Her Duke's Surrender Read online

  Her Duke’s Surrender

  Ladies of Scandal Book Two

  Hilly Mason

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  © 2018 Hilly Mason

  All rights reserved.

  Cover design by Melody Simmons.

  Visit the author’s website at www.hillymason.com.

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  Scotland, June 1815

  She stared at the locket hanging from the pendulous chain.

  Tick-tock, tick-tock.

  Whenever the carriage hit a rock or a dip in the road, the locket would move erratically, like some sort of spirit was in the carriage with her, moving the piece of jewelry out of its own volition. When that happened, Lady Diana St. George would still the locket with her fingers and then let the gentle rocking of the carriage send it back to its side-to-side motion.

  Tick-tock, tick-tock.

  She had yet to open the locket since the day of her marriage to Brodie MacNevin. It was only yesterday, but already it seemed like ages ago that she had met her husband and exchanged their vows.

  Diana leaned her head back, closed her eyes and remembered her wedding:

  “You could always say no,” her sister-in-law, Sophia, had told her as she helped her into her wedding gown inside their room in Gretna Green. “You could work for me at my school. I can help take care of the newborn when the time comes.”

  It wasn’t the first time that Sophia had offered her a means to escape from Diana’s hasty marriage. Of course, her sister-in-law would try to help her find a way out; Sophia was not the type of woman to go blindly into a marriage after all that she’d been through.

  But she was not Sophia.

  Was it so wrong that Diana had always desire to be married? It was just as much of a valid choice as was Sophia’s desire to still earn her own living while being married to one of the richest men in England.

  Yet Diana was taking a large risk marrying a man she had never met. She figured if they were not able to fall in love, she could at least be satisfied that her child will not be born out of wedlock—and be born instead the son or daughter of a duke. She couldn’t think of a better option for her child, especially since her brother could not find any other option for her.

  It had taken Alex quite a while to find someone who would agree to marry her and claim the child as his own—a task that he had to be very discreet about, lest the entire ton found out about her pregnancy.

  Besides, her mother and father did not marry for love and she and her brother turned out fine, nonetheless.

  What Diana expected at the very least, was to live a comfortable life in the Scottish countryside—luckily for her she enjoyed the country just as she enjoyed the city—and to care for her child, setting aside enough money for the child to grow up as comfortably as she had.

  And if Scotland—or her husband—turned out to be unbearable, she had options. Her family in England would welcome her back with open arms without any question. But, she may as well try and hope for the best that Scotland was what she needed to move forward in her life.

  “I’m going through with this,” Diana told Sophia firmly. She rested her hands on her abdomen. She wasn’t showing yet, but soon there would be no hiding her pregnancy. “If this marriage does not turn out the way I expect, I can always return to England. There are many married couples who live in separate estates and go about their lives just fine. My mother and father were one of them. When the child is old enough, I can consider it myself.”

  Sophia looked like she was going to argue, but stopped and shook her head. It was a wise choice; as much as she loved her new sister, once they started arguing Alex was the only capable person to serve as an intermediary to get them to stop. But he was busy in the other room getting ready.

  “You look beautiful,” she said instead. “I would be shocked if Lord MacNevin didn’t fall in love with you.”

  “You flatter me,” Diana said dryly. “But what makes you think I will fall in love with him?”

  “Diana, you fall in love with any man who looks at you for longer than two seconds,”

  “I do not!”

  “And I saw the way you’ve been gazing at his portrait.”

  Embarrassed, Diana snapped the locket shut. Sophia spoke the truth; Diana had always been a hopeless romantic. And even though she had promised she would change after becoming pregnant, she supposed old habits seldom die.

  There was some coordination involved with both parties after Diana agreed to Brodie MacNevin’s marriage proposal. In exchange for a substantial dowry to help save his failing estate and the surrounding town from falling into government hands, they would elope, and then let people know that they had been married a few months prior, so that there wouldn’t be any doubt that the baby Diana carried was his. Diana would become a duchess, and her baby would be saved from becoming a social pariah.

  The baby she carried was, in fact, Lord Evans—a man that she had courted and had thought to be in love with—but his engagement to another woman made it clear that he wanted nothing to do with Diana. She had slept with him on one terribly drunken night after a party—and Lord Evans insisted he did not remember any of it at all. She couldn’t bear to tell Lord Evans about the baby, for he would most likely not accept the baby as his anyway, especially now that he had a fiancée.

  She had accepted her own fate in several stages—first was grief and despair, then anger at herself and Lord Evans for being in the situation in the first place. That anger then turned into acceptance. When she finally accepted that she in fact was going to go keep her baby, she began to feel a bubbling joy in her soul that nobody would be able to take away from her.

  Diana’s brother, Alex, walked into the room. Like Diana, he was tall, with dark features. Whereas his eyes were almost black like their mother’s, Diana’s were hazel—a gift from her father who had died with their uncle on a hunting trip in the Scottish Highlands more than six years ago.

