Harlequin Historical May 2020--Box Set 1 of 2

by Sophia James

  Him.

  Mr Simeon Morgan with the deeds of Athelridge Hall firmly in his pocket.

  He was an outsider, a man who had grown up far from society, any family he’d had long gone. She had heard the rumours of him all Season even though he’d never once appeared at any of the glittering social events she’d attended. His money. His size. His friends who were hardly gentlemen. Society had no place to put him, no way to tag him with the labels they were so wont to do. He was a rampant and unfamiliar unknown, claiming all the spoils usually kept for the well-being of the titled aristocracy. A man no one could fathom.

  A further thought crawled in to join the rest. There was safety behind the name of a man like that, there was no denying it.

  ‘You are very quiet, Ada. Are you well?’

  Her mother was walking with her on the pathways before Athelridge Hall, heavy lines marring her forehead. Adelia had made the Cranstons promise to say nothing to her of Mr Morgan’s visit. She had also expressly sought their troth, not to mention his attitude to their proposed marriage and his anger directed towards it. Her mother did not need another concern on her shoulders for already she was bent over by life, a small thin woman with a constant frown on her brow.

  ‘Adelia is quiet because she is getting married, Mama. She is thinking of her wedding probably. She is in love.’

  Charlotte, her fourteen-year-old sister, turned to watch them, her face more flushed today than it had seemed yesterday. Another bout of sickness? Adelia mentally calculated the number of coins left in the family purse and frowned.

  ‘You are pleased with this union, though, Ada?’ Her mother looked at her closely.

  ‘Of course I am. He is a wealthy man. Besides, he already owns this place. When I marry him we can stay here, Mama, for ever.’

  ‘But is he a kind man?’

  Adelia gritted her teeth. ‘Very.’

  ‘And he loves you?’

  ‘With all of his heart.’

  ‘It is strange that we have not met him yet. Strange he has not come here to make himself known.’

  ‘He is busy, Mama. The railways, his enterprises…’

  ‘Of course.’

  The gown her mother wore showed up her paleness. They were all in black now, the lower windows of Athelridge Hall draped with cloth and every mirror covered.

  Adelia lifted the scratchy black crepe away from the skin at her neckline, the bombazine dress she had procured hurriedly from Jay’s in Regent Street an uncomfortable fit.

  Full mourning at least meant that any wedding would have to be very low key. If the wedding did actually go ahead, Mr Morgan could come and then he could go away again, just as quickly. She doubted he would stay any longer than was socially expected after their last encounter even as she wondered if he would even demand consummation of such a union.

  Heat drew up her body.

  ‘I am so glad your papa knew of this, Ada, and that he approved. It makes things so much easier.’ Bringing a black lace handkerchief from her pocket, she dabbed at her eyes. ‘And your father’s grant of Athelridge Hall as a dowry was an inspired choice because it means we should get to keep our home. Sometimes things are just so very complicated it almost makes my head ache even to think about it, but this is only simple and for that I am pleased.’

  ‘You mustn’t fret, Mama, you know worrying makes you feel unwell.’ Adelia took one thin gloved hand in her own. ‘Everything will be fine.’

  ‘I know it will and our lives can go on in exactly the same way as before, thank the Lord. It does not seem like only weeks since your father passed, does it, but I suppose in the last years we did not see him much so that fact has made it a little easier to deal with.’

  Adelia smiled tightly and looked away. If her mother had ever heard the gossip regarding her father’s many liaisons, she had never said so.

  A deaf ear. A blind eye. A fixed smile. Perhaps that was the way many women lived their lives? If she married Mr Simeon Morgan, she would be doing the very same thing for he’d made his penchant for mistresses and courtesans very plain. But his animosity still reigned supreme and she wondered if indeed he would ever capitulate.

  At this point in time an absent husband did not seem so much of a sacrifice. Such a privation would allow her space to do exactly as she pleased and there were many things here that she loved.

  Even as she was thinking this she caught sight of Cranston coming up the pathway towards them. When he got closer she noticed he carried an envelope.

  ‘This has just come for you, Miss Adelia, and the man that brought it said it was to be delivered into your hands immediately. He made it very plain that it must not go astray and he is waiting as we speak in the blue salon to take the copies back.’

  ‘Back?’ She shouted this word, knowing that his hearing seemed to be deteriorating monthly.

  ‘To the city, miss. To London.’

  Adelia took the missive and opened it, but she knew exactly who it was from for the names of Simeon Morgan’s lawyers were scrawled across the top.

  It was a marriage contract drawn up and signed, Simeon Morgan’s signature a dark scribble at the bottom. She could barely make out a single letter in the scrawl.

  The Athelridge Hall estate was named as a dowry, the titles to the place included. The legal owner of the asset was Simeon Morgan, but she was a beneficial owner during her lifetime and after the death of both her and her husband the asset passed into the hands of any children resulting from their union. Other assets were also named—substantial land, estates and housing—but these were not to be placed in her name at all, but into that of any heirs that might ensue.

