Page 1 of Kiss the Duke Goodbye (The Troublesome Trio #3)

CHAPTER 1

WHERE A LONELY MAN PONDERS LIFE’S COMPLEXITIES

A frigid winter evening, Mayfair 1818

I t was decided.

He was a good brother…but a lousy duke.

Knoxville DeWitt, the Duke of Herschel, paused when he reached the millinery, his reflection in the smudged panes predictably weary. He dragged his knuckle through the muck marring the glass, unsurprised that this tidy shop was where he’d ended up after a dismal afternoon with his solicitors.

Another property needed to be sold to keep the others afloat. A squat but lovely manor in Derbyshire he’d not visited in ages, though he’d planned to later this year. He only hoped the buyer would care for the tenants and have respect for the history of a home that had been in the DeWitt family for centuries. He could not help but feel like a failure.

In frustration, Knox tapped his fist lightly to the window. This was the final residence of the six that had come with the title that he had the option of selling. The rest were entailed and fastened to him as tightly as barnacles to a ship’s hull. Taking him down with them.

His gaze fell to the Drury Lane placard in the shop window. He smiled softly as he noted the artist’s initials sketched in the corner, recalling why he’d come to be in such dire financial straits aside from his horror of a father landing him there. His youngest brother, Damien, had needed ready cash to enable him to secure the woman of his heart. Of his choosing .

If Knox did nothing else in this life, he would ensure his family’s happiness—after he’d done too little in his youth to safeguard it. He believed in true love, therefore relieving the Earl of Whitmore of his debts so Damien would be free to marry his daughter, Mercy, hadn’t caused Knox one moment’s hesitation. A duke’s support also allowed Mercy the freedom to pursue art without fear of society’s recrimination.

However, his solicitors weren’t so idealistic.

A stinging gust whipped down the street and into the open neck of his greatcoat. As he curled his fingers around his lapels, either he shifted or the moon did, and there she was, standing in a rippling wash of light on the other side of the window.

Clarissa Marlowe, his secret, brilliant fascination.

Unlike his reckless twin, Cortland, Knox didn’t move, gesture, or call out to her. He let his attraction muscle through him like a shot of whisky. Some called him a brooder, an overthinker, but he rather believed he had the edge, savoring life in contemplative moments exactly like these. Relishing the rush that hit him. The certainty.

Clarissa’s serviceable gown encased her slender figure like liquid stardust, better than any from the finest modiste in London. And her eyes, oh , they were always a surprise. A jolt, a pleasure. Sometimes the pale gray of a winter morning, others the shimmering pewter of a stormy sky. He wondered what he’d have to do to make them change at his command. A thought that made him hot beneath the collar and the waistband.

Too, her smile, which she rarely offered, tightened his chest like a metal clasp had been clinched around it. No female in London, not one , made him feel like a boy skipping down the Hampstead lanes of his youth. That time, last spring, when he’d shared the story of Viscount Henry tumbling from his horse in Hyde Park, Miss Marlowe had laughed, a real laugh. A dimple, tiny and perched at the outer edge of her lips, flared to life, nearly sending him to his knees.

It was then he realized he was in danger of falling for a woman unsuited to his future.

In standing and, sadly, in wealth.

He was embarrassed to be such a cliché, the impoverished duke in need of a plump dowry. Thankfully, he supposed, he wasn’t going to have any difficulty finding an heiress or an earl’s daughter, a widowed countess or a baroness. While the woman he coveted, the one standing on the other side of the glass, seemed uninterested in him. Clearly indifferent, in fact. Like a fool, he kept coming to her shop without a hint of encouragement. His brothers had finally told him their wives didn’t need another bonnet, not in this lifetime.

So, he’d begun handing them out to his staff.

The tumblers to the lock turned, pulling him from his musing. When Clarissa glanced around the doorframe, her face hidden in shadow, the rapid skip of Knox’s heart told him he was in trouble. However, he didn’t consider declining the offer to come inside, should she be prepared, after hours, to make it. He could claim the frigid weather had gotten to him.

This would be the first time she’d acknowledged any interest in him outside a paying customer. He wasn’t about to let such an opportunity pass.

She beckoned, and Knox followed, stepping into a calming space redolent of dried flowers and the subtle hint of Darjeeling tea. And her , riding the air beneath with the call of lilies.

“Your Grace,” she murmured and shut the door behind him. “I wonder at your urgent need for a bonnet at this hour. You were here five days ago if memory serves.”

