The Duke’s All That

Book 0: Synneful Spinsters

by Christina Britton

Genres: Regency Romance; Family Life

Synopsis

A heartbreaking betrayal. A secret life. A love that deserves a second chance.

Iain MacInnes, Duke of Balgair, has spent the last thirteen years believing his wife is dead—until he receives word that she is very much alive and living under an assumed name on the remote Isle of Synne. He sets off with only one goal in mind: bring his wife back to Scotland where he can divorce her and expose her for the liar she is.

After a devastating deception by the man who was supposed to love her, Seraphina did what was necessary to keep herself and her sisters safe. And though she’s still haunted by the events that tore her world apart all those years ago, she’s made a happy life on Synne, surrounded by loyal friends and building a secret career as a popular author. Now that Iain has found her, however, all that is at risk.

Despite their long separation, the attraction between Iain and Seraphina still burns strong. But with so much hurt and betrayal between them, can they possibly find their way back to each other?

Release date: February 6, 2024

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Print pages: 352

Sample

Scotland, early 1821

His wife was alive.

Iain MacInnes, Duke of Balgair—a title that still felt about as comfortable and welcome to him as a starched collar after the loose-necked Jacobite shirts he’d been used to wearing all his life—stared down at the letter in his hands, feeling as if a ghost had just jumped out at him from the shaky handwriting and punched him in the throat. He read over the missive again, and then once more, his eyes scanning with increasing agitation, certain he must have read it wrong. But no, there it was, plain as day, information he had never expected to receive, had not thought it possible to get.

I did not know who else to turn to, who else might care. Her father lied. Lady Seraphina Trew did not die in a carriage accident with her sisters as her father reported. Rather, they are thought to be alive and well and possibly living under an assumed name.

Dear God. Seraphina was alive?

An image of her rose up, like a specter in a long-abandoned graveyard, from that last time he’d seen her: brilliant hair loose down her back, lips still bruised from his kisses, her smile bright as she bid him farewell, promising to see him within the hour. He had not thought of that painful scene in years—at least not willingly. Later that same day he’d been cruelly informed of her betrayal, all his fears that she could not love someone like him proving true. And when he’d learned of her death several years later, he had not mourned her. It was difficult to mourn someone who had broken your heart so brutally and completely.

But she was alive, and had been all this time?

He was out of his chair before he knew what he was about, racing from the study and through the massive house to the front hall. Donal, the ancient butler with his powdered wig constantly askew, was trudging across the tiled floor as Iain rounded the corner.

“Who brought the letter?” he demanded as he made for the front door.

“Wha’s that, Yer Grace?” the man rasped, frowning at Iain. An expression Iain was all too familiar with, as unwelcome as he was in his new position as duke.

Gritting his teeth at that title he so despised, he nevertheless replied, “The letter that just arrived. It dinnae come with the rest of the correspondence. Who brought it?”

“Oh. Hmm. ’Twas a young woman, Yer Grace. Some wee blond thing, came on foot. She might still be in the front drive—”

The words were not yet out of Donal’s mouth before Iain was out the door. And there she was, trudging down the long drive of Balgair Castle through fresh drifts of snow, shoulders slumped, as if the weight of the world were on them. He did not pause but leapt down the steps, sprinting down the snow-laden gravel drive. Blessedly the lass was so caught up in whatever was on her mind, she did not hear him until he was right atop her. Then she only had time to gape as he lurched into her path.

“You knew Seraphina?”

But even as he berated himself for the desperation in his voice, he realized the lass could not possibly have known his recently resurrected wife. This girl was just that: a girl, not more than fifteen or sixteen at the most. Certainly not old enough to have known Seraphina or her sisters in any proper capacity. Which meant she could not have been the one to pen the missive.

A fact that the girl verified a moment later, all while backing away and staring at him, as if he were a great big beasty about to swallow her whole. “N-nae, I know nae one by that name.”

So saying, she made to skirt around him. But Iain could not let her leave, not until he learned who had sent him that letter.

He stepped in front of her again. The girl’s eyes widened, a distressed squeak escaping her lips.

