Dukes to Fall in Love With: A Historical Regency Romance Collection

by Bridget Barton

  In the end, Elliot had chosen to have the tower destroyed. He had kept it as a memorial for so long, and yet it had never served its purpose. It was not a place of remembrance, not a place to celebrate the lives of those he had lost. It was a dark place filled with too many anguished, painful memories. As much as his sister had loved the tower, in the end, it had served as a place of fear and pain, and he knew the time had come to let it go.

  Before Isabella’s pregnancy had even begun to show, Elliot had pulled the tower to the ground. He did not want his child to fall in love with the building and to make it their own as his sister had done. He wanted his child to find contentment and fantasy anywhere but there. It had come as a great relief to Isabella when the tower had finally come down, even though there was much sadness attached to the deed itself.

  But it was a sign for her that her husband, the man she loved so dearly, was finally beginning to live his life free from the shadows which had held him so tightly and for so long.

  As Isabella had wandered the house and grounds, growing larger by the day, she had been surprised at how his constant company made every day exciting and new.

  They walked together and spent time in the little walled gardens. They played music together every day, and Elliot’s attempts to teach Isabella to play the violin had not been without their rewards. Isabella had taken to the instrument with ease and spent many hours in happy practice.

  When Catherine had finally been born, it seemed to Isabella that Elliot’s world was now complete. His happiness at the appearance of his baby daughter touched her more than anything had done in her life before. He loved his little girl instantly, taking her everywhere with him.

  As Catherine began to grow and become more inquisitive and mobile, she often stared at her father with adoring eyes and reached out with chubby hands to grasp his cheeks. It made no difference to the infant that her father had scars. It was clear that Catherine, as a baby, had never even noticed. He was her father, and that was that. He was the man who would love and protect her for her entire life.

  It was about that time that Elliot had surprised Isabella by accepting an invitation to a county ball being held by Lord and Lady Tavistock. It was to be a large and lavish affair, and Isabella had thought it would likely be just a little too large and overcrowded for her husband’s liking. She knew that they needed to take things little by little, without pushing.

  “Are you quite sure, Elliot?” Isabella had said when Elliot told her that he had accepted the invitation.

  “I would be a fool not to go out into the world, would I not? When a man has a beautiful wife and daughter who love him and look upon him without fear or disgust, then he has everything in the world that he needs. Believe me; once a man has that, he can do anything.”

  His happy smile and bold assertion had reduced Isabella to tears of pride and happiness on the spot, and Elliot had teased her greatly for it for days afterward. But he had teased her kindly, knowing how much his wife had wanted him to have the life which seemed to have been stolen from him all those years ago. He knew what it meant to her.

  “Yes, I should like another cup of tea, Esme.” As Esme poured the tea, Isabella was drawn back into the present moment.

  “Are Catherine and Kitty still outside?” Isabella said vaguely. “I do hope our child is not wearing Kitty out.”

  “I do not think there is much chance of that, my dear,” Elliot said and laughed as he looked over his shoulder and out of the large French windows onto the terrace beneath. “If anything, I think Kitty would be loath to give up her new responsibilities.”

  “I should say so.” Isabella laughed.

  “I do not know how that dear woman manages to be your personal maid, Isabella, and nurse your child.” Esme shook her head in admiration.

  “It is determination, Esme. It is determination to be a great part of Catherine’s life, and the child was born just minutes before Kitty had offered herself up as the role of nurse. How on earth could I have refused her?”

  “And she is a very good nurse, is she not?”

  “She truly can turn her hand to anything. The fact that she loves Catherine dearly helps.”

  “And her duties as lady’s maid?”

  “As you know, I can already look after myself very well indeed.” Isabella laughed. “And the larger part of Kitty’s duties have always been more as counsellor and companion to me than as a lady’s maid. It is very fluid.”

  “I just hope that Kitty will accept help when the second one is born,” Elliot said, and Isabella drew in her breath sharply.

  “Second one?” Esme said sitting suddenly bolt upright. “Is there something you ought to tell me, Isabella?” Esme’s eyes were already bright and shining; she knew the answer to her own question.

  “I had hoped to tell you myself,” she said casting a mock annoyed glance at her husband who, for his part, looked suitably chagrined.

  “I really am terribly sorry; it just slipped out.” He shrugged.

  “It slipped out because you are just so excited, my dear, are you not?” Isabella laughed and reached for his hand.

  “I am excited, it is true. And this is not the first time that I have forgotten myself, I am afraid.”

  “Let me hazard a guess and say that you have already told Crawford.” Isabella was still laughing.

  “It just happened, my dear.” He shrugged again only with more gusto this time. “And then, of course, I had to hurriedly let him know that he and his lovely new wife were not expected to be godparents to our second child also. I told him that he could relax safe in the knowledge that Esme and Rupert would be…” He winced. “Sorry.”

