ZONDERVAN
Prelude to a Lord
Copyright © 2014 by Camy Tang
ePub Edition © May 2014: ISBN 978-0-310-41280-9
Requests for information should be addressed to:
Zondervan, 3900 Sparks Dr. SE, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49546
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Elliot, Camille.
Prelude for a Lord / Camille Elliot.
pages cm
ISBN 978-0-310-32035-7
1. Christian fiction. I. Title.
PS3605.L4425P74 2014
813'.6—dc23
2014018868
All Scripture quotations are taken from the King James Bible.
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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.
Publisher’s Note: This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. All characters are fictional, and any similarity to people living or dead is purely coincidental.
Cover design: Laura Klynstra
Cover photography: Richard Jenkins
Interior design: Lori Lynch
14 15 16 17 18 19 20 / RRD / 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To Sue Brower, for your vision in suggesting this book and our shared love of all things Regency.
CONTENTS
CAST OF PRIMARY CHARACTERS
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
EPILOGUE
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
CAST OF PRIMARY CHARACTERS
Lady Alethea (al-EE-thea) Sutherton, daughter of the seventh Earl of Trittonstone. Alethea’s brother inherited upon her father’s death, becoming the eighth Earl of Trittonstone, but he died only a few years later, and Alethea’s cousin, Wilfred Sutherton, inherited the title and became the ninth Earl of Trittonstone. Alethea’s mother died when she was very young, but her neighbor, Lady Arkright, loved Alethea like a daughter. Her closest friend is her half sister, Lucy. Contrary to the strictures of proper English society, Alethea has learned to play the violin, although she also plays the harp and pianoforte.
Miss Lucy Purcell, illegitimate daughter of Alethea’s father. Before Lucy was born, her mother married a sailor who gave Lucy his name. He died in the war. However, everyone in Alethea’s village knew Lucy was the by-blow of the seventh Earl of Trittonstone. After the death of her mother, Lucy went to Bath to work as a maid, and she rose to become a lady’s maid. Her employer is Mrs. Ramsland.
Mrs. Ebena Garen, Alethea’s aunt. Ebena was the younger sister to Alethea’s paternal grandmother, Darla. Ebena and Darla’s father was Baron Winterscomb. Darla married the sixth Earl of Trittonstone, while Ebena married Mr. Tar Garen, a younger son of the Earl of Danners.
Margaret Garen, twelve-year-old niece of Aunt Ebena’s late husband.
Lady Arkright, (deceased) Calandra was an Italian woman trained in music in the Ospedale della Pietà under the composer Vivaldi. It was in Italy that she met and married her husband, Sir William Arkright, and they lived nearby in Trittonstone Park, Alethea’s home. They had no children. When Calandra died, she bequeathed her violin to Alethea.
Bayard Terralton, Baron Dommick, known as “Bay” to his close friends and family. Lord Dommick only recently inherited the title when his father passed away, about seventeen months before the story opens. (When his father was alive, Lord Dommick was known as Mr. Terralton.) He plays the violin and flute.
Miss Clare Terralton, Bay’s younger sister. Clare is about to make her debut in London in the coming spring.
Lady Morrish, Bay’s mother. She had been Lady Dommick until a few months before the story opens, when she married Sir Hermes Morrish.
Sir Hermes Morrish, knighted several years ago and married Bay’s mother after the death of Bay’s father. His nephew is Mr. Morrish.
The Quartet, (Lord Dommick, Lord Ravenhurst, Lord Ian Wynnman, and Captain David Enlow) four noblemen extraordinarily accomplished in music performance and composition who have been friends since they were in school together. After they graduated university, they performed for private concerts in London and became quite popular due to their wealth, handsome faces, and musical talent (in that order). Then Bay and David bought their commissions and became officers under Wellesley on the Iberian Peninsula, battling Napoleon Bonaparte.
Captain David Enlow, third son of the Viscount Enlow. He has one sister and two older brothers. He saved Bay’s life at the Battle of Corunna and helped him back to England. After a few months, he returned to the Peninsula to continue fighting against the French. He plays the pianoforte and the flute.
Arion Mercaren, Marquess of Ravenhurst, known as “Raven” to his close friends, inherited his father’s title when he was very young. He has two sisters, one of whom married the Earl of Windmarch. During the summer after Bay returned from Corunna, Raven took his friend to Ravenhurst Castle to recover. He plays the violoncello and pianoforte.
Lord Ian Wynnman, second son of the Marquess of Crallworth. His older brother is the Viscount Dinswell, and he has a younger sister. He plays the pianoforte and violin.
PROLOGUE
October, 1809
Trittonstone Park, Somerset, England
Lady Alethea Sutherton sank onto a thin-cushioned chair in the dark, dreary drawing room opposite her cousin and his wife. “Would you care for tea?” Alethea asked, which struck her as odd since her cousin now owned this house, and the master arriving at his new home could hardly be considered a visitor.
