My Deceitful Duchess

Contents DedicationPrologueChapter OneChapter TwoChapter ThreeChapter FourChapter FiveChapter SixChapter SevenChapter EightChapter NineChapter TenChapter ElevenChapter TwelveChapter ThirteenChapter FourteenChapter FifteenChapter SixteenChapter SeventeenChapter EighteenChapter NineteenChapter TwentyChapter Twenty OneChapter Twenty TwoChapter Twenty ThreeChapter Twenty FourChapter Twenty FiveChapter Twenty SixChapter Twenty SevenChapter Twenty EightChapter Twenty NineChapter ThirtyChapter Thirty OneChapter Thirty TwoChapter Thirty ThreeChapter Thirty FourChapter Thirty FiveChapter Thirty SixChapter Thirty SevenChapter Thirty EightChapter Thirty NineEpilogueAuthor’s Notes DedicationTo every romance novel hero anachronistically named Sebastian.I have it on good authority that every historical romance novelist gets one (1).This is mine.(And for Jessica, who asked for a nerd.) PrologueSheffield, EnglandOctober, 1811Death came not quietly to Venbrough Manor. Geneviève Amberley, the Duchess of Venbrough, had expected it to come sooner rather than later, given that her husband had been aged some fifty years at the time of their marriage a year before, and a lifetime of excess had taken its toll upon his body already. She had always known she would be a young widow. But she had expected at least to reach the grand age of twenty first, and she had certainly not expected to become a widow through murder.She had known something was terribly amiss the moment her husband had begun to complain of stomach pains after dinner. They had eaten the very same meal after all, and she hadn’t experienced so much as a twinge. The only difference had been the wine that he had indulged in at dinner and that she had not. And she had had enough experience in reading the intent upon her husband’s face that it had been impossible not to notice the sinister—and delighted—cast to the faces of his distant cousins when the duke had excused himself and taken off to his bed.Mischief was afoot, and she ought to have known it. To be certain, she held about as much love for her husband as it was possible to have for a man who had treated her like a possession rather than a person—which was not much. But she was no fool, and in retrospect she ought to have seen the duke’s relations that had just recently come for an extended visit for what they were: vultures circling carrion.The duke’s death warrant had been signed upon his marriage, and he hadn’t even known it. He had been only too eager to show off his pretty young bride to his relations, and announce his intentions to get an heir from her within the year—an announcement that had been tinged with an air of menace to Geneviève’s ears. The unmistakable command levied in that tone; the decree that she had better deliver unto him his heir…if she knew what was good for her.To the duke’s heir presumptive, her very presence had been a threat. She had assumed erroneously that his obvious distaste for her had been due to her French roots, the poverty from which the duke, in his benevolence, such as it was, had deigned to lift her. Instead it had been the potential for life that she represented—the child the duke intended to have from her womb. A male child would, upon its birth, supplant him from his place, kicking him straight down the line of succession for the dukedom. She knew it now, just as she knew her husband was dying in fits and groans just beyond the door to which she pressed her ear. In the depths of the night, there was no one to hear him but her—and the two villainous relations who had intruded upon him in the interests of ensuring that their plans came to fruition. No doubt they hovered over the duke’s writhing body in the certainty that nothing could be done for him.“For God’s sake; I cannot even hear myself think over this wretched carrying on. How long does it take a man to die?” The sister—Nerissa—inquired icily, as if she had taken the duke’s failure to die promptly and quietly as a personal affront.“Hell if I know,” Julian Amberley—the heir—sighed. “He’s so much larger than he was last I saw him. Perhaps I did not give him quite enough arsenic.”Geneviève closed her eyes, shuddering. Her freezing toes curled into the plush rug beneath her feet. “The bitch could still whelp a boy,” Nerissa said. “We cannot risk losing the dukedom to some half-French brat.”She wasn’t with child. For all the duke’s considerable efforts, she had not conceived in the year they had been wed. The duke had snarled often that there must be something wrong with her, that she had been a mistake—that he had done her the honor of making a duchess of her, and yet she, ungrateful schemer that she was, had denied him the son he so desperately wanted. As if she had done it on purpose; as if she would not have given anything to conceive—which might have spared her his attentions.Julian said, “We’ll have to be rid of her, too. If she is with child, a convenient death will put paid to that.” And then, “Oh, shut up, you great blithering arse,” as the duke gave a wrenching groan of distress.Her husband was not long for this world, and Geneviève—Geneviève would not outlast him by any significant time unless she acted now. God alone knew how long the bloodthirsty pair would wait before seeing her off to a premature grave.Geneviève slipped away from the door on legs that trembled like a bowl of blancmange, unable to work up even a shred of pity for the man who lay in his bed beyond that door, arsenic eating away at his insides. He had never spared any amount of pity for her, after all.It was her own skin she sought to save; not the duke’s. Never the duke’s. She might have thanked them, the evil heir and the conspiring sister both, had they not sought to engineer her death as well. The duke’s death would release her from the gilded cage that had been her prison this last year. She would have skipped merrily away from the whole wretched business—had