A December with a Duke Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Quote

  Copyright

  Get Your FREE Digital Starter Library!

  Other Collette Cameron Books

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  From the Desk of Collette Cameron

  A DIAMOND FOR A DUKE

  A Diamond for a Duke Excerpt

  ONLY A DUKE WOULD DARE

  Only a Duke Would Dare Excerpt

  A DECEMBER WITH A DUKE

  Seductive Scoundrels, Book Three

  By

  COLLETTE CAMERON

  Blue Rose Romance®

  Portland, Oregon

  Sweet-to-Spicy Timeless Romance®

  “Everleigh?”

  Very slowly and just as gently,

  he placed a bent finger beneath her chin and edged it upward.

  “Are you afraid of me?”

  “An indulgent and captivating read. I was charmed from the first page.”

  —Regency Author, Virginia Heath

  A DECEMBER WITH A DUKE

  Seductive Scoundrels

  Copyright © 2018 Collette Cameron

  Cover Design by: Kim Killion

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

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  Portland, Oregon 97203

  ISBN eBook: 978-1947983700

  ISBN Paperback: 978-1947983717

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  A Waltz with a Rogue Series

  A Kiss for Miss Kingsley

  Bride of Falcon

  Her Scandalous Wish

  To Tame a Scoundrel’s Heart

  The Wallflower’s Wicked Wager

  Earl of Wainthorpe

  A Rose for a Rogue

  Castle Brides Series

  The Viscount’s Vow

  Heart of a Highlander (prequel to Highlander’s Hope)

  Highlander’s Hope

  The Earl’s Enticement

  The Blue Rose Regency Romances: The Culpepper Misses Series

  The Earl and the Spinster

  The Marquis and the Vixen

  The Lord and the Wallflower

  The Buccaneer and the Bluestocking

  The Lieutenant and the Lady

  Heart of a Scot Series

  To Love a Highland Rogue

  To Redeem a Highland Rake

  Highland Heather Romancing a Scot Series

  Triumph and Treasure

  Virtue and Valor

  Heartbreak and Honor

  Scandal’s Splendor

  Passion and Plunder

  Seductive Surrender

  Seductive Scoundrels Series

  A Diamond for a Duke

  Only a Duke Would Dare

  A December with a Duke

  Boxed Sets

  Embraced by a Rogue

  To Love a Reckless Lord

  When a Lord Loves a Lady

  Stand-Alones

  Heart of a Highlander

  Earl of Wainthorpe

  To every mother who has lost a beloved child.

  My VIP Reader group, Collette’s Chéris, came through once more and helped me select names for some of the characters in A DECEMBER WITH A DUKE. What would I do without you?

  09 December, 1809

  Ridgewood Court, Essex England

  A chorus of laughter spilled from the drawing room, the gaiety echoing down the gleaming marble-floored corridor. The jollity neither enticed Everleigh nor piqued her interest. A hand resting on the banister and her foot poised on the bottom riser, she slanted her head, listening.

  That did not sound like the small, intimate gathering Theadosia, Duchess of Sutcliffe, had promised for the nearly month-long house party.

  Only close friends and family had been invited, Thea had assured her when she cajoled Everleigh into staying at Ridgewood Court rather than going home to Fittledale Park each evening. Probably because she knew full well Everleigh wasn’t likely to return every day, if at all.

  Thea had vowed there wouldn’t be a soul who would make Everleigh feel the least uncomfortable, nor any rapscallions inclined to pursue widowed heiresses almost four-and-twenty years of age.

  Only eleven people had gathered for tea this afternoon. Afterward, the men—the Duke of Sutcliffe, three other peers of the realm (all dukes as well) and James Brentwood, Thea’s brother—had gone riding.

  Not Everleigh’s definition of a cozy assembly. Two or three at most fit that description.

  Nonetheless, the number was sufferable, for a few days at least. Especially since the other females included her cousins Ophelia and Gabriella Breckensole, as well as her step-niece Rayne Westbrook and Theadosia’s sister, Jessica. The other women planning to attend the house party would join them for dinner.

  Who else had arrived while Everleigh napped the afternoon and early evening away in an attempt to ease the megrim still niggling around her temples?

  Too much excitement—make that tension caused by her dread of gatherings—inevitably brought a headache on. A dose of powders and a lie-down in a darkened chamber with a cool, damp cloth across her eyes had reduced this one to a dull annoyance. Still, the minor throbbing provided a perfect excuse to retire early should the need arise.

  Another burst of laughter erupted, this one mostly masculine chortles.

