The Duke she Desires Read online

  The Duke she Desires

  A Steamy Regency Romance

  Violet Hamers

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Epilogue

  Also by Violet Hamers

  About the Author

  About the book

  Raised as the daughter of a physician, Lavinia Bell has gained knowledge that defies society's rules for women. When forced to take her father's place during an emergency, she meets the most annoying yet devilishly handsome man she has ever seen…

  Peter Cadden, Duke of Kingwood, comes back from war wounded, both physically and mentally. No one can stand his insufferable attitude or put him in his place...expect for the beautiful daughter of his physician.

  But when the Duke's health takes an unexplainable turn for the worse, Lavinia realizes there is a traitor hiding among them that wants Peter dead.

  Because breaking some contracts is a dangerous thing. And Peter just might have signed this one in his own blood...

  Prologue

  Siege of Detroit, 1812

  “Get ready, men!” Major Brock shouted, turning back toward Peter Cadden and the other men standing near the cannon. Brock’s voice was always deeper in Peter’s dreams than in real life. The man was taller, too, even more imposing than he was in real life. Peter wasn’t sure why his mind altered the Major—perhaps to make the previous events more dramatic?

  The battle needs no more drama, he always thought upon waking. It was enough of a tragedy on its own.

  In his dreamscape, Peter watched the scene from above, providing a view of himself. It had shocked him, the first time he’d dreamed in this way. It felt like he was helpless as he watched the tragedy unfold, unable to stop it. But after six weeks of this dream night after night, he had grown used to his role as the silent narrator.

  He watched himself now as he turned to look at the faces of the men with whom he had spent so much of the last few months. In the dream, their faces were blurred, but he knew them by their hair color, their stature, the way they held themselves up to their fullest height.

  There was Benny, short and white-blonde, the youngest of them but also the strongest. And Quenton, tall and lanky and always doubting himself, even though he was one of the Royal Artillery’s best shooters. Aloysius was broad and silent, though Peter knew the man always opened up when he had a few shots of whiskey in him.

  There were twelve of them in all. Peter knew some better than others, but he would trust all of them with his life, and did so often, in every battle they entered. This was their third. There had been the Capture of Fort McKinley, and the Boston riots before that. Though he had only been a member of the Royal Artillery going on eight months, Peter already knew that these were to be his happiest, most fulfilling moments in life.

  Whatever came afterward, he would never feel more useful to his country than he did when manning the cannon in the midst of a battle to ensure that America did not try to take over more land.

  Peter and his team had often spoke of the inherent arrogance that seemed to spread like a disease among Americans. It was something that bonded them, this hatred for the newly independent nation. And it had encouraged them, as well, providing them energy and strength to keep fighting the Yanks when it would have been so much easier to just give up and go home.

  Quenton muttered a curse about the Americans now, and as Peter watched himself laugh in the dream, he heard himself laugh outside it as well, the laugh breaking through the barrier between sleeping life and waking life, his chuckles ringing out in the silence of his chambers.

  He had never been one to make noises in his sleep before the war, but now he talked, laughed, and cried out, often all in one night. It was the only time he was ever truly loud. It was the only time he was actually able to express how he felt. And he always heard it, that echo that transcended the boundaries of consciousness. It never failed to shock him, but it also never woke him up.

  God, but I wish it would, he often thought. If he woke, then he could skip the next part of his dream, the part where it all went wrong.

  Quenton and the rest of the men continued to man the cannon as they derided their opponents. Shots were fired in their direction, and the officers of the artillery responded in kind as quickly as they could. The shots were mostly unnoticed, the team too occupied with priming the cannon, fetching the gunpowder and providing the rounds. They all worked so seamlessly. Peter often thought it was like a dance, each man playing his part with grace and accuracy.

  His gaze fell to his own legs, as it often did, marvelling at their ability to straighten and bend. All those little movements he had taken for granted before nearly brought him to tears now.

  Peter saw his legs flinch with readiness as Brock looked back and shouted for them to ready the cannon for firing again. The team moved into position, focused entirely on the cannon. Their sense of touch was finely tuned to the piece of machinery, making up for the darkness and cacophony of sound that rendered them nearly blind and deaf for most of the battle.

  He hadn’t needed to see or hear what was going on; it was his hands that did the work, and they knew the cannon so well, knew every divot in the rough iron chamber like the contours of a lover’s body. Even now, out of battle for weeks and far away from it all, he swore he could still feel the heat of the metal on his hands sometimes, when he grew lost in daydreams of another reality, another life.

  In this reality, in his dream, he watched himself waiting for Brock’s signal, his body tensed with anticipation.

  “Fire!”

  Excitement pumping through his veins, he saw himself light the match and touch it to the vent, setting off the chain of reactions that resulted in the “boom” of a cannon releasing its iron ball straight into the fray, where it would hopefully hit at least a few Americans, lessening their numbers and making them that much easier to beat.

