Page 8 of Caught with the Beastly Duke (Dangerous Dukes #3)

Chapter Eight

“ W hat are you reading, Your Grace?”

Rosalie looked up from the book she hadn’t put down since they’d entered the carriage to see Clara watching her, a bored look on her face.

Poor Clara , Rosalie thought as she set the book in her lap. She doesn't like to read, and I’ve been ignoring her all day.

“It’s a series about a young lady, Lizzy Seacliff, who runs away from home to become a pirate,” she said, stretching out her legs as she did so as she had been sitting in the same position, spellbound by the book, for hours. “She disguises herself as a boy, is given the nickname Nobeard because, of course, she doesn’t have a beard, and spends her days exploring new lands, running from exotic beasts, and looking for treasure.”

Clara looked confused. “You’re reading a book about sailing?”

“No,” Rosalie laughed. “It’s a romance, of course. You see, the Captain, Jonathan Blackthorn, is the most handsome man in the Caribbean, but he’s also fearsome and cold. He thinks she’s a boy, of course, and he takes her on as his personal helper on the ship. He’s quite beastly, actually, and they fight all the time. But in the most recent chapter, he also revealed that he has a tragic past as well as a soft, heartfelt side, and now, I think she’s starting to fall in love with him…”

Rosalie sighed as the memory of the last chapter sent a tingling sensation through her body. It was one of the most romantic novels she had ever read, and it had surprised her to find it among the novels her cousin had sent her. In the two years she’d lived with him, she’d never known him to have such good taste in books. Or to like such romantic adventures.

The only annoying part was that whenever she imagined the villainous captain, he often looked and sounded exactly like the Duke…

She shook herself, trying to rid herself of this image.

“That sounds scandalous, Madam!” Clara said, breaking into her thoughts and returning her sharply to the carriage. “Are you sure you should be reading something like that now that you are married?”

“I don’t know what my being married has anything to do with it,” Rosalie said indignantly. “If anything, I think it makes it more appropriate for me to read.”

Clara bit her lip. “But surely the Duke would disapprove…”

“Well, that’s why he doesn’t need to know!”

The Duke was riding in a separate carriage as they made their way to Carramere Castle for their ‘honeymoon’ although Rosalie had never considered the rainy, cold North of England to be the ideal place to honeymoon. Nor had she expected her husband to travel separately from her; if he wanted to start their honeymoon off on the wrong foot, he was certainly succeeding.

Although she couldn’t deny that she was enjoying the peace and solitude—whenever Clara wasn’t interrupting her, of course. It was good to once more be alone with a book instead of having to think about how she would be alone with her husband for a few weeks, and they were supposed to get to know one another.

Her stomach growled, and she ignored it, knowing that the sensation would eventually fade.

“Then you should put it away,” Clara said, peering out the window, “because I believe we’ve finally arrived.”

Sure enough, the carriage pulled to a halt moments later, and the footman opened the door and helped Rosalie down. She looked up to see they’d stopped next to a small, Elizabethan-style inn with a thatched roof and a wrought-iron sign that read The Fox and the Hare.

The inn was on the outskirts of a small village. She could see it up the road, a cluster of houses from which smoke rose from brick chimneys. It was early in the evening, and behind the village, the sky was streaked with the pinks and oranges of a sunset.

The second carriage pulled up behind theirs, and the Duke alighted down from it. After a day of traveling, the Duke looked less perfectly coiffed than he usually did, and Rosalie had to admit that it suited him. His hair was a little unkempt from hours on the road, and there was a light dusting of stubble on his chin. He looked rugged and wild, just like how she imagined the Captain in her book looked, and she felt her mouth go dry.

“Are you all right?” he asked as he looked her up and down. “Did the rough roads affect your stomach?”

“I’m fine,” she said quickly.

“Are you sure? You look as if your stomach hurts.”

“I’m perfectly well,” she insisted. His eyes narrowed, but then he shrugged.

“We’ll stay here for the night,” he informed her. “Tomorrow, we’ll arrive at Carramere Castle.”

He led her inside where the friendly innkeeper showed them to a large and comfortable room furnished with a four-poster bed, a bathing tub, and a vanity. The room was simple but clean, and the innkeeper proudly told them it was the inn’s best room.

“We are honored to have the Duke and Duchess of Carramere here,” he said, before bowing and closing the door behind him.

Rosalie, meanwhile, was eyeing the bed.

Will we be sharing that? So far, she and the Duke had not spent a night together in the same bed, and she was more nervous than she cared to let on. She turned to ask him but held her tongue when she got a better look at him. He looked exhausted but even more rugged than ever before, his hair mussed and his eyes tired. She had never seen him look so vulnerable, and it mesmerized her so much that it took her a moment to realize that he had begun to undo his cravat right in front of her.

