The Day of the Duchess (Scandal & Scoundrel 3)

Chapter 1

Deserted Duke Disavowed!

August 19, 1836

House of Lords, Parliament

She’d left him two years, seven months ago, exactly.

Malcolm Marcus Bevingstoke, Duke of Haven, looked to the tiny wooden calendar wheels inlaid into the blotter on his desk in his private office above the House of Lords.

August the nineteenth, 1836. The last day of the parliamentary session, filled with pomp and idle. And lingering memory. He spun the wheel with the six embossed upon it. Five. Four. He took a deep breath.

Get out. He heard his own words, cold and angry with betrayal, echoing with quiet menace. Don’t ever return.

He touched the wheel again. August became July. May. March.

January the nineteenth, 1834. The day she left.

His fingers moved without thought, finding comfort in the familiar click of the wheels.

April the seventeenth, 1833.

The way I feel about you . . . Her words now—soft and full of temptation. I’ve never felt anything like this.

He hadn’t, either. As though light and breath and hope had flooded the room, filling all the dark spaces. Filling his lungs and heart. And all because of her.

Until he’d discovered the truth. The truth, which had mattered so much until it hadn’t mattered at all. Where had she gone?

The clock in the corner of the room ticked and tocked, counting the seconds until Haven was due in his seat in the hallowed main chamber of the House of Lords, where men of higher purpose and passion had sat before him for generations. His fingers played the little calendar like a virtuoso, as though they’d done this dance a hundred times before. A thousand.

And they had.

March the first, 1833. The day they met.

So, they let simply anyone become a duke, do they? No deference. Teasing and charm and pure, unadulterated beauty.

If you think dukes are bad, imagine what they accept from duchesses?

That smile. As though she’d never met another man. As though she’d never wanted to. He’d been hers the moment he’d seen that smile. Before that. Imagine, indeed.

And then it had fallen apart. He’d lost everything, and then lost her. Or perhaps it had been the reverse. Or perhaps it was all the same.

Would there ever be a time when he stopped thinking of her? Ever a date that did not remind him of her? Of the time that had stretched like an eternity since she’d left?

Where had she gone?

The clock struck eleven, heavy chimes sounding in the room, echoed by a dozen others down the long, oaken corridor beyond, summoning men of longstanding name to the duty that had been theirs before they drew breath.

Haven spun the calendar wheels with force, leaving them as they lay. November the thirty-seventh, 3842. A fine date—one on which he had absolutely no chance of thinking of her.

He stood, heading for the place where his red robes hung—their thick, heavy burden meant to echo the weight of the responsibility they represented. He swung the garment over his shoulders, the red velvet’s heat overwhelming him almost immediately, cloying and suffocating. All this before he reached for his powdered wig, grimacing as he flipped it onto his head, the horsehair whipping his neck before lying flat and uncomfortable, like a punishment for past sins.

Ignoring the sensation, the Duke of Haven ripped open the door to his offices and made his way through the now quiet corridors to the entrance of the main chamber of the House of Lords. Stepping inside, he inhaled deeply, immediately regretting it. It was August and hot as hell on the floor of Parliament, the air rank with sweat and perfume. The windows were open to allow a breeze into the room—a barely-there stirring that only exacerbated the stench, adding the reek of the Thames to the already horrendous smell within.

At home, the river ran cool and crisp, unsullied by the filth of London. At home, the air was clean, promising summer idyll and hinting at more. At the future. At least, it had done. Until the pieces of home had peeled away and he’d been left alone, without it. Now, it felt like nothing but land. Home required more than a river and rolling hills. Home required her. And so he would do this summer what he had done every moment he’d been away from London for the past two years and seven months, exactly. He would search for her.

She hadn’t been in France or in Spain, where he’d spent the summer prior, chasing down Englishwomen in search of excitement. She hadn’t been any of the false widows he’d found in Scotland, nor the governess at the imposing manor in Wales, nor the woman he’d tracked in Constantinople the month after she’d left, who had been a charlatan, playing at being an aristocrat. And then there’d been the woman in Boston—the one he’d been so sure of—the one they called The Dove.

Not Sera. Never Sera. She had disappeared, as though she’d never existed. There one moment, gone the next, laden with enough funds to vanish. And just as he’d realized how much he wanted her. But her money would run out, eventually, and she would have no choice but to stop running. He, on the other hand, was a man with power and privilege and exorbitant wealth, enough to find her the moment she stopped.

And he would find her.

