How to Capture a Duke Read online

  Table of Contents

  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

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Get Scandalous with these historical reads… A Lady Never Tells

  Accidentally Compromising the Duke

  The Highland Outlaw

  His Rebellious Lass

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2019 by Tina Sickler. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the Publisher.

  Entangled Publishing, LLC

  2614 South Timberline Road

  Suite 105, PMB 159

  Fort Collins, CO 80525

  [email protected]

  Scandalous is an imprint of Entangled Publishing, LLC.

  Edited by Heather Howland

  Cover design by EDH Graphics

  Cover photography from Period Images and 123rf

  ISBN 978-1-68281-486-4

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  First Edition October 2019

  Dear Reader,

  Thank you for supporting a small publisher! Entangled prides itself on bringing you the highest quality romance you’ve come to expect, and we couldn’t do it without your continued support. We love romance, and we hope this book leaves you with a smile on your face and joy in your heart.

  xoxo

  Liz Pelletier, Publisher

  For Laura and Gabrielle,

  Always reach for your dreams.

  I love you both!

  Also, For Maryliz.

  Friend, grammar queen, and beloved second mother.

  Chapter One

  May 1829

  Kent, England

  Lady Olivia Swift escaped down the gravel path toward the stables. She glanced back at the magnificent country home where currently a dozen guests were enjoying the Duke of Keswick’s hospitality at his house party.

  She didn’t have much time before her mother and the duke’s grandmother would notice her absence.

  The tittering young ladies in attendance would be preparing for daily afternoon tea on the terrace where they hoped the duke would make his first appearance.

  Wishful thinking on their parts.

  The duke so far hadn’t shown his noble face for ten days out of the fourteen-day house party. The debutantes and their mothers had all been disappointed.

  Olivia had been secretly thrilled.

  She made it to the stable doors. Inside, the warmth enveloped her, and the distinctive smell of leather, horse, and clean hay heightened her senses and quickened her pulse.

  Heaven.

  The duke’s stables were indeed stunning. Row after row of stalls housed beautiful horses—mares, stallions, and geldings. Each served a different purpose, whether it be for racing, hunting, or pulling the duke’s crested carriages, curricle, or high-perched phaeton. The value of the horseflesh would turn the dealers at Tattersall’s green with envy.

  Olivia stepped up to the stall of a brown mare to stroke her velvet-soft muzzle. “Hello, pretty. Would you like a treat?” She held out one of the apples she’d pilfered from the kitchens that morning, and the mare’s big brown eyes blinked once as if to say, “Thank you,” then she ate the fruit from her hand.

  The duke’s estate was over twenty thousand acres. The manor home looked like a small castle with its white carved stonework, elegant pillars, and window frames highlighted with gold leaf that caught the setting sun. Dozens of gardeners maintained the sculpted gardens, boxwood hedges, and flowering shrubs, which bloomed in every color and perfumed the air. Numerous ponds, fountains, and classical sculptures decorated the lovely gardens.

  Olivia longed to ride through the vast lands and gallop across the fields. She’d sit astride the animal, not on a side saddle, release the pins from her hair, and let the wind cool her heated cheeks, just as she’d done years ago at her own family’s country estate.

  Her eldest brother Matthew would have adored this stable, would have understood her need to escape the house and the lords and ladies within, to escape the pressure of her mother’s efforts to find her a suitable husband—hopefully the duke.

  But Matthew was dead. He had been thrown while racing his own curricle. A pang of familiar sadness pierced her chest, and she stepped back from the brown mare.

  That’s when she saw him.

  A massive stallion in the last stall, hidden from sight. Over seventeen hands tall, he had a sleek, black coat that gleamed beneath a ray of afternoon sunlight shining through the open stable doors. He took away her breath.

  She approached. The big beast watched her with intelligent black eyes, his nostrils slightly flaring, his head tossing once when she came close.

  “My God. You are superb.”

  What would it feel like to ride him? To feel the exhilarating rhythmic power of those muscles beneath her? She nearly swooned at the thought.

  Pulling the remaining apple from her pocket, she held it out to him. “May I touch you?” She tentatively stretched out her hand, careful not to move too swiftly and startle the animal.

  “S…s-top!”

  Olivia jumped back. The guttural masculine command was harsh and, Heaven help her, menacing.

  She whirled to find a tall man storming toward her, his face a mask of annoyance. His chiseled features—strong jaw, hawkish nose, and dark eyes—spoke of strength and confidence. His dark hair, slightly longer than fashion dictated, brushed his collar. Their gazes clashed, and her gut tightened.

  “What are you doing here?” he demanded.

  He had to be the head groom. He spoke with such command. He must know she was a lady from the manor, a guest at Rosehill. Her muslin walking dress and silk slippers bespoke her station as well as if a majordomo had announced her at a ball.

