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One Dance with a Duke (Stud Club Trilogy, Band 1) - Softcover

Buch 1 von 3: Stud Club Trilogy

Dare, Tessa

 
9780345518859: One Dance with a Duke (Stud Club Trilogy, Band 1)
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0345518853 ISBN 13: 9780345518859
Verlag: Ballantine Books, 2010

Inhaltsangabe

In One Dance with a Duke—the first novel in Tessa Dare’s delightful new trilogy—secrets and scandals tempt the irresistible rogues of the Stud Club to gamble everything for love.
 
A handsome and reclusive horse breeder, Spencer Dumarque, the fourth Duke of Morland, is a member of the exclusive Stud Club, an organization so select it has only ten members—yet membership is attainable to anyone with luck. And Spencer has plenty of it, along with an obsession with a prize horse, a dark secret, and, now, a reputation as the dashing “Duke of Midnight.” Each evening he selects one lady for a breathtaking midnight waltz. But none of the women catch his interest, and nobody ever bests the duke—until Lady Amelia d’Orsay tries her luck.

In a moment of desperation, the unconventional beauty claims the duke’s dance and unwittingly steals his heart. When Amelia demands that Spencer forgive her scapegrace brother’s debts, she never imagines that her game of wits and words will lead to breathless passion and a steamy proposal. Still, Spencer is a man of mystery, perhaps connected to the shocking murder of the Stud Club’s founder. Will Amelia lose her heart in this reckless wager or win everlasting love?

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Tessa Dare a part-time librarian, full-time mommy, and swing-shift writer. She makes her home in Southern California, where she shares a cozy, cluttered bungalow with her husband, their two children, and a dog.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.


Chapter One

London, June 1817

Blackberry glaze.

Biting the inside of her cheek, Amelia d’Orsay suppressed a small cry of jubilation. Even at a rout like this one, a well-bred lady’s abrupt shout of joy was likely to draw notice, and Amelia did not care to explain herself to the crush of young ladies surrounding her. Especially when the reason for her delight was not a triumph at the card table or a proposal of marriage, but rather the completion of a dinner menu.

She could imagine it now. “Oh, Lady Amelia,” one of these young misses would say, “only you could think of food at a time like this.”

Well, it wasn’t as though Amelia had planned to stand in a ballroom, dreaming of menus for their family summer holiday. But she’d been puzzling for weeks over a new sauce for braised pheasant, to replace the same old applejack reduction. Something sweet, yet tart; surprising, yet familiar; inventive, yet frugal. At last, the answer had come to her. Blackberry glaze. Strained, of course. Ooh, perhaps mulled with cloves.

Resolving to enter it in her menu book later, she swept the imaginary dish aside and compressed her grin to a half-smile. Summer at Briarbank would now officially be perfect.

Mrs. Bunscombe brushed past in a flounce of scarlet silk. “It’s half-eleven,” the hostess sang. “Nearly midnight.”

Nearly midnight. Now there was a thought to quell her exuberance.

A cherub-faced debutante swaddled in tulle grasped Amelia by the wrist. “Any moment now. How can you remain so calm? If he chooses me tonight, I just know I’ll swoon.”

Amelia sighed. And so it began. As it did at every ball, when half-eleven ticked past.

“You needn’t worry about making conversation,” a young lady dressed in green satin said. “He scarcely utters so much as a word.”

“Are we even certain he speaks English? Wasn’t he raised in Abyssinia or . . .”

“No, no. Lower Canada. Of course he speaks English. My brother plays cards with him.” The second girl lowered her voice. “But there is something rather primitive about him, don’t you think? I think it’s the way he moves.”

“I think it’s the gossip you’re heeding,” Amelia said sensibly.

“He waltzes like a dream,” a third girl put in. “When I danced with him, my feet scarcely skimmed the floor. And he’s ever so handsome up close.”

Amelia gave her a patient smile. “Indeed?”

At the opening of the season, the reclusive and obscenely wealthy Duke of Morland had finally entered society. A few weeks later, he had all London dancing to his tune. The duke arrived at every ball at the stroke of midnight. He selected a single partner from among the available ladies. At the conclusion of one set, he would escort the lady in to supper, and then . . . disappear.

