Forever her duke, p.1
Forever Her Duke, page 1
FOREVER HER DUKE
DUKES MOST WANTED
BOOK ONE
SCARLETT SCOTT
Forever Her Duke
Dukes Most Wanted Book One
All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2023 by Scarlett Scott
Published by Happily Ever After Books, LLC
Edited by Grace Bradley and Lisa Hollett, Silently Correcting Your Grammar
Cover Design by Wicked Smart Designs
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.
The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be scanned, uploaded, or distributed via the Internet or any other means, electronic or print, without the publisher’s permission. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is punishable by law.
This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events, or locales, is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.
For more information, contact author Scarlett Scott.
https://scarlettscottauthor.com
CONTENTS
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
Epilogue
Don’t miss Scarlett’s other romances!
About the Author
For Steve ~ Thank you for always supporting me, for making me laugh with your ridiculousness, and for being my everything.
CHAPTER 1
The carriage ambling up the winding approach of Sherborne Manor was too early to be carrying Lady Clementine Hammond. Vivi was in the gardens when she first spied it, directing the head gardener on the final plans for the life-size chessboard she wished to be constructed on the north lawn.
“The squares must be painted, not powdered, Shipley,” she said, frowning from beneath the brim of her straw hat as she watched the mysterious carriage’s slow progression. “I want it to resemble a chessboard as closely as you can possibly manage, but we also need to consider the necessity of keeping our lady guests’ hems from being soiled.”
Soiled hems simply would not do at a house party being held by the Duchess of Bradford. She had a reputation to uphold, after all. Vivi went to extraordinary lengths to make certain her guests left her every fête with a smile and a sigh over how wonderfully delightful even the smallest detail had been.
The food was always the finest to be served, the guests in attendance were hand-chosen by Vivi and certain to be witty and amusing, and every facet, from the flowers to the entertainments to the beating of the carpets, was carefully and strategically plotted and overseen by Vivi herself.
“Of course, Your Grace,” Shipley said agreeably. “I wouldn’t dream of powdering the lawn.”
“I’m relieved to hear it,” she said distractedly, for the carriage was drawing nearer, and from her vantage point in the gardens, she recognized the familiar crest on the door. What in heaven’s name was her mother-in-law doing, arriving at Sherborne Manor when Vivi was about to host the grandest house party she had held yet? “Please also see the roses are cut and delivered to the main house for placement the morning my guests first begin arriving. I want the blossoms to be fresh, so be sure to select tightly furled buds rather than flowers in full bloom. The mess of dropping petals is so very disagreeable.”
“I’ll be certain to send only the best buds, Your Grace,” the head gardener reassured her.
She had no reason to require the reassurance. She knew Shipley was an incredibly competent fellow, for she had hired him herself in her husband’s extended absence, the gardens having been left overgrown and in abysmal condition. Over the past year, and under her guidance, the gardens had been painstakingly restored to their former glory. But this house party was important to Vivi. Incredibly important, and she wanted everything to be perfect.
Which was why she needed to address the arrival of that blasted carriage.
“Thank you, Shipley,” she said, offering him a smile. “I am a confident hostess with you at the helm of the Sherborne Manor gardens. Now, I must attend to some other matters.”
The head gardener bowed. “Of course, Your Grace.”
Vivi’s feet were moving, carrying her through the gardens toward the main house. She had spent the morning in boots and a serviceable day gown with her old straw hat—secretly her favorite attire. The boots were broken in and the gown worn and soft from overuse, her hat ten years out of style and quite a monstrosity, its massive brim perfect for keeping the sun from making freckles appear on her forehead and nose.
Ordinarily, she wouldn’t greet the august lady in such an undignified state. But the carriage was gliding toward the front portico now, out of sight, and she needed to stop the dowager before she became too settled and inform her mother-in-law that a house party was about to begin. The dowager detested social gatherings.
Heavens, the dowager detested people. Vivi would never know how the woman could have produced a son as gregarious and magnetic and smoothly charming as Court. Although she was a woman grown of six-and-twenty, the dowager never failed to make Vivi feel as if she were a girl in short skirts, in need of remonstration and the iron rule of a stern governess.
What would she do if her mother-in-law insisted on remaining as a guest? They would have a veritable thundercloud looming over the entire affair, creating a pall not even the fine delicacies her chef cooked up, nor the endless entertainments she had devised, would lift.
It would be an unmitigated disaster.
Vivi’s feet flew faster. She slipped in a side door and hastened to the entry hall, praying she wouldn’t be too late.
A flurry of Your Graces reached her as the tattered hem of her old gray gown swished about her boots and her soles clicked on the polished parquet. She stopped to find the housekeeper, Mrs. Porritt, approaching with a chatelaine jingling at her waist. On her heels was the chambermaid who had been directed to oversee the cleaning of all the bedchambers in the west wing.
