The Cold Duke’s Virgin (Jealous Dukes #1)

CHAPTER 1

The problem with secrets, Clara Whitfield had discovered at the tender age of ten, was that they were only fun if you had someone to share them with.

Fortunately, she had Gabriel Hale, who was excellent at keeping secrets, terrible at climbing walls, and currently stuck halfway up the garden gate In a state of total confusion.

"You're doing it wrong," she informed him, hands on her hips in unconscious imitation of her governess. "You've got to use the crossbar as a foothold, not a chin rest."

"I'm not using it as a…" Gabriel's protest was cut short as his foot slipped, sending him tumbling backward into the herbaceous border with a crash that likely alerted half of Sussex to their whereabouts. A shower of lavender petals erupted around him like purple snowflakes.

"Graceful," Clara observed. "Very duke-like."

"Be silent!" Gabriel muttered, extracting himself from what had once been a perfectly decent herb garden.

His dark hair now stuck up at odd angles, decorated with bits of rosemary and what appeared to be an entire spider web.

"And I'm not going to be duke for ages and ages. Father's only two and forty."

"Two and forty is ancient," Clara said with the confidence of someone for whom twenty seemed impossibly far away. "My grandmother's five and forty and she can barely remember where she puts her spectacles."

"That's because she refuses to wear them, not because she's ancient."

“It amounts to the same thing." Clara plucked a sprig of lavender from his hair. "You smell like my mother's linen closet now."

"Brilliant…Precisely what a young gentleman destined for the dukedom requires, to carry the sweet, fresh scent of fine linens.” He made a face that caused Clara to giggle. "Come along, I wish to show you something brilliant I learned from the gardener."

This was how their Tuesdays and Thursdays went or better yet, for the past two years, ever since Gabriel had discovered Clara reading in the abandoned garden that sat between their estates, and instead of running off to tell the adults like any proper heir should have done, had sat down and asked what the book she was reading contained.

“It concerns a gentlewoman who was responsible for her husband's untimely demise, administered by a noxious draught.”

"That's clever. I'd use pudding. No one suspects pudding.” From that point on, they met there at the very same place they had met, religiously, weather permitting and sometimes weather not permitting, because as Gabriel said, “What is the use of childhood, pray tell, if we are to be forever mindful of the mud?”

He led her to the far corner of the garden where the sun filtered through in lazy patterns, past the fountain they'd tried to fix the month before, which still leaked, around the apple tree with their initials carved with great care into the trunk, to stand before a withered rose bush.

“This is what you wished show me?" Clara wrinkled her nose. “The poor thing has quite faded,”

“It is quite alive, but it is dormant, there is a difference.”

“Indeed!”

Gabriel dropped to his knees beside the plant, producing various implements from his pockets like a magician with a very specific interest in horticulture.

"Mr. Morton showed me this yesterday. It's called grafting.

You take a piece from one plant and attach it to another, and if you do it correctly, they grow together into something new. "

“What, pray tell, if you fail to execute the task correctly?”

“Then, I will be guilty of sending this poor specimen to an untimely grave and the rites of burial must be observed. I've already composed a eulogy should there be need.”

Clara knelt beside him, immediately acquiring grass stains on her second-best dress which had been destroyed in what they referred to as The Blackberry Incident and never spoke of “What words of praise and remembrance are to be spoken?”

"Here lies Rose Bush. It spent its last dying breath in the name of science, a most commendable quality, when one considers the matter fully.

"Very moving. I am quite sure its family will be comforted."

Gabriel handed her a cutting from another rose, this one healthy and green with promising buds. "You do it. You've got steadier hands."

"That's because I don't spend my all my morning’s sword fighting with the fire irons."

"That was one time!"

"Three times. I've been counting."

She took the knife he offered, their fingers brushing in a way that made her feel oddly warm, though she attributed it to the sunshine. Following his instructions, she made a careful diagonal cut in the rootstock, then fitted the new cutting against it.

"Now we wrap it," Gabriel said, producing twine. “In the fashion of a dressing for a wound.”

“Such as when you fell out of the pear tree and scraped your entire face?"

"I didn't fall. I performed a tactical descent."

"You screamed louder than Mrs. Henderson's parrot."

"That was a war cry."

They engaged in dispute companionably as they worked, shoulders bumping, hands occasionally tangling as they secured the graft. It was comfortable, easy, the kind of friendship that adults would later call "sweet" while completely missing its depth.

"We should name it," Clara announced once they'd finished. "If it lives, I mean."

Gabriel studied their handiwork with the seriousness of someone who'd once spent an entire afternoon naming all the frogs in the pond, Herald, Gregory, Swamp Duke, and Mrs. Figglesworth. "What about... Secret Rose?"

“I fear I find it rather uninteresting.”

"The Rose of Destiny?"

"Too dramatic."

“Very well then, what about just... ours? Our rose?"

Clara considered this. "Our Secret Bloom," she decided. "Because it's secret and it's going to bloom and it's ours."

"That's just combining all the rejected suggestions."

"Yes, but when you combine them, they become better. Like the grafting!"

Gabriel couldn't argue with this logic, possibly because there wasn't any actual logic to argue with. This was another thing he liked about Clara, she made proclamations with such confidence that they seemed true just by force of will.

They spent the rest of the afternoon the way they always did with Clara reading aloud from whatever inappropriate book she'd stolen from her father's library, currently something about explorers being eaten by crocodiles, Gabriel interrupting with helpful commentary.

“I am inclined to believe I could contend successfully with any ferocious beast, and both of them pretending they didn't have lessons to attend or responsibilities to consider.

