THE DIAMOND AND THE DUKE Excerpt
His arms clasped behind him, the duke paced back and forth before the hearth.
Never before had she seen him in such a state . . . which was saying a good deal, as she’d seen him many ways these past years: Stunned when his daughter had been caught in a compromising position with Ellie’s brother Courtland. Terrified and pacing in a similar way when Cailin had been giving birth to her first babe.
Even that day, with the lines at the corners of his mouth tense, and his skin pale, he’d not looked as he did now.
Just then, the Duchess of Bentley slid into her husband’s path, cutting off his stride. The devoted couple exchanged quiet words.
Periodically, they nodded. His throat muscles moved, and his eyes gleamed, and the sight of that suffering . . . a portend of what was to come any moment when Wesley Audley finally entered the household, was too much.
Ellie wrenched her gaze away, stealing a peek at the clock atop the mantel.
“How are you reading right now?” Lottie said in hushed tones to their eldest sister.
“I need a distraction,” Hattie said defensively, drawing her book close against her chest.
“A distraction?” Lottie whispered furiously. “A distraction? How can you think of being distracted? They said he is scarred beyond measure. Terribly injured, and you are somehow not worried about seeing him?”
Terribly injured. Scarred beyond measure . . .
Ellie’s mind balked and recoiled as she forced herself to retreat from that quarrel, which painted an image she didn’t want of Wesley Audley.
Because she preferred to remember him as he’d been years ago: powerful and laughing and wholly intact. She didn’t want to think of him changed and broken and hurting—
Ellie sucked in a deep, shaky breath and looked over to where Courtland stood at the window, with Cailin beside him. The devoted, loving couple stared outside.
“. . . what harm is there in me reading a book while we wait . . .” Hattie was arguing.
“I swear sometimes I wonder that I’m not the older sister,” Lottie muttered, with a toss of her curls.
Hattie and Ellie exchanged a look. They might be different in many ways, but they were united in their opinion that since Lottie had a successful Season, and a quick marriage to one of London’s most sought-after noblemen, she’d be- come somewhat unbearable.
“Now, do put that away,” Lottie advised Hattie.
“I won’t, and I certain as Sunday won’t take orders from my little sister.”
Lottie gasped.
“Please,” the Duchess of Bentley interjected. “There is no harm in Hattie reading.”
As her sisters stopped their bickering and silence fell once more, Ellie climbed to her feet and joined Courtland. An anxious Courtland, whose gaze remained fixed on his wife, Cailin. Of course, devoted and loving husband that he was, the center of Courtland’s focus wasn’t his brother- in-law, Captain Audley’s, impending return, but rather,
Courtland’s wife, the captain’s sister.
As if he finally felt Ellie’s presence, Courtland glanced over.
Worry remained etched in every line of his troubled face.
“Ellie,” he greeted absently. “You didn’t have to come today.”
He’d say she hadn’t had to come because he still thought her a child. They all did.
Courtland continued. “It’s not too late if you’d rather—”
She cut him off. “I know I don’t have to be here, Court- land. I want to.”
Because to every member of her family, Ellie was still a small child, no different from her young nephew of two years, who had to be protected. Ellie hadn’t made her Come Out yet, and she suspected even when she did make her entrance before Polite Society that treatment of her would not change.
“What have you heard?” she asked in hushed tones. She felt her brother hesitate.
Courtland stole a glance in his wife’s direction, and when he returned his attention to Ellie, he spoke in hushed tones Ellie struggled to hear. “They say he was speared with a saber in his right shoulder, and his left leg, it was mangled quite badly.”
A pang struck. His rapier fighting arm, as he’d called it those handful of summers ago. That same arm he’d waved about so adroitly as he’d instructed Ellie on the proper way to really handle a sabre and—
Her heart cracked open.
“I . . . fear the duke is being optimistic in the welcoming he’s planned,” Courtland murmured.
As in, the duke hadn’t allowed himself to think about the possibility that his son had been severely hurt. In his mind, he saw Wesley returning the same way Ellie had painted that return in her own mind.
Courtland tensed. “He is here,” he called out. Ellie stiffened.
Tension whipped around the parlor as everyone went motionless.
She managed to slide her gaze over to the window and her heart thumped.
Sure enough, a carriage had come to a stop at the front of the duke’s household. Crimson-clad servants had already begun streaming from inside, rushing to meet Wesley.
Almost simultaneously, everyone found their feet. The duke led the charge, with the duchess flying fast beside him, impressively keeping up with her taller husband.
Courtland hurried to catch Cailin, and the two of them set off after the welcoming party streaming from the room. Gathering her white skirts, Ellie lifted her hem a fraction and rushed to join the family in the foyer.
She took a position at the last place in the line, alongside Lottie.
