The Dissolute Duke

‘I saved the best proposal of all for your ears only.’

A streak of cold dread snaked downwards. ‘You want a divorce, no doubt?’

At that he laughed, the sound engulfing her.

‘Not a divorce, my lady wife, but an heir, and as you are the only woman who can legitimately give me one the duty is all yours.’

She almost tripped at his words and he held her closer, waiting until balance was regained. Their eyes locked together. There was no humour at all in the green depths of Taylen Ellesmere, the sixth Duke of Alderworth.

He was deadly serious.

Shock gave her the courage of reply. ‘Then you have a large problem indeed, because I am the last woman in the world who would ever willingly grace your bed again.’

AUTHOR NOTE

So many people have written to me and asked if I was going to write the story of Lucinda, the last sibling of the Wellinghams.

Well, here it is. Lucinda has featured in Asher’s story, HIGH SEAS TO HIGH SOCIETY, Taris’s story, ONE UNASHAMED NIGHT, and Cristo’s, ONE ILLICIT NIGHT.

Falder has been like a second home to me for so many years—it is quite sad to have to say goodbye. I hope you love the way Lucinda’s man is no push-over and, as the dissolute Duke who has seemingly ruined their sister, is causing mayhem for the Wellingham brothers.

About the Author

SOPHIA JAMES lives in Chelsea Bay on Auckland, New Zealand’s North Shore, with her husband who is an artist.

Sophia has a degree in English and History from Auckland University and believes her love of writing was formed reading Georgette Heyer in the holidays at her grandmother’s house.

Sophia enjoys getting feedback at www.sophiajames.net

Previous novels by the same author:

FALLEN ANGEL

ASHBLANE’S LADY

HIGH SEAS TO HIGH SOCIETY

MASQUERADING MISTRESS

KNIGHT OF GRACE

(published as The Border Lord in North America)

MISTLETOE MAGIC

(part of Christmas Betrothals)

ONE UNASHAMED NIGHT

ONE ILLICIT NIGHT

CHRISTMAS AT BELHAVEN CASTLE

(part of Gift-Wrapped Governesses anthology)

LADY WITH THE DEVIL’S SCAR

Did you know that some of these novels are also available as eBooks? Visit www.millsandboon.co.uk

The
Dissolute Duke
Sophia James

www.millsandboon.co.uk

I would like to dedicate this book to my sister-in-law, Susie. Thanks for being a fan.

Chapter One

England—1831

Her brothers would kill her for this.

Lady Lucinda Wellingham knew that they would. Of all the hare-brained schemes that she had ever been involved with, this was the most foolish of the lot. She would be ruined and it would be entirely her fault.

‘Just a kiss,’ the man whispered, pressing her against a wall in the corridor, the smell of strong liquor on his breath. His hands wandered across the line of her breasts, and in the ridiculously flimsy dress that she had allowed Posy Tompkins to talk her into wearing, Lucinda could feel where his next thoughts lay.

Richard Allenby, third Earl of Halsey, had been attractive at London society balls, but here at a country party in Bedfordshire he was intolerably cloying. Pushing him away, she stood up straight, pleased that her height allowed her a good few inches above his own.

‘I think, sir, that you have somehow got the wrong idea about my wish to…’

The words were cut off as his lips covered hers, a wet, limp kiss that made her turn her head away quickly before wiping her mouth. Goodness, the man was almost panting and it did not suit him at all.

‘You are here at the most infamous party of the Season and my room isn’t far.’ His fingers closed across her forearm as he hailed two others who looked to have had as much to drink as he had. Both leered at her in the very same way that Halsey was. A mistake. She should have fled moments ago when the chance had been hers and the bedrooms had not been so perilously close. In this den of iniquity it seemed anything went, the morals of the man whose house it was fallen beyond all redemption.

A spike of fear brought her elbow against the wall, loosening Halsey’s fingers and allowing a hard-won freedom which she took the chance on and ran.

Twisted and narrow corridors lay before her. There were close to twenty bedchambers on this floor alone and, moving quickly, Lucinda discovered double doors at the very end. With the corners she had taken she was certain those following would not see which door she had chanced upon and without a backward glance she turned an ornate ivory handle and slipped into the room.

