A Heart of a Duke Collection: Volume 1-A Regency Bundle

by Christi Caldwell

  Jane shook her head frantically. “Oh, no. Your event is not tedious.” Terrifying, yes. Tedious, no.

  “And yet, you are here,” the woman admonished contemplatively.

  And yet, she was here. Her Grace’s words provided Jane the necessary window with which to make her escape.

  Except, the duchess glanced about the room, and her earlier amusement and gentle warmth slipped. Concern flooded her eyes as she skimmed her gaze about the room. What brought the hostess away from her own ball?

  As though sensing her question, the Duchess of Crawford looked to Jane. “I lost something.” She captured her lower lip between her teeth and worried the flesh. “It was a gift given me by my husband. It was…” The muscles of her throat worked. “is very precious, a treasure worn by others and I’ve gone and lost it.” Ah, so this is what would take the woman away.

  The thin chain in Jane’s palms throbbed with warmth and she looked down at her tightly clasped fingers. She unfurled her hand and held the pendant up. “Is this perhaps it, Your Grace?”

  The room rang with the woman’s startled gasp. Relief washed over her face as she accepted the delicate necklace. “Thank you so very much,” she said on a reverent whisper. Her gaze caressed the inanimate object with lovingness. “How very odd.” she murmured more to herself. “I’ve heard told the clasp was broken and yet, this evening was the first time I’ve ever been parted with the piece.”

  Jane shifted. She’d not known people to look upon even other people with that gentle connectedness. In a rush to fill the awkward silence, she said, “I discovered it by the hearth, Your Grace.” Clearing her throat, she dipped one more curtsy. “If you’ll excuse me. I should return to the ballroom.”

  “Wait!” the woman’s soft cry stayed her movements and she turned back, fisting her hands at her side. Of course it was too much to hope the powerful peer would forgive her presence in her library. “You are just married?”

  Grief knifed through her. Yes. That was what she was. Married. An obligation. “I was, Your Grace.”

  The ghost of a smile danced on the woman’s lips. “Daisy,” the duchess absently corrected her again. She wandered closer to Jane and walked about her in a slow circle, as though taking her in.

  Jane stiffened under the unrepentant scrutiny.

  Then the woman froze and shifted her attention to the necklace in her hands. She turned it over in her palms, passing it back and forth, repeatedly. “Someone once told me the necklace finds its way to the person who is supposed to possess it.”

  Perhaps it was the tumult of her emotions, but she now struggled to follow the woman’s words. She tipped her head. “Your Grace?”

  The duchess blinked slowly. “It is meant to go to you.”

  Jane searched about in consternation. She wanted to understand the lovely woman. She did. The Duchess of Crawford could have, by all rights, been put out with Jane for her bold commandeering of her room. Yet, she’d not. She spoke with kindness and warmth. “I’m afraid I don’t understand, Your Grace—Daisy,” she corrected at the woman’s pointed glance.

  Daisy thrust the metal into her palms and the charge of the hot chain penetrated Jane’s gloves. She gasped at the inexplicable warmth generated by the piece.

  The duchess watched her closely. “There is a legend surrounding that necklace. It was given to several friends by an old gypsy woman. She promised the wearer of the pendant would earn the heart of a duke.” There was a wistful quality to her words.

  Jane bit the inside of her cheek to keep from saying that she’d long given up on dreams and fairytales. “I do not need the heart of a duke,” she all but spat. “As you see, I am already wedded.” To a man who does not love me. “There will be no l—” She let the words go unfinished. The woman gave her a probing stare. Jane held the long, gold chain out. “I thank you for your offer, but you’ve likely heard the details around my marriage to the marquess.” She wagered she’d be hard-pressed to find a single servant, soldier, or member of polite Society who did not know of those circumstances.

  Daisy held her palms up and shook her head. “You must.” She pushed her hands forward, forcing the necklace closer to Jane.

  Jane gently pushed back. “No, I cannot.” Would not. “That is a…” She paused. “…kind,” Peculiarly odd. “Gesture.”