  Since her decision to move to Scotland, Diana had dreamed of the remote Highlands almost every night. The dreams were vivid; she would be running across a deserted road next to a river, as though searching for something—or someone. Sometimes she dreamt of her father walking down that same road. Was that why she had been drawn to Scotland? Not by this mysterious man she was to marry, but by the strangeness surrounding her father’s death? What would she find up there that she didn’t already know?

  “You look beautiful, Diana,” Alex told her. He walked over to her and kissed her softly on her cheek. “Are you about ready?”

  Diana sighed. “As ready as I’ll ever be, I suppose.” A wave of apprehension seized her. The day was warm—even being this far north did not give her any respite for the wickedly hot summer the season was threatening to be. She grabbed her paper fan and began fanning herself as she gazed at her reflection in the mirror.

  She did look quite exquisite—the pastel green gown she had purchased in London before th
ey left for Gretna Green suited her pale skin well, and made the greenish-brown of her eyes stand out. Her eyes were lined with kohl, and red rouge stained her lips. She thought to add some rouge to her cheeks, but the warm weather already made them flushed and she did not want to look like she was suffering from an ague.

  Her gown had a stylishly low neckline, and the stays she wore accentuated the ever-increasing voluptuousness of her bosom caused by her pregnancy. She eyed her chest appreciatively as she took her diamond heart-shaped necklace—an heirloom of her grandmother’s—and clasped it around her neck.

  Alex interrupted her reverie. “Sister… this man might receive a dowry from this marriage, but he does not have claim to all of your money. I have been setting aside an allowance, only for you and your child. By law it is technically still my money, but if you ever need it, you just need to ask. You are in complete control of the money. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, Alex,” Diana said firmly, “of course.” It was not the first time that she had been told to watch her money. Yes, perhaps at one point in her life she would spend her allowance on frivolous things without a second thought. But being pregnant had changed her. She had somebody else to think about now.

  “You have a certain power over him,” Sophia added. “And the moment he tries to take advantage of that power, give him a slap across the face for me and return home. Understood?”

  “I’m hoping that won’t happen, but yes, I will do so,” Diana promised them. Did they really have such low expectations of Lord Brodie MacNevin? Perhaps she had been overly optimistic that he was a man of decent character.

  She looked at them both and recognized what she saw: fiercely loyal familial love. They only said those words because they loved her, and did not want her to be hurt.

  And soon she would have to leave them.

  Her heart suddenly hammering in her chest, she looked down at the small locket she still held in her hand. Diana knew that Brodie MacNevin was just a few years older than she, and was the descendant of an ancient clan in northern Scotland. After years of battle and upheaval, the clan system had all but been forgotten, and much of the land had been taken by the government and large businesses. But for whatever reason, Brodie was adamant about keeping the land he owned for himself. Alex had explained to her that Brodie wanted to remain loyal to his tenants, who had been living off his land for centuries. The wealthy landlords that could potentially take over Brodie’s land could kick those tenants out at a moment’s notice.

  Most of the poor, failing Scottish towns in the Highlands struggled to hold on to their old values in a changing world. And Brodie MacNevin had no money. The coastal village of Ciarach, where Diana was to move to, was almost in complete ruin. Thanks to her brother’s gaming enterprise, the St. George’s had more than enough money to help Ciarach—for the time being. The rest of Ciarach’s fate fell to Brodie’s responsibility.

  Her fantasies of being married had always included a wealthy husband—not one struggling with money. Nevertheless, it’s better than being an unmarried woman with a baby with no future, she reminded herself not for the first time.

  It was only last week that Brodie MacNevin offered his proposal. They had to be married quickly; Brodie was to leave Scotland the following morning for battle in the Netherlands and he didn’t know when he was going to return.

  Or if he would return.

  Diana swallowed against a suddenly dry throat, and opened the small, oval locket again. A miniature oil painting of a young man gazed back at her. She had stared at the portrait enough times to memorize his features with her eyes closed; he had startling blue eyes, a firm jaw with a sensitive mouth. He looked every bit of an aristocrat except that his skin was tawny as though he spent most of his time outdoors, and he had a golden head of hair, wild and unkempt like a lion’s mane.

  “Well, at least he’s handsome,” Sophia told her, peering over her shoulder.

  “I suppose so,” Diana muttered.

  “You suppose so?”

  “Yes, I suppose he’s handsome,” she remarked testily and said no more. Lord Evans was also remarkably handsome, and look how he turned out to be! Handsome did not necessarily mean Brodie MacNevin was an honorable man!

  She set the locket down on the table in front of her, not wanting to look at it any longer.

  Her brother had yet to hire a new maid since her previous maid, Isabel, proved to be disloyal, so Sophia’s own maid, Joyce, helped her with her hair.

  “It seems a shame to be dressing so elaborately when there will be hardly anyone to see me,” Diana muttered.

