The Duke's Daring Debutante

Freddy broke their kiss and pulled Minette close.

Breathing rapidly, she rested her cheek on his chest and he bent to kiss her crown, his own breathing none too steady.

‘It wouldn’t do to be caught out again,’ he said gently.

‘No,’ she agreed, much to his body’s painful disappointment.

She placed a hand on his lapel and stroked down the fabric. Delight with her response to his touch was a wild beat in his blood. This attraction was a positive sign for their marriage. There was much pleasure to be had between them, as long as he made sure not to let things go too far. Not to get too out of control.

‘We really should go before someone misses us,’ she said, not moving an inch. She sighed. ‘We don’t want to set tongues wagging again.’

Wagging tongues were the story of his life. He had told himself a long time ago that he didn’t care. But he didn’t want her hurt by vicious gossip.

‘Yes, we should.’ He kissed her forehead and linked his arm through hers, feeling for the first time in a long while a sense of hope.

AUTHOR NOTE

I hope you enjoy this offshoot of the Beresford Abbey stories: Haunted by the Earl’s Touch and Captured Countess. When we first met Freddy and Minette I could not understand why they seemed to dislike each other when they would be perfect together. I have enjoyed finding out what was keeping them apart.

Another fun part of researching this story was learning about Mr Brummell’s game of cricket in 1807. Like Minette, I was surprised to see the Beau engaging in anything so active—and with an audience too!

I love to hear from readers, so feel free to email me at ann@annlethbridge. If you would like to know more about my books or sign up for my quarterly newsletter go to my website at annlethbridge.com. And if you are a history buff, you might enjoy my blog: regencyramble.blogspot.com

The Duke’s Daring Debutante

Ann Lethbridge

In her youth, award-winning author ANN LETHBRIDGE re-imagined the Regency romances she read—and now she loves writing her own. Now living in Canada, Ann visits Britain every year, where family members understand—or so they say—her need to poke around every antiquity within a hundred miles. Learn more about Ann or contact her at annlethbridge.com. She loves hearing from readers.

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Each book has a life of its own and is influenced by many people, but I would like to dedicate this book to those who serve their country in whatever capacity they choose—as my dad did in the army.

I believe he would have liked my foray into authorship, since he was a dedicated Georgette Heyer fan and loved reading about history.

Contents

Cover

Excerpt

AUTHOR NOTE

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Epilogue

Extract

Copyright

Chapter One

The foul stench coated Minette Rideau’s throat. With her skirts held high in one hand and the other clutching Granby’s arm, she focussed on taking only tiny sips of air as she picked her way over Bridge Alley’s slimy cobbles. One of many narrow passages in the reviled district of St Giles, it led to London’s most infamous hell. The only one owned by a duke. Falconwood. The man she now risked her reputation to track down in his lair.

Ancient tenements crowded in on both sides, the glimmer of lanterns behind oilpaper giving them menacing aspects. All around, noises of a seething mass of humanity pierced the darkness. Shouts and curses, music from the tavern on the corner. A child crying. A woman coughing.

So very different from the elegance of Mayfair, but not the worst she’d seen.

Granby halted before a low wooden door bound with iron and set with studs. The lantern above the door cast an oily gleam in the slime oozing along the alley’s central runnel.

‘This is it?’ she asked. ‘The Fools’ Paradise?’

‘It is,’ Granby croaked as if his throat was parched.

It had required all of Minette’s powers of persuasion to convince Lieutenant, the Honourable Laurence Granby, to be her escort when she’d named her destination. Now he was peering over his shoulder with the expression of one who had regained his sense of self-preservation and feared for his life. Finally he had realised that if this little adventure ever came to light, he was destined for a wagonload of trouble.

He cleared his throat. ‘You can’t want me to take you in there.’ Begging her to change her mind.

