The Duke’s Desire: 12 Dukes of Christmas #8 Read online

  The Duke’s Desire

  12 Dukes of Christmas #8

  Erica Ridley

  Contents

  Also by Erica Ridley

  The Duke’s Desire

  Cressmouth Gazette

  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

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  Thank You For Reading

  About the Author

  Jewels of Historical Romance

  Copyright © 2019 Erica Ridley

  Photograph on cover © PeriodImages

  Design by Teresa Spreckelmeyer

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

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the author.

  Also by Erica Ridley

  The 12 Dukes of Christmas:

  Once Upon a Duke

  Kiss of a Duke

  Wish Upon a Duke

  Never Say Duke

  Dukes, Actually

  The Duke’s Bride

  The Duke’s Embrace

  The Duke’s Desire

  Dawn With a Duke

  One Night With a Duke

  Ten Days With a Duke

  Forever Your Duke

  The Dukes of War:

  The Viscount’s Tempting Minx

  The Earl’s Defiant Wallflower

  The Captain’s Bluestocking Mistress

  The Major’s Faux Fiancée

  The Brigadier’s Runaway Bride

  The Pirate's Tempting Stowaway

  The Duke's Accidental Wife

  Rogues to Riches:

  Lord of Chance

  Lord of Pleasure

  Lord of Night

  Lord of Temptation

  Lord of Secrets

  Lord of Vice

  Gothic Love Stories:

  Too Wicked to Kiss

  Too Sinful to Deny

  Too Tempting to Resist

  Too Wanton to Wed

  Magic & Mayhem:

  Kissed by Magic

  Must Love Magic

  Smitten by Magic

  The Wicked Dukes Club:

  One Night for Seduction by Erica Ridley

  One Night of Surrender by Darcy Burke

  One Night of Passion by Erica Ridley

  One Night of Scandal by Darcy Burke

  One Night to Remember by Erica Ridley

  One Night of Temptation by Darcy Burke

  The Duke’s Desire

  Meg Church adores two things: life in a village of perennial Yuletide, and the freedom of being a spinster with no reputation to protect. Oh, very well, three things: She’s harbored a secret tendre for Christmas curmudgeon Lucien le Duc since the moment she first glimpsed him. But the sexy blacksmith won’t give her the time of day, much less a night of torrid passion.

  Ever since Lucien le Duc was forced to flee his beloved France during the revolution, his all-consuming goal has been to recover not only his lost land and fortune, but also his rightful place among the French aristocracy. He would never be distracted by an English dairy maid’s sultry glances… or her soul-consuming kisses… or the temptation to turn one night into forever…

  The 12 Dukes of Christmas is a series of heartwarming Regency romps nestled in a picturesque snow-covered village. Twelve delightful romances… and plenty of delicious dukes!

  * * *

  Free Books

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  Grab Once Upon a Duke FREE for a limited time!

  * * *

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  Cressmouth Gazette

  Welcome to Christmas!

  Our picturesque village is nestled around Marlowe Castle, high atop the gorgeous mountain we call home. Cressmouth is best known for our year-round Yuletide cheer. Here, we’re family.

  The legend of our twelve dukes? Absolutely true! But perhaps not always in the way one might expect…

  * * *

  Chapter 1

  November 1814

  Marlowe Castle

  Cressmouth, England

  With her arms full of fresh-cut flowers nicked from the castle greenhouse, Meg Church burst into her best friend’s gorgeous new office. Oh, very well, “Meg” had technically been christened Miss Margaret Damaris Brouillard Church, but who wanted to waste time on anything that stuffy and boring?

  This had been one of the least boring months in recent history. Meg’s bosom friend Eve had fallen in love with one of the dashing le Duc brothers—the slightly less ridiculously handsome one, in Meg’s studied opinion, although she wouldn’t tell her bosom friend that. Eve had married Sébastien le Duc to the dismay of every unwed woman for miles, and now had her very own newspaper.

  Marlowe Castle had purchased the Cressmouth Gazette from Eve’s father, who’d wanted to shut it down when he retired. Instead, the castle solicitor had put long-suffering and hardworking Eve in charge. Wasn’t that just the raisin in the pudding? Meg couldn’t think of anyone more deserving.

  “Here,” she announced, as she began strategically arranging stems of yellow flowers. “If you’re going to be cooped inside this enormous, luxurious new office all day and night, you need a bit of beauty to offset all those mountains of paper.” She spun toward her friend with a mischievous shake of her finger. “Please tell me you’re no longer spending your nights hunched over a printing press. I’m sure your husband can find a few other ways to entertain you.”

  Eve flushed scarlet and became extremely interested in inspecting her new desk’s empty drawers.

