The Dissolute Duke. Sophia James

Reality flared. She was only a situation to be managed. The night crawled in about them, small shafts of moonlight illuminating the interior of the coach. Outside the rain had begun to fall heavily, a sudden shower in a windless night.

      Taylen Ellesmere was exactly like her brothers, a man who liked control and power over everything about him. No surprises or unwanted quandaries. The thought made her frown.

      ‘I do not envisage problems,’ he said. ‘If you play your part well, there should not be—’

      A shout split the air, and then the carriage simply rolled to one side further and further, the wild scrunch of metal upon wood and a jerking lurch.

      Leaping over beside her, the Duke braced her in his arms, protecting her from the splintering glass as it shattered inwards, a cushion against the rocking chaos and the rush of cold air. He held her so tightly she felt the punching hardness of metal on his body, drawing blood and making him grimace.

      Then there was only darkness.

      Lucinda was in her own room at Falder House in Mayfair, the curtains billowing in a quiet afternoon breeze, the sounds of the wind in the trees and further off in the park the voices of children calling.

      Everything exactly normal save for her three sisters-in-law dressed in sombre shades and sitting in a row of chairs watching her.

      ‘You are awake?’

      Beatrice-Maude came forwards and lifted Lucinda’s head carefully before offering a sip of cold lemonade that sat in a glass on the bedside table. ‘The doctor said he thought you would return to us today and he was right.’ She smiled as she carefully blotted any trace of moisture from Lucinda’s lips. ‘How do you feel?’

      ‘How should I feel?’

      Something was not right. Some quiet and creeping thing was being hidden from her, crouched in the shadows of truth.

      ‘Why am I here? What happened?’

      ‘You don’t remember?’ Emerald now joined Beatrice-Maude and her face was solemn. ‘You don’t remember an accident, Lucy?’

      ‘Where?’ Panic had begun to consume her and she tried to sit up, but nothing seemed to work, her arms, her legs, her back. All numb and useless. The feel of her heart pumping in her chest was the only thing that still functioned and she felt light headed at the fear of paralysis.

      ‘I cannot move.’

      ‘Doctor Cameron said that was a normal thing. He said many people regain the use of their bodies after the swelling has subsided.’

      ‘Swelling?’

      ‘You suffered a blow to the neck and a nasty bang on the head. It was lucky that the coach to Leicester was passing by the other way, because otherwise …’

      ‘You could have been there all night and Doctor Cameron said you may not have lived.’ Eleanor, her youngest brother’s wife, had joined in now, but unlike the others her voice shook and her face was blotchy. She had been crying. A lot.

      This realisation frightened Lucinda more than anything else had.

      ‘How did it happen?’

      ‘Your carriage overturned. There was a corner, it seems, and the vehicle was moving too fast. It plummeted down a hill a good many yards and came to rest at the bottom of the incline.’

      Agitation made her shake as more and more words tumbled into the chasm of blankness her brain had become.

      Beatrice took over, holding her hand tightly, and managing a forced smile. ‘It is over now, sweetheart. You are home and you are safe and that is all that is important.’

      ‘How did I get here?’

      ‘Asher brought you back three days ago.’ Lucinda swallowed. Three days. Her mind tried its hardest to find any recollection of the passage of time and failed.

      And now she was cast upon this bed as a figure of stone, her head and heart the only parts of her body that she could still feel. A tear leaked its way from her left eye and fell warm down her cheek into the line of her hair. Swallowing, her throat thick and raw, she had the taste of blood on her tongue.

      Screaming. A flash of sound came back through the ether. Screaming and screaming. Her voice and another calming her. Quiet and sad, warm hands holding her neck so that she did not move, the night air cold and wet and the rain joining blood.

      ‘Doctor Cameron said it was a miracle you did not move another inch as you would have been dead. He says it was fortunate that when they found you, your head had been stabilised between two heavy planks of wood to restrain any motion.’

      ‘Lucky,’ she countered, the sentiment falling into question.

      They were not telling her the whole of it. She could see it in the shared looks and feel it in the hushed unspoken reticence. She wondered why her brothers were not here in the room and knew the answer to the question as soon as she thought it.

      They would not be able to hide things from her as easily as her sisters-in-law, although Cristo was still most efficient at keeping his own council.

      ‘Was anyone else hurt?’

      The hesitation told her there had been.

      ‘There was a man in the carriage with you, Lucy.’ Emerald now took her other hand, rubbing at it in a way that was supposed to be comforting, she supposed, though it felt vaguely annoying because her skin was so numb.

      ‘I was alone with him?’ Nothing made sense. What could she have been doing on the open road at night and in the company of a stranger? It was all too odd. ‘Who was he?’

      ‘The sixth Duke of Alderworth.’ Beatrice took up the story now.

      ‘Alderworth?’ Lucinda knew the name despite not remembering anything at all about the accident.

      My God. The Dissolute Duke was infamous across London and it seemed he kept to the company of whores and harpies almost exclusively. Why would she have been there alone with him and so far from home?

      ‘Does Asher know he was there?’ She looked up at Emerald.

      ‘Unfortunately he does.’

      ‘Do other people also know?

      ‘Unfortunately they do.’

      ‘How many know?’

      ‘All of London would not be putting too fine a point on it, I think.’

      ‘I see. It is a scandal then and I am ruined?’

      ‘No.’ Beatrice-Maude’s voice was strong. ‘Your brothers would never allow that to happen and neither will we.’

      Lucinda swallowed, the whole conundrum more than she could deal with. Eleanor and Emerald watched her with a certain worry in their eyes and even Beatrice, who was seldom flustered, seemed out of sorts.

      Intrinsically flawed. The words came from nowhere as she closed her eyes and slept.

       Chapter Three

      Tay Ellesmere sat in the library of the Carisbrook family town house in Mayfair and looked at the three Wellingham brothers opposite him.

      His head ached, his right leg was swollen above the knee and the top of his left arm was encased in a heavy white bandage, as were his ribs, strapped tightly so that breathing was not quite so agonising. Besides this he had myriad other cuts and grazes from the glass and wood splintering as the carriage had overturned.

      But these injuries were the very least of his worries. A far more pressing matter lingered in the air between him and his hosts.

      ‘You were dressed most inappropriately and Lucinda was barely dressed at all, for God’s sake. The scandal is the talk of the town and has been for the past week.’