Desiring the Devil of Duncraven (Secret Wallflower Society Book 3) Read online

  He only has the wickedest of intentions…

  “I still don’t know your name,” Percy said, gazing up at him from beneath her lashes.

  “My enemies call me the Devil of Duncraven.”

  Of course they did.

  “Are you?” she asked. “A devil, that is.”

  Having worked the tension from her neck, he moved on to her shoulders, his fingers sinking into three years’ worth of pressure and strain. It felt heavenly.

  “What do you think?” he said.

  What did she think?

  “I’m not sure,” she replied honestly. “I suppose it depends on what your intentions are.”

  “Oh, love. My intentions are always wicked.” His eyes darkened to amber, her only warning before he lowered his head…and kissed her.

  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.

  © 2020 by Jillian Eaton

  Edited by Quillfire Author Services

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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.

  A Note to Readers:

  Physical abuse is a reoccurring theme throughout this book. If you have any questions, or would like additional details before deciding to purchase this work, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me at [email protected]. I would like to note any physical abuse or mention of physical abuse occurs strictly between Percy and her estranged husband, who is decidedly NOT the hero of this tale. Such details are not overly graphic.

  Lots of love,

  Jillian

  Table of Contents

  Description

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Epilogue

  The Secret Wallflower Society

  About the Author

  Domestic Abuse

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  Description

  He's a dangerous bounty hunter hired to track her down...she's a beautiful duchess with a wounded heart. When these two meet, one thing is certain: the Devil of Duncraven is never letting her go.

  When Percy was swept off her feet by a charming duke, she thought her fairytale dreams had finally come true…until her husband left her broken and bleeding in an alley. Rescued by two ladies who immediately take her under their wing, she has been a duchess in hiding ever since.

  Lucas Black, the Devil of Duncraven, is a man who procures things…and he’s very good at his job. Hired by the Duke of Glastonbury to track down his missing wife, Lucas quickly finds Percy hiding in London. And just as quickly makes the regrettable error of losing his heart to the frail, violet-eyed beauty.

  Betrayed by one man, Percy has no intention of ever trusting another. Especially the scoundrel who has been hired to kidnap her! Except Lucas isn’t as devilish as he’d like everyone to believe, Percy isn’t as delicate as she seems, and soon they find themselves falling in love. But danger lurks around the corner, because Glastonbury is still searching for Percy. Unfortunately for the duke, Lucas has no intention of letting her go…

  Prologue

  Persephone had always wanted to be a princess.

  Not for wealth or gowns–although she did like a pretty dress. Not even for popularity. Especially not for popularity. No, her reasons for wanting to be a princess were quite specific.

  Princesses had Prince Charmings.

  It was, if not a rule, a very serious guideline.

  And Persephone had been looking for her Prince Charming since she turned eight years of age and fell in love with the idea of being in love.

  She could still remember the exact moment it happened. She’d been walking with her mother through Hyde Park. It had been the middle of April, and the air had smelled of cherry blossoms and possibility. There was no season Persephone liked more than spring, especially after a long winter spent cooped up inside her parent’s modest townhome in Berkley Square, and she’d been eager to stretch her young legs.

  “Persephone, you need to slow down,” her mother had ordered when Persephone tried to rush ahead. “Proper young ladies do not hurry. They take small, precise steps. And they never flap their arms. You look like a goose.”

  Persephone hadn’t wanted to look like a goose. She’d wanted to look like a Persephone. So, she’d obeyed her mother–she was a very obedient child–and begun to take small, precise steps. Which was fortunate, for if she’d been running, she might have missed the man on one knee and the woman standing in front of him with her hands pressed to her mouth.

  “What are they doing?” Persephone had asked, her eyes wide with wonder as the woman said something to the man and he jumped to his feet and wrapped her in his arms with a loud whoop that sent a startled pair of mourning doves fluttering out of the bushes.

  “They are acting in a most inappropriate manner,” Persephone’s mother had said, the corners of her mouth pinching with disapproval before she’d put her arm around her daughter’s shoulders and steered her in the opposite direction. “Such public displays of affection are nothing more than a cry for attention from desperate people. Proper young ladies do not engage in such behavior.”

  But Persephone, who hadn’t been able to stop herself from glancing back at the couple, didn’t believe they appeared desperate. She thought they appeared happy. And she had decided she wanted to be that happy one day, too.

  She just needed to find her Prince Charming.

  Chapter One

  Fourteen Years Later

  Wanted: One Prince Charming

  Estranged Husbands Need Not Apply

  Percy–as she was called now–had always loved painting. There was something about the smooth stroke of a brush on canvas that was innately satisfying. She enjoyed creating beauty out of blankness. Of coaxing the landscapes out of her head and onto paper. It soothed her. It calmed her.

