The Duchess Hunt

‘You?’ she observed as she finally opened heavy eyelids, her gaze still half dazed with dreams of him.

‘Me,’ Jack replied, as if even he was surprised.

‘You should be with your guests, not hobnobbing with a nonentity like me,’ she said with a drowsy smile.

A frown twitched his dark brows together and instead of going away, as she told herself she wanted him to, he sat himself beside her so she couldn’t get up without an undignified struggle.

‘I won’t have you categorise yourself a nonentity, since we never entertain any of those at Ashburton, my dear Miss Pendle.’

‘Don’t mock me,’ she ordered him crossly.

‘Not you, but I do deplore your quest to constantly belittle yourself, Jess.’

Forcing her mind to sharpen, when it wanted so badly to soften, she met his eyes steadily. ‘And I shall never join the chase and allow others to belittle me instead, Your Grace.’

‘What chase would that be?’ he asked silkily, and moved so close to her that her breath came short. ‘It’s the closed season for most country sports, Miss Pendle.’

‘Other than spinster-baiting and duke-hunting, Your Grace?’

ELIZABETH BEACON lives in the beautiful English West Country, and is finally putting her insatiable curiosity about the past to good use. Over the years Elizabeth has worked in her family’s horticultural business, became a mature student, qualified as an English teacher, worked as a secretary and briefly tried to be a civil servant. She is now happily ensconced behind her computer, when not trying to exhaust her bouncy rescue dog with as many walks as the inexhaustible Lurcher can finagle. Elizabeth can’t bring herself to call researching the wonderfully diverse, scandalous Regency period and creating charismatic heroes and feisty heroines work, and she is waiting for someone to find out how much fun she is having and tell her to stop it.

Previous novels by the same author:

AN INNOCENT COURTESAN

HOUSEMAID HEIRESS

A LESS THAN PERFECT LADY

THE RAKE OF HOLLOWHURST CASTLE

REBELLIOUS RAKE, INNOCENT GOVERNESS

ONE FINAL SEASON

(part of Courtship & Candlelight)

A MOST UNLADYLIKE ADVENTURE

Did you know that some of these novels are also available as eBooks? Visit www.millsandboon.co.uk

The Duchess Hunt

Elizabeth Beacon

MILLS & BOON

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Chapter One

‘And you’re quite sure the Duke of Dettingham kidnapped or killed that delicious Mr Seaborne we all swooned over when we came out, Eugenia dear?’ a young matron asked on a nervous titter at one of the last great balls of the London Season.

‘The gentlemen are taking bets on how he’s got away with it for so long, Lottie,’ her overexcited informant told her as if it was gospel truth. ‘Nothing was entered in the betting books, of course, since the Duke must challenge any man who declared him guilty of such a dreadful crime and he’s a crack shot. He certainly wouldn’t balk at putting a bullet in any gentleman brave enough to expose him when he’s disposed of his heir in such a villainous fashion.’

‘Although the Duke is rather delicious as well,’ Lottie said wistfully. ‘That air he has of not caring a snap of his fingers what any of us think quite makes my heart flutter and when he actually looks at me … Ooh, even now meeting those compelling green eyes of his makes my knees knock together and then I can’t think of a single sensible word to say.’

‘I don’t approve of conscienceless rakes,’ Eugenia told her friend stiffly.

‘Once upon a time you would have given your best pearl necklet if it persuaded him to even dance with you, and sold your soul for anything more.’

‘Which means I know what a heartless care-for-nobody he truly is,’ Lottie’s disgruntled confidante informed her as if that settled the matter.

‘And how you wish he’d once played the rake with you,’ Lottie argued.

‘Only to find myself murdered in my bed once he grew bored with me? I rather think not,’ Eugenia said coldly and went to find more receptive ears to pour her poison into.

Jessica Pendle had never found it more difficult to sit quietly and pretend she was deaf and daft as well as lame.

‘Jessica!’

She could almost feel her mother willing her not to stand up and publically denounce that malicious cat for circulating such silly, damaging stories about Jack Seaborne, Duke of Dettingham.

