This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
INKLING PUBLISHING, LLC
Hampden, ME 04444
[email protected]
www.inklingpublishinghouse.com
Copyright © 2018 by Melanie Thurlow
ISBN-13: 978-0-9993190-2-4
ISBN-10: 0-9993190-2-7
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, of transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews as permitted by copyright law.
Cover design by FionaJaydeMedia.com
Interior design by Inkling Publishing, LLC
For my Mom and Dad,
for their support.
Prologue
It all started with an innocent kiss.
Well, fine, there was nothing innocent about a kiss when a young lady was unmarried, unless of course, it involved no more than feather-light lips brushing over knuckles—gloved knuckles!—while in the presence of a chaperone.
And, well, this kiss had been none of those things. It wasn’t light, there was certainly no chaperone, her gloves had long but been discarded, and it worshipped everywhere but her knuckles.
Well, all right, it wasn’t the kiss that worshipped her.
It was the man.
The intoxicatingly handsome man.
Everyone warned against falling in love with an officer. Well, they didn’t warn her, of course. She didn’t have friends to directly warn her of such things. But she knew it nonetheless. Besides it being common sense—officers were drifters, constantly moving around, never in one place for any extended period of time—the warnings were printed in the gossip columns that arrived at Whitefield Abbey weekly from London.
How many women—well-born ladies—had been seduced into believing the pretty promises made by men in scarlet? And how many of them had been turned over by such men, discarded as yet another crumb in the trail of ruin left in their wake?
How many had borne children who would never be heir to anything more than the title Bastard?
She should have known better.
She did know better.
But this was different for the simple fact that he was different.
He was handsome and charming, and he’d listened to her. He looked at her as if she were the only woman in the world that mattered. The only woman in the world. Full stop.
She didn’t pause to consider that the devotion he spoke of, and his pronouncement of love, were just hollow, impulsive sentiments. But it wasn’t simply because she was naive.
At age sixteen, she was not due to be out in Society for at least another year, or even two, perhaps. And she had been, for her entire life, sheltered from every experience a young lady would ordinarily face—and certainly sheltered from the attentions of gentlemen—having been kept cloistered in her family’s estate in Lincolnshire. But even though she had never received such attentions before and it would be very easy to assume that she was naïve, it made no difference. She knew that when her officer professed his love for her, he spoke the truth. She could feel it in her bones, her blood, her very soul.
And so, it started with a kiss.
Perhaps that wasn’t precisely where it started but, in the reflective moments when she would look back, that kiss would be the one to be singled out as the turning point in her life. That kiss had secured her fate.
So, yes, it started with a kiss.
Chapter 1
May 1816
“I hate to be the one to have to break it to you, but the fact of the matter is that, financially, you are in trouble.”
He was blindsided. London was the last place he wanted to be. It was hard to believe he was even in England. And yet, here he was, having a meeting with the last person he wanted to speak with.
He pursed his lips together as he struggled to contain the heat flooding his veins, quickly boiling into anger he could easily misdirect. “And so what do I do?” he asked through clenched teeth.
The elbows of the aging gentleman across from him came to rest upon the mahogany desk, fingers forming a steeple at their peak. “You have to marry. And well.”
Time froze as he stiffened at the thought. He couldn’t move. If he moved, he would explode, and there would be no containing what would happen. For too long he’d been contained, confined. He could hardly bear to allow it to continue by choice.
Finally, he blinked and said tightly, “You know that is not an option.”
But this man was unaffected by his tone, didn’t fear the monster the world had not yet seen. No, the elder man’s eyes merely closed briefly, and when they opened they were full of pity he didn’t want.
“It’s your only option. You either marry, or lose the rest of your ancestral lands.”
“I can’t get married,” he said slowly. Then, shaking his head and coming to an abrupt stand, he pointed a finger at the man, a finger he felt contained all the heat of his anger. “Not now. Not ever.”
The older man merely sighed, spreading his hands apart, and said, “Short of robbery, I can see no other way.”
Gritted teeth bared, he snarled, “How long do I have?”
“A few months at the most.”
The anger drained out of him. He shook his head in disbelief, his legs following his hope down until he was slumped back in the chair. “So soon? How could that be?”
His steward shrugged. “I must admit, the finances have been bleak for awhile now. I did try to reach you, but your circumstances made communication impossible. And with the economy in its current, weakened state… it has proven catastrophic for the estate, I’m afraid.”
“I understand,” he replied, his voice as hopeless as he suddenly felt. He’d been gone for too long. Gone in so many senses of the word.
Forcing himself to lift his eyes up and see past his bleak future, he asked, “What happens when the well runs dry?”
“You’ll lose it all, I’m afraid.”
“All of it?” he asked, his anger immediately coming back to the front. “But the house has long been bought and paid for.”
