Dair Devil

by Lucinda Brant

  With the register signed by both parties, and witnessed, the newly-married couple faced their family and relations with blushing smiles. They acknowledged the Duke and Duchess of Roxton with a bow and a curtsy, and then with the same to the Duchess of Kinross, who blew them a kiss. And then they turned and bowed and curtsied to the Countess of Strathsay, who was sniffing back tears, her face half-buried in her lace-bordered handkerchief. Dair took a step forward, kissed his mother’s cheek and then his sister’s, too, before rejoining his wife to accept the smiles of congratulation from one and all as they made their way along the aisle towards the open doors and the crowd waiting patiently to see them. Outside the family chapel, they would receive more congratulations from family, friends, the ducal household, and most of the village, who had walked up to catch a glimpse of the bride and groom in all their splendid glory.

  But the couple had not taken many steps along the aisle towards the doors when the new Lady Fitzstuart stopped and smiled up at her husband. Those who were following the bride and groom wondered why. Dair did not wonder. He swiftly kissed his new wife’s hand and then stepped forward to embrace his son. Jamie held on so tightly to his father, Dair knew the boy was overwrought and so he gave him a moment. He then kissed the top of his dark red curls, had a word in his ear, and when Jamie nodded, let him go. He then put out his hand to Mr. Banks, and the old gentleman, overcome to be so acknowledged, gripped Dair’s hand tightly. All the while, Mrs. Banks cried her happiness into her damp handkerchief, and when Dair leaned over to kiss her cheek, and to say something in her ear no one but she could hear, she wailed all the more, and fell into her husband’s arms.

  There were those in the congregation who thought this behavior extraordinary, and looked to see what the Duke of Roxton made of it. But the Duke, like everyone involved in this emotional scene, couldn’t care less what others thought. They were all so very happy. And happiest of all were the bride and groom.

  Dair and Rory left the chapel, and walked arm-in-arm into the sunshine of a bright and loving future, two souls now as one.

  ~ TO BE CONTINUED ~

  The Roxton Series will continue in Book 5, the story of the widowed Lady Mary Cavendish—sister of Dair Fitzstuart and first cousin of Antonia, Duchess of Kinross, and no-nonsense Gloucestershire squire Mr. Christopher Bryce.

  Continue reading to further explore behind-the-scenes of Dair Devil or skip ahead to preview Deadly Engagement, a mystery set in the same Georgian world as the Roxton Family Saga in which career diplomat and amateur sleuth Alec Halsey is embroiled in country house murder and mayhem.

  BEHIND-THE-SCENES

  Go behind-the-scenes of Dair Devil—explore the places, objects, and history in the book on Pinterest

  AUTHOR NOTE

  WHILE RESEARCHING disability in the eighteenth century, in particular soldiers returned from battle with one or more limbs incapacitated or amputated, I came across a most remarkable little treatise entitled On the Best Form of Shoe, by an equally remarkable man Professor Petrus Camper (1722-1789) who was Professor of Medicine, Surgery, and Anatomy, at Amsterdam and Groningen.

  What is self-evident today (but is still widely ignored by many consumers) was a revelation to most in the 18th Century. Camper concluded that shoes were made in ignorance of the anatomy and growth of the foot, and constructed to the absurdities and dictates of the fashion of the day. Camper used the term “victims of fashion” to describe persons wearing a particular shoe form, not for comfort, but because it was the fashionable thing to do. He voiced the hope that enlightened parents would avoid inflicting “torture” (his word not mine), on their children by allowing them to wear shoes that fit their foot for comfort, and praised enlightened parents who allowed their children to go barefoot in the house, and thus allowing the growing foot to form naturally.

  Camper’s book includes a chapter on club feet and through his scientific observations and findings concluded (wrongly but enlightened for the time) that such a deformity occurred in the developing fetus while in the womb, and that it was unlikely to be corrected by the use of the wooden and steel contraptions of correction available then; footwear, like those for the normal foot, should be made specific to the shape of the foot itself.

  Camper’s findings were so remarkable for the time that On the Best Form of Shoe was translated almost at once into several European languages and considered worthy of reprinting for the next 100 years.

