Page 1 of The Duke and the Darkness

Chapter One

London

May 1817

Devlin Raines, Dukeof Dartmoor, watched the dealer turn over the last card. An ace. He bit back a curse as the dealer scooped up the coins and kept them for the club.

Luck was not on his side tonight.

With a grimace, he stood, excused himself before another hand could be dealt, and made his way through the crowded game room toward the bar.

Good Lord, he was having a terrible night at the tables. If he were a superstitious man, he’d say that fate was out to get him.

Not just tonight, either. For the past few weeks, he couldn’t buy a win at cards, and the losses were starting to add up. Worse, they were damnably embarrassing, and he had a reputation as a gambler to uphold, even here at Barton’s where they let in any man as long as he had enough money to back his bets and any woman as long as she was beautiful.

That was what he liked best about this particular hell. Here, no one cared about titles or family histories, or that he’d spent years working as a mercenary before becoming a duke.

Here, he could simply be himself.

He needed that. Especially tonight.

Before arriving here, he’d detoured to Seven Dials to speak to two men he knew there from the days of his father’s criminal enterprise, when the old Duke of Dartmoor had been involved in all kinds of illegal businesses from smuggling to child prostitution. Devlin had put an end to all that ten years ago, but ever since, he had remained on guard in case any part of what his father had created managed to crawl its way back into the light. His contacts told him that a new criminal ring had formed in London’s underworld, one that had nothing to do with his dead father.

Devlin wasn’t so certain. A lingering unease ached down in his bones, the same way old sailors felt approaching storms.

He prayed he was wrong.

“Cognac,” he ordered, then selected two cigars from the box on the bar. He slipped one into his breast pocket for later and lit the other on the silver brazier at his elbow.

He puffed at the cheroot and watched as the smoke curled slowly upward. His mother and sisters didn’t like it when he spent all night at the clubs, preferring to have him at home with them. A chagrinned smile tugged at his lips. They would have suffered apoplexy if they knew he came here instead of going to one of the more respectable places in St James’s. But he couldn’t find proper escape in those clubs the way he could here, where he could lose himself in the middle of a packed, noisy room.

It was the same reason, all those years ago, that he’d studied fighting at Eton under Anthony Titus,maître d’armes. During the rigors of training and the bouts of fencing, he had been able to lose himself, if just for a few hours. Only later did he come to realize that what Titus was teaching him wasn’t how to fight but how to remain in control.

Devlin had learned to take his solace wherever he could, including on nights like this. Especially since he’d soon have to give them up completely in favor of Lady Catherine Carlow,daughter of the Earl of Northrop. The woman he’d decided to marry.

The attendant set a glass of cognac in front of him. Devlin held the glass up to the light to check the golden color, swirled it, then lowered his nose for a long inhalation, all before taking a sip. Notes of jasmine, vanilla, earthy black truffle…Perfect.

He doubted Lady Catherine would ever understand how a glass of cognac in the middle of a crowded hell could calm him the way few other things could. But she would be polite enough to pretend to.

Pretense.Duty. Eventually perhaps affection. Above all, turning a blind eye…He grimaced into his glass. The makings of every good society marriage.

Nothing had been publicly announced yet because the marriage settlement was still being hammered out by family attorneys on both sides. But he’d offered, she’d accepted, and he expected to officially announce the engagement by month’s end. Well-educated and proper with an appreciation of the arts and no concerns about his military past, Catherine was charming and pretty, and they bumped along well. Oh, there was no love between them, but that didn’t bother him. Theirs would be a marriage tempered by tolerance, friendship, and a sense of shared obligation.

Still, Devlin didn’t think she would appreciate a husband who spent his nights at places like Barton’s. She expected a good husband and father to their children, and he planned to be that.

The exact opposite of his own father in every way.

But he wasn’t leg-shackled yet, so he returned to the tables. Dawn still lingered hours away, and several thousands of pounds remained to be wagered. He sat and tapped the table to be dealt the next hand.

A woman slipped gracefully onto the chair next to his, then tossed a couple of coins to the dealer with a flick of her slender wrist.

Devlin slid his gaze over her—and caught his breath.Sweet Lucifer, she was striking.

He thought he knew all the women at Barton’s, but he certainly didn’t recognize this one. Not with that chestnut hair piled on top of her head in loosely pinned curls, not with those dark blue eyes and creamy skin that looked as smooth as marble. Yet something about her struck him as familiar.

Impossible.She’d never been here before, he was certain, and he would have remembered meeting a woman like her at one of those tedious society soirees his mother forced him to attend.You are Dartmoor,she always told him,and it is expected…So he went just to please his mother, even if he hated every minute.

No, this woman didn’t belong in gilded drawing rooms with their tame entertainments, at stuffy balls with their regimentation, or at boring ladies’ garden clubs. One look at her proved that. With an aura of confidence surrounding her like fine perfume, she belonged right here. Barton’s was one of the few places in London that welcomed women through its doors and at its tables, where uniformed attendants brought glasses of liquor to the ladies as well as the men, and where it was accepted that no one inside need fear for their reputation. The hell belonged to the underbelly of London society, an exclusive club whose name everyone in thetonknew but which no one would ever dare admit to having entered, where gentlemen and ladies mixed with courtesans and high-end prostitutes of both sexes.