This Duke of Mine Read online

  Copyright © 2018 by Delilah Marvelle

  Cover Design by Delilah Marvelle

  Photograph by Shutterstock

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Contents

  This Duke of Mine

  A Fabliau

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Epilogue

  Also by Delilah Marvelle

  For anyone trying to start again.

  It’s only too late if you never try.

  A Fabliau

  A Fabliau /’fablē,ō/ (noun)

  First known use in 1804

  Its definition: a metrical tale, usually of

  a bawdy and comical nature. Usually.

  * * *

  Let us begin this fabliau with a biddable duchess who had cherished her husband beyond reason. Regardless of his faults, and there were quite a few, she compared him to every season. Even long after he was buried, and the duchess no longer married, she did far more for him than cry. Steadfast she remained, her heart forever strained, refusing to let him die.

  There she sat with his gilded portrait, toasting to what had once been and often played cards alongside him, letting him always win. During formal gatherings, she would set out that portrait and tap his chin, waiting for everyone in the room to comment on how lovely he had been.

  What kept this grieving duchess from being overly sad, was overindulging the one and only son she had. Given Anthony Jacob Danbury was now her little duke, never once did she scold him, yet alone rebuke.

  Spoiled like an apple without any core, this unruly heir loved to yell, curse and slide across every floor, becoming the very thing others learned to abhor. As he became older and grew into each massive and muscled shoulder, he became obnoxious and as unfeeling as any granite boulder.

  He did, however, perfect the ability to smolder.

  Moody and broody to the point of being an ass, he met a disreputable jade one night who invited him to be crass. They were incredibly bad for each other and did nothing but fuck.

  Did he care? No. He let his life go amuck.

  There was, however, a remarkable talent, which he all too often had ignored. It inspired him one evening to drag out sculpting tools from whence they’d been stored. He soon swigged cognac, far from being bored as he hammered with artistic precision and self-centered accord.

  The Royal Academy he now attended bristled with thespians as all of London hovered near, everyone marveling at his sculptures that had appeared over the course of a year! It brought crowds of adoring women who openly sobbed and dabbed away each tear, whilst men grouched and gathered around his artwork unable to find fault enough to jeer.

  ’Twas a wild and feckless jaunt about the town that finally knocked the duke off his royal crown.

  Too much opium and too much drink affected his ability to think.

  He had no recollection of his memory or time.

  And this is where we get to the heart of this rhyme.

  For no more on this matter was ever openly said.

  It wasn’t a subject he allowed others to tread.

  Mostly because…someone had ended up…dead.

  Will our ‘gentlemanly’ duke find ‘time’ for a happily-ever-after?

  That will assuredly be revealed unto thee in the very last chapter!

  Prologue

  Weymouth, England - Summer Evening of 1827

  Mrs. Ryall’s Seminary for Young Ladies

  The Grand Lecture Hall

  * * *

  Charity work. Why not call it for what it really was? Self-mortification.

  He deserved this.

  He deserved to be eaten alive by—

  Buzzing mosquitos found his heat in the darkness, making him smack his own face and throat. “The universe always has to be so literal,” he muttered.

  He didn’t remember there being so many mosquitos in Weymouth.

  Billowing out his linen shirt in an effort to circulate more air, Anthony Jacob Danbury, the fourth Duke of Thornton, grudgingly unbuttoned his opulent waistcoat as lines of sweat dripped down his taut skin. He had long since removed his summer-frock coat from his large shoulders and his cravat from his throat to allow the cooling breeze of the ocean to reduce the heat of the lecture hall through the latticed windows he had unhinged and forced open.

  Even charity-work reminded him of his inability to do any good without cursing.

  “Sod me already.” Stalking over to the nearest open window, he caught himself against its moonlit frame, his height commanding him to stoop in the darkness and wedge himself beneath the window’s lower position. The overly quaint setting of the seminary made him feel like a giant wading through Laputans’ land.

  He couldn’t even piss without stooping because none of these churls thought to leave a chamber pot in the sideboard for a man.

  Who was he to ask for one in the lecture hall? Only a Royal Duke!

  Unfastening the flap of his trousers, he shoved down his small clothes beneath.

  Recognizing he probably shouldn’t urinate all over the wooden ledge where respectable, young women would be convening in the morning, he glanced downward through the blur of shadows, methodically positioning his cock to the best of his ability well over that ledge.

  In an arching stream, piss rustled the bushes below.

  A glorying breath escaped him as he let a stream spew forth as if he were a fountain in Rome posed beneath the stars above.

  He shook out his cock freeing any and all drips which lingered, while he overlooked the vast darkness leading out into the ocean. Evening had fallen more quickly than he had anticipated, allowing the stub of wax on the instructional desk to burn out long before he could replace it.

  The sounds of clicking crickets and the ocean beyond the darkness of the windows filled the pulsing silence. This was his life now. This. No longer attending country house parties but religious institutions.