Damnation, this was no way to get information out of her. “Forgive me, lass,” he said, thickening his burr, making his voice as gentle as he could. “I dinnae mean to frighten you. I only meant to find out who it was that sent the letter. ’Tis verra important, ye ken?”

But the girl did not look even remotely easy at his assurances. Instead, her eyes narrowed in suspicion as she attempted to skirt around him once more. “If yer master wishes to know who sent the letter, he can do the asking himself. Good day, sir.”

Iain very nearly laughed at that. His master, eh? Not that he was surprised the lass did not realize he was the bloody duke. Most dukes were not nearly so rough and unkempt as he, with three days’ growth of beard and wearing his oldest, most comfortable kilt. No, dukes were by and large soft, selfish bastards, who cared more for their possessions and appearance than they did for the lives of those they were responsible for. As were all of the nobility, a group he had come to actively loathe in the past decade and a half.

And, he thought with no little bitterness, he was now one of them.

But the girl had made her way around him and was quickly making her escape. “I am the duke,” he bit out, perhaps more sternly than he should have, considering the anger that his ruminations dredged up.

Another squeak from the girl as she turned back to face him and dropped into a curtsy so low he thought she might lose her balance entirely and topple face-first into the fresh snow. “Yer Grace,” she gasped, “I’m sorry, I am. I dinnae ken ’twas you.”

“Dinnae fash yerself,” he grumbled, waving her to standing. Would he ever get used to the fawning obsequiousness that such a title brought with it? Surely not. It was no wonder those who possessed titles and wealth thought so highly of themselves.

For a moment he remembered one particular lord, and how cruelly he’d dealt with Iain when Iain had dared to look at his daughter, had dared to love his daughter. Seraphina.

But no matter it seemed the lass had risen from the dead—a fact that he could not seem to wrap his head around—he would not lower himself to think of her father and all the heartache that man had caused, all at the altar of his own self-importance.

“But perhaps you might now tell me who sent the letter,” he said.

Whatever reaction he might have expected from her, it certainly wasn’t the sudden sadness in her wide brown eyes.

“My gran,” she said, her voice going quiet. “Mrs. Mary Campbell.”

He sucked in a sharp breath, the cold air like needles in his lungs. Yet another ghost rising from the graveyard of his past. He tried to swallow back the memories that surfaced, but they were barbed and rough with age, and tore at his throat, refusing to budge.

Mrs. Mary Campbell. He had known her well. Housekeeper to Seraphina’s father, Lord Farrow, the woman had been kind to Iain when others had not, taking him under her wing, securing him a position in Lord Farrow’s stables so he might support himself, protecting him from those who would make him suffer for his father’s mistakes and scandalous death. She had been a kind of mother figure at a time when he’d needed it most, and he had trusted her implicitly. So much so that, when he had been presented with tangible proof that Seraphina had left him to go off on those travels she had always dreamed of, only Mrs. Campbell’s mournful testimony that she had indeed seen Seraphina leave with her own eyes had made him finally accept the truth.

And now here she was, writing to him, telling him that Seraphina had not died. That she was alive. He crushed the missive in his grip.

The girl standing before him stared solemnly up at him. “You recall my gran then?”

“Aye,” he managed, his voice gone hoarse. He cleared his throat, fighting for composure. “And where is Mrs. Campbell now?”

Again that sadness in her eyes. “Gone to her Maker,” she whispered.

He sucked in a sharp breath at the unexpected news. Mrs. Campbell was gone? “I am sorry for your loss,” he managed. “The world is a dimmer place for it.” And he meant it, down to his bones. Though he had not seen Mrs. Campbell since the day Seraphina had left him, that did not mean he did not mourn this news of her passing.

But apparently the world had been dimmer for a wee bit longer than he had assumed.

“Thank you, Your Grace,” the girl said, dipping her head in acknowledgment. “But ’tis nae a new grief. Gran has been gone these ten years now.”

He gaped at her. “Ten years,” he breathed. “Did she write this from the grave then?”