It was dark inside save for a candle burning next to the bed, where a man sat reading, thick-rimmed glasses balanced on the end of his nose.

When he looked up she placed one finger to her lips, asking for his silence before turning back to the door. Outside she could hear the noise of those who followed her, the uncertainty of where she was adding to their urgency. Surely they would not dare to try their luck with any number of closed doors? A good few minutes passed, the whispers becoming less audible, and then they were gone, retracing their steps in the quest for the escaped quarry and ruing the loss of a night’s entertainment. Relief filled her.

‘Can I speak now?’ The voice was laconic and deep, an inflection of something on the edge that Lucinda could not understand.

‘If you are very quiet, I think it might be safe.’ She looked around uncertainly.

A ripe swear word was her only answer and as the sheets were pushed back Lucinda saw the naked form of a man unfold from within them and her mouth gaped open. Not just any man either, but the scandalous host of this weekend’s licentiousness: Taylen Ellesmere, the Sixth Duke of Alderworth. The Dissolute Duke, they called him, a rakehell who obeyed no laws of morality with his wanton disregard of any manners and his degenerate ways.

He was wearing absolutely nothing as he ambled across to the door behind her and locked it. The sound seared into Lucinda’s brain, but she found she could not even move a muscle.

He was beautiful. At least he was that, his dark hair falling to his shoulders and eyes the colour of wet leaves after a forest storm at Falder. She did not glance below the line of his neck, though every fibre of her being seemed to want her to. His smile said that he knew her thought, the creases around his eyes falling into humour.

‘Lady Lucinda Wellingham?’

He knew her name. She nodded, trying to find her voice. What might happen next? She felt like a chicken in a fox’s lair.

‘Do your three brothers know that you are here?’

Her shake of the head was tempered by a lack of breath that indicated panic and she could barely take in air. Every single thing had gone wrong since dawn, so when her hands tried to open the stays of her bodice a little she was glad when they gave, allowing breath to come more easily. The deep false cleavage so desired by society women disappeared as the fasteners loosened, her breasts spilling back into their natural and fairly meagre form. The lurid red dress she wore fell away from the rise of her bosom in a particularly suggestive manner and she knew he observed it.

‘Choosing my room to hide in might not have been the wisest of options.’ He glanced tellingly towards the large bed.

Lucinda ignored the remark altogether. ‘Richard Allenby, the Earl of Halsey, and his friends gave me little other choice, your Grace. I had the need of a safe place.’

At that he laughed, the sound of mirth echoing about the chamber.

‘Drink loosens the choking ties of societal pressure. Good manners and foppish decency is something most men cannot tolerate for more than a few weeks upon end and this place allows them to blow off steam, if you will.’

‘At the expense of women who are saying no?’

‘Most ladies here encourage such behaviour and dress accordingly.’

His eyes ran across the low-cut décolletage of her attire before returning to her face.

‘This is not London, my lady, and nor does it pretend to be. If Halsey has indeed insulted you, he would have done so because he thought you were … available. Free will is a concept I set great store by here at Alderworth.’

The challenge in his eyes was unrepentant. Indeed, were she to describe his features she would say a measured indolence sat across them, like a lizard playing with a fly whose wings had already been disposed of. Her fingers went back to the door handle, but, looking for the key, she saw it had been removed. A quick sleight of hand. She had not seen him do it.

‘As free will is so important to you, I would now like to exercise my own and ask you to open the door.’

He simply leaned over to a pile of clothes roughly deposited on a chair and hauled out a fob watch.

‘Unfortunately it is that strange time of the evening: too early for guests to be properly drunk and therefore harmless and too late to expect the conduct of gentlemen to be above reproach. Any movement through the house at this point is more dangerous than remaining here with me.’

‘Remaining in here?’ Could he possibly mean what she thought he did?

His eyes lightened. ‘I have room.’

‘You have known me for two minutes and half of those have been conducted in silence.’ She tried to insert as much authority as she could into her announcement.

‘All the better to observe your … many charms.’ His green eyes were hooded with a sensual and languorous invitation.