  A measured contract. A careful agreement. There was a note attached, too, penned in the same dark writing as his signature and almost as illegible.

  Miss Adelia Worthington,

  Our marriage will take place in the Anglican chapel of St John’s in Hyde Park Crescent on the twelfth of August at two in the afternoon.

  I want as few witnesses as possible. Please include the names of those you will ask to assist you in the returning note.

  Simeon Morgan

  A barely hidden anger boiled from every word. A business proposition and nothing more. Could she truly do this? Could she sell her soul into bitterness and resentment?

  Swallowing, she tried to look unperturbed. The wheels of her life were rolling down a pathway that could bring chaos and disaster unless she was very clever or exceptionally lucky.

  ‘Is it the contract for your marriage, then, Ada?’ Her mother at her side bent across to see the parchment.

  ‘It is, Mama.’

  ‘Does it say when the ceremony will take place, my dear?’

  ‘Yes, in fact it does. It’s on the twelfth of August at two in the afternoon at a chapel in Hyde Park.’

  ‘But that’s your birthday! He is a thoughtful man, then? I knew you should make a splendid marriage, my love. I knew it from the first day you were born and you were so very beautiful.’

  Adelia nodded and moved away from her sister and mother.

  ‘I will send someone back to help you and Charlotte with the vegetables you said you wanted from the garden.’

  Her mother smiled. ‘You are the most caring daughter that any mother could wish for.’

  Cranston nodded. ‘It’s what my wife always says, Lady Worthington, for she has never seen a daughter so mindful of her family, which is a credit to you especially.’

  Adelia swallowed down the lump that seemed lodged in her throat and, clutching the thick envelope, she hurried up the path through the gardens towards the house.

  A signature that would change Simeon Morgan’s life and hers, as well. A signature that wouldn’t lead to happiness, but would lead to safety.

  The secrets that bound such a thought made her heartbeat quicken. She wished she were older or stronge
r or more powerful. She wished that her mother was less vulnerable and Charlotte less sickly, but at least that was a condition that was fixable with better food, a warmer bedroom and a doctor who would treat her more assiduously. The current lack of coin her family was cursed with meant the physician was often unavailable, his good will attached to patients who could pay more.

  No, she did not need a husband who would love her and she certainly did not expect to love him back. But he did have to be strong enough to drive away the questions and she knew there were many.

  The hard-hearted Adelia. The Icicle. The Snow Queen.

  She had heard these nicknames attached to her. She had fought off some suitors who’d decided an approach of force was the right way of it and she had gentled others from her side after they’d sworn eternal passion from just one touch of her hand. Not one had caught her fancy with their simpering and shallow compliments.

  Simeon Morgan was the only man who had ever matched her idea of strength and he was neither vindictive nor petty.

  She hadn’t heard a word about that devastating night at his town house whispered in any quarter. He had not exposed her. He had not abandoned her to a particular speculation when he could have so easily said the words that would have made her an outcast. Victorian society held its mores about sexual conduct close to hand after all and any woman’s flagrant foolishness would never have been condoned.

  Why hadn’t he bared all despite her provocation? Why even with all the hate and fury present in every piece of correspondence sent had he continued to protect her from a final and disastrous public ruin? Even after being shot accidentally by her servant, he had not lain her stupidity bare.

  These thoughts spun around and around as she tucked the documents back into the envelope and went in to meet the messenger.

  * * *

  That evening Adelia dressed in her night-ranging clothes and went out. Past the village square, past the river and the small row of cottages that lined the street. Over the small hill behind high and rusty gates was the ancient country seat of the Thompson family. Arriving at the front door, she knocked and it was opened quickly.

  Alexander Thompson stood there with a smile on his face, untidy brown hair falling around his ears.

  ‘I thought you might come today, Ada, for I heard there was a carriage from London that had come through the village?’

  ‘The contract came.’ She did not mince her words, but gave him her news with sparseness and brevity. ‘It was a reasonable one, generous even.’

  ‘Generous to you?’

  She felt the blood rise in her cheeks, a bolster against the emptiness of all that was being lost.

  ‘If I had money…’

  She shook away the words Alex did not say and moved back.

  ‘That is not an option for us and you know it.’

  ‘Your mother would cope if only you would let her and so would your sister because there is nothing else to do…’

  She didn’t allow him to finish as she moved away further.

  ‘I know what you think and I understand what you are saying, but I cannot let my family become homeless.’

  Alexander had always eschewed any responsibility, living life to the fullest in his own particular way. He had no family left now after the death of his mother two years’ prior, no ties to bind him, no place that drew him back or in. He hated the house he was forced to live in and its location so far out from London town. She knew he did. But she had Mama and Charlotte to think of and, if she lost Athelridge Hall, how would they manage?

  ‘I have made up my mind and set a plan in motion. Should I abandon it now I would never forgive myself. I swear that I would not.’

