by Regina Darcy
Contents
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
BONUS CHAPTER 1:FALLING FOR THE EARL
BONUS CHAPTER 2:AN EARL FOR THE DESPERATE BRIDE
KEEP IN TOUCH!
Copyright © Regina Darcy 2016
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher and writer except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a contemporary work of fiction. All characters, names, places and events are the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously.
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reginadarcy.cleanandwholesomeromance.com
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ONE
The heat in the room was stifling. The windows were closed to prevent the air, and whatever contagions were borne upon it, into the sickroom. But the patient enclosed within the bed sheets seemed entirely unaware of the temperature; he was buried in a mount of blankets and still he shivered.
“Bart!” he called out in a weak voice.
“I’m here, old chap.”
Lord Bartholomew Granger, the Duke of Middleton, Baron Danver’s commanding officer and lifelong friend, came closer to his bed.
“This is on fine pickle you’ve landed yourself in,” he told his friend with a forced smile. “You are not going to let such a small thing as an infection stop you from returning to England are you?”
“We both know, I won’t survive this darn fever,” Jason Danver responded. He started coughing violently. The Duke reached for the cup of water next to the bed and helped his friend take a sip.
“Not if you don’t take better care of yourself.”
“Old chap, I need you to take care of Arya,” Danver said faintly.
“You’re the only one whom I can trust to put her safety first.”
When Middleton said nothing, the Baron repeated his request.
“I will no longer be here to offer her my protection. A protection she sorely needs.” Once again Baron Danver was racked with a persistent cough.
He took a couple of deep breaths and continued his plea, “She’s an innocent in this nest of vipers. Her family . . . they see her as a pawn and they’ve used her as such. Her mother, while she was alive, never had any influence on the decisions that the Maharajah Sangvitani Singh made, and as for that brother of hers, he’s as duplicitous as the devil himself.”
His eyes, feverish but intent locked with Bartholomew’s. He gripped the Duke’s arm and held on firmly as he whispered, “Promise me that you’ll look after Arya when I’m gone. I ask you this on the memory and strength of our friendship.”
The Duke’s heart constricted, his mind still refusing to accept the inevitable. Nevertheless, as his friend continued to stare at him, he finally gave him the answer he was after.
“Yes. Yes, of course I will, but you mustn’t give up.”
“No need to pretend. I’m dying and everyone knows it… Arya knows it too.”
“Where is she?”
“She can’t be allowed in the sickroom. You see . . . ” a frail smile touched the wan lips of the wasting Baron. “We’re . . . she’s going to have our child. It’s very early yet, but nothing must be done to put the unborn baby in harm’s way. He’ll be the heir to my estate; he must be kept safe. I have nowhere else to turn; no one else but you understands the delicacy of our role in India.” He began to cough in earnest now, his body racked by the spasms.
Bartholomew bent down to support his friend, bracing his back so that he could sustain the cough without collapsing. “Arya . . . I have tried to be a good husband, and she has tried to be a good wife, but the odds have been against us. She’s half English and half-Indian; both sides regarded her with suspicion. She’s the dearest girl, but when I’m gone she’ll be alone. I need you to give me your word Bart.”
“Yes, of course. You have my word.”
The Baron smiled, relief colouring his features.
“The two of you have always gotten on well; I knew that I could count on you to do right by her. And by my child.”
“Yes, of course,” the Duke reassured him again.
The Baron fell back upon the bed, exhausted but relieved.
“Thank you. There are no words to express my gratitude. You’ve always been there when I needed you.” Danver waved weakly for the glass by his bed; Bartholomew handed it to him. Danver drank deeply then handed it back to his friend.
“There’s poppy in it; I’ll sleep soon, and very soon, I’ll sleep forever.” He closed his eyes and seemed to drift off. But soon he opened his eyes again.
“You’ll make sure that my child knows who I was, wont you old chap? If it is a boy, he must follow the family tradition: Eton, then Oxford, then a commission. God knows if the Empire will still be here when he reaches manhood; all these rebellions and rival potentates only harm India. But duty comes before all. You will make sure that my son knows this?” the Baron asked urgently.
“Yes.”
“He must do his duty. As I have done mine. As Arya has done hers. You will impress that upon him as he grows to manhood. He must do his duty as a British subject.”
“Yes.”
The Baron sighed. “I am counting on you,” he whispered, his voice fading as his eyelids closed.
Bartholomew remained standing until his friend had fallen asleep. He stood in silent salute to a fallen brother at arms, tears streaming down his cheeks.
