Duke of Debauchery Read online

  Duke of Debauchery

  Sins and Scoundrels

  Book Five

  Scarlett Scott

  © Copyright 2020 by Scarlett Scott

  Text by Scarlett Scott

  Cover by Wicked Smart Designs

  Dragonblade Publishing, Inc. is an imprint of Kathryn Le Veque Novels, Inc.

  P.O. Box 7968

  La Verne CA 91750

  [email protected]

  Produced in the United States of America

  First Edition March 2020

  Kindle Edition

  Reproduction of any kind except where it pertains to short quotes in relation to advertising or promotion is strictly prohibited.

  All Rights Reserved.

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  License Notes:

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook, once purchased, may not be re-sold. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it or borrow it, or it was not purchased for you and given as a gift for your use only, then please return it and purchase your own copy. If this book was purchased on an unauthorized platform, then it is a pirated and/or unauthorized copy and violators will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Do not purchase or accept pirated copies. Thank you for respecting the author’s hard work. For subsidiary rights, contact Dragonblade Publishing, Inc.

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  Additional Dragonblade books by Author Scarlett Scott

  The Sins and Scoundrels Series

  Duke of Depravity

  Prince of Persuasion

  Marquess of Mayhem

  Earl of Every Sin

  Duke of Debauchery

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  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Publisher’s Note

  Additional Dragonblade books by Author Scarlett Scott

  About the Book

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  The Duke of Montrose has perfected the art of being a scoundrel. Mistresses? He’s had an endless procession of them. Gin-soaked nights? He’s experienced more than he can count. He’ll do anything to distract himself from the demons of his past. Until the day his devil-may-care ways leave his best friend gravely injured. Now, he’s determined to make amends at any cost. Fortunately, he knows just where to begin.

  The Honorable Miss Hattie Lethbridge is quite happy being a wallflower, thank you very much. She would far prefer to spend an evening curled up with her cat than whirling about a ballroom. When her brother’s scapegrace friend, the Duke of Montrose, proposes they marry, she is determined to refuse his suit.

  The more she denies him, the more resolute Monty is that Hattie must be his. Much to her dismay, Hattie finds herself warming to the wickedest duke in London. But Monty is keeping dangerous secrets, and when Hattie discovers what he’s been hiding, any hope for a future together may be forever lost.

  Chapter One

  Monty had expected a host of reactions to his proposal of marriage.

  Laughter, however, had not been one of them.

  He stared at the Honorable Miss Hattie Lethbridge, whose wild peals of mirth were echoing through the salon where they sat on opposite settees, attended by an abigail.

  Whilst he had never proposed to make a lady his duchess, he had certainly made a number of offers to females. Demimondaines, it was true. But each one of them had been only too pleased to accept his offer of carte blanche. Not a single, bloody one of them had laughed.

  “Forgive me, Montrose.” Miss Lethbridge at last caught her breath and used a handkerchief to blot the tears from her eyes. “I must have misheard you. I thought you asked me to marry you just now.”

  His ears went hot.

  God’s fichu, this was not proceeding well.

  Not at all.

  “You did not mishear me,” he said. “I proposed to make you my duchess.”

  “Marriage.” The levity fled from her countenance now.

  “Marriage.” He tried to keep the consternation from his voice.

  He had known Miss Lethbridge for years. As the younger sister of his best friend, Viscount Torrington, and the bosom bow of his sister, she had been a fixture of Monty’s life since her comeout. But if he were honest, he had scarcely taken much note of her before, aside from the waspish verbal jabs she insisted upon sending his way. She had always been a vexing creature, which no doubt had tarnished her luster on the marriage mart.

  But he noticed her now. Her black curls were gathered into a becoming hairstyle that framed her heart-shaped face. She was lovely, though not a traditional beauty. Taller than he preferred, it was certain. Still, he found himself suddenly curious about just how long her legs were and how they might feel wrapped around his waist.

  Supposing he could convince her to wed him, that was.

  Which was becoming increasingly unlikely by the moment.

  “You want to marry me,” Miss Lethbridge repeated.

  “As I said.” He flicked an irritated glance toward the abigail, who was seated in the corner of the salon, head bent over some sewing.

  He truly did not prefer an audience for his humiliation, but he supposed there was no help for it. He could not very well sit here unchaperoned with Miss Lethbridge given his reputation.

  One second alone with the Duke of Debauchery was enough to ruin a lady.

  Though, in all fairness, he could not accomplish seduction in a mere second. Three, certainly. Two, perhaps. One? Nay.

