Also by Shirley Marks
HISTORICAL ROMANCE
Miss Quinn’s Quandary
An Agreeable Arrangement
His Lordship’s Chaperone
Lady Eugenia’s Holiday
GENTLEMEN OF WORTH SERIES
The Suitor List
Perfectly Flawed
A Grand Deception
The Duke Dilemma
An Elaborate Hoax
ROMANTIC COMEDIES
Geek to Chic
Honeymoon Husband
Just Like Jack
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Text copyright © 2016 Shirley Schneckloth
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Montlake Romance, Seattle
www.apub.com
Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Montlake Romance are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-13: 9781503938335
ISBN-10: 1503938336
Cover design by Laura Klynstra
Cover photo by Laura Klynstra
Contents
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
About the Author
Chapter One
December 1817, Leaving London . . . with all possible dispatch!
Come on! Come on!” Frederick Worth, Earl of Brent, braced himself against the cold under his multicaped greatcoat. He then gathered the worn ribbons in hand and waved to his companion, Trevor Rutherford, to make haste. “Be quick about it, man!”
A Fenton’s porter hoisted a small trunk behind the box and stepped away. Trevor fumbled about. “Give me a moment, just tying down ma-luggage. Wouldn’t have to do it ma-self if you had a tiger along that would take care of this business.”
Freddie had not the time to supply a groom, a footman, nor a valet for his expeditious exit from Town. He was in a bit of a hurry but waited nonetheless.
“It’s all right for you, packing a few neckcloths in a bag no larger than a small book satchel,” Trevor uttered in soft tones but not so soft as to be unheard. “You’ve got a whole wardrobe waiting for you at the great family pile. I must rely on the meager choices in ma-travel case. Thank goodness for the resident valet; Sturgis is a hand at turning a fellow out smart.”
“I have no intention of heading to Faraday Hall,” Freddie commented over his friend’s running exposition. He faced forward, snugged his beaver hat tight upon his head, and reached for the whip, preparing to spring the horses.
Finishing his task at hand, Trevor stepped into the box. “What do you mean we ain’t going to Faraday Hall? What the devil . . .”
“Hang on and shut it, will you?” Freddie nodded to the boy holding the team to step away from the horses. With a crisp crack of the whip the phaeton lurched forward, cutting off any further comments from the passenger.
Trevor, caught a bit off balance, fell back into his seat, crying out, “I say!”
The phaeton raced away from St. James Street and continued north, keeping Hyde Park to the west. Freddie would have liked to have kept the cattle at a full gallop, but after the first five minutes he could only manage to keep them moving at a trot. Once past the tollgate and away from Town, Freddie slowed the horses to a walk, allowing them to catch their breath.
“Good Lord, Brent!” Trevor yelled over the groans and squeaks of the transport. “This blasted thing will ruin my back. Where’d you get this death trap?”
“Won it from Sir Nicholas Petersham.” Freddie had to admit his newly acquired phaeton was years past being well sprung and it hit every rut and rock in the road.
“Won?” Trevor scoffed. “The only wager you managed to win in a month and this is your prize? I don’t know, I think he’s the one who got the better end of that game. Gad, this thing is a disgrace! I think it used to be yellow. It’s hard to tell. There ain’t enough paint on it to cover the rust and I don’t know how the wheels manage to stay on.”
“I’m afraid it’s all I have, Trev.” Now that he thought on winning this prize, Freddie had to admit it was the most unfortunate happenstance. He hadn’t won in . . . a very long time. Perhaps even more than the month his friend stated.
“Can’t be true. What happened to that fine dark green curricle or that new chaise? Only had that since the end of last Season. Demme, that would have made a fine traveling carriage for the two of us. We’ll catch our death for sure sitting out in the open like this.” Trevor slapped his arms with his gloved hands. “Tell me, if we ain’t headed for Faraday Hall, where are we off to, then?”
“Penshaw Manor.”
“Where is that, pray tell?” Full details to what, why, and exactly where they were headed would take a while to explain, but they had time enough for the lengthy conversation.
“Cumberland.” Freddie braced himself for the reaction that would follow.
“Good God, that’s nearly Scotland!” By the heightened color of his face, Trevor appeared as if he were beginning to warm a bit. “What is that place? Why are we going there?”
“My father made a gift of it to me two years past, if you recall. He wanted me to learn to manage and improve property before I married.”
“You ain’t married. You ain’t near to getting leg-shackled. Your father was the one who married.”
“He’s given it to me nonetheless, and with the new property came the extra funds to get me into my current difficulty. It’s a wretched business. His Grace was very generous and I was . . .” It was difficult for Freddie to admit his failure and his disappointment in himself, even to his best friend.
“I take it you haven’t a feather to fly with.” Trevor’s voice softened as if he understood how much effort it took Freddie to make such a confession.
“No, I don’t. Father’s going to, as my sister Muriel says, ‘give birth to a bovine’ when he finds out just how much I’ve lost.”
