Regency Romance Collection: Regency Fire: The Historical Regency Romance Complete Series (Books 1-5)

by Bridget Barton

  “How long have you been here?”

  “Not more than half an hour, Cordelia. Since the sun came up.”

  “I knew that I would be able to rely on you, and it seems that I was right.”

  When he had helped her down from her horse and the two of them were sitting side-by-side on the rock, Cordelia reached into the little cloth bag on her lap and took out the small leather-bound volume.

  “So, you have found them after all,” Philip said, looking somewhat apprehensive.

  “Indeed, I have. And I have not looked at them once. I simply could not do it without you.”

  “Well, I am here now, and so I think the time has come. I think we really and truly need to know what it was your father wrote.”

  Cordelia tentatively opened the little book and read silently for a few minutes, flicking through the first few pages past the very ordinary and mundane details of everyday life until she found something of note.

  “Oh, here. I think this passage is worth reading out,” she said, turning her pale green-blue eyes on Philip.

  “You read it out, Cordelia,” he said, giving her a nod of encouragement.

  “1st November 1796,” she began.

  “Thirty years ago,” Philip said, absently.

  “In truth, I find it hard to truly realise that I have found Verity Farrington after all these years of acquaintance. I can hardly believe how little notice I paid her when Wentworth and I were but boys, running about the estate and making much mischief. Back then, Verity had just been a little girl. A little girl whom I had almost entirely ignored; dismissed out of hand as if she had not even been there.

  But then, I suppose, she was but a little girl and not of much interest to two growing boys with many trees to climb and arrows to fashion out of branches.

  And yet, Verity had noticed me. She had remembered me most distinctly as her brother’s dearest friend and remembered better yet her own frustration at being so young and so tiny, a little girl invisible to her brother and his special friend.

  Oh, but I could not ignore her now. She has me on a piece of string, and she has only to tug it to easily pull me this way and that. If only she did but know the power she has over me. In truth, it might be best I never tell her, for I should be truly sunk.

  Throughout our years at Eton, Verity became something of a fiction to me. She was a character out of a book almost, one you could imagine if you had a mind to, or forget about equally. Wentworth spoke of her, obviously, but always in the matter-of-fact way that young men speak of their families when they are closeted away at school together.

  And holidays were really no different. I attended my family, and he attended his own. In truth, we did not see much of each other in our summers when we were down from Eton. There was no need, really, since Wentworth and I spent the larger part of the year in one another’s company. And, so it was, every September, Wentworth and I renewed the acquaintance which had been broken only for the short summer months. And, every time we came together again, we could see the changes in each other. Each a little taller, a little broader, a little closer to becoming men.

  And so, it should have come as no surprise to me when, after years without truly setting eyes upon her, I did not recognise Lady Verity Farrington.

  When the thrills and hard work of Oxford were over and our schooling was all done in its entirety, Wentworth and I had each returned to our family estates, both slowly being prepared for the duty that would one day be ours. For, of course, we would each one day be a Duke. How strange it was that it was that very role and responsibility that Wentworth and I had rarely discussed between us over the years. It was almost as if it was simply an inevitable thing; a thing about which, in the end, there was not much to be said.

  Of course, when I finally returned to Horndean Hall for good, an educated man ready to begin his learning in the art of life itself, it would appear that the title of Duke was rather hurtling towards me in a way that it was not for my dear friend.

  My own father had suffered poor health for many years, and it very much seemed as if he simply could not go on very much longer. The thing played on my mind night and day as I worried that I, still young, barely having edged my way into manhood, might truly not be able to manage the role I had longed for and feared my whole life.

  And so it was when I had been invited to a garden party at the home of Lady Winstanley, one to which I knew my dear friend Wentworth would be in attendance, I seized the opportunity to leave go of my cares for an afternoon of enjoyment.

  I had spied my dear friend immediately, of course, and hastened to be at his side. It had been some weeks since I had seen him and I was most keen to regain his company. It was then that I saw him in the company of the most beautiful young woman I have ever set eyes upon.