  Then the woman’s chocolate brown eyes went wide, giving her the look of a night owl startled from his perch. “You love your husband.” She spoke with the same shock and awe of a person who’d just been told the world was, indeed, round.

  Desperate to be free of this painfully awkward and too intimate discussion with this stranger, Jane cast a glance about. When she looked once more at the duchess, she found her patiently waiting, with a soft, almost sorrowful smile on her lips. Jane curled her fingers tightly about the necklace and welcomed the bite of the pendant into the fabric of her gloves. “I…do.” Those words dragged from her, were a hopeful bid to quell the woman’s probing questions.

  She gave her a gentle smile. “I once believed my husband did not love me.”

  At that intimate revelation from her, a stranger, she stiffened. Then, a duchess was permitted that bold confidence and strength. Jane weighed the chain in her palm. “It is unusual to find a peer who believes in those sentiments.” And yet the Duchess of Crawford did.

  That glimmer lit her kindly eyes. “Nobles are to wed for marital connections and power and not much more, you think?”

  She lifted her shoulders in a little shrug. “I do not know what a nobleman or lady should believe or do.” As soon as those revealing words about her origins left her lips, she bit the inside of her cheek hard. “I’m merely a companion,” she finished lamely. “I was not born to your world.” She glanced over the duchess’ small shoulders to the doorway. “I really should leave.” She should never have come. To London. To Gabriel’s home. Jane again held out the necklace.

  Her Grace folded her hands behind her back, her meaning clear: she’d not take the piece.

  “Surely, it matters to you more?” she asked, in a last bid to make the woman see reason.

  “I searched for this necklace through the streets of Gipsy Hill. Do you know who found it?”

  She shook her head.

  “My husband.”

  Of course. The heart of a duke, located and gifted by the duke of her heart. How very fitting, and—“It is all the more reason that you cannot simply give it to me, a mere stranger.”

  Daisy looped her arm through Jane’s and gently steered her over to the door. “I’ve kept this pendant longer than I had a right to. It represented the talisman I hung my hopes upon after…” A flash of sadness lit her eyes and the muscles of her throat worked. “After a very difficult time.”

  Curiosity struck, but Jane quickly tamped down the sentiment. As one who valued and protected her own past and privacy, this woman’s world was her own, and she’d not infringe any more than she already had.

  The duchess gently disentangled the necklace from Jane’s fingers and then turned her about. “When you look at me, Jane, you likely see a duchess. Perhaps a noblewoman to be feared.” Yes, those lofty nobles had never given her much reason to trust them or their intentions. She placed the cool chain about Jane’s neck and fiddled with the clasp. “But I’m no different than you. I’m merely a woman who desired love.”

  A painful swell of emotion climbed Jane’s throat and choked off words. A woman who desired love. She pressed her eyes closed. This woman, in one swift exchange no more than a handful of moments, should look into her soul and see the truths she kept from even herself. Since she’d been a girl in the nursery, she’d longed for the love and attention of someone—her mother, her nonexistent father, a servant, anyone. And now she was married to a man who, by his own admission, never would or could love her. The faint click of the clasp at last catching filled the room and brought her eyes open.

  “There,” the duchess murmured.

  Jane touched the filigree heart. “I do
n’t want the heart of a duke,” she said, her voice whisper soft, wrenched from within her. I only want Gabriel’s heart.

  The young woman’s smile widened. “Neither did I.” Jane furrowed her brow. “I wanted only the heart of my duke. My husband. And you,” she motioned to Jane, “shall have the heart of yours.”

  There was no man. Nor would there ever be. Not a gentleman and not with the aspirations Jane had for her finishing school. “There will be no man to possess my heart,” she said, her tone flat, and she reached up to remove the gift.

  Daisy took her by the hands once more and guided her through the remainder of the room to the doorway. “Ah, but you still don’t realize it?”

  “Realize what, Your Grace?”

  “The necklace found you. You have no other choice but to find love.” The duchess started for the door and just as the woman touched the handle, Jane called out.

