The Duke of Desire

  The Duke of Desire

  (The 1797 Club Book 9)

  By

  USA Today Bestseller

  Jess Michaels

  The Duke of Desire

  The 1797 Club Book 9

  www.1797Club.com

  Copyright © Jess Michaels, 2018

  ISBN: 9781947770096

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

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  www.AuthorJessMichaels.com

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  Dedication

  For Michael. You see all my many moods and still,

  somehow,

  love me.

  Prologue

  Spring 1809

  Miss Katherine Montague pushed out onto the terrace and sucked in a great gulp of brisk spring air. The Rockford ball always launched the Season and was forever too crowded and loud. Tonight was no different, and Katherine rubbed her temples as she crossed the wide terrace, moving away from the estate house and toward a quiet corner where she could just…think for a moment.

  There was a great deal to think about, after all. This was her second Season and it was already not going well. She had danced with two gentlemen, both of them very nice, but her father had intervened, whispering loudly for her not to be so whorish in how she leaned into them.

  Leaned into them? She had done no such thing! She was too terrified to do so, after all. God forbid her father see sin in anything she did. That always resulted in punishment. From him and from the eyes of Society, which turned toward her when he berated her. She had no doubt they judged her as harshly as he did.

  She hated it. Hated hearing her name on the wind. Hated watching certain gentlemen turn slightly away because they were uncertain of her fitness. Tears stung her eyes at just the thought.

  “Good evening.”

  She tensed and turned toward the darkness where the deep, slightly slurred voice had come from. “H-hello?”

  He stepped from the shadows in one long, lazy stride and stopped about a foot away from her. Katherine’s breath caught for she knew exactly who he was. Everyone knew who he was. One couldn’t avoid the knowledge, even if one wanted to, say, run away from it.

  Robert Smithton, Duke of Roseford, grinned at her and then leaned against the terrace wall with his hip. Great Lord, but he was a handsome devil, even more so up close. He had thick dark hair that was rakishly messed like fingers had been run through it. And his dark eyes, now a bit bleary from drink, were impossible not to stare into. She could feel herself doing it now, connecting with him on an entirely inappropriate level.

  “Oh, yes,” he drawled. “A very good evening now.”

  She swallowed hard and watched as those same eyes swept over her from head to toe. She felt every moment of that wicked regard.

  “We’ve met before, haven’t we?” he asked.

  She nodded slowly. Oh yes, they had met before. She’d been introduced to the man by an acquaintance, the Countess of Portsmith, at the end of the last Season. Charlotte’s brother had long been a friend to him, but the countess had seemed reluctant to make the introduction.

  Roseford had been considerably less drunk that night, but no less focused on her. Katherine had felt a strange ache in her when he looked at her, when he repeated her name slowly.

  She felt the same ache now.

  And after that brief interaction? Well, her father’s rage that she would speak with such an infamous rake had been loud and insistent and cruel. She shivered and took a step away from Roseford out of a sense of self-preservation.

  “We have,” she said, answering his question at last.

  He smiled. “Oh dear, I know that tone. Was I very poorly behaved?”

  Katherine worried her lip to smother the smile his teasing question drew from her. He was so very charismatic, it was hard not to be drawn to him. But he was a flame. He destroyed little moths like her without even trying hard.

  She couldn’t afford that. Not with her father breathing down her neck and offering pious marriages to good, decent men who made Katherine’s skin crawl.

  “Not any worse than tonight,” she said, teasing back, and then slapped a hand to her mouth. What on earth was she doing?

  He tilted his head back and laughed, and Katherine stopped backing up. He was…fun. Everyone knew it. That was his reputation, after all: fun. Katherine had never been allowed to have much fun in her life. Not since her mother’s death when she was very young.

  Her father didn’t like fun.

  “What was your name again?” he asked when his laughter had faded.

  She pursed her lips. Apparently, she had not made the same impression on him as he had on her. But why would she? She was the drab daughter of a second son. He was…him. A god amongst men. A god amongst gods.

  “Katherine Montague, Your Grace,” she said.

  He extended a hand and she stared at it. He wasn’t wearing gloves. She had taken hers off after getting hot inside. Skin would touch skin. There was something wicked about that fact. Something naughty. Something that doubled the tingle she felt when she looked at him.

  “I don’t bite,” he said with another smile. “Not unless it’s what the lady likes.”

  Katherine felt heat flooding her cheeks, and somehow she managed to take a step closer and hold out her hand. When he took it, his warm, rough fingers enveloped hers. To her surprise, he did not shake her hand, but lifted it to his mouth. Just before he brushed his lips over her knuckles, he said, “The Duke of Roseford at your service, Miss Montague.”

  His mouth touched her and she froze. There was nothing simple about the touch. Nothing that she could pretend was innocent or misread. When his hot breath steamed over her flesh and his dark eyes held hers in challenge, she recognized something her innocent brain ought not to have known: this was seduction.