  “Marvelous!” Meg clapped her hands in glee. “I had no doubt the le Duc brothers would be every bit as good as they look.”

  Eve sank back in her chair and covered her eyes.

  “You can’t get missish on me now—you’re married,” Meg teased her. “It’s perfectly acceptable for you and your husband to perform as many decadent, carnal acts as can fit into a night. It’s me who must be secretive about such things.”

  Eve peeked through her fingers, both eyebrows raised. “‘Secretive?’ You can’t even be subtle.”

  “Who wants to be subtle?” Meg scoffed. “Subtle is a waste of everyone’s time. If we would all just say what we mean, think of how many misunderstandings could be avoided.”

  “Is that so?” Eve leaned forward on her desk, an arch look in her eyes. “Then why haven’t you told Lucien that you melt into a puddle at the merest glimpse of him?”

  “It hasn’t come up,” Meg replied pertly, then let out a long sigh. “Mostly because he’s never spoken to me. Not that I insist upon conversation. I’d be perfectly satisfied if all he wants to do with me is—”

  Eve slapped her hands over her ears. “I’m a le Duc now! We cannot talk that way about my brother-in-law.”

  Meg grinned back u
nrepentantly. It was good to be jocular with her best friend again. No, it was wonderful. Over the past fortnight, they’d barely seen each other, except at the wedding.

  Not that Eve had cut old friends out of her life the moment she became a Proper Married Woman. Quite the opposite; not a day went by without a note inviting Meg to join the happy duo for a supper here or a glass of wine there. But what kind of friend would Meg be if she inserted herself into a newlywed couple’s private time together, just because Meg was lonely?

  Setting up a new office, however, was exactly the sort of thing Meg excelled at. Although she liked to pretend there was nothing more in her head than the image of Lucien le Duc in tight buckskins—well, that and an abiding love for good chocolate—the truth was, Meg was a born organizer. She loved the late nights she’d spent helping set up the type for the quarterly Gazette. She loved helping her cousins manage milking times at the family dairy. She even loved doing occasional odd tasks around the castle.

  Granted, none of those endeavors incurred a salary of any sort, but Meg had just enough funds to squeak by. She liked her life, just as it was. What else did she need?

  “Congratulations again,” she told Eve seriously. “You deserve this. All of this. True love and your dream of journalism come true.”

  “A new edition every month instead of every three months.” Eve’s expression was still filled with awe. “And I can write whatever I want.”

  “The current issue is your most popular yet.” Meg lifted a copy from one of the many stacks. “Subscribers expected the traditional big Christmas edition, and you gave them that and so much more. Everyone in the whole village must have purchased theirs by now.”

  “Everyone everywhere,” Eve admitted with a smile. “We had to reprint twice to fill all the requests from tourists.” She tilted her head. “What about you?”

  “I have three copies,” Meg answered without hesitation. She always bought at least that many. One to read, one to save, and one for the castle library upstairs.

  “I don’t mean the Gazette. You helped me to set up the type; you know what’s in it.” Eve crossed her arms. “I meant, what about you getting everything you ever wanted, too?”

  Meg set down the newspaper.

  “I already have everything I could ever want,” she answered lightly. “A brilliant and talented bosom friend, who lets me spoil her dog. I share a home with my cousin and her husband, who are the kindest people in England. And we live in a beautiful mountaintop village that celebrates Christmastide all year round. I’m the luckiest person I know.”

  “You could be even luckier,” Eve insisted. “What if you took a husband?”

  “Good God.” Meg groaned. “Please tell me you haven’t turned into one of those already. I thought Old Married Lady syndrome wasn’t supposed to start until five or six years in.”

  Eve’s mouth fell open. “I’m not—”

  “You were perfectly happy without a man in your life until Sébastien came along,” Meg reminded her.

  “And then I became happier.” Eve lifted her chin. “It could happen to you, too.”

  “I have plenty of opportunities for happiness.” Meg pointed a finger toward the ceiling. “Do you know how many well-favored tourists pass through the castle’s guest chambers every week?”

  “You deserve a lifetime of happiness.” Eve frowned. “Not just a night or two here and there.”

  “To be fair...” Meg wiggled her brows. “They tend to be very good nights.”

  Besides, she knew better than to risk her heart. Some people were lucky enough to find something which lasted forever, but Meg was not one of those people.

  If life had taught her anything, it was that as soon as she was comfortable and content, something would happen to snatch it all away. It was much better not to pine for things one could not have in the first place. Change was the most dangerous thing of all.