  Doing good, he found, was self-deprecating.

  Yanking up his small clothes and fastening the buttons of his trousers back into place with a tug, he trudged back toward the blurring darkness of benches and desks that swept upward toward the echoing expanse of the timber-hewn lecture hall.

  Grabbing the crystal decanter off the instructional desk, he poured a dash of cold-stinging cognac onto his hands. He swiped both hands against the fabric of his summer trousers in an improvised attempt to adhere to some level of cleanliness after the piss he took.

  Because, of course, there was no washing basin.

  Why would there be?

  The only reason he even had cognac was because he had his valet procure it from an establishment in town.

  He needed it.

  Mother of God, it had been an exceedingly long week of discourse and lectures on Neoclassicism that included conversing with and managing seventy-two adolescent girls who giggled at everything and whispered and fawned over him like a four-tier wedding cake ready to be sliced.

  With the assistance of his leather boot, Anthony guided his way around the outline of the chair that moonlight didn’t reach and settled into it, dragging the brass candle holder across the desk. He yanked open the top right drawer and swiped the inside of its wooden hollow.

  He paused, his fingers grazing nothing but
…an empty drawer.

  All fourteen candles had gone missing.

  No doubt swiped by one of too many girls who had complained the dormitory never had light.

  Shifting his jaw, Anthony slammed that drawer with a bang. “Fuck.”

  He tried not to curse given he was in a seminary for girls, but he wasn’t a fucking saint.

  Muttering about the darkness he would now have to stumble through to even get to his guest quarters in the other ‘cottage’, he used the outline of shadows to clink the rim of a decanter down against the crystal glass he had earlier set out.

  He sloshed less than two fingers worth of cognac into it.

  Hands trembling, he removed a vial from his waistcoat pocket, uncorked it and counted out drops as best he could in the darkness. Corking the vial and tucking it away, he whirled the opium into the cognac and swigged the burning liquid down, hissing out a breath between teeth.

  Setting the now empty glass down onto the wood surface next to the decanter, he aligned a stack of ledgers filled with Roman artwork and depictions of antiquities, knowing he ought to retire. His boat finally departed for Italy at seven in the morning to take him home and he couldn’t be more grateful to return to the sumptuous life of sketching ancient ruins. No adolescents. No reverends. No headmistresses. No bibles. No preaching. No interruptions.

  The clicking of heels from beyond the timbered walls made him pause.

  He glanced upward and squinted, the blurring darkness wavering.

  The double doors on the upper left of the vast lecture hall opened and closed with a thud-thud.

  An unusually tall and womanly figure in a clinging Parisian robe breezed in with a candle lighting her way through the darkness, her fingers curved through the reflective gleam of the brass holder’s loop. She hummed a vivacious tune as if it were morning and not the onset of evening.

  Her movements were imperial and fairy-like, her steps now soundless, hinting she had removed her shoes at the entrance of the lecture hall to permit herself the glory of pattering across the cool, wooden floor with stockinged feet.

  It was obvious she was unaware of his presence for she kept humming.

  Slung over her arm was a basket with a book tilting out of it as she protected the flame of the candle that wavered against the gust of her movements. The golden hue of light smeared out the darkness to illuminate in its bright circle a pretty, sweet-tempered face and sensuous, full lips.

  Recognizing the reverend’s cousin, he almost scrambled under the desk.

  Although he couldn’t remember her name (…Harlow? Charlow? Farlow?), her keen interest in him was one he had learned to emphatically avoid by ducking down corridors or through the nearest door and bolting it.

  A bit too enchanting, she and her joie de vivre annoyed him. For she defined what he knew the world would one day erase.

  To hum like that, to walk like that, to breeze about the world with such commanding rapture, whispered of too many years spent behind the iron gates of a seminary paging through innocuous books chosen by a cousin who thought the word ‘Hell’ was a bad word.

  That, in and of itself, was amusing because hell certainly wasn’t as bad as he, himself was.

  Curious as to why she was in an entirely different building, Anthony watched her from his throne of darkness.

  She rounded toward a long row of desks at the far upper end of the lecture hall with the pattering of stockinged feet that swished out from beneath an alabaster robe. Curling, auburn hair cascaded out in messy looping tendrils from an unraveling rear-touching braid that swung over her shoulder with each movement.

  She pertly centered the basket and the half-waning candle onto the desk.

  In between prancing feet and shimmying, she dipped her voice and sang, “Cigars and cognac…oy that be the life for meeee. Cigars and cognac…and a bonny lass on my kneeeee….Her eyes do shine for meeee…Her eyes do smile for meeee. We puff our cigars almost each and every night….and after a gill of cognac, she sets my soul aflight! Glory, glory beeeee…Her eyes doth shine for meeee….until sadlyyyyy me coins did fleeeeeeee…ending all love for meeeeeee. And nooooowwwww that damnable and bonny lass…and her oversized pretty arse…” She wiggled hers. “…is sitting on another man’s kneeeeeeeeee.”