“It has,” his steward agreed. “But we had to borrow against it considerably in order to pay back the death taxes for your uncle and the like. That property is currently held as collateral on a significant outstanding loan. When you are no longer able to make the minimum payment, it will be seized. And everything else will soon follow.”
The words were blunt, but he wasn’t one for beating around the bush and his steward knew that. It was best to know the truth upfront. It wouldn’t do anyone any good to be kept in the dark. It never did. And yet, it was darkness that he craved.
“And what will happen to me then? Where will I go? I’ll have not a shilling to my name; what will become of me?” He knew he sounded like a child but couldn’t keep himself from voicing the questions.
Kind eyes full of pity settled upon him, which only served to lower his hopes even further. “Let’s not speak of such things. You have time; and it won’t come to that.”
But it would. He knew it. He couldn’t marry; and without marriage, the legacy of the title he bore could not survive. At least, not with any measure of respectability.
“Surely even you can find someone to marry you,” his steward said, his words tinged with hope.
His cheek flinched as he responded, “Because I’m such a catch? Ha!” he laughed humorlessly. “Who exactly would want to marry me?”
“A great number of women, I suspect. Especially
now. You are a hero, after all.”
The old man was naïve. Or perhaps he was losing his marbles. Perhaps he should search for a new steward. Maybe the man was wrong and things weren’t as desperate as they seemed, financially speaking. But, deep down, he knew the man was right. Things were that bad, or soon would be. He believed the man that had faithfully served his uncle for years.
He was veritably broke, and bills were coming due. Besides, it wasn’t as though he could afford to replace the man.
Rolling his eyes and sighing, he stood abruptly, methodically straightening the cuffs on his wrinkled coat before biting off, “I wouldn’t bet my life on it. And certainly not my money.”
He turned and stormed out of the office, but not soon enough not to miss his steward’s muttered reply. “You don’t have much to bet with anyways.”
He heard the scorn in the man’s voice, the disapproval. As though it were somehow his fault that the country was in debt and that his uncle had died and that the bills that had stacked up in his absence were greater than the fortune his ancestors had spent generations amassing.
It wasn’t that he needed for much. He didn’t need the world. All he needed was enough funds to survive. Now he had an estate to maintain, though, and it seemed neither he or it could survive without each other.
He tore open the door and started down the street at a steady clip. A slight drizzle made London as dreary as ever under his hooded mood. He was ready to be done with it. He was ready to pack up his meager belongings and head home to the country. At least there he might be able to find some peace. If only for a little while. For in a few months he would have nowhere to go, no home to speak of.
He felt he could explode with emotion for all the things that could have been, and all the things he couldn’t now change. But expressing emotions had never been his strong suit. Perhaps the world would believe him heartless; and, well, they would not be wrong, as long as he had a say.
Chapter 2
The Duke of Brighton had raced hell-for-leather to get here. On horseback no less. Though, that wasn’t so surprising considering he was a young man with a young man’s energy and need to move.
Now, here he was, in a horrible state of disarray, standing in the receiving room of Whitefield Abbey.
Hermann, the butler of the Abbey over fifteen years, immediately saw him in—no one turned away a duke, after all, and certainly not one who was so clearly in need of a rest and refreshment. But he—the butler, not the duke—informed the gentleman in question that the Lord and Lady of the house were out of town, gone to London for the season.
The Duke of Brighton, of course, already knew that. He had just raced from London where he knew very well that Lord and Lady Blythe were in residence. After all, how could he not know; they had all gone to town for his marriage to their daughter.
No, the Duke of Brighton was not here to see Lord and Lady Blythe.
He was here to see her.
Isabelle’s jaw followed her stomach to the floor when she received the Duke of Brighton’s calling card on a silver platter. He was to have been married not two days’ prior—married to her sister!
It was supposed to have been the wedding of the season—a wedding that Isabelle had found herself not invited to. She and her younger siblings, Madelyn and Beatrice, had been left sequestered in the nursery at Whitefield Abbey like infants too young to be seen by Society in London, even if only to attend their sister’s wedding.
Isabelle left the duke waiting the obligatory fifteen minutes a lady was expected to leave a gentleman caller waiting. She did so not because she required the time to dress her hair or redress her person. She did so because she simply could not lift herself from the plush little stool upon which she was seated. Because, what possibly could have caused him to rush here, to the country, without his wife? The answer was left to her wild imagination.
The only reason her mind supplied that would require a mad dash from London so soon after his marriage, was death. And if someone had died, she didn’t want to know. Death was a black stain that, at this precise moment, she couldn’t stomach.
Eventually, almost automatically, her mind stunned to blankness, Isabelle stood. The mint green fabric of her muslin skirts swirled about her ankles as her feet carried her in long strides to the door, where she paused with her fingers wrapped tightly around the handle, forcibly stopping the tremor in her fingers.
