Julie Anne Long - What I Did For a Duke: Pennyroyal Green Series

What I Did for a Duke

Julie Anne Long

Dedication

For Steve Axelrod, brilliant agent and friendits been an honor, pleasure, and adventure so far, and I have a hunch it will continue to be.

Contents

F rom a deucedly awkward crouch between a birdbath and a shrubbery in the back garden of a Sussex manor house, Ian Eversea watched the silhouette of a woman pass tantalizingly once... twice... Hallelujah! Three times!before the upper story window.

The window went black. The lamp had been doused.

A signal and a confirmation.

He launched to a stand. His knees cracked like gunshots. He froze. Yet he was alone but for a sky full of stars; naught a soul would witness his furtive journey to the tree.

The road to this treeand to the last three nights of coyly escalating sensual games in her bedroombegan during a conversation at a ball in honor of Abigails engagement to the Duke of Falconbridge one week earlier. At this very house.

Introductions were made; attraction was instant; conversation was brief, every word of it a veritable pearl of innuendo in a lengthening strand of indiscretion. From the beginning, for Ian, all of it was excellent, excellent : her lush burnished beauty, the veneer of innocence over a delightful if startling moral recklessness, all of that wrapped in one particularly titillating danger: she was engaged to Alexander Moncrieffe, the Duke of Falconbridge, whod allegedly poisoned his first wife a decade earlier (naught had ever been proven , of course, nor had any formal accusation ever been made, but the ton knew better than to let such delicious gossip die). Hed fought more than one duel. So they said. He was a cold, elegant, staggeringly wealthy man. He gambled, both at cards and with investments, and he never, ever lost. One trifled with him at ones peril.

Or so gossip had it.

Before drifting away, Lady Abigail had tapped Ian lightly on the arm with her fan and laconically added there was an oak tree right outside her bedchamber window.

He knew the tree. Hed seen it as theyd arrived for the ball through the opportunistic eyes of the typical Eversea male: it leaned conspiratorially against the red brick of the house; its trunk was solid and there were low sturdy branches a grown man could easily scale without damaging essential parts of his anatomy. But its most compelling feature was the branch that stretched yearninglyone might ( he might) even say insistentlytoward a particular window.

And hed wondered whod slept in that room.

It was no cause for wonderment for either Ian or Lady Abigail that they were in such accord.

Perhaps Ill see you after midnight tomorrow.

There had never been a perhaps about it.

For three nights hed made this journey, from the crouch by the fountain to her bed. For three nights hed progressed from a kiss to getting her nearly undressed. Tonight shed promised to be entirely unwrapped when he slid into the bed, and urged him to be, too.

So his heart was thumping hard when he jumped up to get a grip on a lower branch, shinned up the trunk to the one that led to her window and swung up. Shed left the window open an inch or two. He curled his fingers beneath and slid it up gingerly, as too eagerly grabbing at the weathering frame the night before was how hed come by his splinter. He hooked both legs over the sill, then ducked to slide his long body through. The drop into her bedroom was short; a thick Savonnerie carpet swirled in lights and darks muffled his landing.

He tore off his clothes with the urgency of a man fighting off fire ants.

He propped a hand on a table near the window, yanked off his boots, and lined them up side by side on the carpet. His fingers flew over buttons as he rid himself of his coat and shirt and trousers; he wadded all of them together and stacked them next to the bed.

Oh, God. And it was all very good, from the crouch to the splinter to the tree. Every sound, every sensation, amplified his desire and was now familiar and erotic and all of a piece, all part of the act itself: The rustle of the sheets as he lifted them to slide into the bed next to her, the first sweet shock of their smooth coolness on his skin, the ghost of lavender scent they released, the first skim of his fingers over the warm skin of the woman waiting in bed, herself little more than a shadow made of fragrant and silky flesh in which he would soon bury himself as shed promised, her sigh of welcome, the unmistakable gut-chilling metallic click of a pistol being cocked

Holy Mother of!

Perhaps not that.

That was new.

Ian and Abigail scrambled away from each other and sat bolt upright in the bed. Heart thudding against his breastbone, Ian fumbled futilely for his pistolhe was nude and his pistol was in his boot. He surreptitiously slid one bare foot out of the bed and laid it flat on the floor, preparing to launch as appropriateout the window or at the wielder of the pistol. His eyes frantically raked the dark.

Oh, you wont want to move another hair.

The voice was low, dark, and almost offhandedly, lightheartedly menacing.

Mother of God. It was like the night itself had spoken.

Ian was not a coward. But all the little hairs on the back of his neck and arms went erect when one of the shadows detached itself from the corner chair in which it had been slumping and grew taller and taller... and began to drift toward them.

Not a spectre. A man, of course. Dressed strategically in dark clothing. The better to hide, to corner, to trap.

Abigails breathing was audible, tattered by terror.

The man moved toward the bed with the languid loose-limbed purpose of a stalking leopard. Errant moonlight allowed in through the window glanced off the barrel of his pistol. And off something else, something metal, in his other hand.... A lamp.

He settled it gently, precisely down on the small table next to the window, and then took what seemed like an insufferable amount of time to light it, but then fear did rather play havoc with ones sense of time. The flame shuddered fitfully and at last took hold. And at last a mans face flickered in and out of light and shadow. It was a bit like watching Lucifer sitting at a campfire.

Moncrieffe.

Ians voice was hoarse with shock. Unfortunately, Abigail gasped the word at the same time, lending the flavor of a bad pantomime to the whole thing.

It all would have been quite funny had this been someone elses grave, grave dilemma.

The Duke of Falconbridge pondered them. He was already unusually tall, and the lamplight threw an even taller shadow of him against the wall. Two spectral dukes hovering over the bed, and both of them had pistols.

Ian couldnt decide whether to fix his eyes upon Moncrieffes face or the weapon. One was aimed precisely at the center of Ians chest, which was covered now in a cold film of sweat. Both were identically gleaming, impassive, and deadly.

He had no doubts about whether Moncrieffe was capable of shooting. His reputation rather preceded him.

Eversea. The duke nodded in an ironic parody of a social greeting.

It contained nothing of surprise. As though he had expected him.

Had in fact, stalked him, watched him, and lain in wait... God... for how many nights?

How did y-you... ? Ian stammered.

Perhaps this wasnt the time to ask questions, but he truly was curious.

His hands were perspiring now, too.

As I never sleep before midnight, Eversea, and Im a guest here, I saw your horse tethered in the road for three nights now. Honestly, knowing you as I do, it wasnt difficult to draw conclusions. I set the horse free, by the way.

Christ! He loved that horse.