Forever Her Duke (Dukes Most Wanted #1)

by Scarlett Scott

The duke? Her husband, the duke? The man she hadn’t seen in a year? The man whom she had loved since she’d been but a girl meeting her older brother Percy’s school chum for the first time?

Court had left the morning after their wedding day, bidding her farewell when she had only just returned from a morning ride, and as far as she knew, he had yet to come back to England.

She was inside the house.

I don’t think we’d called a ducal residence a house.

she would have given anything to keep her husband at her side. How she had needed him in those early days, Percy’s death still so fresh, his absence in her life a wound that still had yet to heal. And how Court’s leaving had torn her apart,

Court stood in the hall of his own country seat for the first time in too damned long, feeling like a bloody intruder as he stared at the woman before him.

that the tearful bride he had left behind had turned into a formidable woman whilst he had been gone.

Her foolish, unrequited love for Court had been extinguished by his absence.

trying not to think of her husband or the rumored antics that had crushed her heart anew when the gossip had reached her.

She was his wife, whom he had hurt.

But she was different now. She had blossomed into an elegant duchess who looked at him with knives in her eyes and spoke to him with ice in her heart.

Was that how she saw the time he had spent away from England? That he had abandoned her?

Before I was subject to all the stories of your womanizing ways on the Continent.” He hadn’t womanized. He had been faithful during his absence and his travels.

Everything has changed. I’ve changed. I’m no longer the foolish girl who fancied you a hero.”

Do you think I wanted a husband who ran away from me the second we were wed? Do you think I wished to be pitied and scorned whilst everyone laughed behind my back as the papers reported your exploits?”

He wondered just how bad the gossip had been.

But even as she told herself she couldn’t surrender, she was softening, her hands finding purchase in his coat, and she grasped his lapels, holding him tightly.

Ugh

She clung to what he had told her before he had left that awful morning. I’ve made a mistake.

“You made it clear before you left that you regretted marrying me. And you made it even clearer with your absence and your actions abroad.”

“You cannot abandon me after telling me that you made a mistake in marrying me and then reappear in the great hall a year later, telling me that you are my husband. You cannot touch me or kiss me or look at me as you are now.”

At least she’s standing up for herself a little bit.

“You intend to humiliate me before my guests?” she demanded, her

He smiled grimly. “I’ve never shied from a challenge, Vivi. Not once.” She couldn’t contain her reaction to his claim. “Yes,” she said bitterly, “you have.”

So much for loyalty and sisterhood, she thought grimly.

Her irate father had been the one to discover them the next morning, and marriage had been their sole recourse. A marriage he had not wanted, a fact which Court had made more than apparent when he had left her.

“You’ll have to resign yourself to the fact that I intend to assert my husbandly rights at some point, Vivi.”

So he plans to rape her if she doesn’t want him in her bed?

“I mean to woo you. To court you. To seduce you. To do everything I should have done a year ago.”

Interesting how “apologize” or “admit I was wrong” is nowhere on his list of things to do.

Court nodded grimly. “I did. But my loyalty was to Percy rather than my own desires. I vowed to him that I would leave you alone, Vivi, and then I broke that vow and I hated myself. But

Grow up. Don’t blame a dead guy.

“But you left me. You left me for a year, with no explanation, no hope of your return, no reason you had gone. You told me our marriage was a mistake.”

“I’m sorry,” he told her, regret lacing his voice. “Sorrier than you’ll ever know.” “It’s not enough.”

Good. He’s too selfish to think he can just waltz back I to her life like he didn’t destroy it.

“I was trying to speak with her,” he acknowledged

No, he was just trying to make himself feel better.

But since you are a friend of my wife’s, you are a friend of mine.” “Given the way you’ve treated her this last year, you are more likely my enemy,” Lady Clementine said tartly. And he didn’t blame her for the opinion.

“I have a plan,” he began, “and I’m wondering if you might be willing to aid me in it…”

I don’t like as it sound like manipulation.

“You,” she said. “Me.” He rose to his feet with effortless masculine grace, offering her an elegant bow. “Good evening, wife.”

Yep, trickery and manipulation.

her dear friend, who had apparently betrayed her.

“For deceiving me and for somehow persuading my dearest friend to abet your lies?”

She wanted to hate him, but she loved him.

But I feel this “love” she has for him is not healthy. She’s so easily controlled by it.

“I hope you enjoyed the picnic, despite the company you were forced to keep,”

More of that manipulation.

“Don’t call me that, if you please,” she said tartly, fidgeting with her skirt as if she could sense the war raging within him. “Sweetheart?” He gave her a look.

This is the second time she’s to,d him not to all her that.he doesn’t have any respect for he boundaries.

He had already explained to her why he had left. Why he had stayed away. Vivi would have to choose whether she could forgive him.

It was a weak explanation and he’s shown no true remorse yet, only scheming and manipulation since she didn’t fall right into his bed.

The answer for Court was yes. It always had been. It forever would be yes. He was hers, the man who owned her heart. Her husband, her lover, her everything.

At this point shen their story and her life this does not sound healthy. More toxic.

“I missed us.”

You never got to the “us” part.

“I told myself that I owed him a year. A proper year of mourning.” Percy.

To the detriment of your wife and marriage. He was a widow ruled by society’s standards. That he let a dead men rule so much( of his life shows how weak he was/is. She deserves better.

trying not to allow herself to think of him or long for him, to remember the day they’d wed, when she’d still been foolish enough to hope their marriage could be happy,

“We did everything wrong, didn’t we?”

Rather heartbreaking.

“Not everything, Vivi.” His hand shifted, gliding higher, moving above her garters and setting her alight. “We married each other.”

“Was marrying each other the right thing to do?”

A mistake.

“And yet, you continued on with your travels,” she couldn’t help but point out, for despite their proximity and the desire for him that made her so very vulnerable, the anguish of the last year remained, bitter and dark inside her heart.

The first brush of his fingers over her

I’m not engaged in this ex scene at all unfortunately.

promise not to do anything you don’t want.”

But you have in this whole scene.

“My steward wrote that you renovated the old bathing room here,” he said, seeking to prolong his time in her presence.

More manipulation when she has asked and to,d him to leave multiple times.