The Duke Buys a Bride (The Rogue Files #3)
Sophie Jordan
Dedication
For the Joneses, Michael and Tammy:
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a writer must be in want of a good builder . . .
Thank you for helping us build our Pemberley.
May your own happily ever after continue joyfully into forever.
Chapter 1
In which the hungry wolf wakes . . .
Marcus, the fifth Duke of Autenberry, woke with a startled jolt, face-down in horse shit.
At least he assumed the reeking matter was the product of a horse. Several of the beasts could be heard neighing around him and he had spent a good amount of his life in the stables around horses. He knew the stink of horse excrement.
Pain splintered his skull as he pushed himself up. Bloody hell. What happened to him?
Wiping his face with the cuff of his jacket, he sat up fully and looked around, finding himself the subject of scrutiny. Several pairs of eyes stared at him through the slats of the stall. Children, he surmised. The eyes did not appear to be over five feet in height and they talked in high-pitched voices. Of course, that could be his overly sensitive ears.
“When do ye think ’e’s going tae wake?”
“Och, ’e’s been in that ’orse muck fer ’ours now!”
“No’ until the morrow. Whenever my pa drinks ’e sleeps fer days.”
“’E’s big, isn’t ’e?”
“Good morning,” he greeted drolly, trying not to breathe too deeply of the surrounding stench.
The eyes blinked at him.
“Och, ’e talks funny!” one small voice exclaimed.
“I don’t suppose you could tell me where I am?” he inquired, glancing down at himself and wincing. There was a good amount of dung on his once pristine jacket.
Several giggles and titters met his question.
“Ye dinna know where ye are?” one child demanded rather boorishly. “What kind of dolt are ye?”
“A spectacular one,” he grumbled, rising to his feet and ignoring the knifing pain in his skull.
More giggles.
He staggered a step toward the stall door. The children on the other side of the door shrieked and ran. Their footsteps pounded a swift retreat that matched the hammer in his skull. He attempted to lift the latch. No luck. It was barred from the outside.
“Of course,” he muttered, leaning against the stall wall and appreciating the support. He burrowed through his inside pocket to locate a handkerchief. He mopped off bits of hay and muck from his face, wondering how he had fallen so low. Had his life really come to this?
He could not recall having ever slept in so undignified a situation. He’d woken in all manner of locations, but always on a bed or a chaise. Once, at school, he’d fallen asleep on his desk when he stayed up late studying.
This was an ignoble first.
Heavy, dragging footsteps approached. No child, he presumed. A jingle of keys preceded a scratching at the door and then the stall door swung wide.
A face peered inside at him, the eyes small, dark beads in a broad, flat face. “Yer awake,” the fellow announced inanely.
“I am,” he returned mildly, scratching his jaw through an itchy growth of hair as he stared down at his boots. Their high-shine buff had long since faded. His valet back in London would be horrified, but their lack of luster felt appropriate. He felt like his boots. Dull and dusty.
“Thought a night locked up might take the wind out of yer sails.”
Ah. So he had been incarcerated. For what infraction, he could not recall.
He glanced around again, seeing the stall for what it was—a gaol. He recalled stopping at an inn (yesterday?) in some remote village.
He could not remember the name of the village. They’d all begun to blur. He’d passed through many of them on his journey north.
He lifted his head and stared at his jailer. “Might I inquire of my crime?”
“Ye ’ave nay memory then?” The man swiped at his red bulbous nose. “Ye practically destroyed ol’ Alvin’s taproom when John Smithy objected tae yer handling of Rovena.”
“Rovena?” The name rang familiar. He fluttered his fingers near his head as if that might help conjure forth the details. “Was she a black-haired lass?”
“Aye.” The man nodded.
Rovena was aptly named. The serving wench had roving hands. When she’d served him his dinner, she’d plopped down beside him, her greedy paws making short work of freeing him from inside his breeches and seizing on to his cock right there beneath the table.
A nearby fellow had objected to Rovena’s enthusiastic attentions. Perhaps that had been John Smithy.
Marcus remembered little after that.
“If I recall it was more Rovena’s handling of me.”
The portly man guffawed. “Call it what you will. The bailiff sent me to free ye. He’s already taken the cost for the damages out of yer purse. Lucky ye had enough or ye’d be forced to labor until ye paid it off.”
At that, the bailiff’s lackey tossed Marcus’s pocketbook at him. He grabbed it before it hit the ground and landed in muck. “I’m tae instruct ye tae get on yer horse and leave town. ’Tis market day. A busy time and we don’t need the likes of ye loitering about causing any more mischief.”
The likes of him?
It was almost comical if it wasn’t so offensive. He was a bloody duke and they were treating him like some vagabond. True, they did not know his rank, and he might not be dressed in the cleanest garments nor his finest—traveling alone, he knew better than to flaunt his wealth—but they had to realize he was Quality. It was all very unsettling.
“Rest easy. I’m quite happy to leave your little backwater.” Straightening, he tugged his jacket into place. “Extend my gratitude to your bailiff for his warm and gracious hospitality.”
The man scratched his shiny, bald pate as though confounded.
Marcus didn’t bother to assess the status of his pocketbook, although it did feel much lighter. He’d hidden money both in the heel of his boot as well as the lining of his cloak. He wasn’t foolish enough to travel alone into the north country without a healthy dose of respect for the robbers plaguing the countryside.
Marcus passed out of the stall and was quickly directed to his waiting horse. His gelding looked hale and as impatient as he to leave.
A wide-eyed youth handed him the reins. Marcus nodded a curt thanks to the lad and mounted without the aid of a block.
Without a backward glance for the stables that had caged him for the night, he nudged his horse forward into the bustling village, vowing to bypass it on his return journey home. As far as he was concerned, this wretched little place was cursed and he should avoid it and its inhabitants in the future.
Alyse circled the small loft, eyeing her narrow cot pressed against the single gable window. She’d slept in that bed for seven years without fail, staring out the window into the night sky, counting stars and spying on the moon as she waited for the day her life would be her own.
Tonight it would begin. Tonight she would sleep somewhere else.
She’d made the bed today as she did every morning. The gray wool blanket was tucked neatly around the mattress; the thin pillow positioned precisely where her head had rested for seven years. The pillow was worn flat, a permanent indentation at the center of it.
Perhaps where she was going she would have a full, plump, down-stuffed pillow. It didn’t matter. She’d accept a blanket on the hard ground as long as it meant she was away from here. As long as she was free of this place.