Seduction Regency Style
House of Thorns
The Duke’s Widow
Thief of Broken Hearts
A Rose in Disguise
My Highland Love
A Debt Paid
Seduction of a Widow
Music on the Water
Not Another Nob
How to Catch an Heiress
Seduction Regency Style Copyright © 2020 Scarsdale Publishing
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Contents
House of Thorns
The Duke’s Widow
Thief of Broken Hearts
A Rose in Disguise
My Highland Love
A Debt Paid
Seduction of a Widow
Music on the Waters
Not Another Nob
How to Catch an Heiress
House of Thorns
Jude Knight
Chapter One
Wirral Peninsula, Cheshire, 1816
The intruder stealing his roses had lovely shaped calves.
Bear Gavenor paused at the corner of the house, the better to enjoy the sight. The scraping of wood on stone had drawn him from the warmth of the kitchen, where the only fire in this overgrown cottage kept the unseasonable chill at bay. He had placed each foot carefully and silently, not from planned stealth, but from old habit. The woman perched precariously on the rickety ladder seemed oblivious to his presence.
Or—his sour experiences as a wealthy war hero in London suggested—she knew full well, and her display was for his benefit. Certainly, the sight was having an effect. Her skirt rose as she stretched, showing worn but neat walking boots. Her inadequate jacket molded to curves that dried his mouth. Wind plastered her skirts to lower curves that had him hardening in an instant, visions of plunder screaming into his mind.
It had been too long since his last willing widow.
Disgust at his own weakness as much as irritation at the invasion of his privacy, fueled Bear’s full-throated roar, “Who the hell are you, and what are you doing with my roses?”
She jerked around, then cried out as the rung she stood on snapped free of the upright. Bear lunged toward her as the ladder slid sideways. One upright caught on the tangle of rose branches and the other continued its descent. The woman threw out both hands but the branch she grasped snapped free and—before Bear could throw himself under her—she crashed onto the ground.
If the fall was deliberate—which would not surprise him after some of the things women had done to attract his attention—she had made too good a job of it. She lay still and white in a crumpled heap, her head lying on a corner of a flagstone in the path. He dropped to one knee beside her and slipped a hand into the rich chestnut hair. His fingers came away bloody.
As he ran his hands swiftly over the rest of her body, checking for anything that seemed twisted out of shape or that hurt enough to rouse her, a large drop of rain splashed onto his neck, followed by a spattering of more and then a deluge. He cursed as he lifted the woman and ran into the house through the garden doors that opened from the room he’d chosen for his study.
She was a bare handful, lighter than she should have been for her height, though well-endowed in all the right places. He set her on the sofa and straightened. He needed a doctor.
The drumming of rain on the flagstones suggested neither of them would be going anywhere for a while. Bear couldn’t take her out in this weather, nor could he leave her alone in the empty house.
Pelman, the local agent for the man who had sold him the house he was here to restore and sell, was meant to have hired servants, but had been full of excuses. “People won’t come the distance from the village just for the day,” Pelman had said.
As a consequence, he had an unconscious woman dependent on him for her care, and—if Pelman was to be believed—no one else for at least a mile all around. No gentry, anyway, though he’d seen some farm cottages. He examined her while he pondered the situation.
She was in near rags, neatly mended and clean, but much washed and threadbare. The boots displayed by his careless disposition of her skirts were likewise clean and polished, but worn to holes in the sole.
Step one. Clean the wound so he could see how bad it was.
He found a bowl on a shelf in the kitchen and poured lukewarm water from the kettle into it. He’d been here only long enough to assemble a stew for his supper, which hadn’t begun to boil, and to glance into each room to figure out what space he had available.
The pantry boasted a row of neatly marked jars filled with herbs. Chamomile. That was good for healing. Yes, and here was a pottery tub of calendula paste. A basket on the floor yielded neat squares of linen. An old sheet, perhaps? Washed so thin that the remnants were fit only for cleaning.
She was still unconscious when he returned to the room, her chest rising and falling as she breathed. He put the bowl on a small table near the sofa. With a bit of maneuvering, he managed to drape the lady sideways so he could sit on the edge of the couch and reach the wound on the back of her head.
He dabbed gently at the blood.
Pelman had said Bear would need to resign himself to having servants sleep over. Pelman’s sister was willing to serve as Bear’s housekeeper, starting immediately, if she were permitted to sleep at the cottage. Bear had not met the lady, but was wary of allowing a female under his roof except in the company of others.
His huff of laughter lacked amusement. Despite his rejection of Miss Pelman, he had an unknown female on his hands, and his manservant was not due for several more days, since Jeffries travelled at a speed that avoided strain on Bear’s horses.
Could the woman be Pelman’s sister, come to secure her position? On the whole, he thought not. She looked nothing like the fleshy steward with his receding, dirty-blond hair. Besides, Pelman dressed in the height of fashion, so would surely dress his sister better than this.