  FAMILY TREE

  View the Dair Devil Family Tree at lucindabrant.com

  BONUS PREVIEW

  Salt Bride

  A GEORGIAN HISTORICAL ROMANCE

  Salt Hendon Series Book 1

  LONDON, ENGLAND, 1763

  ‘T OM, DO I HAVE A DOWRY?” Jane asked her stepbrother, turning away from a window being hit hard with rain.

  Tom Allenby glanced uneasily at his mother, who was pouring him out a second dish of Bohea tea. “Dowry? Of course you have a dowry, Jane.”

  Jane wasn’t so sure. When her father disowned her four years ago, he cut her off without a penny.

  “What is the amount?”

  Tom blinked. His discomfort increased. “Amount?”

  “Ten thousand pounds,” Lady Despard stated, a sulky glance at her stepdaughter. Annoyance showed itself in the rough way she handled the slices of seedy cake onto small blue-and-white Worcester porcelain plates. “Though why Tom feels the need to provide you with a dowry when you’re marrying the richest man in Wiltshire, I’ll never fathom. To a moneybags nobleman, ten thousand is but a drop in the Bristol River.”

  “Mamma,” Tom said in an under voice, close-shaven cheeks burning with color. “I believe I can spare Jane ten thousand when I am to inherit ten times that amount.” He regarded his stepsister with a hesitant smile. “It’s a fair dowry, isn’t it, Jane?”

  But Lady Despard was right. Ten thousand pounds wasn’t much of a dowry to bring to a marriage with a nobleman who reportedly had an income of thirty thousand pounds a year. Yet Jane hated to see her stepbrother miserable. Poor Tom. The terms of Jacob Allenby’s will had disturbed his well-ordered world.

  “Of course it’s a fair dowry, Tom. It is more than fair, it is very generous,” she answered kindly.

  She retreated once more to the window with its view of London’s bleak winter skies and gray buildings and wished for the sun to show itself, if but briefly, to melt the hard January frost. Tom could then take her riding about the Green Park. Somehow, she had to escape the confines of this unfamiliar townhouse crawling with nameless soft-footed servants.

  But there was no escaping tomorrow. Tomorrow she was to be married. Tomorrow she would be made a countess. Tomorrow she became respectable.

  Tom followed her across the drawing room to the window seat that overlooked busy Arlington Street and sat beside her.

  “Listen, Jane,” he said gruffly. “You needn’t rush into this marriage just for my benefit. Attorneys for Uncle’s estate said there is still time…”

  “It’s perfectly all right, Tom,” Jane assured him with a soft smile. “The sooner I’m married the sooner you inherit what is rightfully yours and can get on with your life. You have factories to run and workers who are relying on you to pay their long overdue wages. It was wrong of Mr. Allenby to leave his manufacturing concerns and his estate to you without any monies for their upkeep. You shouldn’t be forced to foreclose, or to sell your birthright. Those poor souls who make your blue glass need to be paid so they can feed their families. Should they be made destitute, all because your uncle willed his capital to me? You are his only male relative, and you have an obligation to those who now work for you. We know why your uncle made you assets rich but cash poor, why he left his capital to me—because he hoped to force a union between us.”

  “Why not? Why not marry me, Jane?”

  “Because despite being my brother in law, you’ve been my little brother since I can remember, and that will never change,” Jane explained kindly. “I love you as a sister loves a b
rother, and that is why I cannot marry you.”

  “But what of Uncle’s will?” Tom asked lamely, not forcing the argument because he knew she was right.

  “We have been over this with Mr. Allenby’s attorneys,” Jane answered patiently. “The will does not specifically mention that I must marry you, Tom, and so we are not obligated to do so. That was an oversight on your uncle’s part. The attorneys say that I may marry any man, and the one hundred thousand pounds will then be released in your favor.”

  “Any man?” Tom gave a huff of embarrassed anger. “But you are not marrying just any man, Jane. You are marrying the Earl of Salt Hendon! I cannot allow you to make such a sacrifice. It is not right. Surely something can be worked out. We just need time.”

  “Time? It has now been three months since Mr. Allenby died and you cannot keep putting off your creditors. How much do you owe, Tom? How long do you think you can go on before you must sell assets to meet your debts?” Jane forced herself to smile brightly. “Besides, is it such a sacrifice to be elevated from squire’s daughter to wife of the Earl of Salt Hendon? I shall be a countess!”

