The Duchess Diaries: The Bridal Pleasures Series Read online

  “We could all use a little more

  Jillian Hunter in our lives.”

  —The Oakland Press(MI)

  PRAISE FOR THE

  BRIDAL PLEASURES SERIES

  A Bride Unveiled

  “Sizzling sexual chemistry and rapier wit . . . a thoroughly romantic literary treat.”

  —Booklist (starred review)

  “Hunter draws the reader in with a compelling plot and engaging characters in this smoothly written tale of love lost and found.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  A Duke’s Temptation

  “A sinfully sexy hero with a secret, a book-obsessed heroine in search of her own happy-ever-after ending, a delightfully clever plot that takes great fun in spoofing the literary world, and writing that sparkles with wicked wit and exquisite sensuality add up to an exceptionally entertaining read worthy of ‘Lord Anonymous’ himself.”

  —Booklist (starred review)

  “With humor and charm, sensuality and wickedness, Hunter delights.”

  —Romantic Times

  “Ms. Hunter’s Boscastle series is one of the few historical romance series that I read. You’ll find lively characters, unusual plots, and an underlying sense of fun.”

  —Fresh Fiction

  “An unusual duke and a naive country gentlewoman sounds like a typical historical romance, but Ms. Hunter makes it so much more. These characters turn the ordinary into something special and kept me glued to the book.”

  —Night Owl Romance

  “This is the first in what looks to be a very promising, and extremely seductive, new quartet. Most of the focus is on the main couple, Samuel and Lily. This is as it should be; however, a bit of danger and suspense makes enough surprise appearances to keep things intriguing. Few can resist a novel by Jillian Hunter!”

  —Huntress Book Reviews

  MORE PRAISE FOR THE NOVELS

  OF JILLIAN HUNTER

  “One of the funniest, most delightful romances I’ve had the pleasure to read.”

  —Teresa Medeiros

  “An absolutely delightful tale that’s impossible to put down.”

  —Booklist

  “A sweet, romantic tale…full of humor, romance, and passion. Historical romance that is sure to please.”

  —The Romance Readers Connection

  “A lovely read.”

  —Romance Reader at Heart

  “Enchanting…a fabulous historical.”

  —Midwest Book Review

  “[It] bespells, beguiles, and bewitches. If romance, magic, great plots, and wonderful characters add spice to your reading life, don’t allow this one to escape.”

  —Crescent Blues

  “Romantic and sexy.…Read it—you’ll love it!”

  —The Romance Reader

  “Jillian Hunter’s ability to touch chords deep within readers’ hearts is what sets her apart and makes her and everything she writes a keeper.”

  —Romantic Times

  “Ms. Hunter pens unique, fascinating stories that draw the reader right in. Impossible to put down.”

  —Rendezvous

  “A master at wringing emotion from every page, Ms. Hunter explodes onto the scene with an extraordinary tale that combines brilliant writing with sizzling sexual tension.”

  —The Speaking Tree

  The Bridal Pleasures Series

  A Bride Unveiled

  A Duke’s Temptation

  Jillian Hunter

  The Duchess Diaries

  The Bridal Pleasures Series

  SIGNET SELECT

  Published by New American Library, a division of

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street,

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  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices:

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  First published by Signet, an imprint of New American Library,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  First Printing, February 2012

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Copyright © Maria Hoag, 2012

  Excerpt from A Duke’s Temptation copyright © Maria Hoag, 2010

  All rights reserved

  EISBN: 9781101559611

  SIGNET SELECT and logo are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  Printed in the United States of America

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

  If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  For my editor, Kerry Donovan.

  Thank you for your excellent spot-on editing and brainstorming sessions and for always being there when I needed you. I appreciate all that you have done.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Accolades to the NAL Art Department for creating a cover more beautiful than I could ever have envisioned.

  Thank you!

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  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

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapt
er 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Epilogue

  Chapter 1

  Mayfair, London

  1819

  It was the best of balls; it was the worst of balls. It was the annual graduation ball honoring the Scarfield Academy for Young Ladies in London. It was an evening of hope, which Miss Charlotte Boscastle had resolved would not end in disgrace. It was an evening of beginnings and farewells.

