The Hazardous Gamble of the Alluring Duchess: A Historical Regency Romance Novel Read online

  The Hazardous Gamble of the Alluring Duchess

  A Historical Regency Romance Novel

  Hanna Hamilton

  Edited by

  Maggie Berry

  Contents

  A Thank You Gift

  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

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Epilogue

  Extended Epilogue

  The Salvation of the Deceived Lady

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Also by Hanna Hamilton

  About the Author

  A Thank You Gift

  Thanks a lot for purchasing my book. It really means a lot to me, because this is the best way to show me your love.

  As a Thank You gift I have written a full length novel for you called A True Lady. It’s only available to people who have downloaded one of my books and you can get your free copy by tapping this link here.

  Once more, thanks a lot for your love and support.

  Hanna Hamilton

  About the Book

  Even a sunken ship leaves behind a trace. This one did not...

  Dahlia Lovell, wilful daughter of the Duke of Cottleroy, can only watch as her father uses her as a bargaining chip in his umbrageous business deals.

  Roger Kingman, ex-Navy Captain and impoverished Duke of Shelthom, is haunted by the unsolved mystery surrounding his parents’ death at sea. His demons are silenced when he meets Lady Dahlia, who holds the key not only to his heart but also to the unexplainable circumstances of his parents' demise.

  With a suspicious fire breakout and a ghostly island shrouded in mist, Dahlia and Roger must employ every ounce of their wit in order to reclaim their lives and rescue Dahlia’s brother, whose fate seems grimmer by the second…

  Chapter 1

  Lady Dahlia Lovell picked up her skirts and ran after her brother, Aaron Lovell, Marquess of Bochil. She wore an old homespun skirt and tunic she had sneaked out of the poor box. She loved guesting on Bochil Island, her brother’s estate. Her governess, Miss Emma, and her two younger sisters were visiting the market at Cottleroy, their father’s main holding. With no one to oversee her, she could romp as if she were one of the tenant farmers’ daughters.

  She had more freedom than a farmer’s daughter, if truth be told. For such a young woman would be busy at chores from morning to night, with little time for running across the fields where the sheep had lately grazed.

  Panting, she caught up with Aaron. Her senior by four years, Aaron was down from Oxford for the summer break.

  “Will you become as stuffy as our father when you leave Oxford next year?”

  “Probably even stuffier But I don’t think you will ever settle down.”

  “I hope not. I want to live on the little island that father gifted to mother. I shall raise rabbits and will catch fish in the sea.”

  “No vegetables?” Aaron’s eyes twinkled with amusement.

  “Only for the bunnies. You know they are not my favorite.”

  Aaron tousled Dahlia’s already mussed hair. “No, you would live on fruit.”

  “Is the big log still across the brook? We had so much fun playing at quarterstaves and pretending to be Robin Hood and Friar Tuck. The old log was perfect to serve as the footbridge.” Dahlia looked wistfully toward the copse of trees where the little brook wound toward the sea.

  “We had fun until you fell in, Daffodil Dilly. Then we both caught it when I brought you back to the manor house, dripping wet.”

  Dahlia laughed, as much at her brother’s pet name for her as for the remembrance. “We had to do Latin conjugations for days, until Father caught wind of it and said they would be bad for my eyes and complexion.”

  “No such reprieve for me,” Aaron returned. “I think I got your share. It is a good thing I started Oxford that fall because I don’t think I would ever have reached the end of them otherwise.”

  “Let’s try it again,” Dahlia begged. “Just for old times’ sake. I bet I can make you fall in this time!”

  Aaron pretended to be stuffy and judgmental. “I am sure that a scholar such as myself should not encourage my younger sister to act like a hoyden. You know what they say about crowing hens.”

  “No one will see,” Dahlia wheedled. “Come on, Aaron! It will be fun.”

  “Very well,” Aaron relented. Taking out his belt knife he quickly found two saplings, cut them down and stripped the extra leaves away from them. This created two light poles.

  At the brookside, they found that the old log had been replaced recently with a narrow footbridge. It was so new that it still lacked railings.

  Dahlia bounced up and down on it. “Perfect!” she declared.

  Aaron laughed. “To look at you, anyone would think you were twelve, instead of a lady with four seasons behind you.”

  “Today,” Dahlia announced, “I am not a lady. I am Robin Hood, and you shall not cross my bridge without paying toll, Friar Tuck.”

  “As I recall, it was Robin who took the wetting,” Aaron teased. “Are you sure of your role?”

