Duke with a Debt

Wicked Dukes Society

Book 2

Stuart Gilden, the arrogant and cold Duke of Camden, is suffocating beneath a mountain of debt caused by his wastrel father and gambling brother. To make matters worse, he’s being blackmailed by a mysterious enemy who has threatened to destroy him. Enter Miss Rosamund Payne, London’s greatest heiress, who has the wealth Camden so desperately needs. There’s just one problem: she’s his scoundrel brother’s former fiancée.

For years, the unassuming Rosamund has been plagued by fortune hunters, but one hurt her more grievously than the rest. When that rogue’s brother comes to her with a shocking proposition, she’s cautiously intrigued. Soon, Rosamund finds herself exchanging venomous barbs and searing kisses with the insufferable duke, lured by the prospect of revenge and the undeniable heat smoldering between them.

With their marriage of convenience secured, Camden’s problems should be at an end. But in truth, they’ve just begun. Because his enemy has only grown bolder and more dangerous. And the once unwanted wife beneath his roof is proving a maddening temptation he can’t resist, no matter the cost.

Chapter One

The African grey parrot balanced calmly on its perch was glaring at him.

“Gormless shite,” the bird pronounced, flapping its wings as if to punctuate its words.

Stuart Gilden, Duke of Camden, glared back at the feathered creature who had just paid him insult, walking slowly toward it, hands clasped behind his back. He stopped before the parrot, cocking his head and holding its unique silvery stare.

“Do you know,” he said pleasantly, “I could wring your neck with one hand?”

“Landlubber,” the parrot squawked. “Pistols at dawn.”

His eyes narrowed. “Did you just challenge me to a duel?”

Incredulousness rose within him. This was indeed the strangest bird he had ever met. Intelligent, complex, and just a touch mad. Rather like its owner, whose presence he was awaiting.

“Megs want a biscuit,” the parrot told him.

“I haven’t a biscuit,” he said. “And to be perfectly candid, if I had one, I’m not sure I’d share it with you. You’ve been rather rude thus far, haven’t you?”

“Gormless shite,” the parrot said, extending its wings again.

“Megs, my love, I’ve told you about your language.”

The familiar, feminine voice had Stuart turning away from the feathered menace to find Miss Rosamund Payne gliding toward him. It had been some time since their paths had crossed, for their circles had only overlapped thanks to Wesley. But little had changed since he had seen her last.

Her hair was the same, indistinct shade of neither gold nor red, but an odd color all its own. Her eyes were sharp and dark in her pale face. Her chin was stubborn and pointed, her forehead high. She still had the mouth of a courtesan, the only overtly sensual feature she possessed and quite incongruous with her unassuming spinsterish air. Her figure was trim and not overly curvaceous as he preferred, her breasts small and hidden in her modest silk bodice, her height slightly taller than most ladies’ and yet still no match for his. No one could ever call Miss Rosamund Payne a great beauty.

Still, there was something compelling about her. He had always found her presence magnetic in a painfully unwanted way. She had been meant to be his sister, and it hadn’t been his place to notice her. Yet, notice her, he had.

But she scarcely seemed to notice Stuart now as she bustled past him to her infernal parrot.

“Do be a good parrot, and I’ll give you a pistachio,” she purred in a tone that would have been better suited to a lover than a feathered beast.

“Megs want pistache,” the African grey declared.

Stuart stepped to the side, granting Rosamund and her bustle more room, trying not to take note of her perfume, which also had not changed—a decadent blend of rose, violet, bergamot, and ambergris that was rich and alluring.

“Will Megs behave?” she asked the parrot, holding up a small pouch.

“Megs behave,” the bird chirped, then whistled.

Rosamund carefully removed one small oval nut and offered it to the parrot, who gleefully took the object in its beak. Stuart was distinctly aware that he was being ignored, and the novel sensation wasn’t a pleasant one.

Rosamund trailed an elegant finger over the bird’s head. “Good parrot, Megs.”

And then, at last, ever so slowly, she turned the full force of her attention upon him, her dark stare burning into his. “Good afternoon, Camden. I cannot think of a single reason you would have for paying a call upon me.”

No curtsy. Nary a smile. Not a Your Grace , and most definitely not a hint of welcome. Stuart wasn’t certain what he had expected.

“Rosamund,” he greeted in turn, offering a slight bow. “It is good to see you.”

She arched a brow. “Is it?”

Heat crept up his throat.

“Of course,” he fibbed.

She pursed her lips. “I suppose we should sit. Comfort is important when one is being lied to, I find.”

Her observation was sharper than any blade.

But he was at her mercy, and far more than she yet realized.

He inclined his head. “As you wish, madam.”

“I’ve called for a tray of tea as well,” she said coolly before swishing past him.

She moved to the seating area across the room and gingerly settled on a settee, smoothing her seafoam-green skirts. He followed, folding his taller frame into a narrow chair nearby, sparing her his proximity on her seat even as part of him was tempted to do otherwise. Belatedly, it occurred to him that her navy bodice bore the outline of gold scales as if she were a mermaid, the entire affair accented with seafoam ribbon on the sleeves and decolletage.

