P.S. I'll Make You Mine My Duke (Historical Regency Romance) Read online

  P.S. I'll Make You Mine, My Duke

  A Steamy Regency Romance

  Violet Hamers

  Contents

  A Thank You Gift

  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

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Epilogue

  Extended Epilogue

  Preview: A Ravishing Lady for the Rebellious Marquess

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Also by Violet Hamers

  About the Author

  A Thank You Gift

  Thanks a lot for purchasing my book. It really means a lot to me, because this is the best way to show me your love.

  As a Thank You gift I have written a full length novel for you called The Duke she Desires. It’s only available to people who have downloaded one of my books and you can get your free copy by tapping this link here.

  Once more, thanks a lot for your love and support.

  With love and appreciation,

  Olivia Bennet

  About the book

  Seeking adventures, she finds the greatest one: him…

  There is only one thing Lady Amelia Balfour loves more than balls: ghost stories.

  The eldest daughter of the Earl of Derswell is looking forward to visiting the old Cloudfield Manor, the most famous haunted house in London. Expecting it to be empty, she is shocked to discover that she is indeed not alone.

  With his business floundering, Reginald Carter, the young Duke of Cloudfield is almost ready to sign the papers and sell the manor that haunted his dreams for two decades. That is until the most beautiful lady falls right into his arms during an inspection.

  What starts as a spark erupts into a raging fire of passion, and promises of love made under the moonlight.

  However, not everyone is happy with their union and they will stop at nothing to prevent it. Even though the ghosts at Cloudfield Manor are silent, Amelia and Reginald are unaware that they have stirred awake other forces: very real, human forces that have been at work for more than twenty years...

  Prologue

  1797

  The salty sea-stained summer air whipped up around the Royal Marines as they squinted through the blackness of the night, rowing as silently as they could toward the Spanish shore. The glow of the Spanish fortress was unmistakable at the top of the rise as her cannons shot down into the dark channel, and the host of British ships anchored there returned fire, at a small place in the Canary Islands called Santa Cruz de Tenerife.

  The sound was all encompassing, a constant back and forth of sharp pops and cracks, deepened by their menace and their echo off of the Spanish walls. It was a hard thing, to stand on the deck of a ship and go toe to toe with a fortress battery, but it was far harder to take a landing party nearly one thousand strong ashore in secret.

  Horatio Nelson’s plan rested on the surprise landing, and his men, who all loved him so fervently, wanted with all their hearts to give him that gift. One of those men was a proud Captain named Martin Carter, The Duke of Cloudfield. His Grace was a fine looking man by any account, with a strong jaw and a set of broad shoulders which looked a perfect fit beneath his naval officer’s uniform, and well-kept chestnut hair that accented his well-tanned skin from so long aboard a ship.

  His thoughtful brown eyes lingered on the portraits of his wife and young son, contained in the small locket that rested in his palm. He took one last longing look at their images, and then clasped the locket shut with two fingers, and slipped it back around his neck. He could see the shore, and it was so close. He could see Nelson, leading the assault, drawing ever closer to their prize. It would only be a matter of minutes now, of that Martin was sure.

  “Ready then, lads,” he whispered out to the boat full of Marines around him. “Nearly there. Keep hard on the oars, boys, and all else prepare your primer.”

  They followed his orders diligently, making ready their powder horns as the oarsmen hauled away, and for that moment in time it looked as if they would sweep onto the Spanish beach without any resistance, and then easily overtake the battery which suppressed the engaged division of the English Navy.

  “Come on, lads!” he whispered as loudly as he could through gritted teeth. “Let’s take this ruddy place for Nelson, for England! Row! Row! Row!”

  Then the cannons opened up, and lead balls began to splash violently into the water around them as the Spanish ramparts facing them erupted with fiery wrath, and their smoke was illuminated by further flashes of ignited gunpowder.

  “The jig is up, lads!” Martin screamed out. “Faster now! To victory! To Nelson! Look there! He is ashore! After him now! Row! Row! Row!”

  Martin pointed with his sword toward their commander, and all the Marines behind him cheered, waving their muskets in the air as the cannon fire rained down toward them. All around, the shots sent shock waves through the water, each seemingly drawing closer than the last.