Chastised but remorseless, he strolled about her shop, popping his hat against his thigh. While she crossed to a covert sideboard and poured what looked to be excellent brandy into two tumblers. When she returned to him, he pondered the challenge in her gaze, the dare in the self-possessed stance of her body. He often felt like he was in competition when he visited her, like a rope was held between them, and they were each giving it a hard tug.

She tilted her head and offered the glass, lamplight shimmering off strands the color of ivory that she’d gathered into the neatest chignon in England. He’d seldom seen a more composed show of elegance in any ballroom or grand parlor.

Taking the drink, he moved to a cupboard filled with bonnets, because he’d begun to feel a primal urge to back her into a wall and either make the most heroic gamble of his life or the biggest mistake. He’d been without a woman for three months, the longest dry spell of his experience. Although it was self-imposed—and that, too, was intriguing. And frightening.

“I’m in need of a gift,” he finally offered, making a loose circle about his head with his hat. Then he sighed, realizing how silly he looked, and placed the beaver felt on a chair. “Upcoming birthday celebration I’d forgotten about. A luncheon tomorrow.”

Miss Marlowe eyed him over the rim of her tumbler. “Which sister-in-law is it this time?”

He grazed his fingertip along a stunning straw creation decked out in yellow velvet. Aside from his fascination, her hats were the best he’d ever seen. “Baroness Crawford-Digby.”

Miss Marlowe rested back against her front counter, sipping leisurely. “Ah,” she said, skepticism rippling through the word.

Turning to her, he leaned his shoulder against the cupboard, hoping his irritation didn’t show. His father’s stern voice telling him to remember his station pealed through his mind. “It isn’t like that. I’ve known the baroness’s ancient goat of a husband since I was in leading strings. She’s seventy if she’s a day.”

“I thought perhaps…” With a petite gust of laughter, she nodded to the folded broadsheet on the counter. Just yesterday, there’d been a mention of him in the Herald’s gossip column. Some bit about an actress and the bachelor duke that was utterly baseless.

“I wish to point out, Miss Marlowe”—pausing, he tossed back the rest of her fine brandy and wiped his lips with the back of his wrist—“for the first time, I’m certain, that your judgment is incorrect.”

She tipped her head in apology when she didn’t seem apologetic in the least. The amusement curving her enticing lips was at his expense in every way.

“I mean…,” he started, then fell silent. What was there to say? She couldn’t be faulted for suspecting his motives. Undoubtedly, he had his pick of women and society found nothing more interesting than debating his choices. Of late, he found himself shaking chits off like ants who’d gotten at a jar of honey. Making it worse, the news of his need for funds had made the rounds of the ton .

Nothing excited pursuing mothers quite like a duke in desperate need of a duchess.

Complicating matters, in a hidden part of his heart, Knox longed for a family. A wife, children. Someone to love . Aside from his brothers, he’d never had a single person to call his own. What he didn’t want was a marital contract laid out like so much ducal business. Unfortunately, he didn’t think it mattered what he wanted. “The scandal rags have much of it wrong,” he said, uncertain why she made him so bloody unsure of himself.

In response, she shrugged, kicking his temper a notch higher. She used fewer words than any woman he’d ever met. Usually, he couldn’t get them to stop talking.

Exasperated, he tapped his glass to his chest. “Would it matter if I gave one of your splendid hats to a nameless chit before peeling her clothes from her body and stretching her across a set of silken sheets? Perhaps crushing your fine handiwork beneath us in our haste? Must they all be for my sisters ?”

With this inappropriate set of questions, his life changed.

Or his tactics, in any case.

Because Clarissa Marlowe, owner of the most gorgeously composed face in England, hesitated as an adorable streak of color ripped across her cheeks. A full three-second stop while she deliberated.

Tumbler shoved beside a pearl and lace piece on the top shelf, Knox crossed to her. Taking her chin and tilting her gaze to his, he searched her eyes. They’d gone the dark, deep mystery of a thunderous sky. He brushed his thumb across her temple, seeking entry. “What’s going on in there, Miss Marlowe? It’s not a duke asking, it’s merely a lowly, confounded man.”

She shook her head but didn’t move away. Her lips pursed, relaxed, then pursed again. Her breath was whisper-soft against his jaw. “I’m not sure.”

A pulse raced from his chest to his belly, daring to settle in places below he’d rather it not. Having to vacate her shop because of his unbidden arousal was a dismissal he couldn’t contemplate.

Kiss her, Knox. Take what you desire.

God knows, he’d never wished to touch anyone this badly. And he never had to ask twice.

