Clearly, Ned has waited long enough to be rescued from the moor, or the City, or whatever lonely wilderness he’s inhabiting these days. Fortunately for him, Lady Rosalind Kinwood has need of a gentleman’s assistance. Ned doesn’t quite consider himself a gentleman—Newgate, felony charges, and so forth—but he isn’t about to leave Lady Rosalind to investigate a dangerous situation on her own.
I’ve included an excerpt below from Never a Duke, which is scheduled for publication this spring. This will be book seven of the Rogues to Riches, and—as far as I know—the series finale.
I’ve also included an excerpt from my next Mischief in Mayfair title, Miss Dignified, which comes out in January 2022. (Web store and library release Dec. 14.) This story features Captain Dylan Powell, self-appointed guardian angel of former soldiers down on their luck in London, and Mrs. Lydia Lovelace, Dylan’s housekeeper. She’s making his house into a home, and he’s making her question the very loyalties that drove her to London in the first place. Here, there be smoochin’!
To keep up with my new releases, discounts, and preorders, you can follow me on BookBub. If you’d like a little more of the backstories and out-takes, I send off a newsletter about once a month. I will never spam you or sell, give away, or trade your email addy, and unsubscribing is easy. I also have a Deals page on my website if you want to see what’s been discounted in the web store, or which titles are scheduled for early release in the store.
However you choose to keep in touch, I wish you, as always, happy reading!
* * *
Grace Burrowes
* * *
Read on for an excerpt from Never a Duke!
Never a Duke—Excerpt
Lady Rosalind Kinwood’s maid has gone missing, and nobody, not her titled father, not her brothers, not her companion, will help Rosalind discover what has become of the young lady. Rosalind turns to the vaguely scandalous Ned Wentworth for assistance…
* * *
The problem with Ned Wentworth was his eyes.
Rosalind came to that conclusion as she pretended to browse a biography of a long-dead monarch. She had come to the bookstore early, the better to ensure that her companion, Mrs. Beverly Barnstable, was thoroughly engrossed in the travelogues two floors above the biographies.
Ned Wentworth dressed with a gentleman’s exquisite sense of fashion. He spoke and comported himself with a gentleman’s faultless manners.
But his eyes did not gaze out upon the world with a gentleman’s condescending detachment. Rosalind’s brothers, by contrast, had by the age of eight learned how to glance, peruse, peer, and otherwise take only a casual visual inventory of life and to then pretend that nothing very interesting or important graced the scene.
Certainly nothing as interesting or important as her brothers themselves.
Ned Wentworth looked and he saw. His visual appraisals were frank and thorough, as if everything before him, from Rosalind’s reticule, to a swan gliding across the Serpentine’s placid surface, was simply a ledger that wanted tallying.
His eyes were a soft, mink brown, his hair the same color as Rosalind’s. On him, the hue was sable, of a piece with his watchful gaze and sober attire. On her, the color was lamentably plain, according to Aunt Ida. He was on the tall side, but not a towering specimen like the Duke of Walden and not a fashionable dandy like the duke’s younger brother.
Ned Wentworth’s eyes said he’d somehow held out against domestication, unlike his adopted family, who had famously come from lowly origins to occupy a very high station. He prowled through life with a wild creature’s confidence and vigilance, even as he partnered wellborn ladies through quadrilles and met their papas for supper in the clubs.
“She was quite the schemer, wasn’t she?”
Rosalind turned to behold those serious brown eyes gazing at her. Up close, Ned Wentworth was a sartorial tribute to understated elegance. His attire had no flourishes—no flashy cravat pin, no excessive lace, no jewels in the handle of his walking stick.
His scent was similarly subtle, a hint of flower-strewn meadows, a whisper of cedar. Rosalind hadn’t heard his approach, but she’d be able to identify him by scent in pitch darkness.
“Queen Elizabeth was devious,” Rosalind replied, “but she died a peaceful death after nearly achieving her three score and ten. We must account her a successful schemer.”
“Are you a successful schemer, my lady?”