  Eve sighed. “If you want to be a scandalous spinster for the rest of your life—”

  “I do,” Meg assured her. She leaned a hip onto the corner of Eve’s desk. “Highly recommended over the regular sort of spinster. You get all the best bits of having a man in your life without having to actually have a man in your life.”

  Eve narrowed her eyes. “Didn’t you tell me you could stare at a man like Lucien le Duc for the rest of eternity?”

  “I’ve been staring at his brooding deliciousness every day since I moved here six years ago without needing a leg-shackle, thank you very much. Besides, that’s a terrible example. He despises everything English, and I’m… oh, right. English.”

  “No one could despise you,” Eve said staunchly. “Although you’re right; Lucien was a bad example. He’ll be going back to France soon.”

  Meg couldn’t hide her skepticism. “I don’t think ‘soon’ means what you think it means. He’s been planning to leave for as long as I can remember.”

  “The war just ended.” Eve softened her voice. “He has a ticket. His ship sails on the sixth of January.”

  Meg’s chest tightened. Of course Eve would know. News was her job, and she was part of the le Duc family now.

  “Well, figs.” Meg let out a disappointed sigh. “Glimpses of the devil-duke are one of the highlights of my day.”

  “Lucien is not a devil duke,” Eve scolded her. “Didn’t you read page four? He’s a Christmas duke.”

  Meg gasped dramatically. “That means… this is my last chance for an extremely wicked Christmas miracle!”

  Eve covered her face with her hands. “That is not how miracles work.”

  “You have too many rules.” Meg leapt up from the corner of Eve’s desk. “You also have a lot of work to do, and I’ve interrupted enough. If you have extra time before you leave for home, I’ll be upstairs in the library.”

  Eve grinned. “Torrid novels, I presume?”

  “Is any other kind worth reading?” With a wink, Meg slipped out of her friend’s new office and made her way up the castle’s stone staircase to the public lending library.

  Although Meg lived with her cousins, Allan and Jemima were out in the dairy from dawn until dusk, and the tiny cottage felt empty without them. Most days, there was nothing to do to help. Meg had already improved collection and delivery, and the farm had plenty of dairy maids. At least she could feel good about paying for her lodging. Jemima had offered the spare bedchamber free of charge, but Meg refused to be a burden. Not when she’d finally found a home.

  Over time, she’d come to spend most of her days on the castle grounds because that was where the people were. Though winter was the busiest season, tourists flocked to beautiful Cressmouth year-round. The rolling hills of evergreens, the parks and the sleigh rides, the free meals offered thrice daily in the castle’s grand public dining hall…

  Who would want to live anywhere else?

  Chapter 2

  Lucien le Duc could not wait to go back home to France.

  He was the second-best blacksmith in a twenty-mile circumference, and he was tired of toiling every day before a scalding hot forge. Lucien could have become the first-best blacksmith if he could communicate with his clients in their language, but English exhausted him even more than the forge.

  His brother Sébastien’s grease-stained hand poked out from under a mangled cabriolet. “Can you hand me—”

  Lucien passed him a vise and a hammer.

  When they’d first emigrated here in the midst of a revolution, his petit frère Bastien had been too young to build carriages and smelt iron. He and their petite sœur Désirée had spent their days inside their uncle’s cottage, hunched over children’s books borrowed from the castle library.

  Lucien, on the other hand, had been thirteen. Almost a man, in his mind. When Uncle Jasper put him to work, Lucien wasn’t resentful. He’d been desperate for something important to do. Anything at all to keep his trembling hands busy, and distract his mind from his terrified parents’ final words before the crowd had grabbed them and—

&
nbsp; “Can it be mended?” the cabriolet’s owner fretted for the third time in a quarter of an hour.

  Lucien pierced him with his infamous smiting glare. No one was a better blacksmith than Bastien. If he said he could do something, he did it. The careless driver would receive his ridiculous summer carriage back as soon as Bastien deemed it safe, and not a moment earlier.

  The man shrank back against the wall with both palms raised. “I’ll wait.”

  Lucien turned back to his post, where one of the village sleighs awaited winter maintenance.

  Well, technically, it wasn’t Lucien’s post anymore, n’est-ce pas? After years of working at his uncle’s side, then many more years of running the smithy alongside his brother after their uncle’s health forced him into retirement, Lucien could retire, too. Huzzah.

  To some, three-and-thirty might seem a young age to retire. To Lucien, the years had been interminable.

  He and his siblings had not been born to a humble family of country blacksmiths, but rather to a long line of blue-blooded French noblesse. Their family had possessed a grand chateau, endless coffers, a sprawling vineyard… He and his siblings had been destined to a life of leisure, just like their parents, and their grandparents before them.

  And then: the revolution.