  That boisterous din couldn’t be merely the five men from tea. Precisely how many upper crust chaps had been invited? The same number as females to balance the dinner table?

  If so, that likely meant four more strutting peacocks. No doubt pampered and privileged gentlemen with nothing better or more meaningful t
o do with their time than fritter it away at a house party. Or, as experience had taught her, indulge in a dalliance or two or three for the party’s endurance.

  How many times had she witnessed that very thing during the two miserable years she’d been wife to Arnold Chatterton? How many times had her depraved husband carried on with one shameless gillflurt or another whilst Everleigh barricaded herself in her bedchamber to escape the vile intentions of the other debauchees in attendance?

  A shiver juddered across her shoulders, and she firmed her mouth and gave a little shake of her head.

  Chatterton was dead.

  He had been for almost two years.

  He couldn’t hurt her anymore.

  Neither could his son.

  In any event, Theadosia, the daughter of a reverend, wouldn’t tolerate those sorts of shenanigans beneath her roof. But how was Thea to know who prowled about in the middle of the night, or what fiend might waylay and force themselves on an unsuspecting lady?

  Would all the guests remain until Christmastide?

  Boxing Day?

  Twelfth Night?

  If so, Everleigh assuredly would not.

  She enjoyed her solitude too much, hence her turreted bedchamber at Ridgewood, specifically selected for its privacy and isolation from the rest of the guests. Only two other bedchambers and the nursery lay in that wing—all blessedly unoccupied. At least they had been when she’d made her way to her room this afternoon.

  She’d heard nothing on her way down to dinner to suggest otherwise.

  Descending the last stair, she wrapped her lace shawl closer around her shoulders and weighed her options. She could return to her chamber and request a carriage to take her home. She didn’t much care that doing so would certainly advance her reputation for icy aloofness. But it would also hurt Theadosia’s feelings, and that Everleigh did care about.

  A great deal, truth to tell.

  Theadosia was one of the few people who hadn’t judged her, who had remained a true friend.

  On the other hand, Everleigh could muster her courage and see who’d arrived and then decide whether to escape. Waylaying a footman and asking him to reel off the names of the guests probably wasn’t a good idea, though of the choices, it held the most appeal.

  Confound Thea, the compassionate, meddling wretch, for her tender heart and her ongoing efforts to entice Everleigh into Society again. Drat Thea’s determination to help Everleigh overcome her fears and heal. And above all, a pox on her hints that Everleigh should consider allowing suitors to call upon her.

  Even—God forbid!—contemplate marriage once more.

  Didn’t she want children? Thea had asked kindly.

  With all my heart.

  But marry? Be leg-shackled again? Under a man’s thumb, and her every movement dictated?

  No. No!

  Never. Ever. Again.

  She refused to subject herself to le beau monde’s marriage mart or consider matrimony. Her experiences in those areas had proved intolerable, and she’d no wish to repeat them.

  Some things one never recovered from, but unless a person had lived through that awfulness, they simply couldn’t understand, so Theadosia couldn’t be faulted for her efforts. Everleigh’s wounds mightn’t have been physical, but the scars on her soul had all but crippled her ability to feel.

  Theadosia and Sutcliffe’s union was a love match. How could Thea possibly appreciate Everleigh’s aversion to marriage?

  To men?

  Or her immense dislike of December?

  How she loathed the month.

  She’d first met the aging banker, Arnold Chatterton, and his son Frederick, at a Christmastide ball four years ago. After following her about and generally making a nuisance of himself the better part of the evening, Frederick had come upon her unawares when she’d naively stepped outside for a breath of fresh air. He’d dragged her into the hothouse and forced himself upon her.

  Then the sod had bragged to his father about his conquest, destroying any hope she had of salvaging her reputation by keeping silent about the despoiling. Seems deflowering innocents was a perverse game with them.

  Arnold, the old reprobate, seized his chance to gain a young wife, and offered her marriage and a settlement to keep the tale quiet. She’d refused at first, but in February, she’d wed him. Seven months later, she gave birth to a darling baby girl, only to lose precious Meredith a fortnight before Christmas that same year.

  Arnold still insisted she host all manner of reprobates and degenerates for the Yuletide holiday then and the year afterward as well. In all that time, she didn’t see her cousins or friends for fear they’d meet the same fate she had at either Arnold or Frederick’s hands.

  But after Meredith died, Everleigh wrote her mother and confessed all. She’d written Ophelia, Gabriella, and Theadosia too, bribing a sympathetic milliner with a pair of kid gloves to post the letters for her.

