The Autumn Duchess (A Duchess for All Seasons Book 4) Read online

  “Are you going to kiss me again?” Hannah whispered, her eyes two shimmering pools of ash beneath a thick fringe of velvet lashes.

  “Do you want me to?” Evan’s voice was hoarse, his blood hot.

  “Yes.” Her tongue slipped between her lips, drawing his gaze down to her delectable little mouth. A mouth that was all but begging to be tasted. By him. And if that wasn’t the most confounding thing on God’s green earth he didn’t know what was.

  Hannah wanted him. The half crippled duke with a disfigured face who’d once been mocked by the entire ton. He didn’t know why or how, given as he did not even want himself. But she did.

  And he wanted her.

  He wanted her more than he’d ever wanted anything in his entire life. More than he’d wanted to walk. More than he’d wanted his father’s approval. More than he’d wanted the echoes of Lady Portia’s cruel laughter to disappear. And so with a savage growl that was more beast than man, he took what he wanted...

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  © 2018 by Jillian Eaton

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  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form is forbidden without the written permission of the author.

  Description

  A Desperate Wallflower…

  Miss Hannah Fairchild has no dreams of grandeur when it comes to marriage. Forget a duke or an earl. The shy, spinsterly wallflower would be happy with a doctor or (even better) the bookseller’s son. Unfortunately, if she wants to save her family from financial ruin - and her father from debtor’s prison - a duke is precisely what she needs.

  A Disfigured Duke…

  Severely injured from a fall as a young child, the Duke of Wycliffe has spent much of his adult life in bitter seclusion. Withdrawn from the outside world and everyone in it who mocked him for his physical disfigurement, Evan fully intends to spend the rest of his days in isolation at Wycliffe Manor. Until a stammering, gray-eyed book mouse arrives on his doorstep and proposes marriage.

  An Unexpected Proposal…

  To Hannah’s disbelief, the Duke of Wycliffe actually agrees to her ridiculous proposal - under one condition. Their marriage, such as it is, will be in name only. But there are no guarantees when two lonely, vulnerable hearts are involved...and soon Hannah and Evan find themselves doing the one thing they promised they wouldn’t. Falling in love.

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  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Epilogue

  A Note From the Author

  A Dangerous Seduction

  Prologue

  Evan did not remember much about the fall.

  But he couldn’t forget the whispers.

  How could he, when from age eight to one and twenty they followed him wherever he went? The whispers were there to greet him in every room he entered. They trailed after him through the hallways. The blasted things even followed him into ballrooms and carriages and the middle of Hyde Park.

  Suffice it to say he heard the whispers everywhere. But even worse than the hushed voices, even worse than the gossip and the terse smiles and the horrified gasps, were the pitying stares.

  Evan could take the whispers and the staring. He didn’t even mind the disgust, for he knew it was well deserved. He had a mirror, hadn’t he? He knew what he looked like. Which was why, when children cowered and ladies swooned at the mere sight of him – and not in the good way – he took it all in stride.

  But the pity...the pity he could not abide.

  Five years had gone by and the back of his neck still burned with embarrassment and anger whenever he thought of one incident in particular. It had been the night of the Glastonbury ball. A ball he never would have attended if his sweet, ailing mother hadn’t begged him to go.

  ‘You’re becoming a recluse Evan,’ she’d cried, her large blue eyes awash with tears. ‘Staying in all day and all night. It ‘tisn’t natural. Especially for a man of your caliber and station.’

  Evan had been tempted to point out that the only thing unnatural was his face, but he’d held his tongue. And when his mother began to cry in earnest he’d acquiesced to her request, for despite the hardness in his gaze he’d still had a soft spot in his heart that could not abide a woman’s tears. Which was how he found himself standing awkwardly in the shadowy corner of a ballroom while the ton’s elite swirled by in a pastel blend of ivory gowns and sleek black tailcoats.

  Dressed in his own black tailcoat with a crisp white cravat strangling his throat and fawn colored breeches clinging to muscular thighs, he could have almost passed for one of them.

  Almost.

  Keeping one hand pressed defensively against the puckered flesh on the right side of his face and the other wrapped tightly around a glass of champagne that had already been refilled four times, he failed to notice the petite blonde approaching until she was nearly on top of him.

  “Oh!” she exclaimed, round cheeks flushing prettily as she batted her lashes and giggled into the palm of one satin glove. “I am terribly sorry. I fear I did not see you standing there...Your Grace.”

  Evan stiffened, broad shoulders drawing taut beneath his coat. “You know who I am?”

  “Of course,” she said, sounding surprised. “Doesn’t everyone?”

  When his jaw reflexively tightened, pulling at the gnarled scar tissue he was still covering with his hand, she gasped and took an inadvertent step back.

  “I - I am terribly sorry. I didn’t mean to imply...I just meant that, well, you are a duke.”