Rosalind replaced the book on the shelf. “Do you attempt to flirt with me, Mr. Wentworth?”
The biographies were unpopular, hence the conversation was not overheard. Ned Wentworth had likely known that would be the case.
“If I were attempting to flirt with you,” he said, “you’d likely cosh me over the head with yonder tome. Tell me about Miss Arbuckle.”
Rosalind withdrew a folded sketch from her reticule. “A likeness. I am no portraitist, but Francine Arbuckle was willing to serve as my model on many occasions. She has no family in London, and the last I saw of her, my companion had sent her to retrieve a pair of dancing slippers from a shop near Piccadilly.”
“Specifics, please. What shop?”
Rosalind endured an interrogation, and Mr. Wentworth’s methodical inquiry helped her sort recollection from conjecture.
“I tried talking to the crossing sweepers,” she said, when she’d recounted all she could remember regarding Arbuckle’s disappearance. “They acted as if conversing with me would turn them to stone.”
“They might have had trouble understanding you, my lady. They know their Cockney and cant and can recite you bawdy poems without number, but drawing-room elocution eludes them.”
Rosalind had never considered that her speech might be incomprehensible. “Elocution eluded me for years as well. I developed a stammer after my mother’s death. My governess was horrified.” Rosalind was horrified. She never alluded to her stammer, while her brothers never let her forget it.
Mr. Wentworth frowned. “You stammered?”
“For years. My brothers teased me unmercifully. Then my aunt hired a Welshwoman as my drawing master, and she taught me to think of speaking as recitativo. I do not stammer when I sing, and if I can hear a melody…” Rosalind fell silent, for she was prattling. This was Ned Wentworth’s fault, because after he posed a question, he listened to the lady’s answer, and the whole time, he gazed at her as if her words mattered. Very bad of him. “This isn’t helping us to find Arbuckle.”
“Your secret is safe with me.” He chose a book at random from the shelves. “Bankers learn more secrets than I ever aspired to know. We keep them close or soon go out of business.”
He made a handsome picture, leafing through the book. Rosalind would like to sketch him thus, not that his appearance mattered one whit. “What sort of secrets?”
He turned a page. “Who has set up a discreet trust fund for a supposed godchild. Who is one Season away from ruin. Who has abruptly changed solicitors, such as might happen when the first firm is unwilling to suborn a bit of perjury or sharp practice.”
Polite society kept Ned Wentworth at a slight distance, and Rosalind had always attributed that lack of welcome to his past. He was rumored to have met His Grace of Walden during the duke’s little misunderstanding with the authorities, the little misunderstanding that had landed His Grace on a Newgate scaffold with a noose about his neck. His Grace had been merely Mr. Quinton Wentworth at the time and appallingly wealthy.
He was even wealthier now, but still Ned Wentworth’s past did not recommend him to the matchmakers. Neither, apparently, did his present. “No wonder they are all afraid of you. You could ruin the lot of them.”
He turned another page. “You are not afraid of me.”
They were wandering far afield from the topic of Arbuckle’s disappearance, and Rosalind had more information to convey. And yet, to converse with Mr. Wentworth was interesting. With men, she was usually reduced to argument, lecture, small talk, or exhortation. That she gave as good as she got
in each category only seemed to make the situation worse.
“Why would I be afraid of you?” Rosalind said. “You are a gentleman, and you have agreed to help me.”
He closed the book. “Your oldest brother is habitually in dun territory, Lady Rosalind, and your younger brother is barely managing on a generous allowance, very likely because he’s trying to keep the firstborn son and heir out of the sponging house. I thought you should know this before I undertake a search for Miss Arbuckle.”
The words made sense, but they were rendered in such polite, unassuming tones that Rosalind needed a moment to find the meaning in them.
“Do you expect me to pay you?” Rosalind had some ready cash, because wasting coin on fripperies was beyond her, and Papa had little clue what it cost to clothe a lady, much less run his own household.
“Of course not.” Mr. Wentworth shoved the book back onto the shelf. “If your family is short of coin, then the sooner I put your mind at ease regarding remuneration for my efforts, the less likely you are to fret.”