Wilfred, the new Earl of Trittonstone, frowned at the threadbare carpet. Alethea was about to mention how her father and brother had never spared the funds to refurbish the home when Wilfred slapped his hands on his knees and said, “No sense putting it off. Alethea, you have a week to pack up your things.”
It was the same sensation as when she was twelve, riding her horse through the woods. She’d arrogantly thought that as she knew every tree and twig, she’d be perfectly safe if she sped up to something faster than a walk. A low-hanging branch had thwacked her in the throat, dislodging her from her horse. She’d landed hard on her back, so in addition to her throat constricting, she hadn’t been able to make her lungs draw in air. She felt that way now.
“Good gracious, Wilfred, she’s going to faint.” But rather than assisting her, Mona leaned away from Alethea as if unconsciousness were contagious. “I told you to introduce the topic with more circumspection.”
“She should have expected it,” Wilfred groused. “It’s my house now, after all.”
Alethea managed to gasp in a breath. Yes, she had h
alf expected Wilfred to arrange for her to leave, but she hadn’t thought she’d only have a week to pack and say good-bye to her childhood home. “Where . . . where will I go?”
Wilfred’s wrinkled brow cleared. “Is that all that’s worrying you? You’ll stay with Aunt Ebena in Bath. You remember Aunt Ebena, don’t you?”
For Alethea, her brother’s funeral had been a blur of faces, but she did remember Aunt Ebena—tall and thin, with a pinched mouth, a gigantic beak nose, and chestnut hair streaked with ash. “She wants me to stay with her?”
“I didn’t ask,” Wilfred said. “But she’ll do what I say, now that I’m the head of the family. Especially if I sweeten the deal with some money for your upkeep. Ebena’s always looking a little shabby.”
Alethea realized her cousin was against her like an icy north wind. A gust blew her down, and once she got her feet under her again, another gust knocked her over once more. She wanted to leave the drawing room, but she didn’t think her legs would support her. “I’ve lived here in the country all my life,” she said faintly.
Mona gave a lusty sigh. “Now, don’t be melodramatic, Alethea. You had your season in London, after all.” Mona’s nasally voice had an edge to it since her family hadn’t been wealthy enough to sponsor a season for her.
Alethea swallowed the metallic taste in her mouth. The majority of her time in London had been abject pain and humiliation, on account of her height and lack of social skills. And Trittonstone Park had been her haven from her father and brother.
But her father and brother were gone. She didn’t need a haven anymore.
And the last few years, with neighbors who avoided her because they thought she was odd, and with the two people closest to her heart gone, she had been fighting the bleakness of her life alone, the suspicion that there was something fundamentally wrong with her, the fear that the way her family had treated her was the way she would always be treated. Perhaps now was the time to find a new community. And hadn’t Wilfred said . . .
“Aunt Ebena lives in Bath?” Alethea asked.
“Of course. Isn’t that what I said?” Wilfred frowned.
Mona looked at her shrewdly. “Do you have an acquaintance in Bath?”
“Yes, my sister.”
Mona’s nostrils flared almost as large as her watery blue eyes, and Wilfred’s narrow face turned purple. “How dare you mention—” he sputtered. “You are never to mention such persons in this house.”
Considering they had ejected her from her home less than twenty minutes after arriving, Alethea had lost all pretense of politeness. In addition, she had an unfortunate tendency to rebel when someone told her what she could not do.
“Are you referring to my half sister, Lucy Purcell?” she said in a loud voice.
Mona’s narrow shoulders flinched. Wilfred’s grey eyes bulged and grew bloodshot.
Alethea’s anger sent strength to her wobbling knees and she rose, shaking out her brown woolen skirts. She had forgotten about the broken fingers on her left hand, and the motion sent a stab of pain up her arm, but it only stoked the fire in her chest. “Yes, Lucy lives in Bath. It will be nice to be close to her again. We have only exchanged letters since she moved two years ago to take a post as a housemaid. Your cousin is a lady’s maid now, Wilfred,” Alethea said sweetly.
“She is not my cousin!” Wilfred choked out.
“Half cousin,” Alethea corrected herself. “Pray, excuse me.” She swept toward the door, half amused when the butler opened the door from the outside of the drawing room before she reached it. She gave him an impudent smile, which the very proper servant did not return with so much as a crack in his stately facade, although Alethea could have sworn his chin twitched.
As she climbed the stairs, her smile faded, and her anger burned to ashes. This was no longer her home. Gone were the long hours walking the hills and running down them when no one was around to see her. Gone also were the long hours playing her violin . . .
She checked herself. She hadn’t played since the day her brother broke her fingers.
But perhaps in Bath she would find a better doctor, one who would enable her to play again. And Bath had more concerts she could attend, more access to published music. And Bath had Lucy.
What did it matter where she lived? She only had three more years to wait. She had thought she would spend them here, but instead she could spend them close to Lucy, where they could make plans and ready themselves.
Three more years before she would be free.