Still, she might mean more. A thought that scared the breath from him.

“How can I help you be sure?” Knox whispered, his lips falling to the loose strand of hair at her ear. His inhalation brought the scent of lilies and aged velvet home. “Bloody hell, I want to know.”

“You’re too late, Your Grace,” she returned in that sultry voice of hers, “as I’ve already been properly approached.”

The Duke of Herschel released her and stumbled back as if he’d been scalded. Clarissa would have laughed if she’d not witnessed the quickly suppressed look of despair that crossed his face.

His stunning, stop-a-girl-in-her-tracks face.

What was she to do when the most gorgeous man in England was on display in her shop once a week, sometimes twice—and as easily accessible as one of her bonnets? She loathed the complexities of the man. She respected the complexities of the man. He was arrogant, yet adorably vulnerable. Intelligent, but not overwhelmingly so. Surly, but incredibly kind . She’d seen him giving shillings to the scamps in the alley on more than one occasion. Months ago, in the winter, he’d even given his coat to a beggar with a racking cough that spelled certain doom.

After one particularly vexing visit where he’d regaled her with stories from his week in the House of Lords, she’d drawn up a list of reasons why Knoxville DeWitt, the Duke of Herschel, was an impossibility. The titled gambit being number one. Two, he and his brothers, the so-called Troublesome Trio, were walking scandals. When she’d done everything possible to distance herself from a remarkable past that would be of interest to the masses should they find out about it. Of interest to the man standing before her with a gaining-fury scowl on his face.

His eyes glowed, an opaque, emerald wonder as they took her in. “You’ve been propositioned?” He tapped his ear with the heel of his hand, the garnet stone in his signet ring glimmering. “Did I hear that right?”

She reclaimed her glass to keep her hands off him. His chest beneath superfine had been as hard as the marble sculptures in the British Museum, his hip where it bumped hers a point of enticing exchange. If she fantasized about lying beneath his long body in her sturdy tester bed, she merely joined the ranks of many. There wasn’t anything unusual about being attracted to a beautiful specimen. A man out of reach on so many levels.

Too numerous to contemplate.

Nonetheless, it was what one did with yearning that separated the winners from the losers. She’d learned this lesson from her mother early on.

Clarissa swallowed past her chagrin at sharing something this private, even if the sharing was a means to an end. The end to the Duke of Herschel stopping by the Petal and Plume so often that it felt like they were becoming friends. “I’ve been approached, I prefer to term it. Very courteously. A brief affair without the threat of marriage. I wasn’t insulted, I should say. I was flattered. It follows what I want for myself. Freedom, choice, independence.”

He frowned. Coughed into his fist. Let his molten gaze touch every corner of the room before returning it to her. “Who the hell propositions someone courteously? It should involve a kiss that makes one question their next breath . Then no words, not one.”

Blood skipping through her veins, Clarissa fidgeted, shuffling her slippers beneath her skirt. A silly habit. An old habit. “A nice man. An ordinary man. Not one with a page in Debrett’s .”

He laughed, a sound she’d come to know fairly well. Although this utterance had an edge. “So you want ordinary, do you?” Before she could answer, he held up his hand, halting her. His gloves were a dark gray kidskin, the color of mist off the moors. She wished for them to sweep her skin, grip her in tantalizing places, and pull her to him. “I wasn’t propositioning you, by the by. I was merely inquiring about your hesitation after I asked inappropriate questions. I let emotion get the better of me. A DeWitt inclination I detest, even as I’m in the midst of doing it.”

She sipped, gazing at him through the faceted crystal. The glasses had once graced the manor of an infamous viscount. She wondered what he’d say if she told him how she’d come to own them. “I shall be honest. I’m considering the offer.”

The duke rocked back on his heels, his jaw muscle ticking.

“You don’t agree, Your Grace?”

He blew a breath through his teeth. “Wouldn’t I be the biggest hypocrite in England if I said anything against it? Not everything they write about me in the scandal sheets is false.”

His admission made her furious, without reason. She’d read about the actresses, the widows, the stunning comtesse whose family had fled France. The DeWitts had stopped in her shop with their greatcoats reeking of perfume, smudges of rouge on their collars, grins of delight on their faces. This, of course, before Cort and Damien had fallen for their wives. Now, Knox was the only remaining member of the club. A lonely club, she suspected.

He took a step forward, and paused, scrubbing his hand over the back of his neck.

Damn him, Clarissa thought, charmed to her toes. He was nervous.

