The Duke’s Price

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Bargaining on WIP WEdnesday

Another AI image. It’s not terrible.

In this excerpt from The Duke’s Price, my wicked duke makes his offer–and tells the governess his price. (On preorder for release April 1st.)

Miss Henwood was leaving. Was Mort going to do it or wasn’t he? It was unlike him to vacillate. “Miss Henwood,” he said, just as she was about to step through the door into the tower behind him. “I have another proposition for you.”
“Yes?” Her voice was cautious. Wise woman! Beware wicked dukes bearing gifts.
“I have a yacht moored in Collioure, just across the border from Spain in France. I will escort you and the princess to Collioure, and then transport you to England.”
“You will?” The hope in her voice tugged at the dried-up shrivelled vestiges of his conscience. Ridiculous. He was a villain. A villain with some gentlemanly standards, but a villain, nonetheless. If he was going to betray his friend and go to the trouble of a no-doubt uncomfortable dash through the mountains and countryside, then someone had to pay.
“I have a price,” he said.
Miss Henwood did not flinch. “Which is?”
“We will travel as a family—husband, wife and daughter. Or, given she looks like neither of us, step daughter, perhaps.”
Miss Henwood took the few steps back to his side before commenting. “That seems sensible.”
“We shall travel as husband and wife in every way except the church blessing on the arrangement, which shall be temporary, Miss Henwood. Until we arrive in England.” By which time, no doubt, he would have tired of her, as he had of all others.
“I see.”
That was it. Neither yes nor no. Mort began laying out plans as if she had already agreed. It was a strategy that had worked for him time out of mind, both in amorous and business negotiations. “If you can get her excellency out of the town, it is probably best if I appear to leave Las Estrellas. For Barcelona, perhaps. That way, they will be looking for a woman and girl, not a family. Tell me where to meet you and when, and I shall be waiting.”
Her frown deepened as she thought.
“I shall get the pair of you away safely, Miss Henwood, and protect you with all my considerable resources until you are in the hands of your friend and her family,” he said. It was a vow, he realized. Was he in his dotage or suffering a second childhood? He was becoming a knight errant!
“You will protect me from everyone except you,” said Miss Henwood, the sarcasm heavy in her voice.
She was being coy. He was far too experienced not to know she found him attractive, and surely she must be in her mid-thirties. She could not be so innocent that she regarded the perfectly natural acts he had in mind as dangerous.
However, it was not in his interests to point out her duplicity
“I shall tell Carlos in the morning that I have a mind to move on,” he said. “Once my people and I are out of Las Estrellas, I’ll send most of them along the road to Barcelona. From there, they can cross the border for Collioure. I’ll write a note for them to deliver to my yacht. My valet and I will circle the country and wait for you—where?”
“Camino del Lobo,” she said. “Bella and I will be there in… six days. Or I will send a messenger.”
He had her! Did she realise she had just agreed to be his lover? To test her, he said, “A kiss. To seal our bargain and as a deposit in your account.”
Miss Henwood sighed, very much as if he was an annoying child who must be tolerated. However, unless the shadows mislead him, she also blushed.
He said nothing, but waited for her to initiate their embrace. She waited, too. Was she playing games with him? That was not what he expected of her, but then women were unaccountable creatures, in many ways.
After a long moment, she said, “Well? Are you going to kiss me?”
“No,” Mort said. “I don’t owe you a kiss. You owe me one. I am waiting for you to kiss me.”
Instead of pouting, frowning, arguing, or laughing at his nonsense and giving him a kiss, Miss Henwood looked worried, but leaned forward and gave him a peck which would have fallen on his cheek if he had not turned his face to allow their lips to meet.
It lasted less than a second, and was over. Miss Henwood looked relieved. “I will say good night then, your grace.”
“Death,” he insisted, “and the toll required was a lover’s kiss. That was not a lover’s kiss, Miss Henwood.”
He almost laughed at her huff of annoyance. “De-Ath, then,” she said, the stubborn woman. “What am I supposed to know of lover’s kisses, De-Ath? I have been a governess since I was seventeen.”
Her irritation had him adjusting his assumptions about her experience. “You have never shared a kiss? No randy fathers or adult sons? No sweethearts on your day off?”
She frowned again. His guess that she was thinking about what to tell him was confirmed when she said. “I suppose, if we are to be intimate, you ought to know. I have never shared a lover’s kiss. I have had lust’s kisses forced on me, but have managed to avoid anything more than rude slobbering and even ruder fumbling.”
Her disgust dripped from the words. Mort was suddenly very pleased that he had demanded she take the lead in this first encounter. She would soften to him all the sooner if he behaved differently to those who had offended her.
What fools those slobberers and fumblers were! He had never forced an unwilling woman, though he had seduced more than a few into willingness. As he would Miss Henwood.

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Tea with the emissary of a reformed villain

Her Grace served the Earl of Chirbury a cup of tea, made just the way he liked it, and passed him the plate containing several of the little cakes that Fourniers of London had sent over just that morning.

“Well, Rede,” she said, as she began pouring her own tea, “You are an emissary, you said in your note asking to visit. Not that you need to ask, dear boy. You are my nephew, and I am always at home to you. If I am at home, so it was as well you asked, for I am particularly busy these days. I have taken over from Cherry on several of her charities while she and Haverford are in Europe visiting Jonathan.”

She took a sip of her tea, and returned to the point. “An emissary for whom?”

“Do you remember Ruth Henwood, Aunt Eleanor?” Rede asked, and answered himself. “Of course you do. You remember everyone.”

“Miss Henwood was governess to your wife and her sisters at the time of their father’s death, and stayed with them when they fled the wicked uncle,” Eleanor replied. “She is somewhere in Spain, is she not? Did I not hear that she was governess to a princess somewhere in that region? What does Ruth Henwood need from me, my dear? I am, of course, willing to help her. Such a dear girl, and so much help to your darling wife.”

“Yes, Anne loves her as dearly as a sister, and indeed, I also think of her that way, though she insisted on seeking a position rather than staying with us at Longford. Her pupil is the Crown Princess of a small principality in the Pyrenees. And she is Miss Henwood no longer. Indeed, it is her husband who needs the favour, and not from you so much as from Haverford. They want to come home to live in England, you see, and he needs to know that your son will tolerate his return.”

“I do not understand, Rede,” said Aunt Eleanor. “Who has Ruth married, and how has that man offended my son?”

“You will understand the second when you know the first,” Rede said. “Ruth is now the Duchess of Richport.”

Readers of my books will, I hope, recognise Richport’s name. He is first mentioned in Revealed in Mist, as the holder of wild parties. And his name comes up again whenever I need a dissolute and amoral aristocrat. In To Tame a Wild Rake, he goes too far. He has offended too many powerful people, and is in disfavour with the Prince Regent as a result. He is about to go into exile to avoid consequences and decides to take Haverford’s beloved along as his wife. Without her consent. The kidnap is foiled, of course. But Richport is concerned that Haverford still bears a grudge.

The story of how the Duke of Richport came to marry a governess was one of the 43 plots I had worked out in a notebook before I wrote my first novel. It is The Duke’s Price, and will be published early in April.