The Tattooed Duke Read Free

mess with the mortgaged estates, rampant debt, rebellious tenants, etc, etc.
    Bastards.
    The maid kept dusting—had it not been done in years?—moving on now toward his desk. Being bored and women-starved, Wycliff freely ogled her bottom and the hourglass shape of her hips. Her eyes, though—he wished to see her eyes. A man could tell so much about a woman by her eyes.
    “But you must take a wife, if only for the fortune,” Basil continued, and Wycliff did not disagree with him. “First, you’ll need to cut your hair, visit Saville Row for proper attire—”
    Wycliff wore plain buckskin breeches and a shirt that was open at the collar and rolled at the sleeves. His boots had carried him through Africa, pounded the decks of dozens of ships, waded through swamps and seas alike. Frankly, his clothing looked like it had suffered all that and worse.
    “I thought it was enough to be a duke,” he interrupted rudely.
    “Sometimes it is,” Basil replied. “But if you are desperate . . .”
    “I am not desperate.”
    In fact, he had no intention of shackling himself. He had other plans for his time in England—namely, to plan and seek funding for the expedition of a lifetime, before he set sail once more. But Basil would not accept this, so he didn’t even bother to try to persuade his cousin otherwise. Instead he allowed him to carry on.
    “Well you ought to find a wife,” Basil said. “I’d be delighted to assist you, introduce you around, etcetera.”
    If he was planning to take a wife, Wycliff mused, telling his idiot cousin would be the first mistake. That was the path to matchmaking disasters and other high society atrocities.
    “Thank you, cousin. So very kind of you.”
    And with that Basil slurped one last sip of tea, set down the cup, and stood to go. Finally, this visit would be over and he could get on with reacclimating himself to his native country. Beginning with the brothels.
    Basil ambled through the study, slowing as he neared the desk. Wycliff swore under his breath.
    “Don’t look,” Wycliff muttered. Basil looked. Of course he looked.
    “I say, are those drawings of your travels?” his cousin exclaimed. He then took the liberty of lifting one up for a better view.
    “Blimey, cousin! What the devil—” Basil’s eyes nearly bugged out of his head.
    It was a portrait of a girl named Miri; she had graciously allowed him to draw her, including the tattoos that covered her hands, which were clutching her full, luscious breasts. She was laughing in the picture, and he couldn’t recall why; he would never know now, unless he sailed back to ask her.
    He ignored a pang of longing, like homesickness.
    “Tattooing,” Wycliff explained. “It’s a Tahitian custom that involves sharp bone tapping ink under the skin. It takes days. It’s excruciating—” He stopped when Basil’s skin adopted a greenish hue, matching his waistcoat.
    The maid was angling for a look at the drawing, too, and he grinned, and allowed her to see. He watched her eyes widen and look up to him, searching for answers.
    The look knocked the smile off his face and kicked his breath away. Blue. Her eyes were gray-blue like the ocean, where he longed to be.
    “I suppose one would expect such customs from the savages,” said the idiot cousin. Wycliff rolled his eyes.
    “They’re not savages, Basil, they are people who happen to live by a different set of cultural practices,” he lectured.
    “Of course, given your travels you may have a different perspective, but really, no one on earth surpasses the British,” Basil replied, rifling through more sheets.
    Of someone else’s private property. Idiot. Cousin.
    The maid bit her lip. She wanted to speak, and Wycliff was very intrigued.
    “Well that one is quite a stunner,” Basil said, referring to a watercolor of Orama, a lovely woman with soft lips and a warm embrace, who had allowed him to sketch her nude form as she rose like Aphrodite from the ocean with the