  No, he corrected her silently. His father had been a duke. And while Evan had technically inherited the title upon his death, he was no more a duke than he was a fish. Or a horse. Or a bloody cloud floating by in the sky.

  “Is there something I can help you with, Lady…”

  “Portia.” Having recovered from her faux pas, she offered him a brilliant smile. “Lady Portia James. If I am not mistaken, I believe our mothers attended the same finishing school.”

  “Indeed,” he muttered before he glanced purposefully over her shoulder in a not-very-subtle indication that he wished for their conversation to be over. Unfortunately, Lady Portia either did not receive the hint or she simply chose to ignore it.

  “I can assure you this is quite out of character for me and, well, a bit presumptuous if I am being honest, but…” She hesitated, and Evan felt an unmistakable prickling of desire when she sank her teeth into her plump bottom lip. “Would you care to dance?”

  “Dance?” he repeated, so startled by the request that he nearly spilled his champagne. Women – especially women who looked like Lady Portia James – rarely spoke to him, let alone asked him to dance. And yet here she was, standing right in front of him, doing precisely that.

  In hindsight, Evan realized he should have known then and there that something was amiss. That Lad
y Portia, for all of her guilelessness, was not nearly as sweet or innocent as she appeared. But as he’d gazed down into her cornflower blue eyes he had felt something he hadn’t felt in a very, very long time. So long, in fact, that it took him a moment to recognize what it was.

  Hope.

  “All right,” he said gruffly, setting aside his flute of champagne on a nearby planter in order to take her arm.

  If she noticed his stiff gait as they approached the outskirts of the dance floor she made no mention of it, but he still released a quiet sigh of relief when the quartet of musicians sitting high on a dais began to play a slow, subdued waltz.

  Before the fall Evan had been lively and quick; a veritable dervish of athleticism and energy. After it there had been several doctors who had ominously predicted he would never walk again. The late Duke of Wycliffe, determined that his one and only heir would not grow up to be a cripple, had scoured the country until he’d found a physician who told him what he wanted to hear: that his son would in fact regain full control of his legs and, with time and exercise, might even make a full recovery.

  After years of agonizingly painful therapies that required the use of wooden braces and a barbaric pulley system, Evan had managed to walk again. But it was clear, even then, that he’d never be what he once was, much to the duke’s everlasting disappointment.

  “I apologize.” Evan’s scars stood out in vivid white contrast against his tanned skin as his face flushed a deep, mottled red when he stepped on Lady Portia’s tiny foot for what felt like the hundredth time since they’d begun their waltz. “I – I haven’t danced in quite some time.”

  “It’s fine,” she assured him, but she couldn’t quite disguise the wince of pain that flashed across her features when he tried to turn her in a circle and his leg locked in place, causing their shins to collide.

  “This is a mistake.” But when he went to disengage himself she clung fast to his wrist, nails sinking into his sleeve cuff with surprising tenacity.

  “I think you’re doing splendidly, Your Grace. Truly,” Lady Portia insisted when Evan made a scoffing sound under his breath. “I can only imagine how difficult it must be for a man of your stature to complete such intricate steps and turns.” Her mouth curved. “Particularly when your partner is significantly lacking in height. I fully accept all of the blame.”

  A man of his stature? The way she spoke almost made it seem as if she didn’t notice his physical impairments. But that couldn’t be true...could it?

  Again hope stirred inside of Evan’s chest, warming the protective layer of ice he’d used to shield his heart against all of the stares and the whispers and the unwanted pity. Maybe, just maybe, Lady Portia was the sort of woman he’d started to fear did not exist. The kind who could see past his ruined exterior to the man beneath. The kind who saw him for what he was, not for what he was not.

  When the dance ended he met her flawless curtsy with an awkward bow, lips twisted in a grimace of discomfort as liquid fire shot up through his ruined leg. The waltz had been more demanding than he’d anticipated, and already he was dreading the inevitable ice bath and stretching that was to come. But such therapies, albeit horrifically painful, were necessary if he wanted to retain the limited range of motion that he still had left. Which he did, particularly now that he had a new incentive to do so.

  “Lady Portia, might I have the pleasure of…”

  “Of?” she said innocently, batting her lashes at him when his voice trailed away.

  “...of-calling-on-you-tomorrow?” The words came out in one long, unintelligible sentence that had him inwardly cursing, but thankfully Lady Portia was able to decipher his gibberish. Although she did not give him the answer he wished for.

  “I am terribly sorry, Your Grace,” she said apologetically. “I would like that very much, but I am afraid I am leaving tomorrow to visit my aunt in Gloucester. Mayhap when I return?”

  “Of course.” He hesitated, gaze lingering on the curve of her bosom before lifting to her face. She was, without a doubt, one of the most beautiful females he’d ever encountered. All soft lines and ivory skin with hair just a shade lighter than the sun. The quintessential English rose. And she’d wanted to dance. With him. “When do you think that will be?”