  ‘My God, you have always been so very…virtuous. Give it a year, though, and see how you feel then, married to a man you have no reason to like. My offer stands open and there will always be a place for you here should you want it.’

  Such friendship had seen her through many years of sadness and fear. Alex had been a touchstone, a sounding board, allowing her a freedom she’d found exhilarating. It was Alex who had taught her to shoot and fish and forage in the woods around the Hall. It was he who had lent her books and poems and showed her the intricacies of keeping a vegetable garden through all of the seasons and seeing it survive.

  ‘I live on my wits, after all, and on shrewdness and if I am not a part of the world around me in the way others would want me to become, then I am all the better for it. If you could do the same, you would be much happier, but you allow others to define you, to get under your skin…’

  She smiled and let him talk, about his acumen in all things concerning nature, about the foibles of others and about the common sense the world was losing with each and every consecutive year.

  Adelia had heard all of this many times before and usually she agreed with everything he said, but tonight there was an empty exhaustion that filled her, a barren and hollow fatigue.

  Pity.

  The word came through memory and clawed in at ease.

  Simeon Morgan pitied her, pitied her situation and her family, pitied her youth and her shocking offer of marriage.

  He had tried again to convince her to rescind her lies by offering her a substantial sum of money through his legal representation in order to set him free. When that did not work, he had thrown in the legal deeds of Athelridge Hall as a sweetener.

  A trap, she’d thought, and refused it because she could not afford to run the place, not long-term, because even a large amount of money would eventually run out. The roof on the south wing needed refurbishment and the basement under the main rooms was flooding. It was not a pittance she could manage on. Her debts were mounting by the month, worrying her as she sat with the ledgers at her desk in the middle of the night. Yet these offers had eaten at her certainty that she was doing the right thing and at the many conditions she had laid out so bluntly before him.

  In all her thinking and planning she had imagined her sacrifice to be a generous one. She would have allowed him anything in truth and staying well away from her was one of those options. But now all she could see was the dishonour in it, the trick, a snare, that he did not welcome and probably had not deserved.

  It was her father who had ruined things, his death nullifying the chance of ever righting the wrongs, for he’d placed his entailed estate as surety on poorly executed investment choices and a series of selfish mistakes had had disastrous consequences. If her mother had had more of a backbone, they might have managed by shifting to a smaller place and making do, but she was constantly in bed suffering from melancholy and any talk of going to live somewhere else had always been met with tears and bitter recriminations.

  ‘What are you thinking about, Ada? Lately you have lived a life in your head that is irritating.’

  Alexander’s words snapped her out of her ruminations.

  Irritating? Had she been more truthful she might have thrown the exact same criticism back at him, but honesty had long since been sacrificed to expedience.

  ‘You have a small stipend which sees you through, Alex. My father has not left us even that.’

  ‘Then why did you not find a suitor when you were in London? I told you an old, kind and forgetful one would have been the best choice. One who was not meant to be long in this world and would leave you his fortune. Surely there were some of that ilk.’

  She shook her head hard. ‘A woman has no say in who applies for her hand. It’s a market and females are for sale. I was only a number to them, a number made more attractive given the colour of my hair and the shape of my face. God knows, I barely had a true conversation with anyone and if I tried they simply looked horrified.’

  ‘But Morgan held the deeds to Athelridge Hall and so he was chosen?’

  ‘It was a large plus in his favour to be sure.’

  ‘He sounds too virile, too masculine. He soun
ds untameable.’

  At that she almost laughed.

  ‘Before I travelled to London I had not thought power an important attribute, but perhaps it is the only thing I do need now.’

  ‘I disagree. If you cannot wrap Morgan around your little finger, how do you see your marriage proceeding?’

  She was glad at that moment that Alex was not a party to all she had promised Simeon Morgan.

  ‘With caution,’ she replied and turned away.

  ‘We should have married, Adelia, and damn the consequences. We still can, if you are game? It would be some kind of a protection for you.’

  The words fell into the space between them.

  Once she might have said yes, but now… Over the past few years she had seen a change in Alexander, a bitterness that kept on rising. He blamed everyone for his own situation and the constant stream of criticism had begun to be wearying. Sometimes she even wondered if he was quite sane.

  The younger version of herself had thought him more dashing than she did now. Granted, he was handsome and he read widely. But his compassion for others had dulled whereas hers had sharpened, the plight of her family leading her now with much more force.

  London had also changed her and for the first time ever she felt that beauty might not be quite the asset everyone around her had always painted it to be. Her mother, her father, Alexander, the suitors.

  Simeon Morgan had not mentioned her looks once and had never complimented her. He wasn’t thunderstruck by her dimples or by the way she had spoken. Even the colour of her hair, which more normally seemed to drive sensible men into raptures, had hardly signified.

  No, he had looked inside her and judged her lacking. Her own doubts also had begun to surface. There were other young women there in the salons of society who had been plain but bold, interesting women of conversation and ideas. Perhaps her looks had reduced her to something less, something diminished in his eyes.