My Dangerous Duke

And my good master, though I had not asked, urged me: “Look at that mighty one who comes and does not seem to shed a tear of pain.”

—Dante’s
Inferno
, Canto XVIII, ll. 82-84

—Sophocles

Chapter 1

Cornwall, 1816

 

 

S
he was to be given to him as a gift—a plaything for some powerful, dark stranger. How her life had come to this, Kate Madsen could barely comprehend, but her rage at this horrifying fate was muted by the drug her kidnappers forced down her throat.

The tincture of the poppy soon dissolved her will to fight.

Within half an hour of being made to swallow it, it had tamed her temper, blurred her mind, quelled the usual sharp-tongued retorts she blasted at her captors, and left her hands limp instead of her usual clenched fists when the smugglers’ wives came in to prepare her for her doom.

Barely two-thirds conscious, capable only of dull-witted yes’s and no’s, she was uncharacteristically docile as the women washed her roughly and dressed her like a harlot for their lord.

Kate did not know what the smugglers had done to anger the dread Duke of Warrington, but from what she could glean, she was to be the virgin sacrifice by which they hoped to appease his wrath.

His appetite for women was known to be voracious.

This, along with his expertise in all manner of violence, was, she had heard, why the locals privately called their landlord “the Beast.”

None of it felt real. When she saw her reflection clad in the indecent shred of white muslin they had made her wear, she could only laugh bitterly. She knew she did not have a prayer. Half-naked, she shivered uncontrollably—not so much from the cold but in terror of the night ahead.

Only the sedative offered sweet refuge, carrying her fears away to oblivion, like so much chimney smoke torn asunder by the winter wind that even now was howling through the seaside village.

The women nearly scalped her while combing out the tangles in her long brown hair. They sprinkled her with cheap perfume, then stood back to admire their work.

“Right pretty,” one weathered sea-wife declared. “She don’t clean up too badly.”

“Aye, the Beast should fancy her.”

“Still too pale,” another said. “Put some rouge on her, Gladys.”

It all seemed to be happening to someone else. A slimy daub of pink-tinted cream rubbed into her cheeks none too gently, then her lips.

“There.” This done, they pulled Kate to her feet and started herding her toward the door.

Through her dulled, distorted senses, the prospect of exiting the cramped room that had been her recent prison roused Kate slightly from her stupor. “Wait,” she forced out in a mumble. “I … don’t have any shoes.”

“That’s so you won’t try runnin’ away again, Miss Clever!” Gladys snapped. “Here, finish your wine. I’d take it if I were you. He’s like to be rough with ye.”

Kate stared at her, her glassy eyes widening at the warning, but she did not argue. She took the cup and gulped down the last swallow of drugged red wine, while the crude harpies cackled with laughter to think they had finally succeeded in breaking her will.

Lord knew, if not for the strong dose of laudanum they had given her, she would have been screaming bloody murder and fighting them like a wild thing, just as she had on the night of her abduction about a month ago.

Instead, she simply finished the cup and handed it back to them with a grim, lost gaze.

The women bound her wrists with some rope, then took her downstairs to the ground floor of the cluttered little house.

In the room below, grizzled old Caleb Doyle and the other male leaders of the smugglers’ ring were waiting to take her up to the castle. She could not bear to make eye contact with anyone, humiliated by the way they had made her look like a whore—she, who had always valued herself for her brains, not her looks.

Thank God, none of them saw fit to mock her. She did not think what was left of her pride could have borne it.

Despite the heavy, rolling fog that hung over her mind, she noticed how somber the men’s mood was. There was none of the cheerful vulgarity she had come to expect from the citizens of the smugglers’ village.

Tonight, she could almost smell their fear, and it multiplied her own exponentially.

Good God, what manner of man were they taking her to, that he could make these rough criminals tremble like whipped dogs at their master’s approach?

“Finally made a lady of the little hoyden, have ye?” Caleb, the smugglers’ chieftain, grunted at his wife.

“Aye. She’ll show some manners now. Don’t worry, ’usband,” Gladys added. “She’ll soften his anger.”

“Let’s just hope he takes the bait,” Caleb muttered. He turned away, but Gladys grasped his arm and pulled her husband aside.

“You’re sure you want to risk this?”

He scoffed. “What choice do I have?”

Though the couple kept their voices down, Kate stood close enough to hear their tense exchange—not that she was able to make much sense of it, with her usually sharp wits deliberately dulled, as was no doubt their plan.

“Why don’t you just talk to him, Caleb? Aye, he’ll be furious, but if ye explain what happened—”

“I’m done groveling to him!” her husband shot back angrily. “Look at the answer our fine duke sent back the last time we asked for help! Coldhearted bastard. Rubbin’ elbows with princes and czars, wrapped up in God-knows-what dark dealings on the Continent. His Grace is too important to be bothered with the likes of us these days,” he said bitterly. “I can’t even remember the last time he troubled himself with a visit to Cornwall. Can you?”

“It’s been a long time,” she admitted.

“Aye, and he only came back this time on account of the blasted shipwreck! He don’t care about us anymore, never mind we’re his own people. You ask me, he’s forgot where he came from. But this little lesson ought to help remind him.”

“Caleb!”

“I ain’t afraid of ’im! Don’t worry. Once he’s had the girl, he’ll be up to his neck in this, too, whether he likes it or not. Then he’ll have no choice but to help us.”

“Aye, and if you’re wrong, there will be hell to pay.”