  She was tall and rather willowy, and quite the most delicate creature I had ever seen. Her hair was a beautiful pale blonde, almost silver as it glinted in the sunshine. As I approach the pair, the young woman turned to regard me and smiled with such warmth as I could not quite believe. There was, in her curiously pale blue eyes, a look of recognition. But I would have known, surely, if ever I had set eyes upon such a beauty before, with her alabaster skin and her beautiful smile.

  “Goodness me, you have changed a good deal since last we met,” she said, with a curious confidence.

  “My Lady?” I said almost tongue-tied the closer I grew to such beauty. “Have we …?”

  “Do not despair, Sir, you and I have already been introduced. Probably not formally, however. After all, formal introductions do not truly exist between children, do they?” She laughed, and it was the most wonderful sound I had ever heard. It was like a melody; like the gentle rushing water in a stream.

  I knew myself to be standing dumbfounded, my mouth hanging somewhat and my countenance entirely dishevelled. For a moment, I looked helplessly at Wentworth, silently pleading with him with my eyes to do something to rescue me. I was very much in danger of making myself a fool and, above all things, I did not want to do so in front of this most beautiful of women.

  “For Heaven’s sake, Cornelius, surely you remember my sister, Verity?” Wentworth said and was quite unable to contain his amusement.

  Of course, my dear friend had seen my helpless attraction immediately and, instead of being annoyed by it, was curiously amused.

  “Goodness me, you have changed.” Was all that I could think of to say.

  “My dear Cornelius, that is exactly what I have just said,” Verity said and laughed.

  And yet, I knew that she did not laugh at me but rather she laughed with me.

  “I wonder how many years it is, Verity, since you and I last met,” I said, regaining a little something of my composure and doing what I could to behave in a way that Verity Farrington would not simply find ridiculous.

  “Oh, I fear it is many, many years,” She said in a voice that was as warm and smooth as honey. “We were quite children, Cornelius. But I remember you quite clearly charging about Calgarth with my brother here and doing what you could to ignore me entirely.” She laughed again.

  “In truth, I very much have a recollection of the same thing. I do hope, all these years later, that you shall forgive my young self for his ignorance and rudeness.” I smiled at her, finding myself staring into her eyes which were, in truth, so pale they seemed to have been watered down somehow. And yet, they were not insipid; rather they were ethereal. In fact, her entire appearance was ethereal as if an angel herself was standing before me in all her pale beauty.

  “There is nothing to forgive, Cornelius.” She laughed in a way that made her suddenly more substantial; corporeal. “You were but a little boy, and that is what little boys do, is it not?”

  “Ah, but there is one thing I ought really to beg forgiveness for,” I went on, finally finding my feet a little.

  “And what is that?”

  “That I did not recognise you immediately, My Lady. After all, you really rather seem to recognise me.
”

  “I certainly gave that appearance, did I not?” She smiled at me so mischievously that I could hardly believe it. It somehow added a curious depth to her very obvious beauty. “But, I did not. In truth, I saw you come into the garden, and I asked my brother who you were. Believe me, Sir, I was as surprised as I could be to realise that the little boy I remember had become such a man.”

  There had been something in the way she had spoken to me that made me realise she was not as unaffected by me as her dignified manner would have suggested. From that moment onwards, I could not help harbouring a hope that so beautiful a creature might find me of as much interest to her as she was to me.”

  “Oh, I think that makes me really rather sad. Well, happy and sad at the same time, perhaps,” Cordelia said, turning to look at Philip.

  “It seems almost as if we are peering at the past from behind a curtain, Cordelia, witnessing those first moments of attraction between two people.”

  “It is hard to imagine that they were young once. As young as us and so ready to fall in love.”

  “Yes, it is.” As they sat on the rock, both of them lost in their own thoughts and staring at the sunlight reflected in the water of the stream, Philip laid an arm about her shoulders.