“Was that three stacks of Golden Boys you lost to Calvin t’other night?” Trevor recalled, unfortunately incorrectly, and that was only at a small card party at Dowager Countess Fromme’s.
Freddie cringed. “No, that would be five.”
“Good Lord, Brent! Think you were made out of money!”
“Well I ain’t,” Freddie replied rather hotly.
“I don’t see why you haunt the gaming tables. You don’t enjoy it by half.”
“Don’t I?” Freddie had haunted the tables many a night, playing for hours. Had he not found it pleasurable?
“No.” Trevor stared hard at him. “You don’t. How much are your losses exactly? Surely it could not be all that bad.”
“You’re far better at calculations and such than I. Let’s see . . . three . . . five . . .” Freddie did up the sums, the ones he remembered, an
d at the moment he did not completely recall exactly who held his vowels. “Seven . . . and a half . . .”
“Good gad, Brent. You cannot mean . . .”
“Not finished yet. Er . . .” Freddie kept adding to the total until he determined it was hardly worth going much beyond the double digits. “Over ten, no, fifteen, not more than twenty, as far as I can figure.”
“Twenty thousand pounds?” Trevor’s voice rose an octave, maybe two. “Your father is going to have your hide!”
“That’s why I can’t go home. I can’t even go to any of my sisters—when they discover why I’m there they’re sure to . . . I cannot tell His Grace, Trev. I don’t know how I am to face him, or the duchess. That’s why I’ve got to make a run for Penshaw. It’s the only place left for me to go.”
“I’m surprised you didn’t gamble the estate away.” Trevor passed a hand over his brow. He looked worried.
“Forgot all about it until I found the papers when I was packing.” The truth was, Freddie would have wagered—and most probably lost—the place if he had remembered he’d owned it.
“You think you can outrun the duns?”
“Only have to until next quarter day.” Then he would pay them off . . . some of them, at least. The rest would have to wait.
“He’ll find out, you know. Your father’s going to hear about it. If your creditors can’t find you in Town they’ll head to Faraday Hall looking for you. You are only delaying the inevitable.”
“I know. That’s why we’re heading to Cumberland. It’s about as far from Faraday Hall as we can go without leaving the country.”
“You think His Grace will settle your accounts?”
“I—” The phaeton’s front wheel sharply dropped into a hole. It jarred Freddie, certainly, and by the way Trevor shrieked, one would have thought he’d been prodded with a hot poker.
“Devil take it!” he cried out. “Between the wretched road conditions, this horrid death trap of a rig, and the monstrous cold, we’re going to die!”
“We ain’t going to die.” Freddie knew his future did not shine brightly at present, but he would pull himself out of this mess even with Trevor underfoot. He had to. They rolled along smoothly now, nothing but the usual bumps and drops of a poor country road.
Glancing at the dimly lit, hostile landscape around them, Freddie could imagine their journey would be long and uncomfortable. But it certainly could not be so dire as to result in their deaths.
“Not to worry, Trev. I do not believe it will be easy, but we will manage.” Freddie clucked, urging the cattle forward into a slow trot which did not last. “I fully intend to do as my father wishes and make something of myself. If I can survive his wrath, I will somehow set all right.”
“It all sounds very promising. I hope you can manage to do exactly that.” Trevor exhaled. His breath puffed out in a great cloud, and was left by the wayside as their vehicle moved forward. He crossed his arms before him, hugging himself to keep warm. “How are we to endure this? The cold, this perilous conveyance—which, I fear, has only begun—and the hunger?”
Freddie took a sidelong glance at his friend. “Hunger?”
“I’m devilishly peckish. Never had supper, don’t you know?” Trevor blew out another puff of breath. “I don’t know how ma-delicate constitution will take this.”
Freddie chuckled. It was an unexpected reaction. He never thought he’d ever find humor in anything again.
“How long do you think it’ll take to arrive at Penshaw Manor?”
“With a change of good horses—” Freddie began, studying the cattle drawing the phaeton, for he doubted these creatures had the endurance to carry them much farther than the first posting house. “It might take a week.”
Trevor shuddered and squeezed his eyes tight but nodded. “All right. A week it is, then. I certainly hope I make it there in one piece.”
“Take heart, my friend.” Freddie flicked the whip over the horses’ heads, pushing their progress. There was no doubt there lay a long journey ahead of them. “We’ll be fine. You’ll see.”
Traveling along the Cumberland road ten days later . . .
“We’ve slept in barrooms for near a week now, Brent. I never thought I’d have occasion to say this but . . .” Trevor sounded worn and tired; he had done nothing to merit this type of ill treatment. “I must confess I find the barroom lodgings far preferable to the stable accommodations.”
“You’ve run out of the ready, and all we can manage is to feed the horses and bed down with them.” Freddie never had blunt to begin with. He had counted on Trevor’s purse to see them through the journey. “If only we could get fresh horses. No one’s been willing to take these . . . animals.”
