What I Did For a Duke Read online

  What I Did for a Duke

  Julie Anne Long

  Dedication

  For Steve Axelrod, brilliant agent and friend—it’s been an honor, pleasure, and adventure so far, and I have a hunch it will continue to be.

  Contents

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Romances by Julie Anne Long

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Chapter 1

  From a deucedly awkward crouch between a birdbath and a shrubbery in the back garden of a Sussex manor house, Ian Eversea watched the silhouette of a woman pass tantalizingly once . . . twice . . . Hallelujah! Three times!—before the upper story window.

  The window went black. The lamp had been doused.

  A signal and a confirmation.

  He launched to a stand. His knees cracked like gunshots. He froze. Yet he was alone but for a sky full of stars; naught a soul would witness his furtive journey to the tree.

  The road to this tree—and to the last three nights of coyly escalating sensual games in her bedroom—began during a conversation at a ball in honor of Abigail’s engagement to the Duke of Falconbridge one week earlier. At this very house.

  Introductions were made; attraction was instant; conversation was brief, every word of it a veritable pearl of innuendo in a lengthening strand of indiscretion. From the beginning, for Ian, all of it was excellent, excellent: her lush burnished beauty, the veneer of innocence over a delightful if startling moral recklessness, all of that wrapped in one particularly titillating danger: she was engaged to Alexander Moncrieffe, the Duke of Falconbridge, who’d allegedly poisoned his first wife a decade earlier (naught had ever been proven, of course, nor had any formal accusation ever been made, but the ton knew better than to let such delicious gossip die). He’d fought more than one duel. So they said. He was a cold, elegant, staggeringly wealthy man. He gambled, both at cards and with investments, and he never, ever lost. One trifled with him at one’s peril.

  Or so gossip had it.

  Before drifting away, Lady Abigail had tapped Ian lightly on the arm with her fan and laconically added there was an oak tree right outside her bedchamber window.

  He knew the tree. He’d seen it as they’d arrived for the ball through the opportunistic eyes of the typical Eversea male: it leaned conspiratorially against the red brick of the house; its trunk was solid and there were low sturdy branches a grown man could easily scale without damaging essential parts of his anatomy. But its most compelling feature was the branch that stretched yearningly—one might (he might) even say insistently—toward a particular window.

  And he’d wondered who’d slept in that room.

  It was no cause for wonderment for either Ian or Lady Abigail that they were in such accord.

  Perhaps I’ll see you after midnight tomorrow.

  There had never been a “perhaps” about it.

  For three nights he’d made this journey, from the crouch by the fountain to her bed. For three nights he’d progressed from a kiss to getting her nearly undressed. Tonight she’d promised to be entirely unwrapped when he slid into the bed, and urged him to be, too.

  So his heart was thumping hard when he jumped up to get a grip on a lower branch, shinned up the trunk to the one that led to her window and swung up. She’d left the window open an inch or two. He curled his fingers beneath and slid it up gingerly, as too eagerly grabbing at the weathering frame the night before was how he’d come by his splinter. He hooked both legs over the sill, then ducked to slide his long body through. The drop into her bedroom was short; a thick Savonnerie carpet swirled in lights and darks muffled his landing.

  He tore off his clothes with the urgency of a man fighting off fire ants.

  He propped a hand on a table near the window, yanked off his boots, and lined them up side by side on the carpet. His fingers flew over buttons as he rid himself of his coat and shirt and trousers; he wadded all of them together and stacked them next to the bed.

  Oh, God. And it was all very good, from the crouch to the splinter to the tree. Every sound, every sensation, amplified his desire and was now familiar and erotic and all of a piece, all part of the act itself: The rustle of the sheets as he lifted them to slide into the bed next to her, the first sweet shock of their smooth coolness on his skin, the ghost of lavender scent they released, the first skim of his fingers over the warm skin of the woman waiting in bed, herself little more than a shadow made of fragrant and silky flesh in which he would soon bury himself as she’d promised, her sigh of welcome, the unmistakable gut-chilling metallic click of a pistol being cocked—

  Holy Mother of—!

