Prologue
DUCAL DEVASTATION!
ONE DOZEN DAYS OF DARKNESS AND DEMISE
March 1829
Bernard Settlesworth, Esquire, believed that name was destiny.
Indeed, as the third in a familial line of solicitors to the aristocracy, it was difficult not to believe such a thing. Bernard took immense pride in his work, which he performed with precision on nearly every day of the year. After all, he would tell himself, the British aristocracy was built on the hard work of men such as he. Without the Bernard Settlesworths of the world expertly calculating ledgers and deftly managing enormous estates, the House of Lords would crumble, leaving nothing but the dust of ancient lines and fortunes.
He did the Lord’s work, ensuring the aristocracy remained standing. And solvent.
And though he took pride in all aspects of his work, there was nothing Bernard enjoyed quite so much as meeting with new inheritors, for it was in those moments that the Settlesworth name was best put to work—settling worth.
Bernard enjoyed this part best, that is, until tragedy struck the Dukedom of Warnick.
Two marquesses. Six different earls and baronets. A landed gentleman and his three sons. A vicar. A ship’s captain. A hatter. A horse breeder. And one duke.
Lost to a spate of tragedies that included, but was not limited to, a carriage accident, a hunting mishap, a robbery gone wrong, a drowning in the Thames, an unfortunate incident with influenza, and a truly unsettling incident with a cormorant.
Seventeen dukes, if he were honest, Bernard supposed—all dead. All within the span of a fortnight.
It was a turn of events—seventeen turns of events—unheard of in British history. But Bernard was nothing if not dedicated, even more so when it fell to him to play protector to such an old and venerable title, to its vast lands (made vaster by the rapid, successive death of seventeen men, several of whom died without issue), and large fortunes (made larger by the same).
And so it was that he stood in the great stone entryway of Dunworthy Castle in the cold, windy, wild of Scotland, face-to-face with Alec Stuart, once seventeenth in line for the Dukedom of Warnick, now the last known heir to the title.
Face-to-face wasn’t quite accurate. After being greeted by a pretty young woman, Bernard had been left to wait, surrounded by massive tapestries and a handful of ancient weaponry which appeared to have been haphazardly affixed to the wall.
And so he waited.
And waited.
After three quarters of an hour, two large dogs appeared, bigger than any he’d ever seen, grey and wild. They approached, the movements deceptively lazy. Bernard pressed himself to the stone wall, hoping they would decide to find another, more appetizing victim. Instead, they sat at his feet, wire-haired heads reaching nearly to his chest, grinning up at him, no doubt thinking him quite tasty.
Bernard did not care for it. Indeed, for the first time in his career, he considered the possibility that soliciting was a less than enjoyable profession.
And then the man arrived, looking wilder than the dogs. He was dark-haired and big as a house—Bernard had never seen a man so big—well past six and a half feet, he imagined, with what might have been twenty stone on his broad, muscled frame, and none of it fat. Bernard could tell that bit, because the man wasn’t wearing a shirt.
Indeed, he wasn’t wearing trousers, either.
He was wearing a kilt. And carrying a broadsword.
For a moment, Bernard wondered if he’d traveled through time as well as space on the journey to Scotland. It was, after all, 1829, despite the Scotsman appearing as though he’d arrived via three centuries earlier.
The enormous man ignored him, tossing the sword up onto the wall where it stuck as though by sheer force of its owner’s will. That same owner who then turned his back on Bernard and made to leave.
Bernard cleared his throat, the sound louder than he’d intended in the massive stone space, loud enough for the man to turn and cast a lingering look over the solicitor’s diminutive-in-comparison frame. After a long silence, he said, “Who are you?”
At least, that’s what Bernard thought he said. The words were thick on the man’s tongue, wrapped in brogue.
“I—I—” Bernard collected himself and willed the stutter away despite being surrounded by beasts both human and canine. “I am waiting for an audience with the master of the house.”
The man rumbled, and Bernard imagined the deep sound was amusement. “Careful. These stones shan’t like hearin’ that ye think they’ve a master.”
Bernard blinked. He’d heard tales of mad Scots, but he hadn’t expected to meet one. Perhaps he’d misunderstood in the confusion of rolling Rs and missing syllables. “I beg your pardon.”
The man studied him for a long moment. “Mine or the keep’s?”
“For . . .” Bernard wasn’t sure what to say. He wasn’t apologizing to the castle, was he? He tilted his head. “Is Mr. Stuart here?”
The enormous man rocked back on his heels, and Bernard had the distinct impression that his obvious discomfort was pleasing to the great brute. As though he shouldn’t be the one who was uncomfortable, what with traipsing around the castle half nude. “Aye.”