  “I wanted to see the horses,” she said, hoping her voice sounded steady beneath his hard stare.

  He stalked closer with a predatory confidence that heightened her unease. “You should be back at the house.”

  He kept walking until he was within an arm’s reach of her. Beneath that stormy stare, her heart pounded so fiercely in her chest she feared he could hear it. She noticed more about him now. His body was muscular, like the type of man who rode all day and worked hard. His broad shoulders rivaled the pugilists in her brother’s boxing ring in the back of the casino—the Raven Club. She wasn’t easily intimidated, but this man…

  She forced aside her misgivings. He was a groom, and she was a guest. Raisin
g her chin, she met his steely gaze. “I want to ride the stallion. I need a groom.”

  He pierced her with a hard stare. “No one rides Atlas but the d…d-uke.”

  “No one?”

  “His stable. His rules.”

  Her confidence returned along with a good dose of anger. “Fine. Would you kindly ask His Grace if I may ride the black then?”

  He shook his head. “His Grace is not here.”

  An obvious fact. “When is he expected to return?”

  “He d…d-oes not confide in me.”

  She noticed two things. He spoke properly for a head groom, but his speech was not perfect. He stammered over certain words, struggled to form them. She’d had a young maid with a similar speaking condition. Olivia had been pleased with the way Cynthia had dressed her hair, and the girl had been more than pleasant. But Olivia’s disciplinarian father, the old Earl of Castleton, had found the girl’s speech off-putting and had dismissed her without a reference.

  She would have assumed a man as powerful and wealthy as the Duke of Keswick would demand a well-spoken head groom. There was only one explanation. He must be exceptional with the horses.

  Olivia clutched her hands before her. “If I’m not permitted to ride Atlas, then I wish to ride another.”

  “No.”

  “No?” she repeated, dumbfounded. How could he deny her? She was a guest, not a wandering country girl.

  His eyes narrowed. “Where is your chaperone? I have the d…d-istinct impression the lady has no idea of the whereabouts of her charge.”

  Her chaperone, her mother, indeed had no idea where she was and would have a conniption if she knew Olivia was having a heated argument with a groom rather than preparing for the unlikely appearance of His Grace at the house party.

  “Fine,” she snapped. “But I shall return.”

  She took one last longing look at Atlas. She hadn’t given up on the stallion.

  Just the duke.

  …

  Tristan Cameron, the fourth Duke of Keswick, leaned against the stable doors and watched the lady head for the manor. Her presence had disturbed him. Why was one of the ladies from the house in his stables about to touch his horse? As soon as he’d spotted her near Atlas, he’d barked his command for her to cease. Startled, she’d turned.

  Momentarily, he’d been just as surprised as she was. The lady was well-curved with golden hair and green eyes. There was both delicacy and strength in her face. She was pretty, but he had seen many beautiful women. It was the keen determination in her eyes, her excitement and anticipation as she gazed at Atlas, that set her apart from other debutantes. Of course, she had thought him a groom. She had no reason to flutter her eyelashes or curve her well-shaped lips in a calculated smile in order to lure a man into a feminine trap.

  He wondered exactly who she was. The daughter of a marquess, an earl, or a viscount? One of the ladies who had traveled from London to Rosehill for the sole purpose of enticing a duke—him—into marriage.

  She’d fail. They all would.

  His grandmother had insisted on hosting the infernal house party. He couldn’t blame Antonia for her repeated efforts to see him married, but neither did he have to fall into his grandmother’s trap. Tristan hated social gatherings with a passion. He kept busy with his estates, his correspondence, his ledgers, his duties in the House of Lords, and the well-being of the many tenants of Rosehill—the hard-working men and women that depended upon him for their livelihood and whose labor added to the ducal coffers.

  Those who never watched him warily as he spoke.

  Unlike in his youthful years at Eton and even Oxford, he now was too powerful to be mocked. But he recognized the cruel sneers of dandies and the snickers behind ladies’ fluttering fans as he struggled to form certain words. Stress made his stuttering worse. For this reason, he avoided balls, garden parties, house parties, and whatever social gatherings the beau monde devised for their ceaseless and ridiculous need for frivolous entertainment. He was also highly aware of what certain men called him, had called him since his school days.

  The Stuttering Duke.

  He wouldn’t set foot in the manor, not until every young debutant had given up hope of capturing the elusive duke and headed back to London and the bosom of the ton.

  He turned back to Atlas and reached for a saddle. He’d ride and dismiss the golden-haired lady from his thoughts. Despite his grandmother’s wishes, he had no intention to be burdened by a wife.

  Chapter Two

  “Where in God’s sake have you been, Olivia? You missed afternoon tea. We must hurry and get you ready for the evening,” Olivia’s mother, the Dowager Lady Castleton, said.

