Page 1 of The Duchess in His Bed
Prologue
London
1840
The Earl of Elverton scowled at his latest bastard, blotchy and naked, held aloft by a midwife, as though she were offering him a treasure discovered in the ruins of Egypt or Pompeii. He wondered if he should present this one to his wife, tell her to suckle it at her teat, and announce to the world she’d given birth to it.
Why the devil couldn’t he get his countess with babe when he had such success at it elsewhere, with every woman he bedded save her? Perhaps if he were more enthusiastic when it came to the taking of her—
But she was a plain, docile thing, the daughter of a marquess his father had forced him to marry when he was nineteen. Naught about her made a man’s cock stand at attention, although he did manage it. Yet still, after a decade, not once had his seed taken root.
He should probably rid himself of her. A trip down the stairs, a fall from a rowboat in deep waters, a tumble from her horse. He could make an accident happen. He had before with a brother who should have inherited the title ahead of him.
Ashooting accidentwhen they’d been out hunting grouse. No one was surprised. The heir apparent had never been comfortable around weapons or truly mastered the use of firearms. “He tripped, his finger on the trigger,” Elverton had told everyone. “The gun discharged quite by accident.” No one doubted his word, no one suspected it had beenhisfinger on the trigger that was responsible for his brother’s demise, not when he blubbered and produced tears. He became the victim, the one everyone comforted, because he would have to live with the horror that he’d witnessed due to his brother’s clumsiness. Fools all.
Now he slid his gaze from the bawling babe to the woman in the bed recovering from her ordeal, watching him, waiting for his decision. If he were to arrange to pass this by-blow off as his legitimate heir, he would have to dispatch her to a watery grave at the bottom of the Thames in order to ensure her silence. He was not one to take risks of discovery when misdeeds were done. While at present—with her bedraggled hair sweaty and her skin clammy—she wasn’t much to gaze upon, when she was at her best, she was the most beautiful, exciting woman he’d ever plowed. She also possessed a luscious mouth that knew its way well around a man’s cock. He grew hard just thinking of placing his once again between her luscious lips.
“Swaddle it,” he ordered the midwife.
“Can I not keep this one?” his favorite mistress asked.
He glanced around at the lavish furnishings he provided for her in the fine town house he leased. “Not unless you want to keep it and yourself on the streets. Bastards are tiresome, a burden I do not tolerate.”
“But you will ensure he is well cared for and loved, will you not?”
No good would come of changing his plans, but where was the harm in a small lie that would keep her enthusiastically welcoming him between her thighs? He gave her a much-practiced reassuring smile. “For you, I will do near anything.”
Perhaps he’d even replace his wife with her when the time came, if it came, if his countess did not bear fruit soon.
Taking the boy from the midwife, he headed from the room. Because he paid for his bastards to be “put away”—killedin baby-farming circles—he preferred to spread them out, never using the same farmer more than a couple of times. He’d recently obtained a new name, a woman he’d not visited before. He’d gladly hand over the required fee to Ettie Trewlove to ensure he was never again inconvenienced by this brat.
Chapter 1
London
Early March 1872
She was in want of a man.
And not just any man would serve. She had a particular one in mind.
Standing in a shadowed corner of the Elysium Club, an exclusive gaming hell singularly for ladies, Selena Sheffield, Duchess of Lushing, watched as the club’s owner prowled the floor with lengthy, lithe strides, reminding her of a large sleek lion, predatory and dangerous. His black fitted coat caressed his wide shoulders, as she suspected many a lady had. His black brocade waistcoat molded itself around his lean torso. His white shirt and knotted snowy cravat were pristine, a direct contrast to the swarthiness of his skin. He didn’t appear to be a man who spent all his time indoors.
She’d first caught sight of him last summer at Lady Aslyn Hastings’s wedding, when the daughter of the late Earl of Eames and ward to the Duke of Hedley had taken Mick Trewlove as her husband. Selena had known nothing about the Trewloves until that day, until she’d caught tidbits here and there as people whispered about the disreputable family that was naught but by-blows.
Then the Duke of Thornley had married Gillie Trewlove—a tavern owner of all things, for God’s sake—and the whispers had turned into a dulcet tone of alarm. More recently, one of the Trewlove brothers had taken Lady Lavinia Kent, sister to the Earl of Collinsworth, to wife, and suddenly no one could talk of anything other than the Trewlove bastards and the swath they were rapidly cutting through Society like Genghis Khan’s hordes intent on conquering what had once believed itself unconquerable.
She considered herself immune to their spell but had to admit to being intrigued by Aiden Trewlove ever since she’d seen him standing at the altar looking nothing at all like his brother, but then only God knew who had sired him, who had given birth to him. However, it had been more than the cut of his bristly shadowed jaw or his patrician nose or those full, sensual lips that had made it near impossible to take her eyes from him.
It was the way he’d seemed amused by the entire affair. Whenever he peered over his shoulder or faced the crowd of people who had packed themselves onto the pews, desperate to watch a lady of such a storied family marrying a man of such a scandalous one, he’d studied them through half-lowered lids, as though taking their measure and not wanting them to see exactly what he thought of them, of how much he found them lacking.
But when Lady Aslyn had glided up the aisle, the warm smile he’d bestowed upon her, expressing his acceptance of her and welcoming her into the family, had marked him as not only kind but immensely approachable.
And Selena was in need of a man harboring both characteristics in order to calm her fraying nerves and ease the guilt threatening her resolve. She was where she should not be, standing with her back pressed against a wall, wearing a gown of deep royal blue, a mask of the same shade, because Aiden Trewlove offered women sin and secrets. Not all the women hid behind masks, not the bold ones or those who had nothing to lose. She imagined the freedom one must feel to stride through the rooms unmasked, to be unafraid, to be liberated. But it was imperative that no one ever learn of her presence in the scandalous environs provided by Aiden Trewlove.
To women, he had opened the heavens where gods plotted and revealed the delicious mysteries within. A club they whispered about among themselves, a place unknown to fathers, brothers, and husbands. A domain in which women ruled and did as they pleased. He’d given them a paradise within the shadows of London that was theirs and theirs alone. He’d known what they wanted, what they needed. And he’d provided it.
A man who created all of this, who understood women so well and knew the entertainments for which they yearned, surely would not sit in judgment and would know how to provide a safe haven where a woman could do what she ought not without fear of her actions being revealed to others.