“I’ve been waiting nearly an hour for him.”
The dogs sensed his irritation and stood, clearly offended by it. Bernard swallowed.
“Angus. Hardy.” Instantly, they retreated to their master’s side.
And it was then that Bernard knew. He looked to the half-naked man across the entryway and said, “You are he.”
“Aye, but we still have nae established who you are.”
“Alec!” A young woman’s voice echoed through the castle. “There’s a man here. Says he’s a solicitor from London!”
The new Duke of Warnick didn’t look away from Bernard as he raised his voice in reply. “He also says he’s been waiting for me for an hour.”
??
?Seemed nothing good could come of a fancy London solicitor,” the voice sang down. “Why bother you while you were having a spar?”
“Why, indeed,” the Scot replied. “Apologies. My sister does nae care for the English.”
Bernard nodded. “Is there a place we might speak more privately?”
“As I care even less for the English than my sister does,” the duke said, “we needn’t stand on ceremony. You are welcome to state your purpose here and now. And then you may leave.”
Bernard imagined the man’s view of England would change quite a bit once he discovered he’d become a peer of the realm. An exceedingly wealthy one. “Of course. It’s my very great pleasure to tell you that, as of twelve days ago, you are the Duke of Warnick.”
Throughout his career, Bernard had witnessed all manner of response to the reality of inheritance. He’d stood by in the face of devastation of those who had lost beloved fathers, and recognized the eagerness on the face of those with not-so-beloved sires. He’d witnessed the shock of distant inheritors, and the joy of those whose fortunes had changed in the blink of an eye. And, on the least pleasurable of his days, he’d witnessed the devastating burden of inheritance—when a newly minted aristocrat discovered that his title had come with nothing but incapacitating debt.
But in the more than twenty years that he had served the upper echelons of the aristocracy, Bernard had never once met with apathy.
Until now, when the Scotsman he’d crossed a country to find calmly said, “Nae,” turned on his heel, and made for the exit, dogs on his heels.
Settlesworth sputtered his confusion. “Your . . . Your Grace?”
A long bout of laughter came at the honorific. “I’ve no interest in an English title. And I certainly have no interest in being anyone’s grace.”
With that, the twenty-first Duke of Warnick, last of a venerable line and rich as a king, disappeared.
Bernard waited another hour in the stone keep and a full three days at the only inn in the nearby town, but the duke had no interest in speaking with him again.
And so it was that for the next five years, the duke rarely showed face in London and, when he did, he eschewed all things aristocratic. Within months, London society had discerned his disdain and decided that it was they, in fact, who disdained him, and not the other way around.
The Diluted Duke, they contended, was worth neither time, nor energy. After all, seventeenth in line for a dukedom was virtually no duke at all.
Such a view suited Alec Stuart, proud Scotsman, more than well, and he resumed his life without a second thought for the trappings of his title. As he was no monster, he managed his now vast estates with meticulous care, ensuring that those who relied upon Warnick lands were well and prosperous, but he avoided London, believing that as long as England ignored him, he could ignore England.
And England did ignore him, right up until it didn’t.
Right up until a missive arrived, revealing that alongside the estates and servants and paintings and carpets he had inherited, alongside the title he had no interest in using, the Duke of Warnick had inherited something else entirely.
A woman.
Chapter 1
LOVELY LILY TURNED MISS MUSE!
April 1834
Royal Academy Exhibition
Somerset House, London
Miss Lillian Hargrove was the most beautiful woman in England.
It was an empirical fact, requiring absolutely no confirmation from experts on the subject. One had only to set eyes upon her, noting her porcelain skin, precisely symmetrical features, high cheekbones, full lips, curving ears, and a pretty, straight nose that evoked the very best of classical sculpture, and one simply knew.
Add to it her red hair, somehow not at all brash but a rich, golden hue that evoked the most heavenly of sunsets, and her grey eyes like a summer storm, and there was no question at all.
Lillian Hargrove was perfect.
So perfect, that the fact she had come from nothing—that she lacked title, social standing, and dowry, that she had been plucked from Lord knew where by London’s finest artist, to whom she was not married—was somehow rendered irrelevant when she entered a room. After all, nothing blinded gentlemen (titled or otherwise) quite like beauty, a fact that was enough to set any matchmaking mama with an invitation to Almack’s on edge.
Which was why the female half of the aristocracy took exceeding pleasure in the events of the twenty-fourth of April, 1834, the opening day of the Royal Academy Exhibition of Contemporary Art, and the day Lillian Hargrove—current favored beauty of the scandal sheets—was made a proper scandal.
