A Duke for All Seasons: Dangerous Dukes

  Dangerous Dukes

  A Duke for All Seasons

  Wendy Soliman

  Dangerous Dukes

  A Duke for all Seasons

  Copyright © Wendy Soliman 2022

  Edited by Perry Iles

  Cover Design by Clockwork Art

  This e-Book is a work of fiction. While references may be made to actual places or events, the names, characters, incidents, and locations contained are from the author’s imagination and are not a resemblance of actual living or dead persons, business, or events. Any similarities are coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any method, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise without the prior written permission of

  The Author – Wendy Soliman

  This book is licensed to the original purchaser only. Duplication or distribution via any means is illegal and a violation of International Copyright Law, subject to criminal prosecution and upon conviction fines and/or imprisonment. The e-Book cannot be legally loaned or given to others. No part of this e-Book can be shared or reproduced without the express permission of the author.

  Chapter One

  ‘Damnation! Not the best of timing,’ Grace muttered.

  Mistress of the understatement, she thought with a wry smile as she stepped from the broken-down carriage straight into a deep puddle. Mud splashed over the cuffs of her half-boots and dripped from her petticoats and the hem of her gown as it trailed across the sodden ground. Her bonnet was soaked within seconds, its soggy feather flopping around her ears, as defeated by the elements as she herself felt.

  Grace sighed as water that was not attributable to the climatic conditions poured down her face. It was ridiculous to get so upset about a bonnet, she told herself. She had far more pressing concerns, the most immediate of which was a broken axle.

  ‘You should get back inside, m’lady,’ George said gruffly. ‘This is no weather for a lady to be standing about in.’

  ‘Is it fixable?’ Grace asked, ignoring her coachman’s advice.

  ‘I reckon it might be.’ George scratched his ear as he contemplated their dilemma. ‘But I’ll have to walk to the nearest tavern and borrow a conveyance to get you to safety first, and that’ll mean staying the night on the road. It’ll be getting dark soon, what with the weather being so bad, so it won’t be safe to travel on without getting you more protection than I can provide.’

  ‘No!’ Grace’s mind whirled. She couldn’t stay at a tavern, not even for one night. She wasn’t nearly far enough away from home yet. She would be recognised, her presence noticed and remarked upon. Ladies of her standing simply did not stay in taverns, especially when she was so close to home, and certainly never without a female servant in tow. George sent her a sapient look but remained silent. He knows what I am doing, she thought. ‘There must be another way. Are the horses unharmed?’

  ‘Aye, they are that.’ George stood at the heads of the matching pair, talking to them softly as he patted their necks. ‘Just a bit spooked.’

  ‘Well if we unharnessed them I could ride one to…’

  Her words trailed off. Ride to where? She was miles from her destination and a lady riding bareback on a carriage horse would most likely be set upon by vagabonds within minutes. With only George to protect her, she wouldn’t stand a chance of warding off hungry and determined attackers. She couldn’t persuade herself that the storm would have kept such people indoors, aware that the majority of desperados roaming the country in search of easy pickings didn’t have doors behind which to shelter, hence their need to fall back on criminal activity.

  ‘No!’ George, who had been in service with Grace’s family for years, didn’t hesitate to speak his mind. ‘Best you stay in the carriage, ma’am. I’ll leave my pistol with you. I know you can use it if you have to.’ He sniffed. ‘You ought to be able to, anyways. I taught you to shoot myself when you were knee-high to a grasshopper, and I’ll wager you ain’t forgotten how to hit a moving target.’

  Despite her predicament, Grace smiled. ‘Indeed you did, George, and you are in the right of it. I have remembered everything you taught me.’ And have often been tempted to put my skills with a firearm to good use these past two years. ‘Even so…’ Her supply of sighs seemed inexhaustible, and she released yet another. ‘I suppose that is the only way. But what about the horses? They can’t stand about in this weather.’

  George pondered for a moment. ‘I’ll have to unharness them,’ he said eventually. ‘I’ll ride one and lead the other to the tavern, then return with transport quick as I can.’

  ‘Hire a carriage, George, but use our horses to convey it. This carriage will have to be taken to the tavern and repairs put in hand. We can worry about its recovery at a later time.’ Or not. ‘I am sorry that you will have to endure a soaking.’

  ‘It’s nowt but a spot of rain, ma’am.’

  George withdrew his pistol from the folds of his driving coat and handed it to Grace. Despite having handled such weapons in the past, she had not done so for several years, and it felt heavy and unfamiliar in her small hand. She climbed back into the carriage, which was lying at an awkward angle in the ditch next to the rut that had broken the axle and caused their accident, feeling her heart lurch along with the springs. A crack of thunder directly overhead reverberated through her body as the storm reached its zenith.

  Grace perched precariously on the edge of the tilting seat and pulled the folds of her velvet cloak more closely around her, her teeth chattering, wishing she had brought her maid with her. Never had she felt greater need for Phyllis’s calming influence. But bringing her along had never been part of her plan. It was simply too dangerous to involve someone else. Be that as it may, she already missed Phyllis’s reassuring company and sound common sense so profoundly that it felt like a bereavement.

