The Diamond and the Duke (All the Duke's Sins, Band 3) - Softcover

Buch 3 von 3: All the Duke's Sins

Caldwell, Christi

 
9780593334959: The Diamond and the Duke (All the Duke's Sins, Band 3)
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0593334957 ISBN 13: 9780593334959
Verlag: Penguin Publishing Group, 2024

Inhaltsangabe

When a wounded soldier and self-proclaimed "beast" finds unlikely friendship with a headstrong and unconventional beauty, they quickly find themselves weaving a tale as old as time…
 
Despite a hero’s return to England from the Napoleonic Wars, Wesley Audley isolates from the ton. Deep wounds from the horrors of combat—and the despair of a broken heart—left him scarred. As he struggles to cope and resume his place in Polite Society, Wesley is quick to cut himself off from everyone…except for Ellie Balfour. 
 
Independent and strong-willed, Ellie has dreams of captaining her own husband-free life and a penchant for meddling in other’s business. She knows befriending Wesley is a risk but Ellie can’t bear to see his heartache. Nor can she seem to silence all the temptingly intimate thoughts his nearness provokes. 
 
But Ellie is yet to face a battle she can’t win—and Wesley’s heart is worth the fight. If only her campaigns ever went to plan…

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Christi Caldwell is the USA Today bestselling author of the Sinful Brides series and the Heart of a Duke series. She blames novelist Judith McNaught for luring her into the world of historical romance. When Christi was at the University of Connecticut, she began writing her own tales of love—ones where even the most perfect heroes and heroines had imperfections. She learned to enjoy torturing her couples before they earned their well-deserved happily ever after. Christi lives in Charlotte, North Carolina, where she spends her time writing, and being a mommy to the most inspiring little boy and empathetic, spirited girls who, with their mischievous twin antics, offer an endless source of story ideas!

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Chapter 1

London, England

One year later

My dearest Wesley,

I know I once said there was nothing more beautiful than a blue, cloud-filled sky. I was wrong. There is something far more magnificent . . . knowing I share that sky with you. Whenever I wish to feel closer to you, I just look up.

Lovingly Yours

Perched on the window seat, her knees drawn up to her chest, Ellie shifted her focus from the rain slanting in sideways sheets upon the pavement, a deluge that left her stuck indoors, to the couple curled up beside one another on the green button-back velvet-upholstered Chesterfield sofa.

Cailin lay with her head on Courtland's lap and her legs flung over the rolled arm, reading from a letter, while Courtland remained with one hand stroking the top of his wife's head, and the other holding whatever title it was on fossils that so fascinated him and Cailin.

Ellie forced her gaze away from the bucolic tableau they presented: a happily married couple, with the young wife's belly gently rounded from where their first babe rested.

Courtland and Cailin had been gracious. Certainly more gracious than she deserved, or than her machinations had merited.

But Ellie had been obliged to acknowledge one sad truth-her relationship with the pair had been forever altered. Following his marriage, and the pained lecture he'd doled out after he'd learned the truth about Ellie's involvement in his ruination, he'd stopped joining her in her gameplay, and instructed her to cease looking at the world as a battlefield plan there for Ellie to arrange.

And that proved the greatest regret of her life.

It shouldn't matter. Ultimately, in the end, all children were forced to hang up their scabbards and put away their wood pistols and swords and swap those pretend games for all that came with real life.

Absently, Ellie traced a fingertip over the window.

". . . what is it, love? You've those frown lines you get here," Courtland was saying as he touched the place between Cailin's eyebrows. "When you are upset." With those quiet murmurings, his words revealed an intimate knowing of the woman he'd wed, and Ellie found herself more than half longing for that.

Alas, she lifted the book from her lap and raised it to her face, giving the couple the privacy she ought, feeling like the worst sort of interloper.

A streak of lightning lit up a dark sky which would have better suited the night.

". . . my brother . . ." Cailin was saying. ". . . Wesley . . ."

A sharp crack of thunder rumbled the foundations of the house, shaking the windowpanes.

Ellie lost her grip on the book.

Thump.

It landed on the floor with a less-than-subtle thwack that briefly interrupted her brother and his wife's conversation as two sets of eyes swung her way.

"Dropped my book," she explained, unnecessarily. "Lost my hold on the pages. The storm, of course. That sounded as if the lightning strike was close."

