The Tattooed Duke Read online

  “Scandal equals sales,” Knightly remarked automatically. It was the phrase upon which he had built his ever-growing publishing empire.

  “Scandal equals published,” Eliza whispered under her breath. Annabelle Swift, advice columnist and the sweetest girl in the world, sympathetically nodded her head.

  “Scandal equals tell me more,” Julianna said when the meeting concluded a short while later.

  “Yes, everything,” Sophie added. Since her marriage to the Duke of Hamilton and Brandon, Sophie occasionally wrote about weddings, which she hated, in her column “Miss Harlow’s Marriage in High Life.” But she more often wrote about fashion, which she loved.

  “Thank you both for your letters of reference,” Eliza began, and her rich, titled friends both laughed. The letters had been a necessary part of her application for the position of household servant. Eliza continued, “The housekeeper was shocked that someone of my impeccable qualifications would wish to leave your households to work for Wycliff.”

  “Little does she know . . .” Sophie murmured.

  “I am a terrible housemaid, but no one else is lining up to take my place,” Eliza said. “ It seems the duke’s reputation scared off all but the most desperate applicants; the rumors of his debts scared off the rest. How lucky for me.”

  “Good help is so hard to find,” Julianna said wistfully.

  “They will be lining up after your story about the tattooed duke is published,” Sophie said.

  “Which begs the question, dear Eliza, of how you know about those tattoos,” Julianna asked pointedly.

  “I’m sure everyone was perishing with curiosity but would not dare ask in front of the group,” Annabelle added.

  “I might have encountered His Grace in the bath,” Eliza said, realizing that those words didn’t quite explain it at all. They didn’t capture the candlelight, for instance, the steam rising from the hot water, or how she knelt by his side and traced her fingers along the inky swirls of his tattoo.

  “Oh my goodness,” Annabelle gasped. “Did he try to take advantage of you?”

  “No,” Eliza said hesitatingly. But their lips had been close enough for a kiss. “I merely slipped in to leave a drying cloth for His Grace.”

  “It’s only a matter of time,” Julianna declared. “The Wycliff dukes are notorious rakes, and known to enjoy their housemaids.”

  “I have so many chores that I haven’t the time for that,” Eliza deadpanned. “At night I’m too exhausted.”

  “Spoken like a wife,” Sophie said, grinning.

  “What’s he really like?” Annabelle asked. “Is he nice?”

  “Nice is not quite the word,” Eliza answered. “Given that he was rumored to have been a pirate. His idiot cousin said something about him ravishing an entire harem in one night.”

  “Ah, so he is not your average gentleman,” Julianna remarked with a gleam in her eye, which Eliza matched.

  “Is he handsome, then?” Sophie asked wistfully. “He sounds handsome. There is nothing quite like a handsome duke.” He certainly wasn’t beautiful—there was something too sharp in his cheekbones, too rugged in his unshaven jaw and long hair roughly tied back in a queue. Eliza recalled that scar on his lip, suggesting all his adventures. And then his gaze—so very aware, so very bold.

  “In a way . . . a way that leaves a girl breathless.”

  “I daresay the Wycliff tradition will live on another day,” Julianna murmured.

  “Or night,” Sophie added.

  “I told you both, I’m too busy and too tired,” Eliza said, though it was only partially true. The thrill of chasing and capturing a story like this kept her up writing at all hours. As for the Duke himself . . . the word yes burned on her lips.

  But nothing could get in the way of getting her stories printed. Not when it seemed she had written pure gold with this one. Not when every column could possibly be her last.

  “When do we get to make the acquaintance of this duke?” Julianna asked. “This oh-so scandalous duke.”

  “I haven’t noticed a swarm of invitations. But I’m sure he’d take your call,” Eliza answered. No one came to call, other than his idiot cousin Basil. He didn’t receive many letters either. She’d thought there would be a swarm ready to make his acquaintance—he was a duke, after all—but it seemed word had already traveled that he was . . . unusual.

