- Home
- Sierra Simone
Duke I’d Like to F…
Duke I’d Like to F… Read online
Duke I’d Like to F…
Sierra Simone
Joanna Shupe
Eva Leigh
Nicola Davidson
Adriana Herrera
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
* * *
The Chasing of Eleanor Vane, Copyright © 2020 by Sierra Simone
My Dirty Duke, Copyright © 2020 by Joanna Shupe
An Education in Pleasure, Copyright © 2020 by Ami Silber
Duke for Hire, Copyright © 2020 by Nicola Davidson
The Duke Makes Me Feel…, Copyright © 2020 by Adriana Herrera
* * *
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
* * *
Cover Design: Natasha Snow Designs
Cover Image: Magdalena Żyźniewska / Trevillion Images
Editing: Sabrina Darby
Proofing: Dee Hudson and Michelle Li at Tessera Editorial
* * *
First Edition of All Titles: November 2020
Print Edition ISBN: 978-1-949364-09-5
Digital Edition ISBN: 978-1-949364-08-8
Contents
The Chasing of Eleanor Vane
Sierra Simone
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Also by Sierra Simone
About the Author
Duke for Hire
Nicola Davidson
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Also by Nicola Davidson
About the Author
An Education in Pleasure
Eva Leigh
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Also by Eva Leigh
About the Author
The Duke Makes Me Feel…
Adriana Herrera
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Also by Adriana Herrera
About the Author
My Dirty Duke
Joanna Shupe
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Also by Joanna Shupe
About the Author
The Chasing of Eleanor Vane
Sierra Simone
Prologue
1794
She’d only been at Far Hope a week, and she’d already broken two of the three rules her mother had given her. She was about to break the third.
The kitchens were busy supplying treats for the party above, and Eleanor was able to move through the chaos largely unmarked, thanks to the forgettable gown of coarse gray wool she’d borrowed from her maid. She’d brushed her blond hair free of powder and curls and tucked it under a simple linen cap, and she’d washed all the carefully applied cosmetics from her face, scrubbing her fair skin into a state of red splotchiness to make it look like she’d been running back and forth in the hot kitchens all evening.
And, finally, under her skirts, Eleanor had traded her pointed silk heels for leather half-boots. Much better for walking over the rutted Dartmoor roads.
She didn’t take much once she was downstairs—even dressed like a servant, there was only so much suspicion she could evade, and swiping a week’s worth of food would have definitely been suspicious. After her visit to the kitchens, she stuffed her ill-gotten gains into a haversack along with a leather costrel full of water. She left Far Hope under the cover of night, hopeful that her maid would be able to spin out the lie of her illness long enough for her to escape, and hopeful that no one would discover the real reason Eleanor wasn’t at her own betrothal ball until it was much, much too late.
Chapter One
The Lady Eleanor Vane had been resigned to her fate—more or less. She had been a dutiful daughter, had spent the last four years helping her father, the new Marquess of Pennard, restore the old pile he’d inherited in Somerset, all while also tending to her mother’s vague malaise of the gut. She was an accomplished young woman in every metric: she was a faithful churchgoer; she dedicated herself to various philanthropic pursuits; she could play the pianoforte, sing, dance, embroider, and converse in three different Continental languages; and other than her vocal support for William Wilberforce and his abolition bills, she was otherwise as placidly unobjectionable as her father wanted her to be.
At least, that was how she appeared on the outside.
Inside, she roiled.
The renovation she didn’t mind; the languages and charities she didn’t mind. She didn’t even mind caring for her mother, who was an objectively terrible patient in every way.
But the restraint, the relentless serenity and calm that was demanded of her . . . the constant entitlement of everyone else to her time . . .
That she did mind.
The worst part of it all was that—at some point along the way—she’d begun to lie to herself. She began to feel like this was just a phase of her life, merely a stage on her journey, and that at some undefined point in her future, things would get easier. One day, she would spend her days however she wanted. She would go anywhere she liked, whenever she wanted, and she would reach for the things that excited her. She would live her life for herself, no one else, and that would be the reward for being so perfectly competent, efficient, and respectable.