  Perhaps not that.

  That was new.

  Ian and Abigail scrambled away from each other and sat bolt upright in the bed. Heart thudding against his breastbone, Ian fumbled futilely for his pistol—he was nude and his pistol was in his boot. He surreptitiously slid one bare foot out of the bed and laid it flat on the floor, preparing to launch as appropriate—out the window or at the wielder of the pistol. His eyes frantically raked the dark.

  “Oh, you won’t want to move another hair.”

  The voice was low, dark, and almost offhandedly, lightheartedly menacing.

  Mother of God. It was like the night itself had spoken.

  Ian was not a coward. But all the little hairs on the back of his neck and arms went erect when one of the shadows detached itself from the corner chair in which it had been slumping and grew taller and taller . . . and began to drift toward them.

  Not a spectre. A man, of course. Dressed strategically in dark clothing. The better to hide, to corner, to trap.

  Abigail’s breathing was audible, tattered by terror.

  The man moved toward the bed with the languid loose-limbed purpose of a stalking leopard. Errant moonlight allowed in through the window glanced off the barrel of his pistol. And off something else, something metal, in his other hand. . . . A lamp.

  He settled it gently, precisely down on the small table next to the window, and then took what seemed like an insufferable amount of time to light it, but then fear did rather play havoc with one’s sense of time. The flame shuddered fitfully and at last took hold. And at last a man’s face flickered in and out of light and shadow. It was a bit like watching Lucifer sitting at a campfire.

  “Moncrieffe.”

  Ian’s voice was hoarse with shock. Unfortunately, Abigail gasped the word at the same time, lending the flavor of a bad pantomime to the whole thing.

  It all would have been quite funny had this been someone else’s grave, grave dilemma.

  The Duke of Falconbridge pondered them. He was already unusually tall, and the lamplight threw an even taller shadow of him against the wall. Two spectral dukes hovering over the bed, and both of them had pistols.

  Ian couldn’t decide whether to fix his eyes upon Moncrieffe’s face or the weapon. One was aimed precisely at the center of Ian’s chest, which was covered now in a cold fi
lm of sweat. Both were identically gleaming, impassive, and deadly.

  He had no doubts about whether Moncrieffe was capable of shooting. His reputation rather preceded him.

  “Eversea.” The duke nodded in an ironic parody of a social greeting.

  It contained nothing of surprise. As though he had expected him.

  Had in fact, stalked him, watched him, and lain in wait— . . . God . . . for how many nights?

  “How did y-you . . . ?” Ian stammered.

  Perhaps this wasn’t the time to ask questions, but he truly was curious.

  His hands were perspiring now, too.

  “As I never sleep before midnight, Eversea, and I’m a guest here, I saw your horse tethered in the road for three nights now. Honestly, knowing you as I do, it wasn’t difficult to draw conclusions. I set the horse free, by the way.”

  Christ! He loved that horse.

  Well, they were in Sussex, and the horse would find its way back to Eversea House, of that he was certain. Or into the hands of the Gypsies who camped in Sussex, who would know better than attempt to sell a horse that belonged to an Eversea.

  But as for whether Ian would ever make it back to the house . . .

  Abigail’s hand found his and gripped. As if he could offer comfort! He might need that hand to do battle with the duke.

  Perhaps if he attempted to placate. “I never . . .” he began. “We never quite . . .”

  The duke’s eyebrows flicked upward, daring Ian to finish that thought.

  Which he regretted doing the moment he did.

  “. . . It’s not what it seems.”

  The ensuing silence was palpably incredulous. Even Abigail turned to look at him in gap-mouthed astonishment that anyone would actually say that outside of a bad pantomime.

  But bloody hell—and more’s the pity—it was true. More accurately, it wasn’t yet what it seemed.

