Chapter 1

CHAPTER1

The New Forest, Hampshire, England

The carriage rumbled along in the distance, but Xander tried to ignore it for the time being. He had a few more minutes alone before he had to greet his guests, and he was going to make the most of it.

He strode through the parkland of his estate, not wearing a cravat, his waistcoat loose and unbuttoned, and his frock coat hanging over his shoulders.

“Xander!” a voice called from the driveway.

His peace had lasted for so long.

Halting on the lawn, he turned to face the pebble driveway in front of the Tudor, red-brick house that was his home. The carriage had come to a halt, and his mother was climbing down, waving rather eagerly.

Behind her, his sister followed, though there was no great smile on her face. She was hissing something to their mother, pulling at her arm and trying to claw her back.

It ended up practically in a tussle, with his mother, Katherine, trying to walk into the garden, and Helena dragging her back again, clutching at her arm.

“What is going on?” Xander called as he walked toward them, interrupting their argument, which left Helena red-faced and flustered, her dark hair unusually wild around her face.

Katherine turned to him with a vast smile and shook off her daughter. “There you are.” She walked toward him and stood on her toes to kiss him on the cheek, then looped her arm through the crook of his elbow. “You really must come with us sometime to London.”

“Mama…” Helena had a warning tone. “He must know about it.”

“No, he does not have to.” Katherine kept her smile fixed in place, forced so much that her cheeks twitched.

“Well, there’s a natural smile,” Xander observed, earning a true one from his mother.

“Dearest, you really must try and tidy up your wardrobe a little.” She pulled at his waistcoat and marveled at the lack of a cravat, but Xander made no move to change his appearance. He didn’t bother these days to be excessively formal. He was comfortable as he was.

“Mother…” Helena’s tone was even more insistent this time. She strode toward Xander, glancing at the staff, who were now unpacking the various boxes that had been purchased in Covent Garden from the carriage. “He has to know.”

“He does not.”

“Oh, enough of this.” Helena stuffed a hand into her reticule, then pulled out a folded piece of paper.

“Is the sun not shining beautifully today?” Katherine declared and pulled on Xander’s arm, in danger of knocking him over in her sudden haste. “Let us walk together, Xander.”

“Ma! You cannot hide this.”

“What on earth is going on?” Xander asked again as he walked with his mother back across the lawn, with Helena racing to catch up, waving the crumpled piece of paper in her hands.

When he saw Helena’s red face and the paper, he no longer had a wish to know. “Ah, if there is more gossip about me in the scandal sheets, keep it for your own amusement and not mine.”

“Exactly,” Katherine declared comfortingly. “Will you come to London soon, Xander?”

“No, Mother.”

He did not elaborate, for they had discussed this many times. He stayed here, at Grant House in The New Forest these days. It was far from the incessant whispering of the ton, and that was the way he liked it.

“Wait…” Xander came to such a sudden stop that his greater strength made Katherine wobble on her feet.

Her dark hair, beginning to gray these days, quivered beneath her bonnet with the sudden movement. She turned her pale blue eyes up to him, silently begging him not to ask any more questions.

“Why would the scandal sheets be gossiping about me now? I have not been to London in a long time, and I certainly have not been attending any events of the ton.”

He looked at Helena, who stopped at their side, having just stepped over the new daffodil shoots through the ground. Her expression was one of utter sadness all of a sudden as she looked down at the paper in her hand.

Xander followed her gaze and realized it was no scandal sheet she was clutching, nor a small newspaper, but a much thicker magazine. She had folded it to fit it into her reticule and was now unfolding it, trying to flatten the creases.

“Please, do not do this, Helena,” Katherine begged.

“He has to know.”

“It will simply upset him.” Katherine released Xander’s arm and huffed loudly. “I am retiring to the house if you must tell him, but I want it noted I did not wish you to be upset by this Xander.”

“Mother…”

But nothing he could say stopped her now. She strode off toward the house, keeping her chin high and holding onto that dignified look she’d always had as a dowager duchess, though Xander knew his mother well enough to recognize the quivering of her shoulders.

She is holding back tears.

This quivering had started five years ago when scandal befell the family.

“Look,” Helena whispered and opened the magazine, thrusting it into his open palms to read. “Read this.”

Xander shifted his focus to the magazine to see she was directing his attention to a fictional story that was being released in installments in the magazine. This was the story’s first installment, and from the description, it could not be denied who the hero of the piece was based on.

The title at the top of the page read The Dark Duke, the very name that the scandal sheets had coined for him after the scandal that drove him away from the ton five years ago.

His eyes darted across the piece, where he quickly read of a lady entering a ballroom, only to meet this Dark Duke. The character had a different name, but the description was undoubtedly of him.