  He saw the smile form on his face, knowing that at that moment he was thinking of victory, practically tasting it as he watched the gunners clean the piece and repack it with gunpowder. Peter remembered how confident Brock had been that morning when they began the bombardment. The rear of Fort Detroit was weak, and with the Shawnee Indians’ help, Brock was hopeful that they would have the Americans surrendering within days.

  They did surrender, but Peter wasn’t there to see it happen. He never got to celebrate. Not in real life, nor in his dreams.

  “Peter! Prepare to fire!” Brock said, and Peter once again saw himself ready the match.

  He turned to look at Brock, but Peter saw his dream self falter. Something had hit his left leg, a small little pellet of a bullet no larger than the top half of his thumb. Surely something so small could not send him to his knees, but it did. He marvelled at that every time, the way a bullet hundreds of times smaller than himself could make him genuflect.

  Peter watched himself fall, hitting his head on the cannon’s base as he collapsed onto the ground. His team, his men, those who he had called friends, those he had looked up to and those who had looked up to him, didn’t notice for a moment. They were trained on the cannon ball as it leaped from its home into the air.

  But when they saw him, they rushed to his aid.

  It was then that Peter usually woke up, torn away from the past and thrown rudely back into the present. This same process had occurred every night for the last month and a half. He fell
, his men lifted him up and carried him away, and then his eyes opened and returned to his new life, one that was so very altered.

  And every time he woke, his eyes struggling to adjust to the darkness, his mind struggling to adjust to the numbness of the lower half of his body, only one thought ran through his head as his eyes adjusted to the darkness all around him.

  I wish they had left me for dead.

  Chapter One

  “Good morning, my lord, and a fine one it is indeed. The sun is shining, the birds are out, and the tallest oak tree in the garden has just begun to change its leaves. Why don’t I take you out there later, to admire it?” Stevens asked as he pushed open the door to Peter’s room with his shoulder.

  In his hands was a tray piled high with delicacies of every sort. There was bread so fresh that Peter could still smell the faint scent of baked yeast coming off of it. There was cocoa, tea, shortbread biscuits, and teacakes with butter already spread on them and slowly melting into the studs of dried fruit that littered the cakes on all sides.

  On another plate sat three rashers of bacon, two sausages, and a pile of coddled eggs big enough to feed a family of five growing boys with ravenous appetites.

  It was, in short, a feast meant for a king. And Peter didn’t want to eat a single bite of it.

  Stevens, having been his butler for some years now, sensed this, and dropped his affable expression in favor of the stern one for which he was so well known, and which kept the rest of the household staff in line.

  “You must eat, Your Grace. You must. For your recovery, and, if I may be so bold, for Cook’s sanity. She has cried three days in a row now, Your Grace. You of all people know how hard she takes it when people refuse her food. If you do not eat all of this, I will be forced to, and you know how I feel about teacakes.”

  “Indeed, I do,” Peter conceded, pulling himself up by the strength of his arms until he was sitting more comfortably against his pillows. “However, disregarding your prejudices toward the north of this country and their baked goods, this is a veritable feast. King Henry VIII would no doubt have wept at the sight of it, gout be damned. So please, Stevens. I beg of you. Leave me the toast and take the rest of it away. Give it to one of the footmen if you must. They’re growing lads. No doubt they’ll celebrate the sight of so many edible delights.”

  Peter was doing his best to say all this in as cheerful a tone as possible, but he was already weary, and he had only been up an hour and a half. Of course, most of that time had been spent staring at the intricate carvings on his ceiling and wishing for death, but despondency did take it out of a gentleman, particularly a gentleman in his condition.

  “But Your Grace,” Stevens started, advancing with the tray, as though the scent of all the food might change Peter’s mind.

  But Peter knew what the butler was up to. He’d known Stevens for most of his life.

  “Stop,” he ordered, all friendliness gone from his tone as he glared at the tall, middle-aged man before him.

  To his credit, Stevens did so, stopping so abruptly that the teacup balanced on the tray wobbled, sloshing liquid over the rim and filling the saucer below it with pale brown liquid.

  “Leave me the toast, and give the rest of the food to the footmen. I do not care where or when they eat it. I just want it eaten. I will not have Cook crying, but nor will I stuff myself with a feast of such proportions when I have no need or desire to,” he said.

  Or when I do not deserve it, he added privately to himself.

  “As you wish, Your Grace,” Stevens said with a disapproving frown. “I will send James in to help you get dressed in fifteen minutes. I assume that should give you sufficient time for your…toast eating,” he said, spitting out the last two words like toast eating was the vilest of activities, meant only for the scoundrels and scroungers of the world, rather than something that nearly ever British person partook in each morning.