  As the academy’s head schoolmistress, Charlotte would receive accolades for her efforts in training another class of young ladies to enter society. She would be praised for any marriage proposals offered to her students as a result of their elite schooling.

  She would also be blamed for any scandals she allowed to besmirch the academy’s name. Her archenemy, Lady Clipstone, the owner of a competitive although lesser school, had predicted to the newspapers that some social misfortune was bound to occur during the event. Charlotte could take little comfort in the knowledge that she was surrounded by members of her own family—everyone in the ton knew how controversy tended to follow the Boscastles. It was said that whenever more than two Boscastles were gathered in one place, the devil came into active play.

  Still, she was grateful that her cousin, the Marquess of Sedgecroft, had agreed to host the affair at his Park Lane mansion. She appreciated the fact that he had invited his battalion of friends to fill the ballroom and impress the girls.

  The social futures of this group of young ladies were in Charlotte’s hands for one last evening. It fell upon her to put out any flames of attraction to the opposite sex before they could blaze into an impropriety.

  “Miss Boscastle, may I go out into the garden?”

  “No, Amy, you may not, as I have told you a thousand and one times. Not without an approved escort.”

  “But it’s stifling in here.”

  “Drink another lemonade.”

  “Verity drank champagne.”

  “Verity,” Charlotte said, searching the room for the academy’s recent charity-case and most trouble-prone pupil, “will be restricted to her room tomorrow. I knew I shouldn’t have allowed the younger girls to attend. How will they concentrate on class tomorrow? Miss Peppertree was right. Only the graduates should be invited to the ball.”

  “Miss Boscastle, I broke my slipper. What should I do? May I ask the marchioness if I may borrow a pair of hers?”

  Charlotte frowned. “If you can find her—without leaving the room.”

  “Verity is standing on the terrace, miss.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” she muttered. “Where is the Duchess of Glenmorgan? She promised she would stay close enough for me to call.”

  Perhaps, after tonight, Charlotte might be able to draw a breath. For good or for evil, the graduates would venture forth into the world and assume the responsibility of their reputations upon their own shoulders. If it were possible she would have drawn out a complete map of pitfalls that a young lady might encounter after she left the academy. It would depict a narrow road intersected with various pathways marked, AVENUES OF FORBIDDEN AFFAIRS, DARK FORAYS INTO DECADENCE—OR RUINED REPUTATIONS. Until dawn broke over the occasion, however, she was obligated to stand guard against any rogues who thought to take advantage of an inexperienced girl. She had her eye on one rogue in particular. He had looked at her only once. The Duke of Wynfield was without question the most elegant and hard-edged guest at the ball, and Charlotte wasn’t about to let him tempt one of her graduates or distract her from her duty.

  She wondered whether he even remembered the last time they had seen each other, at the emporium in the Strand. They hadn’t exchanged a single word. Charlotte had been shopping for the academy that day. He had been shopping for a pair of strumpets, one draped over either elbow.

  He had kissed one of the tarts on the neck—and merely smiled when Charlotte, at the opposite end of the counter, had gasped in shock.

  She had returned to the academy hours later to record the incident in her diary, as was her wont, changing a detail here and there until, en fin, the actual event bore little resemblance to her fabricated but far more satisfying version. She had been keeping a journal ever since she could hold a pen, and she enjoyed the art of exaggerating commonplace events.

  When her Boscastle cousins had first invited her to London five years ago, she had been so enthralled by their amorous exploits that she had undertaken the task of recording the family history in her diary. Soon the pages needed no enhancement. It was a challenge to follow the family’s constant scandals. It seemed that everyone in the brood had led a secret life as a spy or someone’s lover. She had to face a painful fact—as much as she admired her relatives, it was obvious that she led a dreary life in comparison.

  It took her a month to overcome her inhibitions and let her pen wander where it would. Soon her diaries simmered with illicit truths and vicarious pleasures. In the pages of her intimate musings the duke not only adored her, but he had been pursuing her for months. In actual life he was domineering, indecent, and inexcusably taken with disgraceful women. In his fictional encounters with Charlotte he was domineering, indecent, and inexplicably taken with her. And no one else.