  “We cannot call upon him,” Sophie said morosely.

  “Rules. Scandal. Angry husbands, etcetera,” Julianna explained.

  “Ah, yes,” Eliza said, reminded of that vast gulf between her friends the duchess and the countess, and herself, the daughter of an actress and playwright. There were so many pesky social rules that she never bothered with. “Pity that. I should enjoy watching the exchange.”

  “We shall throw a party and invite him,” Sophie suggested.

  “He does not seem inclined to socialize,” Eliza said. Thus far he had spent most of his hours in a locked room—whatever did he do in there?—or in his private study with maps and books and journals, which she was eager to obtain. He took meals with his one-eyed, one-armed friend Harlan, but otherwise kept to his work.

  “A brooding, tattooed, recluse duke,” Annabelle said breathlessly. “The housemaid with a double life. It’s a Minerva Press novel come to life.”

  Eliza laughed and said, “Except for all the scrubbing of floors, which is not anyone’s idea of romance.”

  Chapter 5

  In Which Scrubbing Floors Is Romantic

  The following day found Eliza scrubbing the foyer floors and eating her words. Saddler, the butler, was nearby in his pantry obsessively polishing the silver. The door was ajar, so he could hear if her work went idle for a moment. The butler, she discovered, also had an unnerving habit of silently appearing behind her and giving her a horrible fright just in those moments when she paused to let her mind wander from her work.

  But it was not the butler on her mind.

  His Grace had strolled by, and Eliza spent the next hour reliving all seven seconds that it took him to stroll through the foyer from the drawing room to his library and ogle her shamelessly.

  When the duke appeared, she had been on her hands and knees, in a position of utter supplication, and vexed with the strands of hair falling in her face. Her cheeks were flushed, due to steam rising from the bucket of hot soapy water.

  He did not ignore her, as he ought to have done. She’d heard that servants in some households were required to turn and face the wall when their masters appeared.

  Instead, the duke indulged in a look that would have been horribly rude for the liberty of it. If she’d had a daughter and a man looked at her that way, she would have called him out for the hot, fierce gaze that freely swept slowly over her breasts, the dip in her back, and the rise of her bottom. It was so brazen, so bold, that she could feel it.

  An hour later she was still feeling it—the heat of it, the shock of it, the mock outrage and secret pleasure.

  Chapter 6

  In Which the Duke Curses His Fate

  The following evening

  Wycliff pulled a sip from his tankard of ale and muttered a stunning array of curses. “Oh damn. Oh bloody hell. Oh Lord above and Lucifer in the heavens. Shit.”

  Timbuktu had always been far away, but not far like this. He’d dreamed of being the first European to make it there—and back. It was a challenge that had stayed with him through the years as he ambled around the world, taking advantage of opportunities that came his way. He had been a reckless wanderer in the manner of a Wycliff, but the discipline he inherited from his mother—where else would it have come from?—was boldly asserting itself.

  Wycliff wanted to lead a proper expedition. He wanted to accomplish something—especially something that had nothing to do with the circumstances of his noble birth.

  He had a dream, a plan. He would have to let it go.

  He took another long sip of his drink.

  Beside him, Harlan appraised the
serving wenches and barmaids of this pub just off St. James’s street and said, “Now there’s a fetching lass.”

  Wycliff followed his gaze and concluded that Harlan was very deep into his cups or utterly desperate after long, chaste months at sea. The chit was fine. But he wouldn’t have classified her as “a fetching lass” by any stretch.

  “Are you quite sure? Because you’ve had a few, and you only have one working eye,” he pointed out.

  Harlan adjusted his eye patch with his one good arm, the one that wasn’t wrapped in a sling made out of an old bedsheet.

  “Oh, I’m quite sure that I’ve had a few and have been at sea for a few months,” Harlan replied.

  To which Wycliff raised his glass and said, “Cheers.”