  Anthony’s lips twitched into a smirk knowing she had been spending time with the gardener who had been singing that same exact song before the reverend had the man’s wages suspended.

  He knew he ought to announce himself, but didn’t want to talk to her.

  She was but a babe living in a soapy-clean and perfect little world.

  One he felt he was mucking up by merely watching.

  Still humming away, she leaned toward the woven basket she had brought, rummaging through its contents. Wavering candlelight fingered out toward a substantial bosom that was tipping out freely from an unfastened robe and a lace-edged chemise, showing pale globes. She wore no corset, making nipples visible through the sheer fabric clinging to her breasts.

  In mind-numbing exasperation that refused to acknowledge that her tits were of any merit, Anthony averted his gaze. Jaw working, he attempted to still his knee and booted foot that always jostled in provocation in her presence.

  He needed her to leave.

  He wanted her to leave.

  So he could leave.

  Fully straightening, she turned and hopped up onto the bench.

  He paused, almost tilting his head to one side to decipher what she was doing.

  Like a princess overseeing a kingdom of benches, she spread her bell-sleeved arms and balanced herself with pointed toes still humming. Swiveling, she sat regally onto the docent desk behind her. With the dangling of long, shapely legs encased in powder-blue stockings, she crossed her legs at the ankles, swinging them.

  Trying not to peruse what she had whimsically exposed to the knees, he bit into a knuckled fist silently swallowing a groan.

  She tugged out a leather-bound book from the basket and opened it, flicking through its entirety in between organizing countless missives between the pages. She angled a flattened page toward the candle so she could better see the text and tugged out one missive which she laid on the desk.

  Hell, he might as well swallow a turtle and have soup.

  Knowing he had yet to instruct his valet about his itinerary, he decided on the lesser evil.

  Anthony cracked his knuckles to signal to her.

  She paused and glanced up. Yanking her chemise down over her legs, she squinted against the darkness, her lips parting. “Your Grace?” she whispered.

  “Unfortunately.” He leaned back against the wooden chair, thudding his torso into it knowing her innocence was now in his hands. Quickly fastening his open linen shirt and collar that exposed his bare chest, he snapped up his cravat, wrapping it around his throat and adjusting the brass beneath it. “I apologize for not being properly dressed or making myself known.”

  Not really, but for now he had to pretend he wanted to swelter and talk. And what was there to talk about with some girl who had more stars in her eyes than the night? He didn’t need to be reminded of what he was. He knew what he was: a degenerate with a brass key around his neck.

  She brightened, her regal features no longer pretty but stunning. She set aside the book. “Magic is real, I dare say. I was sitting here in the hopes that you might return to the lecture hall to collect your ledgers and poof! There you are.”

  Only she would use the word ‘poof’ when talking to a man of almost thirty.

  At least she was pretty to look at. Some of these girls were…no.

  He methodically knotted and tied his cravat, attempting to make polite conversation. “I haven’t seen you all day. How is your evening, Miss…Charlow, is it?”

  She stared. “Miss Barlow. Miss Magdalene Evelyn Barlow. We have conversed. Many times.”

  He gestured toward his head. “Not enough for me to retain anything. Although I do know you are always in the library cataloguing Ladies’ Jo
urnals shipped from…” He snapped his fingers trying to think of it. “The Temple of the Muses. You also tuck flowers into the keyhole of my door every morning. You are on your way to being a true rebel. Keep at it.”

  She lifted a brow. “You remember all of that but not my name?”

  It was a defense mechanism. He never focused on getting to know any attractive female too well for it always ended badly. “Consider it a compliment that I know anything about you at all. I did notice you, Miss Barlow.” More than he had wanted to. “You seem very…”

  She perked, setting a shoulder. “Yes?”

  Alluring. Gullible. “Amiable.”

  She deflated. “Why not call me a peasant?”

  This one wanted a compliment. “You are very pretty.”

  Smiling, she adjusted her robe. “And you are incredibly handsome. So handsome, my palms feel moist every time I look at you and—”

  “Enough. It’s beginning to sound like a medical condition.” Trying not to lower his gaze to her chemise which her breasts were subtly visible through, he waved a finger toward that general direction. “You may want to fasten that robe, cara. (Dear in Italian) It leaves very little to the imagination and I already have plenty of it. What would the reverend say?”

  She attempted to meet his gaze despite the darkness. “My cousin would say you are, as always, the truest of gentlemen sent from the good Lord to bless all of humanity and its women.”

  Hearing her say it blackened his mood.

  For he knew what he was: 248.

  A number to a room somewhere in London.

  He arranged his ledgers stiffly before him, knowing it was best to end this conversation. “I left a missive along with a monetary donation for your cousin in the letter slot. Inform him of it.” He dragged his coat over toward his ledgers, keenly aware they were alone. “I have to leave. Was there something you wanted?”