An unpleasant sensation squirmed behind her breastbone. A guilty conscience was an uncomfortable companion, but not unfamiliar. Guilt lay behind this expedition to London’s worst slums. Even as the idea had germinated, she’d known her escort hadn’t deserved to be placed in such an awkward position. Honour balanced against gentlemanly conduct and no way to reconcile either. He was a nice young man. Open. Honest. And too terribly susceptible to female manipulation. For all that her conscience pricked her, in the end she’d been unable to come up with a better alternative.

Worse, it might all be for naught. The man she’d come to for help had been going out of his way to avoid her for years, hence this charade. For all her careful scheming, he could easily turn her away and report her to Gabe, her sister’s husband.

If so, she’d have to think of another way to achieve her ends and avert disaster.

A disaster she’d set in motion years before. When she’d been young and exceedingly reckless. Not to mention in love.

She patted Granby’s arm. ‘Surely you aren’t going back on your word?’ She put a full measure of disappointment at his lack of courage into her voice.

The young man straightened his shoulders. ‘Certainly not. Gentleman, you know. But really—’

‘Courage, mon ami. Knock. It will be très amusant, n’est-ce pas? No one will ever know.’ She cast him a blinding smile.

Predictably dazzled, Granby rapped on the door with the head of his walking cane.

A square peephole opened. A glimmer of light quickly blocked by an eye peering out. Pah. Men and their dramatics.

‘Ah, ’tis you, sir,’ a gruff voice said from behind the door. The peephole snapped shut, and the door swung inwards. The porter’s glance slid over her without interest. Unlike proper gentlemen’s clubs, here there was no ban on admitting females. It was part of the hell’s attraction, along with wickedly deep play. Hopefully there would be others of her gender present tonight. Creating a stir was not her aim. A simple word with the club’s owner, His Grace, the Duke of Falconwood, was all she wanted.

Granby tucked her arm under his in a rather sweet gesture of protection and escorted her along a short, dimly lit passage to a red velvet curtain drawn to cover a wide doorway. A liveried lad of about fifteen pulled the curtain aside, and they entered the low-ceilinged subscription room. The smell and haze of cigar smoke hung so thick in the air that Minette struggled not to cough as she gazed at men of every age and social class seated at green baize tables. Games of chance occupied their full attention. Pharo, deep basset, dice, to name but a few. Sovereigns and scraps of paper littered the tabletops. The bowstring-taut atmosphere reeked of both triumph and despair.

No sign of her quarry. The elusive Duke of Falconwood, Freddy to his friends, though she did not rank among their number. Anticipation tensed her shoulders, her stomach fluttering with the hope he wouldn’t turn her away mingled with the expectation he would. The unpleasant churning brought bile rising in her throat.

A stocky, pugnacious-looking young man in his thirties, neatly dressed in the style of a butler, his light brown hair fashionably dressed, stepped forward to greet them. ‘Lieutenant Granby. What is your pleasure tonight?’ The maître d’hotel, then. His gaze focussed on Minette, and she read surprise in his narrowed blue gaze.

She held her breath, waiting for him to turn her away. Instead, he gave her escort a look of enquiry and she let her breath out.

‘Vingt-et-un, if you don’t mind, Barker,’ Granby said, as agreed earlier in the evening.

The maître d’ settled them at a table and snapped his fingers for a waiter to take their orders while Minette casually glanced around, trying to spot her man. The back of her neck prickled. Awareness. Someone watching.

The suave-looking gentleman seated at the next table leaned back in his seat. His heated gaze took in her face and the low cut of her gown. ‘Welcome, lovely lady,’ he said, eyeing her escort in the way of a male prepared to compete.

She merely inclined her head and leaned closer to Granby. The gentleman shrugged and turned back to his game.

After an hour of play in which Granby lost a great deal of money to her and there was still no sign of the Duke, she decided her quest was hopeless. So disappointing. And irritating. She’d been certain she would find him here tonight after trying for days to catch him at his lodgings. Now she’d have to think of a different way to meet him. She was running out of ideas.

