What the Duke Wants

by Amy Quinton

  What the Duke Wants

  Agents of Change, Book 1

  Amy Quinton

  Published 2015

  ISBN: 978-1-62210-184-9

  Published by Liquid Silver Books, imprint of Atlantic Bridge Publishing, 10509 Sedgegrass Dr, Indianapolis, Indiana 46235. Copyright © Published 2015, Amy Quinton. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  Liquid Silver Books

  http://LSbooks.com

  This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents and dialogues in this book are of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is completely coincidental.

  Blurb

  She is from trade. He is a duke and a spy with a name to restore and a mystery to solve. England, 1814:

  Miss Grace (ha!) Radclyffe is an oftentimes hilariously clumsy 20-year-old orphan biding her time living with her uncle until she is old enough to come into her small inheritance. Much to her aunt’s chagrin:

  She isn’t:

  •Reserved—not with her shocking! tendency to befriend the servants…

  •Sophisticated—highly overrated if one cannot run around barefoot outside…

  •Graceful—she once flung her dinner into a duke’s face…by accident, of course.

  But she is:

  •Practical—owning a fashion house is in her future, unless someone foils her plans…

  •In love…maybe…perhaps…possibly…

  The Duke of Stonebridge is a man with a tragic past. His father died mysteriously when he was twelve years old amid speculation suggesting that the old duke was ‘involved’ with another man. He must restore his family name, but on the eve of his engagement to the perfect debutante, he meets his betrothed’s cousin, and his world is turned inside out…No matter:

  He is always:

  •Logical—men who follow their hearts and not their heads are foolish…

  •Reserved—his private life is nobody’s business but his own…

  And he isn’t:

  •Impulsive—it always leads to trouble…

  •Charming—that’s his best friend, the Marquess of Dansbury’s, area of expertise…

  •In love…maybe…perhaps…possibly…

  Can he have what he wants and remain respectable? Can she trust him to be the man she needs?

  Dedication

  To my mother-in-law, Hilary Quinton, for the many months listening to me talk about plot points, for reading and rereading work outside your preferred genre, and for your advice. I’ve picked up your brains from the porch floor and will hold on to them for you until your next visit to the States.

  And to my friends and family for your support and encouragement.

  Acknowledgements

  I would like to thank Terri Schaefer at Liquid Silver Books for giving me this opportunity and for believing in me. I would like to thank my editor, JoAnne Soper-Cook, for the wonderful feedback and excellent editorial work. I would like to thank my cover artist for the beautiful cover art. Finally, I would like to thank everyone at Liquid Silver Books for helping me make this dream come true.

  Prologue

  Eton College…

  September 1798…

  Thirteen-year-old Ambrose Langtry, the tenth Duke of Stonebridge, touched his fingers to his lips as the taste of blood flooded his mouth. He had been walking across School Yard, minding his own business, when the fist appeared out of nowhere, striking him square in the mouth. The force of it knocked him to the ground; his books scattered across the cobbles, loosened papers swirling away with the wind.

  He felt around for his split lip. Ouch. Yea, it was split, it stung. And to make matters worse, he was sprawled on his arse where any boy walking by could see. Still, he sat there, bemoaning his bruised tail bone as he poked around inside his mouth with his tongue, searching for loosened teeth. Phew. They all appeared to be intact.

  A shadow fell over him, blocking the meager morning sun. Despite his disadvantaged position upon terra firma, he halted his personal inspection, looked up, and locked eyes with the boy standing over him, presumably the boy attached to said fist. Ambrose arranged his face into his fiercest scowl while noting that the bully had brought along a friend. Typical. They always did attack in pairs. He was scared, but these tyrants definitely didn’t need to know that. Oh, and his tongue smarted; he must have bitten it.

  “Say, what do we have here? Looks like we have a first year who thinks he can look his betters in the eye?”

  The boy was huge and a House Captain: one of a thousand thugs charged with meting out ‘discipline’. They always seemed to be everywhere you didn’t want them to be. Like ants.

