The Day of the Duchess (Scandal & Scoundrel #3)

The Day of the Duchess (Scandal & Scoundrel #3)

Sarah MacLean




Chapter 1



Deserted Duke Disavowed!




August 19, 1836

House of Lords, Parliament



She’d left him two years, seven months ago, exactly.

Malcolm Marcus Bevingstoke, Duke of Haven, looked to the tiny wooden calendar wheels inlaid into the blotter on his desk in his private office above the House of Lords.

August the nineteenth, 1836. The last day of the parliamentary session, filled with pomp and idle. And lingering memory. He spun the wheel with the six embossed upon it. Five. Four. He took a deep breath.

Get out. He heard his own words, cold and angry with betrayal, echoing with quiet menace. Don’t ever return.

He touched the wheel again. August became July. May. March.

January the nineteenth, 1834. The day she left.

His fingers moved without thought, finding comfort in the familiar click of the wheels.

April the seventeenth, 1833.

The way I feel about you . . . Her words now—soft and full of temptation. I’ve never felt anything like this.

He hadn’t, either. As though light and breath and hope had flooded the room, filling all the dark spaces. Filling his lungs and heart. And all because of her.

Until he’d discovered the truth. The truth, which had mattered so much until it hadn’t mattered at all. Where had she gone?

The clock in the corner of the room ticked and tocked, counting the seconds until Haven was due in his seat in the hallowed main chamber of the House of Lords, where men of higher purpose and passion had sat before him for generations. His fingers played the little calendar like a virtuoso, as though they’d done this dance a hundred times before. A thousand.

And they had.

March the first, 1833. The day they met.

So, they let simply anyone become a duke, do they? No deference. Teasing and charm and pure, unadulterated beauty.

If you think dukes are bad, imagine what they accept from duchesses?

That smile. As though she’d never met another man. As though she’d never wanted to. He’d been hers the moment he’d seen that smile. Before that. Imagine, indeed.

And then it had fallen apart. He’d lost everything, and then lost her. Or perhaps it had been the reverse. Or perhaps it was all the same.

Would there ever be a time when he stopped thinking of her? Ever a date that did not remind him of her? Of the time that had stretched like an eternity since she’d left?

Where had she gone?

The clock struck eleven, heavy chimes sounding in the room, echoed by a dozen others down the long, oaken corridor beyond, summoning men of longstanding name to the duty that had been theirs before they drew breath.

Haven spun the calendar wheels with force, leaving them as they lay. November the thirty-seventh, 3842. A fine date—one on which he had absolutely no chance of thinking of her.

He stood, heading for the place where his red robes hung—their thick, heavy burden meant to echo the weight of the responsibility they represented. He swung the garment over his shoulders, the red velvet’s heat overwhelming him almost immediately, cloying and suffocating. All this before he reached for his powdered wig, grimacing as he flipped it onto his head, the horsehair whipping his neck before lying flat and uncomfortable, like a punishment for past sins.

Ignoring the sensation, the Duke of Haven ripped open the door to his offices and made his way through the now quiet corridors to the entrance of the main chamber of the House of Lords. Stepping inside, he inhaled deeply, immediately regretting it. It was August and hot as hell on the floor of Parliament, the air rank with sweat and perfume. The windows were open to allow a breeze into the room—a barely-there stirring that only exacerbated the stench, adding the reek of the Thames to the already horrendous smell within.

At home, the river ran cool and crisp, unsullied by the filth of London. At home, the air was clean, promising summer idyll and hinting at more. At the future. At least, it had done. Until the pieces of home had peeled away and he’d been left alone, without it. Now, it felt like nothing but land. Home required more than a river and rolling hills. Home required her. And so he would do this summer what he had done every moment he’d been away from London for the past two years and seven months, exactly. He would search for her.

She hadn’t been in France or in Spain, where he’d spent the summer prior, chasing down Englishwomen in search of excitement. She hadn’t been any of the false widows he’d found in Scotland, nor the governess at the imposing manor in Wales, nor the woman he’d tracked in Constantinople the month after she’d left, who had been a charlatan, playing at being an aristocrat. And then there’d been the woman in Boston—the one he’d been so sure of—the one they called The Dove.

Not Sera. Never Sera. She had disappeared, as though she’d never existed. There one moment, gone the next, laden with enough funds to vanish. And just as he’d realized how much he wanted her. But her money would run out, eventually, and she would have no choice but to stop running. He, on the other hand, was a man with power and privilege and exorbitant wealth, enough to find her the moment she stopped.

And he would find her.

He slid into one of the long benches surrounding the speaker’s floor, where the Lord Chancellor had already begun. “My lords, if there is no more formal business, we will close this year’s parliamentary season.”