One Night with a Duke: 12 Dukes of Christmas #10 Read online

  One Night with a Duke

  12 Dukes of Christmas #10

  Erica Ridley

  Contents

  Also by Erica Ridley

  Acknowledgments

  One Night with a Duke

  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

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  Thank You For Reading

  Ten Days with a Duke

  Sneak Peek

  The Duke Heist

  Sneak Peek

  About the Author

  Copyright © 2020 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.

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  Also by Erica Ridley

  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

  * * *

  The Wild Wynchesters:

  The Governess Gambit

  The Duke Heist

  * * *

  Rogues to Riches:

  Lord of Chance

  Lord of Pleasure

  Lord of Night

  Lord of Temptation

  Lord of Secrets

  Lord of Vice

  * * *

  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

  * * *

  Gothic Love Stories:

  Too Wicked to Kiss

  Too Sinful to Deny

  Too Tempting to Resist

  Too Wanton to Wed

  Too Brazen to Bite

  * * *

  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

  Acknowledgments

  As always, I could not have written this book without the invaluable support of my critique partner, beta readers, and editors. Huge thanks go out to Rose Lerner, Erica Monroe and Tessa Shapcott. You are the best!

  Lastly, I want to thank my Historical Romance Book Club, and my fabulous street team. Your enthusiasm makes the romance happen.

  Thank you so much!

  One Night with a Duke

  Dashing Scot Jonathan MacLean never returns to the same town twice. The happy-go-lucky philanthropist seeks constant adventure… and is desperate to outrun his past. When a blizzard traps him in a tiny mountaintop village, he meets a woman who tempts him with dreams he'd long since abandoned: Home. Community. Love. But other people’s livelihoods depend on him leaving for good as soon as the snow melts.

  * * *

  No-nonsense jeweler Angelica Parker has spent her life fighting for recognition. She's Black, she's a woman, and she will prove her creations are the equal to any artisan in England. With the project of a lifetime on the line, there's no room for error—or distractions. Especially not the handsome charmer whose unquenchable cheer and melting kisses have become more precious than jewels...

  * * *

  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!

  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 they may not always be who—or what—one might expect…

  Chapter 1

  December 1814

  Mr. Jonathan MacLean could have spent the two-hour journey from Eyemouth, Scotland to Cressmouth, England tucked safely into the relative warmth of the hackney coach he’d hired, but where was the pleasure in that?

  Perched out here with his driver, Mr. Beattie, no foggy window pane stood between Jonathan and the rolling vista. All around them, snow-covered hills topped a sea of frost-speckled evergreens. He was en route to adventure—once again!—and he didn’t want to miss a single moment of it.

  After two hours together, the hackney driver had warmed to his unconventional client.

  “Well...” Beattie squinted into the wind. “I wouldn’t gad about crying, ‘A pox on raisins!’ but there’s a limit to how many a man ought to find in his biscuit, isn’t there?”

  “Pah!” Jonathan said. “I like biscuits with raisins, biscuits without raisins, bread with raisins, bread without raisins, cakes with raisins, cakes without raisins, a bowl full of nothing but raisins...”

  The list of things Jonathan liked was infinite. The right attitude limited opportunities for disappointment. It was difficult for things not to go one’s way, when one was determined to like all the ways.

  Beattie was the best driver a traveler could hope to be paired with. He hadn’t objected in the least when Jonathan promised to triple his earnings if he shared his rickety, wind-whipped perch with a stranger.

  To fill the dead air, they’d shared their life stories—Jonathan’s began when he was sixteen, no sense dredging up memories from his childhood—and were now on to arbitrary preferences, which was exactly the sort of easy, superficial, boundless topic he liked best.

  “Towns,” said Beattie with a sly look in his eye. “As a traveling peddler who’s been to every corner of Britain, there must be some place you refuse to return to.”

  Jonathan wasn’t precisely a peddler, but he was unquestionably a traveler, and it was this topic he’d expected to be peppered with questions about upon declaring himself an open book and taking the controversial stance of not dis
liking anything. That they’d covered raisins and ragwort and kite-flying on windy days spoke highly of Beattie’s creativity. Too many people only concentrated on the obvious.