He is undressing in front of me! Her heart was beating rapidly, and she wanted to look away, but she couldn’t remove her eyes from the column of his throat.

“Pardon me,” he said when he caught her staring, and his hands quickly dropped to his sides. “I must have forgotten to ask the innkeeper to show you to your room.”

“My room?”

“Yes, it’s through here.” He went to a door on the other side of the room and turned the key in the lock then swung it open to reveal another, smaller room next door, connected to his. “It’s not my first time staying here,” he said, laughing at the look on her face. “I’ve sent for your maid, and she will come and dress you for dinner. Then I’m going to bathe before we go down.”

Rosalie stepped into her room. The Duke closed the door behind her, but a minute later, Clara opened it again and came in.

“Shall we dress you for dinner, Your Grace?” she asked.

“I suppose so,” Rosalie said. Clara dressed her quickly then left again by the same door. Unlike the Duke, the maid didn’t seem to think it necessary to latch the door behind her, and Rosalie heard her murmur Good evening to the Duke through the crack in the door. Rosalie had just thought to get up and close the door when it began to open again, probably from a cross breeze or a draft from Clara’s movements.

Rosalie got up at once to close the door. The door was only open a sliver, but she could still see through it into the Duke’s room, and he deserved his privacy.

However, just as her hand touched the doorknob, there was a knock on the door of the other room, and she saw a servant enter with a bucket of hot water. He began to fill the bathing tub then the Duke crossed in front of her line of vision, and she froze.

He was in his shirtsleeves with his cravat, waistcoat, and jacket all removed. She had never before seen him in such a state of undress, and she couldn’t help but notice how wide his shoulders were and how strong the muscles in his back looked as the thin white fabric clung to them.

A strange feeling was coursing through her, rooting her to the spot. She had never seen a man wearing so little clothing before, and she was in shock. Her head spun, her body had gone cold, and she couldn’t have moved even if she wanted to. She was afraid to close the door now in case he looked up and saw her; she didn’t want him to think she was spying.

His large hands came to the buttons of his shirt, and he began to undo them. She was holding her breath, she realized, her body stiff. What are you doing? a voice in her head yelled, and she felt as if she was woken from her stupor. Stop letting your romantic novels influence you, and close the door!

But before she could move, the Duke shrugged off the shirt, and she nearly gasped.

The Duke’s back was as muscular and strong as the thin white fabric of his shirt promised it would be, but that’s not why she almost gasped: it was the sight of dozens of long, white scars crisscrossing his back.

He must have been beaten to within an inch of his life!

Nausea rose up inside of her at the sight, followed quickly by dizziness. She thought she might faint. The scars looked healed, at least, so whatever had been done to him had happened long ago, but they were still horrendous to witness. She could only imagine the pain…

She must have let out a small, stifled sob because the Duke suddenly whirled around and stared right through the gap in the door into her eyes.

“I-I’m sorry,” she stammered at once. “I didn’t mean to—” He took a step forward, and she stopped speaking at once. His face had become a rigid mask, his eyes dark and clouded with anger.

This is the Beast of Carramere, and he’s caught me spying! He’s going to scream at me!

But he didn’t scream at her. Instead, he strode across the room—his chest bare and impossibly muscular which she noticed even in her petrified state—and closed the door between them with a snap.

Rosalie let out her breath. She hadn’t even realized she’d been holding it.

“What happened to him?” she whispered out loud to the room. “And more importantly, who did that to him?”

He had lived a hard life, she knew. He’d been in the Army, and after that, he had worked with the Scotland Yard to help capture dangerous criminals. There was no saying when he might have received the beating that had scarred him so dramatically.

Maybe he was captured by the French or held for ransom by a South London gang.

There were many possibilities. All Rosalie knew for certain was that whoever had made those scars had been trying to break the Duke.

It didn’t exactly soften her heart to him, but it did make her wonder if there was more to him than she had previously thought.

Was it possible he didn’t start out beast? she wondered. Perhaps he made himself into the Beast of Carramere in order to protect himself?

Of course, this only raised more questions than it answered, but it did make Rosalie curious to know more about the man she’d married.

“You’re not eating,” Nathan said, frowning at Rosalie from across the table as she nibbled on her steak-and-kidney pie.

Rosalie looked up. She had a distracted look on her face, and she blinked at him for several moments before seeming to realize what he’d said.

“Oh, I’m not very hungry,” she said, shrugging as she took another small bite of the pie. “Traveling always takes away my appetite.”

That, or the sight of the scars on my back were so sickening that they’ve put you off food.