‘You sound like the wolf from the Grimm brothers’ fairy tales, your Grace, though I doubt any character from a nursery rhyme exhibits the flair for nudity that you seem to display.’

Moving back from him, she was pleased when he pulled on a long white shirt, the sleeves billowing into wide folds from the shoulder. A garment a pirate might have worn or a highwayman. It suited him entirely.

‘Is that better, my lady?’

When she nodded he smiled and lifted two glasses from a cabinet behind him. ‘Perhaps good wine might loosen your inhibitions.’

‘It certainly will not.’ Her voice sounded strict even to her own ears and her eyes went to the book deposited on the counterpane. ‘Machiavelli’s Il Principe is a surprising choice for a man who seems to have no care for the name of the generations of Ellesmeres who have come before him.’

‘You think all miscreants should be illiterate?’

Amazingly she began to laugh, so ridiculous was this conversation. ‘Well, they are not usually tucked up in bed at ten o’clock wearing nothing but a pair of strong spectacles and reading a book of political philosophy in Italian, your Grace.’

‘Believe me, degeneracy has a certain exhausting quality to it. The expectations for even greater acts of debauchery can be rather wearisome when age creeps up on one.’

‘How old are you?’

‘Twenty-five. But I have been at it for a while.’

He was only a year older than she was and her few public scrapes had always been torturous. Still he was a man, she reasoned, though the double standards of behaviour excusing his sex did not even come close to exonerating his numerous and shocking depravities.

‘Did your mother not teach you the basics of human kindness to others, your Grace?’

‘Oh, indeed she did. One husband and six lovers later I understood it exactly. I was her only child, you see, and a very fast learner.’

She had heard the sordid story of the Ellesmere family many times, but not from the angle of a disenchanted son. Patricia Ellesmere had died far from her kin. There were those who said a broken heart had caused her death, but six lovers sounded particularly messy.

‘What happened to your father?’ She knew she should not have asked, but interest overcame any sense of reticence.

‘He did what any self-respecting Duke might have done on discovering that his wife had cuckolded him six times over.’

‘He killed himself?’

He laughed. ‘No. He gambled away his fortune and then lost his woes in strong brandy. My parents died within a day of the other, at different ends of the country, and in the company of their newest lovers. Liver failure and a self-inflicted shot through the head. At least it made the funeral sum less expensive. Two for the price of one cuts the costs considerably.’ His lips curled around the words and his green eyes were sharp. ‘I was eleven at the time.’

Such candour was astonishing. No one had ever spoken to her like this before, a lack of apology in every new and dreadful thing he uttered.

Her own problems paled into insignificance at the magnitude of his and she could only be thankful for her close and supportive family ties.

‘You had other relatives … to help you?’

‘Mary Shields, my grandmother, took me in.’

‘Lady Shields?’ My God, who in society did not know of her proclivity for gossip and meanness? She had been dead for three years now, but Lucinda still remembered her beady black eyes and her vitriolic proclamations. And this was the woman whom an orphan child had been dispatched to?

‘I see by your expression that you knew her?’ He upended his tumbler and poured himself another. A generous another.

He wore rings on every finger on his left hand, she noticed, garish rings save for the band on his middle finger which was embellished with an engraving. She could not quite make out the letters.

A woman, no doubt. He was rumoured to have had many a lover, old and young, large and thin, married and unmarried. He does not make distinction when appetite pounces. She remembered hearing a rumour saying exactly that as it swirled around in society—a diverting scandal with the main player showing no sense of remorse.

The Duke of Alderworth. She knew that most of the ladies in society watched him, many a beating heart hoping that she might be the one to change him, but with his having reached twenty-five Lucinda doubted he would reform for anyone.

Foolish fancies were the prerogative of inexperienced girls. As the youngest sister of three rambunctious and larger-than-life brothers she found herself immune to the wiles of the opposite sex and seldom entertained any romantic notions about them.

Surprisingly, the lengthening silence between them was not awkward. That astonishing fact was made even more so by the thought that had he pushed himself upon her like Richard Allenby, the Earl of Halsey, she might have been quite pleased to see the result. But he did not advance on her in any way. Outside the screams of delight permeated this end of the corridor again, women’s laughing shouts mingled with the deeper tone of their drunken pursuers. A hunting horn also blasted close, the loudness of it making her jump.

