Seduction Regency Style

by Louisa Cornell

  “I have something more challenging in mind,” Bella said. “Widowers. One in particular, an obstinate curmudgeon who can’t take his nose from his ledgers for fear he’ll face the empty spaces in his life.”

  “How is your brother Alec, then, Bella?” the Marriage Maker asked with a twinkle in his eye, immediately discerning the target of her attack.

  “Lonely. Didn’t I just say?”

  “Are you certain about that? Was his a happy marriage?” Sir Stirling asked.

  “Yes, well—” She looked to her husband for help. “As much as we could tell, though one might wish for more spirit. Lucy was a colorless little thing.”

  “Sweet and biddable,” Dougal agreed. “Orkney girl born and bred. Never wanted much but the islands and her garden. Alec adored her. He married her in the hot rush of youth; she married him to please her parents. In the end, she may have bored him.”

  “Harsh,” Bella complained.

  “I could be wrong. She’s been gone three years. Died birthing little Robbie,” Dougal continued. “We went up a month ago so the children could enjoy the islands, and Alec looked set on not remarrying.”

  “He loves those children to death, but he can’t manage them on his own, and a ledger book doesn’t keep him warm at night. Miserable is how he looked.” The thought made Bella miserable, as well.

  Sir Stirling swirled his drink. “May have adjusted his expectations too low,” he murmured. “The ones who’ve had happy marriages usually propel forward to a second one. Sometimes, even they need a push.”

  “I thought you enjoyed a challenge.” When he didn’t respond, Bella let him consider the issue, content to watch while he seemed lost in thought.

  “Viscount Wyncote,” he said at last.

  “I beg your pardon? What does he have to do with my brother?”

  “You said widowers. The man needs an heir. Last week he blubbered all over me at our club about his lonely life and some boneheaded idea that his life is a Greek tragedy. The one and only love of his life died, leaving him childless, and no other woman will fill his heart. He wants a brood mare, not a wife.”

  She snorted. “Sounds like a man.”

  “Sounds like a foolish man,” her husband answered. “Sir Edmund Thorpe is just as bad. I saw to his son’s broken arm last month. He means to marry a nursemaid or governess for his three children.”

  “Another widower,” Sir Stirling mused.

  “Clueless, the lot of them. What they need are wives who’ll wake them up and put a bit of light back into their lives,” Bella asserted.

  “And some naughtiness, too?” The Marriage Maker asked with a knowing look at the two of them.

  Bella felt her cheeks burn. “That too, Sir Stirling. Aye, a warm-blooded woman in their bed and a warm-hearted woman at their hearth.”

  Sir Stirling smiled into his brandy.

  Chapter One

  Orkney, 1814

  When October approached November, days grew short across the islands and the wind cut sharp off the North Sea. Sir Alexander Bradshaw thought he ought to move his children to town if this year proved as harsh as the last, but the three little terrors cut up his peace when they invaded the narrow townhouse in Kirkwall. Alec had a devil of a time conducting his business on the first floor whenever his progeny took up residence above. Without Lucy to manage them in the narrow townhouse, they raced up and down the stairs, howled like banshees, and laughed as if to prove themselves motherless waifs.

  The nursery maids he hired could manage them at Ramskeld, where they had three stairways and long hallways in which to run, grounds across which to chase their goats and trouble the rabbits, and a sea to explore. At least, they had the grounds and sea when weather permitted. Even in the dark months, they could walk out each day, but the previous winter snows had kept him trapped in town for weeks. He had missed the little ones desperately. When Robbie took a fever, ten days passed before word reached him. Even in good weather, he spent most of every week apart from them. He had considered moving his offices to Ramskeld, but doing so would force clients and partners to trot up from town and plague the housekeeper with constant guests.

  Alec swallowed a dram of whiskey in one gulp and shook his head, his disheveled hair dropping thick black locks across his forehead. He tried to convince himself he avoided Ramskeld because memories of Lucy made him sick with grief, but his misery sprang as much from guilt as grief. He suspected he had made her unhappy, although she had never complained, had always done her duty, and had never answered his concerns with much more than, “As you wish, Bradshaw.” He had never been able to penetrate her quiet calm, and he despised himself for having wished to do so.

