The Chaperone's Secret

by Donna Lea Simpson

  Cover

  The Chaperone’s Secret

  As chaperone to the Season’s most desirable young miss, Amy Corbett has two specific duties: to ensure that her charge’s reputation remain spotless, and to see her betrothed to an exceptional beau. Given that the coquettish Lady Rowena manages to maintain an air of propriety while being a flirt of the highest caliber, Amy knows her job should be easy—if only the calculating young aristocrat weren’t so set on toying with men’s hearts, including that of her latest prey, the debauched Lord Dante Pierson.

  Like other gentlemen of high standing and low tastes, Lord Pierson’s restless desire for excitement had driven him into a life of squalor and scandalous social blunders. Finding himself drunk and mud-spattered in a gutter one night, he spies an angelic apparition in a passing carriage and is overcome by a will to reform—surely such a woman could give him hope of rebirth. When he learns that the anonymous beauty is Lady Rowena, he vows to coax that flicker of warmth into a flame.

  As Rowena lures the unsuspecting Pierson ever closer to heartbreak, Amy realizes that for all the talk of his wastrel ways, he is actually a gentle and caring man to be championed and cherished. And in an unguarded moment, the unassuming Amy and downtrodden Lord Pierson will discover that they possess kindred souls—and will make a daring decision to follow their own true path to happiness and love . . .

  Title Page

  Copyright

  The Chaperone’s Secret

  Donna Lea Simpson

  This is a revised edition of a book originally published as Lord Pierson Reforms, copyright © 2004, 2017 by Donna Lea Simpson.

  Cover design and illustration by Dar Albert, Wicked Smart Designs

  Published by Beyond the Page at Smashwords

  Beyond the Page Books

  are published by

  Beyond the Page Publishing

  www.beyondthepagepub.com

  ISBN: 978-1-946069-42-9

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this book. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented without the express written permission of both the copyright holder and the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Books by Donna Lea Simpson

  About the Author

  One

  “You’re a right ’eavy bloke, y’know that?” The pretty young Cyprian hefted her bulky burden and grunted to her friend, “Maisie, kin you carry a bit more o’ th’load?”

  “Bloody ’ell, no, Becky! He’s a’gonna ’ave ter ’elp, or we’ll end in the bloody gutter.” Maisie, a blond with pugnacious features, shoved her shoulder under the man’s arm.

  They stumbled down a foggy, gaslit London street, making their way through the sulfurous yellow miasma, dodging muddy puddles and avoiding the splashing of carriages that rumbled along the cobbles. A light drizzle started, the drops dotting the puddles left from the rain earlier that evening.

  “Of all the filthy luck!” Becky moaned. “As if it ain’t bad enough. Me best dress is covered in muck an’ now it’s rainin’, an’ only gonna get worse.”

  Finally, their burden spoke up. “Ladies,” he slurred. “S-sorry t’be such a bother, but I promise t’make it worth your while.”

  “Yer lucky it’s us, yer nibs, and not one o’ those blokes who was eyein’ ya wiv interest in the ’ell.” That was Maisie, the snub-nosed blond; she was kinder-hearted than Becky, but hoping for a sizable reward from their handsome encumbrance.

  Lord Pierson shook his head, scattering raindrops from his nose as he tried to clear the fog in his brainbox that was more persistent than the London haze surrounding them. He had to clear his head, had to think and find his way home. He would not be found in the gutter for all the gossipmongers to make sport of. His name was already synonymous with degradation and the degeneration of an old and worthy name.

  Not that he was the one who had harmed it most. That honor fell to his esteemed pater, who had passed from the living world to the one beyond in an opium den. No, his only part in the shame had been to further the decline, debasing the Pierson title even more with his wastrel ways.

  And yet, there were things he would not descend to, and one of them was to be found facedown in the gutter, drunk and robbed of his stickpin and purse. And so he had chosen two of the more honest of the Bacchanal Club’s fair “barques of frailty” and offered them a reward if they would see him safely home to Eleven Varden Square, his townhome. Another hour spent drinking at the Bacchanal would have been his undoing for he suspected, from his advanced state of inebriation, that someone was spiking his gin with something more narcotic.

  Again, he shook his shaggy head and tried to help the girls supporting him home, picking his feet up and plodding along the walk. He would make it and then wouldn’t drink for a couple of days, he promised himself.

  Though he had done so before with little effect.

  “We hafta cross here,” he mumbled, pointing with one finger across the road. “And then turn.” He snuffled, rubbing one wet sleeve across his running nose.

  One of the girls grunted and sniffed, mumbling about the rain again, but he was concentrating fiercely on the way home and paid no attention. They continued their uneven progress as they crossed the cobbled street.