  “You must realize that you are the last gentleman I would ever wish to take as my husband,” she said then.

  His ankle was paining him, and he longed for the welcome oblivion only laudanum could bring. Indeed, he felt itchy everywhere. For a moment, he wondered why he had even bothered to present himself here today, and then he recalled the sight of his friend, Torrie, lying
insensate following his phaeton crash.

  Ah, yes.

  The need to pay for his many sins.

  “You find fault with me, Miss Lethbridge?” he asked calmly.

  Of course, he already knew what her objections would be.

  “I find fault with drunken reprobates who recklessly race my brother when he is in his cups, leading to injuries so severe he almost did not recover.” She paused, twin patches of color darkening her cheeks as she rallied to her cause. “So severe he still, in fact, has yet to recover entirely.”

  What Miss Lethbridge did not say was there remained a possibility Torrie would not ever recover. The extent of his friend’s injuries, along with the part Monty had played in them, would not leave him. Like the pain of the broken bone he had suffered in the same crash, the guilt would not go.

  “I was wrong to race Torrie that night, and I know it,” he admitted, for he may be a scoundrel, but he could acknowledge his mistakes. “Marrying you is a means of attempting to atone for my actions.”

  “I am no sacrificial lamb, Montrose.” Her chin tipped up, and her voice was steeped in haughtiness. “Marry someone else if you feel it will unburden you. Marry anyone else for all I care. All I know is, it shan’t be me.”

  She was wrong about that, and he would prove it.

  He shook his head slowly. “It cannot be anyone else, Miss Lethbridge. You are the only woman I will have as my duchess.”

  She dared to laugh again. “How much gin did you drink before you came here, Your Grace?”

  “None at all,” he lied.

  She wrinkled her nose. “You stink of it.”

  Beelzebub’s earbobs. She was not going to make this courting business easy, was she?

  “A small tipple, only to make the pain in my ankle bearable,” he amended.

  This, too, was a blatant falsehood. But he was accustomed to lying to everyone around him. He was Monty, drunken scoundrel, who went through life bedding more women than he could count and being the life of every ballroom, drawing room, or gaming hell he inhabited.

  At least, that was the Monty he showed the world.

  “Your ankle has been healing for weeks,” she told him, unimpressed by his injury.

  The trouble with a broken bone, was that it never set quite properly. True, his demons had sent him down the steps in search of liquor, upsetting the work of the sawbones. True, he had also punched a footman in the eye and pissed on the Aubusson following that unfortunate series of events.

  Opium was his friend now. Well, opium and gin. Along with the occasional smuggled whisky. And brandy. And port. Anything to keep his mind enrobed in bliss. Anything to silence the ghosts of the past.

  But never mind all that.

  “My ankle is still paining me a great deal,” he protested.

  “If you expect my sympathy, Your Grace, you are more foolishly deluded than I supposed.” Her expression was pained. Pinched.

  Her cat chose that moment to make an appearance. It strolled, the plump, beastly thing, right up to his settee as if it had not a care in the world. As if it owned the bloody chamber and all its inhabitants.

  “Why is the feline here?” he muttered.

  For it was a long-standing argument between them that he could not abide by her creature. That pompous spawn of Satan with the most ludicrous appellation he had ever heard.

  “Sir Toby Belch is his name,” Miss Lethbridge said, a wintry note of reproach entering her dulcet voice. “I will thank you to refrain from disparaging my companion.”

  Sir Toby Belch. Her companion.

  “Is it not a feline?” he asked, skewering the white ball of fur with a glare as it padded ever nearer. “How is the truth a disparagement?”

  Her lips tightened. If there was an expression she wore when she was gazing upon a pile of dung, he would venture a guess he was bearing witness to it now. And it was directed solely upon him.

  “Sir Toby is much more than a mere feline,” she snapped. “I do think you should go, Montrose. You have done enough damage already. A moment more in your presence, and I shall be addlepated myself from the fumes on your breath alone.”

  That cut rather deep.

  If she wanted to see him in his cups, she would have to cross paths with him at half-past three in the morning when he was on his second bottle of gin. He was on his best behavior today, on account of the proposal.

  “Forgive me, Miss Lethbridge,” he said, still watching the cat, which had sidled to his mistress first and was now receiving an adoring caress from her that made a sharp spear of jealousy cut through him.

  Imagine that.

  The Duke of Montrose envious of a goddamn cat.

  “Apologize to Sir Toby as well,” she had the audacity to demand.

  “To a cat?” His cravat, styled in some bloody new knot with a name more ridiculous than her feline’s, seemed to be strangling him. And the itchiness was returning tenfold. Reminding him he needed more laudanum soon.