And ruined. Thoroughly.
Later, when that same subsection of the ton whispered fervently about the events of the day, white gloves hiding fingertips stained black with ink from the gossip rags they swore they never read, the conversation would always end with a horrified, gleeful “The poor thing never saw it coming.”
And she hadn’t.
Indeed, Lily had thought it would be the best day of her life.
It was the day she had been waiting for her entire life—all twenty-three years, forty-eight weeks. It was the day Derek Hawkins was to propose.
Not that she had known Derek for her entire life. She hadn’t. She’d known him for six months, three weeks, and five days—since he’d approached her on the afternoon of Michaelmas as she lingered in the Hyde Park sun on one of the last warm days of the year, and told her, in no uncertain terms, that he was going to marry her.
“You are a revelation,” he’d said in his cool, crisp voice, surprising her from her book.
Another might have considered his unexpected arrival the reason for her breathlessness, but Lily had known better. He had taken her breath away because he had found her, ignored in her place in the margins. Despite her beauty, she was alone and unnoticed by the world, thrice-orphaned—first by her land steward father; then by a string of ducal guardians, each meeting a quick end; and, finally, in full, by the neglect of the current duke.
In her loneliness, she’d become very adept at being unseen, so, when Derek Hawkins noticed her—when he saw her with the full, blinding force of his gaze—she’d fallen quite in love. Quite instantly.
Lily had done her best to seem unaffected by his words. After all, she had not read every London ladies’ magazine published in the last five years for nothing. Looking up at him, she tried her best, softest smile and said, “We have not met, sir.”
He’d crouched next to her at that, removing the book from her lap—charming her with his blinding white teeth and even more blinding impertinence. “A beauty such as you should not have time for books.”
She blinked, drawn to his cool blue eyes, trained upon her as though they were the only two people in all London. In all the world. “But I like books.”
He’d shaken his head. “Not as much as you shall like me.”
She’d laughed at the boast. “You seem very certain of yourself.”
“I am very certain of you,” he’d said, lifting her hand from her lap and pressing a warm kiss to her gloved knuckles. “I am Derek Hawkins. And you are the muse for which I have been searching. I intend to keep you. For all eternity.”
She’d caught her breath at the vow. At the way it evoked other, more formal ones.
Certainly, meeting Derek Hawkins was a shock. She’d been reading about him for years—he was a legend, an artist and star of the stage, renowned throughout London and beyond as one of the most skilled theatrical minds of a generation. News of his talent and good looks preceded him—and while Lily could not in the moment confirm the former, the latter appeared quite accurate.
But it was not his celebrity that won Lily over. She had more than fluff between her ears, after all. She did not dream of a famous suitor.
She dreamed of a suitor who would ensure she was never alone again.
After all, Lily had been alone for her entire life.
In the days and weeks that followed, Derek had
courted her, playing the part of the perfect gentleman, escorting her to autumn festivals and winter events, even hiring an older female servant to chaperone them on public outings.
And then, on a cold, snowy afternoon in January, he’d sent a carriage for her, and she’d been ferreted to his studio—the inner sanctum of his artist’s world.
Alone.
There, in the sun-soaked room, surrounded by dozens of canvases, he’d honored her with his words and promises, worshipped her beauty and her perfection and vowed to keep her with him. Forever.
The words—so pretty and tempting and precisely what she’d always dreamed of hearing from a man so handsome and skilled and valued beyond measure—had filled her with more happiness and hope than she’d ever imagined possible.
For two months and five days, she’d returned to the studio again and again, sitting with more than a little pride in the room, warm with winter sunlight and Derek’s gaze. She’d given him everything he asked. Because that was what one did when one was in love.
And they were in love—a fact that was proven by this moment, as they stood in the great hall of the Royal Exhibition, surrounded by the brightest and most renowned of London’s populace. Lily was a half step behind Derek’s right shoulder (where he preferred her), wearing a pale yellow frock (slightly lower than Lily would have liked, but which he’d selected himself), her hair up in a tight, unyielding twist (precisely the way he liked).
As they’d ridden to the exhibition, the rain forcing them inside his carriage, where it tapped its rhythm on the roof and shut out the world beyond, he’d taken her hand in his and whispered, “Today is the day that changes everything. For all time. After today, all will be different. My name will be whispered throughout the world. And yours, as well.”
She’d blinked up at him, heart bursting, knowing that he could mean only one thing. Marriage. She’d smiled and whispered back, “Together.”
The carriage had slowed in that moment, and they’d arrived at the exhibition, but she’d heard his agreement in the thunder of the rainstorm beyond.