A Duke's Temptation Poetess: A Steamy Historical Regency Romance Novel, page 1
A Duke's Temptation Poetess
A REGENCY ROMANCE NOVEL
HENRIETTA HARDING
Copyright © 2023 by Henrietta Harding
All Rights Reserved.
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Table of Contents
Table of Contents
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A Duke's Temptation Poetess
Introduction
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Epilogue
A Governess' Unbridled Passion
Introduction
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
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A Duke's Temptation Poetess
Introduction
In a world where passion clashes with duty, Lady Clarissa has only one dream, to become a famous poet and devote her life to writing. Her heart's desire, however, collides with her mother's ambitions of seeing her wed to the tempting Duke of Hartingdale. While the Duke possesses undeniable charm and eligibility, Clarissa remains steadfast in her poetic aspirations. Yet, she will soon face the daunting task of reconciling her artistic dreams with the undeniable pull of their blossoming connection.
Can her poetic desire be unleashed through her growing attraction to the Duke?
Despite his roguish reputation, Colin, the Duke of Hartingdale, finds himself captivated by the talented Lady Clarissa. Her enchanting glances and fleeting touches ignite a forbidden desire within him, threatening to consume them both. Yet, as rumours swirl around his name and the burden of his sister's troubles weighs on him, Colin must confront his past and the potential consequences it holds.
Will he let his past and reputation ruin their chance for a flaming affair?
Entangled in an undeniable connection, Clarissa and Colin’s once defiant vow to never marry weakens as their attraction intensifies. However, amidst their sizzling love, Clarissa's scheming mother and a manipulative Earl conspire to undermine their happiness. With their future hanging precariously, they must confront the web of lies and deceit that threaten to tear them apart. Can they overcome the challenges and triumph over adversity, forging a love that burns brighter than ever? Or will lies and manipulation sever their literary but flaming love?
Chapter 1
True to form, this ball was a disaster for her, and worse, perhaps, one of her own making. Lady Clarissa Bentley perched primly at the edge of the ballroom in the company of a few other wallflowers. Together, Clarissa thought they made a rather lovely garden. Of the most undesirable overgrowth, she thought dryly. We are all young women standing at the door of spinster-dom.
Clarissa absentmindedly twirled her pen between her fingers. It was no ordinary pen, but the recent invention of John Scheffer. His penographic fountain pen was a clever creation, which kept ink its chamber and eliminated the need for both penknives and inkwells. It was truly the implement of choice for any serious writer. Admittedly, Clarissa was not yet a serious writer, far from it, but she held hope that someday she would be a great poet.
From across the room, Clarissa met the one gaze she had no desire to meet. To Clarissa’s credit, it was difficult not to notice her mother. She had chosen to wear a white gown decorated with scarlet embroidery and ribbons, and massive white feathers, dyed red at the ends. No one could possibly miss seeing her in the crowd. Her mother, Lady Bentley, was a tall, slender woman with sharp, stately features.
Clarissa looked a great deal like her. They shared the same thick, dark brown hair and hazel-green eyes. Mother and daughter were even of a similar height. However, their bearings could not be more different. Clarissa’s mother was a lady people referred to as effortlessly elegant and gentle on the eyes.
Clarissa was a little intimidated by her mother sometimes. The woman bore her grief and pain silently and well, but Clarissa was not, and never had been that sort of woman. Clarissa felt as if she were always bursting with feelings.
As Lady Bentley approached, Clarissa inwardly winced. She felt the sudden urge to hide her pen and the small notebook that she always kept close at hand. “Here you are,” her mother said.
“Indeed,” Clarissa said.
Lady Bentley tipped her chin up and narrowed her eyes. “Have you forgotten that this is the last event of the Season?”
Of course, she had not. How could she when her mother reminded her of that unfortunate detail so often? Clarissa averted her gaze to the open page of her notebook, her eyes idly tracing the wide, sweeping curves of her letters. Handwriting was a sort of art, too.
“And you have already resigned yourself to the corner,” Lady Bentley said, “when you could be dancing and having conversations with any number of fine gentlemen. Do you not want to get married?”
Clarissa sighed. Her mother already knew Clarissa’s feelings on the matter, but she seemed to believe that if she argued enough and asked that dreaded question enough, Clarissa’s feelings would change. Clarissa was suddenly quite aware of Amelia Westwood sitting nearby. Lady Amelia had a penchant for gossip, and although the young woman’s head was turned away, Clarissa sensed that the other woman was listening intently.
