Page 1 of Don’t Let Your Dukes Grow Up To Be Scoundrels (Dukes in Disguise #1)

Chapter One

The Bath Road, England, 1819

Lady Gemma Lively smoothed the crumpled letter in her hand for the hundredth time, her gloved fingers brushing over the words she knew by heart.

…pleased to inform you that the new Duke of Ashbourn, in his beneficence, has determined you may keep the property bestowed by his late father upon your mother, Henrietta. You may travel to the village of Little Kissington to take possession as soon as may be.

In his beneficence, indeed. The new duke had no right to keep it from his stepmother and half-sisters.

However much he despised them.

Gemma’s fist clenched, rustling the paper. Every other part of their father’s holdings and lands might be entailed upon the male line, making it impossible for Gemma and her younger sister to inherit. But the property in question had been a gift, free and clear, settled upon the late duke’s second wife when they married.

A tangled wave of emotion struck her heart at the thought of her handsome, devil-may-care father, with his twinkling eyes and immense passion for life. Sadly, the late Duke of Ashbourn hadn’t exhibited the same passion for planning and forethought. Perhaps he’d spent it all in the first half of his life, before his prim, proper duchess died and left him at last able to break free of the mold he’d been forced into by society as a young man.

Or perhaps he’d simply intended to live forever, once he finally had a scandalous new wife he adored, who allowed him the freedom to carouse around London as he wished.

In any case, beyond assuming that the next duke would take care of things, he seemed not to have spared much thought for what might become of his second family in the event of his untimely passing.

Not that Gemma could throw stones. She’d never given much thought to her future either. Marriage and children and settling down had always seemed like things that happened to other girls. As the beautiful, wealthy daughter of a duke who had entirely flouted convention with his second marriage, Lady Gemma Lively’s life had been a pleasant whirl of all-night balls, boisterous house parties, and risqué French fashions.

Who on earth would give all that up for a life of dull, sober respectability?

Perhaps, a tiny voice whispered, if they’d had a bit more of a care for dull, sober respectability, their self-righteous prig of a half-brother wouldn’t have tossed them out of the ducal mansion in Grosvenor Square the instant he inherited.

Gemma ignored the tiny voice. Like so many of the things she used to enjoy about her life, including the carriage they rode in, regret was a luxury she could no longer afford to indulge. Smoothing the letter in her hand once more, she suppressed a sigh.

With the determined optimism Gemma’s mother was known for, Henrietta Lively said, “Everything shall be well. You will see, Gemma dear. I’m certain this place, this Five Mile House, will be just the thing. A wonderful new home for us.”

Gemma was less certain, but she was glad to see her mother attempt a smile in the midst of her all-consuming grief.

Her parents’ marriage had been a true love match, the connection between them unparalleled in any other match Gemma had ever seen. That had been wonderful for them, if somewhat awkward for their children at times, but it also meant that Henrietta’s misery and shock at her husband’s unexpected death in a carriage-racing accident was severe.

“Five Mile House. It’s an odd name,” remarked Lucy from her position tucked into the corner of the swaying carriage. The only portion of her face that was visible over the scandal sheet she was reading were her dark brows and the high forehead she’d inherited from their father. The mahogany-brown hair she and Gemma had been gifted by their mother was mostly hidden beneath a black satin-trimmed bonnet, although several wisps and curls had straggled free over the course of the long journey.

“Lucy, for goodness sake,” Gemma said. “Haven’t you read that rag already?”

“Five times,” Lucy said from behind the paper. “It’s my last link to civilization. It will be days— days , Gemma—before I see another bit of gossip.”

“We aren’t relocating to a deserted island,” Gemma reminded her. “Undoubtedly, this village will have plenty of gossip of its own.”

“Oh, yes.” Lucy sniffed. “Who let Farmer Brown’s pigs trample the grass on the commons, and what does Mistress Ann put in her cottage pie that will shock you. How fascinating. Meanwhile, the Duke of Thornecliff is embroiled in the most salacious drama involving a merry widow and an actual, bona fide nun , and I won’t get to see how it turns out until a week after all my friends!”

