Page 1 of Duke with a Debt (Wicked Dukes Society #2)

CHAPTER 1

T he African grey parrot balanced calmly on its perch was glaring at him.

“Gormless shite,” the bird pronounced, flapping its wings as if to punctuate the words.

Stuart Gilden, Duke of Camden, glared back at the feathered creature who had just paid him insult, walking slowly toward it, hands clasped behind his back. He stopped before the parrot, cocking his head and holding its unique silvery stare.

“Do you know,” he said pleasantly, “I could wring your neck with one hand?”

“Landlubber,” the parrot squawked. “Pistols at dawn.”

His eyes narrowed. “Did you just challenge me to a duel?”

Incredulousness rose within him. This was indeed the strangest bird he had ever met. Intelligent, complex, and just a touch mad. Rather like its owner, whose presence he was awaiting.

“Megs want a biscuit,” the parrot told him.

“I haven’t a biscuit,” he said. “And to be perfectly candid, if I had one, I’m not sure I’d share it with you. You’ve been rather rude thus far, haven’t you?”

“Gormless shite,” the parrot said, extending its wings again.

“Megs, my love, I’ve told you about your language.”

The familiar, feminine voice had Stuart turning away from the feathered menace to find Miss Rosamund Payne gliding toward him. It had been some time since their paths had crossed, for their circles had only overlapped thanks to his brother Wesley. But little had changed since he had seen her last.

Her hair was the same, indistinct shade of neither gold nor red, but an odd color all its own. Her eyes were sharp and dark in her pale face. Her chin was stubborn, her forehead high. She still had the mouth of a courtesan, the only overtly sensual feature she possessed and quite incongruous with her unassuming spinsterish air. Her figure was trim yet curvaceous as he preferred, her breasts high swells hidden in her modest silk bodice, her height slightly taller than most ladies’ and yet still no match for his. No one could ever call Miss Rosamund Payne a great beauty.

Still, there was something compelling about her. He had always found her presence magnetic in a painfully unwanted way. She had been meant to be his sister, and it hadn’t been his place to notice her. Yet, notice her, he had.

But she scarcely seemed to take note of Stuart now as she hastened past him to her infernal parrot.

“Do be a good parrot, and I’ll give you a pistachio,” she purred in a tone that would have been better suited to a lover than a feathered beast.

“Megs want pistache,” the African grey declared.

Stuart stepped to the side, granting Rosamund and her bustle more room, trying not to take note of her perfume, which also had not changed—a decadent blend of rose, violet, bergamot, and ambergris that was rich and alluring.

“Will Megs behave?” she asked the parrot, holding up a small pouch.

“Megs behave,” the bird chirped, then whistled.

Rosamund carefully removed one small oval nut and offered it to the parrot, who gleefully took the object in its beak. Stuart was distinctly aware that he was being ignored, and the novel sensation wasn’t a pleasant one.

Rosamund trailed an elegant finger over the bird’s head. “What a good bird, Megs.”

And then, at last, ever so slowly, she turned the full force of her attention upon him, her dark stare burning into his. “Good afternoon, Camden. I cannot think of a single reason you would have for paying a call upon me.”

No curtsy. Nary a smile. Not a Your Grace , and most definitely not a hint of welcome. Stuart wasn’t certain what he had expected.

“Rosamund,” he greeted in turn, offering a slight bow. “It is good to see you.”

She arched a brow. “Is it?”

Heat crept up his throat.

“Of course,” he fibbed.

She pursed her lips. “I suppose we should sit. Comfort is important when one is being lied to, I find.”

Her observation was more piercing than any blade.

But he was at her mercy, and far more than she yet realized.

He inclined his head. “As you wish, madam.”

“I’ve called for a tray of tea as well,” she said coolly before swishing past him.