  Failure. Perhaps his misery rooted itself in failure.

  I need a larger townhouse.

  Having the children nearby would ease his bone-deep loneliness. He shoved aside the thought. For today, he had business to conduct, and out-of-the-ordinary transactions, at that. Sir Stirling James had sailed up from Inverness and sent round a request to meet. Their previous partnerships had proven to be profitable, and their previous interactions both stimulating and entertaining.

  Alec’s grandfather built the Bradshaw fortune on beaver skins, but when the beaver population waned, his father diversified. The current generation still dealt in furs and timber from Canada, but the bedrock of Alec’s income lay with supplying goods to the Hudson’s Bay Company, one of Orkney’s major sources of employment and income. Sir Stirling had come to him several times as a middleman to offer specific goods or channels of supply, always to their mutual benefit. This time was no exception. Salt from Sweden at a lower cost than that from Cheshire would improve his profits, now that the Corsican had cut off sources on the continent. The business took little enough time, and Alec readily accepted Sir Stirling’s invitation to dine at the Ansgar Hotel.

  When the two men took seats in the hotel’s upper level dining room beside a window overlooking Harbor Road, a booming voice called out to them, “Alec Bradshaw, my prayers have been answered. You’ve come out of that cave you sulk in.” A familiar figure, a bear of a man with sandy hair and piercing blue eyes, grabbed an extra chair, spun it around, and joined them.

  “Sir Stirling James, may I present His Holiness, the Bishop of Kirkwall, Edmund Salter.”

  “Merely Reverend, if you please. I don’t aspire to popery.” The Reverend reached out a hand. “My name’s Ed, and Orkney hasn’t had a bishop in one hundred and fifty years, but you knew that, I think.”

  “What is this about a cave, Bradshaw?” Sir Stirling asked.

  “Ed believes I don’t socialize adequately.”

  An unclerical snort from the Reverend made Sir Stirling laugh out loud. The jovial man leaned over and took a conspiratorial tone, “Doesn’t even accept my Maud’s offer of Sunday dinners; wanders off to that wind-blown house of his come Friday every week. One of the martyrs is our Alec. He atones for Lucy’s death like one of those desert hermits. I sometimes wonder if he lives on bread and water, too.”

  “Nonsense.” Alec didn’t like the sympathy in his business partner’s expression. “I’m not some wild boy. Of course, I go to Ramskeld when work is done. I have a family. I can’t be cavorting about Orkney.”

  “I had dinner with Bella and Dougal a while ago, and they seemed to think you were withdrawn,” Sir Stirling said.

  Alec felt his hackles rise. “My sister always did believe she knew more about my life than I do.”

  Echoes of her voice telling him his children needed a mother didn’t help. She nattered on in detail about the “sort of girl you need, Alec.” He didn’t plan to remarry, but if he did remarry, he would damn well do his own choosing. She wouldn’t be some dewy-eyed girl with illusions of love. A sensible woman, who knew her place and understood duty, might serve. If he planned to marry. Which he did not.

  Alec scowled at the two men. “Don’t listen to Bella. My life is fine the way it is.”

  The statement slammed the door on his
life as a conversational gambit, and his friends took the hint. Sir Stirling’s nimble mind and the canon’s amusing turn of phrase led conversation over the price of wool, the chances of a hard winter, and the current crop of fools in parliament. As dinner progressed, conversation meandered to the state of the war with France, affairs in Kirkwall and Stromness, Orkney’s vital port, and the shipping industry, until a server cleared the remains of their pudding.

  Over glasses of port, Alec prodded Ed to describe repairs to the cathedral, a thick-walled, medieval wonder. The bishop described his duties with self-deprecating humor, giving his wife full credit for activities both charitable and liturgical.

  “Speaking of your good wife, what are you doing here alone this blustery evening?” Alec asked.

  “My Maud has gone off to visit her sister, leaving me a lonely house and old kitchen. She’ll be home in two days, and the parish will be almost as grateful as I’ll be. She’s bringing new music for the choir from a print shop near the university.”