  But most importantly, it silenced the demons within.

  As she sat in the rear garden and eyed her most recent work, a lovely scene of a pond with two white swans gliding across the glasslike surface, she didn’t think about her estranged husband Andrew, the Duke of Glastonbury. She didn’t think about how black his eyes turned right before he lost his temper. She didn’t think about the sound his hand made when it collided with her cheek. She didn’t think about the rain washing away the blood on her face as she huddled in an alley, wondering what her life had come to. She didn’t think about all the nights she stayed awake, flinching at every sound for fear it meant Andrew had finally found her.

  Instead, her focus was on what shade of green to use for the weeping willow behind the pond. Mint, or chartreuse? This painting was to be a wedding gift for one of her dearest friends in the entire world, Lady Helena Ware, and she wanted it to be absolutely perfect.

  It was in Helena’s townhouse, a cheerful brick home tucked away in the middle of Berkley Squ
are, that she was currently residing (or hiding away, depending on how you looked at it). And it was Helena, as well as her friend Calliope, Countess of Winchester, who had rescued Percy in her most dire hour of need.

  Chartreuse, she decided before she carefully began to fill in the long boughs of the willow with tiny little flicks of her wrist. While oil was her preferred medium, she’d chosen watercolor for this particular piece as she’d wanted to bring a sense of romanticism to the painting. It was her first time attempting watercolor, but she’d long admired the work of Joseph M. Turner, an artist renowned for his use of bold colors and creative landscapes.

  She even owned an original painting of Mr. Turner’s from early in his career; a stunning seascape of an ocean in the midst of a turbulent storm. Or rather, her husband owned the painting. It hung in the library of their country estate in Sussex, one of the few things she missed from her past life as the esteemed Duchess of Glastonbury.

  The fancy gowns, the glittering jewelry, the endless parade of luncheons and balls and theater appearances…those things Percy could gladly go without. Truth be told, she’d never been particularly fond of all the attention and duties that accompanied being married to a duke. Especially a duke of Andrew’s renown.

  Constantly being on display, like a china doll high on a shelf for everyone to look at and try to find fault with, had been both emotionally and physically draining. She’d felt as if she always had to be the best in the room. The best wife, the best hostess, the best duchess. And if she wasn’t…

  Well, she didn’t think about that when she was painting.

  She’d just begun to add depth to the clouds floating lazily over the pond when she heard it. The distinct crack of a stick. It was a small sound. Insignificant to most. But for Percy, it might as well have been a gunshot.

  Her heart leapt into her throat.

  An icy chill swept down her spine.

  He’s found me, she thought.

  For that was what she always thought.

  He’s found me, and this time he’s going to kill me.

  She wished it was an unfounded fear, but it wasn’t. It wasn’t because she knew that the crack of a stick sounded exactly like the crack of a bone. She knew that pain could literally bring a person to their knees. And she knew that Andrew would never stop trying to find her.

  He didn’t search for her out of any sense of love or obligation. Oh, in the beginning she’d believed he loved her. In the beginning, she’d believed he had hung the moon and all the stars along with it. But she’d quickly learned he could no more love her than he could love a plant or a plate.

  She was a possession.

  His possession.

  Trembling from head to toe, Percy spun towards the shadows prepared to fight for her life…or die in the process. Because she wasn’t going back on that bloody shelf.

  Not now.

  Not ever again.

  Lucas Black was a man who procured things.

  When he’d been a young orphan stuck under the thumb of Mastiff Brown, a mean bastard with an even meaner right hook, that had meant purses and watches and whatever else his quick, clever fingers could swipe off the rich toffs as they took their morning strolls through Hyde Park.

  When Lucas changed into a man full grown and put Mastiff into the ground where he belonged, thus earning himself the title of the Devil of Duncraven, those purses and watches evolved into priceless jewelry and works of art. But with the rise of the Bow Street Runners, stolen goods became harder and harder to sell. And Lucas, never one to overlook an opportunity, had adjusted his business model accordingly.

  Now he recovered what had been stolen or gone missing. For a pretty penny, of course. Then he took that money and invested it in any manner of ventures. Some lucrative, others not so much. But despite his lack of a formal education, Lucas had always had a knack for finances, and he’d rapidly turned enough of a profit to live–and travel–in comfort.

  He’d been drinking wine in the middle of Sussex when none other than the Duke of Glastonbury came knocking at his door. Generally Lucas reserved any talk of business for London, but it wasn’t every day a duke had need of his services, especially one with such deep pockets.

  The conversation had been blunt and to the point. A good thing, as he’d found Glastonbury to be annoyingly condescending. But the duke hadn’t batted an eye when Lucas told him what he required for a retainer, and the job itself seemed simple enough.

  Find the Duchess of Glastonbury, and return her to her husband.