His dabbing had started a seep again, but at least he could now see the wound properly. Said female had quite an egg, which had split and bled into her wealth of rich chestnut hair.
She groaned, then suddenly surged away from him to the back of the couch, twisting to shove him as hard as she could.
Chapter Two
A trespasser sat in her little sitting room, and her head hurt. As she slowly regained her wits, Rosabel Neatham shrank against the back of her couch and pushed at the giant who hovered over her.
The giant leapt to his feet and took a step back, his light blue eyes fixed on hers, his thick blond brows drawn together in a glower.
“Get out of my house,” she said without conviction. Some memory tried to break through the headache. Something to do with Pelman, that horrid man.
“You are in my house,” said the giant, looking down his long nose at her.
She
was. Pelman had thrown her and her father out of Rose Cottage, citing the instructions of the new owner. Pelman had found them another place; a shack that kept out most of the wind and the rain. He said he could find them something pleasanter if Rosa could afford to pay. One way or another.
The giant must be the new owner, who had bought Thorne Hall and all its farms and cottages from the nephew of the old baron. The most popular topic of conversation in the village for weeks was what he planned to do with Thorne Hall, with its fire damage and its collapsed wing. “You are not meant to be here yet,” she said. Not her most brilliant remark, but her head felt ready to split in two.
The giant cast his eyes up to the ceiling, as if offering a prayer. Or, more likely, a complaint to some heavenly arbiter of unoriginal comments.
Outside the open doors to the terrace, a bright flash of lightning was followed almost immediately by a rolling peal of thunder. She winced at the noise. Father would be frightened. Since his mind had started to fail, storms disturbed him. Until the accident that confined him to bed, she had to watch him carefully to stop him from wandering into the storm, looking for something he could not articulate.
“I have to go,” she told the giant, but when she put her feet on the floor and tried to stand, the right foot collapsed under her. A stabbing pain made the room swim before her.
The giant caught her before she fell and lowered her to the couch, swinging her feet up and pushing her back onto the cushions. “Is it your head?” he asked.
“My ankle.” With her head and ankle both supported, the pain reduced enough for thought, but she still couldn’t remember the giant’s name.
He stood, looking down at her booted foot, his mouth twisted, his brows drawn together and his eyes somber.
“I need to go home,” she insisted. “My father is confined to bed, and he will be worried.” Not about her, whom he didn’t recognize, but certainly about the storm and about being alone. He had been asleep when she ventured out, but he never slept for long, and she should have been home long since—in the nasty little shack that was all the home she could afford.
“I think, Miss Whoever You Are, that you need to resign yourself to waiting out the storm,” the giant said, his tone cold. “May I suggest that, on future occasions, you remain with your father instead of going off on your own to steal someone else’s roses?”
Rosa flushed. They were his roses. She knew that quite well. However, Father had been asking for roses for two days. When someone in the village mentioned that the rambler at Rose Cottage had flowered even in this cold and blustery weather, so unlike any summer in living memory, she had seen the opportunity to bring him the comfort of the flower he loved.
Rosa sighed. “I am Rosabel Neatham. And I apologize about the roses. I did not know you had arrived yet, Mr.…”
The thick brows lifted, conveying suspicion with an edge of labored patience, but he responded, “Gavenor. At your service, apparently. May I examine your ankle, Miss Neatham? It is Miss Neatham?”
She colored again, the hot blood flooding her cheeks. Yes, it was Miss Neatham, though she was in her thirties. No one had ever seriously courted her, except the loathsome Pelman. Rosa had soon discerned that the arrangement he wanted fell short of marriage.
“Miss,” she confirmed. “Is it… Do you think you need to? I am sure…”
“I am sure you cannot stand on it, Miss Neatham, and someone needs to check that it is not broken. I can do it, or you can do it, for there is no one else in the house.” His bored expression and voice were unaccountably reassuring. Pelman would be salivating at the thought of her baring her stocking foot. The giant—Mr. Gavenor—looked as if he would rather eat rat poison.
Rosa nibbled her upper lip while she thought, but really, she had no choice.
“Very well,” she conceded. Then, since that seemed decidedly ungracious and one of them should show some manners, she added, “Thank you, Mr. Gavenor.”
***
The fairy would be white with pain if her embarrassment hadn’t turned her a deep rose pink. Bear rather enjoyed discomforting her; a small revenge for his own awkwardness. He could manage the ladies of Society well enough. Harpies, the lot of them. He knew what they wanted and was not interested in giving it to them. The wives of his business acquaintances wanted little from him except attention to their husbands, which suited him nicely. Blushing fairies were a new experience, especially one with a determined chin who spat at him like an angry kitten and did not back down when he growled.