  “Esme, forgive me. If I had realized that my husband would turn from hermit to social butterfly in a heartbeat, I would have come here today without him. Truly, I had wanted to ask you for myself.”

  “My dear, are you asking me to be godmother to your new child?” Esme was already dabbing at the corner of her eye with a handkerchief.

  “Yes, just that. I should like you and Rupert to be our new child’s godparents when he or she comes into the world. As long as both you and Rupert are agreeable, that is.”

  “We shall be married by then, my dear, and Rupert will be agreeable whether he is agreeable or not.”

  “Dear me, poor old Rupert,” Elliot said and gave Esme a teasing smile. “It is probably best that he does not yet know all that is to come to him.”

  “Quite so, quite so.” Esme nodded slowly and smiled. “After all, I do not want him to run away to Liverpool and take a boat to Ireland before I have even had a chance to marry him.”

  All three of them laughed at the humorous allusion to Isabella’s daring attempt at escape in the weeks before she had been due to marry Elliot.

  “I am teasing you, of course. Dear old Rupert is a very lucky man, and I should never hear it said otherwise,” Elliot said seriously. “And he is due to have a most interesting and fulfilling married life, of that I am certain.”

  “Between your kindness and the knowledge that I am to be a godmother, I am sure that I shall spend the rest of this day in happy tears. Now then, you really must stop it before I wash myself away.”

  As Esme and Elliot continued to chatter happily, Isabella stared out through the French windows to where Kitty was desperately trying to keep up with the faltering but surprisingly speedy steps of baby Catherine.

  She smiled and blinked back a few happy tears of her own. Everything that Isabella had ever wanted in the world was there before her at that moment. She had a loving husband who was kind, amusing, intelligent, and very handsome. She had a beautiful child and another on the way. And to add to it all, Isabella had the promise of her oldest friend at her side for the rest of her life.

  And with Kitty as the mother figure she had never truly known, Isabella knew that her life was complete. Of course, ups and downs would come as they surely did to everybody, but the foundations of her world were the strongest that she could ever have ima
gined, and for that she was truly grateful.

  THE END

  Can't get enough of Isabella and Elliot? Then make sure to check out the Extended Epilogue to find out…

  Will Isabella and Elliot expand their family with kids?

  Will Elliot ever feel comfortable to go out to society?

  What happens to Isabella's vile brother? Is justice in order?

  Click the link or enter it into your browser

  http://bridgetbarton.com/extended

  (Turn the page to read “Kind Ella and the Charming Duke”, my Amazon Best-Selling novel!)

  Kind Ella and the Charming Duke

  Introduction

  Following the death of her beloved father, Ella Winfield is devastated when her mother, a woman with untamed social aspirations, hastily marries the Earl of Dandridge. He is a humorless man, and one whom Ella does not trust for a moment. Leaving her beloved Longton Manor behind, Ella is cast adrift in the large and unwelcoming Dandridge Hall, despite her desperate plea that her mother need not marry at all.

  The Earl's daughters, Lady Patience and Lady Georgiana, are spoiled and manner less young ladies, used to their own way in all things and fiercely competitive with one another. But when the Duke of Hillington is reported to be searching for a suitable bride, the tension between the sisters reaches new heights. With Ella's simple beauty, intelligence, and fine manners, the Earl seeks to hide her away from the world and, more importantly, the Duke of Hillington himself.

  When he determines that Ella not attend a masquerade ball to which the whole family has been invited, Ella takes it upon herself to attend in disguise and spy on the ambitious little family for her own amusement. When she finds herself in anonymous conversation with the Duke himself, she realizes that there is more to him than a man who would seek nothing more than a pretty bride with a large dowry. He is open and amusing and she finds herself quite captivated.

  Rufus Darnley, the Duke of Hillington, cannot shake from his mind the curious and exciting young woman who appeared at his masquerade ball uninvited, and he can no longer find any enthusiasm for his search for a wife with whom he might provide an heir to the Duchy. When he finds the discarded mask of the mysterious woman who left the ball without a word, he holds on to the hope that he might one day discover her true identity.

  As the Earl of Dandridge plots the most appalling schemes to keep the Duke interested in his own daughters, Ella Winfield must do what she can to stop the man she is fast becoming attracted to from being steered in the direction of either Lady Patience or Lady Georgiana, all without being discovered by the family who have, one by one, turned their backs upon her.

  Chapter 1

  “Mama, forgive me, but do you intend to marry Ronald Belville?” Ella Winfield sounded as dejected as she felt.

  “We shall just have to wait and see, my dear.” Ariadne Winfield was trying to dissuade Ella from her questioning, and Ella knew as much.