‘A successful night, by the sounds. The hunters and the hunted in the pursuit of ecstasy. Soon enough there will be the silence of the damned.’ He watched her carefully.

‘I think you are baiting me, your Grace. I do not think you can be half as bad as they say you are.’

His expression changed completely.

‘In that you would be very wrong, Lady Lucinda, for I am all that they say of me and more.’ A new danger cloaked him, a hard implacability in his eyes that made him look older. ‘The fact is that I could have you in my bed in a trice and you would be begging me not to stop doing any of the tantalising things to your body that I might want to.’

The pure punch of his words had her heart pounding fast, because in such a boast lay a good measure of truth. She was more aware of him as a man than she had ever been of any other. Horrified, Lucinda turned to the window and made much of looking out into the gardens, lit tonight by a number of burning torches positioned along various pathways. Two lovers lay entwined amidst the bushes, bare skin pale in the light. Around them other couples lingered, their intentions visible even from this distance. The intemperance of it all shocked her to the core.

‘If you touch me, my brothers would kill you, most probably.’ She attempted to keep fear from the threat and failed.

He laughed. ‘They could try, I suppose, but …’ The rest was left unsaid, but the menace in him was magnified. The indolence that she imagined before was now honed into cold hard steel, a man who existed in the underbelly of London’s society even though he was high born. The contradictions in him confused her, the quicksilver change unnerving.

‘I came to the party with Lady Posy Tompkins and she assured me that it was a respectable affair. Obviously she and I share a completely different idea of the word “respectable” and I suppose I should have made more of asking exactly where we were going before I said yes, but she was most insistent about the fun we might have and the fact that her godmother was coming made it sound more than respectable …’

He stopped her by laying his finger across the movement of her mouth. ‘Do you always talk so much, Lady Lucinda?’

Her whole body jerked in response to the touch. ‘I do, your Grace, because when I am nervous I seem to be unable to stop although I don’t quite remember another occasion when I have been as nervous as I am right at this moment, so if you were to let me walk from this room this instant I should go gladly and find—’

His mouth came to the place where his finger had lingered, and Lucinda’s world dissolved into hot colourful fragments of itself, tipping any sense of reality on its head and replacing ordinariness with a dangerous molten pleasure.

Chapter Two

Tay just wanted her to stop talking, the edge of panic in her voice bringing forth a guilt that he hadn’t felt for years. The slight curve of her breasts fitted into his chest and he liked the softness. Usually he had to bend down to women, but this one stood only a few inches below him, her thinness accentuating her willowy figure in an almost boyish way.

Her nails were short and the calluses between her second and third fingers told him she was left handed and that she participated in some sort of sport. Archery, perhaps. The thought of her standing, aiming at a target and her blonde hair lifting in the breeze was strangely arousing. He should, of course, escort her from Alderworth posthaste and make certain that she was delivered home safely into the bosom of her family.

But he knew that he would not, and when he took her mouth against his, another feeling surfaced which he refused to dwell on altogether.

He did not imagine she had been kissed much before because her full lips were held in a tight line and, as he opened her mouth with his tongue, her eyes widened.

Eyes of pale blue etched with a darker shade—eyes a man could lose himself in completely and never recover from.

Softening his assault, he threaded his hands through her hair, tilting her face. This time he did not hurry or demand more as the heat of a slow burn built. God, she smelt so good, like the flowers in an early springtime, fresh and clean. He had become so used to the heady over-ripe perfumes of his many experienced amours that he had forgotten the difference.

Innocence. It smelt strangely like hope.

Sealing his mouth across hers, he brought his fingers behind her nape. Closer. Warmer.

The power of connection winded him, the first tentative exploration of her tongue poignant in a way that made him melancholy. It had been a long time since he had kissed a woman who watched him as if he might unlock the secrets of the universe.

Lust ignited, an incendiary living torch of need burning bright, like the wick of gunpowder snaking down through his being. Unstoppable.

‘Are you a virgin?’

