A Rogue For the Dutiful Duchess
The Duchess has a problem – and Pascoe’s a man who makes problems disappear… But what if her feelings for him become the problem? Who will help her then?
Sophie is widowed, a young duchess with a baby son to protect. The late Duke’s mistress threatens the family’s reputation, something she will fight to maintain, so she reluctantly agrees to employ the mysterious Nicholas Pascoe. A rogue and an adventurer, she is told, but an efficient one for all that.
But Pascoe awakens feelings Sophie believed she would never experience and he finds himself breaking every rule he has set himself and falling for this brave, virtuous young duchess.
She has so much to lose, he has so much to hide – is there any hope for them?
Excerpt
1st October 1816. Vine Mount House, Norfolk
Her Grace Sophia Louisa Andrea Delavigne, Duchess of St Edmunds, sat on the great carved chair that her dignity required, took a deep breath and glanced down to make certain that her hands lay still and betrayed nothing but calm assurance. The sight of the lilac silk of her gown gave her a thrill of pleasure which made her lose focus for a moment.
Colour. After a year of solid black it would take more than a week before she stopped feeling delight at wearing colours again, even the muted shades of half-mourning. Little Freddie seemed to be finding it even more difficult to adjust to the sight of her but then, he was only a year old and had never seen his mother wearing anything but gowns that resembled a crow’s plumage.
Sophie felt a little pang when she remembered his face that morning seven days ago as he reached out to touch her skirts and then raised wondering eyes to her face. ‘Mama?’
‘Yes, it really is Mama,’ she had told him. ‘Look what a pretty gown I have for your first birthday.’ He had smiled up at her, the blue eyes, so like his father’s, wide as he surveyed her. Then he had given that naughty chuckle, the one he had most definitely not inherited from the late Duke.
‘Ahem.’
She looked up to see her Steward, Duncan Grant, waiting just inside the door.
‘Mr Grant.’
‘Your Grace,’ said her childhood friend with all the formality he used towards her in public. ‘He has arrived.’
‘Then please show him in.’
She told herself that she must have confidence, that anyone who Duncan trusted and recommended would deal, somehow, with the situation.
‘He makes problems go away,’ Duncan had said when she had gone to him six days ago, white and shaking with shock and anger at what she had discovered. ‘He is exceedingly good at that.’
That had been reassuring, but then Duncan had always been stolidly comforting, from the time when he, the Vicar’s eight-year-old son, had fished Lady Sophia Masterton, aged five, out of the village duck pond and managed to smuggle her back into the castle without anyone, not even Nanny, seeing her.
If he had found her someone with experience of making problems go away, then the man was no doubt a fatherly ex-Bow Street Runner, or perhaps a large, efficient, military man. Duncan had known him in the army, after all, although he had been strangely reluctant to go into details.
‘Nicholas Pascoe, Your Grace.’
So, a Cornishman, Sophie thought and then ceased to think for one disconcerting moment as a figure stepped past Duncan and into the room.
This was not a middle-aged Runner with a red face and a paunch. Nor was this a broad-shouldered, sabre-wielding, army officer. This man did not make her think of sabres at all.
Tall, dark, elegant and very dangerous. A human rapier stood before her, eyes steady on her face. Why then did she have the impression that he could have described the room and everything in it in perfect detail, herself included?
But she was the Duchess of St Edmunds. She had been trained for twenty years to fill a position of the highest rank, and had lived it for four, and that experience had taught her never to betray her true feelings. Perhaps that had been the most important lesson of them all.
‘Mr Pascoe. Good morning.’
‘Good morning, Duchess. And it is simply Pascoe.’
An acquaintance of rank might address her as “Duchess” rather than “your Grace”. By doing so, this… this adventurer was implying he was not just a gentleman but an aristocrat. It was part of her duty to know the contents of the Peerage inside out and to have a good grasp of that even fatter volume, the Landed Gentry. There were quite a few Pascoes in both, but this one she could not place.
Sophie allowed faint surprise and displeasure to show. He looked steadily back, quite unabashed. A Duchess does not blush when a man looks at her, and this one’s gaze held nothing lascivious, nothing even mildly impertinent, yet she could feel the warmth gathering in her cheeks. Somehow, she knew he was very aware of her as a woman. She was certainly exceedingly aware of him as a man.
‘Please, take a seat. Pascoe.’
‘I prefer to stand, ma’am.’
Curse him. Which meant she had to continue looking at his long-legged, slim-hipped, black-clad elegance in its entirety. His shoulders were quite adequately broad, she realised; it was simply that he felt no need to swagger and display them.
‘I believe that Mr Grant has explained to you that I have a situation that needs resolution,’ she began.
‘He told me that you have a problem, Duchess. My occupation is the removal of problems.’
‘And how do you achieve that?’
‘The means need not worry you, Duchess. Discreetly and permanently, I can assure you.’
