Playing the Duke's Fiancée--A Victorian Historical Romance
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Dollar Duchesses
Money for marriage into London Society
Three beautiful daughters of a New York coal magnate are brought to London by their socially ambitious mother, who seeks prestigious marriages for her children—to British peers of the realm. Titled men in need of funds to repair their crumbling estates are drawn to these wealthy young women. But can these matches lead to something more than mere marriages of convenience?
Read Lily and Aidan’s story in
His Unlikely Duchess
Read Violet and William’s story in
Playing the Duke’s Fiancée
Both available now!
And look for Rose’s story
Coming soon!
Author Note
I hope you enjoy visiting the world of Violet and her duke (her sisters also get dukes!) as much as I have. I loved Violet’s independent spirit and her artistic talents especially. I hadn’t originally thought about her being a photographer, but then I remembered a small museum exhibit I visited a few years ago featuring Victorian photographers and their revolutionary work, and wanted to use some of that fascinating information. (Several of the featured photographers were women who really loved using the new medium to convey how they saw their world and were real innovators.)
I’ve always found nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century photographs to be wonderful research sources, but being, shall we say, technologically clumsy myself, I hadn’t really been able to picture how those very complicated early cameras truly functioned. In conjunction with that exhibit, I took a workshop where a collector showed off some of his Victorian cameras and demonstrated how they worked, which I found fascinating and enlightening. I’m still not sure I could follow the complicated processes to make true photographs, but I’m very glad Violet can!
I also enjoyed seeing Lily and Rose again and exploring their close sisterly relationship (I have a brother, no sisters, though I really wanted one as a child!). They’re very different personalities but always fiercely loyal and loving to each other. We’ll see that in Rose’s story as she tries to mend her shaken marriage...
Enjoy!
AMANDA McCABE
Playing the Duke’s Fiancée
Amanda McCabe wrote her first romance at sixteen—a vast historical epic starring all her friends as the characters, written secretly during algebra class! She’s never since used algebra, but her books have been nominated for many awards, including the RITA® Award, Booksellers’ Best Award, National Readers’ Choice Award and the HOLT Medallion. In her spare time she loves taking dance classes and collecting travel souvenirs. Amanda lives in New Mexico. Visit her at ammandamccabe.com.
Books by Amanda McCabe
Harlequin Historical
Betrayed by His Kiss
The Demure Miss Manning
The Queen’s Christmas Summons
Tudor Christmas Tidings
“His Mistletoe Lady”
Dollar Duchesses
His Unlikely Duchess
Playing the Duke’s Fiancée
Debutantes in Paris
Secrets of a Wallflower
The Governess’s Convenient Marriage
Miss Fortescue’s Protector in Paris
Bancrofts of Barton Park
The Runaway Countess
Running from Scandal
The Wallflower’s Mistletoe Wedding
Visit the Author Profile page
at Harlequin.com for more titles.
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Epilogue
Author Note
Bibliography
Excerpt from Falling for His Practical Wife by Laura Martin
Chapter One
1873
‘I wish it would either rain or shine,’ Violet Wilkins muttered as she adjusted the silver nitrate plate of her camera.
The indecisive grey-yellow light that trickled through the conservatory glass was all wrong. She glanced at her sister Lily, Duchess of Lennox, who sat posed amid the palm fronds with her baby son on her knee, the snowy white folds of her lace dress and his creamy blankets bright against the dark green. But the murky light made the contrast blurry and hazy.
‘It’s not at all what I envisaged.’
Lily laughed and bounced the baby, making him laugh, too. How lovely Lily looked since her marriage, Violet thought with a happy but also envious pang, glowing with contentment that softened the elegant edges of her always dutiful, always kind nature. She and Rose, Violet’s twin, who was already married despite their age of only eighteen years old, both had that smiling air all the time now.
It made Violet happy because she loved her sisters so fiercely—the daughters of ‘Old King Coal’ Wilkins had always stuck close together, in the face of their mother’s ambition and their father’s benign albeit wealthy neglect, of societies that rejected and embraced them in turn, and whenever desires turned and turned again all around them. Her sisters were always there, always loved her.
Even though Lily was a duchess now, and Rose was Lady James Grantley, sister-in-law to a duke, while Violet was still just Miss Violet Wilkins, which had never and would never change.
If only that wretched light would change...
‘Oh, Vi, even you can’t control the weather,’ Lily said. ‘We’re lucky to have any sunlight at all.’
‘This wretched English weather,’ Violet murmured. She’d been in England for many months now, staying behind with Lily after their mother saw two of her daughters married and then sailed back to Newport. England was wretched in some ways—the food, the damp chill of the air, the quiet whispers in stuffy ballrooms about ‘unfortunate’ American manners. But there were her sisters and nice strong tea, fascinating and picturesque history everywhere she turned, art and music, and lovely images she could turn into photographs. Here, no one cared if she wandered outside all day with her sketchbook, finding scenes to choreograph and photograph later. Her darling brother-in-law Aidan even let her set up a darkroom in an old potting shed so she didn’t have to rely on a London studio to develop her plates.