  Thank God there was a bottle in his carriage.

  “Yes.” She scooped the feline up from the floor and settled him into her lap, not even sparing Monty a glance. “To Sir Toby.”

  “Sir Toby Belch,” he could not help but to point out. “Do not forget the beast’s full name, lest you dishonor him.”

  He was making light of her. Prodding her when he was supposed to be wooing her, and he knew it. But he was growing irritable. Nothing about this interview had proceeded as he had hoped it would, and now she was upbraiding him about the damned cat. All whilst he was beginning to crave more oblivion.

  His ankle throbbed. All the more reason to settle upon his panacea as soon as possible.

  “He is named after you,” she told him then, her tone most unkind.

  To the beast in her lap, she cooed something nonsensical before delivering a kiss to the top of his head.

  The next time he called upon Miss Lethbridge, Monty was going to pay a footman to lock the damned thing in a closet until he departed. He vowed it to himself.

  “I have no wish to have a cat named in my honor.” He gave her one of his most cutting frowns, an expression he resorted to infrequently, because ordinarily he was too sotted to care. “As I am not a baronet, and my given name is not Toby, I fail to see how I can be his namesake.”

  Her lips compressed for a beat as she finally gave him her full attention, her green eyes assessing. “You do not recall, do you?”

  His frown deepened. “Recall what, Miss Lethbridge?”

  This conversation was growing deuced old.

  “Sir Toby Belch is one of Shakespeare’s characters,” she said.

  The information proved uninformative. He had not attended the theater in years, and even when he had, he had been too deep in his cups to pay attention to the stage, aside from picking out the next actress he would make his mistress.

  Now he was going to have to find out what the devil Sir Toby Belch had done. Monty was reasonably certain he did not wish to know.

  “Of course, I recall,” he lied instead. The itchiness was growing worse. And the solution was awaiting him. “Thank you for the honor, Miss Lethbridge. Hattie. I may call you Hattie, after all our years of acquaintance, and on account of our future nuptials, may I not?”

  Her eyes narrowed. And he swore the feline’s did as well. “You are prevaricating, Montrose, and you may call me Miss Lethbridge, or you may call me nothing at all.”

  “Of course, Miss Lethbridge. When we are wed, however, you will be my duchess,” he could not help but to point out. Nor could he keep the smugness from his tone.

  For she was no chit fresh from the schoolroom. And despite his many faults, he was still a duke. No matchmaking mama would refuse his proposal, not even hers.

  “We will not wed,” she snapped. “And you are lying about everything. About how much gin you have drunk today, about recalling who Sir Toby Belch is, about wanting to marry me. Every day, you lie to yourself, to your sister. You think I do not see your hands trembling o
r your bloodshot eyes, or the wrinkles in your coat, but I see it all. I see you, Montrose. And I do not want you.”

  She rose to her feet following her astounding speech.

  The silent abigail looked up from her sewing, casting him an expression of pity.

  Damnation.

  As he watched, Miss Lethbridge dipped into a remarkably elegant curtsey, given that she held a fat cat, and abruptly quit the room. He was left sitting there, alone with the abigail. He glanced down at his lap, and he realized she was right. His hands were shaking.

  It was time to go.

  He needed his medicine.

  *

  Hattie fled from the drawing room and from the Duke of Montrose so swiftly, she almost collided with her brother in the hall upstairs. Sir Toby, who objected to traveling in such haste, hissed.

  In the wake of the phaeton accident he had suffered while drunkenly racing the Duke of Montrose, Torrie was fortunate to be alive. He was a pale, gaunt figure, quite unlike himself. But that was not the sole manner in which he was unlike himself.

  For he had no memory beyond when he had finally woken. He had suffered a severe head wound in the crash. His physician could not be certain if Torrie would ever regain his full memories.

  “I am sorry, Torrie,” she said, reading the confusion in his expression. “I did not mean to trample you in my haste.”

  “Think nothing of it, Harriet.” He gave her a pained smile. “I was lost in my thoughts and not taking care.”

  She suppressed a rush of sadness at his use of her full given name. Sometimes, it was difficult to comprehend that her beloved brother considered her a stranger. But he was wary and hesitant, uncertain of everyone and everything these days. He did not often stray from his rooms. Not even since he had recovered enough to resume walking once again.

  Indeed, that he had deigned to leave at all was a surprise.

  “Are you well, Torrie?” she asked, clutching the cat to her, searching her brother’s face. “Is there something I can fetch you?”