Her cheeks, already rosy from the cold, darkened. “Nae. That is, she passed nae long after she wrote that note to you and she did nae have the time to post it before she died. And then ’twas bundled in a box with her other things when her rooms were cleared. My family did not discover it until some months ago.”

She was growing more agitated by the moment under his incredulous stare. With enormous will he schooled his features to a calm he did not feel.

“Dinnae worry, lass. What is done is done.”

But she seemed not to hear him. She took the edges of her shawl in her hands and twisted them as if she would strangle the life out of the frayed ends. “We knew she must nae be resting easy with unfinished business. We set out to find you.” She let loose a bark of nervous laughter, made all the sharper for the hush of the snow-draped landscape. “Imagine our surprise to learn our gran was acquainted with a duke of all people. It was why I came in person, to make certain we were not mistaken.”

The reminder of his title was potent enough to banish his shock. “Yes, well,” he muttered. “I wasnae a duke when she knew me.”

But the return of reality had other realizations becoming clearer as well. He looked down at the crumpled missive in his fist with new eyes, taking in the yellowed edges and stains that he had missed when first reading it, all indicators of age and wear. To think Mrs. Campbell had been in possession of this information all along, had meant to give it to him some decade past. He ground his back teeth together. All but for fate, that fickle, wanton creature.

The granddaughter dipped into a quick curtsy. “Your pardon, Your Grace, but I must go; ’tis a fair way to travel before nightfall.”

He looked about at the snow-laden landscape, then back to the thin shawl held tightly about the lass’s narrow shoulders, and nearly cursed. Damnation, he had kept the girl here quizzing her, and she had been freezing in her no-doubt worn shoes.

“You will come back to Balgair with me,” he said gruffly. “I’ll ready a carriage to bring you wherever you need to go.”

He thought for a moment she would refuse. There was nothing like the pride of a Scottish Highland woman, after all. But in the end she must have been colder than even he realized. Cheeks flaming—all the more violent for the blue beginning to paint her lips and nose—she nodded and followed him back to the castle.

In no time he had the girl settled in a carriage, a hot brick at her feet and her purse heavier by a good quantity of coins. As the conveyance rumbled down the drive, creating deep gouges in the fresh snow, he turned away, heading back inside the house. All the while his mind was spinning and whirling like a child’s toy with all he had learned, not the least of which was the inconceivable fact that Seraphina was not dead, but alive and well.

He felt as if she had betrayed him all over again. A string of Gaelic curses poured from his lips, echoing about the massive hall. It would have been an impressive thing to hear… if it had not been the dowager duchess and his cousin, Cora, just arriving in the cavernous space and heard the tail end of it.

“Oh,” the dowager said weakly, thin hands going to her nonexistent bosom. She stared at Iain as if he had grown a tail. And horns. And perhaps cloven hooves to go along with it all.

Cora, blessedly, was made of sterner stuff—though not by much. While she initially appeared just as horrified as the duchess, she quickly managed to adopt her typical cool expression. Even so, her knuckles were white from her fingers gripping so tightly to one another, and he could quite literally see her throat working as she swallowed hard.

“Is something amiss, Cousin?” she queried, her voice without emotion.

Iain pressed his back molars tightly together. Cora always talked thus to him, as if he were a pebble in her path, something to be dealt with but given no more energy than what was strictly required.

“Nothing of import,” he replied evasively, even as his hand closed tighter around Mrs. Campbell’s letter.

But Cora, suspicious of him from the moment he’d stepped foot inside Balgair six months ago, narrowed her eyes and looked to the massive front door. “I thought I heard a carriage.”

“Aye,” he responded, his tone clipped. “A girl came with a letter. I called a carriage for her so she might nae be forced to walk back in the snow. If that is all right with you?”

“It is your home, your carriage,” Cora replied tightly. “It matters not what I think.”

The dowager, who was watching the back-and-forth with wide, anxious eyes, spoke up then in an obvious effort to ease the tension that never failed to crop up between Iain and Cora.

“That was very kind of you, Iain,” she said with a too-bright smile. “But where are you off to now?”