She moved to the seating area across the room and gingerly settled on a settee, smoothing her seafoam-green skirts. He followed, folding his taller frame into a narrow chair nearby, sparing her his proximity on her seat even as part of him was tempted to do otherwise. Belatedly, it occurred to him that her navy bodice bore the outline of gold scales as if she were a mermaid, the entire affair accented with seafoam ribbon on the sleeves and decolletage.

The fanciful dress, so incongruous with what he knew of her, took him by surprise.

“I must thank you for accepting my call,” he forced himself to say, though they were both more than aware that she had kept him waiting, in the presence of the insult-wielding parrot, for half an hour.

“It was unexpected.” She watched him, unsmiling, so very poised. “And not entirely pleasant, if I am honest.”

Her forthright nature was something he recalled well. But what disturbed him now was that he also remembered her tears, the accusation in her eyes. He remembered how shattered she had looked, like a hand mirror that had been dropped upon a stone hearth.

Stuart brushed aside the memory as he winced. “I’ll admit that I had harbored some hope that the intervening years might have rendered you more amenable to a tête-à-tête with me.”

She laughed then, the sound throaty and pleasant and full, before her levity faded, and she continued regarding him with her unnerving gaze. “I regret to report that they have not.”

God. She would not make this easy on him, then. Why had he supposed she would?

He gripped the arms of his chair. “I am sorry for that, Rosamund.”

“As am I,” she said, unsmiling. “Actually, I’m sorry for a great many things.”

“A great many things,” the parrot chimed in, apparently having finished with its pistachio.

Rosamund’s searing stare made his neckcloth feel more like a noose. He turned his attention to the African grey for a moment to find the bird was watching him as closely as its mistress was.

“Gormless shite,” the bird repeated, before issuing another whistle.

He clenched his jaw and snapped his attention back to Rosamund. “It would seem the bird has made his opinion of me quite clear.”

“ Her opinion,” Rosamund corrected. “Megs is a female parrot. She was also quite bonded to her former master, who was a sea captain, hence some of her more… colorful vocabulary.”

Stuart was suddenly dying to know how an heiress dressed as a mermaid had acquired a sea captain’s foul-mouthed parrot, but the question would have to wait. He had far more pressing matters to attend to at the moment, none of which were pleasant.

“I beg your pardon. I assumed the creature was male.”

“Naturally.” She gave him a pained smile that was more of a taunt than aught else, those full lips that would have been better served on a courtesan distracting him.

Her one-word response felt like an insult, and Stuart knew he ought to let the matter go, but he was as obstinate as she, and he couldn’t.

“Why do you say that?” he asked.

“Because it is very much like a man to assume that every creature in his path must also be male, in his mold,” she said.

“Your opinion of my sex is clearly poor.”

Again, her brow arched upward. “Can I be blamed?”

The past lay unspoken, a heavy burden. They stared at each other, two unsmiling enemies—Rosamund with her shrewd gaze and the airs of a queen and Stuart with his swallowed pride and a disgust for his scoundrel of a brother that surely rivaled hers.

“Of course not,” he relented. “What my brother did to you was unconscionable.”

Her smile was serene. “What he did made me stronger and wiser.”

She was utterly unflappable, and this was new. He did not remember such self-possession in her, the ability to flay a man with nothing more than her eyes and tongue. The line of buttons bisecting her bodice drew his attention as she inhaled, the urge to undo them, to muss her irritating perfection perversely rising from nowhere.

“I am relieved to hear it,” he forced out.

A tap at the door heralded the arrival of the tea tray. They were silent as a servant bustled in, laying the tray on the table separating them before excusing herself with a curtsy. The dishes of tea that had been laid out looked as if they were antiques, fashioned of fine porcelain lined with gold and decorated with enamel Libra scales on the cup and a water carrier on the saucer. He watched as she prepared his tea precisely as he had always liked it: a splash of milk first, followed by tea and two lumps of sugar.

She had remembered.

Her attention to detail felt somehow strangely intimate, particularly when their fingers brushed as she handed him his tea. The sweet bergamot of Earl Grey rose from the steaming cup.