  “I’ve not the girth or appetite to be Tuck.” Dahlia declared.

  “Oh, ho! So I am the one with the habit of gluttony!” Aaron challenged. In truth, he was a slim youth. He needed still to pad the shoulders of his jackets a bit to meet the current fashion, but was rapidly growing into being a well put-together young gentleman.

  The staves were light and supple. Aaron had chosen them carefully so as not to task Dahlia’s strength. They played for quite some time, and Dahlia managed to get one or two good taps past Aaron’s guard.

  “You’ve been practicing,” he said. “How did you ever manage?”

  “I’ve been teaching Violet. Rose simply turns up her nose and says she has better things to do than collect bruises.”

  “Father let you?” Aaron parried a shrewd tap that nearly connected with his shoulder.

  “Father doesn’t know. Please don’t tell him. We use the long gallery on rainy days and slip away to the park when it is fair.”

  “Oh, Dahlia,” Aaron chided her. “It is no wonder that you are twenty years old, and soon to be twenty-one, and not a husband in sight.”

  “Perhaps I shall not have a husband. I shall become a famous authoress or do great works of charity.” Dahlia missed her next stroke in the sparring pattern, tangled her feet in the hem of her petticoat and wound up in the brook.

  Aaron fished her out and helped her wring at least some of the water out of her skirts. Then they sat on the little bridge and dangled their feet in the b
rook.

  “When will you go back up to London?” Aaron asked.

  Dahlia made a disgusted face. “Tomorrow. Father has some sort of business meeting over which I am to preside.”

  “I believe I shall come with you,” Aaron said. “I want to take some of my prize ewes to the shepherd who pastures our show flock in Green Park. The bell ewe is expecting a new baby.”

  “I would if it didn’t mean presiding over Father’s stuffy business dinners. Perhaps I will be able to borrow a new book or two from the Reading Room.”

  “Has Father caught on yet that the librarian is slipping Greek and Latin in with your novels?”

  “Thank goodness, no. Otherwise I would get no practice at all with you away at school and me supposed to be out of the classroom.” Dahlia sighed. “Life was a lot less complicated before being presented.”

  “You looked forward to it, as I recall,” Aaron commented.

  “I did, until I realized that my feet hurt after hours of dancing, and the brilliant conversations I had hoped to have mostly centered around the weather.”

  They talked on for a time, enjoying the sunshine and each other’s company. Aaron doted on his younger sister, and Dahlia adored her big brother. In recent times, they had little time together.

  When Dahlia’s skirts had dried out sufficiently to escape notice, they walked arm in arm back to the manor house where Dahlia would dress in proper attire for dinner, and Aaron would have a few words with his man of business.

  Little did either of them know but the humdrum existence they currently enjoyed was about to change drastically.

  Chapter 2

  Roger Kingman, the Duke of Shelthom, crushed the sheaf of bills in one hand and clutched at his aching head with the other. Herbert Cantor, his manservant, gazed at him with worry, then began to pick up his coat and boots, preparing to brush them.

  “Don’t worry with that, Herbert,” Roger said. “I daresay all my things are going to the auction block before the day is out unless I can come up with a way to fob off the tradesmen. I lost at cards last night, and I am punting on River Tick as they say. In fact,” he dropped his head face down onto his desk and mumbled to its surface. “You should probably go down to wherever it is that people go to gain new positions and put in an application, for I will not have so much as a farthing to pay your salary after today.”

  “Now, then, Your Grace,” Herbert said, “it cannot be so bad as that. And I’m sure you’ll come about soon enough. It is true, though,” he commented, “that it would be the better part of wisdom for you to stay out of the gambling hells for the next few months.”

  Roger groaned. “If I do that, then how shall I regain my losses?”

  Shaking his head, Herbert shook out Roger’s inexpressibles. He spotted the large wine stain that was not there when he helped the Duke don the scandalously-tight breeches the night before. “I’m sure I don’t know, Your Grace. But are not the assizes due in a fortnight?”

  “Fortnight...by Jove, I think that you are right. By then all of the estate’s accounts will also be due. Jeremy has let me know that if I make another withdrawal, we shall all be living on porridge throughout the winter.”

  Roger dropped the bills and fisted his two hands in his hair, causing his unpowdered locks to come loose from their normal queue.

  “You must think me a poor creature, Herbert. And you need not Your Grace me when we are in private, as we are now. Since I’ve come home, I’ve had nothing but people tip-toeing around me and bowing and scraping. I’m fair sick of it.”

