It's In The Duke's Kiss: A Danby Regency Novella Read online

  It’s in the Duke’s Kiss

  A Danby Regency Novella

  by

  Julie Johnstone

  It’s in the Duke’s Kiss

  Copyright © 2016 by Julie Johnstone

  Kindle Edition

  Cover Design by Teresa Spreckelmeyer

  Editing by Double Vision Editorial

  Proofreading by Judicious Revisions

  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.

  License Notes

  This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be resold 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 it was not purchased for your use only, please return to Amazon.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of the author.

  For more information: [email protected]

  www.juliejohnstoneauthor.com

  Dedication

  This book is for all the people still searching for love. Sometimes, love is right before your eyes, and all you need to do is open them.

  Smooches,

  Julie

  Table of Contents

  TITLE PAGE

  COPYRIGHT PAGE

  DEDICATION

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  JUST RELEASED

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  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  One

  The Year of Our Lord 1817

  The Serpentine, Hyde Park – Mayfair

  Everyone knew older siblings loved to be bossy. Well, everyone saddled with an officious older sibling understood this. And Lady Emmaline Radcliffe had concluded long ago that her older sister Mary got exceptional pleasure from slipping into the role of nagging mother whenever their own was not present. Mary always did so with a zealous sort of enthusiasm. Just like today.

  “Coming here to capture Lord Nathaniel’s attention wasn’t a good idea, Emmaline,” Mary grumbled.

  Annoyance danced down Emma’s spine, but she’d not show it. She purposely stared past her sister and once more swept her gaze across the frozen ice of the Serpentine in search of Nathaniel Layton. He was supposed to be here. At least according to her lady’s maid, who had been told as much by her cousin, a scullery maid in Nathaniel’s home.

  “Emmaline, did you hear me?” Mary snapped, her voice as piercing as her razor-sharp green gaze.

  Emma clenched her teeth to fight the desire to set her sister straight on how impossible it would be not to hear her. Mary had the uncanny ability to make herself heard without raising her voice, exactly the way their mother did. They both had a certain distinctly peevish tone that caused one’s ears to tingle with awareness. Emma flicked her gaze to her sister and forced a smile. If she showed Mary she was disgruntled, Mary would leave, and if Mary left, Emma would have to leave as well, since Mother would have a fit if she dared skate unchaperoned.

  “I heard you,” Emma replied, careful to keep her voice as nonchalant as she could. She tapped her skates against the ice while tugging her cap down tighter over her head, hoping the wool would muffle her sister’s voice.

  Mary set her hands on her hips and looked down her nose at Emma, just precisely as Mother always did before announcing how Emma was failing to behave as a proper lady should. It was extraordinary and disheartening how alike Mother and Mary were and how very unlike them Emma was.

  Mary narrowed her eyes. “I cannot remember why I let you persuade me to come with you on this escapade, but my senses have returned. We should leave.”

  The wool experiment was a failure, and Emma stifled an irritated sigh, her pulse ticking up with worry. She couldn’t leave! Not until she saw Nathaniel. She’d long ago taken to thinking of him by his Christian name rather than Lord Nathaniel. One did not think of one’s future husband so formally. Ever since Emma had been eight and he’d wiped away her tears at the home of his great-uncle, the Duke of Danby, after a fight she’d had with her mother, Emma had thought of him secretly as Nathaniel. He’d run his bare thumb over her cheek and told her she was perfect. She thought him perfect, as well. Her adoration of him only grew from that day forward.

  Fate, or rather his constantly being away at school, had made it impossible to spend much time with him to discern if he truly was as perfect for her as she thought. However, she had seen him here and there over the years, and twice more, he’d done things that made her heart squeeze and her breath catch. Like the time he’d threatened to plant a facer on Peter Strattford when the boy had teased her, or when Nathaniel had asked her to dance at his great-uncle’s ball last year, when no one else had asked her. She remembered the strength of his arms around her and the warm spice of his breath against her cheek.

  And now that Mother was insisting Emma secure a marriage proposal this Season and Nathaniel was home from school at last, Emma simply had to get to know him. She needed to find out whether he was truly the man for her or not.

  “Emmaline, are you ignoring me?” Mary demanded.

  She looked Mary in the eye. “No, I thought I saw Lord Nathaniel. Please, give me a few more minutes. I shall endeavor not to embarrass you.”

  Mary’s stern gaze softened. “If you’d only try to act more like a proper lady.”

  “I do try,” Emma replied distractedly as she glanced back toward the ice. “It’s not as easy as you make it seem.”

  Mary snorted. “I’d hardly call last week’s race in Hyde Park you attempting to behave as a proper lady.”

  Emma stared down at the ice and half expected to see it thawing with the heat of her rising temper. Mary simply didn’t understand. Emma was different. She didn’t like all the things she was supposed to like, and no matter how hard she tried, it was clear to everyone around her. No one understood, except perhaps Papa, and that was because he was like her or rather she was like him.