‘Why am I not surprised?’ The familiar deep male voice struck a chord low in her stomach. He’d always had that effect on her, though she’d tried to ignore it. As she did now. Slowly, she put her cards face down and glanced up to meet a pair of dark, insolent eyes set in a lean, saturnine face.

A face of pure male beauty, his eyes of the darkest blue ringed by grey. He’d changed since she’d last seen him. His expression had grown colder, harder, more remote. More darkly fascinating. And while his form remained elegantly slender, he’d broadened across the shoulders to match his six-foot frame, which he now used with great effect to loom over her with all the menace of a greater physical force.

Not that she was surprised by the anger smouldering in his dark eyes. She’d invaded his very masculine sanctum.

‘Good evening, Your Grace,’ she said coolly, the daringly low cut of her gown seeming far more outrageous than when she’d left home. Nom d’un nom, she would not give him the satisfaction of feeling embarrassed. She lifted her chin. ‘Quelle surprise.’

His intense dark gaze shifted to her companion. The cold, hard scrutiny of an offended aristocrat.

‘Your servant, Your Grace,’ Granby said, rising to bow, colour flooding his face.

A dark eyebrow lifted in question. ‘Hardly the place to bring a lady, Lieutenant.’

Granby tugged at his neckcloth. Perspiration popped out on his brow. ‘A wager,’ he choked out. ‘Lady wanted to see the inside of a hell. Debt of honour and all that.’

‘Naturally you are not one to argue with a lady.’ The Duke’s narrowed gaze flicked down to the cards and the guineas on her side of the table. ‘Your companion has the devil’s own luck, I see.’

He was being careful not to use her name. She couldn’t help but be grateful for the courtesy. She offered him a sweet smile. ‘Don’t you mean skill, Your Grace?’

‘A newly won skill, then.’

As she had hoped beyond hope, he hadn’t forgotten her or their card games aboard ship some two years before. While she had played off her feminine wiles to get his attention, he’d treated her as little more than an annoying child. Brat, he had called her on the last occasion he had visited Meak, or any other of her brother-in-law’s residences.

‘Unfair, sir,’ she said, keeping her expression flirtatious. ‘I learned from the best.’

His lips quirked at the corners, his eyes glinted, the brief smile making him appear less austere. And more devastatingly handsome. An unwelcome pang pierced her heart. As if she had missed his smiles, which back then had been wickedly teasing. Oh, of a certainty she had missed him. The way one missed a stone in one’s shoe.

The maitre d’, standing at a little behind him, gave an impatient cough.

The flash of amusement on Freddy’s face vanished as quickly as it had appeared. He turned his chilly gaze on her escort. ‘Lieutenant, may I offer you a parlour where you can continue your game in private?’

The commanding tone of his voice was something she certainly didn’t miss. His attempts to act like her older brother. To take charge, as if he had some authority over her actions. She damped down the instant raising of her hackles. After all, this was the reaction she had set out to achieve. His wanting to protect her from her own folly. Not that she would let him know the full extent of her error.

Granby’s expression collapsed into something like relief. He gulped. ‘Very civil, Your Grace. Perhaps...’ He gave Minette a pleading look. ‘Perhaps we should leave?’

Several nearby patrons, including the man who had inspected her when she’d first arrived, had paused in their game to watch the unfolding drama.

‘Oh, no,’ she said, rising to her feet. ‘We should accept His Grace’s kind offer.’

Granby’s face crumpled. ‘Really?’

‘Naturellement.’

Freddy bowed, his expression mocking. ‘Be so good as to follow me.’

He led them through a door in the back wall of the subscription room. As she passed him in the doorway, Freddy leaned close and murmured in her ear, ‘I wonder what Gabe is going to think of this piece of mischief?’

She cast him a glance from beneath her lashes. ‘I didn’t take you for a tattletale, Your Grace.’

Granby gasped.

His Grace glowered.

Minette gave him her brightest, most innocent smile and breezed past him. Her gamble had paid off. She had his full attention.

