Her Duke of Secrets Read online

  Her Duke of Secrets

  By

  Christi Caldwell

  Her Duke of Secrets

  Copyright © 2018 by Christi Caldwell

  EPUB Edition

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without written permission.

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it or borrow it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of the author.

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  Other Titles by Christi Caldwell

  Heart of a Duke

  In Need of a Duke—Prequel Novella

  For Love of the Duke

  More than a Duke

  The Love of a Rogue

  Loved by a Duke

  To Love a Lord

  The Heart of a Scoundrel

  To Wed His Christmas Lady

  To Trust a Rogue

  The Lure of a Rake

  To Woo a Widow

  To Redeem a Rake

  One Winter with a Baron

  To Enchant a Wicked Duke

  Beguiled by a Baron

  To Tempt a Scoundrel

  The Heart of a Scandal

  In Need of a Knight—Prequel Novella

  Schooling the Duke

  Lords of Honor

  Seduced by a Lady’s Heart

  Captivated by a Lady’s Charm

  Rescued by a Lady’s Love

  Tempted by a Lady’s Smile

  Scandalous Seasons

  Forever Betrothed, Never the Bride

  Never Courted, Suddenly Wed

  Always Proper, Suddenly Scandalous

  Always a Rogue, Forever Her Love

  A Marquess for Christmas

  Once a Wallflower, at Last His Love

  Sinful Brides

  The Rogue’s Wager

  The Scoundrel’s Honor

  The Lady’s Guard

  The Heiress’s Deception

  The Wicked Wallflowers

  The Hellion

  The Vixen

  The Governess

  The Bluestocking

  The Theodosia Sword

  Only For His Lady

  Only For Her Honor

  Only For Their Love

  Danby

  A Season of Hope

  Winning a Lady’s Heart

  The Brethren

  The Spy Who Seduced Her

  The Lady Who Loved Him

  Brethren of the Lords

  My Lady of Deception

  A Regency Duet

  Her Duke of Secrets

  Memoir: Non-Fiction

  Uninterrupted Joy

  Dedication

  For Doug—You are my other half. My best friend. My hero.

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Other Titles by Christi Caldwell

  Dedication

  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

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Other Books by Christi Caldwell

  Biography

  Chapter 1

  Bladon

  The Cotswolds, England

  1806

  Rap-pause-rap-pause. Rap-rap.

  Heart hammering, Miss Elsie Allenby went motionless in the straw rocker in which she’d been moments away from dozing off.

  It was the knock.

  With careful, measured movements, she set the book on her lap on the side table.

  There hadn’t been a late-night caller in five years. Four years and two hundred and sixty-six days, if one wished to be truly precise. There hadn’t been a reason for it. Elsie’s father, the only reason for a caller, had been gone that many years, and with his death had also come an absence of those visitors.

  As such, that staccato, timed knock, signaling their presence, held her frozen at the hearth.

  Then it went silent, ushering in a familiar, safer quiet. The crack and hiss of the hearth, the only sound, amplified in its eeriness, was lent an even more sinister aura by the shadows that flickered and danced on the cracked plaster walls.

  Mayhap she’d merely imagined it. Mayhap being shut away from the world, on the edge of civilization, one eventually lost one’s sanity and dissolved into a place of past histories and old memories.

  Bear, the enormous slumbering dog at her side, pushed to his feet, his nails scraping the floor deafeningly loud in the otherwise still of the rooms.

  Her gaze trained on that scarred wood panel built and hung by her late father’s hands. Yes, mayhap she’d merely imagined it. A dearth of human contact and the late-night quiet invariably played tricks upon the mind.

  Except…

  Her gaze flickered to the loyal dog, crouched in a battle-ready position.

  Nay, there could be no other accounting for the aging dog’s response.

  Bracing her palms on the arm of her chair, she slowly pushed herself to her feet.

  The straw reeds creaked in damning proof of her presence, and Elsie forced herself upright, hurriedly completing the movement, until she stood.

  Bear angled his enormous head up.

  She ruffled the coarse fur between his ears, until his eyes grew heavy once more, and he sank back down onto the floor. Collecting her wrapper from the back of her chair, she shrugged into the fraying garment, belting it at the waist.

  All the while, she kept her gaze trained on the front door.

  Mindful of the loose plank boards, Elsie picked her way across the room, skirting furniture until she reached the shelving built into the wall. She briefly removed her attention from the door and, stretching up on her tiptoes, fished around the top shelf.

  Her fingers collided with cold metal, and she drew the weapon from its place, finding some assurance with the weight of the pistol in her grip.

  And a memory trickled in.

