The Duke’s Dark Proposal (Tempted by the Duke #1)

Chapter 1

Deliciously and deliberately free.

“Back straight.”

Lady Gwendoline Reeves let the syllables ring in her ears as she drifted through the blaze of the Millingtons’ masquerade ball, her silk skirts whispering over marble like a rumor in flight.

Her stepfather, Howard Tull, had assumed the role of Viscount Fenwick without a moment’s delay following the wedding to her widowed mother, Cordelia. As quickly as he had donned the pomp and airs of his new title, the cordialities fell, seemingly too much of a burden to bear.

“… should have had her hair styled differently. Too obvious…”

Gwen rolled her eyes as her stepfather continued to hurl insults from behind her.

For all his awareness of the nasty rumors about me, he is forever the one to belabor the point.

“Howard, dear, let’s not perpetuate rumors. We’re here to enjoy the evening without the judgment of the ton following us. It’s the first ball of the new Season, after all. Perhaps it’s all been forgotten?”

“Like a mask could hide our shame,” Howard scoffed, but adjusted his mask and tendrils of loose hair to ensure that both were fully camouflaging his reputably large forehead. His cold satisfaction, though, remained remarkable in his manure-colored eyes.

Gwen’s fingers curled around her fan as a pair of ladies passed by.

“Is that…?”

“Shh! The Viscount!”

Shame. Ruin.

What tidy words to cover a hundred breathless inventions: trysts in borrowed carriages, assignations sketched in ink and innuendo, gentlemen she had never met arranged like chess pieces around her name.

Scandal.

The corner of her mouth quirked beneath her black-lace half mask.

“If you insist on being gawked at, you may at least give them something worthy. Shoulders back, Gwendoline.”

Gwen obeyed the command out of habit, though her spine was already straight. “It’s a masquerade ball.”

“Sweet lady,” a fox-masked gentleman said with a bow, “would you grant me this dance?”

“She is engaged for the next set,” her stepfather cut in, smiling without showing his teeth.

The gentleman retreated and then passed the message along to the other suitors in the room.

“Howard…” her mother trailed off.

Any public contestation of his decision was unacceptable. Lady Fenwick knew it. Gwen knew it.

Hell, the entire ton knew it.

Gwen attempted to distract her stepfather from recognizing her mother’s slip by whipping around. “To whom am I engaged, My Lord?”

“To silence,” he murmured. His gloved hand pinched the soft flesh above her elbow hard, disguised as a guiding gesture. “You will not make a spectacle. You will not chatter with people beneath you.”

Her eyes flicked to the corner where her friends, Eleanor and Arabella Barker, stood.

Eleanor was wearing a sober dove-grey domino, while Arabella was in a pink silk dress, looking like a rebellious confection. Both were staring at her with matching concern.

“And,” Howard hissed, “you will not cling to the daughters of a lowly baron as if they were a raft and you were drowning. Do you understand, girl?”

“Perfectly,” Gwen said, flicking her fan open and shut.

I hate him. I hate him. I hate him!

Another couple drifted by, and the lady’s laugh rose like a lark. The sound struck something tender inside Gwen, thinning the air around her.

She needed the night air, the honest chill of it, the space where candlelight could not judge.

“I would like a glass of ratafia,” she declared smoothly, and boldly took a step away from them.

“You will not drink,” Howard muttered, pinning her to the spot.

“More rules? Am I even allowed to breathe on my own?” She hissed under her breath.

But her stepfather continued without a hitch. “Sweet wines loosen foolish tongues.”

His fingers found her other elbow, a reminder of the cruel pastoral: a shepherd’s crook nudging an errant lamb.

Her mother flinched. “Howard, darling, please,” she whispered. “If Gwen would like a refreshment. My dear…”

Gwen turned her head, catching her mother’s eye for the barest second. I’m all right, she tried to say with the tilt of her chin, the shadow of a smile. Don’t provoke him.

Last year, the rumors had spread about her so quickly.

Invitations had dwindled. Prospects had withered.

Her value on the marriage mart had dropped precipitously.

Which meant, for now, Howard would keep her under his roof instead of marrying her off to some grim-jawed stranger who might carry her mother’s bruises into another house.

“She will stand here,” he said, positioning both women at the edge of the floor as if they were pieces of furniture to ornament the wall. “And be grateful for her mask. Without it, we’ll all be ruined and shunned from Society.”

Gwen smiled up at him because doing otherwise would invite punishment she could not bear to watch her mother endure. “I am always grateful for what you provide, My Lord.”