Her brother and Cailin stared at her.

"Not that I'm afraid of storms," she blurted. "I'm not." Except that was a lie. "That scared. I-" You are rambling. Stop rambling. You are not a rambler. Anything but. Ellie cleared her throat noisily and, leaning down, rescued her book. "I haave it!" she exclaimed needlessly, and then promptly cringed inside. Snapping the pages open, she quickly brought the volume back into place before her face.

"I see that," Courtland called over. "You . . . uh . . . may wish to turn it ar-" Ellie promptly flipped it right side up. "-ound," her brother completed that word and droll response.

Dedicating all her attentions and energies on her book, Ellie made a show at reading; all the while, her ears remained keenly focused on the parts and pieces of the discussion her brother and Cailin had resumed.

". . . heartbreaking . . . not so much as a word from her . . ." Cailin said, her voice catching with tears, and Ellie flipped the unread page noisily. ". . . she will not write him. She will not answer his notes. What am I to say when he asks?" Ellie's sister-in-law was saying. "That according to our brother Hunter, the woman you are in love with is the darling of Staffordshire?"

Ellie went completely motionless.

The woman he . . . loved? Her organ in her chest forgot its job was to beat. As in, Wesley Audley was in love with-

". . . that she's enjoying herself at all the local soirees while you are risking life and limb to keep England safe from that French frog?"

As in Wesley Audley was in love with a woman wholly undeserving of him and his love.

Hatred and jealousy mingled, and together, soured her tongue like the vinegar rag her father had advised her nursemaid to stuff in Ellie's mouth for using words he'd deemed inappropriate for a lady to utter.

He was . . . in love.

In all this time since they'd met lakeside, she'd thought of him. And more, she'd thought of him-and her-together.

Granted, he was more than a dozen years her senior, but she was no longer a child, and with every passing day where he was gone, she'd become a young lady, and he was to return and notice that she was no longer a gangly child.

Just . . . a gangly woman.

But neither would that matter, because he'd said that day at the lake she'd spirit and strength, and a skill with a sword that he'd admired, and-

Ellie gripped her book hard, her fingernails digging sharply into the soft leather and leaving crescent marks upon the cover and back.

The housekeeper appeared and dipped a curtsy to Cailin. "If I might speak to you, Your Grace, about the latest changes to the menu."

The latest changes, because with Cailin increasing in pregnancy and queasy from it, every meal was constantly changing.

As Cailin came to her feet, she offered a wave and smile to Ellie, which she quickly returned.

"I'll return shortly, love," the duchess said to her husband. She tipped her head up to receive Courtland's kiss.

Ellie hurriedly averted her attention from that intimate exchange.

The moment Cailin had followed Mrs. Dumfrees, Courtland returned to his book.

"Who was Cailin speaking about?" Ellie asked after her sister-in-law had gone, and she and Courtland remained alone.

Her eldest brother glanced over the top of his pages and looked confusedly her way.

Be breezy. You are breezy. "The woman who is not writing the lieutenant."

Courtland scrubbed a hand over his mouth.

For an instant, she thought he would not answer. For an instant, she thought he'd rightly point out her past actions barred her from possession of intimate details that did not explicitly involve her.

Though, in this case . . . they did. Her brother just did not know it.

"She also happens to be the young woman who urged him to go to his father, the Duke of Bentley, so he could make a better life for himself." Her brother's jaw hardened. "A better life, which in her mind included wealth and land, and attaining everything she could through his commission in the army."

The reason he'd joined the military, and risked his life even now, was a woman?

Ellie's chest tightened in an odd way, in a way she'd never believed it would or could because of a man, and yet now it did at the thought of the dashing Lieutenant Audley courting another woman who was decidedly not Ellie.

Courtland started to rise.

Ellie quickly stayed him with another question. "Do you know her?"

He stared confusedly at her.

"The young woman," she clarified.

Her brother shook his head. "Only that her name is Claire Sparrow. Her father is a part owner of the Cheadle mines with Hunter."

The second-eldest Audley sibling, following Rafe. Wesley and Cailin were the youngest.

"She has not bothered to write...

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Verlag
Penguin Publishing Group
Erscheinungsdatum
2024
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0593334957
ISBN 13 
9780593334959
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
304
Kontakt zum Hersteller
BERKLEY
https://www.penguin.com/?s=BERKLEY

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