After the Battle of Delhi during the Second Anglo-Maratha War the crown had seen a need to ensure its interest were being represented accurately. It had sent the Bartholomew Granger and Jason Danver to create political alliances and relationships in India. Alliances beyond that of the East India Company. It had been four long years. During that time Bartholomew had inherited the Duchy of Middleton, when his father died. The Duke had been dreaming of England for the last six months. His duty and estate calling to him. Both men’s commissions were coming to the end and they had been in serious talk about leaving the colonies together. That dream was now dead, Jason Danver would not live to see his homeland again. The Duke took a deep breath, clicked his heels together, bowed, turned around and walked out of the room.
It did not have occurred to him to deny his friend’s dying request to look after his wife and unborn child, but he had no idea of just how he was to do that.
Surely the Maharajah would want his daughter under his wing so that he would control the inheritance that she would receive on behalf of her child, who would be the heir to the impressive Danver estate and title. The Maharajah was by all accounts a fond father, but he was a ruler first and his children were the armoury with which he built up his power. British intelligence was not certain whether the Maharajah was playing both sides or whether he was unaware of the subversive activities of his eldest son Param. But it was only a matter of time before Param’s political activism on behalf of independence and his father’s strong ties to the British Empire were destined to collide.
When Bartholomew left the room, the hallway outside the sickroom was thronged with people; friends, fellow officers, members of Lady Arya’s family. But not her brother; Bartholomew’s observant eye noted that Param Singh was not among the waiting crowd. Nor was the Maharajah, but that was not surprising; Indian royalty did not wait in h
allways. The Maharajah would come when he decided it was time to say good-bye to his British son-in-law and he would do so with pomp and ceremony, a visit from a potentate to a representative of the British government. The marriage between his half-English daughter and Baron Danver had been arranged for political reasons. The Maharajah, mindful of the unrest in his province, and convinced that the only way to forge peace was to strengthen the bonds between the British Raj and his dynasty, had offered his beautiful daughter as a prize. Arya Singh, the obedient daughter of the Maharajah and his second wife, dutifully married the Baron a year ago as she had been told to do.
What she thought of the match, Bartholomew didn’t know. He only knew that he had fallen in love with Arya Henrietta Singh, on the day that she became Baroness Danver, his best friend’s wife.
TWO
Lady Arya Danver was royalty; her husband had been in the habit of forgetting that she had been raised not only as a British aristocrat, but also as an Indian princess. She was expected to conduct herself regally and in a manner which paid tribute to the long and impressive history of the Singh dynasty. She was now a British widow, and there were expectations from that quarter as well; her mother, an Englishwoman, had raised her according to English propriety so that she would not disgrace her place in British society.
But her mother had died six months ago, and her husband had just taken his last breathe in a sickroom to which she was denied access.
She must not risk the life of her unborn child, her father had proclaimed. He had emphasised that this was not a time for sentiment. This was a time when the ties between Great Britain and the Indian kingdom of Bharatpur needed to be strengthened.
She felt remiss in her duty, neglecting her husband in his final hours. She could not have said that she loved him; her mother had told her that people of her station did not marry for love. Love for people of consequence was a mere whim, not something to be indulged. The lower casts might do so because they had nothing at stake: no alliances to build, no vast tracts of land to join, no family histories to unite. But during their one year of marriage, she had grown fond of him and her heart ached at the thought of his passing.
As she sat in her bedchamber, while all around her the household made preparations for the funeral, she was aware that her father would have plans for her. Those plans would make no allowances for her preferences. She was a daughter and not a son, her wishes deemed irrelevant. She was, he would tell her, an insignificant link in the greater golden chain of destiny. She was certainly more valuable now that she was carrying the Baron’s heir and that value meant that her future had to be carefully considered to determine where she could be of the most use. Britain and Indian Bharatpur; she must never lose sight of that greater marriage, that powerful alliance, to which she owed her allegiance.
When her father had told her that she was to marry the Baron, she had not questioned his decision. The Baron was young, wealthy, the heir to English lands that she had never seen; he had been a good man, a faithful husband, mindful of his duty as an officer and as a husband. Their wedding was a magnificent event to which the high-ranking British government officials and East India Company representatives, as well as the members of Indian royalty, had been invited. Her father had spared no expense to ensure that his daughter’s marriage was counted as the social affair of the season. There had been balls leading up to the ceremony; there had been tiger hunts for the gentlemen; there had been suppers and parties, so that all of India could behold the affection between the Maharajah of Bharatpur and the British Empire.
Arya, only eighteen, had meekly done as she was told and if she felt lost in the swirl of gaiety which accompanied the engagement, she was wise enough to say nothing of her feelings to her mother, who had painstakingly coordinated the domestic preparation for the celebrations. Or to her father, who made sure that his only daughter was married off in a style which would put the British peerage to shame.
