The Scoundrel Duke of her Heart by Violet Hamers

Prologue

“Ishall get you out of here, Mother!” Sixteen-year-old Nicholas shouted over loud crackling as he frantically searched amidst the engulfing flames and smoke around them for an exit.

The fire was persistent and merciless, eating up everything in its path and seeking out more with greed as ferocious as its heat. Nicholas saw no way out of it. His mother coughed through the smoke as she also sought a way out. She’d fallen asleep in his bedchamber after coming in earlier to play their nightly game of cards only to be woken by the sudden heat and brightness that filled the room.

They had just made it out of his bedchamber, but the hallways and stairs Nicholas had known his entire life seemed foreign to him, almost as though he were in a maze. Whatever confusion he felt at that moment though, he was not alone. Just below, he could hear the furious efforts being made to reach them on the third floor.

“Give me your hand, Nicky,” his mother, Celia, said, “And don’t let go. I have you.” Her eyes shone with concern for him. He was supposed to be the one saying those words to her. But he would get them out of the fire. He had to.

They were hurrying down the hall towards the servants’ staircase when a loud creaking stopped them short. Celia abruptly released his hand as a beam fell between them, taking a step back to avoid being hit by it.

“Mother!” he called, taking hold of a burning beam without thinking and releasing it abruptly and crying out in pain.

“You’re going to burn yourself, Nicky!” she called. “I am fine. Go downstairs and tell the others where I am.”

“I can get you out of here!” he insisted, taking hold of the fallen beam again and pulling. The thing refused to budge.

“Stop it, Nicholas! You are harming yourself.” Her tone was grave. “Go. I’ll be all right.” There was fear in her eyes and it increased his own fear. The thought of leaving her there to find help terrified him but it was necessary. Taking a shaky breath, Nicholas took a step back.

“Nicky, look out!”

He jumped back but was unable to land on the floor. Instead, he began to fall down the stairs. The last thing Nicholas saw was another beam falling toward his mother. His fall seemed endless, his ears filled with a devastating shrill scream.

* * *

“Thank heavens, you are awake!” the housekeeper, Mrs. Henshaw gasped when Nicholas’s eyes fluttered open.

It was not the first time he’d tried to open them, yet they felt heavier than ever. His head throbbed and a dull ache somewhere along his leg informed him of the extent of his condition but not the nature of it.

“Oh, don’t sit up, child,” Mrs. Henshaw stayed him with her hands on his shoulders, “Dr. Busket said to not move that leg.”

Nicholas craned his neck to get a glimpse of the inert limb, registering the dead weight and what appeared to be ice on his knee. Most of the leg was bandaged, from his thigh down to his calf. The coolness of the ice was soothing and instead of resuming his attempt at sitting up, he leaned back against the pillows, closing his eyes.

“I must summon him,” came Mrs. Henshaw’s voice. “‘At once,’ he said,” she added, turning on her heels and hurrying out of the room before he could ask her anything.

He was dazed and tried as he might and could not recall what had happened to cause him to be confined to his bed. A short stint passed before Mrs. Henshaw walked back in with the family doctor in tow.

The kindly middle-aged man who had been treating him since infancy squeezed his shoulder. “I knew you’d fight through it.” The smile on his face gave Nicholas some comfort.

“Night after night of fever,” Mrs. Henshaw said as Nicholas was about to speak. “We thought you wou—” she stopped herself from saying any more.

Dr. Busket examined his leg. “I had to operate on it because you dislocated your knee during your fall, injuring the artery behind it.”

“Was I riding?” Nicholas asked, observing Mrs. Henshaw blanching as she exchanged a look with the doctor. His brows drew down over his eyes in puzzlement.

“The ice helps with the inflammation and pain,” Dr. Busket carried on, ignoring his question. There was a grim set to his mouth that Nicholas found both unusual and disturbing.

Nicholas sighed. “Mother must be cross with me. She always is concerned about my riding. Says I am too wild on a horse.”

A loud gasp made his head snap up quickly and in time to see Mrs. Henshaw turn away from them, her eyes shimmering with… Tears? What was the matter with her?

Cautiously, he began, “Mrs. Henshaw, are you...”

“Where is he?” His father’s stentorian voice drowned his question and he turned his head toward the door. The duke stormed into the room, his face red with rage. “Explain yourself, boy!”

Nicholas drew a breath, moistening his dry lips and collecting his thoughts before speaking. “I beg your pardon for the inconvenience, Your Grace. I must have pushed the horse too hard to have gotten unseated and hurt.”

His father’s face was now vermillion and the proverbial smoke was coming out of his ears. “Horse?” he spat. “What rubbish are you talking about?” He turned to the doctor and the housekeeper without waiting for a response from Nicholas. “Are those the lies you have been feeding the boy?”

