A Duke in Disguise

by Cat Sebastian

  On the next page was a short paragraph: “What follows is an example of what is lost when the press fears for its safety. I, James Talbot, Duke of Arundel, set the type and printed these pamphlets with my own hands and no assistance. In the event that the Home Office finds these materials seditious, my direction is Weybourne Priory, Notts.” Below was the entirety of Nate’s last essay, in which he wrote about the dead of Pentrich, arguing that only the direst desperation would drive a man to take arms and revolt, because the chance of success is so minuscule and the cost of failure so high; a person would have to believe his death to be worth more than his life, and for a government to tacitly agree to that statement is to concede its failure and acknowledge it should be overthrown. It was a perfectly good essay, and made points Verity had been hearing for years, but to see them laid out starkly on paper, and by Ash’s doing, moved her to speechlessness.

  “Miss Verity?” Nan asked. “You all right?”

  Verity realized she was crying. “Very much so.” Other people might like love poems or posies; Verity’s heart could be won only by outright sedition, and Ash had known it. Within hours of inheriting his title, he had declared himself against the government, and for Verity. “But I need to go to Arundel House immediately.”

  “If you could spare a moment before leaving, perhaps?” came a voice from behind her.

  She spun around to find Ash leaning against the door that led to the shop.

  “Nan, here’s a couple of florins, go buy the finest cheese in the land, leave it on the kitchen table, then take the rest of the day off.”

  The older woman took the coins and left, throwing a wink at Ash over her shoulder.

  “Who are you to dismiss my servant?” Verity asked, stalking towards him. “Overstepping and imperious.” She took hold of his cravat and pulled him close so she could breathe in the scent of his shaving soap and skim her lips across the faint stubble of his jaw.

  “I’m the man you’re going upstairs with, Plum. Shocked you need this spelled out for you, always thought you cleverer than that. After that, I plan to go to Weybourne, but thought you might like to come with me. Caro says it’s in an appalling state of dilapidation, so you don’t need to worry about being subjected to a life of luxury.”

  This, she suspected, was his way of asking her to marry him in his ancestral home. She twisted her hand in his cravat and saw the mingled alarm and desire in his dark eyes. “Did you really print it with your own hands? How did you operate the press by yourself?”

  “Ah, I did have an accomplice for that part.”

  “Your aunt?”

  “Madam, I am not informing on my aunt.”

  She bit back a laugh and kissed him hard. God help her, she had missed this, missed having him by her side. “Upstairs,” she said, her lips still against his. “Now. Then we’ll go to your poxy house.”

  They got only as far as the study, Ash pressing her against the closed door. She promptly wrapped her legs around his waist as he reached for the fall of his trousers. She slid her hand between them, pushing his hand away and drawing him out, stroking him in her hand. “I’m feeling maudlin, Ash, but I missed this.”

  “It missed you,” he said earnestly.

  She snorted with laughter and then groaned as he slid inside her. “I meant that I missed this,” she breathed. “Being close with you, doing this with you. I ought to have known from the first time we kissed that we needed to be together. Stupid of me.”

  “I knew before then,” he said, driving into her. “And I’ll spend the rest of my life reminding you, as often as you need.”

  “Please,” she said. “Please.” He was hitting a spot inside her that made her feel perpetually on the brink of climax, and while it was sweet torture, she needed more. She insinuated a hand between them, felt the place where they joined, where he thrust inside her again and again, and then she was gone, toppling over the brink, with only Ash to hold her.

  Could it be that easy? As simple as two people deciding to be together regardless of every reason why they shouldn’t? Verity was willing to believe that it was, because the alternative was a life without Ash, without love, without hope. And hope, Verity was learning, wasn’t just idly positing the truth of some fanciful notion. It was taking that truth and letting it be your lodestar, guiding your movements, providing your direction.

  Whatever the next months or years might hold, Verity would go through it with Ash, and that was enough.

  Epilogue

  In the end, they wound up staying at Weybourne Priory for longer than either of them had contemplated. There was an entire village of houses with bad roofs and worse chimneys, which kept Ash quite busy and provided a way for him to dispose of reckless amounts of money. Verity, meanwhile, offered her shop foreman an extra six shillings a week and lodgings in the Holywell Street house in exchange for him handling the day-to-day business of Plum and Company until Nate returned. This gave her time to work exclusively on the Ladies’ Register.

  Staying in the country gave London a bit of time to get over the shock of having a new duke who had made a disgraceful marriage. While Lady Caroline declared herself content to weather the storm, Verity thought it could wait until some of the furor had died down. She hated the country much less than she thought she would.

  A letter from Roger arrived after they had been in the country only a few days. He was well and the climate agreed with him. Verity watched as lines of concern smoothed from Ash’s forehead and he seemed to drop a burden she hadn’t entirely known he was carrying.

  In the first weeks of spring, when the ground was still frozen and the trees were still bare, a letter finally came from America. Verity had burst into tears at the sight of her brother’s handwriting, and Ash had needed to read the letter aloud to her.