  “Your Grace?” The young lady turned back and looked at her. Jane folded her arms close to her chest. “Might I request a favor of you?”

  The woman inclined her head. “Of course.”

  “Will you have my carriage readied? I find I cannot stay.”

  Chapter 28

  She’d taken his damned carriage.

  Seated in the confines of his brother’s carriage, Gabriel stared with sightless eyes at the passing streets. She’d left. From across the ballroom floor he’d taken in her approaching the Duke of Ravenscourt and then her flight. It was as though she’d disappeared—a task not impossible in the lavish, opulent home of the Duke of Crawford.

  And if it hadn’t been for the Duchess of Crawford, he would still be wandering his host and hostess’ blasted home.

  She asked for her carriage.

  He fisted his hands on his lap and willed the carriage faster. What in hell had that monster said to her? Given her the cut direct? Cast aspersions upon her character and credibility as he’d done when Gabriel had approached him days earlier? While his tortured mind ran through every horrifying possibility, the grating rumble of the wheels turning over the cobbled roads punctuated the quiet.

  As the illegitimate daughter of a nobleman, Jane had gone through her life treated as though she were of lesser worth, a woman who’d been told by Society’s dismissal that she did not matter. In his silence, in his blasted determination to protect himself from hurting or feeling, he’d committed the most egregious offense against her—he’d fed the very same belief the lady likely carried.

  Jane had given him her love.

  And he’d rejected her. Pain knifed away at his insides and he rubbed the dull place where his heart beat. He’d gone through the better part of his life believing he didn’t care about anyone or anything but the obligation he had to his siblings. But he’d been so very wrong. He cared and it was as his brother said—claiming he didn’t care and believing himself incapable of love, or being loved, didn’t make it true.

  The carriage rumbled ahead and he damned the infernal ride. The traffic had clogged the streets and delayed his return home.

  I should have told her. I should have let her know just how much she mattered to me. He should have given her the words she’d been denied the course of her life; not because it was an obligation owed, but because they were the words she deserved, the words in his heart. He was nothing without her. He’d been nothing, an empty, cold shell of a person before her. She’d made him smile and laugh, and teased him, and—

  His townhouse pulled into focus. Gabriel rapped once on the ceiling and the conveyance rocked to an abrupt stop. He planted his feet upon the carriage floor to keep from pitching across the seat and then tossed the door open.

  “My lord?” his driver called after him as he sprinted the remaining distance down the street. His pulse hammered wildly in his ears and his breath came in great, gasping pants that had nothing to do with his exertions. He skidded to a stop at the base of the stairs and then took them two at a time.

  God love Joseph. The servant threw the door open in anticipation and Gabriel rushed inside. He shrugged out of his cloak and tossed it to a waiting servant. “My—”

  “Her Ladyship is above stairs, my lord.”

  The words had no sooner left the older man’s mouth than Gabriel took the marble stairs two at a time. He stumbled over his feet in his haste and righted himself. Then he reached the landing. With his heart hammering wildly, he raced to Jane’s chamber door and tossed it open. He staggered inside and located her in the corner of the room.

  She stood at the corner of the window, her mouth parted on a moue of surprise. “Gabe—”

  “W-wait,” he rasped, sticking out a finger. “Just w-wait.” A slight frown played on her lips. “Please,” he added. He dragged a hand through his hair, damp with perspiration from running through the London streets. “I’ve always been rubbish at talking to people, J-Jane.” Gabriel panted, damning his earlier exertions that made a muddle of his words. He rested his hands on his knees and drew in several, slow, steadying breaths. “My sisters, my brother, my mother. I have but one friend. And even him I’m a miserable bugger to.”

  She cocked her head as though trying to make sense of his words, except his thoughts tumbled around in his head, over each other, so that even he no longer knew what to say or how to say it.

  He tried again. “I never wanted a wife. Or children.” She folded her hands before her and he stared at those interlocked digits so tightly clasped her knuckles turned white. “Until you. And even that, not until tonight. At the duke’s ball, and—”

  “There was no three thousand pounds.”