Obviously, Nathan didn’t say this out loud. Nor would he mention his scars to her ever if he could help it. The fact that she had seen them filled him with shame, and he had to stop his hands from clenching into fists on the table.

Don’t take it out on her, he reminded himself. She would have seen them sooner or later anyway, given that we are married.

Nathan forced himself to focus on Rosalie, who was still watching him. There was something tender in her expression, something he hadn’t seen before, and his stomach clenched.

She feels sorry for me now. It wasn’t exactly how he wanted the woman married to him to feel about him.

“Well, I don’t care if you’re not hungry,” he said instead. “You will need your strength for the rest of the journey tomorrow. It’s a long way to Carramere Castle still. If the pie isn’t to your liking, I can see if the cook will make something else.”

“It’s to my liking,” Rosalie said quickly, and she gave him a forced smile before taking a larger bite of the pie.

He leaned back in his seat, satisfied. She’s not going to get away with not eating in front of me.

This was the main reason he’d wanted to take Rosalie with him to Carramere Castle. He could have gone on his own, of course, and kept her firmly out of harm’s way. While he didn’t fear the new Lord Redfield, he also didn’t know what they might be up against here, and opium smugglers were serious criminals. He’d dealt with some before in the cases he’d worked on with Scotland Yard.

But he’d suspected that if he left Rosalie, she would go back to eating as little as possible and lose the little weight she’d managed to gain since coming to live with him.

“Are you excited to reach the castle tomorrow?” Rosalie asked as she reached for her glass of wine. “It has been a while since you’ve been there, right?”

“It has been some years,” Nathan admitted. He didn’t really want to talk about himself or the castle, but if it kept her eating, then he would.

“Then you must be excited,” she concluded, studying him.

He shrugged. “There are lots of repairs to do. It has fallen into disarray since even before my father’s death. He did not take good care of it or keep it safe from destruction. I am not looking forward to how much time, effort, and money it will cost to make it habitable again.”

“It’s not habitable?” Rosalie’s eyes were wide with worry.

He laughed. “Parts of it are habitable enough. But no, I wouldn’t want us to stay there long term.”

She took another bite of the pie, chewing slowly as she thought about this. “So… you are taking me to a rundown castle that is only habitable in parts… for my honeymoon?”

Her eyes narrowed slightly, and Nathan’s stomach twinged. She suspects there is more to this than just the honeymoon.

“It’s my ancestral home,” he said quickly, “and it’s very beautiful, even if some areas need repairs.”

“The repairs might not be so bad to make,” she said after a moment, “but you sound as if you dread them.”

“It is not an interesting use of my time.”

“But as you say, the castle is your family home. Shouldn’t you take pride in it?”

Nathan snorted. He couldn’t help himself. He knew it was rude and dismissive and might hurt her feelings, but she’d hit a nerve.

“Taking pride in the castle would mean taking pride in my family and our history,” he said. “And I find it hard to care about either.”

“Why?” she asked, setting down her fork. He nodded at her food, only resuming once she had eaten a healthy bite.

“My father was obsessed with family, honor, and carrying on our legacy as Dukes of Carramere, but I find that repulsive. I’m not interested in carrying on his legacy. Anyway, if he’d really cared so much about the castle, he wouldn’t have?—”

He forced himself to stop speaking. Already, he’d said too much, and he could see the curiosity in her eyes.

“He wouldn’t have done what?” she asked.

Of course, she wouldn’t let it go. This is Rosalie we’re talking about. She probably thinks it’s an important backstory, like I’m a character in one of her romantic novels.

“It’s not important,” he said dismissively. “And I don’t wish to speak of it.”

“You brought it up,” she pointed out.

“I suppose we could trade questions for bites of food again,” he mused, and much as he’d expected, she blushed and then took a large bite of her pie.

She is embarrassed by how little she eats; she doesn’t want me to know about it.

“That won’t be necessary,” she said as she took another large bite. “This really is an excellent steak-and-kidney pie.”

“It’s even better with wine,” he said, and he signaled for a footman to pour the Duchess more.

“Oh, that is very good,” Rosalie agreed as she sipped the wine, and Nathan was pleased as he watched her take another sip, followed by more food. She is really eating more than she has before.

He reached for his own wine glass and took a long gulp before setting it back on the table.

“I always stop here on the way to the Castle,” he said, looking around. “The food and drink are excellent, and the innkeeper is a good, honest man. The rooms we are in are his and his wife’s, but they always insist I take them whenever I stop through.”

“That is very kind of them,” she observed.