  The deep rumble and clatter of wheels on cobblestone behind them announced another carriage coming, and Maisie and Becky tried to haul him off to the relative safety of a gaslight standard—they were already in a better part of town, or there would not be gaslights—but he staggered, his bootheel catching on the gutter.

  Damnation, but his legs would not work right!

  “C’mon, ya great lout. Up t’the walk, now,” Maisie said.

  They made it up to the walk as the carriage approached, and Pierson, stumbling down to one knee, looked up. In the open window of the carriage was framed an angel, her silvery hair braided into a coronet around her oval, fair-skinned face, her perfect lips parted slightly in a beautiful smile, jewels sparkling at her white throat. She was like a painting framed in the window, the lamplight glowing on her face creating the affect of a halo. He stared, preternaturally aware of her every movement even at such a distance, and as he gazed, open-mouthed, a wave of mucky f
ilth engulfed him and his companions.

  Maisie and Becky swore in high-pitched screeches and shook their fists as the carriage driver rolled on, oblivious, the clop clop clop of the horses’ hooves receding in the muffling fog.

  But Pierson, mud and water streaming down his face and trickling down his coat front, stared after the carriage. He had just seen the face of an angel, a veritable seraphim, and the one woman in the world for whom he could reform, if she would just deign to favor him with one more of her radiant smiles. Surely this was that elusive love at first sight, for never had he felt this surge of hope, this delirium of optimism. He was engulfed in a wave of gratitude more surely than that torrent of filthy water, for he knew in his heart that in that one moment his destiny had changed.

  Who was she, that bright angel? And what could he do to make her see that she and she alone could make him a better man, the kind of man a woman like her could be proud to call her own?

  He stood, slowly, shaking off more of the fog of alcohol. He would find out who she was, or his name was not Dante Delacorte Pierson.

  • • •

  In the carriage, Amy Corbett gasped and tried to rise from her seat, but the carriage shuddered and she sat back down abruptly. “That poor man! James must go back and . . .”

  She was stopped by her charge’s gales of laughter.

  “Did you see him, Amy?” Lady Rowena Revington held her stomach and gasped out the words through fits of laughter. “Did you see that fellow, muck and filth in his eyes, his hair all streaming down and muddy, kneeling in the gutter! He was gaping like a . . . like a cod.”

  “Lady Rowena,” Amy said, shocked reproach in her voice, as she twisted back around from looking behind them. Trying to set the matronly tone she considered appropriate for the chaperone of a duke’s daughter, she primmed her mouth and said, “You should not laugh at that poor fellow. I have never seen anything so awful! We should go back, make sure he is all right and that his two companions are not—”

  “His two whores, you mean,” Lady Rowena said, wrinkling her nose in disgust.

  “His . . . oh, Lady Rowena,” Amy said, her gloved hand muffling her words. “You should not say such awful—”

  “Oh, Lady Rowena,” the young woman fluted in a strangled, prissy tone, imitating her chaperone. “Do not try to correct me, Amy,” she said in her normal voice. Her eyes lit up in merriment and she burst into laughter again, rocking back and forth. She wiped a tear from her eye with her paisley shawl and continued, “I shall be laughing about this for days. You must admit it was a diverting sight when James splashed that drunken sot, and he, kneeling in the gutter, muck all over him and those two girls swearing and shaking their fists . . . I would give a quarter’s allowance to see that again! Truly, I would.”

  Amy lapsed into silence and stared in mortification at the beautiful young woman opposite her, whose glorious loveliness had not dimmed one jot for her having been out all evening at a ball. The interior of the carriage was gloomy, the only light from the coach lanterns, but there was no concealing the glory of Lady Rowena’s fair hair, glowing like pewter, it was so silvery. Jewels sparked and twinkled at her ivory throat and her expensive gown hugged perfect curves. She was a most beautiful young lady. But for her to laugh at another human’s plight in that way . . . what did it say about her heart?

  And this was the girl for whom it was her duty to find and capture an unexceptional bridegroom. Better than unexceptionable; nothing but an earl or a marquess at the very least would do for the daughter of a duke. She quailed at the thought. What did she know of the upper echelons of the aristocracy?

  Well, more now than just a few short months ago.

  Amy thought back to the circumstances that had brought her to this difficult pass. She had been content in her previous position in Ireland as governess to a brood of girls, the daughters of the Honorable Mr. Laurence Donegal and his wife, Mrs. Honoria Donegal. At twenty-four and with no connections to the greater world, nor “good society,” Amy felt fortunate in her post and loved the girls sincerely, even the eldest, a vivacious and impetuous girl who had vowed never to marry. Miss Bridget Donegal, eighteen and past all need of a governess except as a chaperone at village assemblies—Mrs. Donegal fancied herself ill much more often than she actually was and would not attend those small affairs—had told all who would listen that she had no intention of ever marrying, and had publicly announced that she and Amy would someday, when all the Donegal brood were past their need for a governess, take a house in the village and live on her inheritance. After that announcement Mrs. Donegal had spent a week in bed.