  “Your husband will see you,” Joyce remarked. “And that’s all that should matter.”

  “What matters is that you feel confident and comfortable,” Sophia interjected. She gave her a directed look again, the same one Diana had seen a dozen times before. You want to do this, do you? her sister-in-law silently asked.

  Diana ignored the look and turned towards the mirror. Joyce had done an exquisite job. Her dark hair was pulled back into a pretty bun. Small pins decorated with white pearls adorned the crown of her head.

  “I’m ready,” she said. “Shall we go downstairs?”

  The ceremony was not the event she had imagined it would be. In her dreams as a girl, she imagined being married to her paramour at someplace extravagant, like the Carlton House in London, not in some small side-room next to the tavern in an inn.

  Well, if her pregnancy has taught her anything, it was that life was just a series of unexpected events, and it was foolish to try to predict the future, despite what Sophia’s fortune-teller friend, Miss Baxter, would say.

  Diana’s heart felt as though it were going to leap out of her chest the closer she walked to the ceremonial room. Brodie MacNevin was just on the other side of the wall. What was he thinking as he stood there waiting for her? Was he just as nervous as she was?

  Sensing her discomfort, Sophia gave the woman a sympathetic squeeze on her shoulder.

  “We’re right behind you,” she said to her sister.

  Diana gave Sophia a shaky smile and opened the door to meet her husband.

  He was much taller in person, and much broader around the shoulders than the portrait suggested. He wore a traditional Scottish kilt—emerald, like the hills surrounding Gretna Green. His hair was long, slightly curly and pulled back away from his face with a leather thong. Alarming blue eyes looked at her from across the room, assessing her. He is indeed like a lion, she thought. Graceful, yet deceptively dangerous. At first, Diana wanted to lower her gaze, but she remained focused on him. I have complete control. I can also be a lioness. As she walked into the room, she thought her heart was beating loud enough for everyone in the small room to hear.

  As her witness, Alex stood next to Diana. He and Brodie exchanged long, hard looks—unreadable to Diana. Seemingly satisfied, Alex took a few steps away from Diana and folded his arms.

  A young man, who was most likely Brodie’s own witness, took a few steps away from Brodie to stand by Alex, giving Diana an opportunity to stand next to her soon-to-be husband.

  Diana was not a short woman, yet when she stood next to Brodie she had to crane her neck to look up at his face. She was greeted with a frown.

  “You could at least pretend to be happy,” she whispered to him as the priest began to drone on about the sanctity of marriage.

  His eyes widened with surprise, and his lips twitched, as though trying not to laugh. Quickly, however, his face reverted back to that stony impassiveness.

  “Why fake it?” he asked her dryly.

  Her mouth dropped open. She suddenly felt ridiculous in her attire—like she was a child dressed for a make-believe wedding. She was only vaguely aware of the priest’s words, and when it came time for Brodie to kiss her, she stared up at him blankly, wondering if he actually was going to do it.

  This is for my baby, she thought. My child will now have a prestigious title along with the generous fortune my brother gifted me.


  It still did not quell the ache she felt in her heart. As Brodie leaned down to very lightly sweep his lips against her own, she pressed her hands firmly against her stomach—a reminder that she would not be so alone in her new life in Scotland.

  Out of the corner of her eye she could see Sophia, standing next to her stepdaughter, Annie. Her sister-in-law had been against marriage not too long ago, but life had changed for Sophia in ways she did not expect.

  But she and my brother had been in love for years. Lord MacNevin and I are but mere strangers. Oh Lord, what have I done?

  The ceremony now over, Brodie turned from Diana and briskly walked out of the hall, his witness following after him. Diana looked after him mutely before she turned around to say her goodbyes. When she reached her family she burst into tears, falling into Sophia’s arms.

  “Sophia, I am so frightened.”

  Her sister kissed her forehead. “I know,” she said gently. “But I don’t believe this man will hurt you.” She lowered her eyes and whispered, “But if he does, do you still have what I gave you?”

  Diana could feel the cold steel of the blade hidden in her stocking pressing against her leg. She nodded through her tears.

  “I don’t think I would be able to kill him, if it came down to it,” she whispered back.

  Sophia shrugged. “It does not have to be fatal to prove your point.”

  “Well, I pray it doesn’t come to that,” Diana pulled away from Sophia, and then embraced her brother next.

  “Take care, sister,” he said. “We will visit once the baby is born. Unless, of course, you need us there sooner…”

  She stepped away from him. “You two are the most pessimistic people I’ve ever met,” she said to them, not unkindly. It made her feel quite loved that they cared so much. “I will miss all of you so very much.” If she were to remain with her family any longer, she feared she would never leave them. Diana kissed the top of her niece’s head and stepped outside to join her husband.

  Brodie was talking to his witness, and immediately ceased their conversation when she approached. Feeling awkward at her obvious intrusion, she bowed her head slightly to the unknown man in a greeting.