  “Do you know who we are, boy?”

  The hammer-fisted giant smirked at his crony: another typical pimple-faced fourth year who, despite missing a surprising amount of teeth, grinned and stared daggers at Ambrose while punching his fist into his hand—definitely a bully.

  A third assailant pushed his way between the other two.

  “Well, well, well, if it isn’t the Duke of Stonebridge,” mocked the new arrival. The other two blockheads chuckled their contempt.

  Lord Richard Middlebury. Ugh.

  “I’d suggest we birch him now, but he might like having us pull his trousers down…Like father, like son, eh, Stonebridge?”

  The boys sniggered again, then began to argue amongst themselves as they fought to decide how best to handle the ‘situation’. Idiots, the lot of them. Middlebury probably’d be considered the ‘brains’ if one had to decide such a thing. That wasn’t saying much.

  He was unsurprised by their taunts. Vile rumors about his family spilled from everyone’s lips since Father died. They said Father had been riding in his carriage with another man, a bare-arsed-naked-as-the-day-he-was-born other man. They said the pair of them had been cavorting at a molly house the whole night through. They said a God awful lot of things. Bollocks. All of it.

  It had been a year, yet the pain was ever present. Not a sore-tooth type of ache, but a throbbing-twinge-in-the-chest, knife-to-the-gut kind of ache. Excruciating. Agonizing. Unbearable. Sometimes, he forgot. In fact, he scarcely thought on the scandal anymore. Yeah, he lied sometimes, too.

  His three tormentors, fleetingly forgotten, drew his attention back to the moment at hand. They had come to an accord. Great.

  “Is it true, little Ambrose? Would you like us to pull your trousers down?”

  They sniggered again. All three of them, the loudmouthed boors. He tried to ignore them as he stood and brushed the dirt from his trousers. They allowed him to gain his feet and restore his garments without incident. Which was odd. And a bit alarming.

  Father had not been prone to violence, and he, normally, was the same. Why this time was different, he didn’t know, but for some reason, today the pain would not be denied, and with a strength he never suspected he possessed, he unexpectedly retaliated.

  He bared a full year of built-up emotions through his arms and legs as he swung, kicked and bit at everything within reach. He saw red, and his eyes burned from the tears that threatened to fall. He blinked rapidly; a recent habit, for the tears were always hiding just beneath the surface. He became a mythical berserker, all but blinded by his anguish and no longer in control of his body. His hands ached from the repeated impact of fist to flesh. He didn’t stop. He ignored his conscience. He wouldn’t stop.

  Occasionally, a word pierced his emotional storm: Bastard. He punched someone’s face. Suicid
e. He kicked someone’s shin. Weak. He elbowed someone’s nose. Sodomy. He kneed someone’s gut. They were only words all jumbled together and fuzzy, but too reminiscent of past hecklings. The rage drove him indefinitely before silence pricked his awareness. His mind struggled to make sense of the disquiet while his fists continued to fly.

  Then he heard a sound; one so soft, he might have imagined it, yet so compelling it seized his attention through his haze of anger:

  “Ambrose…”

  He ceased his attack, and with wild eyes, searched the crowd for its source, but he felt sluggish, as if he moved about in slow motion, his arms and head burdened with heavy weights. The pain in his knuckles was a distant throb. His bottom lip felt swollen and fat as he absentmindedly tongued his bloody split. Reluctantly, he let go his desperate search.

  A mob of students had gathered to gawk, yet he heard nothing. Time crawled, yet it was over in minutes. He caught sight of a peculiar fluttering out the corner of his eye, and he twisted to get a better look. It was a bloody cravat flapping about in the breeze. He started to become further aware of his surroundings.

  He was on his knees, straddling Middlebury, his hands squeezing the boy’s neck. And the blood…it was everywhere. He looked about with increased anxiety, as reality—and with it panic—crept in. On reflex, he released his hold on Middlebury, whose head hit the cobbles with a wet, sickening thud. His other tormentors lay motionless nearby, as life reverted to full speed and the silence was shattered.