  And then a young English gentleman of impeccable birth and considerable property happened to visit the Donegal house. He saw Bridget in some amateur theatrics, the mounting of which was Amy’s great joy, fell immediately in love with the “fair Ophelia,” as her part styled her—winsome, lovely and ethereal—and promptly declared himself, was accepted by the fair maid herself, the betrothal announced and the first banns read in church.

  Some in the village declared it unseemly, the haste with which the young man had been accepted. The Donegals might not have been so hasty if they had not feared he would abscond the moment he found out their daughter’s willful nature. But Bridget was no one’s fool. The young man was handsome and rich and she saw immediately that she was unlikely to receive another offer so fine. Marriage to him promised a life of ease, travel, and fine society, a far cry from the spinster’s existence she had imagined as the pinnacle of her ambition when faced with the village lads as her only suitors.

  The girl was swiftly married and somehow, Amy was never sure how nor why, it was all attributed to her superior common sense, powers of persuasion, and amateur theatrics. Mrs. Donegal, proud of having a very proper young English lady as her governess—the Donegals, Protestant but still Irish down to the bone, were very conscious of their inferior place in English eyes—had taken the opportunity to trumpet the young lady’s miraculous abilities far and wide.

  Then fate changed Amy’s destiny. The incredibly wealthy and powerful Duke of Sylverton happened, on his way to his estate in England from some business on the Irish coast, to briefly visit Mr. Donegal on horse-purchasing business near Christmas of 1818. He heard about the eldest daughter’s miraculously good match. From that moment Amy Corbett’s fate was sealed, even though during the duke’s visit she was ensconced in the nursery upstairs with the younger children. She was not privy to the conversation of Mrs. Donegal in the duke’s presence, but from experience she could imagine the boasting about “Miss Corbett, our English governess.” For some reason Mrs. Donegal felt it reflected well on them to have such a treasure in their employ and had taken to amplifying Amy’s part in the courtship, attributing to the governess a shrewd manipulation that was never in her character.

  Amy wished Mrs. Donegal had kept her compliments silent.

  She glanced at Lady Rowena, who still chuckled over the poor man they had deluged, and then back out the window. Surely they were almost home? Or at least back to the duke’s London residence, which was far too grand in Amy’s unassuming view to ever feel like home. It was like living in a museum, and just as cheerful. But she had never had much choice in the matter of where she would live next. The Donegals had received from the Duke of Sylverton an offer that was worded as a command. They would release Miss Corbett from her employment in their household so that the young lady could come and work for him as chaperone to his lovely daughter, Lady Rowena. Her duties would not be onerous, so they could, in good conscience, let her go.

  Of course, they had not needed his reassurance of Amy’s good treatment to see the necessity of releasing her immediately. No one who had ever met the duke would deny him anything. Even if his grand and elevated title did not awe them—and it did the Donegals—his manner, which was lofty and regal, would have. They let her go immediately. She had no recourse but to become Lady Rowena’s companion and chaperone for the approaching Season. The duke expected her
to work the same kind of miracle with his daughter that she had with Miss Bridget Donegal.

  It was an intolerable burden, and one Amy had no assurance she could ever hope to carry out. Leaning her head against the carriage window, she remembered the relief of meeting Lady Rowena for the first time. During her long voyage from Ireland and then travel to the duke’s country mansion, she had worried that the duke’s daughter was some kind of fright, or a virago. On reaching the manse, weary and overwhelmed, she had been escorted up the long, winding staircase to Lady Rowena’s bedchamber.

  And had felt immediate relief. Lady Rowena was lovely, and though physical beauty didn’t mean much to Amy in her evaluation of people, with it the girl combined a sweet, helpless, gentle personality. The poor girl was ill, just recovering from the affects of a putrid throat and fever. She was wan and thin and grateful to anyone who talked to her and would sit with her. Poor, poor girl, Amy had thought, gazing down at the young lady wrapped closely in woolen shawls and covers. With a father like the duke, she mostly needed someone to intercede for her, perhaps, someone to make sure she was not hustled into an unhappy marriage against her wishes. She was certainly too weak and feeble to stand up to a man like the duke herself.

  All of Amy’s protective instincts were stirred. The duke only ever said his daughter was known in society as a pure and unsullied flower of English maidenhood. No one ever had a word to say against her in society, he claimed. She had begun to feel that this position might be even more enjoyable than her post at the Donegals’ tumultuous and disorderly house. At first she was mostly nurse, helping the poor girl recover.