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Back The Duke in Question Save as PDF
Chapters (33)
  1. Front Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright
  4. Contents
  5. One
  6. Two
  7. Three
  8. Four
  9. Five
  10. Six
  11. Seven
  12. Eight
  13. Nine
  14. Ten
  15. Eleven
  16. Twelve
  17. Thirteen
  18. Fourteen
  19. Fifteen
  20. Sixteen
  21. Seventeen
  22. Eighteen
  23. Nineteen
  24. Twenty
  25. Twenty-one
  26. Twenty-two
  27. Twenty-three
  28. Twenty-four
  29. Epilogue
  30. Author’s Note
  31. Acknowledgments
  32. About the Author
  33. Back Cover

Her shoulders lifted with her short breaths as if she was struggling to find the right words to soften the blow he knew was coming. “This is sex, Valentine. You know that. We both know it. I can’t let my heart get involved because I’ll only set myself up for heartbreak.” Her voice went soft. “You don’t believe in love, and I…do. Someday, I want that for myself. Maybe that will be with Herbert, maybe not.”

Valentine blinked, glad that she could not see his face…see the utter chaos that the soft words had caused and the sudden sensation in his chest as though something inside was cracking into pieces. She wasn’t wrong about him. He was a pragmatist, a man ruled by wit and will, and not by his passions, and yet he’d never felt more like a stranger to himself than he did in this moment.

He’d never resented himself more.

Twenty-two

Bronwyn had lied to Valentine. Her heart was well and truly involved, and heartbreak was definitely in her future. Hell, it was already here. Though she had no one to blame but herself that she had fallen stupidly and irreversibly in love with the duke.

Why couldn’t she have fancied a sweet, uncomplicated man like Lord Herbert? If Thornbury was a roiling, stormy ocean, the charming young lord would be a placid, glassy lake. No, perhaps a pond with no depth whatsoever. Even the Marquis de Tremblay, dancing so gaily with her aunt, would have made a better option of a husband. Not that he would, considering how infatuated he was with her aunt and she with him, though they both tiptoed around it as if that would make it disappear.

Love didn’t care about age.

Her mother had seen through Tremblay in half of a second, staring him down as if he were an insect that needed to be squashed when he’d offered to escort her to the ball. Be her foil, as they’d planned. But even he, with his perpetually pleasant mien, had withered like a flower facing the cruelest frost at the force of the marchioness’s glare. Later on, Bronwyn heard him whisper to Aunt Esther, “I am sorry, chérie, but I always thought you were exaggerating about your sister.”

“No, which is why we have to save Bronwyn.”