"My tutor says I'm incorrigible," Gabriel announced proudly, lying on his back in the grass, watching clouds drift by.

"What's that mean?"

"Haven't got a clue, but he seemed very passionate about it."

"My governess says I'm willful," Clara offered, lying down beside him, maintaining a careful foot of propriety between them because even at ten, she knew there were Rules. "I believe it means I don't do what she says."

"Why would you? She's boring."

"Exactly! Yesterday she wanted me to practice sitting. Just sitting! For an hour!"

"What's to practice? You just... sit."

"Apparently there are seventeen wrong ways to do it. I've discovered them all."

Gabriel turned his head to look at her, grass tickling his cheek. "You're brilliant at sitting. Pay no mind to any differing opinion.”

"You're a terrible judge of sitting. You can't even sit through church without fidgeting."

"That's because Reverend Blackwood talks for approximately seven years every Sunday."

"He does not!"

"He does! I've timed it. Seven years, minimum."

They argued about this happily, the way they argued about everything, not with warmth, but with the contentment of engaging in a lively nature, one who would both argue and amuse, yet remain entirely inoffensive.

The summer weeks passed in a blur of stolen afternoons. Their rose, against all predictions, survived. More than survived as it showed signs of new growth, with tiny leaves unfurling like green promises.

"I told you," Gabriel said smugly one afternoon, eating pilfered strawberries while Clara attempted to sketch the garden she was terrible at it, but refused to admit defeat.

"You said there was a fifty percent chance we'd bring about its demise.”

"No, I said there was a fifty percent chance it would live. That's completely different. I'm an optimist."

“You speak falsely.”

"I'm optimistically truthful."

“There’s no such thing as that.”

"It is now. I've decided."

This was how they were together, easy, teasing, completely unaware that what they had was rare and precious, but…doomed, and this was because Gabriel’s father had other plans for him.

Because Gabriel's father had plans. Eton, he announced one evening at dinner. Starting September.

Gabriel's first thought wasn't about leaving home or facing the unknown. It was: Clara's going to be furious I'm leaving her with all the garden work.

When he told her the next day, she was indeed furious, but not about the garden.

"Eton's ages away!" she protested. "It's practically in Scotland!"

"It's in Berkshire."

“It amounts to much the same thing!" Anywhere that's not here might as well be the moon."

"I'll write letters," Gabriel promised. "Every week. I'll tell you everything."

"Even the boring bits?"

"Especially the boring bits. They'll probably all be boring bits."

Clara was quiet for a moment, picking at the grass. "It won't be the same."

"No," Gabriel agreed, because even at such a young age, he knew better than to lie about the important things. "But I'll come back for holidays. Christmas and summers. And you can take care of our rose."

“It will surely become an absolute fright, quite without form or beauty, if left to my humble care. I possess not the slightest acquaintance with the proper tending of a rose.”

"You know everything about everything."

"That's true," she said, but her smile was shaky. "You have to promise to write. Properly. Not just 'Dear Clara, school is fine, sincerely Gabriel.' Real letters."

"I promise. Long, incredibly boring letters about Latin and porridge and how much I miss…" He stopped, flushing.

"Miss what?"

"This," he said, gesturing at the garden. "All of this. You as you can understand.”

She did. That was what made their friendship strong as their thoughts were ever known to each other.

The month of September presented itself with the certainty of an unfortunate tempest spoiling an afternoon outing.

Gabriel's departure was marked by a melancholic, leaden sky and a light, incessant rain which caused the flowers in the garden to appear quite dejected and heavy with wetness.

They sat in the greenhouse, watching rain streak the glass, neither saying much.

"I made you something," Clara said finally, producing a small package wrapped in brown paper.

Inside was a pressed flower from their rose, the first bloom it had produced, pink edged with gold, carefully preserved between glass plates.

"Clara," Gabriel breathed. "This is…this is brilliant."

"It's just a flower," she said, but she was pleased. "For your room at school. So you don't forget about the garden."

“As if such a thing could ever escape my recollection!” He reached into his own pocket. “I too have something for you.”

It was a small leather journal, the kind sold at the stationer's in the village. Nothing fancy, but on the first page, he'd written: "Clara's Book of Extraordinary Occurrences and Suspicious Behaviors."

"For all your stories about the neighbors," he explained. “The concoctions of your imagination.”

"They're are not concoctions! Mrs. Weatherby is definitely hiding something in her cellar."

"Bodies?"

"Cheese. Illegal French cheese."

"Even more scandalous."

They laughed, but it had a hollow sound to it, echoing in the greenhouse with all the words they weren't saying.

"I should go," Gabriel said finally. "We're leaving at dawn."

"I'll be here," Clara said. "Tomorrow. To wave goodbye."

"You don't have to…"

"I'll be here," she repeated firmly.

He stood to leave, then suddenly turned back and hugged her, quick and fierce and slightly awkward, the kind of hug young awkward boys give when they don't know how else to say goodbye.

"Take care of our rose," he said into her hair.

"Take care of yourself," she replied into his shoulder.

And then he was gone, running through the rain, leaving Clara alone in the greenhouse with the sound of rain and the weight of change pressing against the glass.

True to her word, she was there the next morning, standing by the garden gate in her nightgown and shawl, hair still mussed from sleep.

Gabriel saw her from the carriage window and pressed his hand to the glass.

She waved with both arms, as if she were signaling a meaning from afar, with every motion of her person

Don't forget, her waves seemed to say. Don't forget us.

Never, he thought back, watching until the garden disappeared around the bend. Never.

The first letter arrived two weeks later.