  In Charlotte’s version of the incident in the emporium, the duke had noticed her across the counter and had immediately dismissed the other women. He had walked straight up to Charlotte and, without a word, grasped her hand.

  “My carriage is outside,” he had said, his sinful smile mesmerizing her. “May I take you away?”

  His face receded. Another voice, breathy and excited, was whispering in her ear. “That’s the Duke of Wynfield you’re staring at, Miss Boscastle. Do be careful. Everyone is saying that he’s in the market for a mistress.”

  Charlotte gripped her fan and turned to regard her favorite student in dismay. “Lydia Butterfield, reassure me that he has not found one in you.”

  Lydia gave her a wistful grin. “Dear Miss Boscastle, I shall miss you with all my heart.”

  “You shall miss my guidance; that is clear.”

  “I won’t need it any longer,” Lydia said with regret. “But I will miss your history lessons.”

  “All the battles and beheadings?” Charlotte asked, stepping to the side to stop Lydia from staring at the duke. Or him from noticing her. “But don’t be so melodramatic or I shall start to cry. Your family still lives in London. You may visit the academy whenever you wish.”

  “My family—well, my betrothed’s parents live in Dorset, and he is eager to start a family—”

  “Your betrothed?” Charlotte said faintly.

  Lydia bit her lip, nodding toward the short gentleman standing a few feet behind her. “Sir Adam Richardson, the architect.”

  “Lydia, I am so—”

  Envious? Yes, to her shame, she envied Lydia a little. But she was also filled with happiness for a girl whose sweetness Charlotte had feared would render her vulnerable or undesirable on the marriage mart. “I am proud,” she said firmly. “He appears to be a fine gentleman.”

  Lydia laughed, her gaze drifting to the duke, who was not known to be a gentleman at all. “I was told that he is a wildly jealous lover.”

  “Your fiancé?”

  “The duke,” Lydia said, laughing again. “He has a reputation for being a possessive suitor.”

  “Lydia.” Charlotte attempted to look shocked, although the same rumors had not escaped her attention. Such gossip should have stamped the duke as an unacceptable person instead of engendering wicked daydreams about him in Charlotte’s imagination. Why did it feel so pleasant to picture him tearing off his long-tailed eveni
ng coat to defend her from…Oh, since it was her flight of fancy, the other man might as well be Phillip Moreland, the cad who had broken her heart years ago.

  She could picture it so clearly. The ballroom would be cleared for a duel; the duke studied sword fighting at Fenton’s School of Arms. Charlotte had watched him perform at a benefit ball in this very mansion. She’d had nothing to do with him on that past night, and it was doubtful that she would capture his interest in the future.

  “I don’t think that either of us need worry about the duke’s amorous proclivities,” she assured Lydia, thus uttering the fateful words that would come back to mock her before morning came.…

  Chapter 2

  Gideon doubted that he had made a good impression on Miss Charlotte Boscastle the day she had seen him in the emporium. For one thing he’d drunk too much the night before and his head had felt like Hephaestus’s workshop. For another he was dressed for practice at the fencing school, and there were two whores attached to him like handcuffs, which they may or may not have used on each other the night before. He couldn’t remember.

  He knew he looked disreputable the day he stepped into Sir Godfrey Maitland’s emporium. Godfrey, a former student at Fenton’s fencing salon, had stared at him in reproach across the counter. “We have many ladies in the shop, Your Grace,” he had said in a meaningful voice.

  And that was when Gideon first noticed Charlotte, who glanced at his two companions and lifted her nose in the air as if she’d caught the scent of a noxious threat that might contaminate the young ladies huddled around her.

  He inclined his head at her, to no effect. And then he had kissed one of the harlots on her neck, hoping to elicit some reaction from the golden-haired lady in the straw bonnet. He had, too.

  She had gasped and moved back to stand like a shield in front of her charges. Gideon had responded with a slow, roguish smile that brought a blush to her porcelain complexion.