“Thorne is a rake and a cad and a terrible cheat at cards,” Gemma reminisced, feeling fond at the memory. “What fun we had at Lady Ellery’s rout last month. He nearly gambled away his breeches to?—”

Lucy huffed. “Ugh, Gemma! I simply cannot believe you refused to introduce me to him!”

“The Duke of Thornecliff isn’t interested in silly misses fresh from the schoolroom,” Gemma said crushingly, her heart seizing at the thought of eighteen-year-old Lucy in the same room as the dissolute, drunken lout of a duke. It was one thing for Gemma. She was twenty-four, and she’d been a member of the fast set for years. The men she’d danced and laughed and flirted with all knew the rules of the game as well as she did. And for all her reputation, Gemma had never been truly tempted into much more than a dalliance with any of the gentlemen who dangled after her.

But Lucy was still an innocent, despite her irritating fixation on the latest tittle-tattle. Not that Gemma knew her all that well these days, she realized with an unwelcome pang of guilt. With such a wide gulf between their ages, once Gemma came out, she had not had much time for the gawky younger sister who tagged along after her, clamoring for attention.

“Girls,” their mother cried as Lucy drew in an outraged breath. A fresh flood of tears welled in Henrietta Lively’s lovely blue eyes. “Girls, please. No more squabbling. After all we’ve been through, and all the uncertainty ahead, can’t you please try to get along?”

The letter in Gemma’s hand crinkled again as her fingers tightened at the reminder of the change in circumstances they faced. “Yes, Mama. But if you could only try again to remember what sort of property it is that we’ve inherited? That would make me a great deal more sanguine about our prospects.”

A pretty flush mantled Henrietta’s softly lined cheeks. She was still beautiful, Gemma noted with exasperated affection, the twinkle in her dark blue eyes unfaded by time, though currently a bit dampened by sadness. The strands of silver streaking her dark hair gave her a dignified air that wasn’t entirely in keeping with the personality of the woman.

“Good gracious, what a fuss you make!” Henrietta waved her handkerchief distractedly. “I have told you, time and again, that your father gave me the gift of Five Mile House on our honeymoon, as a promise that he would never stray more than five miles from my side for the duration of our lives together. It was a grand, romantic gesture! One doesn’t ask for a detailed survey of the attributes of a grand, romantic gesture!”

“Of course, Mama, but given that we no longer have any servants, it would be nice to know whether we’re about to arrive at a large manor house or a simple cottage,” Gemma pointed out.

“Mr. Eggleston said the place has some sort of income.” Henrietta waved away crass matters of finance with an airy unconcern that made Gemma’s temples begin to throb. It was tiring, at times, to be the only member of the family who seemed to understand that their new position in life was going to force them to economize.

“There will doubtless be plenty of servants on hand to care for our needs when we arrive,” her mother continued. “Although I do think it was badly done of your brother to refuse to let us bring along any of our people from Ashbourn House.”

The slight wobble in Henrietta’s voice when she referenced their childhood home in the heart of London softened Gemma’s frustration.

Her mother had lived out a fairy tale, a lowly young nurse to a duke’s son, who caught the eye of the master and became his duchess. Once Henrietta left the ranks of the serving class for the upper classes, she never looked back.

Gemma was afraid her mother was in for a terrible shock when they arrived at their new home. The solicitor, Mr. Eggleston, had indeed mentioned an income, but the sum was the barest fraction of what Gemma used to receive from her father as pin money. It would not support the Lively women for long, even with economizing. What was more, there couldn’t be many servants attached to such a house, nor could they afford to add more.

The ember of anger buried at the pit of her stomach flared for a moment into a white-hot flame. She tamped it down. It hurt too much to be angry with her father.

He had loved them, she reminded herself. He had assumed—or perhaps, he’d wished to believe—that they’d be taken care of.

By his estranged heir, the son who had never forgiven him for his unconventional second marriage. The son who had, in his beneficence , left them with no funds, no dowries, and only one place to turn: a house of unknown size and character, in a tiny village two days’ drive west of London in the Wiltshire countryside.

Humiliation scoured her lungs as she recalled the cold, unyielding lines of her half-brother’s countenance facing them across the drawing room after their father’s funeral procession. Gemma had looked at Nathaniel Lively, the new Duke of Ashbourn, and seen in him every snobbish society matron who’d ever cautioned her boring daughters against turning out like “that scandalous Lively chit.”