They say there is this moment of utter clarity right before your life ends. As though all the pain and darkness in the world is washed away. One moment, and then everything is gone, you’re somehow no longer you. That you are left merely the shell of your former self.
That is what Isabelle reflected upon as the physical manifestation of her anxieties slowly subsided and calm settled about her.
Yes, it could be viewed as a bit dramatic to liken what happened to Lady Isabelle, in that moment, to dying. But that’s what she felt like. It felt like a piece of her died. She wasn’t sure what piece it was. Was it her heart, her very soul, or merely the loss of innocence, the upsetting knowledge that her life, from this moment forward, would be forever changed?
To her, the metaphor of death seemed a more than fitting descriptor.
Lady Isabelle Hayes, third eldest daughter of the Earl of Blythe—or second to most, since her disabled elder sister, Jacqueline, wasn’t publicly acknowledged—knew, standing there with her hand on the doorknob of her bedchamber, that her life as she’d known it was over. When she left this room, her innocence—what little she still had left—would be taken from her. When she met with Lord Brighton, and he related the bad news he no doubt bore, she would be entirely changed.
Her life had seen so very much change recently and she didn’t know how much more she could bear.
She really should have come to this revelation before now, but something about this moment made everything she had been facing and fearing seem very much real.
But she couldn’t leave him waiting forever. He was a duke, after all. Besides, whatever news he brought with him, she would have to hear it eventually. She might as well get it over with. How much worse could it be than the news she had already received?
Isabelle released the doorknob and crossed back over to the fireplace, picking up the tear-stained letter that she had received earlier in the day, and held it over the fire until it was engulfed in flames.
Then she put on her strong, stoic shell and went to greet the duke…
Only to find that her worst fears were nothing compared to that of reality. No one could have foreseen this, least of all Lady Isabelle and the Duke of Brighton.
Chapter 3
It was mad. Absolutely ridiculous.
And she’d said as much. Multiple times. With impressive vigor.
She was surprised that she was even able to still form sentences, much less speak them, even if they were nothing more than fractured staccato sentences that she repeated again and again.
It was really a wonder that she was still upright, much less walking. Pacing, really. Practically wearing holes in the practically centuries old carpet.
Movement seemed the best course of action, because without it she didn’t know how all this sudden energy would manifest itself. It would certainly have to come out somewhere, and she didn’t exactly desire to lose her head. But if she kept moving, perhaps she could walk herself backwards, wear a hole in the carpet that would open up some sort of portal to the past and take her back to the false sense of ignorance she had before.
Five minutes ago would do just fine.
Five minutes ago, when she was but a girl who had not a care in the world. Well, comparatively speaking, of course.
Five minutes seemed like such a long time now.
She was wishing for the impossible though. All that would come of wearing thin the carpet was that her parents, upon returning home—already in what must surely be the most desolate of moods anybody had ever possessed—would focus all their fury upon her.
S
he stopped wringing her hands together—her hands which had by now turned startlingly white but surprisingly not painful—and lowered them to her side. She turned abruptly back to Lord Brighton who was still standing in front of the lovely little settee he had vacated upon her jumping out of hers, minutes earlier.
“You must be joking,” and her tone held the implication that she required him to confirm that he was, in fact, joking.
But he did not.
“This cannot be happening,” she said, clawing her hands wildly through her hair, pulling out several pins and strands of hair in the process. Several golden locks fell into her vision and she brushed them aside.
“My father has gone mad,” Isabelle declared.
“Be that as it may,” Lord Brighton returned, grimly, “he still insists upon it.”
“But it’s insane! I cannot marry you! You’re in love with my sister, and I’m…” She trailed off, and either he understood her unwillingness to expound upon this subject or he hadn’t noticed any strangeness in her stopping mid-sentence, for which she was grateful either way.
Lord Brighton had come bearing two messages. The first was a letter from Rose, given to Lord Brighton for delivery of the missive.
She had left. Rose had done it. She had run away. And in return, she essentially ruined the rest of her sisters’ chances at making advantageous marriages. But that was of no matter. Isabelle held not an ounce of a grudge. Rose had, her entire life, lived for her sisters. She took the blame for their transgressions—which, in Isabelle’s case, were abundant—and bore the brunt of their father’s physical abuses. She had even accepted her fate of an arranged marriage to a man she didn’t know.
Rose had never been selfish, and even now, in the most selfish of acts, she was acting selflessly. Rose was throwing away her own happiness, and the love of her life, for her sisters again—to protect their other sister, Jackie. Isabelle couldn’t resent Rose for that. Had she been in her sister’s shoes, she would have done precisely the same.
Wherefore Art Thou. Page 1