  Her soft whispered words cut into his profession. Gabriel straightened and stared unblinking at his wife. He shook his head in an attempt to process. “How—?”

  “My father,” she said quietly. “He explained that he’d never settle any funds upon a bastard child.” Gabriel curled his hands into tight fists, torn between wanting to take her in his arms and hunt her father down and hurt the beast as much as Jane now hurt. “Is that true?”

  He unclenched his hands and gave a terse nod. “It is.” With that utterance, the lie he’d never truly allowed himself to consider, wheedled around his brain, now damning and ugly for the deception he’d practiced. “I’d thought to—”

  “Protect me,” she supplied, taking a step toward him. “That is who you are, though, isn’t it?” There was sadness to her tone that gutted him. “You would marry a woman you didn’t even like—”

  “I liked you quite well.” Only, as those words left him, he grimaced at how inadequate they were. “Well, not quite at first.” He pressed his fingers against his temples. He was mucking this up, quite badly. He’d venture no lady had ever been won with such unromantic sentiments. “You infuriated me and do you know why?” He let his hands fall to his side.

  She shook her head back and forth in a slow motion.

  Gabriel closed the distance between them and took her hands in his bringing them close to his chest. “Because you made me feel and I’d spent my whole life trying to not feel anything. You terrified me with your bold challenges and your undaunted courage.” Emotion balled in his throat. “I have not given of myself in thirty-two years. I have let no one in. Not my brother or my sisters. Not any woman.” A dull flush stained his cheeks. “In any way.”

  Jane widened her eyes as an understanding flashed within their blue depths.

  Except, there was no shame with that truth. “I have not given any piece of myself to any woman and for that, I am thankful.”

  Tears flooded her eyes. “Oh, Gabriel,” she whispered, stroking his cheek.

  “I was waiting for you.” He captured her wrist in his hand and brought it to his lips. “I just didn’t know it. Jane Edgerton, I love everything about you. I love you for having carved out a life and slipping into my home in order to survive. I love you for wanting to open a school, because it is admirable and good. I love you because…” He placed a kiss against her lips and the familiar spark that had always been between the
m ignited. “I love you because there is no other reason than that I do.”

  The muscles along the slim column of her neck moved. “Gabriel, you don’t have to—”

  He claimed her lips once more, silencing her. “My whole life I’ve done what I thought I was supposed to.” It had been a futile attempt to right his sins. It had taken Jane to show him that those crimes belonged to his father. “This,” he drew her hands to the place where his heart beat for her. “There is no logic or reason to this. This is me, a man in love with you and if you leave me to go to your school, it will devastate me. Don’t leave me. I—”

  Jane leaned up on tiptoes and kissed him. Gabriel closed his eyes a moment and, for the first time in his life, turned himself completely and fully over to another person.

  Hesitantly, he clasped her at the waist and drew her closer. Then kissed her as he’d longed to since their first exchange in his library. Kissed her as he’d dreamed each night since then. Kissed her with who he was. He plundered her mouth with his over and over and their tongues danced in an age-old rhythm. Gabriel swept her into his arms and carried her over to the wide four-poster bed then gently laid her down. He shrugged out of his jacket and tossed it aside. He tugged his cravat off and then his waistcoat followed suit. All the while, his gaze remained trained on Jane in her mauve satin gown. As he joined her on the bed, she came up on her knees. He touched his lips to the rapidly beating pulse at her neck and she tipped her head back on a shuddery sigh. Gabriel nipped and tasted the flesh, while he worked his fingers over the bothersome row of buttons down the back of her gown. A hungry desire to at last know her in every way made his fingers clumsy and he cursed.

  Jane smiled and stroked her fingers along his jaw. “Always so in control,” she said softly.

  Gabriel yanked at the row of buttons and tiny pearl pieces scattered about the bed and floor. “I have had no control since the moment you entered my life, Jane.” With that, he pulled at the fabric of her gown tucked beneath her knees and pulled her dress overhead, baring her to his eyes. Desire slammed into him so hard, it sucked the air from his lungs. “I love you, Jane Edgerton.”