  Then, when the summer was in full swing, a peculiar letter arrived from Amelia. “Salutations on becoming a grandmother,” she wrote to Verity. “Your demonic cat has had an appalling number of kittens, all very sweet, which leads me to believe they take after their father, whoever he might be. Also, it may interest you to know that there’s a new scandal du jour. My brother—both my brothers, in fact—have made ill-advised marriages. Mother is delighted. The good news is that when you return to London you will no longer be the most outrageous aristocratic spouse, and that is all I’m going to say on the matter. I finished the Isabella of France manuscript (please find it enclosed) and have commenced a biography of Joanna the Mad.”

  “What’s that look on your face?” Ash asked. He stood in the door of the room Verity had adopted as her study. His sleeves were rolled up and there were bits of hay or some other vegetation in his hair. A smudge of dirt sat under one eye. He looked very flushed and very happy. She would never have guessed that the country would suit him. She certainly wouldn’t have guessed how well it would suit her, but she was coming to understand that it mattered very little where she was, compared to who she was with.

  “The Marquess of Pembroke has outdone us in scandal, apparently.”

  “Damn. We’ll have to take up as highwaymen to reclaim our spot,” Ash said.

  “I was thinking we could try piracy.”

  “That’s the spirit.” He grinned. “So do you want to go back to London? We could hire a house if you don’t fancy staying where there’s been a mur—totally accidental death.”

  “What kind of house?” Verity asked.

  “Oh, I don’t know. Someplace with gold leaf all over the water closets and enormous Corinthian columns in the foyer, so everyone will know we have no class.”

  And so everyone would know they weren’t trying to play by the rules. “The ton will be disappointed if we don’t have a replica pyramid in the garden.”

  “You make a good point.” Ash came forward and sat on the edge of her desk. He twisted one of her loose strands of hair and fixed it in place with a pin he drew from his pocket. Which was pretty rich coming from a man who had the better part of a hay stack tangled in his hair, but
Verity wasn’t complaining.

  “Come here,” she said, pulling him down by the collar for a kiss.

  “Anything for you, Plum,” he said, and brought his lips to hers.

  Author’s Note

  Ash’s illness is a type of seizure disorder that would likely be diagnosed as epilepsy both today and in 1817. Before the advent of seizure control drugs, many people with similar conditions had their lives cut short or severely curtailed by illnesses and injuries related to their seizures. But there were also people with seizure disorders who lived full and happy lives. Writer and illustrator Edward Lear is a notable example, and a near-contemporary of Ash. I’m indebted to the friends who helped me come up with a realistic depiction of Ash’s symptoms, although his situation is not meant to be universal.

  For anyone who is wondering whether it would be appropriate or realistic for an unmarried man to lodge with an unmarried woman, we have a historical precedent that neatly echoes Ash and Verity’s case. During the late Georgian era, caricaturist and printmaker James Gillray lodged for many years with Miss Hannah Humphrey, his publisher.

  Several women in the publishing and print-selling industries owned and operated thriving businesses during the Georgian era, so Verity’s proprietorship of Plum & Company would hardly be remarkable to her peers. You may recognize the address of Verity’s bookshop: Holywell Street is primarily famous as the epicenter of Victorian pornography. Before that, however, it was a hotbed of political radicalism. Literature, political radicalism, and erotica were intertwined in this period; indeed, the poem that Verity struggles with in Chapter Eighteen is Percy Shelley’s “Ozymandias,” which was first printed in a radical weekly paper, and some years later reprinted by famous pornographer and radical William Benbow.

  Perkin Warbeck, while seemingly a bizarre choice for a lady novelist of the early nineteenth century, was the topic of a novel by none other than Mary Shelley. For many years, there was some confusion about whether Warbeck’s wife, Lady Catherine Gordon, was the granddaughter of the king of Scotland. We now know that she was not, but I let the author of our novel labor under that misapprehension.

  In considering what Ash’s solicitors might do to advance his claim as speedily as possible, I borrowed some details from the case of the Tichborne Claimant. In the 1850s, the heir to the Tichborne baronetcy died in a shipwreck; ten year later, a man claimed to be that presumed-dead heir. I have to confess that I expedited the proceedings in a way that I’m afraid is sadly unrealistic by 19th century legal norms.

  Acknowledgments

  This book took the better part of a year that was challenging in just about every way. I’m more indebted than usual to my editor, Elle Keck, and everyone at Avon. My agent, Deirdre Knight, has as always been tremendous. Margrethe Martin not only read multiple drafts of this book but also made sure I had a constant supply of dog pictures and Danish candy. Lastly, I owe a lot to my children for taking the time to firmly and patiently explain that some villains need to die.

  An Excerpt from Unmasked by the Marquess

  Don’t miss the rest of Cat Sebastian’s Regency Imposters series! Keep reading for an excerpt from

  UNMASKED BY THE MARQUESS

  Available now from Avon Impulse

  The one you love . . .

  Robert Selby is determined to see his sister make an advantageous match. But he has two problems: the Selbys have no connections or money and Robert is really a housemaid named Charity Church. She’s enjoyed every minute of her masquerade over the past six years, but she knows her pretense is nearing an end. Charity needs to see her beloved friend married well and then Robert Selby will disappear . . . forever.