  Typically Lucas was hired to search for objects instead of people but there’d been nothing typical about the astronomical fee the duke had agreed to pay, including a bonus of a thousand pounds if the duchess was returned before months end.

  He’d returned to London the very next day to begin his search. A search that had taken him from Mayfair to Grosvenor to Winchester Manor, before ultimately leading to a brick townhouse in Berkley Square.

  The sun was beginning to set off the Thames as he bypassed the front door and went around to the rear garden, blending seamlessly into the shadows that slithered away from a long hedgerow dividing the home from its neighbor. The rough edge of a leaf caught on his jacket as he slipped between two holly bushes. With his sole focus on the delicate fairy sitting partially obscured behind a tall wooden easel, he wasn’t as careful as he should have been, and the branch that had snared him broke with a loud crack.

  Like a deer startled by a wolf in the middle of the wood, the fairy leapt up out of her chair and whirled towards the line of shrubbery, her eyes wide and fearful as she searched the encroaching darkness.

  Lucas sucked in a sharp breath.

  So this, he thought silently, was the missing Duchess of Glastonbury.

  The duke had given him a miniature of his wife for reference, but Lucas didn’t need to take it out of his pocket. This woman was clearly the one he had been sent to find; he’d be a fool to mistake her for anyone else.

  And Lucas, while many other things, was not a fool.

  The duchess’s hair was a shade lighter than the picture, he noted. Sable streaks intermingled with silky black in a loose coiffure that accentuated her delicate countenance. She had violet eyes framed with thick lashes, a tip-tilted nose, high cheekbones, and a mouth that was a tad top-heavy. To his disappointment, most of her body was concealed beneath a green shawl, but he could tell by the size of her wrists peeking out beneath the embroidered gold fringe that her bone structure was as slight as that of a song bird.

  She was a tiny little thing, hardly bigger than a minute. And he wondered at the unexpected surge of protectiveness that roared within his chest, even as he stepped out of his hiding place and began to saunter towards her, his long stride making short work of the small garden.

  “S-stop right there!” Her voice was an octave higher than where he suspected it normally resided, and full of barely-restrained panic. “I’m warning you!”

  How darling. The kitten had claws. Or at least, she liked to pretend she did. But despite his amusement, Lucas couldn’t help but admire her bravery. It was obvious she was scared out of her wits.

  And he wondered about that as well.

  When Lucas had been a boy of twelve, long before he made a name for himself by murdering Mastiff, he’d taken up work at a livery stable. He had wanted to make an honest go of his life, or at least give it a shot. As he had always had an affinity for animals, he’d decided unsaddling and grooming the horses of rich noblemen would suit him. And if he occasionally slipped a shilling out of a pocket or two, well, who was the wiser?

  The job hadn’t lasted for more than four months, but there was one horse he would always remember. Opal had been of Arabian descent, a gleaming chestnut with a dished nose and bright, inquisitive brown eyes. He got in the habit of carrying a sliced piece of apple for her whenever she was brought by the yard, and a bond was quickly formed between the high-spirited mare and the young lad desperately searching for a true friend.

 
; Then one day Opal was sold to an earl of something or rather. An earl who wanted to use her for racing, never mind that she hadn’t the temperament for it. Lucas never saw his friend again until, nearly seven years later, he was passing by Tattershall’s, an equine auction house, when his head was abruptly turned by a familiar dished nose and a soft, pleading nicker.

  Tattershall’s was known throughout Europe for its excellent horse flesh, but there was also a wooden pen, hardly bigger than a sitting room, where men could sell their beasts that were beaten down or otherwise unusable. The poor, worthless things normally went to the butcher, and were rarely worth a second glance. Which was why Lucas was stunned to see Opal huddled in the corner of the pen, her once glossy coat dull with age and neglect, her brown eyes sunken in, her ribs plainly visible.

  If that was the worst of it, he might have been able to make an excuse. Maybe the earl had sold her to a family in want of a gentle riding horse, and they’d fallen on hard times. Maybe she’d been lost in a wager, and her new owners hadn’t been as mindful of her care as they should have been as she grew older.

  But then he stepped up to Opal, and he went to rest his hand on her neck, just like he’d done a dozen times before. He waited for her to turn her head and nudge his chest, just like she’d done a dozen times before.

  Instead, she flinched, and the whites of her eyes flashed, and he felt a pit deep in his stomach because he knew her fear came from more than a lack of good grooming and oats.

  Someone, somewhere, had beaten that terror into her.

  And it broke his heart to know they’d broken her spirit.

  He’d paid three copper pennies for Opal, and brought her back to the same livery barn where they’d first met. He’d rented her a stall, and given her all the apples she could eat, and brushed her coat until it shone. He’d showed her nothing but love and kindness to her last day, and held her head in his arms when she passed.