  What have I done?

  Cool air blew through the school yard, raising goose bumps across his clammy, overheated skin. An occasional gasp or whispered comment tickled his ears. He caught sight of onlookers eyeing him with disgust before turning their backs. Some help they were. The air smelled fresh and crisp and cold in his nose and birds chirped in nearby trees as if today were just an ordinary autumn day, oblivious to the humans and their discord. It was surreal. One of the boys moaned, but not Middlebury. Ambrose took this all in on a glance, his senses now hyper aware. And he was ashamed.

  He had just reached down to check Middlebury’s injuries, when he was jerked to his feet and spun about to face Head Master Smith. Ah, bloody hell, I’m in deep shite now.

  Head Master Smith was tall and gaunt, but impeccably dressed in unrelieved black from his boots to his cravat. Even his hair was black. By contrast, his skin was so pale as to appear luminescent, the whiteness only marred by prominent blue veins at his temples. He resembled death. Or what Ambrose thought death would look like if it took human form.

  Ambrose trembled with frayed nerves, chilled to the bone at the sight, and his heart leapt in his chest. God, please don’t let them notice. He thrust aside wild thoughts of every possible sentence he might face. At least he tried to. An eternity passed while he waited; thirty years at the very least. He would be an old man by the end, decrepit and scarred. Head Master would probably look the same. Preserved.

  Ambrose was held in place by a guard, his arms clamped behind his back and his head held steady by his hair. The. Entire. Time. His scalp stung and had lost numerous strands of hair in the process while he waited. A few were caught in his guard’s waistcoat. He was forced by this position to stare into Head Master’s emotionless grey eyes. It was unnecessary, for he did not intend to look away. He wanted Head Master to believe he wasn’t afraid. He wasn’t afraid. At all. Surely.

  No words were spoken before Head Master broke eye contact. It was all so anticlimactic. He nodded once at his guard before walking away without a word.

  In response, the guard released his hair minus a few more strands, but not his arms. He was shoved forward down the path toward the Block, and he stumbled, often, over the uneven cobbles, his legs unsteady and fatigued. At the very last minute, before they turned out of sight, he looked back, but the throng had closed in, surrounding the fallen boys. He could see nothing but the dark jackets and hats of his fellow students, black marks in a landscape of green and blue and stone. He turned back around and plodded on to meet his fate.

  The wind ruffled his remaining hair. Huh. He had lost his hat at some point during the melee. And with that thought, a memory surfaced: Father had just gifted him with his first hat, a bicorne. He was six years old, or thereabouts. He marched about the house and grounds all afternoon showing it off and brandishing a wooden sword. That evening, he sat with Father on an old bench under a grand English oak and talked about what it meant to be a gentleman. He had sworn never to forget.

  Had he been alive to witness today’s events, Father would have been disappointed and ashamed. His actions today had not been what Father would have considered appropriate behavior for a gentleman, surely, and that bothered him more than any of the suggestive taunts from earlier. Ah, God…Father, I’m so, so sorry. It was at that precise moment when Ambrose, recently named Duke of Stonebridge with no small amount of means at his disposal, realized…no, vowed…he would do everything in his power to clear the Stonebridge name, his family’s name, of scandal.

  Chapter 1

  Beckett House…

  Amberley, West Sussex…

  Country Home of the Earl and Countess of Swindon…

  25th April, 1814…

  “What are we going to do about her, George? If she ruins everything for our Beatryce with her common…”

  Grace Radclyffe, the twenty-year-old niece of the Earl and Countess of Swindon, leaned back against the wall, raised her eyes to the ceiling, and blew out her breath in relief as the shrill sounds of her aunt’s remaining words were cut off by the closing of the study door. Thankfully, her uncle’s response was indiscernible, his answering voice muffled by the paneled walls.

