Eva Leigh - Dare to Love a Duke

The life he’d known of gaming hells, opera dancers, and riotous pleasure—all of it had to stop. For his mother’s sake, and for Maeve’s.

His steps stopped. A galvanizing thought hit him.

“Fuck,” he said softly.

The Orchid Club, and Amina, were now forbidden to him. The place—and the woman—were too scandalous. He had to close the door on that part of his life, though it had been part of the fabric of his existence for a year.

A new loss tore through him like a claw. Never to hear Amina’s voice again, never to behold her as she walked with her queenly air and knowing gaze, nevermore to talk or flirt with her. All of it, gone.

It seemed impossible, insupportable. He wouldn’t know how to exist without the club and without Amina. She was a constant in his life, a person of both gravity and spirit. He didn’t want to walk away, but he’d no choice in the matter.

Today was Wednesday, which meant the club would be open tonight.

He firmed his jaw with resolve. This evening, he’d don his mask for the very last time, and see her just once more. When he did, he intended to make her a very bold, forbidden proposal that went against every rule.

One night together, before they parted forever.

The newspaper fell from Lucia’s hand, landing on the kitchen floor with a soft ruffling sound that she barely heard. She stared straight ahead, and everything she saw—from the fire burning in the hearth, to Kitty cradling baby Liam as she stirred up a pot of porridge, to the light in the windows shifting from morning to afternoon—appeared distant and far away, as if she was looking through the neck of a bottle.

“ Dio ci aiuti, ” she whispered. “God help us.”

“What is it?” Elspeth asked from her seat at the table. “You’ve gone white as whey.”

Numb with shock, Lucia scooped up the newspaper and walked it to the fire. She threw the paper into the flames, watching it curl and turn black before finally breaking into ash.

She moved clumsily to the table and sat heavily in a chair. She ran her fingers back and forth over the grooves cut into the table’s wooden surface, marks left by countless meals shared in this very kitchen with the people she cared about most in the world.

All of that might disappear. Far sooner than she could ever have feared.

“There were secrets Mrs. Chalke entrusted to me.” Her words sounded stunned even to her own ears. “I didn’t want to keep them from you, but I’d no choice. Holding those secrets was one of the conditions of taking the position as manager.”

“Ours is a business built upon secrecy,” Elspeth said. “We can’t fault you for holding to it, if it meant our continued employment.”

“ Grazie .” Lucia exhaled, hoping that this simple act might ground her when she felt utterly out of control. “The identity of the club’s owner—that was one of the secrets. Exposing his identity compromised everything. So, I kept silent.”

“Understandable.” Kitty brought Liam over and gently lowered him into his high seat. “But we had our suppositions, didn’t we, El? Thought he might be a banker or some rich cove who had a taste for fucking and an even bigger appetite for profits.”

“That’s so,” Elspeth said. “But I was hoping he might be some bishop who liked to earn extra coin from sin while preaching against it from the pulpit.”

“In a way, you’re both right.” Lucia looked back and forth between her two friends. “He was a man of the highest rank, the bluest blood, and moral. At least, he liked people to think he was moral, but it was he who came to Mrs. Chalke to propose the opening of the Orchid Club.”

It felt strange to say even this much about the man who’d been their patron, when for over a year, she’d held firm to the knowledge of his identity. Holding tight to mysteries was her trade, and even with her dearest friends, it jarred to share them.

But it might not matter anymore.

She looked around the kitchen, taking in the rows of copper pans in their open cabinets, the soot-stained wooden beams in the ceiling, and the large table that dominated the center of the room, where later that afternoon, Jenny and her crew would prepare the sweetmeats and savories that fed their guests.

Tenuous, the lot of it. She might blink and it would disappear forever. Worse than losing her employment was the fact that the club employed a substantial staff, people whom she’d come to think of as a kind of found family in the absence of her own kinship by blood.

What if she couldn’t save this? What if she couldn’t save it for them ?

“The owner of this club . . .” She swallowed. “He’s dead.”

A horrified silence reigned, broken only by the sounds of Liam slapping his hands on the tray in front of him.

“Does that mean that the establishment’s finished?” Elspeth asked.

“I don’t know.” Cristo, how she hated saying those words, and hated that she didn’t—couldn’t—predict what might befall her and the staff of the Orchid Club. She was the mortar that fixed everything together, but there was nothing she could do to prevent the earthquake that threatened to shake the building into rubble.

Why hadn’t she seen this coming? When she’d gone for her monthly meeting to deliver his share of the profits, he had been absent, with illness being given as the explanation. She hadn’t known the severity of his poor health. Until now.

“If he was a highborn cove,” Kitty mused, “it stands to reason that he’s got an heir, and that cove is our new owner.”

“True.” Lucia hadn’t considered that. “These English nobles love nothing so much as preserving pedigrees. Thinking on it, I recall our dead patron mentioning that he had a son.”

“Then the club passes to that bloke,” Kitty said. “Wouldn’t it?” She looked at Elspeth as if searching for answers.

Elspeth held up her hands. “If you’re looking for an expert in English aristocrats and their patrilineage, look elsewhere.”

“So,” Kitty continued, “he’s got a son. And that gentry cove is our new patron. Then there’s no harm for us in his sire’s passing.”

Unable to keep still, Lucia surged to her feet. “We don’t know if his son knew his father’s connection to this place. Diavolo, the son might not even know of the Orchid Club’s existence.”

“Be a hell of a shock when he finds out,” Elspeth muttered.

“ Esattamente . What if he’s prudish, and the thought of owning a club for fucking horrifies him?” She paced, her thoughts tumbling over themselves, each scenario worse that the next. “He’d shutter us for certain.”

They’d lose the club.

And without her income, she’d lose her dream. The home for girls could never come to pass.

She pictured them, the countless young females cast onto the streets of London without anyone to care for them, to protect them and ensure that they could have a life of anything but the meanest poverty and subsistence. But Lucia was going to help them. Not all of the girls, because that would be impossible, but surely it was better to improve the lot of a few rather than let all of them meet grim fates.

Lucia gasped, choked by desperation and fear. She couldn’t fail them.

“Or maybe,” Elspeth said in a placating tone, “he’s one of those randy men who’ll delight in possessing an establishment such as ours. He might like it and keep us operational.”

“I hope so.” Lucia braced her hands on the heavy worktable, trying to stay on her feet when she thought it very possible she might tumble headlong into darkness. “We’ll know soon enough, when I deliver the owner’s share of the profits.”