  Sir Stirling twirled his drink. Reflected candlelight danced upon the port’s surface. “I’ve heard a bit about your choir school, Ed, and the organ students, as well. In fact, I have a guest aboard my ship you may know—or soon will.”

  “Miss Dunwood? Must be. We had word to expect her. Never say you’re transporting my new organist, Sir Stirling. Small world.” Ed twisted to address Alec. “The governing board finally agreed to bring one on if only to help Maud with the choir school.”

  “Ann Dunwood, yes,” Sir Stirling responded. “My sister-in-law, Olivia, asked me to see her safely delivered to Kirkwall. Miss Dunwood is her good friend.”

  “She comes recommended by the vicar in Lower Bottleby. He called her ‘a competent player for a female.’ The rest of his description made her sound like one of those grey creatures that fade into a parish. Pity that. We could use someone to liven up the dark months.”

  Alec almost missed Sir Stirling’s frown, quickly replaced by his habitual sly humor.

  “Grey? Perhaps the vicar is colorblind. I found her company enjoyable. She’s a sensible woman, and by all reports, a good musician. Music might liven your life, Alec. As I recall, you play yourself.”

  Alec considered the piano at Ramskeld, silent since his wife’s death, and shook his head. “Haven’t time for that.”

  “Your children might learn to play,” Sir Stirling James said.

  “Lillian perhaps…” Alec murmured, warming to the idea. “She would need a teacher other than me, though.”

  “Not those rapscallion boys of his,” Ed put in. “But Stirling has a point, Lad. You’ll need to keep the lot of them busy if you bring ‘em to town this winter.”

  “It’s convenient I’m bringing a music teacher to Kirkwall, then,” Sir Stirling said, peering at Alec.

  What had he called his Miss Dunwood? A sensible woman.

  Alec wondered fleetingly if Sir Stirling deliberately echoed his thoughts about the sort of wife he might seek—if he ever decided to seek one. He couldn’t shake the idea, absurd though it was, even after he arrived home late that night.

  Chapter Two

  “You cannot stay on board, you know.” Sir Stirling James’s voice rumbled through the captain’s cabin.

  Ann Dunwood sat in the narrow confines of her benefactor’s ship, which lay at anchor off Stromness, with only the timid maid he had hired for her journey who served as chaperone. Once again, Ann puzzled over the man her friend Olivia assured her could be relied upon. Though perhaps trustworthy, his blunt talk made her uncomfortable.

  “Of course not. Tomorrow is soon enough,” Ann replied to his nonsense. Honestly, the man could be absurd.

  “The cathedral parish awaits. All of Kirkwall awaits.”

  Laughter, rusty from long disuse, bubbled up at that remark. “They require a chapel drudge, someone to pound familiar hymns into the minds and voices of disinterested children.” She stared at her untouched drink, one she feared was much stronger than she had ever tasted.

  Sir Stirling’s expression didn’t alter one whit. He kept his own counsel. At least, he didn’t laugh at her. He merely sipped his brandy and scrutinized her. “The Kirkwall organ awaits.” He raised a questioning brow.

  The corners of Ann’s mouth rose.

  Yes. The Kirkwall organ.

  If God was kind, she would have time alone to become acquainted—to fall in love—with the instrument.

  “You enticed me here with it,” she murmured.

  “Too strong a word, surely,” Sir Stirling said. “You needed to get away from Lower Bottleby. No one there appreciated you.”

  Ann studied her lap and the still full tumbler of amber liquid he had pressed on her “for courage.”

  “Did I?” She glanced up at him, raising one skeptical brow. “One parish is the same as any other. I suggest music to stir the soul; they demand tunes to lull the restless and appease the congregation. I do as they ask, and they are pleased. If I manage to fade into the shadows, they are even more so.”

  “My sister-in-law insisted you needed the change.”

  “Olivia? How would she know? I’m home only once a year, after the great Easter feasts conclude, and then for a few weeks. Now that she’s married, we see each other even less.”

  “Nonetheless, she frets that you ‘fade away year by year.’ She begged me to find you a new position.”