Jack and his cousin Richard would not harm each other even if their very lives depended on it and anyone who knew them at all well would happily swear to the fact, but she knew a single lady, even one of her advanced years, could never defend an unrelated gentleman without making bad worse.

‘Mama?’ she murmured absently.

‘Pretend you didn’t hear them,’ Lady Pendle urged softly.

‘It doesn’t even make sense,’ Jessica muttered distractedly. ‘Jack’s already the duke, so why would he need to kill anyone to secure his position, let alone his cousin? Do they think Jack will now hunt down every male Seaborne in the country on some lunatic rampage to exterminate all competition?’

‘You don’t suppose such inveterate gossips consider the implausibility of the stories they make up then spread as if they were truth, do you, my love? It all sounds like the plot of a very bad sensation novel thought up by some bored creature without anything to do and too much time to do it in, but how much good do you think it would do Jack if we both swept into battle on his behalf?’

‘None at all,’ Jessica admitted. ‘But that woman made such ruthless efforts to trap Jack into marriage when we first came out that I wonder he didn’t go about in a suit of armour. If he was prepared to murder anyone, it would have been her.’

‘A woman scorned can be very dangerous indeed, but we will discuss this at home when nobody else can hear but Papa, if he happens to be in one of his listening moods. For now we must pretend we have heard nothing untoward,’ her mother advised.

‘But Jack is an honourable man. Even when he’s looking down his lordly nose in a way I can’t help but find so infuriating that sometimes I long to smack him, I still know that much. I could never believe him capable of such villainy,’ Jess continued with a bewildered shake of her head.

‘You make yourself such an easy mark for his teasing by flaring up at him on the slightest provocation, my love,’ her mother said mildly and Jessica wondered why her family and his never seemed to find Jack’s regal-duke act infuriating.

‘There’s no need for him to play the autocrat whenever he isn’t being such a disgraceful rake nobody will even whisper in my hearing what he’s really been up to since he came down from Oxford even now,’ she muttered grumpily then caught an amused glint in her mama’s eyes and looked at her enquiringly.

‘Sometimes you sound just like Jack’s grandmother, my dear,’ her mother declared with a smile that would have made Jessica suspicious, if she wasn’t so busy being horrified.

‘I don’t, do I?’ she asked, wincing at the very idea of resembling that dreadful old aristocrat in any way. ‘I’ll never snap at him again,’ she added fervently and wondered exactly why her mama looked so pleased.

Before she could consider the idea further there was a flurry of excited interest around the entrance to the ballroom created by some important arrival then a delighted susurration of whispering. She realised why when the Duke of Dettingham himself strolled into the ballroom as easily as if he was taking a stroll about his own garden, then bowed to his hostess with roguishly exaggerated grace and a wicked smile. That middle-aged matron acted the blushing damsel of twenty years ago rather than the formidable society hostess she was now and simpered girlishly when he kissed her hand like some old-time chevalier.

Jessica frowned as she watched Jack insinuate himself into what had been a hostile environment with his usual careless aplomb. He ought to look as if he’d dressed by guess in the dark, considering his almost-fitting coat and carelessly elegant cravat, she decided critically. Instead he was dark and dangerous, and so careless of the fashion he carried off as if he’d heard of it and decided to try it in his own unique fashion that he was the model all the would-be dashing young men scrambled to emulate. In her opinion they would never succeed, but even she realised he had the casual elegance so many others strove for in vain.

Meanwhile the Duke of Dettingham surveyed the assembled company as if he was mildly amused by the antics of a pack of well-dressed monkeys on the strut then spotted friends in the crowd and forged his way towards them. No risk of losing sight of him, even if he hadn’t been so tall that he was head and shoulders above most of his peers, Jessica decided with some exasperation. Wherever he went there was a flurry of greetings and he went about his ducal progress as if he had no idea most of the guests had only just stopped whispering tall stories about him and his missing heir.