Before two weeks were out, the papers had dubbed him “the Duke of Midnight,” and every hostess in London was jostling to invite His Grace to a ball. Unmarried ladies would not dream of promising the supper set to any other partner, for fear of missing their chance at a duke. To amplify the dramatic effect, hostesses positioned timepieces in full view and instructed orchestras to begin the set at the very hour of twelve. And it went without saying, the set concluded with a slow, romantic waltz.

The nightly spectacle held the entire ton in delicious, knuckle-gnawing thrall. At every ball, the atmosphere thickened with perfume and speculation as the hour of twelve approached. It was like watching medieval knights attempting to wrest Excalibur from the stone. Surely one of these evenings, the gossips declared, some blushing ingénue would get a proper grip on the recalcitrant bachelor . . . and a legend would be born.

Legend indeed. There was no end of stories about him. Where a man of his rank and fortune was involved, there were always stories.

“I hear he was raised barefoot and heathen in the Canadian wilderness,” said the first girl.

“I hear he was barely civilized when his uncle took him in,” said the second. “And his wild behavior gave the old duke an apoplexy.”

The lady in green murmured, “My brother told me there was an incident, at Eton. Some sort of scrape or brawl . . . I don’t know precisely. But a boy nearly died, and Morland was expelled for it. If they sent down a duke’s heir, you know it must have been dreadful.”

“You’ll not believe what I’ve heard,” Amelia said, widening her eyes. The ladies perked, leaning in close. “I hear,” she whispered, “that by the light of the full moon, His Grace transforms into a ravening hedgehog.”

When her companions finished laughing, she said aloud, “Really, I can’t believe he’s so interesting as to merit this much attention.”

“You wouldn’t say that if you’d danced with him.”

Amelia shook her head. She had watched this scene unfold time and again over the past few weeks, admittedly with amusement. But she never expected—or desired—to be at the center of it. It wasn’t sour grapes, truly it wasn’t. What other ladies saw as intriguing and romantic, she took for self-indulgent melodrama. Really, an unmarried, wealthy, handsome duke who felt the need to command more female attention? He must be the most vain, insufferable sort of man.

And the ladies of his choosing—all flouncy, insipid girls in their first or second seasons. All petite, all pretty. None of them anything like Amelia.

Oh, perhaps there was a hint of bitterness to it, after all.

Really, when a lady dangled on the outer cusp of marital eligibility, as she did, society ought to allow her a quiet, unannounced slide into spinsterhood. It rather galled her, to feel several years’ worth of rejection revisited upon her night after night, as the infamous duke entered at the stroke of midnight, and at twelve-oh-one his eyes slid straight past her to some primping chit with more beauty than brains.

Not that he had reason to notice her. Her dowry barely scraped the floorboards of the “respectable” range, and even in her first season, she’d never been a great beauty. Her eyes were a trifle too pale, and she blushed much too easily. And at the age of six-and-twenty, she’d come to accept that she would always be a little too plump.

The girls suddenly scattered, like the flighty things they were.

A deep whisper came from behind her shoulder. “You look ravishing, Amelia.”

Sighing, she wheeled to face the speaker. “Jack. What is it you’re after?”

Pressing a hand to his lapel, he pulled an offended expression. “Must I be after something? Can’t a fellow pay his dearest sister a compliment without falling under suspicion?”

“Not when the fellow in question is you. And it’s no compliment to be called your dearest sister. I’m your only sister. If you’re after my purse, you must come up with something better than that.” She spoke in a light, teasing tone, hoping against all previous evidence that he would protest: No, Amelia. This time, I’m not after your purse. I’ve ceased gambling and drinking, and I’ve thrown over those ne’er-do-well “friends” of mine. I’m returning to University. I’ll take orders in the Church, just as I promised our dying mother. And you truly do look lovely...

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Verlag
Ballantine Books
Erscheinungsdatum
2010
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0345518853
ISBN 13 
9780345518859
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
400
Kontakt zum Hersteller
SC
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/

CL MODESTO LAFUENTE 41
Madrid
Madrid
Spanien