He slid into one of the long benches surrounding the speaker’s floor, where the Lord Chancellor had already begun. “My lords, if there is no more formal business, we will close this year’s parliamentary season.”

A chorus of approval—fists pounding on seatbacks around the hall—echoed through the chamber.

Haven exhaled and resisted the urge to scratch at his wig, knowing that if he gave in to the desire, he would become consumed with its rough discomfort. “My lords!” the Lord Chancellor called. “Is there, indeed, no additional formal business for the current session?”

A rousing chorus o

f “Nay!” boomed through the room. One would think the House of Lords was filled with schoolboys desperate for an afternoon in the local swimming hole instead of nearly two hundred pompous aristocrats eager to get to their mistresses.

The Lord Chancellor grinned, his ruddy face gleaming with sweat beneath his wig as he spread his wide hands over his ample girth. “Well then! It is His Majesty’s royal will and pleasure . . .”

The enormous doors to the chamber burst open, the sound echoing through the quiet hall, competing with the chancellor’s voice. Heads turned, but not Haven’s; he was too eager to leave London and his wig behind to worry about whatever was going on beyond.

The Lord Chancellor collected himself, cleared his throat, and said, “. . . that this Parliament be prorogued to Thursday, the seventh day of October next . . .”

A collection of disapproving harrumphs began as the door shut with a powerful bang. Haven looked then, following the gazes of the men assembled to the now closed door to chambers. He couldn’t see anything amiss.

“Ahem!” the Lord Chancellor said, the sound full of disapproval, before he redoubled his commitment to closing the session. Thank God for that. “. . . Thursday, the seventh day of October next . . .”

“Before you finish, my Lord Chancellor?”

Haven stiffened.

The words were strong and somehow soft and lilting and beautifully feminine—so out of place in the House of Lords, off limits to the fairer sex. Surely that was why his breath caught. Surely that was why his heart began to pound. Why he was suddenly on his feet amid a chorus of masculine outrage.

It was not because of the voice itself.

“What is the meaning of this?” the Chancellor thundered.

Haven could see it then, the cause of the commotion. A woman. Taller than any woman he’d ever known, in the most beautiful lavender dress he’d ever seen, perfectly turned out, as though she marched into parliamentary session on a regular basis. As though she were the prime minister himself. As though she were more than that. As though she were royalty.

The only woman he’d ever loved. The only woman he’d ever hated.

The same, and somehow entirely different.

And Haven, frozen to the spot.

“I confess,” she said, moving to the floor of the chamber with ease, as though she were at ladies’ tea, “I feared I would miss the session altogether. But I’m very happy that I might sneak in before you all escape to wherever it is that you gentlemen venture for . . . pleasure.” She grinned at an ancient earl, who blushed under the heat of her gaze and turned away. “However, I am told that what I seek requires an Act of Parliament. And you are . . . as you know . . . Parliament.”

Her gaze found his, her eyes precisely as he remembered, blue as the summer sea, but now, somehow, different. Where they were once open and honest, they were now shuttered. Private.

Christ. She was here.

Here. Nearly three years searching for her, and here she was, as though she’d been gone mere hours. Shock warred with an anger he could not have imagined, but those two emotions were nothing compared to the third. The immense, unbearable pleasure.

She was here.

Finally.

Again.

It was all he could do not to move. To gather her up and carry her away. To hold her close. Win her back. Start fresh.

Except she did not seem to be here for that.

She watched him for a long moment, her gaze unblinking, before she declared, “I am Seraphina Bevingstoke, Duchess of Haven. And I require a divorce.”

Chapter 2

Duchess Disappears, Duke Devastated

January 1834

Two years, seven months earlier. Minus five days.

Highley Manor

If she did not knock, she would die.

She should not have come. It had been irresponsible beyond measure. She’d made the decision in a fit of unbearable emotion, desperate for some kind of control in this, the most out-of-control time of her life.

If she weren’t so cold, she would laugh at the madness of the idea that she might have any control over her world, ever again.

But the only thing Seraphina Bevingstoke, Duchess of Haven, was able to do was curse her idiotic decision to hire a hack, pay the driver a fortune to bring her on a long, terrifying journey through the icy rain of a cold January night, and land herself here, at Highley, the manor house of which she was—by name—mistress. Name did not bestow rights, however. Not for women. And by rights, she was nothing but a visitor. Not even a guest. Not yet. Possibly not ever.

The hack disappeared into the rain that threatened to become heavy, wet snow, and Sera looked up at the massive door, considering her next move. It was the dark of night—servants long abed, but she had no choice but to wake someone. She could not remain outside. If she did, she would be dead before morning.