  She should have stepped away from it. From him and his dangerous beauty and charm. From his slightly drunken state. It obviously lowered whatever inhibitions a man like this normally held when it came to ladies.

  Only she didn’t. She stayed where she was, hand in his, staring as he lowered their clasped fingers but did not release her. If anything, he got bigger, stepped closer in the moonlight.

  “Your uncle is the Viscount Montague, isn’t he?”

  She nodded, stricken mute by the odd encounter and all the strange feelings it inspired.

  “And this is your second Season,” he continued.

  “You know a great deal for a man who couldn’t recall my name a moment ago,” she whispered, her voice shaking.

  “I remember information and faces,” he said. “Especially when I am being pursued.”

  She blinked. “I was not pursuing you.”

  The corner of his lips quirked up, but his eyes grew hard as he said, “Every eligible lady in Society is pursuing me, no matter what I do to discourage their chaperones.”

  She lifted both her brows. “Is that what all your wild behavior is about, Your Grace? Discouraging the chaperones?”

  He gaze held hers evenly for a beat, then another. Something in the air between them shifted, subtle but oh, so powerful, and Katherine forgot to breathe for a moment. Roseford edged forwa
rd a tiny bit more and suddenly his body brushed hers. His breath stirred her face as he leaned in. His free hand, the one that wasn’t still scandalously holding hers, trailed up to trace the line of her jaw with his fingertips.

  “Not all of it,” he whispered, and then he was moving closer.

  Katherine realized, in a second that seemed to take a lifetime, that this man was about to kiss her. She also recognized, without shame or judgment, that she desperately wanted him to. This dangerous, shocking man of ill-repute didn’t frighten her. He drew her in, and she wanted whatever he offered with a power that made her shake.

  She tilted her face up, offering her mouth, and just before their lips touched, she heard something on the wind. Something horrible.

  “Katherine!”

  She realized through her fog that it was the sharpness of her father’s voice. The shame and judgment she hadn’t felt a moment ago rushed to her as his steely hand closed around her upper arm and he ripped her away from Roseford.

  “You’re coming with me,” her father snapped, glaring at the duke before he hauled Katherine off the terrace, through the ball with everyone watching, and to their carriage around front. His fingers dug into her bare skin, he yanked hard enough that it felt like her shoulder was being separated from her body, and when he hurtled her into the vehicle, she staggered and slammed her knee against the seat edge. Tears leapt to her eyes.

  As the carriage began to move, she hauled herself into a more dignified place and dared to look at him. She flinched. His round face was almost purple with anger, his arms were folded and his jaw was set.

  “Whore!” he shouted, and she turned her face. That was his favorite slur to hurtle. And it would soon be followed by his second favorite. “Whore’s daughter.”

  She bent her head as the tears of physical pain became tears of rage and emotional destruction. “I didn’t do anything,” she protested softly.

  “We both know what you were about to do,” he snapped. “And if you were so willing to give such a man as the Duke of Roseford your mouth, what else would have you given him? What else have you given? You think I do not know your mind?”

  “You don’t!” Katherine protested, lifting her hands in pleading. “You don’t know. I did not go out onto the terrace to find the duke. I didn’t even know he was there. We were only talking. Perhaps things escalated, but it was innocent, Papa, I swear to you. I would not have gone so far.”

  Except that didn’t feel true as she said those words. Not when she thought of the fuzzy image of Roseford’s handsome face swinging in toward hers. His mouth tantalizingly close.

  That darkness he was bringing with him, it was exactly the kind her father feared, and she had been willing to walk right into it.

  Montague stared at her and his eyes glazed. “You truly are just like your mother,” he murmured.

  Katherine flinched. She hardly remembered her mother, though the fleeting images she had were nothing but kind and soft. Yet her father railed against the dead woman near daily. To be compared to her was the lowest of insults, at least in his mind.

  “I’m not,” Katherine whispered. “I’m not like what you say she was.”

  His gaze held on her, and then he nodded. “Perhaps it isn’t too late. What you need is a stabilizing influence. What you need is a firm hand that can guide you or punish you as needed.”

  Katherine shook her head swiftly. This was, yet again, another conversation she’d had with her father a dozen times or more. Since her coming out the year before, it had been a topic he had worn into the ground.

  “Please don’t say marriage,” she said. “You told me I could have another Season to find a match on my own.”

  “That was before I found you spread out in front of the Duke of Roseford, ready to become another of his whores,” her father snapped, and his hand lifted as if to strike.

  Katherine flinched from the violence. She’d felt it enough. Today, though, he didn’t swing but lowered his hand slowly. “I’ve been speaking lately with the Earl of Gainsworth. Your uncle’s friend.”

  Katherine’s mouth dropped open. “He is twenty-five years my senior, Papa! Older than you.”

  “And that is what you need. A man that will give you no quarter, will grant you no room for your wicked desires. A pious man like me.”