Of course it was a British wedding; the Baron had insisted and the Maharajah had concurred. Arya had followed through with the practices which were somewhat foreign to her because, even though she was half-British, her life was lived following most of the Hindi customs. But a British wedding it had to be, and she had gone down the aisle on her father’s arm, in the Church of England ceremony where her husband awaited her. Beside him were his groomsmen and his best man, all officers in their vivid redcoats and martial bearing, their posture unyielding and their faces impassive. All except for one. As she approached the altar, the Duke of Middleton, her husband’s best man, had grinned at her and winked. She had been so startled by his departure from decorum that her face alighted in a broad smile. Everyone assumed that she was smiling at the Baron; the Baron himself had assumed as much. But everyone was wrong. She had told no one, certainly; her feelings had remained concealed, part of that private self that she shared with no one because no one cared what Lady Arya Danver thought or felt. Her innermost feelings and opinions were insignificant. Except to Bartholomew.
The Baron, a little worse for wear but not drunk, had insisted that his best friend must dance with his bride. “Today, I am issuing the command,” he had said, “and you must obey my nuptial orders, Bart.”
“Gladly,” Bartholomew had replied. She had been too shy to speak at first, but the Duke did not seem to know that she was insignificant and unimportant and he had inquired about her plans, now that she was married; he wanted to know if they planned to travel to England and if she wanted to. What she thought seemed to matter to him. He had smiled into her eyes and made her feel beautiful. The dance had ended much too soon and the marriage had begun.
Lord Middleton had often been their guest in the past year; the British community congregated around the officers and they enjoyed accepting invitations to the palace that the Maharajah had bestowed upon his daughter and son-in-law as a wedding present. Arya, who had had riding lessons from the time she was young, was an expert horsewoman and much admired for her seat. She had been taught to dance as a child and she was sought after as a partner at balls. As for conversation, well, she was a quiet girl because while dancing and riding were expected of a woman who belonged to the upper levels of society, insightful discourse was not. Except with Bartholomew, who probed her for her thoughts on the political situation in Rajputana to Bengal, on the books that she read and the art that she enjoyed.
On her very wedding day, she had fallen in love with her husband’s best man. A year later, now a widow and an expectant mother, her feelings had not changed. But her feelings were unimportant. They were not destined to be with each other.
THREE
“Your Ladyship, the Duke of Middleton is without, requesting an audience.”
Startled out of her reverie, Arya frowned at the butler who delivered the message. “The Duke of Middleton is here?”
“Yes, milady. The Baron sent for him before he passed.”
She hadn’t known. No one had thought it important to let her know that her husband’s closest friend had been summoned to the Baron’s deathbed.
Arya rose. The black folds of her dress, stiff and unyielding as the mourning season, which was upon her, accompanied her like attendants. She would have preferred to observe the Hindi traditions of purification and to wear a white mourning garment. But even this choice had been taken away from her.
She took a deep breath and refocused her attention on the servant in front of her.
“Please escort His Grace in and bring in some tea.”
“I’ll have a tray sent in immediately, milady.”
Bartholomew entered the room with his swift, military gait, his hat under his arm, his sword at his side, but his eyes were on her. “My Lady Danver, I’m so sorry for your loss.”
“And yours. The two of you were great friends.”
“Yes . . . since our boyhood. How are you managing?”
“There’s really nothing for me to manage,” she answered with a sad smile. “My father and Sir Henry are taking care of t
he funeral.”
Sir Henry Hastings was the liaison from the British government, a diplomat whose connections with His Majesty’s government were testimony to his long years of service and his broad knowledge of the political protocol. He was a dry, stiff man who clearly regarded Arya as an ornamental accoutrement to the marriage and of no innate significance. He had delivered his condolences and the condolences of His Majesty’s government by rote before going off to meet with her father as they determined how to handle this development.
“Yes, I understand that. I meant you. I—he told me the happy news. I’m sorry that your child, when born, will not be able to know his father.”
“Or her father,” Arya replied with a flash of impertinence. “Girl children are born, you know, although they are not wanted as much as boy children.”
Bartholomew’s expression was entirely within the boundaries of decorum, but as his eyes travelled over her thick chestnut hair and deep amber, expressive eyes, he thought to himself that a daughter who looked like Arya would be a beauty and a delight to her family and an everlasting asset to the Danver lineage.
“I rather fancy, Lady Danver, that all those short-sighted men and women who crave sons had better give a thought to the means by which children enter the world. I grant you, we men have our merits and I venture to say that we have some areas of superiority, but worthy though we are, we have not yet been entrusted with the propagation of the species.”
She laughed out loud at Bartholomew’s comment, then clapped her hand to her mouth. “I’m in mourning; you made me laugh.”
“You are to be a mother; you must convey some joy to your child,” he countered.
“Oh, Lord Bartholomew, it’s so good to see you.” Arya dropped the contrived formality, and addressed the Duke in the informal manner that was their habit when in private.