Henrietta, no stranger to dramatics, had been ready to throw herself at her former charge’s feet and beg to be allowed to stay at Ashbourn House—their home, which was abruptly and unceremoniously no longer their home. Gemma might have let her—hell, she might have joined her—if it would have made any difference.

But there was no mercy or softness to be found in her miserly half-brother. The closest thing she’d discerned to a spark of humanity was the faint glimmer of satisfaction at finally being in a position to send his upstart, unwanted relations back to the level of society to which he deemed they belonged.

“I still can’t believe dear Nathaniel would treat us this way.” Henrietta shook her head in bewilderment. “His own family. He loved me so, when he was a little boy.”

Yes , Gemma thought, but that was before you married his father when the man should’ve still been in mourning for Nathaniel’s mother. Still, one would hope a grown man would be able to put the past behind him.

Apparently not.

“He’s supposed to be such a stickler for propriety,” Lucy complained, rustling her newspaper in agitation. “Shouldn’t his sense of honor demand he care for his mother and sisters, at least in public?”

“Stepmother. Half-sisters.” Gemma could hear the qualifiers in Dear Nathaniel’s frigid tones, exactly as he’d spoken after the funeral. “Ashbourn doesn’t see us as his family—he sees us as his father’s lamentable and embarrassing mistake. Therefore his honor does not require that he support us in any way. If we wait for him to come to our rescue, we shall drown. We will have to find a way to keep ourselves afloat as best we can.”

“Oh, well,” Henrietta sighed, fidgeting with the lace edges of her handkerchief. “I suppose what’s done is done, and cannot be undone.”

“I wouldn’t say that.” Gemma folded up the solicitor’s letter and tucked it away in her reticule. “I fully intend to regain everything we’ve lost, and more.”

It was Lucy’s turn to snort. “How?”

“By marrying well, obviously.”

Finally Lucy dropped her scandal sheet to stare at Gemma. “You’re daft. We’ve just left London and its scores of eligible bachelors for some ramshackle farmhouse in the middle of nowhere, and you think now is the right time to start husband-hunting?”

Gemma shrugged, determined not to appear daunted by the enormity of the task she’d set herself. “There are men everywhere. They usually seem to like me well enough. I’ve turned down scores of marriage proposals over the years. It shouldn’t be too difficult to finally say yes to one.”

“There certainly are men everywhere, but one wouldn’t want to marry most of them.” Lucy wrinkled her pert nose. “And before, you were the daughter of a duke and could expect a sizable portion to be settled upon you. You may not find yourself quite so popular now.”

“Ooh, a palpable hit.” Gemma grinned, surprised to find herself enjoying Lucy’s company. She ignored the little pang of worry that her sister might be correct about the origins of her attractions for men. After all, the instant it became known that the new duke was turning them out without a penny, her bevy of admirers and friends and hangers-on had scattered like pigeons set upon by a tomcat. “But I’ve other attributes that will help me along the way to matrimony.”

“Oh,” Lucy nodded sagely. “You mean your breasts.”

“Lucy!” Henrietta shrilled, handkerchief fluttering.

“Well, look at them,” Lucy protested, gesturing at Gemma’s chest. “She’s not wrong, they’re definitely going to be a help.”

Without vanity, Gemma knew she’d been blessed with the sort of figure that most men noticed at once, and kept on noticing even while one was trying to carry on an intelligent conversation. It was a nuisance, but she’d always supposed she might as well make the most of it while it lasted. However, it wasn’t the attribute to which she’d been referring.

“I meant my mind,” Gemma told her sister loftily. “Breasts are all very well in their place, but they won’t be enough to find us an unmarried man of large fortune and biddable disposition.”

“All this talk of…of body parts and mercenary marriages,” Henrietta moaned, closing her eyes and laying the back of her hand to her forehead. “Where did I go wrong? How have we come to this? Gemma, didn’t your father and I always tell you that you must marry for love, as we did!”

Affection squeezed Gemma’s heart. “And so I shall, Mama. You are quite right. I shall endeavor to do exactly as you did: I shall fall in love with a kind, indulgent, amusing, and wealthy man.”

Very wealthy, Gemma amended silently as the coach bounced over a bit of rough road, and Henrietta gave a short shriek.