“Call ’em what they are . . . nags, bags of bones, broken-down—”
“You’re right but what are we to do but continue?”
Freddie thought about it, now that he had the time. Being a viscount’s younger son, his friend would inherit nothing. Trevor had always managed to make his small allowance work for him. Actually, it seemed to Freddie that Trevor was always rather plump in the pockets.
“It’s devilish cold out here. How much longer do you think it’ll be before we arrive? You said it would be a week days ago.”
“It cannot be that much longer. I would like to think we could arrive sometime today.” Freddie hoped so, at any rate.
“I suppose it all depends on our luck with the weather and how much light remains.” Trevor was sounding less and less enthusiastic about their situation since they’d had to bed down with the horses. Their situation would be greatly improved once they reached their destination.
“You’ll see. It won’t be much longer until we’ll be sitting before a roaring fire in the library with a warm brandy in hand. With any luck we’ll be having a good laugh when we look back.” Freddie shook just as badly from the cold as his friend.
He was pretty sure they would be laughing at this, hopefully fairly soon. Freddie hadn’t actually set foot on the grounds of Penshaw Manor, but it was no secret to him that His Grace had always had a good eye for property.
Freddie reached into his coat and pulled out a letter. “Here, have a look at this. It’s the map. We’re bound to need it soon, hopefully before the light fades.”
Trevor carefully opened the paper; it caught against the brisk wind and rattled in his hands. “It’s dashed-difficult to see the markers, it’s white as far as the eye can see.” He continued to study the map. “I think we must be someplace up around here. I’m fairly certain we have not crossed this bridge, but it should be coming up soon.”
After that discussion the weather seemed to have taken a turn for the worse. It grew colder, damper, then colder again until a new blanket of snow covered their surroundings, making an unfamiliar landscape further unrecognizable. Freddie only hoped by staying on the main road they would come across someone who might be able to point them to the correct property. He had no expectations of signs directing one to Penshaw Manor.
The two traveled silently, together enduring the cold and rhythmic rocking, bumping, and dropping of the phaeton. Freddie was beginning to think Trevor was right. Now they were lost and, if they did not find some sort of shelter, would freeze to death.
This was the absolute worst idea he had ever had. What gave him the notion he should head north, to somewhere he’d never been, during winter? Maybe Freddie deserved this end after his nonstop, wastrel lifestyle of parties, women, drinking, and gambling. Trevor did not.
The sound of the horses’ hooves altered just slightly, accompanied by the unmistakable screech of the metal horseshoes sliding over ice. Instead of the crunch of frozen mud and snow, the wheels rolled upon something dense and hard.
The horses, in their panic, moved quicker, which was the wrong thing. The phaeton slid sideways. There was the sound of cracking and splintering wood. Freddie barely caught sight of Trevor—his wide-eyed expression of fright when he, too, realized that something was horribly
wrong.
Freddie sailed through the air from the transport, as if everything around him moved in slow motion. He could do nothing about his hat tumbling from his head in an opposite direction. He stretched out his arm, reaching for it.
My hat . . .
He drew in an icy breath to shout out a warning when blackness enveloped him and ended his fleeting conscious thoughts.
Chapter Two
The cacophony of hooves woke Freddie. He opened his eyes to see white, all white around him. And it was cold. Bitterly cold. He managed to sit upright, bringing a fading blue sky into view. Freddie recalled he was in the country and to his left was the wreck of what used to be Sir Nicholas’s phaeton.
He glimpsed a pair of horses rearing as if performing in some sort of show. They were tethered together, their heads were held high with fright, steam shooting from their nostrils. The two horses, pulling against one another, broke completely free from the wreckage. The torn harness traces flew around in midair while the metal fittings jangled about to further frighten them. They bolted, racing away down the road with speed not seen from them during the entire journey.
There was nothing he could do. Freddie felt immobilized. Cold surrounded him, his arm felt stiff, his leg hurt, his back ached. Oh God, how his head throbbed!
“Trevor?” Freddie called out, his voice soft, hoarse from the recent trauma. “Trevor?” he said louder this time and made to launch to his feet to search for his friend. He stood, rather slowly, extricating himself from the bits of wreckage sitting atop the snow that partially buried him. He placed his hand on his right thigh. It was sore. Just strained, he imagined. Moving toward what remained of the phaeton, he kept an eye open for movement and called out, “Trev, where are you? Trevor?”
There was nothing; no response at all.
“Rutherford! Where are you?” Freddie shouted louder this time, his anxiety mounting. He would not be able to bear it if something happened to his friend. “You’d best not leave me out here by myself. You know I cannot manage alone.”
Pausing again to best hear a response, he turned his head slowly, taking in the landscape, and kept a careful notice of anything out of the ordinary.
A Rake Reformed (A Gentleman of Worth Book 6) Page 1