  May not be who you think . . .

  Alistair, Marquess of Pembroke, has spent years repairing the estate ruined by his wastrel father, and nothing is more important than protecting his fortune and name. He shouldn’t be so beguiled by the charming young man who shows up on his doorstep asking for favors. And he certainly shouldn’t be thinking of all the disreputable things he’d like to do to the impertinent scamp.

  But is who you need . . .

  When Charity’s true nature is revealed, Alistair knows he can’t marry a scandalous woman in breeches, and Charity isn’t about to lace herself into a corset and play a respectable miss. Can these stubborn souls learn to sacrifice what they’ve always wanted for a love that is more than they could have imagined?

  Chapter One

  Alistair ran his finger once more along the neatly penned column of sums his secretary had left on his desk. This was what respectability looked like: a ledger filled with black ink, maintained by a servant whose wages had been paid on time.

  He would never tire of seeing the numbers do what he wanted them to do, what they ought to do out of sheer decency and moral fortitude. Here it was, plain numerical proof that the marquessate had—finally—more money coming in than it had going out. Not long ago this very library was besieged by a steady stream of his late father’s creditors and mistresses and assorted other disgraceful hangers-on, all demanding a piece of the badly picked-over pie. But now Alistair de Lacey, eighth Marquess of Pembroke, could add financial solvency to the list of qualities that made him the model of propriety.

  This pleasant train of thought was interrupted by the sound of an apologetic cough coming from the doorway.

  “Hopkins?” Alistair asked, looking up.

  “A person has called, my lord.” The butler fairly radiated distress. “I took the liberty of showing her into the morning room.”

  Her? It couldn’t be any of his aunts, because those formidable ladies would have barged right into the library. Alistair felt his heart sink. “Dare I ask?”

  “Mrs. Allenby, my lord,” Hopkins intoned, as if every syllable pained him to utter.

  Well might he look pained. Mrs. Allenby, indeed. She was the most notorious of his late father’s mistresses and if there was one thing Alistair had learned in the years since his father’s death, it was that the arrival of any of these doxies inevitably presaged an entry in red ink in the ledger that sat before him.

  And now she was sitting in the morning room? The same morning room his mother had once used to receive callers? Good Lord, no. Not that he could think of a more suitable place for that woman to be brought.

  “Send her up here, if you will, Hopkins.”

  A moment later, a woman mortifyingly close to his own age swept into the library. “Heavens, Pembroke, but you’re shut up in a veritable tomb,” she said, as if it could possibly be any of her business. “You’ll ruin your eyes trying to read in the dark.” And then she actually had the presumption to draw back one of the curtains, letting a broad shaft of sunlight into the room.

  Alistair was momentarily blinded by the unexpected brightness. Motes of dust danced in the light, making him uncomfortably aware that his servants were not doing an adequate job with the cleaning, and also that perhaps the room had been a trifle dark after all.

  “Do take a seat,” he offered, but only after she had already dropped gracefully into one of the chairs near the fire.

  The years had been reprehensibly kind to Portia Allenby, and Alistair felt suddenly conscious that the same could not be said for himself. She had no gray in her jet-black hair and no need for spectacles. The subdued half mourning she had adopted after his father’s death made her look less like a harlot who had been acquired by the late marquess on a drunken spree across the continent some eighteen years ago, and more like a decent widow.

  “I’ll not waste your time, Pembroke. I’m here about Amelia.”

  “Amelia,” Alistair repeated slowly, as if trying that word out for the first time.

  “My eldest daughter,” she clarified, patiently playing along with Alistair’s feigned ignorance. Your sister, she didn’t need to add.

  “And which one is she?” Alistair drummed his fingers on the desk. “The ginger one with the freckles?” All the Allenby girls were ginger-haired and freckled, having had the great misfo
rtune to take after the late marquess rather than their beautiful mother.

  Mrs. Allenby ignored his rudeness. “She’s eighteen. I’d like for her to make a proper come out.”

  So she wanted money. No surprise there. “My dear lady,” he said frostily, “you cannot possibly need for money. My father saw to it that you and your children were amply provided for.” In fact, his father had spent the last months of his life seeing to little else, selling and mortgaging everything not nailed down in order to keep this woman and the children he had sired on her in suitably grand style.

  “You’re quite right, Pembroke, I don’t need a farthing.” She smoothed the dove-gray silk of her gown across her lap, whether out of self-consciousness or in order to emphasize how well-lined her coffers were, Alistair could not guess. “What I hoped was that you could arrange for Amelia to be invited to a dinner or two.” She smiled, as if Alistair ought to be relieved to hear this request. “Even a tea or a luncheon would go a long way.”

  Alistair was momentarily speechless. He removed his spectacles and carefully polished them on his handkerchief before tucking them into his pocket. “Surely I have mistaken you. I have no doubt that among your numerous acquaintances you could find someone willing to invite your daughter to festivities of any kind.” The woman ran a monthly salon, for God’s sake. She was firmly, infuriatingly located right on the fringes of decent society. Every poet and radical, not to mention every gently born person with a penchant for libertinism, visited her drawing room. Alistair had to positively go out of his way to avoid her.