than to draw your skirts up and push my way inside, I won’t this evening.”

  “You won’t?” Margaret couldn’t keep the note of disappointment from her voice, although she also appreciated that he was taking care with her. As though she were something precious, not a walking scandal. Which would explode into something far more scandalous if their behavior got out. She couldn’t risk that for him. For her, she didn’t care, but she knew his title, and the respect it commanded, was important to him, made it possible for him to do what he thought needed to be done. Whereas her very lack of propriety, of reputation, made it possible for her to do what she knew needed to be done.

  He chuckled. “No, I won’t.” He gathered her in his arms, then positioned them so that he was leaning against one end of the sofa and she was leaning against him, her back to his front. He did it so easily she felt a thrill at just how strong he must be. And then she thought about what it would be like to feel all that power surrounding her, and—