“To my study. Unless you have need of me, madam?”

Her expression gentled. “I thought I told you to call me ‘Gran.’”

Gran. Yes, she was his late father’s mother. Yes, she was kin, his family, his clan.

But after more than three decades of believing himself to be alone, being looked down on, having no one—all but for that brief time with Seraphina—it was much too late for him to ever accept these women as family. How many years had Iain spent hating himself for his origins, clawing his way out of the literal gutter, using every ounce of cunning and luck and pure spite to turn his life around and lay claim to everything he had been lacking in life. And the whole time he’d had family, family who had never once looked for him in more than thirty years, never made an effort to contact him. Only when the old duke was dead and they needed to locate someone to take his place did they even bother to search out him or his father. No, they had been living a life of luxury and ease while he had been alone and struggling in near poverty, wondering where his next meal might come from.

“Yes,” he replied evenly, though his anger burned hot as ever, “you have told me that.”

Her features paled, and she seemed to shrink into herself. But he would not feel pity for her.

The dowager turned to Cora, still at her side. “Dearest, have I told you that the latest issue of the Gaia Review and Repository has arrived? Mayhap we might go fetch it and have a read.”

“That sounds lovely, Gran,” Cora replied quietly, even as her eyes blazed into Iain’s. “But I need to grab my reading glasses. Why don’t I meet you in your sitting room?”

The dowager nodded and, without a glance Iain’s way, shuffled off. She was barely out of earshot before Cora turned on him.

“You don’t have to be so cruel to her,” she hissed.

But he would not rise to her bait. “I have work to get to. Is there anything else you needed?”

She blew out a frustrated breath, and for a moment he thought she would not let it go.

But in the end she merely said, “It is getting increasingly close to the season. I am fully aware that you have no plans to search for a bride, but I do hope you reconsider. For the sake of the dukedom.”

With that, she turned and stalked from the great hall.

Another string of curses escaped his lips, this time much quieter so he might not have to deal with her judgmental stare again. As if he gave a damn about the dukedom, a title he had never wanted. He had no emotional connection to it, and he certainly didn’t give a damn that he was last of the line. He’d had every intention of finding a wife… eventually. Though it was not to save the dukedom. With all he had amassed over the past decade, all the properties he had taken back from the sniveling English, all the bastard Sassenach he had bankrupted, he wanted an heir, someone to pass it on to. Someone who would not have to suffer and struggle as he had.

But he had not counted on the fact that his dead wife was not, in fact, dead.

Pressing his lips tight, he opened his fist and glared at the crumpled letter. “Well, I cannae verra well go off and marry another when I’m already wed, can I?” he muttered. He would find Seraphina, he decided. And when he did, he would divorce his devious wife and finally get her out of his life for good.

Isle of Synne

Six months later

Late summer, 1821

Miss Athwart. I say, Miss Athwart.”

But Miss Seraphina Athwart, head proprietress of the Quayside Circulating Library on the idyllic seaside resort the Isle of Synne, hardly heard the increasingly annoyed voice at her elbow, far too caught up in the story she was hastily scribbling. It was highly unusual that she allowed herself to get caught up in her writing in such a public place. No, she had a strict—albeit silent—rule that any work she put into her secret alter ego, that of the mysterious authoress S. L. Keys, was to be kept starkly separate from her public persona. It was a secret even her beloved sisters did not know; that even her dear friends had never guessed at.

However, last night’s dream, which had her once again reliving the worst moments of her life, had demanded she put it on paper immediately. Perhaps she should simply try to forget, as anyone else would have done. But writing it down, seeing it in simple black and white, was almost like lancing an infection, purging her of the poisonous memories.

But the telling of that story would have to wait. Phineas, her red-crowned parrot, nipped ever so gently at her ear, making her aware that she was needed.

“What is it, darling? Oh! Mrs. Juniper.” Seraphina started upon seeing the woman peering so intently at her. Hastily turning over the papers she had been scribbling on, praying the nosy woman had not snuck a peek at her writing, she straightened and pasted a stiff smile to her lips.