  Grace thought of the horrors she had left behind and hardened her heart. This was no time to lose her nerve. There would be time for regrets later. For now she must take advantage of Afton’s preoccupation and use the opportunity to escape his clutches.

  Or die trying.

  She could not, would not, allow this inconvenient setback to deter her from that purpose. Anything was better than returning to the living hell that went by the name of marriage to a possessive bully and tyrant. If she was to leave her past behind her without also leaving a trail or endangering those who mattered to her, she reminded herself, then she had no choice but to leave Phyllis too. She knew only too well that Afton’s retaliation against anyone whom he even suspected of helping her would be swift and brutal.

  She shuddered when she considered what fate would await her if he caught up with her. His debauchery would become unrestrained. Not that he had shown much restraint before.

  That thought reinforced her will. Even her current predicament was preferable to remaining at home, playing the role of the obedient, biddable little wife. She almost laughed aloud despite the gravity of her situation, wondering how anyone could ever have considered her biddable. She had been a rebel all her life; known for her inability to hold her tongue, especially when someone was being exceptionally irrational, which seemed to happen a great deal within the ranks of London’s elite.

  Be that as it may, she’d had to grow up eventually and face the hard fact that in her world women were very much second-class citizens, not permitted to have thoughts or opinions of their own; very much their husbands’ property to do with as they saw fit.

  ‘Not this woman,’ she muttered, tossing her wet head and sending the soggy feather cascading across her eyes.

  ‘What was that, ma’am?’ George asked.

  Even above the sound of the torrential rain and the occasional rumble of thunder, George had heard her speak aloud as he moved one of the horses from the shafts. Dearest George! She hadn’t forgotten about his staunch loyalty, which was why she hadn’t actually told him that she was leaving her brutish husband.

  For ever.

  He had assumed that he was driving her to spend a few days with her friend, Doreen Palmer, and that Phyllis had not accompanied her because there had been a recent outbreak of fever in Doreen’s household. Grace had insisted that she would not expose Phyllis, who was long past her prime and suffered from a weak chest, to the slightest risk of infection. Phyllis had nodded, hugged Grace and wished her a pleasant trip. She had known—or likely guessed—that she wouldn’t see Grace again, and that hug had been her seal of approval.

  Get out of a brutal marriage before he goes too far and actually kills you, had been the unspoken message.

  Phyllis and Grace had both been in tears when Grace left her marital home. She had delayed her departure until Afton took himself off on one of his frequent gambling excursions, thinking it would buy her some time. She knew that his spies in the household would send word when Grace failed to return home, but with great good fortune it would be several days before Afton was forced to accept that she had dared to defy him and a search was instigated.

  Two days was all the time she could depend upon having, and it would just have to be enough. It would have been, she reminded herself, fighting the urge to take out her frustration on the soggy upholstered seat, but for the damned storm that had been responsible for the carriage finishing up in a ditch. George had sniffed the air before leaving Afton Hall, predicting a break in the glorious summer weather. He advised ag
ainst travelling until the situation improved, but Grace couldn’t afford the delay. She might lose her nerve if she had to sit twiddling her thumbs and had too much time to think about the enormity of her actions, so she’d insisted upon setting out despite the ominous thunderclouds that were gathering in the western sky.

  Since disaster had struck George, to his credit, hadn’t once reminded her of his warning.

  ‘Right, I’ll be off then, m’lady.’ George poked his bristly head into the carriage. ‘I’ll be right quick, but make sure you stay alert now and don’t hesitate to use that pistol if you think you have to.’

  Dear God, if all went to plan she would never see dear, dependable George or be the recipient of his sage advice ever again. That realisation caused Grace’s heart to lurch almost as dangerously as the lopsided carriage. She would likely never see him again if circumstances conspired against her and she was dragged back to the marital home, she reminded herself, and that very real possibility helped to restore her dwindling reserves of courage. Afton would punish her by removing her support system—namely George and Phyllis—even though neither of them had knowingly aided her escape. Both would have done so without a second thought, had she asked it of them, and Afton would assume that she had asked.

  She had planned to arrive at her friend’s abode and then send George home again. That way he could truthfully tell Afton where he had left Grace. No one knew that Doreen was in London, and that none of the family would be at home to welcome her.

  She had thought it all through.

  A hired carriage and driver were on hand to take her from Doreen’s home to London as soon as George had departed, where she would go to ground until the dust settled. She could not return to her own family even if she had wanted to, which she most emphatically did not. It was the first place that Afton would think of to look for her. Besides, her parents would be aware of the scandal that deserting her legal husband would create and would never agree to take her in. Nothing mattered more to the Selhursts than their reputation.

  There was little love lost between Grace and her relatives anyway. Grace had always been too wild, too opinionated, too eager to laugh at life’s absurdities to fit in with her mother and siblings. Her father had been delighted to marry her off to Afton, the catch of her season, and wouldn’t tolerate any of the objections Grace had raised when she learned that the match had been arranged without even consulting her.