The fanciful dress, so incongruous with what he knew of her, took him by surprise.

“I must thank you for accepting my call,” he forced himself to say, though they were both more than aware that she had kept him waiting, in the presence of the insult-wielding parrot, for half an hour.

“It was unexpected.” She watched him, unsmiling, so very poised. “And not entirely pleasant, if I am honest.”

Her forthright nature was something he recalled well. But what disturbed him now was that he also remembered her tears, the accusation in her sharp, dark eyes. He remembered how shattered she had looked, like a hand mirror that had been dropped upon a stone hearth.

Stuart brushed aside the memory as he winced. “I’ll admit that I had harbored some hope that the intervening years might have rendered you more amenable to a tête-à-tête with me.”

She laughed then, the sound throaty and pleasant and full, before her levity faded, and she continued regarding him with her unnerving gaze. “I regret to report that they have not.”

God. She would not make this easy on him, then. Why had he supposed she would?

He gripped the arms of his chair. “I am sorry for that, Rosamund.”

“As am I,” she said, unsmiling. “Actually, I’m sorry for a great many things.”

“A great many things,” the parrot chimed in, apparently having finished with its pistachio.

Rosamund’s searing stare made his necktie feel more like a noose. He turned his attention to the African grey for a moment to find the bird was watching him as closely as its mistress was.

“Gormless shite,” the bird repeated, before issuing another whistle.

He clenched his jaw and snapped his attention back to Rosamund. “It would seem the bird has made his opinion of me quite clear.”

“ Her opinion,” Rosamund corrected. “Megs is a female parrot. She was also quite bonded to her former master, who was a sea captain, hence some of her more…colorful vocabulary.”

He was suddenly dying to know how an heiress dressed as a mermaid had acquired a sea captain’s foul-mouthed parrot, but the question would have to wait. He had far more pressing matters to attend at the moment, none of which were pleasant.

“I beg your pardon. I assumed the creature was male.”

“Naturally.” She gave him a pained smile that was more of a taunt than aught else, those full lips that would have been better served on a courtesan distracting him.

Her one-word response felt like an insult, and Stuart knew he ought to let the matter go, but he was as obstinate as she, and he couldn’t.

“Why do you say that?” he asked.

“Because it is very much like a man to assume that every creature in his path must also be male, in his mold,” she said.

“Your opinion of my sex is clearly poor.”

Again, her brow arched upward. “Can I be blamed?”

The past lay unspoken, a heavy burden. They stared at each other, two unsmiling enemies—Rosamund with her shrewd gaze and the airs of a queen and Stuart with his swallowed pride and a disgust for his scoundrel of a brother that surely rivaled hers.

“Of course not,” he relented. “What my brother did to you was unconscionable.”

Her smile was serene. “What he did made me stronger and wiser.”

She was utterly unflappable, and this was new. He did not remember such self-possession in her, the ability to flay a man with nothing more than her eyes and tongue. The line of buttons bisecting her bodice drew his attention as she inhaled, the urge to undo them, to muss her irritating perfection perversely rising from nowhere.

“I am relieved to hear it,” he forced out.

A tap at the door heralded the arrival of the tea tray. They were silent as a servant bustled in, laying the tray on the table separating them before excusing herself with a curtsy. The dishes of tea which had been laid out looked as if they were antiques, fashioned of fine porcelain lined with gold and decorated with enamel Libra scales on the cup and a water carrier on the saucer. He watched as she prepared his tea precisely as he had always liked it: a splash of milk first, followed by tea and two lumps of sugar.

She had remembered.

Her attention to detail felt somehow strangely intimate, particularly when their fingers brushed as she handed him his tea. The sweet bergamot of Earl Grey rose from the steaming cup.

“Thank you,” he said, deciding the fine porcelain he held was likely Meissen.

He wondered if Rosamund had purchased the cups and saucers herself or if they had belonged to her mother, whose eccentricities and affinity for collections had been rather notorious.

She finished preparing her own tea. “You are most welcome. To the tea if not at my home.”

The reminder that they were bitterest enemies was pointed. She would serve him tea and recall precisely how he liked it made, but she drew the line at false pleasantries.

“Megs want a tea cake,” the parrot called from across the room, reminding him of her presence.

Well, at least she hadn’t called him a gormless shite again.

Progress.

“You shall have one in a few minutes, darling,” Rosamund returned, her voice gentling as she responded to the bird.

And Stuart found himself suddenly, irritatingly envious of the feathered menace still glaring at him from her perch.

“Now then,” Rosamund said suddenly, returning the full, disconcerting force of her attention upon him. “I don’t imagine you came here for idle conversation or tea. What is it that brought you to me, Camden?”

His heart thumped hard. Here was his opportunity. And yet, the words felt thick and heavy and improperly formed. His tongue was stuck, his mouth dry. He, who had faced death and destruction and the hells of war, was terrified of four little words that, taken separately, were all rather inconsequential save one.

He could do this.

He had to do this.

The contents of the letter he had received yesterday was still burned upon his soul.

Stuart took a deep, steadying breath, holding Rosamund’s dark stare. “Will you marry me?”