Jane Lark - The Scandalous Love of a Duke

Jane Lark

A division of HarperCollins Publishers

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Jane Lark Jane Lark I love writing authentic, passionate and emotional love stories. I began my first novel, a historical, when I was sixteen, but life derailed me a bit when I started suffering with Ankylosing Spondylitis, so I didn’t complete a novel until after I was thirty when I put it on my to do before I’m forty list. Now I love getting caught up in the lives and traumas of my characters, and I’m so thrilled to be giving my characters life in others’ imaginations, especially when readers tell me they’ve read the characters just as I’ve tried to portray them.

Dedication The Marlow Intrigues Series is gathering followers, and the story of Ellen’s son, John, is my first step into the next generation. There is still more to come, including the prequel to The Illicit Love of a Courtesan, but for now I hope you enjoy the tale of my moody, arrogant, fractured, golden-hearted, young Duke. If you wonder who, or what inspired John’s story––it was written at the time that Prince William asked Catherine Middleton to marry him. His apparent reluctance to accept his royal status, his reliance on Catherine, and the way he is so much more relaxed with her, gave me the inspiration for John’s circumstances and his own Catherine, though John’s story does not follow theirs.

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Epilogue

About HarperImpulse

Copyright

About the Publisher

I love writing authentic, passionate and emotional love stories.

I began my first novel, a historical, when I was sixteen, but life derailed me a bit when I started suffering with Ankylosing Spondylitis, so I didn’t complete a novel until after I was thirty when I put it on my to do before I’m forty list.

Now I love getting caught up in the lives and traumas of my characters, and I’m so thrilled to be giving my characters life in others’ imaginations, especially when readers tell me they’ve read the characters just as I’ve tried to portray them.

The Marlow Intrigues Series is gathering followers, and the story of Ellen’s son, John, is my first step into the next generation. There is still more to come, including the prequel to The Illicit Love of a Courtesan, but for now I hope you enjoy the tale of my moody, arrogant, fractured, golden-hearted, young Duke.

If you wonder who, or what inspired John’s story––it was written at the time that Prince William asked Catherine Middleton to marry him. His apparent reluctance to accept his royal status, his reliance on Catherine, and the way he is so much more relaxed with her, gave me the inspiration for John’s circumstances and his own Catherine, though John’s story does not follow theirs.

Katherine’s fingers grasped the pale, uneven trunk of the beech tree. Laughing, she braced her body to stop her descent down the grassy slope, her grip slipping on the thin strips of peeling bark.

She turned back to catch her friend’s hand.

In fits of giggles, Margaret fell against the tree too.

“Shhh … ” Eleanor whispered, her fingers pressing to her lips as she struggled to tame her own intemperate humour. “They will hear us.” Eleanor was Margaret’s younger cousin.

More giggles erupted from the large group of younger girls behind them. Eleanor was the most boisterous of them, though.

Looking across her shoulder, Katherine smiled.

Katherine was the outsider here. The odd one out. A Spencer. All the other girls were the Duke of Pembroke’s grandchildren. Katherine was nothing compared to them. Her adopted father was a mere lowly squire. But Katherine had grown up amongst this family. These girls were more sisterly to her than her own sister. Her brother Phillip was John Harding’s friend and John was another of the Duke’s grandchildren, the eldest, and his heir.

One day John would own the land they stood on, and a dozen other estates. He’d be rich.

John. His name stilled Katherine’s heart and slowed her breathing as a secret longing welled inside her.

She no longer felt like laughing, she clung to the tree, her palms pressing against the trunk as her gaze reached through the veil of branches and leaves that stirred gently on a warm summer breeze.

“Can you see them?” Caroline, one of Margaret’s younger sisters, whispered.

“What are they doing?” Margaret leant forwards, looking over Katherine’s shoulder.

“Swimming,” Eleanor gasped with another giggle. “They’re naked.”

The girls about Katherine broke into fits of laughter again, their fingers pressing over their mouths.

“Hush,” Heather, Margaret’s older sister, who was the eldest of the girls, urged them to be silent. She was eight and ten. She had already curtsied to the Queen. Her father was an heir to a duke too. All the other girls were the daughters of dukes or earls. Katherine loved them all, but even so she wore the weight of her lower birth as prominently as her second-hand scarlet cloak. She stood out.

“We should not have followed,” Heather said

“Papa, will kill me,” Eleanor laughed, breathlessly pressing her fingers against her chest.

“And Grandfather will kill John,” Margaret whispered.

The girls looked at one another as Katherine looked about them all. John was their pattern card. All his younger cousins followed him like shadows, emulating everything he did. They were all mesmerised by him. But Katherine’s feelings were much more than just awe. She loved John, secretly, but without hope or expectation. When she was with him her heart ached and raced, and well… She did not know how to explain it.

The others whispered and giggled.

Katherine focused on the boys cavorting in the lake. They seemed oblivious to the girls obscured by the curtain of leaves.

They were splashing water at each other, shouting and baiting one another, laughing. John, pale-skinned, lean and athletic, lunged at Katherine’s brother, gripped his shoulders and pushed him under water. The game grew more aggressive. Phillip thrust up and retaliated, lunging back at John, and when John dodged him, Phillip dived beneath the water and pulled John under.

All the boys, a dozen or more of John’s friends from Oxford, broke into an uproar then, as the game became a mêlée.

They were not boys, though, not anymore, no more than she was a girl. They were young men, and she was on the brink of womanhood. She could be married now if she wished. The problem was the only person she wished to marry was unattainable. John.

“We should go,” Heather breathed beside her. “We shouldn’t be here.”

Katherine turned.

Eleanor made a mischievous face at her older cousin. “Killjoy.”

“Give them their privacy,” Heather pressed.

Eleanor pouted, she was only thirteen. “We didn’t know they were going to swim—”

“And that is precisely why we should go back before we are missed,” Heather caught hold of Eleanor’s arm. “Come on, they will start the celebrations soon.”

The other girls began peeling away.

Katherine would have to go back too, but she would rather be in the water. Her gaze returned to the lake. The day was hot, and the heat was heavy, clinging and oppressive. She understood why they’d shed their clothes and dived in.