  He preferred to have his nose in a book instead of keeping a discerning eye on the state of his affairs, and like her, no matter how hard Papa tried, everyone knew he was horrid at the role of pragmatic earl. He would have been much better suited to being a quixotic inventor, yet he’d been born an earl. She inhaled a long breath. She would have been much better suited to being an independent man, yet she’d been born a woman whose fate—everyone kept telling her—was to live and die by the thousands of rules Society forced upon her.

  She curled her gloved hands into fists and tried to beat back the tide of annoyance that was rising up, but it was no use. Out came a hot, irritated breath, fluttering a loose strand of her inky hair, which had been hanging in front of her right eye. “Cousin Jeffrey practically challenged me in the park when he told everyone I was an inferior rider! What was I supposed to do?” she demanded, regretting the words and the slip of her temper the moment Mary’s eyes went from narrowed to slits.

  “Ignore him,” Mary replied in a matter-of-fact tone. “He’s foolish and you know it.”

  She did know it, b
ut her pride had stolen her good senses as it so often did. “I am a far superior rider,” Emma muttered.

  “No one saw that, Emmaline. All they noted was your galloping across Hyde Park like a man would. All they remembered was that you once again behaved improperly. However will you find a husband if you cannot manage to comport yourself like a lady?”

  “I’m comporting myself like a lady now,” Emma retorted, keeping her voice low to prove it even though she wanted to scream. “What’s more ladylike than setting one’s sights on the gentleman one wants to marry?”

  Mary scoffed. “Emmaline, your silly girlhood infatuation must come to an end today. Just because his lordship once told you that you were perfect does not mean he believed it. He was simply being nice.” Mary raised an eyebrow.

  Emma’s stomach roiled. She swallowed hard. Mary had struck Emma’s biggest fear with an invisible hammer: that Nathaniel had simply taken pity on her that day.

  “Just a half hour more, I beg you,” Emma pleaded. “If I don’t see him—”

  “He’s to your left,” Mary blurted, her eyes widening with obvious surprise. “But don’t look!”

  Emma immediately glanced to her left, and as her gaze found Nathaniel, her stomach knotted. He looked perfect, as always. The dark blue coat he wore nicely displayed his broad shoulders while superbly contrasting all that was golden about him, from his light hair to his brown, gold-flecked eyes. He stood facing his older brother, the always-serious Duke of Blackbourne. His Grace was speaking rapidly, as if he was lecturing, or at least it appeared that way to Emma. When her mother lectured, she always spoke in a rush.

  Emma’s heart squeezed for Nathaniel. She’d heard the gossipmongers twitter about some scandal attached to him recently—something about being thrown out of Oxford—but Emma refused to believe he would compromise a lady. He was an honorable man. Well, her heart told her he was, anyway.

  “I’m going to skate by him and drop my handkerchief,” Emma said hurriedly, her excitement exploding in her chest.

  Mary gasped. “No, Emmaline! A true lady would never—”

  Emma turned her skates sharply away from her sister and shoved off, blessedly not hearing the rest of whatever Mary said. She knew very well what she was supposed to do. She didn’t need Mary to tell her that a proper lady would simply stand there and wait and pray that Nathaniel noticed her and came to speak to her. A proper lady might even skate very slowly and primly by him in hopes that he would take note and say hello.

  Emma had tried to be proper around him ever since when years before Mother had said that the only thing Nathaniel likely remembered about her was that she had climbed a tree at his great-uncle’s home when she was a child, fallen out, and received a much-deserved scolding. Yet the handful of times she’d seen him through the years, he only seemed to notice her when she was being her improper self, which only served to prove that they belonged together. He liked her as she truly was.

  Emma glided over the thick, gleaming ice toward the edge of the Serpentine where Nathaniel stood with his brother near a mead tent someone had pitched. The cold, crisp air whistled in her ears as it washed over her face and made her cheeks burn. She slowed as she got closer, took out her handkerchief, and dropped it right in front of Nathaniel. “Oh, dear!” she exclaimed.

  His eyebrows shot up, then slowly lowered along with his gaze, which slid down her body to her handkerchief before returning to her face.

  He grinned. “Lady Emmaline?”

  She barely resisted frowning. “You say my name as if you’re unsure it’s me.”

  Nathaniel chuckled. “You’ve changed greatly since last I saw you.”

  “Well, it has been a year,” she blurted, before she thought better of revealing that she knew exactly how much time had passed since she’d last seen him.

  Nathaniel threw his head back and laughed, but the duke frowned. Emma struggled not to scowl at the man. The few times she had run across His Grace, he had offered the necessary greetings, yet his words held no warmth, much like his cool gray eyes. Nathaniel, on the other hand, had warm eyes and an even warmer smile. She felt positively heated by his appreciative gaze.

  He bent down, retrieved her handkerchief, and handed it to her. “The last year has been well to you,” he said in a voice that made her belly flutter.

  “Nathaniel,” His Grace said in a warning tone that reminded Emma of her mother.