  “I am not going to shoot someone, Papa.”

  “But you may need to, poppet. If it is your life or theirs, I will always choose your life. And I expect the same of you.”

  The scissoring of pain ripped her back from the oldest of memories, and she forcibly thrust those distracting thoughts of her father—and the time before—into the furthest chambers of her mind.

  “Focus,” she mouthed, winding a careful path to the door. Pressing herself tight against the wall, she held
her gun aloft in one hand and with the other grasped the rusty handle.

  One, two, three…

  Elsie pushed the door open a crack, slipped outside and… stopped.

  A grayish wryneck paused in midpeck of the chipped wooden window frame. The creature angled its head back and forth, contemplating her with its small, unblinking black eyes.

  Some of the tension left her, escaping her lips on a soft, breathless laugh that stirred a faint puff of white in the cool spring night. “You’re a peculiar fellow, aren’t you?” she murmured, her voice echoing quietly around the gardened landscape. The tall hedges and bushes and sea of flowers long-ago planted allowed the modest ivy-covered cottage to blend in with the Bladon landscape as easily as any shrub or bright splash of greenery. “What are you doing at this hour?” Elsie lowered her arm back to her side, glancing down at Bear, who’d joined her on the slate steps. “We do have a visitor,” she explained, motioning to the wryneck. “He is too proud to join the other wrynecks on the ground. Not that there is anything wrong with being different,” she rushed to assure the motionless bird.

  Different was a state she could well identify with. Both the solitary state and the oddness that set one apart. Kept away from the whole of the world, rarely leaving their small patch of land, she and her father had only ever been met with curious stares and suspicious looks when they were required to go into the village. Feeling a kindred connection to that painfully still bird, she took a step closer.

  Bear growled and crouched in a fighting stance once more.

  The wryneck took flight, raining down feathers in its haste to flee.

  “You scared him,” she chided, snapping her fingers once.

  Bear whined, nudging his head against her skirts, but then ultimately followed her command. He sank to his haunches, staring up at her with enormous, sad brown eyes.

  “It is fine,” she pardoned, giving his head another affectionate pat. “You are a loyal pup.”

  More than ten years old, the creature had been beaten and branded on his belly by bullying village boys before he was rescued by Elsie’s father. Eventually, the scarred and scared pup who’d hissed and snapped at everyone had become an affectionate, loving member of the small Allenby family. He’d also been the only company she’d known these nearly five years.

  Midnight quiet reigned once more, punctured only by the occasional chitter of a cricket or the sporadic song of the frogs. Elsie did a sweep of the grounds. The full moon’s glow bathed the earth in a soft light, illuminating the gardens.

  Reflexively, she drew her pistol close, and the gooseflesh rose on her arms. Do not be silly. Papa hadn’t raised her to cower at shadows. And she’d been alone long enough that the nighttime shouldn’t scare her.

  But everything dark comes at night… death and dying and—

  “Come,” she urged, snapping twice, and Bear popped up. “Such loyalty certainly deserves a treat,” she murmured, needing to hear her voice in the quiet.

  With Bear trotting at her heels, Elsie reentered the cottage. She closed the door and, this time, put the clever locks built along the whole front panel by her late father into their proper places.

  No good could come from being careless. No good ever had come from it.

  She stumbled over her task and squeezed her eyes briefly closed.

  Except, the door to the past had been opened by the faint raps, and when those darkest moments slipped in, they would remain…

  “I’ll return, Elsie. These men require my help.”

  The muscles of her throat constricted, and she struggled to swallow past the lump. That long-ago lesson had proved the peril in… helping. It had been an inherent part of who her father was and who he’d always been. And that inherent goodness had seen him dead.

  Bear growled.

  Elsie opened her eyes. “Hush,” she chided gently, struggling with the last, rusted lock. It fell into place with a satisfying click. She turned and made to return to her chair, abandoning all hope of rest this night. “There is nothing to be…” Her words trailed off.

  A scream climbed up her throat as a wave of fear surged through her.

  Turning back, she lunged for the door. Panic exploded in her chest as she scrabbled with the clever chains.

  Trapped. Locked in by her own hand.

  “Tell your dog to stand down, Miss Allenby.”

  Miss Allenby.

  Spoken not in the country tones of the village people, but the cultured ones belonging to men of rank and privilege. Men of rank and privilege never had a need for her. They once had a use for her father, but they’d done just that—used him and then abandoned him. And despite his many sacrifices, he’d paid with his life, left defenseless by noble gentlemen.

  A sob tore from her as she wrenched at the handle.