  “I refuse to return to all places,” Jonathan replied cheerfully. “Not because I’ve disliked them, but because there are so many more I haven’t seen. One week, that’s my rule. Less, if I can help it. Then it’s on to the next town, and the next adventure. I’m the luckiest man alive!”

  Beattie stared at him, aghast. “You haven’t a home?”

  Jonathan ignored the familiar ache he kept buried deep inside. He’d had a home once. A mother who rarely spoke to him. A father who never came round. Four walls that provided no comfort at all. Yuletides spent staring out of the window, dreaming of a place where he would be wanted.

  But dreams were for children.

  Life had taught Jonathan it was safer never to get attached in the first place.

  “How can I pick a place to stay still,” he pointed out reasonably, “until I’ve experienced everything, to know for certain which I’ll like best?”

  Beattie’s wind-chapped lips gaped.

  “You should try it,” Jonathan suggested. “You said you’d never been out of Scotland, and now here you are, on holiday in England!”

  Beattie gazed doubtfully at the endless drifts of snow encroaching on the winding road.

  “I’m not on holiday,” he reminded Jonathan. “You paid me handsomely to make this journey.”

  “Was it not enough?” Jonathan pulled several more freezing guineas from his coin purse and dropped them into Beattie’s gaping pocket, heavy from all the other coins Jonathan had foisted upon him. “There, now you can be on holiday, as well. Although I should confess that I am always on holiday and not on holiday at the same time.”

  Beattie’s frost-tipped lashes blinked. “Your confessions always leave me more confused than when I started.”

  Jonathan beamed at him. “Part of the fun, isn’t it? A body might think—”

  But the words froze in his throat like so many icicles. A festive crimson sign rose like a beacon just ahead:

  * * *

  Welcome to Christmas!

  * * *

  “Cressmouth,” Jonathan muttered. “The village is called Cressmouth.”

  “Aye, well,” said Beattie. “It might be named Cressmouth, but even I know it’s called ‘Christmas’ by everyone between Shetland and Cornwall. Isn’t that why you’re here? Everyone adores Christmas!”

  Jonathan would rather there be no Christmas at all.

  “What’s that?” he said, pointing a leather-clad finger at a telltale waft of smoke rising from a gray blur of a brick house in the middle of a large field.

  Between the falling snow and the corkscrew path up the evergreen-furred mountain, the village had been completely hidden from view until, suddenly, it wasn’t.

  This was interesting, indeed! H-A-R-P was just visible on a thick wooden sign blanketed in snow. A stud farm, by the looks of it. One of the most famous in England, to be specific. Everyone had heard of the Harpers.

  One of their horses was of royal caliber, according to the broadsheets, and was the most in-demand of all the fine blood horses in Britain. No lesser personage than the Prince Regent had attempted to purchase it, but he hadn’t been able to, which only made the horse quintuple in value and the Harpers all the more infamous.

  “Look!” A horse and rider cut across the Harpers’ snow-covered fields.

  “I can’t look,” Beattie grumbled. “I can’t even see the road with you leaning past me like an overeager puppy. If you were inside the carriage, you could look out of the window and—”

  “Nothing interesting happens whilst cloistered somewhere,” Jonathan scolded him.

  He twisted backward onto the perch, his frozen knees balancing on the tattered squab, just in time for the rider to come within shouting distance.

  “Ho, there!” he called out. “Lovely horse you’ve got! I’ll buy it from you!”

  “What would you do with a horse,” Beattie asked, “when you haven’t even got a house?”

  “Give it to you,” Jonathan replied sensibly. “What a wonderful story it will make! ‘How did you enjoy your time in Cressmouth?’ they’ll ask—”

  “Christmas,” Beattie corrected. “It’s called Christmas.”

  Jonathan wanted to like everything. He tried to like everything. But some things…

  He continued on, ignoring Beattie’s interruption. “‘Och, you know, boring old seasonal nonsense,’ most people would reply. ‘Bought a watercolor of a pine tree, in case I forget what one looks like when I’ve gone back home.’ But not me, Beattie, and not you! ‘Bought a horse,’ I’ll say, ‘from the famous Harper stud farm. Gave it to my hack driver. Hope he likes it better than raisins.’ And you’ll say—”

  “I won’t say a blessed thing,” Beattie said, “because that gentleman didn’t even look up when you called, so I daresay you won’t be buying any horses.”