  Cordelia leaned against him, taking every bit of comfort she could from his closeness. As she did so, she wondered how it was that the promise of love could have turned into a bitter feud that had tainted three decades.

  Chapter Six

  For some time, Philip Farrington had felt himself to be a curious mixture of great worry and great excitement. As he met every morning with Cordelia, he knew himself to be very firmly falling in love with her. In truth, he could not imagine how he would get along in life if the two of them were not destined to be together. He rather thought he felt much as old Cornelius Cunningham had all those years ago when first he had met Philip’s Aunt Verity.

  As every day passed, Philip found that the time he and Cordelia spent together down by the stream was simply not enough. She could only come out at such an early hour and stay for so short a time so as not to draw attention to her habits, and she had to be returned home before her family was quite ready for breakfast. And, every day, as the time came to say goodbye and Philip knew he must wait an entire day and night before he saw her again, he knew he wanted more.

  He wanted Cordelia to be his entirely and yet, with every step he took away from her and towards the great estate of Calgarth, he felt hope slowly slipping away. With their two families so hopelessly deadlocked, how could he and Cordelia ever find enough peace to share a happy life together?

  Whilst Cordelia herself was not despised in the Farrington household, most particularly because of dear Divina’s high regard for her, still, a marriage to her would not have been encouraged. In truth, it was a thing that Philip knew without even having to ask the question. If things could not be resolved and resolved quickly, there would be only one course of action open to Philip and Cordelia if they wanted to spend the rest of their lives together.

  And yet, Philip loved his own family so very dearly. He could not imagine being estranged from them for the rest of his life and rather wished that his own choices could be far simpler and far less painful.

  Returning from their third morning of reading the diaries of Cornelius Cunningham, Philip found himself drawn towards his brother’s study. As he had come into the great entrance hall, Philip had rather discerned a certain amount of excited talking and had simply followed it to its source.

  For a moment or two, he hovered outside the door to Gabriel’s study and, feeling himself every bit the eavesdropper, he stood as still as a statue and listened intently.

  “I say we should sink the thing without delay, Gabriel,” Hugh Farrington said quite determinedly. “We have almost all of the materials we require, and the surveys that Spencer saw completed have been most conclusive.”

  “But first we need to be sure we have enough men to complete the task quickly. Do not forget, brother, that the minute we start, all will become known, and time shall be of the essence.”

  “Indeed, that is true, Gabriel. But even if we are but one day ahead of them, we are still ahead. All that matters is that we have a proper mine sunk and have laid claim to it before the Cunninghams; if only we claim it seconds before, it is ours.”

  “Yes, you are right, of course. And it is likely that the longer I hold off on the thing, the greater the chance that Richard Cunningham will find out exactly what it is we are planning. In truth, I had not wanted to act against them whilst they were a family in grief, however much my feeling towards them rather burns. But time is moving on, and it would appear that Richard Cunningham is taking on his role of Duke without much difficulty. I daresay if we do not act soon, he will.”

  Hearing a chair scrape back from within the room, Philip rather thought his discovery inevitable and, without delay, he hurried back along the corridor and through the great entrance hall, hiding himself in the drawing room.

  As he sat in the drawing room, glad to have found it entirely empty, Philip’s mind was a sudden maelstrom of activity. If he and Cordelia did not find something in the old Duke’s diaries soon, anything that would serve to heal this rift, all would be lost. He had heard the intent in the voices of his brothers and knew that they did not have long.

  Still, they had made great progress even that morning in their reading of the diaries and had begun to move on greatly toward the time when tragedy had struck.

  “2nd April 1797.

  It has taken me day upon day to find the strength with which to write these lines. In truth, I can hardly bear to commit them to paper, lest I look upon them in years to come and find my heart broken afresh. Should any man really want to commit his own pain and humiliation in the deepest ink that may one day be read by the eyes of another? And yet, I must part with this thing before my very heart bursts. I have not one person with which to discuss it and, most horribly, I find I cannot even confide in my very finest friend. For if I did, my dear Wentworth would be entirely crushed to hear of his sister’s most dreadful behaviour.

