A Lady’s Code of Misconduct
Meredith Duran
Delightful . . . Heart-Pounding . . . Sexy . . . Unforgettable . . .
Savor “romance at its finest” (New York Times bestselling author Liz Carlyle) in these acclaimed novels from Meredith Duran!
LUCK BE A LADY
RT Book Reviews Top Pick
“Flawless novel. . . . These intelligent, multilayered characters embody the best aspects of this wonderfully indulgent series.”
—Publishers Weekly, starred review
“Well-paced, simmering with sexual tension and peopled with memorable characters, this is a love story to be savored.”
—RT Book Reviews
LADY BE GOOD
RT Book Reviews Top Pick
“Lady Be Good has extraordinary characters plus enthralling developments.”
—Single Titles
“Romance, passion, heartbreak, excitement, suspense, and a stellar resolution . . . Lady Be Good packs an emotional wallop!”
—Fresh Fiction
FOOL ME TWICE
RITA Award–winning
USA Today bestseller
“In modern romance, there is still room for the hero that Byron described as ‘that man of loneliness and mystery’ . . . It’s possible that no one writes him better than Meredith Duran, whose books are as dark and dangerous as the heroes they feature.”
—The Washington Post
“Meredith Duran unceasingly delights . . . as a wordsmith and a master at understanding the elements that connect complex, genuine, and lovable characters.”
—Buried Under Romance
“Incredible sensuality. . . . Crazy hot.”
—Fiction Vixen
THAT SCANDALOUS SUMMER
RT Book Reviews Top Pick
“Sophisticated, witty, smart romance.”
—RT Book Reviews
“A powerful story with emotional punch. . . . A joy to read.”
—The Romance Dish
AT YOUR PLEASURE
RT Book Reviews Top Pick
A Romantic Times nominee for Most Innovative Romance of 2012
An American Library Association Shortlist selection
“Unforgettable. . . . Rich in texture.”
—Romantic Times (4½ stars)
“Fast-paced, heart-pounding . . . a wonderful read!”
—Fresh Fiction
A LADY’S LESSON IN SCANDAL
RT Book Reviews Top Pick & a Desert Isle Keeper for All About Romance
An American Library Association Shortlist selection
“Compelling, exciting, sensual . . . a nonstop read everyone will savor.”
—Romantic Times (4½ stars)
“Top-notch romance.”
—Publishers Weekly
WICKED BECOMES YOU
RT Book Reviews Top Pick
“Witty, often hilarious, sensuous, and breathlessly paced.”
—Library Journal
“Sexy, inventive, and riveting, it’s hard to put down and a joy to read.”
—All About Romance
WRITTEN ON YOUR SKIN
RT Book Reviews Top Pick & a Romantic Times
Best Historical Romance Adventure award nominee
“Mesmerizing . . . a glorious, nonstop, action-packed battle-of-wills romance.”
—Romantic Times (4½ stars)
“Wildly romantic.”
—Dear Author (Grade: A+)
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To Joyce Littell, a teacher who not only revitalized my love of school but told me I would certainly grow up to be a writer. In dedicating this book to you, I at last fulfill the secret vow I made on the final day of the sixth grade. It’s long overdue.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks to Lauren McKenna, Elana Cohen, Melissa Gramstad, Marla Daniels, and everyone else who makes Pocket feel like home; to Holly Root, S. J. Kincaid, and Janine Ballard for advice, feedback, and encouragement; to my husband, Matt, for his creativity, humor, empathy, and general perfection; and to family and friends for humoring me through another round of fevered research, late-night writing binges, and random digressions on parliamentary politics which you all graciously pretended to find fascinating.
CHAPTER ONE
February 1860
The first sensation was light. Red, the color of hellfire.
Then . . . weight. Weight compressing and lifting. Squeezing and relaxing.
Breathing. Air. Nose-throat-chest. A body—flesh, his own, his mind anchored within it.
He flexed his fingers.
“Look!” The soft voice startled him. It came from nearby. “Did you see that? His hand . . .”
Girlish voice. Recognition sifted through him, thinning the murk. He felt himself settling more deeply into this body. Pillow cradling his skull. His toes, trapped by smothering weight. Blanket. The air scratched in his nostrils. Smell of . . . soap.
“Open your eyes,” whispered the girl.
His eyes! Yes, he could open them.
The light was scalding. So bright! He could not bear it.
“Go fetch your mother.” A new voice, hoarse, masculine. “Go!”
Hurried footsteps. Floorboards groaning. Slam of a door.
A vise closed on his fingers, crushing them. “Crispin. Open your eyes. Now.”
He knew this voice. It was the voice of command, of expectations. It was the voice of disappointment, but he had always tried to answer it, to prove himself worthy.
He forced open his eyes, braving the glare.
His father gazed down at him. Face deeply lined. Rheumy eyes, shining strangely.
A tear plummeted, splashing Crispin’s chin.
* * *
Later. Much later. Or only minutes. Surfacing from deep sucking darkness. Exhausted, bone weary, so hot.