  “I might be more moved by that assertion if it didn’t sound so regretful, Eversea.”

  The duke almost sounded amused. But then irony, when delivered cold and shaved very, very fine, could sound like amusement.

  There was nothing at all amusing about the unwavering aim of that pistol.

  Abigail and Ian flinched when the duke broke from the circle of lamplight and strode slowly over to Abigail’s side of the bed. All this slinking was very unnerving, because Ian knew the man usually moved as though he resented gravity. With long, impatient strides and focus and purpose. He wasn’t a stroller.

  He stood over her.

  Abigail audibly swallowed.

  Down, down, down. The duke lowered the pistol. They watched it with the avidity with which they would an indecisive cobra. Perhaps . . . perhaps he meant to lock it? To tuck it away? To—

  He stopped lowering it when the muzzle was aimed precisely at Abigail’s throat.

  She squeezed her eyes closed and hoarse prayers rushed between her lips.

  Ian’s rib cage stopped moving. His breathing had arrested. Abigail’s hand was like ice in his, and for an ungentlemanly moment he wanted to fling it back to her, to reject their mutual idiocy, to ask her how on earth she thought he could comfort her or resolve the circumstance. The two of them were only involved for the pleasure of it. He assessed his chances of flying at the duke and knocking him to the floor before he could shoot. After all, he was naked and coated in terror sweat and would therefore theoretically be difficult to grip. The duke was tall but wiry and might topple should he be struck by a hurtling Eversea.

  But Ian didn’t like his chances. He’d seen the man shoot at Manton’s.

  He’d no choice. He’d talked his way into this; he’d talk his way out of it.

  “For God’s sake, Moncrieffe.” His voice was still frayed but he was proud that it didn’t tremble. “Do you have to torment her? Call me out or shoot me and have done with it. The fault is entirely mine.”

  This wasn’t at all true, as Abigail had in fact set the whole thing in motion, but it was perhaps the most gallant thing Ian had yet said in his life. Then again, centuries of splendid breeding and battle-tempering were difficult to combat. They rose inconveniently to the surface in moments of greatest peril, it would seem.

  “Just . . . for the love of God, do whatever it is you intend to do.”

  Silence as the duke considered—or pretended to consider—this entreaty.

  “Very well,” the duke said with equanimity. “As you make an excellent point, Eversea, I’ll do what I intended to do all along. And what I intend to do . . .”

  Ian was so focused on the pistol he hadn’t noticed the man was unbuttoning his trousers as he spoke.

  “. . . is share her with you. Slide over, Eversea.”

  Their gasps nearly sucked the air out of the room.

  Satisfied he’d shocked a few years from their lives, Alexander Moncrieffe, the sixth Duke of Falconbridge, paused his hand on his trouser buttons and contemplated all the whiteness: bulging white eyes, the naked white shoulders, the white sheet his fiancée had yanked modestly up beneath her chin to disguise from him all that pale nudity she was willingly sharing with Eversea.

  He knew him, of course, and his brothers and father, from White’s, from entirely noncommittal encounters over cigars and brandies in libraries after balls. They were a close-knit, legendarily charming, legendarily wealthy lot.

  He mulled the notion of toying with them a little more and rejected it as pointless. And perhaps more to the point, boring.

  Perhaps it was because he was, as was whispered, getting old.

  He was nearly forty.

  Instead he moved—so quickly Abigail stifled another shriek and Ian flung his arms up over their heads in defensive alarm—across the room and yanked the window up high, then bent and seized Eversea’s boots—it had been all he could do not to shoot the scoundrel as he’d watched him neatly line them up—and hurled them like spears—One! Two!—out the window. Next he hurled out the wadded bundle of clothes. For one thrilling moment Ian’s coat caught a passing breeze and flapped like a bat sideways through the night before disappearing.

  But the shirt didn’t get far. It caught in the branches of the tree and dangled by the cuffs and swung gaily, as though inhabited by an invisible trapeze artist.