Of course he belonged to an aristocratic and powerful breed and had started out with a good many unfair advantages, but the current Duke of Dettingham was taller, long limbed and more leanly muscled and formidably intelligent than even the Seaborne clan expected of their titular head. He was probably a bit too much the leader of the pack for some of them, too, considering most Seabornes were as determined to go their own way as their piratical forebears had been, but she doubted a single one of them would put out a scurrilous story about Jack and Rich to clip his wings a little and keep him busy with his own affairs instead of theirs.

Dismissing his current notoriety, since he was clearly as indifferent to it as a rock, Jessica concentrated on dealing firmly with her own senses and the feral beat of excitement his presence awoke deep inside her without any effort on his part. Her body had an infuriating habit of getting into a silly flutter at the very sight of Jack in his full arrogant glory and it would never do to let even a hint of that show. There were other good-looking and active gentlemen of Jack’s ilk with rank and power at their fingertips and she told herself he wasn’t that special, but a deeply buried and highly excitable Jess whispered they didn’t possess the air of such casual power that Jack had no need to flex to prove himself, or that infernal natural charisma he would still possess even if he’d become a boot boy at sixteen instead of a duke.

She had been a sad tomboy and had wanted to join his and Richard’s wild rides and rough sports when he was sixteen, but they usually managed to evade her. Jessica recalled her twelve-year-old self doggedly searching up hill and down dale when they left with the dawn and came in at dusk to avoid her and might have blushed, if she wasn’t too old to flush when her cool composure was threatened by a careless aristocrat nowadays.

‘Richard was always terrified something would happen to Jack and he would be obliged to take on the dukedom,’ she muttered under her breath and heard her mother’s shocked gasp that she should even think about such things now.

‘Kindly remember where you are before you start discussing a very good friend’s premature demise, Jessica.’

‘That wasn’t what I meant at all, and nobody is paying the slightest attention to me. They are all far too busy being intrigued or scandalised by Jack to listen to anything a plain nonentity like me has to say about him and his.’

‘You always set yourself too low,’ her mother scolded and Jessica heard the note of concern in her mother’s voice and tried to pretend interest in the company while Jack sauntered about the room as if he owned it.

She even managed to carry on a laboured conversation with a sober young gentleman of political ambition in search of a well-connected wife. Jessica knew she was well born and related to many of the ton in some degree or other, but wondered why this plodding young man thought she could be that wife. At three and twenty she was nearly on the shelf—the eighth child of parents who had provided livings and dowries for the other seven already and were therefore not rich, powerful or careful enough to make good in-laws—possessed of only moderate looks and a damaged left ankle. Still, she supposed she had the modest fortune left her by a great-aunt, in the belief Jessica would stay single and need it; her father was a viscount and her godmother was the Duke of Dettingham’s beloved aunt by marriage. Luckily Jessica didn’t like Mr Sledgeham enough to admire him for finding that a desirable connection, despite Jack’s current notoriety.

‘So what do you say, Miss Pendle?’ the wretched man asked all of a sudden and she tried not to look at him blankly.

‘Thank you, but, no,’ she managed civilly but firmly and it seemed a good enough answer as he only looked mildly disappointed.

‘Then can I fetch you some refreshment, Lady Pendle?’ Mr Sledgeham politely enquired of Lady Pendle and Jessica breathed a sigh of relief.

‘No, but thank you for the offer and your company, Mr Sledgeham,’ her mother said with such brisk kindness that he accepted it as his dismissal and took himself off.

Jessica hardly had time to repress a shudder at the very idea of enduring a lifetime with such a prosy bore before Jack Seaborne loomed over her in person and she promptly forgot Mr Sledgeham altogether. Her heart thumped uncomfortably at Jack’s proximity and she ordered it to behave itself. Of course he would come and be civil to them if he was on his best behaviour tonight, she reassured herself. Lady Pendle was a long-time friend of his Aunt Melissa and Jessica was that lady’s goddaughter, so he could hardly stroll past them as if they were mere nodding acquaintances, even if that was all they really were nowadays.