“I expect there will be,” he replied with a hard glitter in his shrewd old eyes. “But look at my choices, Gladys. Better the devil you know.”

“Right, well, if you’re sure, then. Off ye go.” Gladys folded her arms across her chest.

Caleb turned away, his weathered face taut as he gestured to his men. “Come on. Bring the girl. Let’s not keep His Grace waitin’!”

Two of the grubby smugglers took hold of Kate’s arms and, without further ado, ushered her out into the biting cold of the pitch-black January night.

Her brain seethed as she tried to sort out the sketchy information in the Doyles’ exchange. This was the first sort of explanation she had heard about what was going on, but with the laudanum working in her blood, her wits were too slugging to weigh it all out. She rose and fell on waves between euphoria and dread; following one train of thought simply took too much effort. It was easier just to drift …

Meanwhile, the smugglers lifted her limp body and deposited her in the second of three battered, waiting carriages. Caleb threw her a flimsy blanket to keep her from catching her death. He locked her in with a wary look, as if he suspected her of eavesdropping.

A moment later, they set out for Kilburn Castle, the ancestral home of the Beast.

As their caravan rumbled out of the wind-whipped village, Kate stared blankly out the carriage window.

Above, the hooked moon tore like a claw through the smoky scattered clouds, revealing pinprick stars; winter constellations marched down over the horizon into the glossy onyx English Channel.

Feeble lanterns on the smugglers’ boats bobbed in the harbor, riding out the frigid night at anchor.

Ahead, the road hugged the hill as their small caravan ascended. And far up on the distant crest, the black tower of Kilburn Castle loomed.

Kate rested her forehead for a moment against the carriage window, staring dully at the castle. She had already had plenty of time to contemplate what she might find there, for through the window of the tiny bedchamber that had been her prison cell for the past few days, she had been able to see the stark tower standing alone a few miles away on the bleak cliff top.

According to local legend, the castle was haunted, its master’s bloodlines cursed.

She shook her head in woozy annoyance.
Ignorant peasant superstitions.
The Duke of Warrington was not cursed, merely evil, she could have explained to these unlettered brutes. What other sort of man would participate in such iniquity?

From the snatches of gossip she had overheard among the smugglers’ women over the past few weeks, the duke sounded like the very worst sort of aristocrat—rich, powerful, corrupt. Steeped in sheer debauchery. She had also heard the women say His Grace belonged to some unspeakable libertines’ society in London called the Inferno Club.

How he amused himself there made her shudder even to wonder.

Hating him, however, seemed as futile as wondering why all this was happening to her.

She had never really understood from the start why she had been kidnapped. She lived so quietly at the edge of the moors with her books and writings; she kept to herself, never bothered anyone. She had no enemies that she knew of.

Nor many friends, admittedly.

Why would somebody target her?

For all her love of logic puzzles since she was a child, she could not riddle this one out, until at length, she had drawn her own conclusions based on the few facts she possessed.

The smugglers dealt in black markets, which, since the end of the war, had ceased to exist. Now that there was peace, there were no more tariffs on French luxury goods.

Lean times had come to Cornwall. Ergo, to make a living, the smugglers must have broadened their interests by venturing into a darker sort of commodity.

Oh, she had read about so-called white slavery before. The newspapers spoke of criminal rings that abducted young females without any family, and sold them in secrecy to decadent noblemen and other rich perverts to rape at will, as though inflicting pain and terror was its own expensive form of depraved amusement.

Though she had heard of it, Kate had never dreamed it was anything more than a lurid myth, the stuff of the Gothic novels that were her secret vice. Yet somehow, to her horror, here she was, caught up in it.

This was the only explanation that seemed to fit at all.

The Doyles’ tense conversation of a few moments ago offered new bits of insight, but in her current muddled state, she did not have the wherewithal to assimilate it into her working theory. Whatever their words had meant, it did not bode well.

More important than knowing
why
, at any rate, was figuring some way out of this.

The castle was getting closer. Her fear mounted with every yard of road the carriages covered. Rallying herself with a mighty effort against the heaviness of the laudanum, Kate sat up and tried the door handle. She rattled it with some vague notion of escape, but it did not budge.

Even if she could succeed in breaking free, she realized that exposed to the elements, half-naked as she was, the wet, brutal cold would kill her within hours.

She could not even hope for justice someday, she thought in a flood of despair. Everyone knew that a duke was practically immune to prosecution for any form of criminal barbarity.

Besides, whom would she tell? For that matter, who would believe her? She barely believed it herself. For all she knew, this man might kill her in his pursuit of twisted pleasure.

No, her only hope at this point was that when he was finally done with her, he might let her live, might let her just go home.

The thought of her cozy thatched cottage at the edge of Dartmoor brought tears of nearly unbearable homesickness to her eyes, all of her emotions intensified by the opiates. By God, if she ever made it home, she swore she would never complain again about her rural isolation out there on the heath. For she had discovered lately that there were worse things in the world than loneliness.

The hardest part was thinking that stupid O’Banyon had not even kidnapped the right girl!

On the night of her abduction, the ringleader, O’Banyon, kept calling her by the wrong name—Kate Fox instead of Kate Madsen.

Her name was Kate Madsen!

With failing hope, she thought perhaps it might all be an outrageous case of mistaken identity. Perhaps she could convince the duke that this was never supposed to happen, not to her.

And yet … a glimmer of a childhood memory, a tiny incident she had almost forgotten poked a hole in her neat little theory about the white slavers, spawning a fearful bewilderment that shook her to the core.