…icy blue eyes, so strong that they could pierce a man as well as any bullet from a pistol. His dark hair, grown much longer than most men wore it in the ton, curled and practically masked the sideburns and stubble on his chin.

He towered over others in the room, tall, with a loose coat that hung about him as a bat’s wings hung about its body. He was an omen in any room, the harbinger of something worse to come, and that icy stare was a warning for anyone not to get too close…

He stopped reading and gripped the magazine so tightly in his curled fist that Helena backed off the daffodil shoots again.

“I knew you wouldn’t like it.”

“What is this!?” he spluttered. “Someone is writing fiction about me now?”

“It doesn’t name you. He is different, but…”

“It’s undoubtedly me, is it not?”

“I know, I know!” Helena flung her hands in the air and then buried her face in her palms, turning in a tight circle. “It seems your name is becoming a thing of legend, Xander. They’re using your reputation to create tales of woe and danger now.”

Xander looked down at the article again. It couldn’t be denied he was hardly the romantic hero of this piece. He was a dangerous figure, and as he finished reading the installment, he could practically feel himself screaming at the heroine not to go near this version of the Dark Duke, but to run in the other direction.

“They’re making me into a mythical being,” he said in disgust and marched away toward the house, stuffing the magazine in the pocket of his coat.

“Xander, Xander, please,” Helena rambled, running after him, picking up the skirt of her gown to make her running easier. “Please, do not be mad.”

“How can I not be mad?” he asked wildly. “I leave the ton for five years. I have scarcely crossed paths with anyone since, and yet they do this to me. Am I not a man? Am I not human to them? No, clearly! I am just smoke and darkness.”

“Xander.” Helena caught his arm before he could go back into the house. “You have had far worse said about you in the scandal sheets. Surely fiction should not matter too much?”

“You do not get it.” He tore his arm out of hers and pushed through the side door into the house. He entered the parlor, where he caught sight of their mother. She was sitting, seemingly calmly, in an armchair at the side of the room, though her hands fidgeted relentlessly, showing her true mood. “This ruins my name further.”

“What harm is a little debauchery?” Helena shrugged. “Everyone knew you were a rake before you were betrothed, and I hardly think you have stopped your behavior since.”

“Helena!” Katherine said in outrage, but Helena simply shrugged and carried on as she walked into the room.

“It is true. With the scandal sheets talking about his rakish ways, and whatever else… may have happened five years ago.”

“Helena.” Xander’s voice was dark. He couldn’t bear it if she thought there was the slightest bit of truth in the rumors from five years ago.

I never hurt Tilly, never laid a hand on her.

“Of course, I do not believe it,” Helena declared with sudden passion and sincerity. “My point is that worse has been said about you in public. This may not be nice, but it is certainly something you can cope with, I am sure.”

“You do not understand. Back then… it was a scandal that fueled all that was said about me. But now, years have passed, I’ve barely shown my face, and I must still endure this sort of behavior?” he hissed and turned in a circle. “Whoever wrote this, I shall find them and make them pay.”

“Oh, yes. That will improve your image in Society, will it not?”

“Helena.” Katherine sighed loudly again, but Helena merely continued to shrug.

Deep down, Xander knew his sister was right, but he couldn’t get a handle on his fury. It consumed him, like a blue hot light from a fire, the part that always burned the hottest. He kept pacing, unable to calm himself as he thrust his hands into his hair.

“This is unbearable,” he said darkly after a minute or so.

“Well, you cannot attack whoever wrote this without causing further scandal. You want to stop it? You wish to prove the ton wrong?”

“What do you think?” he said with thick wryness, turning to face Helena sharply.

“Yes or no? No more sarcasm.” She held up a warning finger.

“Then yes,” he said firmly, taking note of how his baby sister had become a grown woman who wasn’t afraid to voice her opinion in the last few years.

The scandal had affected her, too, of course, but she had handled herself with grace. If he wasn’t at the other end of her… assertiveness, he would have been even prouder.

“Then do as our mother asks.” Helena’s voice was so calm that it startled him as much as her request.

“What?” he asked, his tone wild in surprise as he looked between the two of them.

“Return to the ton,” Helena continued calmly, her arms folded as she spoke with finality. It was as if the matter was already settled before he had even given his answer.

“What did you say?” he asked, his voice thick with a warning his sister ignored.

“Return to London, show your face, and show you have nothing to hide.”

Feeling as if he had been struck with a sudden icy wind, he balked and stood there, looking between his mother and sister.

“It might just work,” Katherine added after a minute.

Could I truly return to that cesspit of gossip?