“Your Grace, there appears to be a misunderstanding. The boy’s memory—”

The duke raised a hand, silencing Dr. Busket. He was panting and his fury was palpable. Nicholas swallowed, wishing he could sink into the mattress and disappear. “Did you know that your actions killed her?”

“The mare?” a befuddled Nicholas asked. He could not understand why his father was enraged by his riding accident. This was not the first time he’d fallen off a horse.

Now the duke was on the verge of becoming apoplectic. “What bloody mare? I am talking about you mother, you damned fool!”

“My…”

The memories came crashing into him, hitting him like a heavy sack of bricks. The darkness of his reality intoxicated him as the last image before everything had gone dark surfaced: something falling on his mother. Her scream rang anew in his ears and he covered them with his hands, shutting his eyes too, and willing his reality to be anything but.

“Your Grace,” Dr. Busket began again, “Might I suggest we handle this at a later—”

“Do not tell me what to do with my own son!” the duke bellowed. “I want an explanation for why he risked his limbs and fled the fire, leaving his mother behind to die!”

Nicholas’s ears were covered but every vile word his father uttered reached him, piercing his heart like a double-edged dirk. His body began to tremble.

“You are crying?” he asked, sounding both outraged and surprised. “I don’t know where you got this cowardice from and I am most appalled by it. Your actions killed her and the child she was carrying.”

Nicholas uncovered his ears and looked up now, his eyes brimming with the tears he was assiduously trying to keep at bay. He tried to say something, anything, but his tongue thickened and he couldn’t utter a word. He tried again.

“I-I-I...d-d-d…” He was suddenly that stammering child again; the child that had been helpless and ashamed before his father. Not a word he tried to say was coherent.

A bitter laugh was wrenched from the duke. “First you killed your own mother, then you were insensible for days, and now that you are finally awake, you cannot give an intelligible explanation for your actions.”

Nicholas’s lips trembled and he felt even smaller than his father was making him feel. “S-a-s…”

“You cannot say anything in your defense, can you?” His father threw his hands up in the air in exasperation. “At least, give me an excuse for depriving me of my chance to acquire a proper heir, you stammering fool!”

* * *

“Don’t let go. I have you.”

Nicholas bolted upright, his heart racing and his body gleaming with sweat. A decade had passed, yet he was still being haunted by the bitter memory of his mother’s death. The nightmare was always the same. She would be holding his hand, telling him to not let go, and then she would be behind the fallen beams as flames erupted from every direction.

Heaving a sigh, he squeezed the bridge of his nose before reaching for the pocket watch on his nightstand to check the time. Strong rapping sounded at his front door. Who could be at his door at past two in the morning? His gaze swept about the dimly lit bedchamber for his clothes, settling on the woman sleeping soundly beside him.

He envied her. Where every moment of his life was spent paying for his sins—living with the memory of his loss—hers was spent taking life’s pleasures. Rising from the bed, he took his robe from the floor and donned it before taking the lone candle in the room and going to check on his visitor as the knock persisted.

When he opened the door, he found a teenage boy on the other side with a small satchel strapped across his body. “Nicholas Brighton?” the boy asked, squinting in the dark.

“Yes?”

“Urgent mail for you, monsieur,” the messenger replied in halting English, fishing in his satchel and retrieving a missive that he handed to him.

Nicholas was reluctant to accept it but his curiosity won. After collecting the letter, he began to turn but paused. The boy was waiting, an expectant smile on his face.

“Une minute, s’il vous plaît,” he said, closing the door and going back to his bed chamber to find some coins.

He’d not told anyone of his whereabouts and thus he was greatly surprised by the arrival of this letter. Only one person had a way of knowing he was in Saint-Malo, France. Tossing the letter onto the small desk by the window, he found some coins and returned to tip the messenger.

When he returned, he picked it up, expecting to see his cousin, Ernest’s bold handwriting on the envelope. Instead, he found his family’s dratted signet on the sealing wax. He allowed a string of expletives to rush past his lips before rummaging through the desk drawer for a letter opener.

He wondered why the duke would write to him now after five years of silence. Had he taken ill and was summoning his only heir? He shrugged as he tore open the letter. Fine penmanship that could only belong to the Dowager Duchess of Seaton suffused his vision and his body tensed.

Come back to England and take your place as the Duke of Seaton.

The entire message was contained in one line. There was neither a salutation nor a closing remark.

“You look tense. Is something the matter, love?” came his companion’s voice. She sat up in bed, sweeping her light hair away from her face and covering her bare bosom with the bed covers.

“It’s my father,” he said slowly, setting down the letter and walking back to the bed.

“What about him?”

“He is dead,” he said, marveling at how indifferent he was feeling about the information. “My grandmother wants me to return to England.”