“It is. It was difficult for me to accept at first, but they always insist—I think it is an honor for them. Anyway, I understand the importance of hospitality. Of course, I pay them far more than the going rate, and I always come back to this inn, even if it’s not the most convenient way to travel to the Castle.”

“You are loyal,” she said slowly. She was watching him with a thoughtful expression on her face, as if this was just occurring to her.

“I am loyal to the people who earn my loyalty,” he corrected. “For instance, I don’t think one should be blindly loyal to someone just because of family ties.”

“I agree, of course,” she said. “Look at my father.”

“Precisely. But I do value loyalty, and once someone has earned my respect and friendship, I will stand by them through anything.”

She nodded slowly and took another bite of food. “That quality is to your credit.”

“Of course, the opposite is also true,” he noted. “Once someone loses my respect, it is difficult for them to ever get it back.”

“Well, that doesn’t surprise me,” she replied, and he thought he saw the hint of a sarcastic smile. “One doesn’t become a fearsome duke by forgiving easily.”

“What about you?” he asked, choosing to ignore the pointedness of her remark. “Do you forgive easily?”

She looked surprised by the question, and she paused in her eating. “I am not particularly vengeful,” she said after a moment. “Nor do I expect people to be perfect. But I would never forgive, for instance, Lord Cain.”

“Because of how he hurt you?” Nathan asked, and for some reason, he really wanted to know her answer.

“Hurt me?” she responded, her eyebrows going up. “What do you mean?”

“Well, he made you fall in love with him, and then he turned out to be in league with your father.”

“Oh!” Rosalie laughed then shook her head. “No, I was never in love with Lord Cain. Yes, I found him handsome and intriguing, and I certainly had a girlish crush on him, but it wasn’t love. No, what I can’t forgive him for is being involved in Violet’s kidnapping. Anyway, even if he had broken my heart, I could forgive that. What I can’t forgive is someone hurting those I love.”

Nathan smiled slightly. “Ahh. So you are loyal as well.”

She smiled. “Yes, I suppose I am.”

The mood between them remained pleasant for the rest of dinner and continued as he led them back to their rooms later that evening. As they rounded a corner, a candle from a nearby sconce lit up Rosalie’s face, and he saw that she was smiling to herself.

“What is it?” he asked. He’d quite forgotten about their conversation about the castle, and he was surprised when she mentioned it again.

“Oh, I was just thinking about the renovations that Carramere Castle needs.”

“Oh?”

“And, well, it is all a matter of perspective, don’t you think?” She laughed, and he could tell from the way she leaned on his arm that the wine had gone to her head. “You can either dread rebuilding and fixing the castle, or you could look forward to the renovations. After all, it symbolizes a new beginning. Just as you and I are at a new beginning in our lives, in our marriage, so can the castle also start afresh. And you know, I think I’d have some ideas for how to make it your own—our own—and not about your father or family’s legacy.”

Nathan couldn’t help but smile and shake his head incredulously. “You are speaking like a duchess now. You have a castle to renovate, an infinite budget, and no need to worry about where the money comes from.”

Rosalie laughed. “I suppose I am. But I was thinking about what you said, about how life is not a novel, and while I do believe novels can make life better, there is also truth to what you said. I would like to leave my mark on something, to make something and not just read the books that other people have made. Maybe renovating the castle is a way to do that.”

“I think it might be,” he said softly. They had both stopped and were now staring at each other in the darkened hallway.

Nathan was sure it was just the wine, but Rosalie had never looked as lovely as she did then, her face flushed from the wine and her eyes sparkling.

His eyes dropped to her lips. They looked so red and plump in the candlelight, slightly parted, as if waiting for him to kiss them…

“It’s not such a bad thing to want to be a heroine in a novel,” he heard himself murmur. “It just means you want your life to be an adventure, full of excitement and romance…”

He took a step toward her, and as he did so, felt himself sway slightly. The wine has made me a little tipsy as well! And it was also making him reckless and bold; it was making him want to reach out and touch those pretty lips?—

And Rosalie was also leaning toward him, her smile a little wider than usual, her eyes flashing dangerously.

He leaned forward, too.

They were married, after all, why shouldn’t he kiss her?

“Your Grace, your bath is ready.”

Nathan started and dropped his hand. He took a step back from Rosalie and stared around, his eyes settling on her lady’s maid, who was poking her head out of the bedroom door farther down the corridor.

“Oh! Right…” Rosalie blinked and looked around as well, a dazed look on her face. “Thank you, Clara.”

The maid disappeared back into the room, and Rosalie turned to look up at him. Her expression had become cold and reserved, but Nathan took a step back, frustration and anger flickering through him.

What were you thinking? he snarled at himself. She still thinks of you as a loathsome beast.

And Nathan couldn’t bear that thought.