  She wasn’t a looker; Harlan could have her. Not like that maid, Eliza. Now she was a fetching chit. Every time he encountered her around the house, he noticed something about her, like the perfect, pert shape of her bum. Or her breasts, which promised to be a good handful. Or a figure that made a man ache and think extremely ungentlemanly thoughts.

  But it was her eyes that affected him most, and not because they reminded him of the sea and the sky and other lovely blue things. She really looked at him, searching, curious—when she ought to turn and face the wall whenever he passed.

  Wycliff had no interest in rebuking her for that. He was a terrible duke in that way. Mrs. Buxby ought to have, if she wasn’t so drunk all the time. But she’d been the housekeeper since before he was born, and he wasn’t about to reprimand her. Besides, the Wycliffs were never ones to keep a conventional household.

  He sipped his ale again. Like all the Wycliffs before him, he was hankering after the maid, when he had real problems to face. Bloody hell and damnation. He was thinking with the wrong organ.

  “I’ll be back shortly,” Harlan said. “Actually, I hope I’m not back for an hour at least. Maybe longer,” he added before downing his ale and sauntering across the room to chat up the barmaid who had caught his eye.

  They were drinking because Wycliff had received awful news that day. They were also drinking because he could not tolerate the confines of Wycliff House with that information looming over his every breath. And especially not with that housemaid, Eliza, sauntering from room to room, hips swaying, pink lips smiling and tempting him with racy thoughts. And then her breasts . . .

  He wanted to bend her over the dining table and ravish her. Or the desk, or one of the twenty beds, or any piece of furniture, really. The sooner the better, too, since every last stitch of furniture would likely need to be sold.

  That was the news he had received today, from a pipsqueak solicitor and a banker who resembled a whale: There could be no expedition. At least not one he funded himself, because His Grace, the eighth Duke of Wycliff, was broke.

  Chapter 7

  In Which There Is a Midnight Interlude

  The hour was late. The sheet of paper before her, blank. Eliza bit her lip, lost in thought. Her first column would be published tomorrow and she awaited it eagerly, like Christmas or her birthday. In the fast-paced world of newspaper publishing, however, she had little time to savor her success before the next column was due.

  Thus far she had written The Tattooed Duke on the page. That was all.

  What else to detail? His household was unconventional and haphazard. His possessions were unusual and almost contradictory: skulls and seashells and weaponry and exotic plants. And those were only the items she’d glimpsed. There remained the matter of what lay behind that locked door in the library. Or of his journals, which lay scattered upon his desk.

  She ought to read them.

  The page was still blank before her. It was this paralyzing panic, leaving her unable to string words together, that had caused her downward spiral at The London Weekly. Every column now was her last chance, and she felt it like a lump in her throat. She could not afford unwritten pages.

  She ought to go see about those journals. Or that locked room.

  Perhaps tomorrow, Eliza thought, daring a longing glance at her bed. But the risk of discovery in daytime was too great.

  She ought to go now, even though it was nearly midnight.

  No, she might encounter the duke. Her pulse quickened.

  Or, she thought, a smile playing at her lips, she might encounter the duke in a dark and quiet house. Either way, she would find something to write about.

  Impulsively she grabbed her wrapper and blew out the candle in her bedchamber. Under the cover of darkness she made her way down the stairs and into the library. Fortunately, the fire had not died down completely.

  Eliza crept over to his desk, heart pounding and breath held.

  Get the story. Get the story. The words were never far from her mind.

  But . . . was that a pang of guilt? She had not missed the duke’s irritation when his idiot cousin freely explored his personal papers, as she was about to do now.

  Or was that excitement upon discovering the Wicked Duke of Wycliff’s personal journal detailing his travels and the devil only knew what else? She lifted the cover and saw rows of the duke’s scrawl.

  Get the story. Get the story.

  Eliza took a moment to light a candle. The words now appeared before her.

  Tahiti, 1823.

  Miri enlightened me to some exquisite positions, the likes of which no English maiden would ever dare . . .

