Page 1 of Kiss the Duke Goodbye
CHAPTER 1
WHERE A LONELY MAN PONDERS LIFE’S COMPLEXITIES
A frigid winter evening, Mayfair 1818
It 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 hischoosing.
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, notone, 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, areallaugh. 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. Andher, 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 hatswerethe best he’d ever seen. “Baroness Crawford-Digby.”