Jack presented her with a glass of lemonade without even asking if she wanted it, as if he’d armed himself with it in case she was overcome with artless enthusiasm at the very sight of him. Then he insinuated himself on to the chaise between herself and her mama with a faintly amused air of omnipotence.

‘Your Grace,’ she managed with a stiff nod and an indistinct murmur that might be a thank-you for the lemonade, if he had an obliging imagination.

‘Miss Pendle,’ he said blandly with an annoyingly elegant seated bow. ‘I trust you are enjoying robust health and spirits?’ he asked, as if was addressing some ageing spinster at least twenty years older than her three and twenty.

‘I am very well, thank you,’ she replied repressively.

He had always delighted in provoking her, then sitting back to watch her struggle with her stormy emotions in public. It was annoying and ungentlemanly of him and she silently told him so with a furious glare disguised as a weakly smile. He grinned and stretched his long legs out in front of him as if he hadn’t a care in the world. Jessica reluctantly admired his élan even as she felt the flex and steel of sleek, masculine muscles next to her and wished him a great deal further off. With his black-as-midnight, slightly overlong, curling hair catching all sorts of devilish lights in the candles’ glow and the starkly male beauty of his sensual mouth added to that hint of a smile in his gold-rayed green eyes, he might look like the answer to a maiden’s prayer, but she couldn’t dream the dreams other well-born society ladies indulged in.

Somehow she fooled herself he was a run-

of-the-mill gentleman who had stopped for a polite conversation to stop herself colouring up like every other idiot he smiled at in that way. Jack Seaborne wouldn’t want her if she was presented to him naked on a platter with an apple in her mouth, like the wild boar’s head at Christmas. The very idea of him prostrating himself at her imperfect feet made her smile so wryly to herself that she met his enquiring gaze with a fading memory of it on her lips.

‘That’s good,’ he said blandly and she cast him an even more suspicious glance, ‘because I came to issue an informal invitation to a house party my darling aunt has got it into her head to organise at Ashburton this summer. We dearly hope Miss Pendle and her lovely mama, along with her rather-less-lovely sire, will join us in Herefordshire for a fortnight, as soon as this fiasco is finally over and done for another year,’ he said lightly, then looked almost serious as he met Jessica’s eyes with something that might have been a plea in his own, if she wasn’t who she was and he were not the most eligible duke in the land. ‘You’ll be as welcome as the flowers in spring; you always talk to me as a human being and not merely a duke. Won’t you agree to come and make the whole business a little more bearable for us all?’ he coaxed shamelessly.

‘If I’m sure of only one thing in life, your Grace,’ Jessica said as lightly as she could manage when the sincerity in his eyes made her want to grant him anything he wished, ‘it’s that you’re perfectly capable of looking after yourself.’

‘Not this time, Princess. I suspect my dragon grandmother has put out an edict that I must be wed post haste, now I’m racing towards thirty and nigh in my dotage,’ he said, a touch of bitterness in his deep voice that made Jessica look a little more carefully at him than she’d dared to until now and note the lines of strain and tiredness about his firm mouth and the faint shadows under his eyes that spoke of a deeper weariness than anything merely physical. ‘Won’t you join us at Ashburton for a few weeks and add a little spice to a leaden occasion, Princess Jessica?’ he went on. ‘You will be such a relief from the sweet little débutantes my aunt is threatening to inflict on us. I’ll soon be choking on too much undiluted sugar,’ he appealed almost earnestly.

Not sure whether to be flattered or insulted, she told herself he’d spoilt his plea by using the nickname he inflicted on her when his aunt gave her the ground-floor Queen’s Room at Ashburton after her accident to save her climbing the stairs.

‘I have asked you not to call me that so often I shall soon start saying it in my sleep,’ she told him acerbically.

‘Say you’ll come to Ashburton for a few weeks this summer and I’ll try very hard not to do it any more, Miss Pendle,’ he urged.

‘And you promise you won’t hold me up to ridicule?’