He knew she was by the way she was breathing, barely enough air to fill her up, lost in the moment and her lips parted.

‘Yes.’

‘Why the hell did you come to this party, then?’ The layer of civilisation that he had tried to keep in place was gone with the feel of her, but there was no withdrawal as he asked the question. Rather she pressed in closer and shut her eyes, as though trying in the darkness to find an answer. He felt the feathery waft of her breath in the sensitive folds of his neck and wondered if she was quite as innocent as he presumed. If this was a game she played, then it was one that he had long been practised in and she would need to be careful. His hands went around her back of their own accord, like a pathway memorised.

Salvation.

The word came unbidden and blossomed into something that he could not deny and his pulse began to quicken. It had been years since he had felt like this with any woman and surprise spurred him onwards.

He twisted her and his mouth fell lower, laving at the skin at her neck, his attention bringing whorls of redness to the pale. Her breath matched his own now, neither quiet nor measured, for the power of the body had taken over and his thumb caressed the budding hardness of one nipple through crimson silk.

She arched back, thighs locked tight, her breasts twin beacons of temptation.

He wanted her as he had never wanted another in all his life, the feel of her, the softness, her hair light-spun gold against his dark. With a small motion he had her bodice loosened and his palm around the bounty of one breast, cupping flesh, stroking the firmness. He needed her devoid of clothing, wanting pure knowledge without a covering. If she had not been the lady he knew she was, he would have simply ripped the garment off from neckline to hemline, and transported her naked to his bed to take his fill. His mouth ached for the intimacy of her curves.

‘The taste of a lover is part of the attraction,’ he stated simply as he raised his head, watching as understanding dawned. Uncertainty chased on the heels of wariness, but still she did not pull away as he thought she might. Only a slight frown marred her brow, measuring intent without any fear whatsoever. A guileless allowance.

Such an emotion was something he had rarely experienced. His reputation had protected him, he supposed, and kept others at a distance. But Lucinda Wellingham was different and more dangerous than all of the sirens who had stalked him across so many years. The connection between them was unexpected and startling as it drew him in, his body tightening in the echo of an old knowledge. His head dipped and he brought one soft peak into his mouth, the force of the action ripping stretched red silk and the seam shirring into uncountable and damaged threads. He liked the way she arched into him, her fingers combing through his hair, nails hard-edged with want, taking his offering and giving him back her own.

His hands now moved from the rise of her bottom around the front to feel for the hidden folds of womanhood, the silk only a thin barrier to taking. He pressed in to find her centre.

‘No.’ A single word, moaned more than stated, but enough.

‘No?’ He had to make certain that that was what she had meant, his breath coming thick with need. She shook her head this time, sky-blue eyes devoid of everything, a frown on her forehead and her chest rising and falling.

No, because she could not envisage what a yes might mean? No, because he was a man with enough of a reputation to destroy her?

Breaking away he moved back, the anger in him mounting with a pounding awareness of guilt. The road to ruin was a short one and he knew a lady of her ilk would have no possible defence against his persuasions. Suddenly his own chosen life path seemed seedy and vulgar.

‘I will take you home.’

She did not repair the damage to her dress as she watched him so that one breast stood out naked from the loosened fabric, a pink-rosebud nipple beckoning against scarlet silk. With her glassy eyes and stillness she was like a sensual and pliant Madonna fallen from heaven to land at the feet of the devil. Indecision welled, but he had no shield against such goodness, no way to safeguard his yearning against her righteousness.

Stepping forwards, he readjusted her gown, retying the laces on the flimsy bodice so that some measure of decency was reinstated. He could do nothing to repair the ruined seam and his eyes were drawn to the show of flesh that curved outwards beneath it, calling for his attentions. Swearing, he took a blanket from his bed and laid it around her, the wool almost the same shade as her hair. Then he collected his clothes, pulling on his breeches and placing a jacket over the shirt. He did not stop for a cravat. His boots were shoved on stockingless feet at the door as he retrieved the key and unlocked it.

‘Come, sweetheart,’ he murmured and found her hand, liking the way her slender fingers curled around his own.

Trust.

Another barrier breached. He yearned for others.