  Horatio Nelson had his sword high in his right arm, and although they could not hear him from this distance, they knew he was bound to be screaming all sorts of inspirational calls to action, and they loved him for it. They loved him so much, that they would give him this fortress, or die trying. Nelson’s skiff hit the beach, and his men began to pour off of it like the Myrmidons landing at Troy, and Nelson was leading them the only way he could—with valor and brutish courage that would carry him into the annals of history.

  Then the unthinkable happened. It was not unthinkable because it was unlikely, rather, because people had not dared to dream of it, for Nelson was too beloved, and too successful a commander to ever be taken away from them. And yet on that late summer evening, they all watched in horror as Nelson fell backwards into the landing boat, his arm washed away in red by the cruelty of cannonade.

  Martin felt utter shock and disbelief to see his leader fall, but he knew his men would feel the same, and that if ever they were to reach the shore alive and capture that fortress, he would have to steer them from depressive thoughts. Now was not the time for mourning.

  “Give ‘em hell, lads!” he seethed, waving his sword about. “For Nelson! Bring us ashore! Are you with me?”

  “Aye!” they screamed, poised to spring from the bow behind their officer. “Then row! Row lads, row! Bring us there! For England!”

  Then everything suddenly shifted like an eerie and violent tide. Martin’s craft was clove in two by a Spanish ball, and the planks creaked and cracked and were rent from each other in a matter of seconds. Martin was in the water, along with all of his Marines, and he felt entirely numb, ignorant to the splinter of wood stuck through him. The weight of his equipment began to drag him slowly downward, and Martin noticed a strange serenity there beneath the waves. He could not much hear the cannon any more, nor the scattered shouting of Marines and their muskets as they tried to s
torm the beach.

  As he sank, his locket, still around his neck, drifted upwards gently, and cracked open by the impact, Martin could see his wife’s face looking back at him. He smiled to himself as he looked then to his young son, that bold face that Martin suspected would grow into a rather dashing fellow. How he loved them, and how they loved him. That was his last thought, and his body touched softly to the sandy bottom of the shallows as he died, and the British attack failed.

  ***

  The news came on a silver tray, delivered by a well-dressed man who had no clue to the gravity of the letter he carried. Little Reginald Carter poked his head around the corner of the foyer. He was being stealthy, for it was well past his bedtime as a three-year-old, but he possessed keen interest whenever the doorbell rang, for he hoped it would be his father come home from the war.

  Reginald watched a servant take the letter as his mother stepped into the room. Reginald shrunk lower behind the metal legs of a suit of armor which his father had filled the house with so prolifically.

  “Who would send a messenger at this hour?” his mother sounded cross, her hands on her hips as she approached the servant.

  “It is from the Admiralty, madam,” the servant answered softly, and Reginald could see concern in both of their eyes, but still he dare not reveal himself.

  “Oh,” she stumbled slightly backwards, feeling the wall behind her for support. “I see.”

  “Would you like—?” the servant stepped forward with the letter, but Reginald’s mother turned her head away, hauling a few nervous breaths into her chest.

  “Read it,” she commanded. “Read it to me.”

  “Yes ma’am,” the servant said softly, retrieving a letter opener from the mail tray. Reginald could hear the paper being cut in the stark silence of the house, and that sound would stay with him for the rest of his life. It was not quite a cut, not quite a tear, it was something that sat in the center with dreadful precision, and it chilled the young boy to his core.

  “To the esteemed Duchess of Cloudfield,” the servant began, looking with a strange and unfamiliar expression at the words he was set to read. He took a breath, and continued. “We write to you so urgently to inform you of the action at Santa Cruz de Tenerife, which occurred under the command of Admiral Horatio Nelson this twenty-fifth of this July, in the year of our Lord seventeen ninety-seven.”

  “A night assault was made on the beach, led by Admiral Nelson and his top officers, your esteemed husband, the Duke of Cloudfield among them. It was in this heroic action that Admiral Nelson was wounded by grapeshot, and we are told your husband took up the command of the landing parties. For this he should and will be commended honors that befit his bravery, in that regard you have my word.”

  Then the servant stopped, taking another lingering pause but Reginald’s mother said quietly, “Continue.” The servant nodded, and looked back to the page.

  “Your husband’s landing craft was then struck by artillery fire from the fortress walls, and all men aboard perished as a result, the great and noble Duke of Cloudfield among them—”

  “No!” she wailed out, crumpling to her knees as all the composure fled from her face. “No, no, no! Woe upon the world, no!” and she began to sob uncontrollably, taking her head into her hands.

