Read an Excerpt From Sarah MacLean's Steamy New Romance "The Day of the Duchess"
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This summer, romance author Sarah MacLean continues her excellent Scandal & Scoundrel series with The Day of the Duchess, out June 27. The Day of the Duchess follows Seraphina, Duchess of Haven, as she returns to London to obtain a divorce from her estranged husband, Malcolm Bevingstoke, Duke of Haven. (If you read The Rogue Not Taken, you'll remember Malcolm as the guy that Seraphina's sister Sophie pushed into the fish pond.) Unfortunately for Seraphina, divorces aren't exactly easy to obtain in 1836 England, so she'll have to get creative.
Though The Day of the Duchess is set in the 19th century, Sarah looked to more contemporary scandals for inspiration. Jay Z and Solange's elevator fight inspired the aforementioned fish pond incident; for this book, Sarah looked to celebrity couples like Brangelina or Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner, who dealt with splitting up in the midst of rabid public interest in their personal lives. "We look at the headlines and the covers of the magazines and say, 'Oh, I know everything there is to know about Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner,'" Sarah explains. "But we don’t know anything about those people, anything at all!" Read on for a sneak peek at The Day of the Duchess.
He was as handsome as he’d ever been.
Sera didn’t know why she’d expected him to be otherwise — it had been three years, not thirty — but she had. She’d harbored some small, secret dream that he’d be less perfect. Less handsome. Less, full stop.
But Malcolm Bevingstoke — Duke of Haven, her husband and the only man she’d ever loved — wasn’t less. If anything, he was more.
His face more angular, his gaze more consuming, he was even taller than she remembered. And so handsome, even as he came toward her, dressed in ancient parliamentary robes and the inane powdered wig that should have made him look like a child playing at fancy dress and instead made him look a man with a purpose.
Namely, removing her from the floor of the House of Lords.
He parted the similarly garishly appointed members of Parliament like a red velvet sea, encouraged by the hoots and jeers of those assembled aristocrats whose disdain she knew all too well from her former life. Men who could ruin a woman in a heartbeat. Destroy a family and a future. And do it all without thinking twice.
She’d loathed them all, and him the most.
But not for long.
She planned to put the loathing behind her now that she’d returned, ready to forget him. She’d imagined this moment for months, since before she’d returned to Britain, the entire plan designed to infuriate him to the point of agreeing to the dissolution of their marriage. For, if there was anything Haven loathed in the world, it was being played the fool.
He approached, the massive chamber falling away along with the years. She’d been haunted by his eyes. Somehow not brown, not green, not gold, not grey, and somehow all of them at once. Fascinating and full of secrets. The kind of eyes that might steal a woman’s wits if she wasn’t careful.
Sera was careful, now.
Careful, and smart. She resisted the urge to back away from him, simultaneously afraid of what might happen if he touched her, and determined never to cow to him. Never to run from him again.
She was not the woman she had been when she’d left. She was returned with a singular promise to herself; when she left him this time, she would do so with pride. With purpose. With a future.
She had plans. And these men would not stop her.
And so it was that London’s most powerful, assembled for the final day of the parliamentary session, witnessed Seraphina, Duchess of Haven’s winning smile as she faced the duke of the same name for the first time in two years and seven months. Exactly. “Husband.”
Another woman might not have noticed the slight narrowing of his eyes, the barely-there flare of his nose, the nearly imperceptible clenching of his square jaw. But Sera had once spent the better part of a year fascinated by the way this proud, unflappable man revealed himself in the infinitesimal. He was angry. Good.
“Then you remember me.” The words were quiet and sharp. Of course she remembered. No matter how well she tried, she seemed unable to forget.
And she had tried.
She lifted her chin, keenly aware of their audience, and slung her arrow. “Don’t fret, darling. I predict we shan’t need to remember each other for long.”
“You are making a spectacle of yourself.”
She allowed her smile to widen. “You say that as though it is a bad thing.”
One brow rose, superior as ever. “You are making a spectacle of me.”
She did not waver. “You say that as though you do not deserve it.”
She didn’t expect him to reach for her, or she would have been prepared for what came when his fingers wrapped around her elbow, firm and warm and somehow unexpectedly gentle. Would have steeled herself for the assault of too long ago memories.
I’ve never felt anything like this.
She resisted the memory and slid her arm from his grip with a graceful force that he would feel and no one watching would ever notice. The duke had no choice but to let her go, even as he lowered his voice and spoke, the words barely there. “Who are you?”
It was her brow that rose this time. “You do not recognize me?”
“Not this incarnation of you, no.”
Incarnation. It was not the wrong word, for she had been reincarnated. That was what happened to those who died and returned. It had felt like death, just as this morning, in this place, in all its heat and rancid stench made worse by the assembly of pompous masculinity, felt somehow, remarkably, like life once more.
“I could not taste freedom then.”
His lips flattened. Before he could reply, a man shouted from the assembly beyond. “Oi! Haven! The chit’s not allowed on the floor!”
Sera turned to the man. “My Lord Earl, I believe you meant to address me as Duchess.”
The men assembled harrumphed and grumbled as the earl in question — now sporting scarlet ears — spoke to Haven. “Control your female.”
Sera returned her attention to her husband, but did not lower her voice. “It is impressive that he believes you are able to do such a thing.”
Her husband’s eyes narrowed and Sera’s heart began to pound. She recognized the look. An animal, challenged.
Let him come for her. She, too, had teeth.
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