  That January, Arnold and Frederick, two drunken sots on their way home from whatever foul company they’d kept that evening, had been robbed and shot multiple times. They’d both died.

  She hadn’t cried a single tear.

  Nor did she smile when the will was read, and as Chatterton’s closest living kin, she was left his entire fortune. She’d give it all up, every last penny, if Meredith had lived.

  Mama too. She’d died from consumption in March of that awful year.

  “Mrs. Chatterton, are you lost? May I direct you to the drawing room?”

  She started and clutched a hand to the base of her throat, her pulse jumping against her fingertips. A familiar surge of fear-induced adrenaline zipped through her veins. She’d been so lost in her reverie she hadn’t heard the blond Adonis masquerading as a footman approach.

  He smiled, male appreciation gleaming in his eyes.

  That look she knew well. She didn’t recognize him from her other visits. He must be new to his profession, else he’d have learned to conceal his inclinations better.

  “I am Hampton.” He splayed a snowy while glove against his puffed-out chest. “May I be of service?”

  The way he lowered his voice when he said service, suggested he offered her something other than directions.

  “No.”

  She shook her head, skewing her lips downward slightly at her subdued cream gown, trimmed in black and pansy. Perhaps she should’ve worn the violet bombazine. That frock boasted a higher bodice and didn’t flatter her coloring as much as this one did.

  “I was just erecting my ramparts and fortifying my buttresses before entering the fray.”

  “You’re wrecking . . . what?”

  His handsome face contorted in puzzlement.

  Hampton might possess a god’s physique and sculpted facial features, but the gorgeous chap was dumb as mud.

  “Never mind.” She gathered her skirts whilst pointing down the passageway. “It’s along there. Third door. Right?”

  “No, the drawing room is on the left, Mrs. Chatterton.”

  Because there aren’t any doorways on the right side, featherbrain.

  She was hard put not to gape at his obtuseness.

  “I would be happy to escort you.” Another rakish smile lit his features.

  On second thought, mud might shine brighter than this fellow.

  Exasperated by his forwardness, she arched a starchy brow.

  “There’s no need. I’ve been here before, and I’m certain you’ve duties to attend to. I shan’t keep you from them.”

  There. She’d just reminded him of his position, and if he wanted to keep it, he’d best stop playing the flirt. Next time, she’d report him to Theadosia. Unlike Everleigh’s deceased husband and his philandering cohorts, she didn’t dally with servants.

  Looking somewhat like a rambunctious puppy who been scolded for nipping too hard, Hampton inclined his head, and she swept past him.

  Bolstering her lagging courage, and with shoulders as rigid as the marble her black silk slippers swished upon with each step
she took, she marched toward the drawing room. She’d rather know now whether she’d need to give her regrets to Theadosia and depart for home.

  At the doorway, she pressed a palm to her roiling stomach, shut her eyes, and drew in a long, steadying breath.

  Compose yourself, Everleigh Lucy Katherine Chatterton.

  She swallowed, forced her eyelids open, and formed her mouth into a self-possessed smile, assuming the cool, standoffish mien that had served her well as a buffer these past four years.

  Damn Arnold Chatterton and his evil spawn for turning her into this creature, hiding her fear behind Arctic reserve.

  A few steps into the room, she halted, and the smile curving her lips became brittle.

  Thirty or more people attired in evening finery occupied the chairs and settees, as well as every nook and corner. Panic clawed its way up her throat, stealing her breath, and restricting her lungs.

  This was a mistake.

  She shouldn’t have come. Not just to dinner, but to Ridgewood Court.

  How could she have failed to consider the guests living within a reasonable carriage journey?

  Buffleheaded nincompoop.

  Too late to turn tail and run now.

  Or was it?

  Long ago, she’d ceased caring what people thought of her; when she’d been accused of marrying Arnold Chatterton for his immense wealth. Ridiculed for doing so, given his reputation for whore-mongering and other more abhorrent habits. Scorned and shunned because of the vulgar company he kept. Yet those same elitist hypocrites skulked into his bank for loans on a regular basis.

  She’d held her head high and never let on how the whispers, cutting looks, and judgments wore away at what little self-respect she had left.

  They didn’t know the truth of it.

  Most people still didn’t, and it would remain that way.

  She scanned the room again, noting a few more friends, acquaintances, and neighbors. Not all strangers then. This might be bearable. While married, she’d managed larger, much more raucous crowds many times with no lasting ill effects.