Suppressing a sigh, Vivi turned her attention toward the capable housekeeper first, in deference to her position. “Yes, Mrs. Porritt?”
“Shall I have the duke’s bedchamber aired out and freshened, Your Grace?” the housekeeper asked.
The duke? Her husband, the duke? The man she hadn’t seen in a year? The man whom she had loved since she’d been but a girl meeting her older brother Percy’s school chum for the first time?
If only.
But no, she had abandoned the hope that the man she had married would ever return to her. Court had left the morning after their wedding day, bidding her farewell when she had only just returned from a morning ride, and as far as she knew, he had yet to come back to England. As the tales of his adventures—complete with scandal and dubious associations with other women—had reached her, she had been forced to concede it was entirely possible the man she had loved had been nothing but a chimera. He was as lost to her now as Percy was.
“Of course not, Mrs. Porritt,” she declined, tamping down the accompanying sadness at the thought of her beloved brother. “His Grace is not in residence here at Sherborne Manor, as you know. Such an effort won’t be necessary.”
“But, Your Grace—” the staid housekeeper protested in an unusual show of persistence.
“Not now, if you please,” Vivi interrupted, turning toward the chambermaid, ever cognizant of the arriving carriage and the need to address it and its occupant both. “Lumley, what do you require?”
“The green bedchamber appears to have water damage, Your Grace,” the maid said, her gaze darting between Vivi and the housekeeper. “A spring storm brought down one of the old trees in the garden, and the branches must have punctured the roof. One of the girls has been to the attic, she has, and reports a fair bit of damage above, as well as the plaster below in the guest room.”
“Not the green chamber,” she muttered, for it was where she had been intent upon placing the meddling Marchioness of Featherstone. “How bad is it, Lumley?”
“I’m sure I couldn’t say the extent for myself, Your Grace,” Lumley said, lowering her head with humility. “Perhaps Mrs. Porritt or Mr. Alderson might know better than I myself would.”
A new sound reached Vivi as she grappled with the unwanted news concerning the green chamber—it was the centuries’ old front door swinging open and then closing again.
The dowager had already arrived.
She was inside the house.
Perish the thought.
Vivi took a deep breath, then exhaled, steeling herself for a confrontation with her mother-in-law, who had never failed to make her disapproval of—and eternal disappointment in—Vivi well-known. For she believed Vivi was responsible for Court’s defection. And in a sense, she was not wrong. However, what Vivi had never swallowed her pride enough to reveal to the dowager was that she would have given anything to keep her husband at her side. How she had needed him in those early days, Percy’s death still so fresh, his absence in her life a wound that still had yet to heal. And how Court’s leaving had torn her apart, as mercilessly as any blade.<
“I will return in a moment, Mrs. Porritt, Lumley,” she said.
Leaving the servants in her wake, Vivi reached the end of the hall leading to the great entry.
And promptly stopped, shock rendering her motionless.
For there, in the marble-floored entry to Sherborne Manor, with its trickling Poseidon fountain hidden in an alcove gurgling merrily away and its hideous spoils of previous Dukes of Bradford mounted all over the walls in dubious array, stood not the dowager Duchess of Bradford as Vivi had feared.
But rather, a far more perplexing creature: a man who was vexingly tall and broad of shoulder, long-legged and lean-hipped and undeniably dangerous-looking. His dark hair was nearly long enough to brush his shoulders, a well-trimmed beard shadowing his jaw. She had a vague impression of sharp cheekbones above the beard and startling green-blue eyes.
Disturbingly familiar eyes.
She stopped, the world spinning about her.
And then the unexpected arrival spoke. “Hullo, Vivi.”
That voice.
She would recognize it anywhere, for it was the voice of Harcourt Sherborne, the Duke of Bradford, the man she had loved ever since she had been fourteen years old and he had been a lofty eighteen. He had given her a grin and his most courtly bow, and he had stolen her heart forever.
Her husband.
CHAPTER 2
His wife.
Court stood in the hall of his own country seat for the first time in too damned long, feeling like a bloody intruder as he stared at the woman before him.
He suddenly felt every one of his thirty years. Much had altered during his absence. And it was more than apparent to him now as he stared at her, awe combining with a curious sensation in his chest, that the tearful bride he had left behind had turned into a formidable woman whilst he had been gone.
A duchess in her own right, even if she was wearing a bedraggled gray gown and a floppy-brimmed straw hat. Perversely, the sight of her with such a shocking lack of polish—the opposite of every sharp-tongued letter he had received from his mother in his travels—filled him with a new sense of appreciation.
A very male and primitive one. But that, too, filled him with old guilt. For this was Vivi. His best friend’s younger sister, the one whom he had promised he would never touch. The girl who had swum in the lake in her shift and caught frogs in her bare hands and fished with him and Percy when they’d been lads up from Eaton. She was also the wild hoyden he’d married in the darkest depths of his grief over Percy’s death.