* * *

“She is always dancing, is she not?” Violet’s friend, Grace, said with a sigh, her head turned toward the dance floor in the center of the ballroom. Her rather tanned skin, unusual for the ton, gleamed in the candlelight.

“Always,” Violet said in agreement, nodding as she looked at her sister.

Quite the center of attention as well as the ballroom, Celia was dancing with a great smile, her beautiful blue eyes flashing with a twinkle at the gentleman who danced with her.

Violet had already seen that Celia’s dance card was full for the night, but it didn’t stop other gentlemen from hanging at the side of the dance floor, hoping for a chance to dance with her.

“She is a marvel,” Eleanor said with a sigh of her own. “If your sister was not so clever or kind, I would find her very annoying, indeed,” she declared with wit, making the rest of them laugh as she drank her champagne with eagerness.

Tall, willowy, with dark brown hair and a vast number of freckles slightly masked by the new spectacles she wore, Eleanor spent most of her time reading and had earned the name bluestocking long ago when she had first debuted.

At her side, Diana hid her laughter behind her hand. As tall as Eleanor, lean and blonde, she seemed to occupy less space than Eleanor, for she did not hold herself with her chin so high.

“It’s a wonder Celia does not join our reading group sessions,” Violet said with wit, drawing smiles from her friends around her. “She would no doubt join in with vigor—unless, of course, any man walked by us. Then she would be scurrying after him like a cat after a mouse.”

Eleanor guffawed with laughter while Diana hid her smile behind her hand. Grace went to tap Violet’s arm playfully for her wit and nearly managed to drop her champagne glass, which was fortunately caught by Violet before any incident could occur.

“Speaking of which.” Eleanor took Diana’s arm and turned her around so the group could huddle together in the corner of the room, standing between candelabras bearing flickering candlelight, and the swathes of flowers that decked nearby tables. “Let us leave the matter of dancing for a minute and discuss what is truly important.”

“What is that?” Violet asked.

“Your story, of course!” Eleanor said with excitement.

“Shh,” Diana urged with a wave of her hand, blushing as she looked over their shoulders. “We do not want anyone to overhear.”

“Worry not,” Violet assured her. “Everyone here is concerned with their own business. Wallflowers attach themselves to walls for a reason. We are not noticed there.”

Her jest earned her more smiles.

The year before, Violet had begun to write a story that she sent off to a women’s magazine in order to be published. Now being released in installments, it was proving quite a success indeed, yet she had one problem…

“How is the story to end?” Grace said with sudden eagerness, practically bouncing on her toes. “Come, you can tell us.”

“I wish I knew.”

“I beg your pardon?” Eleanor looked over her champagne glass, peering through her spectacles. “You do not know?”

“No. I thought I knew, but the more I write, the more I do not know how this tale is going to end. Let us accept the truth of it, my heroine is foolhardy. That is part of her charm,” Violet said with a laugh, “and her draw to this character, the Dark Duke, is natural indeed, but I am not sure just how depraved to make his character.”

“Depraved?” Diana shuddered at the word. “You are not going for a romantic ending, then.”

“I do not see why I should.” Violet wrinkled her nose. “I have always enjoyed the gothic tales in the bookshops, those darker and more dramatic stories that keep one awake at night, checking behind the curtains and under the bed. I do not know whether to have my hero and heroine marry, to have him leave, or to have him kill her instead.”

“Kill her!” Diana repeated wildly as Eleanor laughed heartily at the idea.

In contrast, Grace this time did manage to drop her champagne glass. The contents spilled across the floor, but the base managed to land on the hem of Violet’s dress, which cushioned its fall. Grace hurried to pick it up again.

“You would write such a dark tale?” Grace asked in amazement, her eyes wide.

“Why not? It would certainly surprise the reader if that was the ending.”

“Surprise them, but perhaps not please them,” Eleanor said with a giggle. “Which ending are you leaning toward?”

“I do not know.” Violet shook her head. “I guess I am waiting for a moment of inspiration.”

It was a single moment that had inspired the story, after all—the meeting with the rumored Dark Duke in a bookshop in Covent Garden. She was waiting for another such moment with someone else, someone who could conjure the perfect ending to mind.

As she raised her champagne glass to her lips and took a sip, a footman at the entrance to the ballroom announced the arrival of more guests.

They all turned, a general air of quiet falling over the ballroom as the music for the last dance finished.

“Announcing the Duke of Barlow, along with his mother and sister, the Dowager Duchess of Barlow, and Lady Helena,” the footman announced.

It’s him!

Violet accidentally swallowed too much champagne in shock and managed to make her nose fizz with the bubbles.