  Katherine shook her head. She’d seen the Earl of Gainsworth at parties. Despite his advanced years, he wasn’t exactly unattractive, and the way he looked at women her age could scarcely be seen as pious, no matter how much he gave to the church or spoke to her father like he was an acolyte.

  “Please don’t,” she whispered. “Give me a little more time, Papa.”

  He pursed his lips. “No. The time is up, my dear. I need to arrange this before your worst impulses are known to the world. Before they are out of hand and I lose all control over you. I will go to the man tomorrow and sign the betrothal. I will see you married to him before another fortnight has passed.”

  She flew to the opposite side of the carriage, catching both Montague’s hands in her own as she cried out, “Please, Papa, no!”

  He shook her away and looked at her with pure disgust and distain. Then he folded his arms. “It will be done, Katherine. There is nothing that could be said that could change my mind. You will be brought to heel and this marriage will do it. One way or another.”

  Chapter One

  Fall 1812

  Robert Smithton, Duke of Roseford, looked out over the ballroom floor with disinterest. He’d never enjoyed this exercise in exhibition, but as of late it had become almost unbearable. He felt his mouth turn down even lower as he looked at the couples bobbing about the floor. Friends of his, many of them with happy brides in their arms.

  Once upon a time, he would have said those men had thrown away their freedom. But it was hard to feel that way now when their joy was so clear. So sharp. Like a knife to the gut.

  “What are you brooding about?”

  Robert jumped and turned to find three of those very friends standing at his elbow. The Dukes of Abernathe, Crestwood and Northfield. James, Simon and Graham respectively, because the titles were so damned tedious.

  It was Graham who had spoken, and he handed over a drink for Robert with a grin. Robert refused to return the expression. “Who says I’m brooding?”

  He took a slug of the drink and found it watered down, indeed. God, he would be happy when the Season was over. When his friends would retreat back to their estates and their frustrating contentment and he would be left to prowl and dive into all the darkness that kept the pain away.

  “I’m an expert,” Graham retorted, but then another grin brightened his face. Robert was warmed by it. Just two short years ago, his friend would not have smiled so easily. Love did that, it seemed. “Or I used to be.”

  “Ha,” Robert grumbled, winking at the men so his ill humor would not be perceived as a slight. “As if any of you are experts in anything anymore. I am the last bachelor.”

  Simon let out a long laugh that turned more than one interested female head. Not that he noticed. He only had eyes for his wife, just as all the others did. “You are not the last bachelor.”

  “There’s Kit,” James said with a shake of his head. While he smiled, Robert felt his concern just below the surface. James had always been the King of the Dukes. Robert had always been his most troublesome subject.

  “Kit?” he repeated with a snort of derision. “He is a saint—he hardly counts. No, it is left to me to sow all the wild oats for all of you old married men.”

  Now all three men looked concerned and Robert began to calculate how quickly he could make a run for it.

  “Aren’t you tired of it all?” James asked, his tone soft, all teasing departed.

  Robert tensed and looked out at the glittering ball without answering. He couldn’t answer, at least not without gathering himself first. He didn’t want them to see, he didn’t want them to know, to hear it in his
voice that James was right. He was tired of all of it.

  Once upon a time he used to take such pleasure in…well…pleasure. All the parts of it, anticipation to orgasm. But now, now he went through the motions. It was rote. Expected. He was never fully satisfied, even when the experiences were passionate. And if he stopped, he feared the reasons why would catch up to him, overtake him.

  He certainly didn’t want to face them. What his friends had found was not for him. It didn’t exist and he didn’t want it. That kind of intimacy was not something he wished to share with any other human being.

  “You believe everyone’s path must take them to where you are,” he said at last, because it was clear they were waiting for some kind of answer. “Just because mine hasn’t and won’t doesn’t mean I am tired of it.”

  James caught a breath like he was ready to argue that point, but before he could, another man approached. The Marquess of Berronburg was not a member of their duke club, and judging from the way James, Simon and Graham all recoiled slightly as he stepped into their midst, he was not about to be invited into the periphery. Robert couldn’t blame them for it. Berronburg was often rude, he imbibed too much and his lechery for women was nearly as legendary as Robert’s.

  Of course, Berronburg was far less subtle in his advances. He was a lout. But he was Robert’s lout. They often prowled together since he had no old friends to do that with anymore.

  “Ah, look, four dukes, all in a row,” Berronburg crowed loudly. “Do I get some kind of special prize if I find them all?”

  James shook his head slightly. “I have no idea, Berronburg.” He glanced at Robert. “Perhaps we can continue this conversation later. For now, I will find my wife.”

  He turned, and Simon and Graham excused themselves as well. Robert stared as they walked away. As the other men met and married the great loves of their lives, he had often wondered if he might one day be pushed from their ranks because of his refusal to do the same. If at some point his old friends would look at him and see someone no better than the marquess who was prattling at his side.