  Eliza’s cheeks burned hot as she continued to read. Had that been a pang of guilt? It was no match for her curiosity, especially about relations between a man and a woman that she would never have imagined. She flipped the page.

  Lord above, there were illustrations, too!

  What she experienced now was certainly not guilt and far surpassed curiosity. She felt an awareness that was new to her. A new heat, a new intensity, in places she’d never really felt before. The dusky centers of her breasts were suddenly exquisitely sensitive. Suddenly every part of her was begging for attention.

  All of this warred with jealousy for this girl, Miri, who had experienced some sort of rapture with the duke under an unfathomably starry sky with a warm and sultry island breeze stealing over our naked, heated skin.

  Eliza fanned herself. She continued to read of their passionate encounters and the outrageous pain from the tattooing; of learning the native language, the social rules, and plant-hunting expeditions far inland; of gloriously lazy afternoons swimming in the turquoise surf.

  She flipped back to the very vivid illustrations. She turned the book sideways. She tilted her head. And then she dared to dream . . . dared to imagine herself with the duke in these positions no English maiden would ever try.

  A gasp escaped her lips. Her heart was thudding hard and fast in her chest. She felt positively strangled by her dressing gown. This was becoming too much.

  Eliza slammed the journal shut, placed it back on his desk and blew out the candle. She had not read much that could be used in her column—unless she wanted to ruin every maiden in London, and perhaps a few marriages, with some very graphic descriptions of outrageously pleasurable lovemaking.

  Such were Eliza’s thoughts and she tiptoed down the hall and crossed the foyer, barely concealed by the sconces that had been left burning. The duke. His pleasure. Her writing. The pangs of guilt returned, but still they were no match for the hot spark of desire that, tonight, had been nurtured into a slow, smoldering fire.

  She was halfway across the wide expanse of the marble foyer when the duke entered through the front door. Apparently, he had been out.

  “Eliza.” His voice was low, but lud, did it carry in the vast, empty hall.

  “Your Grace,” she whispered. How did one greet a duke in the middle of the night, whilst in her dressing gown? Well, she knew how Miri would greet him . . .

  She haphazardly bobbed into a curtsey instead.

  Slowly, Wycliff crossed the foyer, with those long, determined strides of his, and she had every opportunity to admire the power, barely restrained, in hi
s every movement. He stood before her.

  It was dark. Late. She’d just been reading the very intimate details of his passionate lovemaking and found herself breathless.

  “It’s late for a housemaid to be scurrying through the halls,” the duke remarked. “And in her dressing gown, too . . .” His voice dropped to a whisper and trailed off. That awareness she’d felt earlier she felt again now, in spades. Her every nerve was at attention, awaiting something, anything, from him.

  “I had forgotten something,” she managed.

  “What would that be?”

  My wits, Eliza thought. My sense of decency. My respect for other people’s private property and privacy. And a bit of maidenly virtue, too, she realized, given the tantalizing descriptions and images she’d just read and seen.

  “I wanted to check on the fires . . .” she said, like a practiced actress. Or liar. It was definitely pangs of guilt that she was experiencing, and they were growing stronger now, overtaking any feelings of curiosity or desire she’d felt earlier.

  He was a man—albeit one who’d led a fascinating life and who was devastatingly handsome. He was a man who deserved his privacy, his reputation. And he was a man who made her heart skip beats just with a glance, who made her feel breathless and light-headed with every knowing smile he threw her way. A man who intrigued her, set her aflame, a man who . . .

  . . . was clasping her waist with one, warm hand. Who knew that the curve of her hip possessed such sensitivity?

  Eliza tilted her head back to look up at him. His eyes were unbelievably dark in this light, but there was no mistaking the spark there—desire, or mischief, she wasn’t sure. Did not much care at the moment.

  His mouth closed down on hers. His lips were warm and she was hot and melting under their gentle pressure. With his tongue, he lightly traced the seam of her lips, urging her to open to him, and she did. He tasted of drink—but also danger and experience and power and the sort of wicked pleasure that had never occurred to her before tonight.