Stephanie Laurens: Mastered By Love

The ninth book in the Bastion Club series, 2009

Lady Letitia Randall

#7 Christian Allardyee,

Marquessof Dearne

Alicia “Carrington” Pevensey

#2 Anthony Blake,

Viscount Torrington

Phoebe Malleson

#5 Jocelyn Deverell,

Viscount Paignton

#1 THE LADY CHOSEN

#2 A GENTLEMAN’S HONOR

#3 A LADY OF HIS OWN

#4 A FINE PASSION

Lady Penelope Selborne

#3 Charles St. Austell,

Earl of Lostwithiel

Madeline Gascoigne

#6 Gervase Tregarth,

Earl of Crowhurst

Lady Clarice Attwood

#4 Jack Warnefleet,

Baron Warnefleet of Minchinbury

Leonora Carling

#1 Tristan Wemyss,

Earl of Trentham

And so it ends. DL

#5 TO DISTRACTION

#6 BEYOND SEDUCTION

#7 THE EDGE OF DESIRE

September 1816

Coquetdale, Northumbria

It wasn’t supposed to have been like this.

Wrapped in his greatcoat, alone on the box seat of his excellently sprung curricle, Royce Henry Varisey, tenth Duke of Wolverstone, turned the latest in the succession of post-horses he’d raced up the highway from London onto the minor road leading to Sharperton and Harbottle. The gently rounded foothills of the Cheviot Hills gathered him in like a mother’s arms; Wolverstone Castle, his childhood home and newly inherited principal estate, lay close by the village of Alwinton, beyond Harbottle.

One of the horses broke stride; Royce checked it, held the pair back until they were in step, then urged them on. They were flagging. His own high-bred blacks had carried him as far as St. Neots on Monday; thereafter he’d had a fresh pair put to every fifty or so miles.

It was now Wednesday morning, and he was a long way from London, once again-after sixteen long years-entering home territory. Ancestral territory. Rothbury and the dark glades of its forest lay behind him; ahead the rolling, largely treeless skirts of the Cheviots, dotted here and there with the inevitable sheep, spread around the even more barren hills themselves, their backbone the border with Scotland beyond.

The hills, and that border, had played a vital role in the evolution of the dukedom. Wolverstone had been created after the Conquest as a marcher lordship to protect England from the depredations of marauding Scots. Successive dukes, popularly known as the Wolves of the North, had for centuries enjoyed the privileges of royalty within their domains.

Many would argue they still did.

Certainly they’d remained a supremely powerful clan, their wealth augmented by their battlefield prowess, and protected by their success in convincing successive sovereigns that such wily, politically powerful ex-kingmakers were best left alone, left to hold the Middle March as they had since first setting their elegantly shod Norman feet on English soil.

Royce studied the terrain with an eye honed by absence. Reminded of his ancestry, he wondered anew if their traditional marcher independence-originally fought for and won, recognized by custom and granted by royal charter, then legally rescinded but never truly taken away, and even less truly given up-hadn’t underpinned the rift between his father and him.

His father had belonged to the old school of lordship, one that had included the majority of his peers. According to their creed, loyalty to either country or sovereign was a commodity to be traded and bought, something both Crown and country had to place a suitable price upon before it was granted. More, to dukes and earls of his father’s ilk, “country” had an ambiguous meaning; as kings in their own domains, those domains were their primary concern while the realm possessed a more nebulous and distant existence, certainly a lesser claim on their honor.

While Royce would allow that swearing fealty to the pres ent monarchy-mad King George and his dissolute son, the Prince Regent-wasn’t an attractive proposition, he held no equivocation over swearing allegiance, and service, to his country-to England.

As the only son of a powerful ducal family and thus barred by long custom from serving in the field, when, at the tender age of twenty-two, he’d been approached to create a network of English spies on foreign soil, he’d leapt at the chance. Not only had it offered the prospect of contributing to Napoleon’s defeat, but with his extensive personal and family contacts combined with his inherent ability to inspire and command, the position was tailor-made; from the first it had fitted him like a glove.

But to his father the position had been a disgrace to the name and title, a blot on the family escutcheon; his old-fashioned views had labeled spying as without question dishonorable, even if one were spying on active military enemies. It was a view shared by many senior peers at the time.

Bad enough, but when Royce had refused to decline the commission, his father had organized an ambush. A public one, in White’s, at a time of the evening when the club was always crowded. With his cronies at his back, his father had passed public judgment on Royce in strident and excoriating terms.

As his peroration, his father had triumphantly declared that if Royce refused to bow to his edict and instead served in the capacity for which he’d been recruited, then it would be as if he, the ninth duke, had no son.

Even in the white rage his father’s attack had provoked, Royce had noted that “as if.” He was his father’s only legitimate son; no matter how furious, his father would not formally disinherit him. The interdict would, however, banish him from all family lands.

Facing his apoplectic sire over the crimson carpet of the exclusive club, surrounded by an army of fascinated aristocracy, he’d waited, unresponsive, until his father had finished his well-rehearsed speech. He’d waited until the expectant silence surrounding them had grown thick, then he’d uttered three words: As you wish.

Then he’d turned and walked from the club, and from that day forth had ceased to be his father’s son. From that day he’d been known as Dalziel, a name taken from an obscure branch of his mother’s family tree, fitting enough given it was his maternal grandfather-by then dead-who had taught him the creed by which he’d chosen to live. While the Variseys were marcher lords, the Debraighs were no less powerful, but their lands lay in the heart of England and they’d served king and country-principally country-selflessly for centuries. Debraighs had stood as both warriors and statesmen at the right hand of countless monarchs; duty to their people was bred deeply in them.

While deploring the rift with his father, the Debraighs had approved Royce’s stance, yet, sensitive even then to the dynamics of power, he’d discouraged their active support. His uncle, the Earl of Catersham, had written, asking if there was anything he could do. Royce had replied in the negative, as he had to his mother’s similar query; his fight was with his father and should involve no one else.

That had been his decision, one he’d adhered to throughout the subsequent sixteen years; none of them had expected vanquishing Napoleon to take so long.