Duke of
Havoc
Dukes of Destiny, Book One
Whitney Blake
Copyright © 2019 by Whitney Blake
Kindle Edition
Published by Dragonblade Publishing, an imprint of Kathryn Le Veque Novels, Inc
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
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About the Book
Lord Reeve Malliston, Third Duke of Nidderdale, is a brilliant military tactician with a musician’s eccentricities. A favorite of the Duke of Wellington, he’s called to fight on the fields of Salamanca. The English victory is supposed to be Reeve’s defining accomplishment, but war is cruel to the duke, who is discharged from the battlefield nearly deaf and with two fingers missing. He comes home a disgraced and broken man, or so he believes.
After his lady wife dies under mysterious circumstances, nasty rumors abound that he went mad, that war shattered his mind and he murdered the mother of his two young daughters. With little care for the social consequences, he does nothing to combat the gossip and descends into debauchery, leaving his children under the dubious care of a pernicious governess and her sister, his equally uncivil housekeeper.
When yet another instance of domestic chaos greets him and his daughters beg him to intervene, Reeve suddenly decides to enlist his old comrade’s daughter as their new governess. With this new woman to be both surrogate mother and tutor, Reeve plans on resuming his risqué lifestyle without worry or guilt.
But Miss Caroline Sedgwyck, though affectionate toward the children and levelheaded overall, is anything but docile. She sees right through Reeve’s penchant for impropriety, much as he detects that her calm indifference to him is a facade. The two constantly test each other as Caroline challenges the duke to do what is best for his family, while Reeve stirs Caroline’s passions.
Desire, friction, and friendship blossom in equal measure between them—is Caroline the woman to quell the Duke of Havoc? Will she restore the music to his soul?
Dedication
For Nick—who changed my mind about romance.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Books from Dragonblade Publishing
Blurb
Dedication
Acknowledgements
&n
bsp; Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Epilogue
Excerpt from Duke of Sorrow
Acknowledgements
Enormous thanks to my editor, Scott Moreland, and to Kathryn Le Veque, who believed as much as I did that Reeve and Caroline had a story to tell.
Prologue
July 22, 1812
The Battle of Salamanca
Spain
It had been a glorious rout masterminded by the Duke of Wellington.
Now, it was the site of carnage. The fields of Salamanca, once shining waves of gold beneath the summer sky, were red with the blood of wounded men and horses that saturated the earth.
It had been a pristine place until 100,000 men found either their graves, or their victories. And living – however scathed or broken – counted as a victory.
Wellington had outsmarted the French. The man would be known as an offensive tactician from this battle forward because he’d exploited a weakness in what had been a solid defensive line. His decision had worked – the French were retreating, streams of their men fleeing the battlefield.
Ave omnes victors interemit.
All hail the victors.
For Reeve Malliston, Third Duke of Nidderdale, it was a day of diamonds. A commander in the British Heavy Cavalry Brigade, he came from an established line of soldiers and knights, and he looked upon his service under Wellington as a feather in his cap. He’d been personally requested by Wellington, who had been a friend of his deceased father.
He’d performed flawlessly under Wellington, sometimes despite dubious conditions, and he’d performed flawlessly today helping rout the French and protect British supply lines. Reeve was – or so he believed, anyway – a natural hero.
Truth be told, he was also something of a schemer and dreamer. He’d gone into the military to please his aged father – following in Papa’s footsteps, as it were – but the truth was that Reeve had the soul of a poet, the heart of a musician, and the mind of a rogue that even the most severe discipline couldn’t curtail. Even as a lad, he’d had a wild streak that his father had tried so hard to curb. Military school and fatherly beatings couldn’t kill that spirit, and as a last-ditch effort, his father’s old friend Wellington had taken Reeve under his wing.
Wellington understood him, oddly enough, and gave him assignments where Reeve’s natural attributes would be best suited, like routing an entire flank of French troops. Reeve was innately cunning, and fearless, and his heroics had been successful.
The battle was dwindling. Reeve sat on the rise overlooking the battlefield as the smell of acrid gunpowder flared in his nostrils. The French were in petulant denial of their defeat, still persisting in firing off their nine-pounders in some areas.
Still trying to obliterate as many enemy soldiers as they can, poor bastards.
He’d moved his men out of range of the cannons and, even now, they were rounding up some of the French stragglers.
He was quite pleased with himself. Another victory, another fine mark upon his service record that proved to the world that he had some mettle in him. In the stories he would tell to his children in coming years, he would have undoubtedly single-handedly won this battle for the British.
And I will finally earn the respect that the dukedom title couldn’t bring me –
Abruptly, Reeve’s musing was interrupted.
Hot shrapnel carved into his flesh. He realized, somewhat aghast – pain hadn’t set in yet, only incomprehension – that a cannonball had just exploded several feet away from him. He glanced down to see a jagged line of ruby blood seeping through the new tear in his uniform, just along his collarbone. That wasn’t the most shocking thing. He noted with strange detachment that his left hand was now missing its two middle fingers. The stumps were open, bloody messes.