  Nathaniel cut his gaze to his brother then back to her. He let out a sigh, and she tensed. He was going to bid her good day, and all because of his brother! She could feel it! She openly scowled at the Duke of Blackbourne now, who appeared not to notice, but when she looked at Nathaniel from under her lashes, she noted his lips twitching upward into an amused smile.

  Nathaniel met her eyes. “Perhaps, I will see you in a bit? I must finish discussing some business with my brother.”

  The Duke of Blackbourne inclined his head to her, and she couldn’t help noticing how lovely and thick his black hair was…and how perfectly it suited his dark personality. A nervous laugh escaped her with the errant thought, and she quickly slapped a gloved hand over her mouth. She positively hated when she did that.

  She took a deep breath and spoke. “Good day, Your Grace. And Lord Nathaniel, perhaps we will see each other again soon.” Emma forced herself to turn and skate away through the throng of people. Her heart pounded as she headed toward a less crowded section of the ice where hopefully Nathaniel would see her and join her.

  To her right, she saw a flash of purple, and she knew immediately that her sister, always too proper to actually skate, had followed Emma’s progress along the edge of the Serpentine.

  When Emma stole a glance, her sister’s scowl was plain enough even from the distance that separated them. Emma frowned. From Mary’s irritated expression, she had no doubt her sister’s patience for this outing was almost expired. She spun around and glanced toward Nathaniel, who was still talking to his brother. She had to do something drastic to get him on the ice with her or Mary would drag her home.

  Mother would likely blister her ears tonight for seeking out Nathaniel’s attention, but Emma didn’t care. If Mother had her way, she’d marry Emma off to a dull gentleman who wouldn’t let her race horses, skate too fast, laugh too loud, or dance with too much enthusiasm. Emma shuddered. Such a life would kill her.

  She sucked a breath of cool air into her lungs. Her limbs tingled in anticipation as she took off around the wide-open space. She made a circle as she glided around, picking up speed as she went. Her cap flew off and her hair blew behind her. The distant noise of people talking faded as the swish of her skates against the ice and the hiss of the air from her pace filled her ears.

  She skated around once, twice, three times—so exhilarated that she whooped with joy—and then she did something her mother would surely scold her for later, saying it was the most unpardonable, unladylike faux paus ever: she threw her arms wide and she spun until she was laughing so hard that tears leaked from her eyes. If Nathaniel didn’t join her now, then so be it.

  Lucian pulled his gaze away from Lady Emmaline’s lithe, graceful form as she skated away. He rarely thought Nathaniel was correct about much, but his brother was perfectly right that Lady Emmaline had greatly changed. The last time Lucian had seen her—had it truly been a year since his great-uncle Danby’s Christmas party?—she’d been all gangly limbs, and he could clearly recall her standing alone in a corner staring at the dancers. He’d asked Nathaniel to partner with her and then ordered him when he’d refused. Lucian would have partnered with her himself, but by the way she always stared at Nathaniel, Lucian knew that she liked his brother.

  Nathaniel hiccupped and Lucian frowned. “You’ve drunk too much mead,” he growled under his breath just as his brother seemed to sway with the wind. Nathaniel tipped precariously to the right, and Lucian grabbed his elbow and steadied him.

  “Thank you, Lucian,” Nathaniel slurred, then offered a mock salute before turning his
attention back to the ice where hundreds of people were skating. The lot of them seemed unencumbered with responsibility. He, however, had so much responsibility that he had a constant ache coiling across the breadth of his shoulders.

  He tried to force his mouth into a smile, but his skin felt like it would crack under the foreign movement, so he let the effort go. Dukes didn’t smile anyway. It was a known and accepted fact. Dukes made decisions that would increase the family money. Dukes solved problems, offered advice, and commanded when necessary. Lucian took a deep breath and prepared to do the last three directly.

  He tugged a hand through his hair as he looked at his brother. Nathaniel was younger by seven years, yet at times, Lucian felt as if he were easily twenty years older than his brother. He was tired of feeling so old and burdened, but what choice was there? He was the duke and had been since his father’s death fourteen years ago. “Nathaniel, we need to discuss your problems.”

  “I don’t have any.” Nathaniel’s expression grew hard and resentful.

  “I’d say you do,” Lucian countered, careful to keep his tone neutral to avoid a quarrel.

  “And I’d say”—Nathaniel’s voice was distinctly bitter—“that you need me to have problems so you will continue to feel like the better son.”

  Lucian felt a tick start in his jaw. He’d expected resistance, but this nastiness was new. “That’s not true, and you know it. I have never thought I was better than you. This talk today is not about me. Your love of gambling and innocent debutantes, whom you somehow persuade to do unwise things, is a problem.”

  “I’ve stolen no innocence.” Nathaniel offered a cheeky grin. “Only kisses.”

  “This damnable attitude is what keeps getting you into trouble,” Lucian growled.

  Nathaniel clamped Lucian on the shoulder. “I do believe you’re simply jealous because I have fun and you never have any,” he finished, blowing his mead-drenched breath at Lucian.