The light had gone. Square stamps of darkness filled the windows. A low fire revealed the contours of the room. A man, gray-haired, with pitted cheeks, slept nearby in a settee, his limbs contorted, slumped at an angle that guaranteed a backache tomorrow. The woman beside him, who nestled into his shoulder—her eyes were open, fastened on Crispin’s.
She blinked rapidly, then eased straight. “Can you hear me?”
What an odd question. He cleared his throat. Searched for his voice. “Yes, Mother.”
She reached for her husband’s arm, squeezing silently until he started awake, rubbed his eyes, saw what she had seen.
The wrongness registered on Crispin then. This bedroom—he knew it. It belonged in his parents’ London townhouse. But a Gainsborough now hung in place of the still life. The carpet was the wrong shade. And his parents . . .
They looked shrunken. Hollow-cheeked, aged.
He pushed upright. His head exploded.
Time skipped then. He was flat on his back, gasping. His parents were hovering over him, caught in the middle of an argument.
“—call the doctor back at once,” said his mother. “Let him decide.”
“No. I am going to wake him.”
Crispin took a strained breath. “What happened?” he asked.
Their relief was almost comical—wide-eyed, gaping. But they both fell silent. Some charged look passed between them. His mother laid her hand over his.
“You’ve been ill,” she said.
That much was clear. He tried to remember . . . anything. But recent days felt hazy. The tour through Italy? No, there had been much more after that. Studies
with the German tutor? They felt very distant. He was missing something. But he felt sure he should be in Cambridge, cramming for the exam. “Why am I here?”
The question had a peculiar effect. His mother’s grip slipped away. She retreated a pace from the bed. “Oh, Crispin.” Her voice was clogged with tears.
“A fine question,” his father bit out. “Should we pretend to be strangers, then? Your goddamned stubbornness—”
“Stop it,” his mother choked.
Strangers? Crispin’s bafflement redoubled, pulsing in time to the ache in his head. The agony was . . . exquisite.
He felt for the source of it, moving gingerly, groping across his own skull. What on earth? A patch of hair had been denuded. It was growing back short and bristly. The stubble covered a thick gash, as though he’d been axed.
“What happened?” He heard fear in his own voice now, but for God’s sake—“How long have I been here?”
“Five days,” his father said. “But we can see you off by morning if that is your preference.”
“Stop it!” His mother loosed a sob. “I won’t have it—”
The door banged open. In came his sister. God above! She had brought a young woman with her, a stranger—here, to his sickbed!
“Awake again!” With a dazzling smile, Charlotte drew the other girl forward. “I promised you, didn’t I? Look, Jane! I promised you.”
Charlotte was beaming, oblivious to her own lunacy in showing off her invalid brother like an animal at the zoo.
At least the other girl looked properly mortified. She stared at Crispin mutely, her great brown eyes seeming to plead with him, perhaps to save her from his family’s madness.
Crispin cast an amazed glance at his parents, waiting for them to scold Charlotte, to escort this stranger out.
But they said nothing. They looked grim, resigned. Indeed, his father’s expression was all too familiar—the tense, dour face of a man disappointed too often to be surprised by it. “We should give them a moment of privacy,” he muttered to Crispin’s mother, and then pushed and prodded the others toward the door.
Surely they were not serious! “Wait,” he said—but the door closed, leaving him alone with the stranger, who looked as miserable as he felt.
A strange fragment of laughter fell out of him. It made the girl flinch, for which he felt a flicker of regret, but really, what else was there to do but laugh? He had woken into a nightmare. The room changed, his parents changed. Only the main themes remained constant: their disapproval and disappointment. His inability to please them.
At least his brother hadn’t appeared to condemn him. “Madam,” he began awkwardly, but she interrupted him.
“Listen,” she said. “I know you must be confused. But I promise you, I can explain.”
He stared at her. She spoke as though they knew each other. He had never seen her before in his life. She did not look like the kind of fashionable, flashy beauty that Charlotte usually befriended. Her prettiness was quiet, easily overlooked. Her dark eyes held mossy hints of green and gold. The muted lilac and jet of her walking dress, the modest neckline and minimal trimming, could have passed for half mourning.
Yet she had offered to explain, and he would gladly take that offer. Besides, the resolute set of her square jaw, the levelness of her gaze, and her cool voice seemed . . . steadying. An air of authority surrounded her.
“Go ahead, then,” he said.
“Everyone thought you would die.”
Shock lashed through him. “How charming,” he said—aiming for dryness, failing with a cough.
“Your injuries were grave.” She sounded insistent, as though he had argued with her. “And you were . . . asleep . . . for five days. Nobody could help you. The doctors told your family not to hope.”
Her pause seemed to suggest that he would find this sufficient. “And? Go on.”
She opened her mouth, then seemed to falter. Her gaze broke from his to wander the room, a certain desperate haste to her survey, as though she were looking for something better to discuss.
But when she met his eyes again, she took a deep breath and said in a resigned tone, “And so I thought it a perfect solution. Besides, the archbishop had heard the rumors—he knew you weren’t expected to live.”
The archbishop? She was babbling. He felt exhausted again and leaned back into the pillows to close his eyes. This is a dream, he told himself. A nightmare, that’s all.