  And that is one thing that I could not do. I simply could not tell him of all that Verity has done to shame herself and humiliate me. Wentworth is a good man and my very closest friend, and I should never, ever have him hear of this.

  In truth, I would not have believed the thing myself had I not heard it straight from the lips of a woman I believe to be most honest and good. Prudence Littlefair has been the closest companion of Verity Farrington since they were but girls, and I could see the great pain that so dreadful an admission was causing that good woman.

  Even now I can hear the words of Prudence Littlefair ringing in my head, almost as if they have a life of their own long after they have been spoken. And they will not give me peace.

  I have come to know Prudence rather well these last months of my courtship of Verity and have seen in her countenance how very pleased she was that her friend was soon to be married to the man who would, one day soon, become the Duke of Horndean. In truth, I had noticed how Prudence, the most attentive of friends in every way, seemed somehow a little reticent with Verity these last days.

  I could not help thinking that dear Prudence was in some way made uncomfortable in the presence of her finest friend. It was a curious feeling and one that had given me a sense of unease that I could not settle. It was as if I knew that something was wrong; I knew in my heart that something was coming.

  When Prudence attended Horndean Hall herself and requested an audience with me in private, I rather feared the worst. And yet, in all my fears, I could never have imagined that Prudence Littlefair would tell me of Verity’s most dreadful betrayal.

  That most beautiful of women, the only woman I had ever loved, had betrayed me in the worst way imaginable with the Earl of Payton.

  Poor Prudence, so delicate a young woman, with her dreadfully pale skin and red hair, had flushed terribly as she had stumbled over her words in
a bid to get it all out. And all the while, I was unable to help her through it; I was lost in my own world of pain and humiliation, and I could do nothing to ease the suffering of the woman who, on the verge of losing a good deal herself, had chosen to take the only path that was the right one.

  “I could not see you cuckolded, Sir. I know that you and I are barely acquainted, but I know you to be a good and decent man. In truth, I could not bear any person to be treated in such a way and to be left entirely ignorant of the facts. As much as the facts may hurt you, Lord Cunningham, at least you now have the right to choose how you wish to continue.” Tears streamed down Prudence’s face. “And yet my own heart is broken, Sir, for I fear the loss of my own dear friendship. In truth, I am so hurt and disappointed myself for I could never have believed that Verity could have lowered herself so dreadfully. Really, I could not have believed it.” And at that moment, Prudence Littlefair sobbed so deeply that I thought she would make herself ill. I had never seen a woman so overtaken by grief and yet not to have witnessed a death.

  But, of course, the poor young woman had witnessed a death, had she not? She had witnessed the death of her friend’s innocence and good nature and, on account of it, would go on to witness what would undoubtedly be the death of a lifelong friendship.

  As rotten as this likely sounds, I was rather thankful for Prudence Littlefair’s heartbreak and distress. Whilst I should not admit such a thing out loud, it is true. For it was that very distress which distracted me from my own. It gave me another person in this world to comfort and concentrate on instead of thinking how my own heart had been broken into pieces, never to be restored again.

  With her words, Prudence Littlefair had destroyed my world. And with her tears, she had given me a different purpose; a reason to keep living.

  As Philip sat alone in the drawing-room, he could not help drawing to mind the look on Cordelia’s face when she had finished reading that passage. She had seemed more distressed than the information could have warranted at that time and, in truth, Philip rather wondered at it. He, himself, had felt a good deal of shame settle upon him. For all the years that he and his family had uttered the name of Aunt Verity as a means of justification, it would very much appear that the retribution they had sought for so long had been entirely misplaced. And Verity, rather than being so complete a victim had, in the end, rather been the author of her own misfortune.