  Ann wondered if that was true. She dared a swallow of her drink; it burned its way down, loosening her tongue in the process. “Does she believe you can find a husband for me, at last?”

  “Why do you think that?” His twinkling eyes suggested he already knew the answer.

  “Isn’t that what you do? Make marriages for people—some of them unlikely?” She loathed the hope that lodged in her throat, almost as much as the humiliation of her friend suggesting such a thing.

  He gave a nod. “I’ve had some success helping people see what they might otherwise have overlooked, and they are happier for it.”

  Ann washed a bitter retort down with another swallow. “Overlooked. An apt description. After Lord Herring’s younger son lost interest, even Reverend Wilkens, the curate, looked right through me without seeing me.”

  “Ronald Herring is a blind fool. He mistook a wealthy harpy for a biddable wife and pays for his mistake daily, it may please you to know.”

  “If that is true, I pity them both.”

  His knowing eyes bore into hers until her cheeks burned. “You would never delight in another’s misfortunate, even when the person treated you poorly. I should say he did you a favor because you are far better off without him.”

  “I’ll never know, will I? It was long ago, and no other man has shown me any interest.”

  “Perhaps you are overlooked because you will not let yourself be seen,” her friend’s brother-in-law said, not unkindly.

  Much later, she lay awake in the dark of her cabin while the ship grew silent. Tomorrow, she would slip off the vessel and into a new life in the far north. She shivered under her coverlet, though whether from the early cold or fear of what might come, she could not say. Sir Stirling’s words echoed in her mind as if they echoed off the timbers of his ship.

  Perhaps you are overlooked because you will not let yourself be seen.

  She had shown herself to Ronald Herring, and he had looked the other way. She had tried at both her first parish and her home parish, but her music was met with utter distaste at both. Would Kirkwall be any different?

  Better she resign herself to the same insipid music.

  ***

  Alec trudged up the stops of Kirkwall’s ancient cathedral, a gift from their Norse overlords centuries before, and felt like a drowning man grasping at flotsam to keep his head above water.

  Sir Stirling’s suggestion sounded absurd at first, but he had given it thought after his guest pressed further. He could bring his children to town if they had sufficient activity to keep their minds busy. The boys could attend the cathedral school.
They’d take his oldest Alex for certain, and even Robbie had outgrown their nursemaid. They would have the cathedral for Latin and history, and his crew for mathematics and navigation. The maid could handle Robbie if he wasn’t up for as much.

  That left Lillian on his hands. At ten, she was as unruly as her brothers. Perhaps if Maud Salter had assistance, she would reopen the dame’s school alongside the choir school. In the meantime, music might be the solution. He remembered his daughter taking an interest, though Lucy’s enthusiasm for teaching had been lukewarm, at best.

  Having thought through his plans, the arrangements for the boys had been simple enough to complete in the two days since his dinner with Sir Stirling James. Word had been sent to Ramskeld, tuition had been paid, and schedules had been sorted. Only Sir Stirling’s final suggestion required action. It ought to be a simple matter to arrange private music lessons to keep Lillian out of trouble while her brothers were at work elsewhere.

  When he reached the top step of the great church, a torrent of sound emerged from the interior, and he urged the thick door open. He quickened his pace when the full force of the music struck him, and his heart pulled him forward into the interior.

  Bach! A Bach prelude enveloped him—played as he hadn’t heard since his grand tour took him to Salzburg. His soul soared to the heavens. Silken threads drew him toward the source, drew him up the winding stairs to the loft high above the nave.

  When he spied the organist, he was shocked to find a vibrant and passionate woman in command of the grand instrument. Oblivious to his approach, with her eyes closed and her head thrown back as if in ecstasy, she attacked the keys of the organ with agile fingers. His mouth went dry. His body stirred, as it hadn’t since his earliest courtship of Lucy. He forced thoughts of his late wife away and let the music seduce him.

  The fugue ended on a flourish as ardent as the rest of it. He fell to earth with a thud so sudden that he thought he might break. The magnificent creature at the keyboard, her hair wild about her head, let her hands hover over the keys for long moments before she recovered from the music’s spell.