No, England was home now, for better or worse. She couldn’t envisage going back to stifling New York or Newport now. For all its hierarchy and gossip, there was a strange freedom to England that Violet had never known before.
If she could just find a way to hold on to it. Everyone expected her to marry now, with her sisters both wed and her fortune just waiting in a bank vault, but Violet couldn’t even begin to imagine wanting to marry. Running a vast house like Lily, helping a husband’s academic career like Rose with her Jamie and his classics studies. Violet’s time, her energy, would be pulled away from her darkroom, bit by bit, until she had nothing left for her art. She had to work hard and steadily to master the complicated process of light and c
hemicals necessary to produce the images she saw in her mind. The sense of shadow that created the image of three-dimensionality, of life itself caught forever.
She was a long way from where she wanted to be, from bringing the images she imagined to reality. A long way from her great dream of being included in the Photographic Society of London’s annual exhibit. She hadn’t yet found the perfect subject to capture their attention. It would take much practice. But she was determined. She dared not even think yet of the vaunted Solar Club, which admitted only twenty-five members and barely any women at all, but some day...
‘I heard that the French use phosphorescent flashes to create light effects,’ she said. ‘Perhaps if I...’
Lily laughed. ‘Oh, no, Vi! That would frighten poor Babykins to bits and possibly set fire to the castle.’
Violet smiled at her nephew and went to adjust the edge of the long white wool blanket as she waited for the light to change. He gave her a precious, gummy grin and grabbed her finger. How she adored him! He had become her favourite photographic subject, his merry and patient little nature so perfect for her camera, such a joy to be around.
‘I would never want to scare my little pumpkin,’ she said. ‘And I doubt I could! He’s such an imperturbable little soul.’
‘That he is, my wee angel,’ Lily said with a Madonna-like smile. She bounced him in her arms, making him chortle. ‘My happy little soul.’
‘Just like his sweet mama,’ Violet told him, checking the light against Lily’s hair, darker than Violet’s bright red and much deeper than the wispy platinum curls sprouting on the baby’s egg-like head. ‘You’re the best boy in all the world, aren’t you, my darlingest nephew?’
He laughed and kicked, reaching his plump arms up to his auntie.
‘How he adores you,’ Lily said happily. ‘You must find someone nice and give him some cousins soon, Vi!’
Startled, Violet reared back as if suddenly burned. Of course, she was often asked about marital plans, in every letter from her mother, from Lily’s mother-in-law, the formidable Dowager Duchess, and even, very gently, from Rose, who thought every marriage must be as seemingly blissful as her own. And it often came up in conversation with all the London mamas who were certain their sons would make the best use of her Wilkins money. But never from Lily.
Violet tried to laugh. ‘You will have to look to Rose for nieces and nephews, Lily.’
‘But Rose lives so far away! They never leave London. And she and Jamie are so wrapped up in their books, not to mention that Rose’s beauty is becoming more admired every day. She’s in demand among society now. We never see them. Babykins does need someone to be his friend.’
‘What if I married someone and lived far away?’ Violet said lightly. She went back to her camera, trying to ignore the fidgety discomfort such conversations always gave her. ‘I might go off to India or Africa or something.’
Lily gasped. ‘Did you accept Colonel Hastings, then?’
Violet laughed. She had many suitors, none of them quite right, none of them capturing her imagination, and Colonel Hastings was one of them. He was a widower in the colonial service who made no secret of the fact that he needed a wife before he went back to the Punjab or wherever it was. He was rather dull, but he was better than Lord Anderbrook, who only talked about cricket, and that dour Mr Frye, who lamented his crumbling Jacobean manor house. At least Colonel Hastings did have interesting tales of his travels, and India would make for some intriguing photographic studies. But he was quite thirty years older than her. If she had to marry, she wanted someone exciting, or at least very interesting.
‘No, I’m not engaged to the Colonel, or anyone else,’ she said. ‘I’m much too busy right now.’
Lily sighed. ‘Yes. I suppose we should get your Court presentation finished before we think about marriage. Has your gown arrived from Worth yet?’
Violet shook her head. ‘Not yet.’ The presentation was another thing that interested Lily far more than Violet, but at least, unlike marriage, it would be over quickly. Once she got past the lessons in proper curtsying and all the dress fittings, it would be only one day packed into the stuffy palace with all the other young ladies trussed up in trains and feathers and pearls. Dull, but perhaps it would open more doors, let her meet more people, go more places. Artistic, interesting people and places.
Lily shook her head. ‘It must arrive soon! Or you won’t have your proper train to practise your walk.’
Violet laughed. ‘I do know how to walk, Lily!’
‘Backwards, with a three-foot train?’
