From Duke till Dawn: 2018’s most scandalous Regency read

“London’s a proper banquet,” Martin explained. “Best action in the world is here.” He ran a hand down the front of his embroidered waistcoat, candlelight catching on the rings adorning his fingers. He could never resist a bit of flash. “And I’m nothing if not generous. I could’ve summoned any of a dozen swindlers to run this place with me. But I chose you.”

“I’m grateful for it,” she answered sincerely. Even lawful gaming hells made profit hand over fist. “But it’s not like you to run a legitimate business.”

“This will be my last scheme,” Martin insisted for the hundredth time. “I wanted to end my career on the level. That way, there’s no chance of being hauled in before the law. You’ll see,” he vowed. “Won’t take but a blink and we’ll be swimming in cash.” He eyed the safe meaningfully.

Cassandra couldn’t contain her restlessness anymore. She paced the room. “Just a month. You promised. We’ll run the hell for a month, and then decamp.”

“A month is the perfect amount of time,” Martin said smugly. “Keeping something around for a short while ensures the toffs will come running. They’ll throw blunt at us, knowing we won’t be here forever.”

“All our debts paid,” Cassandra added. “Including George Lacey’s investments.” Lacey was the sort of man wise people avoided, particularly when it came to money. She’d been set against making Lacey an investor, but Martin had said it would be fine.

“Paid in full,” Martin said with a munificent expression. “Even to Lacey. And there will be enough left over to set us up for the rest of our lives. Think of it, my lass.” He beamed. “No more schemes. No more swindles. Just high living for the rest of our days.”

How wonderful would that be? Ever since Cheltenham, she’d become so bloody tired. Of running from one place to another. Of using men’s better feelings against them. Of always being someone other than herself. She hadn’t wanted to keep scamming them, but she’d had no choice, no way of earning her coin. When Martin had written her, it had been like a sign from the heavens. She could earn money through legitimate means, and use that to set herself up for the rest of her life.

Cassandra had no idea what she would do if she didn’t need to deceive anyone anymore. But that open future didn’t frighten her. She’d find something, somewhere, to do. Maybe she’d open a hat shop in a coastal town. Or she’d go to Italy and try to learn how to paint. It didn’t matter. All that was important was that she’d be done with fleecing and scheming and pretending.

She stopped pacing and examined a framed print of a country estate. Oh, maybe, maybe, if she allowed herself to dream . . . Alex could be beside her as she ran that hat shop. Or he’d gaze over her shoulder as she painted a Roman ruin and kiss her neck, praising her work.

Such lovely dreams.

But that’s all they were. He was a duke. She was a swindler. What would come of their association? Nothing good, to be sure. She could lose everything she’d worked so hard for. If he ever found out the truth . . . She would be brought to trial. Transportation was the usual fate for those guilty of fraud. Months at sea with hard labor to follow.

She looked down at her hands. They were smooth and youthful. But they’d grow hard and cracked and old—just like the rest of her—if she was sent to Australia. If she survived the journey. If she could endure the punishing labor. Many didn’t.

Thank God Martin had trained her well. She’d stayed ahead of the law for a long time.

“Don’t think I’m not grateful,” she said. “I am. But I don’t see or hear from you in seven years. Seven years on my own. Out of the depths of the void, your letter arrives, telling me to come to London. You left me.”

Martin rolled his eyes. “Don’t say you’re still wounded over that. You survived. You even took a duke for five hundred pounds.” He grinned.

She bit back a sigh. Martin would never admit that he was in the wrong, even as the noose slipped over his neck. And she couldn’t stay angry with him. Not when he was the one who got her out of that wen of a Southwark flash house when she was a grimy girl picking pockets.

He showed her how good she could have it—mingling with toffs, drinking wine instead of gin, sleeping on feather mattresses instead of filthy hay. Showing her how to play the pretty widow instead of becoming just another tart walking the street.

Her loyalty would always be to Martin.

She did truly owe everything she had to him. She wouldn’t be an ingrate and turn her back on him. Besides, if Martin’s predictions for the gaming hell came true, she could leave behind her shadow life and finally step into the sun.

She wouldn’t have to cheat good men like Alex anymore.

And she’d never see Alex again. A rift of pain opened up within her at the thought, but she ignored it, as she always did.

“Time to get back to the floor.” She moved toward the door, then exited the office. Shouts and laughter and the smell of spilled wine greeted her in the corridor.

The evening had only just begun, and there was money to be gotten from the countless aristos cramming themselves into the gaming hell.