She never could exactly picture what living for herself looked like, however, and whenever she tried, the images and imaginings darted and flashed their way out of reach, like fish scattering away from a thrown pebble in a garden pond. She didn’t know any women who lived for themselves, except spinsters, but even they were often dependent on their family for their means . . . and anyway, she didn’t necessarily want to be a spinster. Outside of spinsters, there was Mary Wollstonecraft—but Eleanor wasn’t a writer. There was the Duchess of Devonshire, Eleanor supposed—but the duchess had also been forced into an unhappy marriage. There was the Countess of Kellow, but Eleanor didn’t know enough about her to know if she was happy or fulfilled.
All Eleanor knew was what this ideal life wasn’t. It wasn’t tepid; it wasn’t tedious. It wasn’t a trap. Perhaps there would be
marriage, perhaps there would be a great move across oceans, perhaps there would be danger—the point was that anything could happen, in the same way nothing ever happened in the present. She would be free to leave, free to roam, free to think. And if she did anything like marry or move or manage another estate, it would be because she wanted to. Because she’d chosen it for herself, claimed it for herself.
It was a fiction, she knew that from the beginning. Except, unlike other kinds of fictions, this story she told herself began to feel truer and truer over time, instead of less. Until it felt like the truth after all. Until it felt like it had been the truth all along.
She’d believed her own lie, and that single act of foolishness had begun her unraveling. Two months ago, Lord Pennard had pronounced that Eleanor was to be betrothed—sight unseen—to Gilbert Gifford, Earl Sloreley.
She was to marry a stranger.
Without delay.
Gilbert was the Duke of Jarrell’s nephew and heir, and he was a squirming embarrassment to his entire family. A man just past his majority, there had been the usual slate of gambling, womanizing, and intemperance that was generally tolerated in heirs—but then came the scandal in Italy during his grand tour, something involving an elderly contessa’s racehorse and a baptismal font full of madeira, and Sloreley had been summoned home in shame. The duke had paid, bribed, and donated in order to assuage the wounded sensibilities of the contessa and the Church—and possibly of the horse—and now the duke had clearly had enough of his nephew’s dissolution. Sloreley would be married, and married to the most respectable girl the duke could find, and that girl was Eleanor.
All of this Eleanor’s father disclosed to her in his study as if he were explaining the weather, as if it would be as impersonal and bloodless to her as it was to him.
“So I am to marry this earl,” she’d said, trying to keep her pulse steady. “Even though we have never met, and he is rumored to be an unrepentant lecher.”
Not that Eleanor minded lechery per se, but she did mind ridiculousness. She did mind inheriting another project.
“And he baptized a horse,” she added, to clarify her point.
“The priest baptized the horse. Sloreley only watched,” her father had corrected cheerfully. There had been florid blooms of early morning drink on his otherwise chalky cheeks. “He’s young still, Eleanor, you can control him. You can help him corral his vices and grow into a proper man.” He’d given her a fond look. “You are a born manager, you know. Just look how easily you’ve managed Pennard Hall while your mother’s been ill. Everyone sings your praises! And besides, Sloreley is Jarrell’s heir, which means you’ll be a duchess someday. Your first son will be a duke.”
“But why is he the heir? I know the current duke is unmarried, but surely he’s not too old to find a wife?”
Her father had waved his hand. “Jarrell’s first wife died some years ago, and he’s never made a secret of his wish not to remarry. And what does it matter? The important thing is that Gifford is the heir and you’ll marry Gifford. I have no doubt you’ll be able to take him in hand. None at all.”
So this was to be her reward, then. She’d succeeded at every task she’d set her mind to, and now she’d been given her prize: another unending task of impossible proportions.
Like Sisyphus with his stone, but her boulder was a living man. With loose morals and even looser habits.
The loose morals she could live with. She often thought she’d like to try some loose morals herself, actually. She’d long ago found a hoard of rather salacious books and pamphlets stashed in a trunk in the attic, and her imagination and her right hand had made good use of the stories and accompanying illustrations. And of course, there had been that house party, where Eleanor had wandered into the Foscourts’ temple folly at the wrong moment and saw things that hadn’t left her mind since.
However, loose morals rarely ran both directions in married couples. Men were allowed these things; women were not. And while it was tacitly accepted by society at large that husbands would stray, Eleanor wasn’t interested in playing the expected counterpart: the meek wifey, embroidering cushions at home while her husband caroused and dallied however he pleased.