Lily did have a point. Violet had no desire to topple over in front of the Prince and Princess of Wales once she made her curtsy. She might be called ‘The Wild Wilkins’, but she didn’t want to embarrass Lily.
‘I’ll tie a tablecloth around my waist and we’ll practise walking the gallery after tea,’ she promised. ‘If I can just get the perfect angle on this photograph first...’
The baby was beginning to fuss, and Lily popped a teething ring into his mouth, but they knew it was only a matter of time before Nurse would have to be called. For a long moment, as Violet adjusted the tripod, there was only the sound of his soft baby sighs and the drip of water on the plants, the heady, earthy, rosy scent all around them.
Then Lily spoke again, just as Violet dared hope the dreaded marriage talk was put aside for the moment.
‘But I did hear that Aidan’s old friend, the Duke of Charteris, is returning home soon,’ Lily said casually. Too casually. ‘His estate at Bourne Abbey is not far away at all. And they say he’s interested in a grand political career. He’ll be wanting a most intelligent wife.’
‘The Duke of Charteris?’ Violet gasped. ‘I’m surprised Aidan would be friends with someone like that.’
Lily’s eyes narrowed. ‘You’ve met him?’
Violet shook her head. ‘Not at all. I just hear—things.’ She remembered whispers about the Duke of Charteris, the wealthy and powerful owner of one of the oldest estates in the area, which had been in his family since the Reformation. She had been very intrigued by engraved images of the old abbey and by the glimpse of towers and chimneys she sometimes got in rides over Aidan’s estate. They would make lovely photographs. But the Duke himself, though young for his title, as Aidan was, seemed rather fearsome. Ambitious, intelligent, serious. Handsome but humourless.
Though, to be strictly fair, most of the tales she’d heard had been whispered by a young lady at a garden party, a Miss Lowestoft, who seemed as if she might have a small axe to grind with the Duke. Perhaps she’d set her cap at him? That was where Violet first heard the ‘Duke of Bore’ title, but he did sound serious and tiresome. Not the kind of man she would want to be friends with, or marry, even if she could then live near Lily.
‘I haven’t met him yet, either,’ Lily said. ‘He was abroad at the time of our wedding. But Aidan seems to like him. He’s travelled a great deal, though not quite in the same adventuresome way as Aidan. They say he is very intelligent and steady.’ She paused. ‘And handsome.’ Before he’d returned to England following his older brother’s death—when he had met and married Lily—Aidan had been a renowned explorer, wandering alone through deserts and jungles. ‘I doubt he can be very dull. And maybe someone with a steady nature would do you some good.’
Violet sighed. She’d heard that all her life, every time she tore her skirt climbing over a fence or fell from a galloping horse or danced until dawn, all while laughing too loudly or giving her opinion too freely. Someone steady would give her life balance, they said. A strong husband was clearly needed. ‘You sound rather like Mother.’
Lily laughed. ‘What a terrible insult, Vi! I’ve a mind not to shelter you under my roof any longer. But just this once, she might be right. A good, steady, calm husband could be a help to you, a fine partner in life. If you love him.’
‘Well, I hav
e never been in love. Not like you and Aidan, or Rose and Jamie.’ Violet felt a sudden, sharp, unwelcome twist at those words, at the thought that she had never known such contentment as her sisters. She covered it by moving her tripod again. ‘And I’m sure I never will be. I just want to get into the Photographic Society, or even perhaps the Solar Club.’
And to do that, she needed to perfect her technique, find just the right exciting subject to grab their attention. A woman’s artistic work had to be twice as good, twice as interesting, twice as artistic, twice as hard to ignore, in order to get half as far.
The light at last shifted, the clouds scurrying away to leave the sun clear and shining and silvery, falling perfectly on Lily’s sleek hair and white skirts. Violet happily left the marriage talk behind to focus on the image before her. She gestured for Lily to hold up the baby just so.
She did love taking portraits above all, capturing the essence of people on her plates, their expression, their style. She wanted to catch all the beauty around her, freeze it for all time, remember the feeling of the light and life itself. It was almost like magic.
‘All right, now, Lily, hold very still. And one—two—three.’ She released the brass lens, just as the baby howled.
As she finished and Lily stood to stretch her legs and swing the baby in a playful arc to make him laugh again, Aidan appeared. He was such a good match to her sister, so tall and golden and full of energy. He bounded up to his family to kiss them. Lily had certainly found her own ‘steadying influence’, her other half. Violet very much doubted there was such a man out there for her.
‘I’m sorry to interrupt, Vi,’ he said, contrite when he saw she was still behind her camera. Unlike most men, Aidan took her work as seriously as he did his own and revelled in studying her finished images.
‘Not at all! We’re just coming to an end. I’ll have to run off to the darkroom now,’ she answered.
‘Do you have just a moment?’ he said. ‘I have a bit of news and I think you should both hear it.’