  “Thank you, Stevens. You may go now,” Peter stated, no longer looking at Stevens as the butler placed the plate of toast in front of him on the wine-red coverlet. Peter was about to tell him to leave the jam on the tray, that he needed only butter, but Stevens slammed the small bowl of jam onto the table next to Peter’s bed before he had the chance even to open his mouth. He decided that, upon reflection, he would be better off just dealing with the presence of the jam.

  It was clear that Stevens was at his wit’s end, and Peter did not want to push him further.

  When the door to his chambers was shut and he was once again alone, Peter exhaled a deep, frustrated breath and began buttering his toast, attacking the piece of bread with such violent motions that he actually pierced through it, scraping his knife across the porcelain plate, and making a truly horrible sound.

  He took only the smallest spoon of the jam from the bowl at his side. The toast barely changed color when he was done spreading it. The spread jam was a depressing pale pink when compared to the vibrant magenta of the jam in its bowl.

  Peter frowned, wishing he could spread more, wishing he could empty the whole of the bowl of jam onto his plate and spoon the saccharinely sweet stuff directly into his mouth.

  But he could not. He knew if he allowed himself this indulgence, more would follow. Suddenly, all those cravings for rich foods that he managed to hold at bay each day would come out with a force he would not be able to detain. And he must detain them.

  Rich foods were for hale and hearty gentlemen who went about their days attending to business, strolling about their fields and generally being useful. Whereas Peter spent nearly every hour of his day supine, dependent on others to move him where he wanted, to attend to his needs. He didn’t deserve such delicacies. He would not allow himself them.

  It was nothing short of humiliating to live like this. People had often remarked that he had enough energy for three gentlemen, able to accomplish in an afternoon what most did in two days. Now he was an invalid. It was a transformation Peter could not stomach, no matter how much time he had to adapt to it.

  The injuries to his leg had shrunk his world to a very small thing, indeed. He relied on people for nearly everything. He could not walk on his own, and had to be carried anywhere he wanted to go. He could not even dress himself, unable to even touch the lame appendages that now served as his lower half. They mocked him, looking so normal from the outside. His legs looked exactly as they had always looked, bar a slight loss in muscle tone due to his inactivity. But they did not move, not unless someone moved them. And Peter couldn’t bear it himself. He hated them. They had ruined his life.

  With every passing day, Peter could feel shame descending upon the centuries-old dukedom that he had inherited from his now-deceased father. The Dukes of Kingwood had always been the strongest of fellows, winning every argument they entered into in Parliament, protecting their tenants and workers, providing for their families.

  Peter had promised his father on the old gentleman’s deathbed that he would continue the legacy, but he was unable to do so now. An invalid could not be a duke. A coward could not be a duke.

  And I am both of those, Peter reminded himself daily.

  Of course, he couldn’t step down. It was impossible. No, instead, he was destined to a life of letting his solicitor manage the affairs he ought to be handling, while he convalesced in bed and let all those idiotic physicians from all over England and the continent take a look at him and pronounce his condition “very strange, very strange indeed.”

  Though only Peter’s right leg had received the gunshot wound to the calf muscle, both his legs were immobile. It was what some physicians termed “a nervous condition,” which made Peter think more of blubbering old biddies in Bedlam than dukes of the ton, though the physicians assured him the condition could afflict anyone.

  “The wounds are in your mind, Your Grace. The calf muscle was torn, indeed, but it has recovered remarkably. You ought to have retained full movement of the leg, and indeed, tests show this to be the case. But since you still cannot move
either appendage, it must be in the mind, and the cure for such an illness is far more complicated than that of a gunshot wound.”

  These were the words of the last physician, who Peter had thrown out on his backside seconds after he finished his speech.

  Peter knew it wasn’t in his mind. His legs didn’t work. He had tried to move them many times in the last few weeks, but they never budged from their straight, slack position. His knees could be bent if he was in a sitting position, but it was a painful process that took both Peter and Stevens to complete.

  No, his legs didn’t work. It was his legs, not his mind. His mind, whether fortunate or not, was still entirely in working order. The injury hadn’t affected it at all.

  After an hour’s rumination on this and other similarly melancholic subjects, Peter was thoroughly depressed. James had come to dress him, and Peter was stationed in an armchair by the fire, reading The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire, a book so thoroughly boring that Peter often fantasized about using it as fuel for the fire rather than as reading material. He was bored out of his skull, and considering ringing for tea just to have something to do, when he heard the familiar, high-pitched voice of Lady Magdalene Stewart. And suddenly, the Roman Empire seemed rather appealing.

  This feeling grew even more pronounced when Stevens threw open the door to the drawing room a mere minute later and declared that Peter’s betrothed had arrived, and they would both be adjourning to the garden to see the oak tree Stevens had so raved about.

  “I do not wish to go,” Peter grumbled as Stevens lifted him capably into his arms and began to walk toward the morning room, a side door of which opened onto the expansive garden of the North London estate.