“Oh, I do hope the coachman is taking care with my darlings,” Henrietta wailed, her gaze darting anxiously to the roof of the carriage. “I still cannot believe they were not allowed to ride inside with us, but must stay piled atop, willy-nilly, exposed to the elements! I dread to think what has become of them.”

Henrietta’s “darlings” were her most cherished possessions: her enormous collection of fashionably overdecorated bonnets. Today’s specimen was on the simpler side, in accordance with Henrietta’s deep mourning, but some of them were truly impressively batty.

Gemma’s gaze was snared by the beady black eyes of the stuffed raven perched atop her mother’s head. A cloud of black netting surrounded the thing like a nest, dotted here and there with faceted jet beads that caught the light whenever Henrietta moved. The poor creature’s black wings had been manipulated to look as though it was about to take flight.

“Your hats are fine, Mama,” Lucy and Gemma said in unison, then shared a small smile. The response required no thought at this point in the journey. This marked at least the twenty-fifth time Henrietta had lamented the fate of her darlings in their many trunks and boxes.

“There would have been no room inside the carriage for us, if we had let your collection ride inside,” Gemma reminded her mother, who huffed and shifted against the squabs.

“Oh, when will we arrive?” Henrietta twitched her black shawl closer around her shoulders. “This has been the most interminable voyage.”

Gemma silently agreed, wincing as the carriage jounced over a particularly deep rut in the road, rattling her bones and bruising hindquarters that had been tenderized over two days of travel. Her knuckles whitened where she clutched her reticule and its meager contents. The funds they’d left London with, the sad remnants of the money they’d received by selling their jewelry, had been sorely depleted by the necessity of last night’s stay at The Green Man in Reading.

Then the horses slowed, and Gemma realized they were making a turning. She reached to unlatch the window and crack it open to allow a little cool air into the coach. It smelled fresh and bracing, like growing things.

Despite all her cares and worries, Gemma felt her heart lift. “Soon, I should think. We’ve left the main road, so we must be getting close to Little Kissington.”

“I want to see!” Lucy exclaimed, scooting along the bench seat closer to the window and jostling Gemma aside so that she could peer out.

With a little shoving, Gemma made room for herself at the window as well. The crowded cobblestones and gray smoke of London had long since given way to the rolling hills and valleys of the North Wessex Downs. The gentle green land spread out on either side of the road like a rumpled blanket tossed down by a careless giant. Wildflowers bloomed purple and yellow amongst the waving grasses, dancing in the breeze. In the distance, the afternoon sunlight glinted off the babbling brook that ran alongside the road.

Gemma caught her breath. It was beautiful. Undoubtedly as dull as the dusty byway they traveled, but beautiful.

“What is it?” Henrietta cried excitedly. “Can you see the house yet?”

Just as Gemma began to shake her head, the carriage topped a small rise and in the distance, nestled within a beech wood, she glimpsed an imposing manor house of warm, golden stone.

“I do see something,” she said, breathless with surprise.

“What are you—oh!” Lucy craned her neck, her bony elbow jabbing into Gemma’s side. “It looks like a castle!”

“It’s lovely.” Gemma’s eyes tracing the graceful peaks of the roofline and the round crenellated tower set into the western wall. “And huge. Much bigger than I expected.”

“Oh, I knew it would be perfect!” Henrietta clapped her hands, in raptures. “Girls, girls, didn’t I say? I knew it must be a great house. I knew your father would take care of us.”

If only he’d taken care of our dowries as well , Gemma thought, though she kept it to herself. Why ruin her mother’s moment of happiness with the unhappy reality that they would almost certainly have to let a house this grand to someone who could afford to live in it? She could only hope that a lease would bring in enough to settle the Lively family somewhere sensible so she could begin her campaign of making a brilliant match.

But even as Gemma’s mind whirled and her mother and sister celebrated, the carriage continued to drive.

It rolled down the hill. And then it continued on, past the turning to the wide drive that appeared to lead to the weathered stone manor.

Throwing the window fully open, Gemma stuck her head out and called up to the driver, “I say, John, have you missed the turning? Wasn’t that the way to Five Mile House, just back there?”

