Caught By the Ruthless Duke (Caught by the Duke #2)

Chapter 1

Chapter One

“You dare call this clean?” her aunt scoffed.

Cressida’s fingers tightened around the brass candlestick she’d been polishing for the past hour. The metal bit into her palm, a sharp reminder that her life had been reduced to such indignities.

Aunt Agatha stood in the doorway of the drawing room, her thin lips pressed into a bloodless line. She swept across the floor with the practiced severity of a headmistress inspecting a particularly disappointing pupil, her black bombazine skirts whispering accusations with each step.

“I—” Cressida began.

“Silence.” Her aunt snatched the candlestick from her hands, holding it up to the weak afternoon light filtering through the windows. “Do you see? Here, and here. Tarnish remains. Two years under my roof, girl, and you’ve learned nothing of proper industry.”

Two years.

Twenty-four months of scrubbing floors and mending petticoats. Seven hundred and thirty days of being reminded that she had failed at the only task that mattered for a woman of her station: securing a husband.

“I shall do it again, Aunt Agatha.” Cressida kept her voice measured, though frustration burned in her chest. “If you would permit me—”

“Permit you?” Her aunt’s laugh was brittle as winter ice.

“You speak as though you have earned the right to make requests.” She set the candlestick down with a decisive click.

“Your parents sent you here to learn humility, Cressida, and to understand the consequences of your willful nature. A bluestocking. A woman who corrects gentlemen at dinner. Is it any wonder you remained unwed Season after Season?”

The familiar shame tried to claw its way up Cressida’s throat, but she swallowed it down.

She had debated philosophy because she found it stimulating. She had read widely because her mind craved knowledge as surely as her body required food. And yes, perhaps she had been too forthright, too honest, too much herself, but she did not think she deserved to be disparaged for it.

“I was merely being truthful—”

“Truthful, you say?” Her aunt’s eyes narrowed.

“Pride, girl. That is what you suffer from. Sheer, selfish pride. And if you think me fool enough not to see it, I’ll have you think again.

” Her expression changed, bright with the flat, indifferent light of a July afternoon.

“You’ll have no kindling for your room tonight.

Perhaps discomfort will teach you what words cannot. ”

Cressida’s gaze flicked to the empty grate. The attic where she slept was already cold and close, the kind of damp that seeped into one’s bones regardless of the season, but she lifted her chin.

“As you wish, Aunt Agatha,” she replied.

She would not fold before this woman.

“And you’ll take your evening meal in the kitchen. With the other servants.” Her aunt said this with some modicum of relish.

Cressida barely managed to keep her expression civil. “I understand,” she said, even though she ached to fire off a retort.

She’d learned, in two years of living with her aunt, that the woman enjoyed a quarrel. While Cressida was not above standing up for herself, she did not quite fancy another row with the termagant.

Her aunt studied her for a long moment, no doubt searching for cracks in her composure. Finding none, she turned toward the door.

“Finish the silver before supper. All of it. And Cressida?” She paused, not bothering to look back. “Your parents were right to send you away. You were an embarrassment to them in London. Do not compound their shame by entertaining notions of returning.”

The door closed with a soft click that somehow felt more damning than a slam.

Cressida released a breath, but the tightness in her chest did not abate, no matter that the source of her agitation was no longer in her vicinity.

She supposed she’d gotten used to existing in this state of constant upset, even if it was certainly not a healthy way to exist. Her parents had sent her here to “learn propriety,” but they ought to be grateful for her stubborn nature.

Otherwise, she would have been bundled off to a madhouse rather than back to them.

Her hands trembled slightly as she retrieved the candlestick, but she forced them steady. She would not weep. She had learned, if nothing else, that tears accomplished nothing in this house.

She worked methodically through the remaining silver, her thoughts drifting—as they so often did—to Harriet, her dearest friend. The only person in London who had truly understood her, who had laughed at her wit rather than been scandalized by it.

They had made a pact once, curled up together in Harriet’s bedchamber after her first Season: they would remain friends regardless of what became of them, be it in marriage, spinsterhood, or scandal. Nothing would sever their bond.

How long had it been since she’d heard from Harriet? Months, certainly. Her aunt confiscated any correspondence that arrived, claiming it would only encourage her “unladylike tendencies.”