  “Perhaps not today,” Jonathan allowed, “but anything could happen tomorrow. The best adventures are unpredictable.”

  “I predict I won’t be here to find out,” Beattie said. “Once you alight at your cottage, I shall turn around and go home. You might not believe in permanence, but I’ve got a wife who’ll be keeping supper warm for me. Something to consider.”

  “Pah,” said Jonathan. “If I can’t decide on a home until I’ve seen them all, how am I supposed to take a wife? Do you know how many more women there are than cities and hamlets? Even if I limited myself to conversing five minutes with each one, I’d never meet them all in a hundred years.”

  “You don’t have to meet them all,” Beattie said in exasperation. “Find a good one and keep her.”

  “I don’t want a good lass,” Jonathan explained. “I want a splendid lass. I want the best lass. Nothing else will do.”

  “And ‘nothing’ is what you’ll end up with,” Beattie predicted. “I hope you like suppers alone.”

  “Be alone?” Jonathan clutched his chest. “I’ve taken every meal with a different person for as long as I can remember.”

  Well, for as long as he’d been on the road—which was the only bit he chose to remember.

  Not that Beattie was listening. He stared openmouthed at the majestic castle soaring up into the sky at the top of the mountain. It looked like something out of a fairy book. Or it would, if it weren’t surrounded by a living black moat of holiday-makers in smart carriages, and swarming pedestrians in bright-colored woolen caps.

  “Turn here,” Jonathan commanded, shaking out the small hand-drawn map that had come with his invitation. “To the right, past the pond, curve about until... here!”

  One might not think a village of a thousand souls would require much in the way of maps, but the Duke of Nottingvale was nothing if not thorough. It was a quality Jonathan very much admired, and it boded splendidly for their upcoming business partnership—if the presentation went as planned.

  He leapt to the ground the moment Beattie halted the hack, and had to grab the edge of the footrest to keep his feet from flying out in front of him when his boots skated weightlessly across a hidden patch of ice.

  Two matched footmen burst from the cottage with twin expressions of horror, but they were far too well-mannered to scold their guest for leaping down from a carriage like—what had Beattie said?—aye, like an overeager puppy.

  Jonathan liked puppies. Everyone liked puppies. There were far worse things one could be compared to.

  As the footmen carried Jonathan’s trunks into the cottage—and really, only a duke could refer to this sprawling detached brick country home as a cottage—he turned back to Beattie to make his goodbye.

  “Safe travels back to your wife.” He tossed an extra sovereign up toward the perch. “I’ve left a small coin purse in the carriage for you to do with what you will. If it were me, I’d purchase a horse on my way out of town.”

  Beattie nearly missed catchi
ng the sovereign. “How much coin is in the back of my carriage?”

  Jonathan waved a hand. “I didn’t say you could purchase ‘the’ horse. Perhaps I want the famous one for myself. I know nothing about horseflesh, but the best studhorse in England can’t be a poor investment, can it?”

  Beattie stared at him. “If they wouldn’t sell it to Prinny—”

  “Then he didn’t offer the right price. I agree, I agree. You’re a crafty one.” Jonathan slapped the side of the carriage. “Go on now, before you beggar me dry.”

  As the wheels crunched over the snow, it almost sounded like Beattie muttered, “No one will believe this story.”

  Jonathan grinned to himself. All good stories were slightly unbelievable, and the best stories were the least believable of the lot. It was his sworn mission to live the unlikeliest tale he could devise.

  “Mr. MacLean,” said the duke’s butler. “Allow me to take your hat and your coat. I’m afraid His Grace isn’t expected until the day after tomorrow.”

  The duke’s butler did not add, “Because you’ve arrived two days early.”

  Partly because a duke’s butler was far too refined to make such a pointed observation, and partly because someone as well-prepared as Nottingvale would keep his cottage ready for guests at all moments, despite only hosting once per year during his annual Yuletide party.