Fret? Whatever was he getting at? “You are being too delicate for my feeble female brain, Mr. Wentworth. Plain speech would be appreciated.”
He selected another book, as casually as if he truly were browsing the biographies. “You promised in your note that if I heeded your summons, you would make it worth my while. A simple request for aid would have sufficed, my lady. You need not coerce me with coin.”
Ah, well, then. His pride was offended. Having two brothers, Rosalind should have recognized the symptoms.
“I meant to trade favors, Mr. Wentworth. You have agreed to search for Arbuckle, and thus I will share with you the fact that Clotilda Cadwallader is considering allowing you to court her. She’s said to be worth ten thousand a year.”
The book snapped closed. “She’s what?”
“Said to be worth—”
He shook his head. “I know to the penny what she’s worth, and it’s not ten thousand a year. What else can you tell me?”
“She might allow you to pay her your addresses.” Rosalind offered this news with all good cheer, though Clotilda was a ninnyhammer. Men seemed to prefer ninnyhammers, alas. “You’d have to change your name to Cadwallader, but she says you aren’t bad looking, you’re solvent, and you would not be overly bothersome about filling the nursery.” More delicate than that, Rosalind could not be.
“Because I have no title and need neither heir nor spare, and what married couple would ever seek one another’s intimate company for any reason other than duty?”
Mr. Wentworth’s tone presaged not affront, but rather, amusement—and bitterness.
“I know little of what motivates people to marry, and as for intimate company…” Too late, Rosalind realized that she’d sailed into an ambush of her own making.
“Yes, my lady?” The amusement had reached Mr. Wentworth’s eyes. He was silently laughing at her, which merited a good Storming Off in High Dudgeon, except that his gaze held only a friendly sense of fun and nothing of mockery.
He was teasing her. Rosalind’s brothers had teased her, before a mere sister had slipped beneath their notice. Arbuckle had occasionally teased her. But when Ned Wentworth teased, his watchful, noticing eyes warmed to a startling degree. A smile lurked in the subtle curve of his mouth, and the corners of his eyes crinkled.
I must sketch him thus, must catch that near smile. “We will now change the subject,” Rosalind said, “because the alternative is to admit that I’ve mortified myself.”
“Must we change the subject just as the conversation is becoming interesting?”
“You are twitting me.” Or perhaps he was flirting with her? Not likely, but Rosalind had so little experience with flirtation she could forgive herself for wondering.
“On the basis of vast inexperience, you were preparing to lecture me about your complete indifference to marital joy. Of course I was teasing you. And as for Miss Cadwallader… You will please inform her that I want a very large family.”
“Do you?”
He put the book atop the shelf. “If Miss Cadwallader asks, you may assure her I do.” His smile had gone from a subdued curving of the lips to a buccaneer’s grin.
To blazes with sketching him. When Ned Wentworth smiled like that, Rosalind wanted to kiss him.
* * *
Order your copy of Never a Duke, and read on for an excerpt from Miss Dignified!
Miss Dignified—Excerpt
Chapter One
“That is a kitten.” The audacious little beast—a calico—batted at the toe of Captain Dylan Powell’s boot as if to herd him out of his own kitchen. “I do not recall giving permission to add another dependent to my household.”
If asked, he would have refused. Half of London’s disabled and unemployed soldiers already relied on Dylan’s hospitality, and that was quite challenging enough.
“That,” Mrs. Lydia Lovelace retorted, “is a pantry mouser, and you, Captain Powell, are intruding belowstairs unannounced again. We have discussed this. If you’re peckish, you may ring for a tray and I will happily oblige you.” In the dim light of the kitchen hearth, she gathered her shawl in a manner that conveyed vexation—with him.
“It’s nearly midnight,” Dylan replied. “I would not trouble you over bread and cheese.”
“Bread and cheese.” Mrs. Lovelace swished past him to the window box. “You hare about London at all hours, on foot, in this weather, and think to subsist on bread and cheese.” She tossed the longer tail of her shawl over one shoulder with all the panache of a Cossack preparing to gallop across the snowy steppes. “I should let you starve, but then I’d be in need of a post.”