The ache of that isolation settled in her bones, colder than any lack of kindling.

By the time she’d finished with the silver, her shoulders burned, and twilight had begun to creep across the floors.

She was making her way toward the kitchen for whatever meal the servants received when voices drifted from the kitchen, high and excited, wholly inappropriate for the usually subdued staff.

“Can you imagine? The Marquess of Whitebrook!”

Cressida froze in the corridor.

“Surely not,” another voice whispered. “He’s the most notorious rake in London. I heard he once—”

“Hush! Mrs. Drewley will have our heads if she catches us with this.” There was a rustling of paper. “But it’s all here in the scandal sheet. The engagement is announced. Miss Harriet Barnes is to marry Lord Whitebrook next week.”

The world tilted.

Harriet?

Her Harriet, who had sworn she would never marry a rake, who had declared such men beneath contempt? Harriet, who deserved a husband who would cherish her intelligence and kindness, not some debauched scoundrel who would break her heart before the honeymoon ended?

Certainly, they couldn’t mean her, could they?

“Next week?” The first maid’s voice rose with scandalous delight. “How deliciously rushed. Do you suppose he has already—”

“Mary! Don’t be vulgar.”

Cressida didn’t wait to hear more. She moved through the kitchen on silent feet, her mind racing. The maids were too absorbed in their gossip to notice her, huddled as they were over what must be one of the very scandal sheets Aunt Agatha publicly denounced while privately devouring.

Next week.

In the countryside, the announcement had said. Cressida had caught that much. Which meant Harriet was likely already traveling, if she hadn’t arrived there already.

She had to stop this wedding. She had to.

Cressida found her aunt in the study, bent over the household accounts with her characteristic severity.

“Aunt Agatha.”

Her aunt didn’t look up. “I believe I gave you tasks to complete.”

“I’ve finished the silver.” Cressida stepped forward, her heart hammering. “I must ask… I need to request permission to travel to London. My friend, Miss Barnes, is to be married, and—”

Now her aunt looked up, incredulity written across her narrow features. “Permission? To travel to London?” She set down her pen slowly. “Have you taken leave of your senses entirely?”

“Harriet is my dearest friend. I merely wish to attend her wedding—”

“You are unwelcome in London, Cressida. You would embarrass your parents, embarrass me. Embarrass yourself, if that makes any difference to you.” Aunt Agatha stood, her posture rigid with displeasure.

“You seem to labor under the misapprehension that you have any standing left in society. You do not. You are a spinster. A failure. Your parents banished you here to live quietly, to cease causing them trouble, and by God, that is what you shall do.”

“But Harriet—”

“Your friend has made her choice. She is to be a marchioness. What possible use could she have for a penniless, unmarriageable bluestocking?” The words landed with a force that should have been bruising.

Cressida had long since learned to treat them as mere glancing blows.

“Now, return to your room before I withdraw your supper privileges as well.”

Cressida stood rooted to the floor, rage and helplessness warring in her chest. But she saw the futility of further argument in the set of her aunt’s jaw, the dismissive wave of her hand.

She curtseyed, a mockery of obedience, and left.

In the attic that night, Cressida lay shivering beneath her inadequate blanket and stared at the darkness. Harriet deserved better than Lord Whitebrook. She deserved better than a marriage born of pressure or convenience or whatever had driven her to accept such a man.

And Cressida… she might have failed as a lady, might have disappointed her parents and scandalized the ton with her unladylike interests, but she would not fail as a friend.

“No. Harriet deserves better,” she whispered to herself.

And with that, she rose with her decision already made.

Moving quickly, she gathered her few possessions: a change of clothes, her mother’s handkerchief—one of the only items she’d been permitted to keep—and the small volume of poetry Harriet had given her years ago. Her riding habit hung in the corner, creased but serviceable.

The house slept around her as she crept down the servants’ stairs. She knew which steps creaked, which doors stuck. Two years had taught her the geography of her prison.

The study door opened silently. Moonlight guided her to the desk, to the hidden compartment behind the third drawer where Aunt Agatha kept household funds.

Cressida’s hands trembled as she counted out enough for coach fare and lodging, even as she tried not to think about what exactly she was doing right at that moment.

Theft.