The Day of the Duchess (Scandal & Scoundrel, #3)

by Sarah MacLean

She’d left him two years, seven months ago, exactly. Malcolm Marcus Bevingstoke, Duke of Haven, looked to the tiny wooden calendar wheels inlaid into the blotter on his desk in his private office above the House of Lords. August the nineteenth, 1836. The last day of the parliamentary session, filled with pomp and idle. And lingering memory. He spun the wheel with the six embossed upon it. Five. Four. He took a deep breath. Get out. He heard his own words, cold and angry with betrayal, echoing with quiet menace. Don’t ever return. He touched the wheel again. August became July. May. March. January the nineteenth, 1834. The day she left. His fingers moved without thought, finding comfort in the familiar click of the wheels. April the seventeenth, 1833. The way I feel about you . . . Her words now—soft and full of temptation. I’ve never felt anything like this. He hadn’t, either. As though light and breath and hope had flooded the room, filling all the dark spaces. Filling his lungs and heart. And all because of her. Until he’d discovered the truth. The truth, which had mattered so much until it hadn’t mattered at all. Where had she gone? The clock in the corner of the room ticked and tocked, counting the seconds until Haven was due in his seat in the hallowed main chamber of the House of Lords, where men of higher purpose and passion had sat before him for generations. His fingers played the little calendar like a virtuoso, as though they’d done this dance a hundred times be...