‘I would never do anything so unfriendly,’ he said as if he found the idea impossible to even contemplate, despite all the teasing she’d endured in the old days. ‘You will be an honoured guest and anyone who dares consider you otherwise will soon discover their error and a pressing engagement elsewhere.’

His words should have warmed her, so why did she suddenly want to cry? Because it wasn’t every day a lady was asked to a house party as a sort of female jester, she supposed. ‘I doubt very much Papa will agree to leave Winberry Hall and the hay harvest once he is back in Northamptonshire again at long last,’ she managed to say coolly enough.

‘He would tear himself away if that were all that was keeping him home, my dear, but don’t forget his latest grandchild is about to come into the world and your father is a far more doting father and grandfather than he would have everyone believe,’ her mother put in ruefully.

‘Surely we cannot be from home at such a time either, Mama? This will be Rowena’s first child and she is sure to need us even more,’ Jessica protested.

‘Rowena has many weeks to go and is robust as ever, despite that air of fragility her husband is clearly taken in by even though he’s been married to her for more than a year now,’ her mother argued. ‘Both he and your father are worry warts, but I’ve no intention of sitting about clucking like a mother hen solely to make them feel better. A relaxing fortnight at Ashburton before I immerse myself in my grandmotherly duties once more sounds wonderful to me, so thank you for asking us to be your sadly pampered guests there once more, your Grace,’ Lady Pendle said with an air of finality.

It seemed that Lord and Lady Pendle and their last unmarried daughter would be present in Herefordshire this summer to watch his Grace the Duke of Dettingham pick out his duchess, whether that daughter wanted to be there or not.

‘I’ll be very grateful for some leaven to add to so much dough, then,’ Jack said with a lopsided grin that could charm a gorgon.

Jessica found herself unworthily hoping one of the young ladies invited to be looked over like fillies before a sale would turn him down flat when he asked them to marry him, but supposed that was too much to expect. Jack Seaborne was a temptation any sensible woman he wasn’t planning to marry ought to avoid like pure sin, but even Jessica couldn’t ignore a direct appeal for support. Yet why was he meekly going along with his grandmother’s scheme to marry him off like this? His air of disillusioned cynicism usually kept all but the most maniacally determined husband hunters at bay and he had carefully avoided unsophisticated young ladies, however lovely, until now. So why had he decided to marry, after all the effort he’d put in to avoiding that state? Sighing at the unfathomable nature of Jack Seaborne’s thoughts and motives, Jessica decided she’d find out quite soon enough.

‘Perhaps I could stay at home, just in case Rowena needs me,’ she said in a last-ditch attempt to escape.

‘Why would she when she has a devoted husband ready, willing and able to look after her far more closely than you ever could now she is wed? At least we need you, Princess, so if you insist on being useful to somebody it might as well be us Seabornes,’ he said and this time she could sense the steel under the velvet of his deep voice, as if he truly did need her to be there this summer while he picked out a bride for some peculiar reason all his own and was determined she would be close by.

‘You don’t need me and I would be out of place at such a gathering,’ she insisted, her internal warning bells clanging.

‘Not so,’ he insisted tersely and she felt apprehension shiver down her spine as she met the challenge in his green-gold eyes.

‘I’m not an uncritical little débutante,’ she warned.

‘Were you ever one of those, Princess?’ he asked with a smile that threatened to undermine her defences.

‘And I’m even less wide-eyed and naïve now than I was then.’

‘I think we all know that.’

‘Then you must also know I’m not the sort of person you want at Ashburton if you’re intent on persuading one of the guests to become your duchess,’ she said recklessly and knew the instant it was out of her mouth that it was a dare too far.

His green-gold eyes darkened until they resembled obsidian and his mouth hardened into the look of arrogant superiority that had always raised her hackles. His unspoken contempt for her plain speaking was intimidating, as if she’d lost his good opinion so effectively it wasn’t even worth him explaining why. Her hand shook and her breath hitched as she bit back the apology threatening to tumble from her lips.