He knelt on the floor by her feet and undid her boot buttons as gently as he could. Not gently enough. The color had receded altogether by the time he could draw the boot off, and sweat stood out on her white face.
Miss Neatham lay against the pillows, biting her upper lip.
“The worst is over,” Bear reassured her.
She managed a small twist of the lips that may have been a smile.
He was impressed by her attempt. He returned his attention to her ankle. The flesh was swollen and held the indentation when he pressed it with his finger. Broken? Or sprained? He palpated and moved it, watching her face for a reaction. “Not broken, I think,” he said at last. “But you have a bad sprain, Miss Neatham. You will not be standing on this foot for some time.”
Miss Neatham’s forehead creased in a frown. “But I must go home,” she repeated, as if wishing would make it so. Undoubtedly, such a beauty had more than her share of courtiers falling over themselves to make her wishes come true.
“I do not see how, Miss Neatham. You cannot walk on that ankle, and I have no carriage.” Though, if he had, he would send for a doctor. The ankle would heal with rest, but he could not rest easy about the knock she had taken on her head.
“A horse?” she asked. “Could I borrow your horse?”
She had the grace to sound doubtful. Borrow a man’s horse, indeed. Even if he had been inclined to put a beast of his into the keeping of a chance-met rose thief, he had no choice but to deny her. “Stabled in the village,” he said. The shed here would not keep out the rain, and the stables at the Hall were in a worse state.
“Then a walking stick,” she proposed. “I think there are some in the stand in the hall, unless Mr. Pelman removed them.”
Bear lifted his brows. “You know Pelman, then?”
“Everyone knows Mr. Pelman,” Miss Neatham’s arid tone said more than her words.
He was unaccountably cheered that she did not admire the man, which made his response more abrupt than he intended. “You are being ridiculous, Miss Neatham. You can go nowhere in this weather and on that ankle, and you should not, in any case, be walking after such a blow to the head.”
“But I must,” she repeated. “Mr. Gavenor, you do not understand. My father is bedridden and frail. I must go to him.”
“Your servants will look after him.”
The fairy shook her head. “I have no servants.”
That was a conundrum, though it begged the question of why the fairy had walked all the way to Rose Cottage, abandoning the poor man in his bed. In any case, he could not see what either of them could do about the situation.
“Resign yourself to remaining here until the rain stops, Miss Neatham. I will then walk into the village and arrange for transport. Meanwhile, surely one of the neighbors will call in and look after your father?”
Her look conveyed sheer disbelief. She hoisted herself upright, holding onto the side arm of the couch to balance herself on her good foot. “Unless you mean to keep me prisoner, Mr. Gavenor, I am leaving,” she proclaimed, her defiance diminished when she turned even whiter and suddenly sat down. “Oh dear,” she said.
Bear shook his head, sighing. “Give me your father’s direction and I will see to him. You, Miss Neatham, sit here with your foot up until I return.”
“There is a large umbrella in the stand, too,” she told him, “and an oiled coat hanging on the back of the scullery door.”
His face twisted into a suspicio
us scowl. “You are remarkably well informed about the contents of my house.”
The woman showed no signs of fear at his expression or his tone. “I should be, Mr. Gavenor. For the past eight years, until a week ago last Wednesday, Rose Cottage has been my home.”
Chapter Three
As he trudged through the rain, Bear thought about Miss Neatham’s claim. He couldn’t imagine why she should make up such a story. She must know that he could check with Pelman. She did not seem a stupid woman.
His seller told him that the Hall was uninhabitable, but that a local fellow had been keeping an eye on the place and might know of a suitable cottage. He’d sent a letter to Pelman, asking for something close to the Hall. It had never occurred to him he might be turning a woman and her elderly father out of their home.
His instincts and the evidence said she was telling the truth. Everything was where she said it would be, down to the basket of ointments and potions for medical care in the pantry, to which he had been sent when he proposed tearing up a sheet to bind her ankle so she would be more comfortable. Sure enough, the basket held rolls of fabric, torn into two-inch strips and neatly rolled.
On the other hand, what woman wanted to live so far from the village?
He reached the bottom of the first hill and crossed a little bridge before climbing the next hill. In daylight, before the rain set in, the distance had seemed shorter.
Bear and Pelman had probably done Miss Neatham a favor, pushing her into a cottage within easy reach of the village shop and neighbors. He consoled himself with that thought as the rain poured down in sheets and the puddles joined into streams, running down the road and passing him as he descended a long slope toward a cluster of rooftops around a spire.
The village of Kettlesworth occupied a small plateau halfway down the hill, and spilled across the slope below to the river flats, now drenched in rain. The village boasted rows of tidy cottages as well as some shacks barely worthy of the name, and a number of larger buildings. The inn, where he’d eaten lunch today and left his horse, was centrally placed, where the road from the Mersey met four local roads, one of which led to the road to Chester.
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