  Grace had been on her way outside when Aunt Mary had come barreling down the stairs in high dudgeon. Grace had quickly dashed into an alcove beneath the stairs to avoid a confrontation. She had simply planned to wait for Aunt Mary to pass before continuing on her way outside and was surprised—well, perhaps not surprised as much as…caught unprepared…by her aunt’s reproving words.

  Grace’s eyes watered as she fought for control over her emotions. She refused to cry, but it was never easy to know you were the unpleasant topic of a conversation, and there was no doubt that Grace was the ‘her’ to which her aunt referred. Who else could it be?

  Grace pressed further into a corner of the alcove in an attempt to remain unseen whilst she pulled herself together. All around her, the staff hustled anxiously about their tasks as they frantically prepared for the arrival of the Duke of Stonebridge, one of a dozen guests expected to arrive today for a week-long house party. She could smell the familiar odors of lemon and oil as a maid set about cleaning the nearby stair rail.

  “Miss Grace…”

  Grace surreptitiously swiped at her eyes before peering around the corner to see the upstairs maid, Janet, standing there, her brow furrowed with concern.

  One of the few joys of Beckett House, her aunt and uncle’s house and Grace’s home for the past year, was the staff, all of whom were welcoming and pleasant despite their employer’s haughty airs. It horrified Aunt Mary to know how friendly Grace was with the staff, knowing them all by name and enough about their families to ask of them in conversation. Aunt Mary put the behavior down to Grace’s father and his lowly beginnings.

  Grace shook her head to prevent Janet from saying anything more. She was simply too upset to engage in conversation. However, to reassure the maid of her continued friendship, Grace lightly laid her hand upon Janet’s arm and gave her a tender squeeze and a friendly smile before hurrying off toward the rear of the house and the French doors that led out to the back garden.

  Normally, Grace maintained quite a sunny disposition and even now refused to allow her aunt’s bitter prejudice to bring her down, but in order to regain her composure, she needed to get out of the house…

  Now, twenty minutes later, Grace sighed with contentment as she sat on an old wooden dock with her skirts hitched above her knees, dangling her feet in the cool,
clear water. The dock jutted out over a large lake situated in a clearing deep in the woods behind the rear gardens of Beckett House; thus she was obscured from view of the house and she could relax and enjoy some privacy.

  She closed her eyes and tilted her face to the sky, the feeling of warmth from the sun at her back inviting her to unwind. Her bonnet lay beside her with her hair pins cradled in its bowl, the adornments all but forgotten as she rolled her head back and forth and allowed the sun to caress her face. Her loosened brown hair just grazed the flare of her hips with the movement. She inhaled deeply, for the air was cool and refreshing.

  On her exhale, Grace leaned forward and looked down, staring meditatively at the water. She was content to simply watch its movement as it swirled about one foot where she rotated it in a figure eight pattern just beneath the surface.

  Her thoughts drifted to her situation. Her parents were dead a year now and she was living at the mercy of her Aunt Mary and Uncle George, the Countess and Earl of Swindon, until she reached her twenty-first birthday which, thankfully, was only a few short months away.

  In actuality, neither the earl nor the countess was her blood relation. Her real aunt was the earl’s first wife, Florence Swindon. Florence and Grace’s mother, Leanne, had been sisters, both born of a Baron. However, whilst Aunt Florence had married the Earl of Swindon, George Beckett, Grace’s mother had remained in Oxford and married a man in trade, a local bookshop owner named John Radclyffe.

  Grace barely remembered Aunt Florence, but her impression was that of a rather friendly, shy woman whom Grace did not often see, probably due to the earl and his prejudices against people in trade. Aunt Florence and Uncle George had one daughter, Beatryce, when Grace was three. Unfortunately, Aunt Florence died during the birth of her second child a few years later (the child also passed), and then nearly a year to the day afterwards, the earl married his second wife: Mary Swindon nee Wristwaithe.