  “Wife of a nobleman who is marrying you because he gave his word to your dying father and feels honor-bound to do so,” Tom grumbled. “Not because he wants or loves you… Oh, Jane! Forgive me,” he apologized just as quickly, realizing his offence. “You know I didn’t mean—”

  “Don’t apologize for the truth, Tom. Yes, I am marrying a man who does not care two figs for me, but in doing so my conscience is clear.”

  “Well, if you won’t marry me, then marriage to a titled lothario is better than you remaining unmarried,” her stepbrother said in an abrupt about-face that widened Jane’s blue eyes. “Only a husband’s protection will fend off lecherous dogs. Living unmarried in a cottage on the estate was all well and good while Uncle Jacob was alive to protect you. But even he was powerless the one and only time you ventured beyond the park. You became fair game for every depraved scoundrel riding the Salt Hunt.” Tom squeezed her hand. “Uncle showed more restraint than I. I’d have shot those lascivious swine as let them take you for a harlot.”

  That humiliating incident had occurred two years ago but the memory remained painfully raw for Jane. What Tom did not know was that the lascivious swine of which he spoke were in truth the Earl of Salt Hendon and his friends. On the edge of the copse, with her basket of field mushrooms over her arm and dangling her bonnet by its silk ribbons, she had not immediately recognized the Earl astride his favorite hunter, with a full beard and his light chestnut hair tumbled about his shoulders.

  He had brought his mount right up to her and stared down into her upturned face with something akin to mute stupefaction. Then, much to the delight of his boon companions, he exacted a landlord’s privilege for her trespass by dismounting, pulling her into a tight embrace and roughly kissing her full on the mouth. She had tried in vain to push him off but his arm about her waist was vise-like, and he continued to crush her mouth under his, violating her with his tongue; he tasting of spirits and pepper. When he finally came up for air, his brown eyes searched her shocked face as if expecting some sort of revelation. It was only when she slapped his face hard that the spell was broken, and he was brought to a sense of his surroundings. He released her with one vicious whispered word in her ear and a low mocking bow.

  Even now, two years on, remembering how pitilessly he had whispered that hateful word, Jane shuddered and swallowed. He could very well have stabbed her in the heart, such was the hurt that came with that one word: Harlot.

  She smiled resignedly at her stepbrother, all of one-and-twenty years of age and with so much responsibility resting on his thin young shoulders.

  “But what else were they to think, Tom? I, an unmarried girl cast out of her father’s house, living under the protection of an old widower, they could not take me for anything less than a harlot.”

  “No! No, you’re not! Never say so!” he commanded, a glance across the room at his mother, who was pouring out more tea into her dish. “You made one tiny error of judgment, that’s all,” he continued. “For that you must suffer the consequences for the rest of your life? I say, a thousand times, no.”

  “Dearest Tom. You’ve always been my stalwart defender, though I don’t deserve such devotion,” she said in a rallying tone. “You cannot dismiss what I did as a tiny error of judgment. After all, that error caused my father to disown me and brand me a whore.” When Tom made an impatient gesture and looked away, she smiled reassuringly and touched his flushed cheek. “I cannot—I do not—hide from that. If your uncle had not taken me in when my own father disowned me, I would have ended up in a Bristol poorhouse, or worse, dead in a ditch. I will always be grateful to Mr. Allenby for giving me shelter.”

  “I’d have looked after you, Jane. Always.”

  “Yes, Tom. Of course.”

  But they both knew the unspoken truth of that lie. Jane’s father, Sir Felix Despard, would never have permitted Tom to interfere in a father’s justifiable punishment of a disobedient and disgraced daughter. The loss of her virtue and its tragic consequences had bestowed upon Sir Felix the right to cast her out of the family home, alone, friendless, and destitute. Jane had disgraced not only her good name but also her family’s honor. She did not blame her father for her disgrace, but Jane would never forgive him for what he had ordered done to her.

  Regardless of what others thought of her, she still believed in upholding the moral principles of fairness, honesty and taking responsibility for her actions. The predicament she had found herself in had not been of her father’s making, it had been hers and hers alone. But Tom would never understand. He had been spared the whole sordid story, for which she was grateful. Tom was an earnest young man who saw the good in everyone. Jane hoped he always would.