Now came the most difficult part of her plan.

* * *

Following in the wake of the shamefaced Granby and the clearly recalcitrant Miss Rideau, Freddy curbed his ire. The attraction he’d always felt towards the stunningly beautiful French girl, with her velvety brown eyes flecked with gold and her deliciously creamy skin, of which he and everyone else in the club had seen far too much this evening, had nothing to do with his anger.

He was a normal, red-blooded male, and she was a lovely young woman.

No, it was Minette’s lack of respect for the feelings of his friends, Gabe, the Marquess of Mooreshead, and his wife, Nicky, that had him clenching his jaw to the point of cracking his back teeth. How could she be such a little idiot as to come to a place like this? ‘Heaven’, as his customers like to call his establishment when in the throes of their disillusion. For he had no doubt this was all her doing.

Fortunately for her, Barker, his maître d’, knew a member of the Quality when he saw one. The moment Freddy had come in by way of his private entrance, his man had brought him the news that the wrong sort of woman had strayed onto the premises. She wasn’t the first lady to wander through his portals. Usually they were older, married, matrons looking for a bit of excitement after doing their marital duty. As long as they were discreet, no one paid them any mind. However, never did freshly minted debutantes like Minette Rideau darken his disreputable door. Neither did he want them to. He liked his women as dissolute as he was, when he bothered with them at all.

She was lucky no one had recognised her. If they had, not even Gabe could save her reputation.

Minette was trouble. Reckless. Heedless. Things the male predator within him had recognised at their very first encounter on board ship. Apparently, she had no more idea than a baby about the harsh truths of the world in which he resided. The need to beat a little sense into the baby-faced Granby pulsed in his blood. How could the man have let her inveigle him this way?

He escorted the pair along a carpeted passageway, the salacious pictures on the walls advertising the purpose of the rooms at the back of the house. Some of his customers preferred their amusements out of the public eye. Such as those who held political positions, where deep play would cause a raised eyebrow or two. Others demanded more carnal forms of entertainment.

Minette carefully kept her eyes lowered, but he knew she saw them.

He opened the door to a room set up for gentlemen who took their cards seriously to the point of utter ruin. Windowless, panelled in dark wood, the only ornament a marble fireplace and mantel.

Once the pair were inside, Freddy closed the door and turned the key. Granby started.

Freddy put up a hand. ‘To ensure we are not interrupted.’

The lieutenant nodded and looked relieved.

Freddy fixed him with a look designed to freeze. ‘Are there maggots in your brain, Lieutenant? What do you mean by bringing a gently bred girl to a hell?’

‘Pardonnez-moi,’ Minette said, her voice equally icy, ‘I do not believe what I do is your concern.’

‘Well, you believe wrongly,’ Freddy said. ‘Well, Granby? Are you indeed so bacon-brained you did not realise that any one of your friends might have walked in and recognised Miss Rideau?’

The poor tongue-tied lad gulped and shifted on his feet. ‘Told you. Debt of honour.’

Freddy leaned against the doorjamb and crossed his arms over his chest. ‘Tell me about this wager of yours.’

‘Lady Cargyle’s al fresco breakfast,’ he blurted in a rush.

Freddy waited for the next burst of words. If memory served, the young man had a bit of a stutter, which he manfully controlled by these staccato deliveries.

‘Croquet,’ Granby choked out. ‘Wager. Ball through three hoops with only one knock of the mallet.’ He blushed. ‘Not possible.’

‘So did she?’

‘Kicked it through the last one.’ He looked at Minette with a wan grin. ‘Fair. No rule about kicking.’

Minette lifted a defiant chin.

Unwanted laughter bubbled in Freddy’s throat. With great effort he managed to hide it. The girl was a minx. As smart as paint and always got what she wanted—by fair means or foul, according to a harassed Gabe.

Too bad she wouldn’t want— He cut the thought off before it fully formed. He wasn’t interested in respectable young females and if he had been, she had certainly never masked her dislike of him from the very first. Intelligent woman.