  Herbert was not only Roger’s manservant but had also been his batman on the continent during the skirmishes with Napoleon. Herbert had come to the estate with his mother, a Scottish woman who was some sort of distant poor relation. She had been employed as a companion to Roger’s mother. The boys had tumbled out of trees together, gone fishing in the estate streams, learned to ride; and to shoot under the tutelage of the estate gamekeeper and Roger’s father, the late Duke of Shelthom. But that was before Leonard, Roger’s older brother and the heir, had come down with cholera.

  Herbert just sighed and shook his head. “Roger, you are not in such a sad case as all that. But I will own that since your parents and your older brother passed, and you were forced to give up your Commission, you’ve not been yourself. And I am sorry if being formal is hard for you, but in truth I’m afraid that if I am not, I will forget. I’ll own that I, too, long for the days when we were just ‘Rog’ and ‘Herb’, but things do change over time. It can’t be helped.”

  Roger swallowed hard. Leonard, his older brother, had been primed to take over the estate. But he had taken ill shortly after the early spring rains had washed through the barnyards and into the kitchen gardens. That was in March of 1814.

  In April of 1814, shortly after Napoleon had signed the Treaty of Fontainebleau, Roger had received word that his parents were sailing to Paris to attend the court of Louis XVIII and to finally conduct some long-delayed business. Roger had sold his commission, and he and Herbert were to have joined the Duke and Duchess on the return trip. Roger received word that instead of a pleasant journey home, the ship carrying his parents and all those aboard had gone missing.

  It was now August of 1817, and the grief was still a knife in his guts. The days when he and his friend had roamed the estates, playing at highwaymen and nobles or pretending to be King Arthur’s knights, were long behind them both, but how he longed for those simpler times.

  Roger straightened out the rumpled duns and laid them back on his desk. His man of business, Jeremy Sharp, had accosted him before he could even partake of breakfast. He had given Roger a thorough lecture that included words like, “profligate ways” and “your father would never…,” “your brother would have had better sense,” followed by the crowning glory of the genteel tirade, “I’m glad your mother, the Duchess, isn’t here to see this.” Then the elderly solicitor had withdrawn with grave dignity. Jeremy had been both his father’s and his grandfather’s man of business and was prone to take liberties when talking to Roger, whom he remembered as a reckless boy.

  And that, Roger thought to himself, is the problem with inheriting a house full of old family retainers, even though he couldn’t argue that he had played ducks and drakes with his family fortune.

  He had no idea where the money was coming from to pay the staff, but he knew he couldn’t let them go. Most had been on the estate long before he was born. They were as much a fixture as the chandeliers in the ballroom or the post and beam barns that housed his racing horses.

  More than that, their housing and meals were part of their income. Many would have nowhere else to go. He had paid his debt of honor, as gambling debts were called, the night before, so he didn’t have that hanging over him, but he had borrowed heavily from the household accounts to do it. Now, he had on his desk all the bills from the butcher, the baker, and candlestick maker, to say nothing of the fodder for his cattle or the staff’s weekly stipends.

  “Herbert, I fear I am a poor creature or at least an indifferent businessman.”

  “Never say it, Roger. You just have a problem with cards. And while you are an excellent judge of horseflesh, you are not well-versed in the underhanded ways of racehorse owners and riders.”

  “Is that why I lose so often? I thought I was quite losing my touch.”

  “No indeed, Sir. That stallion you bought last month is as fine as has ever walked.”

  “But now I have to feed him, and he didn’t even place in the last race he ran, which now diminishes his value at stud. My old friend, you are an excellent diplomat, but I am in a tight place, make no mistake of it. Whatever shall I do?”

  “I am sure I don’t know, Roger,” Herbert said, “but I am told that one way for a gentleman to successfully recover his losses is to marry an heiress.”

  “Herbert! What sort of man do you take me for?” Roger protested.

  “I am sure I don’t know, Your Grace,” Herbert repeated with delibe
rate emphasis on the Your Grace and held a studiously blank expression in spite of the twinkle in his eye, “perhaps one whose pockets are to let?”

  “Herbert!”

  “I will just take these things to be washed, then I will see about getting a nice pot of Chamomile tea and those excellent biscuits that you fancy. Then you can rest, because I see the signs of one of your sick headaches coming on. I am sure that you will be able to think of something as soon as you are feeling better.”