  “You’re the best of brothers, Tom,” she said sincerely, and swiftly kissed his cheek.

  But Tom did not feel he had earned such praise. He grabbed Jane’s hand.

  “If you had accepted any man but Lord Salt!” he said fiercely. “He always has this look on his face—hard to describe—as if someone has dared break wind under his noble nose. The way his nostrils quiver, I just want to burst out laughing. You may giggle, Jane, but God help me to keep a straight face if the rest of the Sinclair family have the same noble nostrils!”

  The butler chose that moment to interrupt.

  “What is it, Springer?” Jane asked politely, bringing her features under control.

  “Lord Salt and Mr. Ellis, ma’am,” the butler intoned.

  Stepbrother and sister exchanged a wide-eyed stare, as if caught out by the very object of their gossiping.

  “What? He is here now?” Lady Despard blurted out rudely, and before the butler could confirm that indeed the Earl of Salt Hendon and his freckle-faced secretary waited downstairs, added with a trill of breathless anticipation, “What a high treat for us all! Shall I order up more tea?”

  Jane informed the butler in a perfectly controlled voice that he was to show his lordship and Mr. Ellis up at once, and to bring a fresh pot of tea and clean dishes. But no sooner had the door closed on the servant’s back than she sank onto the window seat, as if her knees were unable to support her waif-like frame. She was deaf to her stepmother’s entreaties that she go at once to the looking glass and there tidy her hair and straighten the square neckline of her bodice. And she was blind to her stepbrother’s frown of concern, thinking that if she’d brought her needlework to the drawing room she could at least pretend occupation and never need look the nobleman in the eye.

  Coming face-to-face with the Earl of Salt Hendon, Jane lost the facility of speech.

  ~ ~ ~

  MAGNUS VERNON TEMPLESTOWE SINCLAIR, ninth Baron Trevelyan, eighth Viscount Lacey, and fifth Earl of Salt Hendon, strode into the drawing room on the butler’s announcement and immediately filled the space with his presence. The papered walls and ornate plastered ceiling shrunk inwards, or so it seemed to Jane, accust
omed to the Allenbys, who were all short and narrow-shouldered. The Earl was neither. He was dressed in what Jane presumed to be the height of London elegance: A Venetian blue frock coat with elaborate chinoiserie embroidery on tight cuffs and short skirts; an oyster silk waistcoat that cut away to a pair of thigh-tight black silk breeches, rolled over the knees and secured with diamond knee buckles; white clocked stockings encased muscular calves; and enormous diamond-encrusted buckles sat in the tongues of a pair of low-heeled black leather shoes. Lace at wrists and throat completed this magnificent toilette. Yet, neither ruffled lace or expertly-cut cloth could hide the well-exercised muscle in the strong legs, or the depth of chest and width of shoulder. But he did not dominate by size alone. There was purpose in his stride, and when he took a quick commanding glance about the room, the intensity in his brown eyes demanded that those who fell under his gaze pay attention or suffer the consequences of his displeasure.

  Lady Despard, standing near the fireplace, brought him up short. She dropped into a low curtsy, giving his lordship a spectacular view of her deep cleavage. When the Earl tore his gaze from her overripe bosom, it was to turn and regard Jane with a disdainful glare. A look, hard to read, passed across the nobleman’s square face, and then it was as if he suddenly realized he was being less than polite. He bowed slightly as Lady Despard rose up and with her son crossed the carpet to greet him.

  Formal introductions gave Jane time to find her composure. She stood frozen, awed by the sheer physicality of the man, unable to bend her stiff knees into the desired respectful curtsy. She appeared calm enough, but inwardly she felt sick to her stomach and relieved at the same time. She was glad that he barely looked at her. When he did, it was with tacit disapproval, and as if to make certain she was paying attention. This expression stayed with him when he spoke a few words with Tom. Jane saw it in the clench of his strong jaw and the way in which his lips pressed together in a thin line, giving his classical features a hard, uncompromising edge. Yet, no amount of cold disdain could diminish the fact he was a ruggedly handsome man.