Now she was staring at him in that direct way she had, as if daring him to criticise.

He focussed on Granby. ‘What on earth made you agree to such a hen-witted wager?’ He waved a hand to encompass the club.

Minette bridled, her brown eyes flashing sparks of gold. Saints, in a temper she wasn’t just beautiful, she looked like a goddess of war. Gabe really needed to take a firmer hand on her bridle or the girl would find herself dished before she had time to make an eligible marriage.

The thought of her married painfully pierced the wall of ice he’d built around his emotions. Really? Mentally, he shook his head. It wasn’t possible. He didn’t care what she did, as long as it didn’t ruin his friendship with Gabe. One of the very few people he valued. He focussed his attention on her young idiot of an escort.

The boy looked as if he wanted the floor to open beneath his feet. ‘I didn’t know. Secret wager. Written on paper. Held by the judge.’

‘I can imagine what you wrote on yours.’

The blush turned fiery. That was the trouble with fair hair and skin—there was no hiding your embarrassment. Freddy felt a grim sense of satisfaction as the discomforted young man swallowed hard. ‘Nothing terrible. I swear.’

The fact that Freddy had sympathy for Minette’s victim didn’t mean he would be let off the hook. ‘What? Are you a sheep to be led by the nose?’ Some other part of his anatomy more like. ‘You are fortunate I do not intend to report you to your colonel for conduct unbefitting.’

Resentment flared in the boy’s eyes at the slur. No doubt he was thinking his tormenter was a pot calling the kettle black, but Freddy held his gaze and knew he’d made his point when the lad’s shoulders slumped. ‘Yes, sir.’

‘You can go. As a family friend, I will see Miss Rideau home.’

Granby looked at Minette in question.

An expression flickered over Minette’s face. If he had to guess at the meaning of that brief flash in her eyes, he would have said it was triumph. It didn’t make sense. Chagrin more likely. Annoyance at being stuck with him as an escort. She knew very well he’d not put up with her nonsense.

She gave Granby the nod of acceptance. He felt as much relief as Granby clearly did that she’d decided not to refuse or make a fuss.

He really ought to tell Gabe about this little escapade, but he wouldn’t, as long as she was reasonable. It would only worry Nicky, who he had heard was in a delicate condition. No, Miss Rideau would have to endure a lecture from him instead.

Freddy unlocked the door and opened it wide. ‘Lieutenant?’ he said softly, making sure the other man heard the authority in his voice. ‘Not a word of this evening to anyone. Do I make myself clear?’

The young man snapped a quick salute in reply. ‘Wouldn’t dream...’ he blurted. ‘Mum’s the word.’ He scuttled out.

Freddy closed the door and turned to face the real villain of the piece.

Taking in her false expression of innocence, something inside him snapped. Fear for what might have happened had she chosen some other club in which to exercise her need for adventure. ‘What the devil did you think you were doing? Did you want to marry the fellow, or simply ruin his career?’

She recoiled, the colour draining from her face, but, pluck to the backbone, she recovered in a second, squaring her shoulders. ‘I wanted to see inside a hell.’

He narrowed his eyes, instinctively sensing dissembling. ‘Why?’

The defiant gaze met his square on and, like the first time they had met, he was struck by her fragile beauty and the shadows in those beautiful doelike eyes. Secrets and pain. Once more, he was aware of a very real desire to shield her from a harsh world, even knowing she’d seen far more of it that any gently bred girl should have to witness during the years she’d wandered revolutionary France.

He gestured for her to take a seat. When she did so, he strode to the decanter of brandy and the two glasses on a side table. As was usual in the presence of a beautiful woman, he was aware of his awkward gait. He carried the glasses back to the table, taking care not to spill the contents yet not showing he was in any way conscious of making an effort. He’d had years to practise what other men took for granted. And while the slight halt in his left leg was so much a part of him it rarely discommoded him, it did demand more care in some of the simplest actions of life.