“What if I made the same offer, Miss Marlowe? Courteously and with every pledge of respect and discretion. What if I promised to make you cry out in pleasure the likes of which you’ve never, I pray, experienced before? And if you have, I’ll vow to surpass it.” He blinked, his breath hissing past his lips, his cheeks taking on a rosy tinge. “I promise to leave your legs unsteady, your heartbeat wild, your skin afire. Reason in a realm beyond. If you say yes, I will give you all I have for every second we’re together. I’ll let you go when you wish to leave. You’d retain your freedom, your independence, your good name. I don’t want to own someone or have them own me. Nor do I want to wreck anyone, including myself.”

She set her glass on the counter. This wasn’t anything like Clarence Henry’s politely worded suggestion that they meet at his Belgravia townhouse if she was amenable. A widower uninterested in securing another wife, Clarence had been her friend since childhood. She found him pleasing and witty, compassionate and reasonably attractive. He had most of his hair and a trim form. He smelled like bergamot and the leather of his cobbler’s trade. His fingers were stubby, not the sleek, long digits of a duke, but she could overlook this.

He was safe .

Clarence was a raindrop when she was now faced with a deluge.

“Who do you want , Clarissa? If you know, take it.”

She jerked her head up, stunned to hear her name on his lips. His voice was deep, a sensual echo threaded through her dreams. She didn’t want to desire a breaker of rules and hearts. A blasted peer, when a peer had ruined her mother. Herschel would bring her nothing but anguish unless she was very, very careful.

When she wasn’t sure she was up to the task. The duke made her want to throw bloody caution to the wind.

Nevertheless, she was finished pretending she didn’t have needs. She wasn’t going to tell Knoxville DeWitt, but there had been other offers. Whispered suggestions on multiple occasions since her sixteenth year. Only recently had she been tempted to accept, her mostly successful attempts at self-pleasure no longer enough. The Duke of Herschel’s weekly visits had gotten to her, a needle of awareness beneath her skin. She felt feverish when he left her shop. Bewildered and unfulfilled. He was pushing her toward an indeterminate future.

She’d worked hard to ensure her liberty—but she was also a woman. With a curious sense of wonder about her body and the mechanics of sexual congress. There were only so many ways she could satisfy that interest in a world that provided females few choices.

Actually, His Grace was giving her a rather grand option.

Clarissa studied him, holding nothing back. Broad-shouldered, long and lean, with a face suited to the gods. Hair the color of rosewood with just enough curl to make her long to plunge her fingers through the glossy strands. And those eyes…glittering in the loose beam of light piercing the windowpane. Testing her, urging her. She’d seldom seen a set that green in all her days. They pulled her in without hesitation, every time. And she’d wager a thousand pounds that the body underneath those expensive garments was incredible.

She tilted her head in challenge. “You said a kiss that makes one question their next breath is key.”

The Duke of Herschel’s mouth parted on a sigh. She stifled the quiver of yearning that fluttered through her. “Yes, yes, I did.”

Clarissa pressed her lips together to hide her smile, realizing how hard she was going to make him work for her. In repayment for his visits, the teasing, the laughter, the dance. The times she’d gotten nothing, absolutely nothing , done when the door closed behind him. Admittedly, she felt a prick of irritation that he’d accepted how inappropriate she was and followed the only course of action available to him.

She was a woman he’d ask to tup, not marry.

But she was also a girl who could face the reality of her situation.

“I appreciate your offer, and I shall think on it.” Clarissa trailed her finger along a jagged scratch on her counter that she’d meant to gloss over months ago. “Nevertheless, in all fairness, I have to let Clarence have a go. Since he was first out of the gate.”

The Duke of Herschel frowned, sending adorable creases shooting from the corners of his eyes. “Like it’s some sort of competition?”

A bubble of laughter popped through despite her restraint. “A competition. Hmm, I love the sound of that. I should enjoy being a prize in a contest where I’m also the judge.”

He shrugged his wide shoulders beneath his superfine coat as if he were preparing for a boxing match. “I bet you would.”

She shook her head, hoping she wasn’t carrying this maneuver too far. Men had very fragile natures, she’d come to understand. “You can bow out and leave him to it.”

“Like hell, I will,” he whispered, the heat in his voice melting her where she stood. Then he grinned, utterly the scoundrel who’d paraded into her shop for months rabble-rousing with his brothers.

Before she could say another word, he was standing before her.