“Thank you,” he said, deciding the fine porcelain he held was likely Meissen.

He wondered if Rosamund had purchased the cups and saucers herself or if they had belonged to her father, whose eccentricities and affinity for collections had been rather notorious.

She finished preparing her own tea. “You are most welcome. To the tea, if not at my home.”

The reminder that they were bitterest enemies was pointed. She would serve him tea and recall precisely how he liked it made, but she drew the line at false pleasantries.

“Megs want tea cake,” the parrot called from across the room, reminding him of her presence.

Well, at least she hadn’t called him a gormless shite again.

Progress.

“You shall have some in a few minutes, darling,” Rosamund returned, her voice gentling as she responded to the bird.

And Stuart was suddenly, irritatingly envious of the feathered menace still glaring at him from her perch.

“Now then,” Rosamund said suddenly, returning the full, disconcerting force of her attention upon him. “I don’t imagine you came here for idle conversation or tea. What is it that brought you to me, Camden?”

His heart thumped hard. Here was his opportunity. And yet, the words felt thick and heavy and improperly formed. His tongue was stuck, his mouth dry. He, who had faced death and destruction and the hells of war, was terrified of four little words that, taken separately, were all rather inconsequential, save one.

He could do this.

He had to do this.

The contents of the latest letter he had received yesterday were still burned upon his soul.

Stuart took a deep, steadying breath, holding Rosamund’s dark stare. “Will you marry me?”

Into the shocked silence that had descended following the Duke of Camden’s improbable proposal, Megs interjected, “Gormless shite! Megs want pistache.”

The diversion was comedic for its timing. It was also just what Rosamund needed.

“You’ll not be having any pistachios if you insist upon paying our guest insult,” she chided her beloved parrot, her mind whirling.

He was jesting.

Surely.

Playing a terrible joke upon her.

The Duke of Camden was a devoted sybarite, as cold and jaded and arrogant as they came. He didn’t want to marry anyone, least of all a plain spinster whose foolish heart had been shattered by his cruel scoundrel of a younger brother.

“Megs sorry,” the African grey said, her apology accompanied by a cheerful whistle that suggested her contrition was based solely upon her desire for another nut.

Rosamund rose from her seat as if it suddenly had been set alight and moved across the room to Megs, intent upon giving her reward, only to realize that she had left the pouch of pistachios on the table by the tea set.

With an irritated sigh, she turned back to the abandoned nuts, only to find the Duke of Camden standing as well, his pale-blue eyes upon her, so different from his brother’s, which were hazel, ringed with gray. In her stupid love for Lord Wesley, she had once written a sonnet devoted to the mercurial nature of his eyes. Pity she hadn’t realized his eyes were a metaphor for his honor.

“What is it?” she demanded, flustered.

“It is rude to sit in the presence of a lady.” He extended his arm, her pouch dangling from his long fingers. “Also, I do believe the pistachios you seek are to be found within.”

He had noticed where she kept them. And that she had forgotten them in her haste to flee him and his ridiculous proposal. But then, he had always been far too observant.

She snatched the pouch from his grasp. “Thank you.”

Whirling about, she returned to Megs, extracting a pistachio that she offered up. The parrot took it in her beak, nibbling.

“Does she never move from her perch?” Camden asked, his voice far too near.

He had followed her, rather in the vein of a tiger stalking its prey. A big, powerful beast, sleek and magnificent and yet capable of so much strength and ruthlessness. She didn’t even need to look to know what she would see. The Duke of Camden was tall, broad-shouldered, lean-hipped, and powerfully built. Unlike his younger brother, his was not a classical masculine beauty.

Camden was all hard angles and merciless planes: a firm, square jaw, an unforgiving blade of a nose, high, sharp cheekbones, and an incongruously sinful mouth that looked as if it might leave a bruise. His hair was a dark, rich mahogany with a slight wave, so unlike Wesley’s long, blond locks, which had been a source of colossal vanity. And the duke was taller and stronger, an immense monolith of a man.

