Regency Historical Romance Books

“Your Grace,” she said, quietly. “Did you have a good dinner?”
“What are you doing here?” He frowned, ignoring her question. “This is hardly proper, Miss Mackenzie. If you wished to speak with me, you should have waited until morning.”
The blatant deception fanned the flames of Maggie’s fury.
“I have no wish to speak with you at all,” she cried. “Nor to be near you in any way. Yet here I am. Commanded once again. Summoned once again.”
She felt herself begin to shake. “I tell you, it ends now. I will not stand it. No matter what you believe I am. I will not be that to you, Lance Carlisle.” She called him by the name she had known him by in her childhood. When she had believed him a prince. “Your uncle may have used me as he liked, but I will not be used again.”
She could hear herself, practically shouting now. Any footman passing by in the hall would hear.
Well, let them.
In the heat of her words, her arms had fallen to her sides. Her hands were clenched now, her fingernails biting sharply into her palms. She gasped, looking down, to see traces of blood from small half-moon indentations.
The duke was looking at her, his mouth partly open. The cravat he had been undoing, hung untied around his neck. Now he snatched it off with one hand, as he looked at her bloodied hands.
“Maggie,” he said, his voice low. “What are you talking about? What have you done? I did not ask you here. Will you not talk sense and tell me what has happened?”
She watched him take a deep breath. “I do not know how to convince you of this, but I only wish to help. That is the God’s honest truth of it, Maggie. I have no wish to harm you.”
“You called me here, to your room. You told her you wanted me,” Maggie whispered. There was a tinge of doubt in her voice now. Could he hear it?
She watched his face change, harden with anger. Against her?”
― Fenna Edgewood, A Duke for All Seasons