  “Mama, it is a simple enough question. After all, he has made no secret of his interest in you, and I can see no sign that you have attempted to escape his interest, even though Papa passed away less than a year ago.” Every time Ella alluded to the death of her beloved father, the familiar grief swept over her, weakening her each time.

  “Are you concerned that I would not see out my full period of mourning?” Ariadne looked affronted.

  Ariadne Winfield often looked affronted, especially when her motives were being called into question. And when she was not affronted, the wife of the late Baron Winfield was generally dissatisfied with life and everything in it.

  Ella had always known that her parents’ marriage had certainly not been a match made in heaven, but she had also known that her father would have given anything for it to be so. Her mother, on the other hand, always had the air of a woman who regretted marrying in haste and wished she had waited for a better prospect to come her way.

  But Ariadne had come from much humbler beginnings. The daughter of Sir Robert Addington, she had been forced to work as a governess when her father had died, and the extent of his debts became apparent.

  No longer a gentlewoman, Ariadne had not enjoyed her reduced status. When Lord Winfield, a baron and close friend of the family for whom she was working showed an interest in her, Ariadne had jumped at the chance to rescue herself from a life of obscurity, in a world where she was neither fish nor fowl.

  The young Ariadne Addington had not languished in the lonely life of the governess for more than six months before she agreed to marry Winston Winfield. But it was clear that she had never loved him; he was simply a means to an end. He was the man who would make her a woman of note again, not a gentlewoman fallen on hard times, but Lady Winfield, a baroness.

  Ella had never known if her father had realized it at the time when he had first asked the young governess to marry him, or if he was blinded by his love for her, so much so that he would have taken her on any terms.

  But Ariadne’s dissatisfaction had grown and grown over the years until it had become a tangible thing with what seemed like a life of its own. And it was clear to Ella that her beloved father had noticed it then, even if he had not seen it all those years ago.

  “Well, is that what is upsetting you so?” her mother spoke again when Ella had been silent for some moments.

  “I beg your pardon?” Ella was a little startled by her mother’s sharp tone.

  “You are concerned that I am not going to wait out my one-year period of mourning?”

  “That is not all I am concerned about, Mama,” Ella said, wondering at her mother’s shallow attention to nothing more than what was considered proper. “And just the idea that you are waiting out your twelve months and nothing more is something that I find extremely upsetting. After all, Papa was very much more than a man whose passing should be hurriedly counted away on one’s fingers.”

  “As usual you are being obtuse, my dear,” Ariadne said sharply. “You are not at all practical, Ella, and I feel certain that it will one day be your downfall.”

  “I am practical enough, Mama, when there is a need of it. But I do not need to be practical about the loss of my father. He is more than a few months of mourning to me, even now when he is no longer with us. It pains me that you are not struck in the same way.”

  “You do not know what does or does not strike me, Ella.” Ariadne glared at her, her dark brown eyes glassy and her features seeming to become more pointed than ever.

  It was a tone and countenance which Ella recognized with ease. Ariadne had a vaguely aggressive manner when she could not add anything of worth to an argument and instead sought to put the whole thing to an end.

  But Ella had seen and heard it all before and was not fooled by any of it. And she knew exactly what did and did not strike her mother, even if Ariadne herself seemed so sure that she did not.

  “Mama, the Earl of Dandridge does not have a reputation as a good man.” Ella was not about to let it go. “He is not spoken of warmly in society.”

  “Men of power and wealth seldom are my dear. It is just the way of the world, and you will one day come to recognize the petty jealousies of others,” Ariadne said in a condescending way as she treated her daughter to a smile which suggested she was simply tolerating her daughter’s ignorance of the way of things.

  “So, you think that people only talk ill of him because they are jealous? That they say that he is a man of no loyalty and short temper simply because he is more wealthy and powerful than they are? All of them, Mama?” Ella spoke incredulously, keen to let her mother know that she was not as naive in such matters as she had been accused. “Or do you perhaps hear and see what it is you wish to hear and see, Mama?”

  “I have seen nothing in Ronald Bellville’s character which would make me suspect that he is anything other than a good man,” Ariadne said defiantly.

  “I think you are just determined to see him so, Mama.”

  “And why is that? Why would I be so determined to see him as a good man if
he is not?”

  “Because I believe that you wish to marry him, Mama.”

  “And why would I wish to marry a man if I did not truly think him good?”

  “I do not know,” Ella said although the truth of the matter was that she did know.

  But, at that moment, Ella could not imagine how it was she would say to her mother outright that she believed her a title hunter, an ambitious woman with little or no regard for the memory of her very fine husband and the welfare and happiness of her own daughter. For that was exactly how Ella saw it, and she knew, deep down, that it was the truth.

  Ella was not a naive young woman, far from it. She had a keen intellect and was an extraordinarily good judge of character. These were things that she thanked her father for, blessings which he had passed down to her, she was sure.