“I do want to be married,” Clarissa said softly.
Marriage consumed her thoughts ever since girlhood when she had sneaked away from her governess’s watchful eye and hid in her father’s library reading old chivalric romances of Tristan and Isolde, Guinevere and Lancelot, Astrophel and Stella. How often had she dreamed of being a desired heroine with her own noble knight racing to her rescue atop a strong, white steed.
“But I am realistic with my expectations,” Clarissa said, cutting her eyes towards Lady Amelia.
Lady Bentley frowned, her gaze sharpening. She turned her attention to Lady Amelia. “And you have resigned yourself to an evening of solitude, also?”
Clarissa’s mother had a way of speaking that managed to be both cutting and pleasant at the same time. Sometimes, Clarissa admired that about her mother. She had a certain authority about her which commanded respect. Under the eye of Clarissa’s watchful mother, Lady Amelia smiled sheepishly and fled towards the circle of dancers.
The other woman who remained in the corner was Lady Emma, but it seemed as though she had gained the attention of a handsome suitor. Lord Henry, if Clarissa was not mistaken.
“Father left me barely any dowery to speak of,” Clarissa said. “I have nothing to draw a suitor to me, and this is my fourth Season. You must know it is impossible for me to find a husband.”
Her mother knew this already, but Clarissa thought that if she mentioned her lack of prospects enough, eventually, her mother would recognize them for what they were.
“So you are going to remain in this corner for the rest of the night?” her mother asked. “And consign yourself to spinster-dom or worse?”
Worse was doubtlessly the position of a governess, and as loathe as Clarissa was to admit it, she shared her mother’s reservations. Clarissa doubted that she would ever become a good poet if she were a governess and tasked with watching over the education of someone’s young children. She would not possibly have the time to pursue both.
However, she could find no other solution to her situation. Although her prospects were poor, she could wed, but previous Seasons had proven that it was difficult to find a husband who would take her with such a pittance of a dowry, much less respect her inclination of being a bluestocking. A governess would be a means to survive, and although the position was hardly ideal, it was better than being destitute.
She should like to be a poet, but even if she were to find some publisher interested in her work, Clarissa knew that her poems would not be published at once. Money would not arrive for some time. How would she sustain herself in the meantime? And suppose that the poems did not sell at all?
Clarissa was unsure if she could bear the shame of having poured her entire being, heart and soul, into her poems only to have London’s readership find them lacking.
“If you would spend more time trying to find a proper suitor and less time writing, you might very well be wed already,” Clarissa’s mother said. “It does not suit a lady to write anyway, especially not one who is in a situation as financially precarious as yours is.”
As Lady Bentley leaned closer, Clarissa covertly shut the cover of the book. Despite her desires to become a renowned poet, Clarissa did not want anyone to see her writings before they were finished. She especially did not wish for her mother to see them; undoubtedly, Lady Bentley would respond scathingly to their contents. Clarissa could not imagine that her mother had a fondness for poetry, much less her own daughter’s.
“Many great women have been exemplary writers,” Clarissa said.
“I would not say that you are a great woman,” Lady Bentley said. “Great women have money, power, and influence.”
Clarissa tried not to show how badly that hurt, but something must have shown on her face, for Lady Bentley’s expression softened just a little.
“I should not have said that,” her mother said. “At least, not so abruptly. I know that you feel this situation your father has put us in is unjust. Early in our marriage, it became quite apparent that I had wed a wastrel, but still, I had no idea the extent of your father’s carelessness.”
Only her father’s solicitor had known the true extent of the late Lord Bentley’s carelessness. Clarissa still remembered all too well the sympathetic look on Mr. Summer’s face when he delivered the news that the family was nearly destitute.
Even after all the creditors were appeased and a significant portion of the family’s wealth sold, Lady Bentley and Clarissa still found themselves scarcely able to survive, much less capable of maintaining the life expected of the Ton.
Clarissa suspected that she did not even know the true extent of her father’s debts, as after the first meeting with Mr. Summer, her mother had insisted on meeting with the solicitor unaccompanied.
“You have a duty to marry well,” her mother said. “You must try, at least. I will not have you sitting here all night and doing nothing.”
My writing is not nothing, Clarissa thought.
She remained silent, though. There was no point in trying to persuade her mother that her poetry had value. She held her pen and book in one hand and slowly rose from her chair. “I will speak with some gentlemen,” she said.