A wave of terrifying pain shot through her. She put a hand to her midsection.

They would be dead.

The pain ebbed, and she caught her breath once more, lifting the elaborate wrought-iron B affixed to the door. Letting it fall with a thud, the sound an executioner’s axe, dark and ominous, coming on a flood of worry. What if no one answered? What if she’d come all this way, against better judgment, to an empty house?

The worries were unfounded. Highley was the seat of the Dukedom of Haven, and it was staffed to perfection. The door opened, a liveried young footman with tired eyes appearing, his curiosity immediately giving way to shock as pain racked Sera once more.

Before he could speak, before he could shut her out, Sera stepped into the doorway, one hand at her heaving belly, the other on the jamb. “Haven.” The name was all she could speak before she doubled over.

“He—” The boy stopped. “His Grace, that is—he is not in.”

She looked up somehow, her eyes finding his in the dim light. “Do you know me?”

His gaze flickered to her swollen midsection. Back.

Her hand spread wide over the child there. “The heir.”

He nodded, and relief flooded her, a wash of warmth. She swayed with it even as his young eyes widened, drawn to the floor beneath them.

Not relief. Blood.

“Oh—” he began, the remainder of his words stolen away by shock.

Sera swayed in the doorway, reaching for him, this virtual child who had been so very unlucky in his post that evening. He took her hand. “He is here,” he whispered. “He is abovestairs.”

He was there. Strong enough to bend the sun to his will.

That might have been gratitude if not for the pain. It might have been happiness if not for the fear. And it might have been life if not for what she suddenly knew was to come.

Get out. She heard the words. Saw his cold gaze when he’d banished her from his sight months earlier. And then, somehow . . .

Come here. That gaze again, but this time heavy-lidded. Desperate. Hot as the sun. And then his whispers soft and beautiful at her ear. You were made for me. We were made for each other.

Pain returned her to the present, sharp and stinging, marking something terribly wrong. As though the blood that covered her skirts and the marble floor weren’t enough of a herald. She cried out. Louder than she would have guessed, as there was suddenly someone else there; a woman.

They spoke, but Sera could not hear the words. Then the woman was gone, and Sera was left in the darkness, with her mistakes and the boy, the dear, sweet boy, who clung to her. Or she to him. “She’s gone to fetch him.”

It was too late, of course. In so many ways.

She should not have come.

Sera fell to her knees, gasping through the ache. Sorrow beyond ken. She would never know their child. Dark-haired and wide-smiled, and smart as his father. Lonely as him, too.

If only she could live, she might love them enough.

But she was to die here, in this place. Yards from the only man she’d ever loved. Without ever having told him. She wondered if he wo

uld care when she died, and the answer terrified her more than all the rest, because she knew, without doubt, that it would follow her into the afterlife.

She clutched the boy’s hand. “Tell me your name.”

“Your Grace?”

She clutched his hand. “Sera,” she whispered. She was going to die, and she wanted someone to say her name, not her title. Something real. Something that felt like it belonged. “My name is Seraphina.”

The dear boy clung to her. Nodded. The knot in his too-narrow throat bobbing with his nerves. “Daniel,” he said. “What shall I do?”

“My child,” she whispered. “His.”

The boy nodded, suddenly wise beyond his years. “Is there something you wish for?”

“Mal,” she said, unable to keep the truth at bay. Unable to keep it from swallowing her whole. Just once more. Just long enough to put everything back to rights. “I wish for Malcolm.”

The Duke of Haven threw open the door to the room where Sera lay, silent and still and pale, the force of the oak slab ricocheting off the wall startling those inside. A young maid gave a little cry of surprise, and the housekeeper looked up from where she held a cloth to Sera’s brow.

But the Duke wanted nothing to do with the two women. He was too focused on the surgeon at his wife’s side.

“She lives,” Haven growled, the words filled with emotion he did not know he could feel. But then, she had always made him feel. Even when he’d been desperate not to.

The surgeon nodded. “By a thread, Your Grace. She will likely die before nightfall.”

The words coursed through him, cold and simple, as though the doctor were discussing the weather or the morning news, and Malcolm stilled, the full weight of their assault threatening to bring him down. Not an hour earlier, he had held his lost child in his hands, so small she did not even fill them, so precious he could not bear to return her to the maid who had brought her to him.

Instead, he’d sent the servant away, and sat in silence, holding the near-weightless body of his daughter, mourning her death. And her life. And all the things she might have been.