CHAPTER ONE
12 Months Later
A prickling sensation spread across the back of Alethea’s neck, which had nothing to do with the brisk air of Bath in the winter.
She looked up from the cabbage she was considering and glanced around the busy marketplace. People shifted in and out of her vision, none looking at her. She twisted to look in the other direction, but again no one paid her any attention.
So why had she felt as if she were being watched?
The farmer, John, looked at her with brow wrinkled. “Something worrying you, miss?”
Alethea had never corrected him. By now, she was used to being called “miss” as opposed to “my lady.” After all, who would believe an earl’s daughter was out in the market buying potatoes and parsnips? But today it took her a moment to realize he was speaking to her. “What? Oh, I beg your pardon, John. Yes, I’ll take the cabbage.”
The prickling feeling returned. Alethea casually turned to the side as if considering some leeks and quickly glanced up.
She caught a man staring at her.
He looked away as if her gaze burned him. Alethea continued to watch him, studying his grey thinning hair, dirty leathery skin, cadaverous build. She wasn’t sure what she was searching for, perhaps something silly like an indication he’d been watching her, but then he entered into a conversation with a man selling knives, apparently bargaining for something.
Had he been watching her or did he just happen to look in her direction? She would have been a terrible spy.
She slipped the cabbage into her market basket, then paid and thanked John before leaving. She was being ridiculous. Who in the world would care enough to want to follow her? She had no money of her own that she controlled, and no social connections since her one season in London had been so uneventful. Besides which, she was a tall, plain, eight and twenty-year-old and not some pretty, dewy-eyed young miss just out of the schoolroom.
She turned up Milsom Street, which bustled mostly with maids, manservants, and merchants this early in the morning. The more fashionable set would emerge in several hours, but for now she was relieved that, as usual, no one would recognize her. It was the reason she’d flown against convention and volunteered to do the cook’s marketing—the opportunity to stroll the streets of Bath, breathe in the crisp air, and walk for an hour or two with no young ladies to titter at her strong stride, no old biddies to disparage her rosy cheeks from the exercise.
A year ago she had arrived in Bath with the hopes it would have a more diverse, broad-minded set of people. Instead, Bath contained a fashionable set who professed to be liberal and intelligent, but who all seemed to disdain Alethea’s passions as ungenteel. Their wit could cut as sharp as the people in London, and for some of them, politeness was merely a veneer.
She could not avoid them at the evening parties, but she could shake their influence loose from her mind during early mornings like these, when she could disappear into the servants of Bath. She strolled through a cluster of shopkeepers, completely unnoticed.
Almost.
A coach-and-four barreled down the street, much too fast for the narrow way. Several people leapt out of the way of the horses with cries of alarm, but the crowds forced the coachman to finally slow his headlong dash, right where Alethea stood pressed against a shop wall.
“Why are we slowing?” a deep male voice demanded from the depths of the coach.
Alethea had been breathless on account of being forced to the s
ide, but now the air stopped in her throat.
It couldn’t be him. Not here, in Bath.
She glanced up just as a man from within the coach looked out—and met her eyes.
Dark eyes, shadowed, solitary. He had always reminded her of a hawk, its power and beauty, its lonely existence. But she now noticed that there was a dark pain, something that had aged him beyond the eleven years since she’d seen him last.
His eyes flickered, and she tensed. Surely he wouldn’t recognize her. She had been one woman in a crowd of hundreds at his concert in London who had danced at the same balls, attended the same operas. Fallen half in love with dashing Mr. Terralton, son and heir to Baron Dommick.
No, he was Lord Dommick now—she had read that his father died last year, three months after Mr. Terralton returned to England, injured from fighting Napoleon on the continent.
But his gaze didn’t leave hers for a few heartbeats, as if trying to place her.
Then he turned away as the man sitting next to him said, “Bay, I’m sure it would hamper your rescue attempts if you were arrested for killing a bystander with your coach.”
Alethea recognized him as Lord Ian Wynnman, and sitting across from them was the Marquess of Ravenhurst.
Her heartbeat galloped. Three of the Quartet, here? She would have expected them to be wintering at their country estates, not mouldering in Bath with invalids taking the waters.
“Bay, your stepfather is a fool. A delay of a few minutes will not mean your sister’s ruin,” Lord Ravenhurst said.
Alethea recalled an announcement in the papers about Lord Dommick’s mother remarrying, although she couldn’t remember to whom.
“He may be a fool, but I know nothing of his nephew,” Lord Dommick replied as the coach pulled away from Alethea. “I intend to allow him no time for any malicious scheming . . .”
Alethea stared at the back of the coach as it continued down the street, her heartbeat returning to normal. For a moment, she’d thought the Quartet was in Bath to give one of their famous concerts, but that was a silly notion. After Lord Dommick and Mr. David Enlow had gone off to join the fighting on the continent, the Quartet had not played together in seven years. She had not heard anything about Mr. Enlow but supposed he must still be in the army.
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