“Mr. Burke.” Her voice came from very close now. It shook. “Please. We can undo it. You mustn’t believe I meant to cross you!”
He opened his eyes and she flinched.
Why, this girl was afraid of him.
He struggled to hide how disturbed he was. He knew his family often believed the worst of him, but until now, he had not imagined the world did so as well. “Who are you?”
“Who am I? I’m . . . Are you joking?”
“My sense of humor is not so poor as that,” he said. “Who are you? How do you know me?”
The color drained from her face. “I . . .” Her lips opened and closed. “I’m Jane,” she said unsteadily. “And you . . .” Her indrawn breath sounded ragged. “You, Crispin, are my husband.”
CHAPTER TWO
Three months earlier
Bullies like her cousin had an animal instinct, a gift for sensing rebellion. Archibald had stolen Jane’s needlepoint six days ago. She had woken to find her embroidery frame empty, all the threads neatly sliced. Ten months of work, gone.
Jane could guess what had happened. Archie had got some new toy from the inventor, a marching monkey with bladed claws. After Archie set the monkey loose in the drawing room and left scratch marks on the furniture, Aunt Mary had furiously told him to put the machine to work on his own things.
Instead, he’d picked Jane’s.
Archie had the hobbies of a child raised by wolves—dangerous toys, mean pranks. But he was twenty-two years old, only ten months younger than Jane, and he wasn’t stupid. He would have paused to look at the embroidery after his monkey tore it free. He would have recognized the chance for a new lark.
For six days, then, Jane had waited for Archie’s ambush. But he bided his time until tonight, when company gathered at Marylebigh.
It was a frosty November evening, and a fire leapt in the great Jacobean hearth of the drawing room. Jane’s aunt sat nearby it with the Countess of Elborough and Archibald, while Uncle Philip gathered at a short remove with his political cronies—Lord Elborough and Crispin Burke, a Member of Parliament like her uncle.
Jane, as usual, took the window seat in the corner. Her late mother would have scolded her for sitting so far apart from the others, and for ignoring their conversation in favor of a patch of canvas she was stitching without design or care. Her parents had expected her to listen carefully, to think deeply, and to offer her opinions with poised confidence.
But her aunt and uncle, who had become her guardians after her parents’ death, took a different view. In company, they expected Jane to hold her tongue and look shy. She was the golden goose, after all, whose inheritance funded this household. Treasures were not paraded brazenly before those who might covet them. Eligible gentlemen, in particular, were not invited to Marylebigh—save Crispin Burke, of course, but he did not signify. For all his breeding, he was no gentleman.
Jane did not mind the window seat. It made an ideal spot from which to eavesdrop on her uncle. He was arguing with Mr. Burke, in a rare show of discord. It seemed like a gift from the heavens, really, for this was the last chance Jane would have to witness such quarrels. By tomorrow, she intended to be in London, free at last.
But her escape had to be secret. She was biding her time this evening, giving nobody cause to notice her.
“The French aren’t building their battle fleet for show,” Uncle Philip said hotly. Mr. Burke had been needling him about his support for the prime minister, who wanted to spend a fortune to reinforce Britain’s coastal defenses. “Besides, it’s a damned
embarrassment, the state of our naval bases. A child could penetrate them.”
“Goodness,” said Mr. Burke. He was a tall, dark man, unjustly attractive, who spoke and moved and shredded men’s ideas with a languid, careless confidence that was probably inherited—his father was a viscount, his maternal grandfather a duke. “A child could do it?” He cast a dubious glance toward Archie, her uncle’s heir, who was picking his nails with a distracted smirk. “Not any child, surely.”
Her uncle scowled. “You were with me on this,” he said. “I will have your support in committee.”
Burke adjusted his posture, a lazy roll of his shoulders as he retrieved his port. “You’ll have it. But not because I lie awake at night riven with dread over a French invasion. Half a million pounds are earmarked for the improvements, and your friend the inventor will win the bid. Very well.” He lifted his glass. “To profit—your personal deity.”
Jane inwardly snorted. Had her uncle prayed to profit, then Jane herself would have been treated as a goddess, not kept in the corner and ignored.
Her uncle was flushing. “Marlowe is your friend as well, I believe.”
“No.” Burke drank. “My friends at present are a small and select company: those who can help with the penal bill.”
Uncle Philip twisted his mouth. “Marlowe has offered to help fund that campaign, too. He owns half the newspaper editors in the north—”
“I do not want him involved.”
“So the party is to finance the whole of it? That’s a pretty idea—”
Burke’s glass slammed down, and the entire room froze. Jane was suddenly aware of how much taller he was than her uncle—or, for that matter, any other man in the room. Archibald had yet to look up from his nails, but Lord Elborough shrank into himself and pretended to be invisible.
“Listen well,” Burke said in a cold, clear voice. “The party will pay whatever it takes. The party will do what I say. As will the men we’ve purchased from the opposition. They are bought and sold; the deal is done. That bill will be carried.”
Bought and sold! Burke spoke of men like cattle at the market. He was not only ruthless, but amoral to boot.