“Forgive me,” she continued, adjusting her spectacles. “I’m afraid I was quite immersed in my work. How can I help you today?”

But the woman was not to be soothed so easily. She pursed her lips, glaring at Seraphina. “I pay good money for my subscription to your establishment, Miss Athwart,” she said, looking Seraphina up and down as if she were a cockroach—well, more up than down, as Seraphina quite towered over most of the women on Synne, and a fair number of the men as well. “I even make certain to encourage any of our customers who come through the Master-at-Arms Inn to patronize your premises. And so I expect to not be so rudely ignored.”

Hot anger sizzled along Seraphina’s skin. But she had not spent years controlling her more unwelcome emotions for nothing. She would certainly not let some insulting, self-important woman draw out her ire.

She smiled tightly and inclined her head. “Again, my apologies, Mrs. Juniper. It was horribly disrespectful of me and shan’t happen again. Now, then, what can I assist you with?”

The woman, having no recourse but to back off in the wake of Seraphina’s politeness—no matter how couched her words had been in disdain—narrowed her eyes. “I am hoping to borrow the latest Walter Scott. I trust you have a copy available?”

Seraphina nodded. “Kenilworth? Yes, we should have a copy for you, Mrs. Juniper. Please have a seat in the reading room and I shall check on that right away.”

“I haven’t the time to wait.” The woman sniffed, adjusting her bonnet, a hideously loud confection of straw and ribbons and feathers that rivaled Phineas for gaudiness. “You shall bring it round to the Master-at-Arms when you’ve located it. At no extra charge,” she added pointedly, giving Seraphina a stern look. “And don’t think to foist this particular chore off on one of your sisters. You were the one to insult me, and you shall be the one to make it right.”

So saying, she sniffed again and flounced toward the door.

“I’ll locate the book for you, Seraphina,” her youngest sister, Elspeth, said, rounding the counter as Mrs. Juniper stalked out to Admiralty Row and out of sight. “I don’t know why the woman couldn’t wait for me to be done with Miss Swan. She could see you were busy. By the way, what were you working so diligently on? I’ve never seen you so distracted.”

“Nothing,” Seraphina hastened to say, gathering up the loose pages lest her curious sister take a closer look at them. Of course, her sisters would be ecstatic were they to learn she was the one penning the popular gothic romances that had everyone clamoring for the monthly Gaia Review and Repository.

But she could not have them wondering at the contents of her stories, realizing that there was more than fiction to them. Her sisters already knew that the year she had been away from them had not been spent traveling, as their father had claimed. If they read her work they would begin to understand where she had truly been, someplace so horrible that she had never been able to give voice to it except in her secretive writings.

She cleared her throat, putting those particular thoughts from her mind. “The reason Mrs. Juniper insisted on me helping her is because she despises me,” she continued, folding her papers several times over and stuffing them in the pocket at her waist. “She does not think well of a self-made woman who has no need for a man or children.”

Elspeth laughed as she thumbed through the list of their stock of titles. “Then she must not think well of Millicent and myself either, for we are right there with you.”

Seraphina smiled down at the bent bright auburn head of her youngest sister, ever industrious and good-natured. “Ah, but you both have the good fortune of being quite sweet and cheerful. No one could despise either one of you, dearest. I, on the other hand, am very much set in my grouchy, grumbly ways.”

Elspeth looked up with a gentle smile. “That is because she does not know you as we do.”

At once Seraphina’s light mood vanished. “Perhaps,” she murmured quietly as, having found what she had been looking for, Elspeth hurried away. But then, even Elspeth and Millicent did not know Seraphina completely. They did not know the dark secrets in her heart, the cloud of fear and grief that hung over her head, ready to rain down on her at a moment’s notice, the horrible memories that were like manacles.

Subconsciously she rubbed her wrist under the long sleeve of her gown, even as she told herself that there was nothing there. She pressed her lips tight. And there never would be, ever again.

Phineas, however, must have sensed her distress. He gave a low whistle, pressing his head to Seraphina’s cheek.

“. . .