Outside it was quiet and, as the stables materialised before them, a lad came to his side.

‘Ye’d be wanting the carriage at this time of the night, your Grace?’ Disbelief was evident in the query. Normally conveyances were not sent for until well into the noon hours of the next day. Or the one after that.

‘Indeed. Find Stephens and have it readied. I need to go to London.’

When the boy left them Lucinda Wellingham began to speak, her voice low and uncertain. ‘My cloak is still in the house and my hat and reticule. Should I not get them?’

‘No.’ Tay wanted only to be gone. He had no idea who would talk about her appearance at one of the most infamous and least salubrious parties of the Season, but if he had her home at the Wellingham town house before the morning surely her brothers would be able to fashion a story which would dispel all rumour.

‘My friend Posy Tompkins might wonder what has happened to me. I hope that she is safe.’ She did not meet his eyes at all, a contrite Venus who had tripped into the underworld unbidden and now only wanted to be released from it.

‘Safe?’ He could not help laughing, though the sound was anything but humorous. ‘No one at my parties is safe. It is generally their singular intention not to be.’

‘Enjoying herself, then?’ she countered without missing a beat, the damn dimples in her cheeks another timely reminder of her innate goodness.

‘Oh, I can almost swear that she will be that. The thrall of a good orgasm is highly conducive to contentment.’

Silence reigned, but he had to let her know. Who he was. What he was. Her muteness heartened him.

‘I am not safe, Lady Lucinda, and neither am I repentant. When you came to Alderworth dressed in the sort of gown that raises dark fantasies in the minds of any red-blooded man, surely you understood at least that?’

Tears glittered and Tay swore, causing more again to pool beneath the light of the lamp.

‘Lord knows, you are far too sweet for a sinner like me and tomorrow you will realise exactly just how close to ruin you were and be thankful that I took you home, no matter the loss of a few possessions.’

Asher, Taris and Cristo would not have called her sweet. Not in a million years. She was a failure and a liability to the Wellingham name and she always had been. That was the trouble. She was ‘intrinsically flawed’. The gypsy who had read her palm in a stall outside the Leadenhall Market had looked directly into her eyes and told her so.

Intrinsically flawed.

And she was. Tonight was living proof of the ridiculous things she did, without thought for responsibility or consequence. With a little less luck she could have been in the Duke of Alderworth’s bed right now, knees up around his bare and muscled thighs and knowing what a great many of the less principled women of English society already did. It was only his good sense that had stopped her, for she had been far beyond putting a halt to anything. With just a little persuasion she would have followed him to his bed in the candlelight. Shame coated her, the thick ignominy making her feel ill. Such a narrow escape.

An older man came towards them, carrying a light, and behind him again a whole plethora of busy servants. Lucinda did not meet their eyes as they observed her, plastering a look on her face that might pass for indifference. Goodness, how she hoped that there was none amongst these servants of Alderworth who might have a channel of communication into the empire of the Wellinghams.

At her side Alderworth made her feel both excited and nervous, his heat calling her to him in a way that scorched sense. When his arm came against her own she did not pull away, the feel of him exciting and forbidden before he moved back. She took in one deep breath and then let it out slowly, trying to find logic and reason and failing.

His gaze swept across her with all the intensity of a ranging and predatory tiger.

Within moments the conveyance was ready to leave, the lamps lit and the driver in place. Without touching her Taylen Ellesmere indicated that she climb up and when she sat on a plush leather seat, he chose the opposite side to rest on, his green eyes brittle.

‘It will take us four hours to reach Mayfair. If you are still cold …?’

‘No, I am fine.’ She pulled the blanket further about her, liking the shelter.

‘Good.’ Short and harsh.

Glancing out of the window, she saw in the faded reflection her stricken and uncertain face.

What did the Duke of Alderworth make of her? Was he as irritated by her uncertainty as he was with her intemperance? She could sense he wanted her gone just as soon as he could get her there, a woman who had strayed unbidden into a place she had no reason to be in; a woman who did not play the games that he was so infamous for.

Why he should hoist himself into the carriage in the first place was a mystery. He looked like a man who would wish to be anywhere but opposite her in a small moving space.