She turned back to him, the familiar sound of the parrot enjoying her treat of little comfort, and realized that in her discomfiture she had quite forgotten what Camden had asked of her.

“I beg your pardon?” she queried.

“The bird,” he offered, nodding toward Megs. “She has been on her perch for nearly an hour. I merely thought it unusual that she hasn’t chosen to flit about or wander.”

He was not wrong in his assessment. And the reminder of the lack of care Megs had endured still left her heart hurting. She and the parrot had found each other when they had needed companionship and understanding the most.

“Before the sea captain took her in, she was kept too long in her cage by her previous owner,” she explained. “Continually being confined weakened her ability to fly.”

“A shame,” he said softly.

She wondered if he meant it or if he was simply mouthing words like so many other people. No one else seemed to appreciate her bond with Megs the way she did. It was difficult, if not impossible, to explain. It simply was.

“Yes, it is,” she agreed, gesturing toward the abandoned tray. “Shall we continue our tea?”

“I was hoping we might further our conversation instead,” Camden said, his voice, like his expression, hardened and severe. “Specifically, I was keenly waiting for your answer.”

Dear God.

She hadn’t misheard him, then.

Nor did he appear to be jesting. If anything, the Duke of Camden was joyless, utterly unsmiling. So serious that his countenance might crack.

“I don’t understand.”

She skirted him, suddenly needing air. Distance. His size and his presence were duly overwhelming. Not that she feared him but that he was so very…masculine. So different from Wesley, who had been teasing and charming, filled with irreverent quips and longing glances that had lit her from within.

All a guise, as she had later learned. Everything about Lord Wesley Gilden had been contrived for the purpose of securing England’s wealthiest heiress as his wife. And he had nearly accomplished the feat.

“Rosamund, don’t run from me.”

Camden was following her, his voice near, and her awareness of him made her heart stutter into a faster pace and a languorous bud of heat unfurl deep within her at the same time. The duke had always been dangerous to her. When she had been engaged to his brother, she had noticed him. He had taken all the air from every room he inhabited, intrigued her in a way that had been most improper. She had forgotten those restless feelings he’d inspired, dismissed them along with her betrothal.

But whatever she was, Rosamund Payne was no coward. She had faced almost every shame imaginable and held her head high. So she stopped and spun back to face Camden, and with so much haste that they collided, her bouncing off his granite wall of a chest.

“Oh,” she said, the startled exclamation fleeing her.

She should remove her hands from his coat. Cease touching him. Step away. But he was hotter than the most comforting winter’s fire in the grate. And he smelled delightfully manly, like shaving soap with a tinge of sandalwood and musk.

“I can explain,” he said, a muscle in his wide jaw tightening.

She forced a laugh she didn’t feel, intent upon showing him nothing but sangfroid. No emotion. Not a hint of anything other than what she wanted him to see.

“I do not see how you possibly can,” she said honestly.

For there was not a world that existed in which the arrogant Duke of Camden wanted to marry his younger brother’s plain, spinster castoff. No matter how much money she promised to bring to their union. Unless…

She searched his gaze, looking for affirmation. Finding it.

“You need funds,” she guessed, almost breathless at the thought.

“I do.” His hands had clamped on her waist to steady her, but that was where they remained, holding her to him.

Not tightly. She could escape. And yet, she made no move to do so. There was a shocking intimacy to the way he held her, wrapped in an arrogant assumption.

Part of Rosamund wanted to push away from him; his grasp was gentle enough, and she could extricate herself with ease. But part of her wanted to linger. To keep her hands on his chest, where his heart was thumping every bit as hastily as hers. He was not as unaffected as he pretended either.

That didn’t change her inevitable answer. “I’m afraid that marriage no longer holds the allure it once possessed for me. And as for the notion that I must be wanted for my fortune alone, well, as you can imagine, Your Grace, that has grown particularly hateful. I am no longer willing to give a man my fortune in exchange for his name. It is a terrible business decision.”

