A Duke to Claim her Nights

A DUKE TO CLAIM HER NIGHTS A STEAMY REGENCY ROMANCE SCARLETT OSBORNE CONTENTS Before You Start Reading… A Thank You Gift Love to Read? About the Book Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Epilogue Extended Epilogue Also by Scarlett Osborne Preview: The Boxing Duke Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 About the Author BEFORE YOU START READING… Did you know that there’s a special place where you can chat with me and with thousands of like-minded bookworms all over the globe?! Join Cobalt Fairy’s facebook group of voracious readers and I guarantee you, you’d wish you had joined us sooner! Let’s connect, right NOW! Just click on the image above! ⇧ A THANK YOU GIFT Thanks a lot for purchasing my book. It really means a lot to me, because this is the best way to show me your love. As a Thank You gift I have written a full length novel for you called Seduced by the Brooding Duke. It’s only available to people who have downloaded one of my books and you can get your free copy by tapping this link here. Once more, thanks a lot for your love and support. With love and appreciation, Scarlett Osborne LOVE TO READ? If you love to read, and want to be first to know about the newest Steamy Regency books by your favorite authors, make sure to check out the link below! Join Cobalt Fairy’s Newsletter and enjoy our newest books in the genre you all love! Just click on the image above! ⇧ ABOUT THE BOOK “You drive me mad, and I adore every minute of it.” Arabella has been raised to be the perfect hostess, her mask unwavering. Until the Duke of Willmington attends their family dinner party and he manages to push all of her buttons at once. It would all be so much easier if she knew where her rage ends and the desire begins… Duke Stephen thinks Arabella is fake, infuriating, and so annoyingly alluring. Losing himself trying to break her facade, they don’t realize a precious artifact has been stolen until it is too late. Visiting Stephen in the dead of night to ask for his help might be the first risk she has ever taken, but it won’t be the last. Finding a thief is dangerous, but doing so with the enraging duke by her side could endanger far more than she ever thought… CHAPTER 1 If not for the fact that it would have been appallingly unladylike, Arabella Talbot, elder daughter of the Baron Swinton, might have shrieked with excitement when she read the note on the little table in the parlor that served as her writing desk. A duke was coming to dinner! Arabella threw the note down and hurried to find the rest of her family, pausing at the parlor door to smooth her skirts and check her coiffure. Poise was a practice, after all, one painstakingly maintained and easily disrupted. As such, Arabella made herself walk to the morning room, even though there would have been nobody to see her skip, if she had indulged her excitement. “Oh good, everyone’s here,” she said when she arrived to find them all exactly where she expected them to be. Everyone, in this case, meant her father, the Baron, who was happily immersed in the London Times, her mother, her sister, Henrietta, who pored over a fashion plate, and her brother, Frederick, who was furiously jotting something down in a small notebook. “You shall never guess who has agreed to attend tonight’s dinner party.” At once, the Talbots looked up at Arabella, their diversions forgotten. “Well, don’t keep us in suspense, Ari,” said Henrietta, who had no sense for dramatic timing and an unfortunate penchant to insist upon using Arabella’s childhood nickname. “Who?” “The Duke,” announced Arabella triumphantly. Nobody reacted. “Which one?” asked her father, Trent, with only mild interest. Arabella let her shoulders slump a little and took a seat, accepting the cup of tea her mother passed her way. “Honestly, none of you are any fun.” “Sorry, darling,” said her mother, patting Arabella’s hand. “We are very excited.” None of them looked particularly excited, except for Henrietta, who still sometimes gave into childish displays. “We would like to know, however: which one?” Arabella was assuaged. Besides, now that she thought about it, cool detachment, as though one socialized with dukes practically every other week, was the much more sophisticated attitude. “The Duke of Wilmington, as it happens.” She took a sip of her tea which was pleasantly hot—but not too hot—and perfectly steeped. You could always count on a good cup of tea being at the ready in the Talbot home. “And his brother, Noah.” “Hmph.” Frederick made a sound that would have been a grunt, had it not come from a baron’s heir. “Wilmington’s a bore. Only ever wants to talk about crop yields and investment strategies. Terrible at a party.” “And old,” said Henrietta dejectedly, the excitement seeping out of her posture. “He is not old, Henrietta,” Arabella scolded. “He’s not even thirty.” “Thirty is old,” said Henrietta, who was sixteen and thus could make such pronouncements without even the slightest hint of irony. Arabella ignored her. “And you’re being terribly rude, Freddy.” What she did not say was that she wasn’t sure that her brother was wrong, necessarily. She’d heard similar things about the Duke of Wilmington though she hadn’t met the man herself; he was a perennial no-show at society events. With the right frame of mind, though, this made her landing him for this party even more of a social coup. “Besides,” she waved away her siblings’ concerns. “That is not the point at all. The point,” she added, even as Henrietta opened her mouth, undoubtedly, to ask about that very thing, “is that we shall have a duke at