Her mother nodded stiffly, her lips twitching into the faintest smile. “This is your last chance,” she said. “Fortunately, the night is not entirely gone. Why, the Duke of Hartingdale has not even made an appearance yet! He is sure to be here tonight.”
Of course, he would make an appearance. This ball was being thrown by his aunt Lady Matilda, herself a notorious spinster. Clarissa could not help but admire the older woman for making the best of a situation which doomed many to a life of vicious gossip and sad, pitying glances. Lady Matilda sometimes made Clarissa think that spinsterhood would not be so terrible. But Lady Matilda had an enviable inheritance, and Clarissa did not.
Still, even a life of impoverished spinsterhood would be preferable to wedding the Duke of Hartingdale. If she was being fair, Clarissa would admit that His Grace was uncommonly handsome. He was blessed with a chiselled jaw and coal-black hair that fell into his icy blue eyes. The Duke was not especially tall, but his lithe, wiry form was readily apparent even beneath his well-tailored suits.
Several ladies fancied him and spoke highly of his looks. His pleasing appearance hardly compensated for his many flaws, however. His Grace was also a notorious rake, subject to rumours wherever he went.
Fortunately, there is no chance of His Grace even glancing my way, much less being interested in making me one of his lovers.
Clarissa was far too sensible of a woman for that. Still, she knew when there was no point in fighting. It was best to humour her mother. “I shall try and speak to him,” she said. “Perhaps he will agree to a dance.”
If they were to dance, Clarissa would need to find someone to hold her pen and book for her. Clarissa’s eyes darted over the ballroom, searching for her friend Lady Margaret. There were very few people who Clarissa would trust with her poems, and regrettably, the fashionable pink gown Clarissa wore was not a garment which afforded a woman with pockets.
Clarissa trusted that Margaret would keep her poems safe and be kind enough not to read them, but her friend’s patience would likely only remain for two dances. Margaret was also trying to find a suitor, and although she was not yet at the threshold of spinsterhood, Clarissa knew that her friend’s two failed Seasons must weigh heavily upon her heart.
“I have heard that he intends to remain in London after the Season’s end,” Lady Bentley said. “That would provide you with the opportunity to spend more time with him.”
Clarissa nodded, although she could think of little worse than enduring the Duke of Hartingdale’s company. “I suppose it cannot hurt to try.”
She was quite sure that trying was harmless. His Grace did not want a bluestocking, a wallflower, or a woman who refused to be seduced. Clarissa was all three of those things, utterly undesirable to him. He wanted a lady who would fall into his bed. Clarissa did not blame women for wanting to indulge in an amorous congress with His Grace.
She was, after all, a modern woman who had read every word ever penned by Mary Wollstonecraft and Maria Edgeworth. Clarissa understood that women desired love, companionship, and pleasures of the flesh just as men did. However, it seemed to Clarissa that if a rake like His Grace wished to indulge his desires, he would be treated far kindlier than a woman who wished to do the same.
The lady would be disgraced, and the Duke would be called wicked and encouraged by his companions, all of whom delighted in their mistresses and vices.
“There is Lady Matilda,” Clarissa’s mother said, lowering her voice. “She looks anxious, see? I would guess that she is also becoming impatient with His Grace for having not made an appearance already.”
Lady Matilda had moved to the edge of the crowd. From the pink blossoming across the lady’s face, Clarissa guessed that she had until recently danced through several songs. When she stood beside His Grace, the familiar resemblance between aunt and nephew was obvious. They shared the same dark hair and the same blue eyes, but Lady Matilda was a slight creature, as delicate as a daffodil stem.
The illusion was only aided by her blue, pearl-trimmed gown. While most of the ton exuded a calm veneer regardless of circumstance, Lady Matilda was very much the exception. Her every emotion appeared as brightly as sunlight across her fine-boned face. It was as if being consigned to spinsterhood had made her care less about propriety with each passing year.
Her eyes darted about the room, and her brow furrowed. As Clarissa and her mother drew closer, she could see that Lady Matilda bit her lip and fidgeted with the fine skirts of her gown. With a sudden exasperated sigh, Lady Matilda disappeared into the crowd.
“I had hoped we would catch her,” Lady Bentley said. “His Grace is sure to greet his aunt first of all the guests.”
If his rakish friends did not capture his attention first, he might. Clarissa knew that the Duke of Hartingdale and Lady Matilda had a close relationship, but she did not know if it was so strong that he would neglect his libertine companions in favour of his aunt.