But perhaps Sloreley would consider her argument if she made it to him. Perhaps they could come to an agreement, and if that were the case, then the morals would not bother her very much at all.
No, it was the loose habits that bothered her. It was his reputation for missing important functions, for making public scenes, for inveterate rudeness, and for constant sloppiness. While she’d never been able to picture her ideal future with any real clarity, she knew that Gilbert Gifford was its exact opposite. She predicted that marriage to him would be a trap of thanklessly spent time, of smoothing over his gaffes and crudities. Of trying to improve someone who gave no indication he wanted to be improved.
She appealed to her father to no avail. She appealed to her mother with even less success. No one could understand why she didn’t want to become a duchess someday; everybody seemed to think Sloreley would eventually be brought in line by her quiet, efficient personality.
Indeed, that’s why she’d been chosen.
A graceful bride for a disgraceful man.
And what were her choices? Truly? If her parents would not change her mind and the duke was intent on having her as a bride for his nephew, what else could be done, other than run away?
If she ran away, where would she go? And to whom? And with what money?
So, as the invitations were penned and the trousseau was packed, she’d resigned herself.
She would marry Sloreley at the duke’s seat of Far Hope, where she and Sloreley would rusticate afterward until he could possibly be seen as respectable by society again.
She would begin the project of making him a fit heir and preparing him for a dukedom.
She would marry him and she would find a way to bear it, just as she’d always found a way to bear everything.
When they’d first glimpsed the ancient manor tucked away in the moors, her mother had taken one look at the frowning stone edifice and told Eleanor, “This will all be yours someday. You must remember to be grateful.”
For a very brief moment, Eleanor agreed. Far Hope looked like an etching in a book—moody and wonderful—and there was something about this wild, lonely land that made her feel like she’d stepped into a story. Her very own story, where there would be adventures and romance and—
Abruptly, she remembered that wasn’t the case.
Her story was already written, the book already closed and put back on the shelf. The beauty of Far Hope might indeed be hers, but there was no mystery or adventure here.
As per usual, her mother was never ill when she didn’t want to be, and so had accompanied the Lord Pennard and Eleanor down to Dartmoor for the nuptial celebrations. Eleanor had never really begrudged her the malingering—if anything, she was jealous of her mother’s ability to dodge work—but right now, in the face of this terrible marriage, it chafed. Especially since her mother was using her convenient good health to exhort Eleanor to her famous serenity when all Eleanor actually wanted to do was leap from the carriage and run as far as her legs would carry her.
“Anything else?” Eleanor had asked, trying and failing to sound composed. “Anything else I must do while I’m marrying a reprobate?”
“You must not do anything to jeopardize the marriage,” her mother said seriously. Gray shadows had moved over her face, turning her porcelain features into an ominous, inhuman silver. “You mustn’t, Eleanor. Nothing outrageous, nothing scandalous. The dukedom of Jarrell is the chance of a lifetime.”
Eleanor had nearly snorted at her mother’s warning, but her mother didn’t notice.
If Eleanor hadn’t done anything outrageous during her first twenty years of life, she hardly saw how it would happen out here in this gorse-ridden wasteland. “Of course, Mama.”
“And,” her mother pronounced, “you must not leave.”
<
br /> “Leave?” Eleanor asked, not bothering to hide her incredulity this time. “Where would I go?”
She gestured out the carriage window to prove her point. They were surrounded by miles and miles of gorgeous but desolate hills. Heather, growing brown and rusty under the fading autumn light, covered everything. Fog laid heavy in the dips and valleys and the road was a single muddy track, occasionally diverted around cheerless granite crags. There was not another inn, house, or hovel for miles.
They might as well have been at the edge of the world.
Her mother had nodded then, satisfied. There was no escape.
She broke the first rule that very night. After they were received at Far Hope and allowed to rest, they took dinner with a sallow-faced Sloreley, who was already drunk and sulky beyond belief at Eleanor’s presence. He alternated between glaring at her and avoiding her gaze altogether; he practically flung her hand off his arm when they reached the table. When he scratched his neck under his lacy neckcloth, she caught a glimpse of a fresh love bite on the pallid skin below his ear.