Lottie clutched her flowers for Wesley Audley close to her stomach and stretched on tiptoes to catch a glimpse of him through the door.
Ellie’s chest tightened, and she reminded herself to breathe even and easily.
And then . . . he was there.
Only, he was there as she’d not expected.
For in all her imaginings of his return, she’d never imagined him being carried on a litter by several servants.
Thwack . . .
Dumbly, Ellie glanced away from Wesley’s prone form to the flowers her sister had dropped.
Lottie swayed.
Or was that Ellie?
Courtland rushed to catch Lottie by the arm, to keep her on her feet, so it must be Ellie’s elder sister.
Ellie’s legs knocked together.
The duchess sobbed softly, and then caught that errant sound of grief and despair in her fist.
All the while, Ellie stood motionless. Her breath came harsh and fast in her ears as she stared at Wesley.
Wesley remained motionless, his eyes shut, and his cheeks covered in a thick growth. But for the lowest, faintest groan to filter from his lips, he remained utterly silent.
What did you think? That he would walk through the doorway?
And yet, oddly, she realized that was precisely what she’d thought. For in her mind, Wesley was indomitable, possessed of a strength and power of the legendary gods, and as such, when she’d played out his return, he’d always been walking. He’d have moved with a swagger. In that romanticized dream of his return, he’d even sported a dashing scar down his cheek which would have only leant to his masculine beauty.
The servants carrying Wesley’s litter paused near Ellie and adjusted their hold on the handles.
Suddenly, Wesley’s eyes opened. Ellie froze, her gaze locked with his. Hunted.
Haunted.
He was a man who was both. As a young girl who’d been both of those herself, she recognized those emotions even within his pain-filled eyes.
“Hullo,” she said, her voice so faint she wasn’t sure if she’d actually spoken that greeting.
He glared at her; the coldness in that agonized gaze knocked her back on her heels, and she automatically took a step backward to escape it.
Suddenly, he spoke, his voice a harsh, angry rasp. “Leave me alone.”
And a vicious pain racked her heart.
The servants carrying Wesley froze and looked desperately at the Duke of Bentley for direction.
“I said, leave me alone!” Wesley thundered. “All of you, just let me be.” He thrashed his head back and forth, shouting, cursing, and Ellie proved a coward, because she re- treated several steps.
What did you think? That upon seeing you, he would have hopped to his feet and recognized you as the woman who’d written him, and be miraculously cured?
But then Wesley closed his eyes once more and ceased his shouting and cursing. There was a flurry of motion as servants rushed forward, and an officious-looking man with wire-rimmed spectacles hurried along behind, and Wesley, once strong, powerful, indomitable, and smiling Wesley, was carried above stairs.
When he’d gone, she and their families remained locked in silence broken only by the weeping of the duchess and Wesley’s sister.
Ellie hugged her arms tight.
What if you’d continued writing . . . What if you were the one to pull back home, and in so doing, distract his attentions from where they truly belonged—on fighting?
Bile climbed her throat, and her breathing grew ragged. In both writing those letters, and then not writing them,
Ellie had wronged him.
And there could be no undoing what she’d done. Ever.
Excerpted from The Diamond and the Duke by Christi Caldwell Copyright © 2024 by Christi Caldwell. Excerpted by permission of Berkley. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
THE DIAMOND AND THE DUKE by Christi Caldwell
When a wounded soldier and self-proclaimed “beast” finds unlikely friendship with a headstrong and unconventional beauty, they quickly find themselves weaving a tale as old as time…
Despite a hero’s return to England from the Napoleonic Wars, Wesley Audley isolates from the ton. Deep wounds from the horrors of combat—and the despair of a broken heart—left him scarred. As he struggles to cope and resume his place in Polite Society, Wesley is quick to cut himself off from everyone…except for Ellie Balfour.
Independent and strong-willed, Ellie has dreams of captaining her own husband-free life and a penchant for meddling in other’s business. She knows befriending Wesley is a risk but Ellie can’t bear to see his heartache. Nor can she seem to silence all the temptingly intimate thoughts his nearness provokes.
But Ellie is yet to face a battle she can’t win—and Wesley’s heart is worth the fight. If only her campaigns ever went to plan…
Romance Historical [Berkley, On Sale: February 27, 2024, Mass Market Paperback / e-Book, ISBN: 9780593334959 / eISBN: 9780593334966]
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About Christi Caldwell
Christi Caldwell is the USA Today bestselling author of the Sinful Brides Series and the Heart of a Duke Series. She blames novelist Judith McNaught for luring her into the world of historical romance. She enjoys torturing her couples before they earn their well-deserved happily ever after. Originally from Southern Connecticut, Christi now resides in North Carolina, where she spends her time writing and being a mommy to an energetic little boy and mischievous twin girls who offer an endless source of story ideas.
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