“No, your ladyship,” came the driver’s quick reply. A strong-jawed white man of middle years, dressed in the impeccable dark blue and gold of the ducal livery, John Coachman gave every appearance of knowing exactly where he was going and how to get there, despite having spent most of his career driving the dowager duchess from Ashbourn House to her hatmaker’s shop.

“We should reach the village in the next few minutes, your ladyship,” John informed her calmly, and Gemma thanked him before pulling her head back inside the coach.

“That must not be our house. It’s quite a pile, though. I wonder who lives there.”

Lucy smirked. “Probably a crusty old country gentleman and his pack of twelve hunting dogs. A perfect prospective husband for you, Gem!”

Gemma gave her sister a shove back to her side of the carriage. “I don’t care if he has fifty hunting dogs and is old enough to be our grandfather. If he’s got the income to support a house like that, he’s going on my list.”

“Oh, there’s a list now?” Lucy asked.

“Not yet, but there will be. I intend to be systematic about this.”

“Girls,” Henrietta protested again. “My poor head.”

Refraining from pointing out that she might be less prone to headaches if she didn’t insist on wearing bonnets weighed down with dead bird carcasses, Gemma went back to watching out the window for her first glimpse of their new home.

Hedgerows and the occasional low stone fence ran alongside the road and divided up the fields. Dotted about the countryside here and there, Gemma saw thatched-roof farmsteads and stone outbuildings. Sheep placidly cropped the grass and lay in the shade of tall, sturdy trees.

They were only two days’ journey from London, yet Wiltshire was so different, Gemma felt as if they’d somehow traveled to another world.

They crossed a stone bridge, the rushing brook below loud in her ears as a collection of small buildings came into view. Built from the local limestone, their crooked rooftops and smoking chimneys seemed to glow in the fading afternoon light.

Before Gemma had time to register more than the size of the village (tiny) and its level of quaintness (extreme), the carriage was slowing once more, and turning off the mail coach route, through a stone archway and into the courtyard of a ramshackle coaching inn.

Gemma stared across the dirty cobblestone courtyard. Streaky bare windows stared forlornly back at her as chickens scratched around the sunken steps. A wooden door hung ajar, giving a glimpse into the dark interior of the inn.

It opened, and a tall, bearded man in laborer’s clothes stepped out to lean one broad shoulder against the crumbling doorframe. He watched impassively as the coach rolled to a stop in front of him.

The tips of Gemma’s fingers went cold and tingly and her breath came short, striking against the confines of her light corset.

“What is this place?” Henrietta asked tremulously. “Are we lost?”

“Don’t be silly, John Coachman never gets lost,” Lucy reminded her, but her voice was uncharacteristically small.

“Perhaps he has stopped here to ask for directions.” Unable to bear the tension, Gemma put her head out of the window again to speak to John. It was terrifically unladylike, but there was no one but that uncommonly tall laborer to see her, and Gemma had never been very good at being ladylike anyway.

“John? Are we lost?” she called.

“No, your ladyship,” came John’s implacable reply.

Gemma’s heart stopped. For some reason, she glanced back at the man in the doorway, who straightened with slow, insolent grace. Pulling his hands from his pockets, he strolled unhurriedly toward the coach.

Behind Gemma, her mother and sister were talking over one another, asking questions she couldn’t answer in high-pitched tones of distress that blurred into an incomprehensible din in her ears as she stared into the man’s face.

His features were rough and angular, the lines of his square jaw softened only by the gleaming chestnut of his short-cropped beard. He wore no hat and he had the sun-bronzed skin of a man who worked outside, though the creases that fanned out from the corners of his vivid green-gold eyes could’ve been from laughter rather than squinting against the glare. A lock of light brown hair fell over his forehead, gleaming with strands of copper and gold in the waning sunlight, and for a mad moment, her fingers buzzed with the urge to smooth it back.

He was extraordinarily well built, tall and broad with real muscles that came from hard physical labor rather than the discreet padding of a dandy. His every movement spoke of power, a leashed animal vitality that stirred Gemma’s blood and stole the breath from her lungs.

This man was temptation incarnate.

Oh no , she thought blankly. This cannot be happening. I don't have time for an inconvenient attraction!

Then he opened his beautiful, sensually shaped mouth, and Gemma somehow knew what he was about to say before he said it.

“Welcome to Five Mile House.”