His touch was sure, his hand at her jaw, beneath her ear, before finally settling at the nape of her neck. He’d ripped off his glove on the way over and his skin against hers was sizzling. She could feel calluses on his fingertips, the slight scrape of his thumbnail. She went willingly when he urged her, meeting his hard body with an intimate press of her own.

His head lowered; hers rose.

Where they met in the glorious middle.

The kiss was twenty seconds of tender caresses before it roared away from them. She didn’t wish to play coy, she wanted to learn . To be . Sincere and courageous, she dove in.

When he opened his lips atop hers, she followed, mimicking his moves. He groaned brokenly, more erotic than any sound he’d made in her dreams. His hand curved around her waist, his fingertips digging into her skin. Yanking her to him, before pushing them against the counter when it wasn’t enough. His tongue touched hers, lightly, then… ah , magic. A blaze of heat, an erasure of reason, instinct taking over. They tangled, fought, and battled with nothing more than their bodies. She’d never realized she could experience this much from an act that seemed so straightforward in theory.

A simple kiss, when it wasn’t simple at all.

Later, Clarissa couldn’t have said exactly what her adoring duke did to her—or what she did to him . Only that they were, for a brief moment, joined in erotic fervor.

Bodies bumping, twisting, heads slanting for deeper contact. Her teeth nipped his bottom lip and the taut underside of his jaw. His mouth danced along her cheek before finding a vulnerable spot beneath her ear that made her moan low in her throat. His reaction to her was not insubstantial. She could feel his hard length pressing against her hip as he stepped into the warm crevice between her legs. The image of him thrusting inside her blossomed until the picture roared through her mind.

The kiss was constant movement. And hunger. Her fingers twisted in his lapels, then rose to curl in the silken strands at his nape. She wanted this to go on forever. She needed the Duke of Herschel in a way she’d never needed a man.

That she wasn’t frightened of this truth stunned her.

As it was, he pulled away first. With a whispered oath and a gasping exhalation, set her back. His eyes were glazed, so dark a green they were mired in shades of mossy black. She understood from his confounded expression that the experiment had gone in a direction he’d not planned.

She was wholly gratified to see he’d lost control.

The man had control of far too many situations.

“Quit smiling,” he ground out between lips she’d plumped with her own. “Unless you’d like me to move you atop this workspace and have you right bloody here.”

Laughing, she sucked in a much-needed breath that allowed his scent into her nose, while holding on to the counter he’d threatened to place her atop to keep herself from sliding to the floor. She wondered if his sheets smelled of sandalwood and hoped she would soon find out. “Thank you, Your Grace. This was a very enlightening interview. I will consider your candidacy.”

She pressed her palm to his chest, recording his heartbeat tapping beneath the heel of her hand before giving him a little shove.

He stumbled but righted himself instantly, his scowl growing. “You’re not kissing the other one.” He gestured between them with the glove he’d somehow hung on to during their ride. “This was enough of a test. A goddamned fire when we only needed a trifling blaze to prove anything.”

She clicked her tongue against her teeth. “I think that’s hardly cricket. Clarence asked first, and since I’ve never kissed him, I hardly know how to judge without it.”

He set his jaw. “Clarence?”

“He’s very nice. A cobbler.”

The duke drew a fast breath through his nose. “Cobbler.”

She shook out her skirt, looking down to conceal her amusement. “Good with his hands.”

“Brilliant,” he grumbled in a hot tone and wiggled his glove on one delicious finger at a time. Then he was off, across the room, where he snatched up his posh hat and jammed it on his head. It sat at a horridly crooked angle Clarissa had no intention of correcting. “I suppose I’ll wait with bated breath to hear your verdict.”

Leaning against the counter, she took in the full picture of the Duke of Herschel in high dudgeon. Heavens , he was stunning, no matter how much she wished he weren’t. Not to mention the bulge beneath his trouser closure her gaze kept straying to. His body was a marvel. “You’re merely vexed because no one, I suspect, has ever told His Grace no.”

He speared her with a leaden look that sent a quiver right through her. She was obviously attracted to the sulky ones. “You’re right, they haven’t. Unless you mean my father, a dreadful man who enjoyed telling me no in all kinds of hateful ways.”

Oh , she thought. If he continued exposing fragments of himself, she feared tumbling down a slope she had no wish to traverse.

He made it to the door before his gaze sought out hers again. “And it’s Knox DeWitt, Clarissa Marlowe. No more Your Grace, not one more utterance of that damned honorific. After such a blinding kiss, I think we’re owed.”

Then he was gone, leaving her to wilt against a workspace she’d never look at again without imagining him tupping her atop it.