  Reginald felt a strangeness come over him. It was like a sudden flood that hollowed everything within him away, leaving him unable to move, think, or speak. He could only watch his mother cry from afar and struggle to understand what exactly was occurring, for he was three years old, and while he understood what death was as a concept, it had never affected him personally, and he still did not grasp the finality of it, as children struggle to do.

  So he stood there as the servant crouched down beside his mother, tentatively reaching out his hand. “May I get you something?” he asked gently.

  “Leave!” she snapped back. “Leave and take that cursed letter with you!”

  The servant recoiled, but maintained his professional demeanor, and said “I shall bring you a brandy, to settle your nerves if it pleases, ma’am.”

  “Just leave,” she sobbed, her head lolling back into her hands, her body wrenching with great sobs. “Go! Get it away from me!” and she thrust her hands roughly toward the letter, shoving it away crudely. The servant tucked the letter into his waistcoat, and stood slowly.

  “I shall see about that brandy, Your Grace,” he said. He straightened his uniform, and turned toward the nearby parlor. Reginald saw that after he turned away, the servant wiped a single tear from his eye, then he disappeared through the doorway.

  Reginald was about to move toward his mother, for at this point he could see that something was terribly wrong, but just as he was about to move, she thrust herself to her feet, her body shaking with each heaving breath. She turned around and began to claw her way up the stairs, her hands wrapping around the beautiful and lengthy banister that wound up the symmetrical staircase to the second floor, like the talons of a hawk on the hunt.

  She was gone from his sight then, and Reginald could no longer hear her sobbing. He tentatively stepped out from his hiding place behind the armor, now finding the strength to move his legs. The house was silent, eerily so, save for a light clinking of crystal from the other room where the servant was presumably pouring a brandy.

  Reginald was about to step from the hallway that ran beneath the stairs out into the foyer properly, when something happened. It happened suddenly, and without warning, and it would affect little Reginald for the rest of his life.

  First it appeared as a shadow, moving silently through the air in a plummeting motion, so quickly that Reginald could not make it all out, but then it stopped short some two feet from the ground, and the cessation in movement was accompanied by a horrendous cracking sound as the banister kicked and bucked under the weight, but nevertheless held true to its assigned purpose.

  His mother was swinging there before him, and wood chips flaked down around her in a strange dusting, her head at an awful tilt, hung with a thick woven cord from the heavy drapes, and Reginald screamed.

  He could not be sure of what happened after that. The next thing he knew he was in the servant’s arms, being carried fast away from the hanging silhouette of his mother as she became a smaller and smaller shape down the hall. The suits of armor seemed to stare at him as he was carried past at a running speed, and the colors of the wallpaper blended together into a strange sort of tunnel.

  He could hear the resounding footfalls of the servant, and the sound of his clomping blocked out all other sounds in that vortex of a space, and then finally his mother disappeared from view entirely.

  Reginald found himself sitting in the kitchen, staring at his feet, not knowing what was happening at all. There was commotion all around and the house staff were crying on each other’s shoulders. Reginald felt as if he were still in the tunnel, without any place to go or be, or anything to say. He kicked his feet together over and over again, counting the scuff marks on his shoes each time he added another. When did I put on shoes?

  “Hello, Reginald,” a familiar voice cut through the swirling chaos, and Reginald looked up to see his uncle’s kind face looking down at him. His uncle sank to his knee, and looked into Reginald’s eyes, reaching a hand out to hold up his chin. “How are you?”

  Reginald blinked at his uncle. Speech was not something he possessed the capacity for at the moment, and so he looked solemnly at his uncle with both the deepest sorrow, and greatest confusion in his eyes. Reginald returned his uncles question with a single shrug, then went back to kicking his feet together.

  “Come now,” his uncle put his hand on one of Reginald’s feet, stopping the distraction. “You have to come away with me.”

  Reginald looked back up at his uncle, and sheepishly asked, “Where are we going?”

  “We are going to my home,” his uncle replied. “You are going to live there henceforth.”

  “Will Mother and Father be there?” Reginald
asked, hunching his shoulders forward. He saw his uncle take a deep breath, bow his head, then look back up at him while he nervously scratched at his fine woolen top hat.

  “No, Reginald,” he said, and his eyes began to water. “No, they won’t.”

  “I want to see them,” Reginald protested, feeling himself begin to cry.

  “I know, lad,” his uncle took him into an embrace, and lifted him off of the kitchen bench. “I know.”