# Read the first page of Wicked and the Wallflower by Sarah MacLean Read the opening of Wicked and the Wallflower by Sarah MacLean free, no signup. A wallflower bargains with a ruthless bastard to snare a duke. - Page: https://uncovered.ink/read/wicked-and-the-wallflower-sarah-maclean - Genre: Romance - Year: 2018 - ISBN: 9780062691972 - Read it blind (cover and title hidden): https://uncovered.ink/?b=9780062691972&s=read-page - Buy: https://bookshop.org/a/125786/9780062691972 - Borrow: https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=9780062691972 ## The opening The three were woven together long before they were aware, strands of spun, silken steel that could not be separated—not even when their fate insisted upon it. Brothers, born on the same day, in the same hour, at the same minute to different women. The high-priced courtesan. The seamstress. The soldier's widow. Born on the same day, in the same hour, at the same minute to the same man. The duke, their father, whose arrogance and cruelty fate would punish without hesitation, stealing from him the only thing he wanted that his money and power could not buy—an heir. It is the Ides of March the seers warn of, with its promise of betrayal and vengeance, of shifting fortune and inalienable providence. But for this sire—who was never more than that, never close to father—it was the Ides of June that would be his ruin. Because on that same day, in that same hour, at that same minute, there was a fourth child, born to a fourth woman. To a duchess. And it was this birth—the birth all the world thought legitimate—that the duke attended, even as he knew the son who was to be his heir in name and fortune and future was not his own and still, somehow, was his only hope. Except she was a daughter. And with her first breath, she thieved future from them all, as powerful in her infancy as she would become in her womanhood. But hers is a story for another time. This story begins with the boys. The Devil stood outside Marwick House, under the black shadow of an ancient elm, watching his bastard brother within. Flickering candles and mottled glass distorted the revelers in the ballroom beyond, turning the throngs of people within—aristocrats and moneyed gentry—into a mass of indiscernible movement, reminding Devil of the tide of the Thames, ebbing and flowing and slick with color and stink. Faceless bodies—men dark with formal dress and women gleaming light in their silks and satins—ran together, barely able to move for the craning necks and flapping fans waving gossip and speculation through the stagnant ballroom air. And at their center, the man they were desperate to see—the hermit Duke of Marwick, shining bright and new, despite having held the title since his father had died. Since their father had died. No. Not father. Sire. And the new duke, young and handsome, returned like London’s prodigal son—a head taller than the rest of the assembly, fair-haired and stone-faced, with the amber eyes the Dukes of Marwick had boasted for generations. Able-bodied and unwed and everything the aristocracy wished him to be. And nothing the aristocracy believed him to be. Devil could imagine the ignorant whispers running riot through the ballroom. Why should a man of such prominence play the hermit? Who cares, as long as he’s a duke? Do you think the rumors are true? Who cares, as long as he’s a duke? Why hasn’t he ever come to town? Who cares, as long as he’s a duke? What if he’s as mad as they say? Who cares, as long as he’s a duke? I hear he is in the market for an heir. It was the last that had summoned Devil from the darkness. There had been a deal, made twenty years earlier, when they were three brothers in arms. And though much had happened since that deal had been forged, one thing remained sacrosanct: no one reneged on a deal with Devil. Not without punishment. And so, Devil waited with infinite patience in the gardens of the London residence of generations of Dukes of Marwick for the third in the deal to arrive. It had been decades since he and his brother, Whit—together known in London’s nefarious corners as the Bareknuckle Bastards—had seen the duke. Decades since they’d escaped the country seat of the dukedom in the dead of night, leaving secrets and sins behind, to build their own kingdom of secrets and sins of a different sort. ## Books with a similar feel - [The Devil in Winter by Lisa Kleypas](https://uncovered.ink/read/the-devil-in-winter-lisa-kleypas.md) - [Negotiating Health Care by Sally E. Thorne](https://uncovered.ink/read/negotiating-health-care-sally-e-thorne.md) - [Too Hot to Handle by Tessa Bailey](https://uncovered.ink/read/too-hot-to-handle-tessa-bailey.md) - [The Best of Me by Nicholas Sparks](https://uncovered.ink/read/the-best-of-me-nicholas-sparks.md) - [Angelika Frankenstein Makes Her Match by Sally Thorne](https://uncovered.ink/read/angelika-frankenstein-makes-her-match-sally-thorne.md) - [Sheltering Rain by Jojo Moyes](https://uncovered.ink/read/sheltering-rain-jojo-moyes.md) --- Source: Uncovered (https://uncovered.ink). A short sample shown for reading and discovery. Rights holders can request removal at https://uncovered.ink/takedown.