  They were all mesmerized by it for half a second.

  Then Moncrieffe spun on his heel and aimed the pistol precisely at Ian’s sweating white forehead.

  “Leave the way you came, Eversea. Now.” The words were etched in menace.

  He could sense that Ian’s muscles were bunched in preparation to fend off an attack or perhaps launch one. He was younger, but Moncrieffe was certain the fight would be fair even if he didn’t have a pistol. He’d had years of experience in which to perfect all manner and methods of fighting, dirty included. Perhaps especially.

  “Do you need me to define ‘now’ for you as well as ‘honor,’ Eversea? Test me.” He took an infinitesimal step forward.

  This propelled the boy. Ian slid swiftly from the bed, attempting to drag the sheet with him. He was yanked backward abruptly. He shot a glance over his shoulder. Abigail had a stubborn grip on it.

  He tugged desperately, eyebrows raised plead-ingly.

  She held on to it tenaciously, frowned, and gave her head a frantic little shake.

  Oh, for God’s sake.

  The duke ripped the sheet from Eversea’s hand.

  Ian Eversea was stark naked in the lamplight, long white feet and hairy shins and all. To his credit, though he didn’t quite plant his hands nonchalantly on his hips, he didn’t uselessly overlap his hands over his penis. After all, everyone in the room knew he possessed one.

  “Moncrieffe. We can settle this like men over the weapon of your choice. I welcome it. I deserve it. You’ve every right. Choose your weapon.”

  Touching speech. Everseas were unfailingly polite.

  Bastards and rogues, but polite.

  A number of glib retorts occurred to Moncrieffe. Well, you obviously fancy yoursel
f a swordsman, Eversea, sprang to mind. But he didn’t suffer fools or knaves. Ever. He was nearly forty years old, and the sands in his hourglass of patience were ever-dwindling.

  He was sardonic even in his thoughts these days.

  “Your punishment will fit the crime.” He stood back to allow Eversea a path to the window.

  And Ian walked like a condemned prisoner to the guillotine.

  The duke and Abigail silently watched Ian squeeze himself out. It wasn’t at all pretty, involving bending and contorting and the exposing of places Moncrieffe deeply regretted seeing even by lamplight. At last came what amounted to watching a moonset as his white hindquarters vanished, and then Ian shinnied back out onto that once-inviting, now perfidious branch.

  They heard a grunt and a ripping sound as Ian yanked free his shirt from the branch, and came away with only half of it. Moncrieffe shut the window emphatically on Ian’s muttered heartfelt epithet and yanked the curtains closed.

  When he yanked the curtains Abigail jumped a little and turned regretful, startled eyes on him, as though he’d just prematurely concluded a puppet show.

  He weakened. Just a little. Somewhere in the icy clarity of his rage was an echo of what he’d once felt when he looked at her. Her hair was down, and she’d luscious piles of it, like doubloons spilled from a pirate chest. He could have had it down long before now. He could have had his hands tangling through it. He could have had her on her back, writhing beneath him. He knew very well how to seduce a woman, to persuade her she wanted him even if she wasn’t entirely convinced. Most of them wanted him.

  Well, he supposed he should have known.

  “Why?” he said finally.

  “Why do you want to know?” she rejoindered.

  Excellent point. He’d probably regret hearing it.

  “Answer me,” he said anyway. Beneath the quiet words thrummed a threat that would have had a stalwart man taking a step backward.

  She swallowed again. She licked her fear-parched lips. He watched her pink tongue running over their fine outline with a certain detached appreciation that swelled again into rage, like a tide.

  “He’s delightful,” she said simply, faintly, plucking nervously at the sheet she clung to in one fist. Her voice was still weak from shock, but she shrugged, an attempt at arrogance. “And handsome. And young. And popular.” She paused. “And nobody likes you,” she couldn’t resist concluding with faint acid petulance.