His Inherited Duchess


 
 
 
 Daring Rogues
 Reformed rakes find romance!
 Carrick Eisley and Logan Maddox may have once put their lives on the line with their wild, daring exploits, but when it comes to putting their hearts on the line, that’s one risk these former rakes aren’t willing to take...until they are confronted with the women who will change their views on love, and their lives, forever!
 Read Carrick and India’s story inMiss Claiborne’s Illicit Attraction
 And Logan and Olivia’s story inHis Inherited Duchess
 Available now!
 
 
 Author Note
 Logan and Olivia’s story is about second chances and trust—trusting oneself as well as trusting others even when that trust has not been warranted in the past. Each of them have decided to pick themselves up, dust themselves off and to make things better next time, but even that comes with a cost. Each of them have also built defenses to protect themselves from repeating the mistakes and the hurt of the past. They struggle, as we often do, with finding the balance between learning from the past and letting the past dictate the future, often to our detriment.
 I hope you enjoy their story and that it offers others a way of examining their own patterns and processes when setting boundaries and when crossing them.
 
 
 BRONWYN SCOTT
 His Inherited Duchess
 
 
 
 Bronwyn Scott is a communications instructor at Pierce College and the proud mother of three wonderful children—one boy and two girls. When she’s not teaching or writing, she enjoys playing the piano, traveling—especially to Florence, Italy—and studying history and foreign languages. Readers can stay in touch via Facebook at Facebook.com/bronwynwrites, or on her blog, bronwynswriting.blogspot.com. She loves to hear from readers.
 Books by Bronwyn Scott
 Harlequin Historical
 Daring Rogues
 Miss Claiborne’s Illicit Attraction
 His Inherited Duchess
 The Peveretts of Haberstock Hall
 Lord Tresham’s Tempting Rival
 Saving Her Mysterious Soldier
 Miss Peverett’s Secret Scandal
 The Bluestocking’s Whirlwind Liaison
 Under the Mistletoe 
 “Dr Peverett’s Christmas Miracle”
 The Rebellious Sisterhood
 Portrait of a Forbidden Love
 Revealing the True Miss Stansfield
 A Wager to Tempt the Runaway
 The Cornish Dukes
 The Secrets of Lord Lynford
 The Passions of Lord Trevethow
 The Temptations of Lord Tintagel
 The Confessions of the Duke of Newlyn
 Visit the Author Profile pageat Harlequin.com for more titles.
 
 
 For the super cool members of the creative writing community of practice at my college. I love hanging out with you—Sam, Jenny, Vernon et al.
 
 
 Contents
 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
 Chapter Nineteen
 Chapter Twenty
 Chapter Twenty-One
 Epilogue
 Excerpt from A Season of Flirtation by Julia Justiss
 
 
 Chapter One
 Logan James Montfort Maddox, Fifth Viscount Hailsham, was the epitome of his age. Society’s most sought after contradiction; the Responsible Rake, the titled gentleman who lived lavishly and flagrantly in the moment as if he hadn’t a care beyond the day while privately shouldering the enormous concern of his family’s well-being for the present and securing it for generations into the future. He was a man for whom the concepts of dissipation and dependability lived cheek by jowl with one another.
 To the untutored debutante straight from the schoolroom it made him an enigma, layers of handsome masculinity wrapped in an intriguing mystery. To their mamas, however, it made him something much more: eligible; marriageable. Preferably sooner rather than later now that he came with the extra caveat of possibly being the next Duke of Darlington. Such an enticing combination of wealth, lineage and dedication to family didn’t come on the Marriage Mart often. When it did, people were bound to pay attention, to the man and his circumstances, because when something was too good to be true, it quite often was. Best one knew before one married into it.
 Such considerations were the precise reasons he and his mother, the viscountess, were tucked into the well-sprung but utilitarian Maddox family travelling coach, hurtling over the weather-rutted roads of late winter toward Darlington Hall in Surrey with all haste possible. Logan, having ignored the initial summons two weeks ago, had now received word in no uncertain terms that such disregard for his situation was growing less possible to maintain as was his fate. Every day that passed seemed to indicate he would indeed be the duke.
 ‘I haven’t been to Darlington Hall since the old duke was alive and you were small. You must have been four.’ His mother tried for a smile. It came out small and tremulous. No one had smiled for weeks. The news had stunned them all with its suddenness coming swiftly on the heels of Christmas, its repercussions continuing to shock and shape them in the unfolding weeks. ‘Do you remember nothing of that visit? You and your cousin, Adolphus, played soldiers in the nursery.’ He did remember that visit, although he wisely said nothing. It wasn’t polite to speak ill of the dead. Adolphus had been a bully and when he’d not got his way he’d punched him.
 His mother’s smile, not strong to begin with, faltered. ‘And now...’ Her voice trailed off, the rest unspoken. Now Adolphus was dead along with his father, Logan’s father and Logan’s brother, Griffin. The male limbs of the family tree pruned down to Logan and his younger brother, Rahnald, a prospect that had once been so improbable to consider that Logan had never dwelled on the idea.
 It was that improbability that had been a source of significant anxiety of late. The old duke had died of natural causes a few years ago as had Logan’s father, who had died when Logan had been fifteen, preceded by his own son Griffin’s death when Logan had been thirteen. But now Adolphus was dead. What the cause of his death was had not been imparted to Logan, but whatever