At least Alex wouldn’t be one of them. Her heart clutched at the thought of seeing him once more. She couldn’t be disinterested whenever she beheld his sternly handsome face, or when she looked into his dark eyes and saw concern and caring, real emotions. He was as honest as she was deceitful. Like all untrustworthy creatures, she longed for what she wasn’t.

And her body warmed, grew soft and supple from just the feel of his hand in hers. Two years ago, he’d been a creative and talented lover, leaving his brand upon her. Had anything changed? Would they be as good together as they had been so long ago?

Did he still care for her, the way she ached for him?

She could never find out.

Chapter 3 (#ulink_98570ae8-f337-5ad5-9cc9-1ff23e93e7b2)

Alex stared out his bedroom window, his hands braced on either side of the glass. The chamber overlooked the garden in the back, but at this late hour, there wasn’t anything to see. Night’s shadows thickly covered the hedges and trees. He strained to observe something, anything, to distract him—yet nothing emerged from the darkness.

Unlike his antecedents, Alex often suffered from insomnia. It was family lore that the first five Dukes of Greyland could sleep the undisturbed slumber of the just, even if someone decided to use cannons and trebuchets to rip down the walls of Greyland House—the dukedom’s seat in Suffolk. Alex’s own father slept through his predawn birth, despite the efforts of several large footmen trying to shout the old duke awake.

Alex’s mind could never be so easy. It often kept him awake late into the night, no matter how physically exhausted he might be. He frequently sat up until the small hours of the morning, thinking over how he might have spoken more eloquently in Parliament, or if he was taking the correct path by ordering a field flooded, or whether or not there was enough grain for his tenants.

Am I doing the right thing? The thought always stalked him, from his earliest years to now.

Tonight was no different. He’d left the gaming hell and, escorted by Ellingsworth and Langdon, gone immediately home. He dismissed his friends as soon as he’d arrived on his doorstep, then retreated to his study to pore over estate ledgers and review petitions. Anything to stop him from thinking of Cassandra. To keep away from her, even while he longed to claim her as his own.

He knew that was out of the question. Though Cassandra came from a noble background, his father would have looked askance at her impecunious circumstances. Alex had enough fortune for them both, “But,” his father had said more than once, “a bride must bring wealth and influence with her. Neither can be neglected when selecting a wife.”

Lady Emmeline had possessed both. She had been the perfect candidate for a wife.

When it came to potential duchesses, Cassandra had neither wealth nor influence. All the emotions he’d tried to bury after her desertion now roared to life. His chest actually ached. She could have given him what he’d feared would never be his—love. But he’d never have that now. He’d never have her.

When the clock chimed one, he’d sent his remaining staff to bed. Tried to do the same for himself, but to little avail. Lying in bed, staring up at the canopy, he wished for shackles to keep him bolted to his mattress.

Alex scowled now and pushed away from the window. He tugged on the bellpull, then threw on his clothing heedlessly. His legs urged action. As he dressed, his sleepy butler arrived, wearing a hastily donned robe.

“Your Grace?” Bowmore asked.

“Have my horse saddled,” Alex answered in a clipped tone.

Bowmore was too well trained to ask where Alex planned on going at this hour. “Which one, Your Grace?”

He wanted speed, wildness. “Sirocco.” Though the horse was a gelding, he’d never lost that spirit Alex needed right now.

The butler bowed and retreated silently. Alex finished dressing, shoving his feet into tall boots. He didn’t bother with a hat. Whoever saw him on the streets at this hour cared less for decorum than he did at the moment.

He pounded down the front stairs and out the door to the street, where a groom waited for him, Sirocco dancing on the end of the lead. Without a word, Alex mounted the horse and took up the reins. He’d give the groom an extra day off to compensate for being awakened. A guinea would go to Bowmore, too.

But he’d worry about his servants later. Now he needed movement. He urged Sirocco into a trot, then a canter, finally a gallop, tearing through London’s dark streets. Directions meant nothing. He had no purpose, his mind trying to empty itself of thoughts as his body moved in time with the horse.

But the thoughts wouldn’t stop their churning.

Hell, he wished Cassandra had come to him when her cousin had cheated her out of her widow’s portion. It would have been so very easy to bring in his own legal counsel and restore her lost fortune. If that had been unsuccessful, and she had refused any financial assistance, he could have readily found her employment with any of a dozen fine families looking for companions and chaperones for marriageable daughters or elderly aunts. He could have done something.

“Damn it,” he growled to himself. “Do not go back.”

Because he could do something now. He could get her out of that gaming hell, could try to recoup the money her cousin had cheated from her. Or gain her a position with a good aristocratic family. If he, the damned Duke of damned Greyland, gave her a reference, she would have no trouble finding honorable employment.