  Terror buzzed loudly in her ears, squeezing out logical thought, and tunneling the voices of those strangers and Bear’s barking.

  “I said, tell your dog to stand down.” The quiet command cut across the din in Elsie’s ears.

  They destroyed your father. Do not cower before them. That reminder of the wrongs done by these men and her hatred for them and all they represented replaced the fear, and she fed the anger. Found courage in it.

  She whipped around and alternated the barrel of her pistol on first one of the darkly clad strangers and then the other. “Or what?” she rasped, hating the faintly breathy quality of those two words. “You’ll kill me?” She directed that at the taller of the gentlemen. “My dog?” Elsie tossed at the other. She’d expect anything from these ruthless sorts. They were capable of anything.

  The two men exchanged looks. One was tall and dark, the other several inches shorter and fair-haired. They might as well have been Lucifer and the Lord himself teamed up to wreak havoc on her already uncertain existence.

  And despite her earlier resolve, dread scraped along her spine and made a mockery of her attempts at bravery. Her gun shook in her hands, and she steadied her hold on it.

  Crouched low, all the hair on his back standing upright, Bear barked all the harder. The remarkably stoic composure of the men who’d invaded her household revealed not even a crack at the vicious fangs bared on them. Neither brandished weapons.

  And yet…

  She swallowed hard. The men were in possession of two very different frames—one stocky, the other taller. Both, however, were muscularly defined and exuded strength. They could end her, or Bear, with a skill that wouldn’t leave a mark and would see them both forgotten, until Mrs. Dalright brought Elsie’s next delivery of wildflowers.

  Elsie snapped her fingers twice, and Bear instantly sat beside her.

  He continued growling. The menacing rumble left both gentlemen unfazed.

  “What do you want?” she asked quietly, keeping her pistol trained between the men, where she could easily get a shot off at the first who made a rush for her.

  “If you would?” the taller stranger drawled, waving a lazy hand at her weapon. “I hardly find that the best way to begin a discussion is at gunpoint.”

  “And I hardly consider one’s home being invaded in the dead of night conducive either. Therefore, I should say we are even on that score,” she snapped.

  Did she imagine the ghost of a smile that hovered on the other gentleman’s lips? Elsie fixed her gun at the center of his chest. “Do you find this amusing?”

  “On the contrary.”

  He shot a hand out, relieving her of her pistol before she could even draw breath into her lungs. So quick, so silent. The usually alert Bear registered nothing but the faint whoosh of air.

  “There,” he said crisply. “Now, why don’t we sit?”

  She’d be a fool to believe his was anything but a command, a directive issued in her own household by men who’d slipped inside and laid claim to this entire midnight exchange.

  She jutted her chin up. “If you feel so inclined, then you may sit, but I am—”

  Creeeeak. The stocky stranger dragged a chair over
and thrust it at her. “Sit.” His flinty-eyed stare bore through her, hard, unforgiving… and impatient.

  Bear picked his head up.

  Over the years, Elsie had overseen the care of animals brought to her by her father or local villagers for healing. Usually injured by snares, or abandoned by negligent providers, those creatures had all found a place in the Allenby household. Betrayal and suffering had forever scarred the souls of those animals, wounds that went far deeper than the physical ones she’d tended. Those who were impatient around them, made quick steps, or let fear drive them, invariably found themselves bitten or backed into a corner by the wounded creature.

  Elsie hesitated, staking some claim of control of the situation, and then she sat.

  With matched movements better suited to men in the King’s army, they collected the matching sack-back Windsor chairs from the hearth and set them close on either side of her.

  Palms dampening, Elsie gripped the arms of her chair.

  “Do not,” the scarred gentleman warned as she made to stand.

  “I’d be a fool to believe you don’t intend to prevent me from moving,” she spat. The unpredicted element of this meeting erased a necessary element of fear.

  “We’ve no intention of harming you,” the dark gentleman said in cool tones that conveyed a pragmatism and no attempt at easing her anxiety. “Dismiss your dog.”

  “If you don’t intend to harm me, then it should hardly matter whether or not he sits and takes part in our discussion.”

  The gentleman sat back and contemplated her.

  As the moments ticked by on the mantel clock, she struggled to remain absolutely still, to not be the next to speak or capitulate any more than she already had.

  The members of the Home Office who’d visited this cottage sensed weakness and used it to their advantage. As long as one served them, no questions asked, they were content to leave one be.

  Her heart twisted. Or that had been the case. That was what she’d believed, until they’d repaid her father’s efforts on their behalf, with… nothing.

  “My name is Lord Edward Helling. This”—he gestured to the gentleman at his side—“is Mr. Cedric Bennett.”