  “Whatever for? His Grace will not make an appearance.” Olivia shut the bedchamber door and sat on the edge of the four-poster bed. Her mother had already been waiting in Olivia’s room when Olivia had come in. She braced herself for her mother’s disapproval.

  “You do not know that for certain. And even if the duke doesn’t attend, there are Lord Elton and Lord Edwards, who have shown interest in you. Surely, you have noticed.”

  How could she not? “Mother, Lord Elton is boring and has a fondness for discussing nothing but himself. Lord Edwards is incredibly vain and looks in his mirror more than I do.”

  “You are too selective, young lady.” Her mother’s lips thinned in a line of disapproval, and she began to pace the Oriental carpet. She was a tall woman whose blond hair was just showing a hint of gray. She was dressed in a violet gown, which brought out her green eyes and creamy skin. She’d been a great beauty in her youth and had captured the earl’s interest during her first Season.

  “I do not think—”

  “Your siblings have married,” her mother said, cutting her short. “I have returned from your aunt’s home in Bath for the sole purpose of finding you a husband.”

  Her brother Ian, the Earl of Castleton, had married Grace. Her sister, Ellie, had married the Marquess of Devlin. Both of her siblings had found a rare love match. Olivia adored them, but she was still envious of their good fortune.

  “My siblings were lucky to find loving spouses. I want to do the same.” A love match was what Olivia had always wanted—that and having children. She adored her little niece and nephew and wanted her own family. But she wanted to choose her own husband, not one her mother selected.

  Her mother waved a dismissive hand. “You can find one here.”

  “Mother, I already told you about my misgivings regarding Lord Elton and Lord Edwards.”

  “Nonsense. You have misgivings about every suitable gentleman I’ve mentioned. Would you rather that mousy-faced Lady Samantha make a marriage match instead of you?”

  Lady Samantha was the youngest daughter of the Marquess of Henley. She’d been hostile toward Olivia from the first day she’d set foot at Rosehill. Olivia had swiftly concluded that Samantha viewed her as competition for what she most coveted.

  The duke.

  “Lady Samantha must be sorely disappointed by the rudeness of our host. What if the duke has no intention of gracing us with his presence for the duration of the house party? There are only four days left.”

  “Lady Samantha is not only after the duke, but a gentleman with both title and wealth. She has ambition.” Her mother leveled her gaze at Olivia with a look that proclaimed her daughter lacked the favorable trait.

  Her mother was wrong. Olivia had ambition, just not for the men under this roof. She’d been truthful when she’d said that she wanted to marry for love.

  “I’d like to go riding,” Olivia said.

  “No.”

  Olivia wrinkled her nose. “What will it take, Mother?”

  “Attend to Lord Elton this evening. I want to see you charm the man.”

  Olivia hesitated for the briefest of moments. She could listen to Lord Elton drone on about his allowance if it meant she would be free to ride for an afternoon. The challenge seemed almost too easy a means to get what she wanted. Elton would r
equire little urging to talk.

  An image of the head groom flashed into her mind. Now he was a worthy opponent. His stammering did not bother her, but his arrogance did. He guarded the stables like an inner sanctum to heaven. While she knew without a doubt that she could slip past her mother for a brief escape, she could never sneak past the head groom. If there was a man whom she needed to charm to obtain what she wanted, it was he.

  …

  The evening was lasting forever.

  Olivia found herself seated between Lord Elton and Lord Edwards. Her mother must have whispered in the dowager duchess’s ear to procure such a seating arrangement.

  Olivia’s gaze traveled the length of the dining room table, past fine china, priceless silver, and gleaming crystal, to study the dowager, the duke’s grandmother.

  In the absence of the duke, the dowager was seated at the head of the table, a formidable woman in her seventies with a head of gray hair and a surprisingly unwrinkled face. Her dark eyes were lively as she gazed first at Olivia, then Lord Elton to her right, then Lord Edwards to her left.

  Olivia was also highly conscious of her mother’s attention. Her mother arched a delicate eyebrow, and her meaning was unmistakable.

  Olivia turned to Lord Elton. A man with a slight build, he had thinning brown hair, brown eyes, and a nose that resembled a wedge of cheese. “Tell me again about your own estate, my lord.”

  “It’s in Hertfordshire. As for the earldom, I take my duties seriously. My allowance is eight thousand pounds annum. I have six younger sisters. Before his death, my father instructed me to care for each of them until they are married. I seek a respectable wife who shall take my sisters under her wing and find them all proper husbands.”

  Six sisters! Good grief. If he was looking for someone to model prim and proper behavior, then his interest in her had been sadly misplaced. Olivia had gotten into plenty of scrapes as a young girl, and she imagined that at least one of Lord Elton’s sisters would have a mischievous streak.

  Olivia would like that one best.

  Olivia feigned interest as Lord Elton droned on about the traits he felt most desirable in a wife. Duty. Respectability. Loyalty. Poise. Restraint.