Deciding he couldn’t bear to see that any more, he looked around the field, at his lingering men that had been startled into action, into scurrying and sprinting away, some helping their wounded comrades into safer positions.
His last cogent thought was wry, steeped with a soldier’s gallows humor. Perhaps I didn’t get us as well out of range as I assumed.
Then, something – another shard, or just the sheer force of a new explosion – ruptured his left eardrum. Searing pain forced his mind to go blank.
Agony alone accompanied him into the dark.
Chapter One
November 1812
Yorkshire, England
Oh, God…
His head was killing him.
Reeve’s head pounded so dreadfully that it was difficult to function on a fundamental level. He should have known better than to spend the entire night gambling and drinking but, evidently, he was a fool. Bracing himself, he stepped out of his phaeton into the offensive early morning sun, squinting because the light hurt his eyes. Squinting only worsened the anvil pounding in his head. The little blacksmith working away in his brain certainly was busy.
He’d just come home on a bright, cold morning after having been out all night.
Or was it two nights? Reeve wondered.
Christ, he couldn’t remember. It was a race to get out of the sunlight and he took long, but comically halting, strides to the front door of his home – a pale-stoned beast of a building known as The Thornlands. His eyes were assaulted by the invasion of the sun; all he wanted was the succor of his fine bed or, perhaps, a soak in the tub first to ease his headache. Next time, he would know better than to accept a drinking challenge while at the gaming tables. Now, he was suffering for his rashness.
You dullard; you’re old enough to know better. You’re not some greenhorn.
Just as he reached the ornately carved oak panel that constituted his front door, it opened. His butler, the elderly but impeccably dressed Edgar, rushed at him. By the look on the butler’s face, the duke knew that trouble lay in wait for him. Edgar’s leathery-faced countenance was full of foreboding.
“What news brings you to me with such an expression?” Reeve asked, ready to get the matter dealt with, whatever it actually was, so that he could move on to solitude. “The ceiling of my home remains intact, I hope?”
Edgar rolled his eyes, giving the impression of one who wished to be anywhere else but where he was at the moment.
“My lord, the ladies are at it again,” he said. He spoke in a pointedly loud voice when addressing his lord, as everyone in the household did these days.
If one didn’t speak loudly, one simply wasn’t heard. The damage to the duke’s hearing those months ago on Salamanca had him almost completely deaf.
But Reeve heard him, clearly. He would have rather not heard him at all.
What a blasted surprise, he thought. “Ah,” he said, resigned, his voice strained with hard-won patience. “The cats are in a bag, slashing at each other again. What’s the trouble now? Has someone lost an eye?”
Edgar was genuinely distressed and did not approve of the sarcasm. “They have been nattering nonstop all morning. I fear, this time, that there truly will be a war.”
Reeve had no time for hyperbole or dramatics, especially having served in an actual war. He was certain his head was about to bobble off his neck if he didn’t get out of the sun.
“Tell me, Edgar, in precise terms, of the situation that has your nerves in tatters, and do let me indoors,” he said as he tried to move into the shade of his stoop. “Be swift. I have no time for foolery.”
Edgar tried to be succinct. “To my understanding,” he said, “and you know how little of that is in supply in this house, Mrs. Humphrey decided to clean the children’s room this morning. Meanwhile, Miss Ball had planned an etiquette lesson, but the children would
have none of it – either the cleaning or the tutelage – so they locked themselves in their rooms and would not surface. Duckie tried to call them forth, but they ignored her, then she began fussing that their breakfast would go to waste.”
Reeve gave him a droll expression. It was hard to manage snideness with such a headache, yet he did. “Say it is not so.”
“It is true!” Edgar said, insistent. “But it grows worse, my lord. Duckie then demanded that Miss Ball and Mrs. Humphrey take responsibility for this great calamity and, of course, they refused. Now, all three women have taken up weapons. I fear for their safety, my lord, and ’tis a fine thing you have arrived home when you have. They need a battlefield commander, I fear.”
Reeve looked at old Edgar as though the man had lost his mind. But as he thought on the situation, he could readily believe it. Although Edgar had a penchant for outrageous exaggerations, what he described was not outside the realm of possibility. The female members of his household were prone to useless squabbles. There had been some infamously ridiculous arguments.
Nothing had changed, even after he had been invalided. It was too much to hope for.
Exhaling a long-suffering breath, Reeve steeled himself, took the remaining steps to his front door and pushed it open.
He heard echoes of the fighting immediately as they rippled from the first of the double-parlors at the front of his home. An enormous, curving staircase was to his right, clinging to the wall. He knew that he could take the flight of stairs up to his room and none of the three women would be the wiser.
It was, perhaps, the best action to preserve his temper and his sanity, and one that would lessen the risk of exacerbating his headache. However, should they come to know of his evasion – and they would, because they always did – there would be no peace at The Thornlands. They would know their master had shirked his duties, as he’d shirked so many others since his return from the war.
It was, in fact, now his responsibility as the father of his children and lord of the house to settle any mishaps with regards to his daughters. But it was something he’d never had to handle until lately.