  “Hmmm?” She’d been looking at something – or someone – over his left shoulder, and it took her a moment to respond. “Oh, I’m not certain.”

  Evan’s brow furrowed. “You’re not certain when you’ll return?”

  “No.” Was it his imagination, or had her demeanor suddenly cooled? “I’m sorry, Your Grace, but I fear my presence is requested on the other side of the room.”

  “Wait, I–” But she was already gone, the train of her ivory gown fluttering silently in her wake as she cut a path through the middle of the floor to where three other women stood waiting in front of a pillar, their expressions hidden behind large silk fans.

  Giving a bemused shake of his head, Evan managed to hobble back to his corner. His champagne was exactly where he’d left it, and he drained what remained of the warm bubbly liquid in one swallow. For an instant he considered going after Lady Portia and asking for a second dance, but he didn’t want to come on too strongly. Besides, he doubted his leg would hold up.

  A glance at his gold pocket watch indicated the hour to be just shy of two in the morning, nearly fifteen minutes later than when he’d told his driver to be waiting for him outside. With one last cursory glance around the room – a vain attempt to make it appear as though he was looking at everyone when in fact he was really only looking for one person – he exited through a matching set of glass doors and onto a stone terrace that wrapped around the entire front of the house.

  Standing at one end of the terrace was a bevy of females with their heads bent together. Evan clung to the shadows as he hobbled past them, only to stop short when his ears detected Lady Portia’s sweet, melodious voice. Except it no longer sounded very sweet or melodious.

  “Well, I did it.” Her tone vaguely triumphant, Lady Portia opened her beaded reticule and held it out. “Five shillings each, if you please.”

  Evan frowned. What was she talking about?

  “I cannot believe you let him touch you.” With a visible shudder, a tall brunette standing to Lady Portia’s left tossed a handful of coins into the reticule. “Weren’t you afraid you were going to catch something?”

  “He’s not diseased, Nora.” Lady Portia rolled her eyes. “He’s disfigured. There’s a difference.”

  “Not much of one.” This from a slender redhead with a smattering of freckles across her nose. “What did he say to you?”

  Lady Portia’s snickering laugh cut through Evan like the sharpest of blades. “I haven’t the faintest idea. I was concentrating too hard on not being sick to listen to a word he had to say. Honestly, I knew he was hideous, but up close...” She made a face. “It was horrible. I honestly don’t know how the poor man gets out of bed every morning. He must keep every mirror in his house covered. It’s such a pity he’s a duke. All of that wealth and good breeding completely wasted.”

  Evan had heard more than enough. Unfortunately, when he tried to put weight down on his bad leg it buckled beneath him, even one dance having been too much for the fragile muscle and shattered bone. With a grunt and a curse he stumbled out of the shadows and fell down hard on his knees, drawing the attention of Lady Portia and her friends.

  “Your Grace!” she gasped, and if not for what he’d just overheard Evan might have been tempted to believe her concern was genuine. “Are you all right? Here, let me help you.”

  “Do not touch me,” he snarled when she crouched down beside him and reached for his arm. Her head canted to the side, the feigned worry sliding off her face as easily as dust being wiped off a table.

  “Very well.” Standing with the effortless grace of someone who’d never had their body betray them, Lady Portia watched Evan struggle to his feet with the faintest of smirks. When he was once again standi
ng – more or less – she stepped out of his way and let him pass without speaking, her pitying stare saying more than words ever could.

  Ashamed, angry, furiously betrayed, he gritted his teeth against the agonizing pain pulsing through his fractured limb and, through sheer will and determination, made it around the corner and down the steps before he collapsed against a stone wall covered in ivy, his tortured body refusing to take another step.

  Never again, he vowed silently as he tilted his head back to glare bleakly up at the stars. He would never attend another ball. Never let himself be fooled by a beautiful woman. Never be stupid enough to believe anyone could see past the monster on the outside to the man beneath.

  And, most importantly of all, he would never, ever fall in love.

  Chapter One

  “Not again.” Her nose wrinkling when she passed by her father’s study and was overwhelmed by the unmistakable stench of cigar smoke and strong spirits, Hannah knocked softly on the door before letting herself in.

  It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the dim lighting. When they did, she was met with a familiar sight: Lord Fairchild slumped forward over his desk, one hand still wrapped around the bottle of brandy he’d used to drink himself into mindless oblivion and a cigar smoldering dangerously close to a towering stack of unpaid notes.

  Hannah extinguished the cigar first and then dumped what remained of the brandy out the nearest window before tossing the empty bottle into a bin. Her father jolted when the glass clanged against metal, but with a snort and a loud snore he promptly fell back asleep.

  “Oh Papa.” Tenderly covering his shoulders with a blanket before turning her attention to the various bank notes scattered across the desk, she began to sort through them one by one, the corners of her mouth tightening as she encountered one frivolous expense after another.