And she did have a flair for business. That was one realization she could thank Lord Wesley Gilden for, even if she would sooner blacken his eye than admit it aloud.

The duke’s pale eyes burned into hers. “Never imagine I come to you without something to offer in return.”

“I have no interest in being a duchess. I am perfectly content to be Miss Payne until the day I die. Titles mean less than nothing to me, particularly when the title in question belongs to a member of the Gilden family. Plainly, you and your offer of marriage and title and scoundrel brother can all go rot.”

“Go rot,” Megs chimed in from her perch. “Gormless shite. Megs want tea cake.”

Rosamund chose to ignore her beloved parrot for the moment, knowing that Megs was nettled because she was.

Camden’s lip curled, and he released her, taking a step back. “I do not fault you for that opinion.”

“I wouldn’t care if you did.”

“Brava.” A small smile played with the corners of his lips. “The tigress has emerged at last.”

“Tigress?”

“You were always so quiet and placid, allowing Wesley to trod all over you and doing so with a smile. But I saw beyond your polite facade. I very much doubt he ever did. If you had married, he would have destroyed you. You would have been miserable as his wife.”

The tea was cooling. And in truth, it was a source of comfort for her—the preparation of a cup, the slow and careful movements, the joy of drinking it. She had grown accustomed to hiding herself behind the trappings of civility. Most people never looked beyond them.

The Duke of Camden, however, was not most people.

Her chin went up. “How fortunate, then, that his mistress sent me a letter before I was foolish enough to marry him.”

Although the missive had long since been tossed angrily into the flames, she knew every word of it by heart. He loves me, though he will wed you to provide for our little family.

Our little family.

Three words that had broken her heart open like a ripened peach dropped from lofty heights. How she had loved Lord Wesley Gilden. He’d been out of her reach, charming and handsome, and his attention had gone straight to her head, rendering her quite witless for a woman who prided herself on her intelligence. That fact still grated raw upon her nerves now—that she had known better, had been wiser, and yet still he had outmaneuvered her with such devastating ease. Oh, how she loathed her own stupidity—to this day, a perennial thorn in her side.

Camden’s smile faded, his unusual eyes still holding her in their piercing thrall. “You are right to be angry with him. My brother is a bastard.”

“Right bastard,” Megs said, whistling. “Megs want pistache.”

“Language, Megs,” she chided before she surrendered to the African grey’s demand.

Breaking the hold Camden’s stare had on her, Rosamund moved past him to where Megs watched them from her perch, her head cocked, her silvery gaze somehow both curious and knowing.

“Megs want pistache,” the bird repeated, apparently having changed her mind about the earlier request for tea cake.

“And you shall have it, but you must behave,” she crooned, stroking Megs’s silken head with a crooked finger.

She picked up the pouch from the table where she had left it and extracted one nut, offering it to the parrot, who eagerly took it in her beak. As she stood with her back to him, Rosamund could feel Camden’s stare on her as if it were a touch. Swallowing down a rush of unwanted emotion, she spun about to face him again, pinning a polite smile to her lips.

“Oh my, look at the time. Regretfully, I have other engagements awaiting me today, Your Grace.”

His expression was unreadable, his harsh face drawn, and she could not deny the compelling figure he made, standing in her drawing room as if he belonged there, tall and elegant and haughty. He was more handsome than she had recalled, and it disturbed her to make that acknowledgment. To recognize that she was aware of him as a man.

That perhaps she always had been, even when she’d believed herself in love with his brother.

“I’ll take my leave, but I would remind you before I go that if you marry me, you’ll have the one thing you have been coveting these last three years.”

She laughed bitterly. “If you think it was the illustrious Gilden family name I was after, you are wrong, Your Grace.”

“Not my name.” He smiled again, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “Revenge.”