When last he’d seen her, her nose had been dappled with freckles, her boots had been caked in mud, and she’d just returned from riding her favorite horse, Visigoth, like the wind.
“Vivi,” he repeated, the pet name Percy had always used for her.
A pet name he had been granted permission to use for her as well in those careless days.
He and Vivi had been friends, great friends, once. And then one reckless night had quite thoroughly ruined that. Or perhaps, to be more accurate, he had quite thoroughly ruined that. He had missed her every moment he had been gone, but he hadn’t realized just how much until he stood here on the great hall marble, busts of Dukes of Bradford past watching on with censorious stares.
Her shoulders went back, spine stiffening, and she snatched the hat from her head, leaving the small golden curls framing her face in disarray. The color of her hair—bright and pale as wheat in the sun—had not altered, even if the way she looked at him had.
“What are you doing here, Bradford?” she demanded curtly, thoroughly dashing the foolish musings. “I thought you were in Paris.”
She had not called him Court, he noted, but Bradford, the appellation and mantle he loathed, more suited to his odious sire than to himself. Moreover, he had last been in Paris months ago. Most recently, he had been in New York City. He wondered if she bothered to read the letters he sent her.
It shouldn’t matter either way; he was the one who had gone away. And yet, he couldn’t shake the acute stab of disappointment knifing through him at the notion that all his efforts to connect with her from afar might have been thoroughly ignored. But then, he should have expected as much, for he had never received a response from her. The silence, like the time and the distance, had simply lagged on, until he’d reached the end of his self-imposed exile, and the strain from being away from her had proven too much.
He summoned a forced smile. “I was under the impression this was my home. Am I not welcome here?”
Court cursed himself for the touch of bitterness leaching into the question. There was something damned disagreeable in the air here at Sherborne Manor. It was as if all the agony and despair of centuries’ worth of miserable Sherborne ancestors had seeped into the stone foundation, remaining like wraiths to haunt the unfortunates who still traversed these halls.
He hated it here. He should not have come. Would not have done, were it not where his wife was. His wife. Christ, but it felt strange and yet right to call her that. To look upon her and think something so ridiculously possessive as mine. He hated himself for the awareness of her careening through him. For the thoughts of her beauty, for the unwanted longing.
What would Percy say if he could see his oldest chum now? Court shuddered to think it.
Vivi was frowning at him as if he were the source of her everlasting disappointment. She had not moved any nearer, making no effort to close the distance between them. Nor to greet him in a wifely manner.
Not even a friendly one.
His wife’s blue eyes were fashioned of ice.
“Of course you are welcome,” she said, her tone of voice suggesting entirely the opposite.
Court was vaguely aware of some female domestics hovering in the distance, one of whom appeared to be matronly and elegantly dressed enough to be the housekeeper his wife had hired according to his steward, a set of keys hanging at her waist. They had an audience. He ought to keep his thoughts to himself.
And yet, his stupid mouth was moving. Moving the same way his legs were, carrying him closer to the wife he had missed.
“You are not pleased to see me,” he observed, stopping before her.
The freckles were gone, he realized, mourning their charming path which had once reminded him of a constellation all her own lightly dancing over the delicate bridge of her nose. He wondered what else had changed. What she had lost besides the tiny coppery specks that had once entranced him.
“You are unexpected, Your Grace,” she said with cold civility.
Decidedly not the spirited hoyden he remembered. She had a smear of dirt on her cheekbone, and he longed to wipe it from her pale skin. Perhaps there was a hint of her former self lingering within, the intrepid girl whose bravery and determination had never ceased to amaze him.
“Formality, Vivi?” he asked, an odd, hurt sensation lingering, rather like an old wound newly opened.
Like Percy’s death.
Like returning to England and being forced to face the fact that his friend was no longer here. How easy it had been by comparison, to travel and lie to himself that Percy was merely at home in England. That he hadn’t drowned when the Marguerite had been swallowed by the sea.
Vivi’s full lips tightened incrementally, and Court couldn’t help but notice how full and lush they were, the pale, delicate pink of a summer rose in bloom. Lips he remembered beneath his all too well.
“How am I meant to greet a stranger, if not with formality?” she asked, her voice dripping with scorn.
She was angry with him.
He might have known; indeed, he had brought it on himself, keeping his distance for so long.
“I’m hardly a stranger,” he reminded her. “You’ve known me since you were a girl who adored splashing in puddles and climbing trees.”
She remained unsmiling and aloof, staring at him with an inscrutable gaze that may as well have been a blade for the way it cut at him. “I realized some time ago that I never knew you, Bradford. Now, if you please, tell me what you are doing here and when you plan to leave again. I have dozens of guests about to descend upon me in two weeks’ time, and your unexpected arrival only adds to the strain of the household preparations.”