While the kitten pounced on Dylan’s boots, then pronked away with its back arched, Mrs. Lovelace put together an omelet of ham, cheese, and bacon. At the same time, she had a rack of toast browning over the coals, and a kettle on to boil.
For Dylan to sit, even on the hard chair before the kitchen table, was to fall prey to a staggering weight of fatigue. By a London gentleman’s standards, midnight was not late. By a soldier’s standards, midnight was hours past bedtime. Though he’d sold his commission years ago, Dylan’s body had never lost the habit of the soldier’s hours.
He rose to turn the toast—when had his hips acquired the aches of an eighty-year-old man?—and the kitten scampered after him. Rather than risk stepping on such a small pest, he scooped the beast up.
“Does it have a name?” he asked. The feline squeezed its eyes closed and commenced rumbling. I’m surrounded by insubordination.
“She. Calicoes are always female in my experience, and no, she does not. Not yet.”
Dylan resumed his seat as the kitchen filled with the scents of good, simple food. “Because you think I’d turn her out?”
Mrs. Lovelace sent him an eloquently skeptical glance. “Even you would not turn away a kitten on such a foul night.”
No, he would not, but come morning…
“It’s merely raining.” Dylan had marched through worse and barely noticed the wet, but this rain was London rain, which could turn to sleet at any season of the year. Welsh rain was well behaved by comparison, usually more of a pattering mist, and often bringing rainbows in its wake.
Thoughts of Wales were never cheering, and never far from his mind.
“Rain with a bitter wind,” Mrs. Lovelace retorted, taking the toasting rack off the hearth. She opened the rack and began spreading butter over the warm slices. “River fog reeking of foul miasmas. Footpads on every corner. That you have not succumbed to brain fever or fallen prey to violence surely qualifies as miraculous.”
“Would you miss me?” The question slipped out, not quite teasing. Perhaps Mrs. Lovelace was right—she was frequently right, also somewhat less than respectful of her employer. The late hour, an empty belly, and the dirty weather had taken a toll on Dylan’s wits.
“I would miss my post.” She cut the buttered toast into triangles and arranged it on a plate with the steam
ing omelet. “You should wash your hands, sir.”
Now she gave him orders, albeit couched as a suggestion and served with a side of scowling disapproval. To wash his hands, Dylan would have to stand again, and now that he was finally home and parked on his arse, even crossing the kitchen loomed like a three-day forced march.
He nonetheless set the kitten on the warm bricks of the raised hearth and went to the wet sink to do as he was told. Junior officers in particular learned to do as they were told, though half the time the result was death or disgrace—at least when the orders came from Colonel Aloysius Dunacre.
“Will you join me?” Dylan asked, returning to the table. Mrs. Loveless had made a prodigious amount of food, more than he could comfortably eat at one sitting.
“I’ll see to the tea.”
The kitten curled up in a basket on the hearth, looking small and vulnerable all on its lonesome, also contented and sweet, damn it.
Dylan stared at the hot food, an unexpected comfort on an otherwise frustrating night. “For what I am about to receive, I am abjectly grateful. Please do sit, Mrs. Lovelace.” He cast around for a means of inducing her to get off her feet. “To have you racketing about will ruin my digestion.”
She wore no cap at this late hour, and Mrs. Lovelace did set great store by her caps. She set great store by feather dusters, recipes for lifting stains, and medicinals for every occasion. Dylan had never met a woman so ferociously competent at domesticity, nor so ruthless in her warfare against dirt and disorder.
She brought the tea tray to the table and sat across from him, perched on the very edge of her chair. “The eggs might need salt.”
Dylan portioned off a third of the omelet and set it on a saucer. “Try it for yourself. I cannot possibly finish this and good food ought not to go to waste.” He pushed the plate over to her, then added a triangle of toast. Challenging Mrs. Lovelace to bend a rule was always an intriguing exercise. She was not stupidly rigid, but rather, sensibly well organized.
A Rogue in Winter Page 12