Howard’s eyes narrowed on her. He enjoyed insolence only when he was the one who dealt it. “We will discuss your gratitude at home.”

Gwen inclined her head. Inside, her pulse drummed a stubborn rhythm against her stays.

I will not break here. Not for him. Not tonight.

She drew a breath perfumed with beeswax and roses, and tried to imagine the night air beyond the terrace: cold, clean, and unowned.

Cordelia’s breath hitched. “Why not go look at the conservatory? The orchids are in bloom.”

“I do not care for flowers,” Howard grunted, which was her mother’s cue to also remain behind.

“She wasn’t asking you,” Gwen murmured, folding her fan furiously.

She dipped into a curtsy and slipped away as the orchestra struck the opening of a waltz, the crowd folding and unfolding in silken waves. She did not run, as running would invite questions.

“My love…” Her mother reached for her, catching her arm before she reached the terrace.

Gwen turned.

“Please, darling, please forgive him.”

Gwen took her mother’s hands in her own. They were cold. “No,” she whispered fiercely, though her voice was tender as she tucked a stray curl beneath Cordelia’s mask. “I’m so tired of this.”

Tears shimmered in her mother’s eyes. “He loves us,” she insisted, the contradiction tearing furiously at the words. “He… does not know how to behave otherwise, but he does so out of love.”

“Then he can learn to love us right without pain,” Gwen countered.

Or he can be made to stop.

The thought came cool and ruthless as a blade slid into its sheath. She had done what she could with whispered inventions and careful errors. But words like this did not bruise men who had never been expected to answer to anyone.

Her mother winced, but nodded her head slowly. “Are you going to the conservatory, my love?”

“I was planning on it, and grabbing a glass of wine while I was at it,” Gwen said plainly.

“Alright, well, just let him know that you’re going.”

“Just come with me. We don’t need his permission.”

A wave of laughter carried from the ballroom. Perfume and heat rolled through the doorway with the swell of violins. Somewhere, a gentleman barked out, “One, two, three. Mind your turn, Madam.”

The ordinary gaiety of it made Gwen’s heart ache.

“Look at me, Mama,” she said softly.

Her mother did.

Beneath the gilded edges of her mask, Gwen saw the woman her mother had been before grief and fear had taught her to fold herself smaller: beautiful, eager for life, braver than she knew.

She had loved her first husband with a fierceness that warmed a room.

She loved badly now—clutching nettles to save the imaginations that had once saved her.

“We are not required,” Gwen said gently, “to forgive the lash as it falls.”

Cordelia’s mouth trembled. “If I object, if I push, it means that I’ll make it worse for you. You know this.”

Indeed, they both knew the arithmetics of Howard’s temper.

Gwen’s gaze flicked, unbidden, to the pale underside of her mother’s wrist, which the glove did not fully cover.

No marks tonight. Thank God.

“Then we’ll just have to be more clever in our defiance,” she coaxed. “And quiet. And quick.” She squeezed her mother’s hands.

“Gwendoline…” Cordelia trailed off, shaking her head.

“I shall get some air,” Gwen declared, her voice even and calm. “The smells in this room make me dizzy.”

Howard, bored and monarchic in his command of their small province, had already turned away to greet a baron of only slightly more impressive consequence than himself. He gave a small nod when the message reached him: ten minutes.

“Be careful,” Cordelia whispered.

“Always,” Gwen murmured, before turning and moving through the crush.

Arabella rose on tiptoe and lifted a hand.

After the briefest hesitation, Gwen shook her head. Not now.

If she told them she meant to take the air, Arabella would insist on coming along, Eleanor would calculate the risks… and a small war would erupt in whispers.

She did not need war. She needed a moment in which she could remember what it felt like to belong to herself.

The terrace doors opened as she approached, a couple sweeping out in pursuit of privacy and starlight. Gwen slipped out in their wake and let the darkness envelop her.

The garden calmed her. Everything about it. The hedges clipped to perfection, the gravel beneath her feet, the scent of the blooms and the fresh fountain water.

She let her shoulders fall the inch she had denied them all evening and closed her eyes.

Alright, count to ten. Or twenty… one hundred.

Whatever it took to force her heart into sensible strides instead of this skittering bolt of a hare.

One for her infuriating stepfather, whose laugh had sounded like the first strike of rain on summer dust.

Two for her mother, who had once taught her that dignity was not a thing granted by men, but a thing a lady carried for herself.

Three for Arabella and Eleanor, a steadfast presence in her life in their own special way.

Four for William, her little brother, who was far away at Eton, with his boots too tight and his letters filled with triumphs he pretended were accidents.

Five… Six… Seven…