  Her life beneath the care of disinterested parents had been almost as joyless as her marriage to Afton, she conceded.

  Almost.

  At least growing up she had been free after a fashion to do as she pleased, and was not dependent upon the mercurial moods of a cruel and possessive husband.

  ‘The new world it will have to be,’ she muttered, fingering her reticule, in which resided a considerable amount of her jewellery, along with bonds and gold coin, all of which would see her transported across the Atlantic and give her sufficient funds to reinvent herself.

  Fortunately, she was well educated and not afraid of hard work. She had heard that there were fortunes to be made in America. Whether or not that was true she couldn’t have said. All she knew was that anything would be better than the current hell she was obliged to endure.

  A long strand of dark blonde hair dripped over her shoulder, and she absently ran it through her fingers, squeezing the moisture from it as she watched George haul himself onto the wet back of the one of the carriage horses, the other held in one hand on a leading rein.

  ‘You take care, George,’ she said, welling up with affection as she stuck her head out of the door and waved. ‘Try not to catch your death.’

  ‘Like I says, ma’am, it’s nowt but a spot of rain. I’ve known worse. It’s you as must be careful. It ain’t safe for you to be left all alone, but I won’t be long. You just stay alert.’

  With that timely advice, he spurred his horse forward and disappeared into the sheets of falling rain.

  Grace felt ridiculously alone; especially when the storm intensified. Rain pelted against the carriage roof, lightning flashed and thunder cracked directly overhead once more, causing Grace to almost leap out of her skin.

  ‘It will pass soon,’ she said aloud, finding comfort of sorts in the sound of her own voice. ‘What was that?’ she added, her entire body jerking forward and rocking the precariously balanced carriage.

  An unfamiliar sound, audible even above the noise of the storm, had caused the sixth sense that always warned her when Afton had some particularly spiteful debauchery in mind to ring alarm bells inside her head. She leaned towards the carriage window, afraid to move too quickly for fear of tipping it completely over, and saw movement in the treeline, barely visible through the torrential rain.

  ‘There’s someone out there,’ she muttered, her heart palpitating, aware that it almost certainly wasn’t an animal. Any animal with a lick of sense would have found shelter until the storm abated.

  She narrowed her eyes, cursing the elements that prevented her from seeing the hand in front of her face. Not moving a muscle, she fingered the pistol.

  And waited.

  There it was again. A darting movement. Men. Two men, she thought she could detect, heading for the carriage, no doubt hoping to help themselves to her luggage in the trunk. Ordinarily, Grace would have let them, just so long as they didn’t try to molest her. She’d had more than enough molesting at the hands of a man whom the law dictated was entitled to do whatsoever he liked to her. She had hopefully seen the last of him, and had no intention of tolerating the advances of strangers.

  And she had no intention of losing the precious, carefully selected property she had brought with her either.

  Grace slowed her breathing, calm and determined as she watched the two vagrants growing in courage when no one challenged them. They straightened up and walked towards the carriage, no doubt assuming that it had been abandoned.

  ‘Never assume,’ she muttered, adjusting her aim and firing a shot directly above their heads.

  Hallam Fairfax cursed the conditions as he guided his team around yet another rut in the sodden road. He was damp and not in the best of tempers. He should have taken his friend Damon Pearce’s advice and stayed with him for another night. But there were only so many young women being thrown in his path that Hal could tolerate, and all things considered he preferred a drenching to fending off those determined misses for even another hour.

  ‘The joys of being an eligible duke, eh Milo?’

  Milo, a large mutt whose coat was an interesting patchwork of colours, sat on the box seat beside Hal, apparently indifferent to the conditions. The rain probably hadn’t even penetrated his thick coat anyway, Hal assumed, as the silly animal wagged his rear end in response to Hal’s comment. Hal laughed, took one hand off the reins and scratched the dog’s ears, sending the creature into paroxysms of delight.

  Lady Pearce, whose hospitality he had been obliged to withstand in order to spend a few days with his friend, had looked appalled when her gaze first fell upon Milo. Since he wasn’t a pedigree lapdog, she had obviously assumed that he would be housed in the stables, but Milo was having none of it—and nor was Hal. Milo was gangly and ungainly, but as soft as butter. Always hungry, he was perfectly behaved as long as nobody made the mistake of admitting him to a dining parlour. Lady Pearce’s Turkish rugs were under no threat from Milo, and Hal knew that if he stood his ground, his hostess would relent and permit the dog to remain in the house.

  Which, of course, she soon did.

  The only amusing aspect of the company, apart from Damon’s society, was watching the eligible females who wanted to impress Hal attempting to befriend Milo. None of them appeared to genuinely like him. Hal refrained from pointing out that if one of them had taken a real interest in the mutt, it would have assured her of Hal’s reciprocating interest. He knew that he would be saved from that particular tedium though when Milo licked one female’s hand and she actually shrieked.

  Hal’s smile at the memory was cut short when the storm intensified, thunder cracked directly overhead and the rain began to fall even harder. Milo just stared out into the downpour, droplets falling from the end of his nose.