She would fill her days with sewing, letting the activity push away her loneliness. And this time, she had a new challenge to attempt. There was still the problem of finding the right fabric, however.
Victoria set aside her sewing and went to open the trunk on the far side of the room. It was filled with old gowns that she and her sisters had played in as children. They had pretended to be grand ladies, hosting parties for their dolls.
She rummaged around the trunk, looking for a bit of silk. Near the bottom, she found a crimson satin shawl that had once belonged to her grandmother. Her mother had loathed the color, believing it was far too garish.
But it was irresistibly soft. She ran her hands over the surface, wondering if it would be too delicate for an undergarment. Frowning, she eyed the door. Downstairs, she heard the sound of her sisters talking, and the low voice of her mother.
There wasn’t a great deal of time, but she went to the door and locked it. Then she brought over the stays she’d worn earlier, examining the construction. The boning tended to mash a woman’s rib cage, making it hard to breathe. But it was the stiff, unyielding buckram that made it itch.
Victoria stripped off her nightgown until she stood naked in her room. It was cold, and she shivered as she reached for the crimson satin. Gathering it into a length, she molded it against her breasts, experimenting as she lifted them up to create cleavage.
In the mirror, she stared at herself. The soft fabric enveloped her nipples in a sensual way, making the tips erect. The candlelight cast a golden glow over her skin, and the red satin appeared scandalous.
She looked like a courtesan, a woman about to be undressed.
What would it be like to have a man standing before her? Would he want to caress the satin? Would it allure him, making him desire her as a woman?
Though she’d never touched herself in that way before, Victoria moved her palms over the fabric. Her breasts ached, and a sensual warmth bloomed between her thighs. She knew, from talks with her mother, that within a marriage, a husband would touch his wife intimately. And that she would enjoy sharing his bed.
She let the satin fall away, baring her nudity before the mirror. For as long as she buried herself within the house, no man would ever touch her. No man would ever want her.
The thought made bitter tears spring up in her eyes, for she simply didn’t know how to overcome her fear.
If you enjoyed the excerpt, you may purchase Undone by the Duke on Kindle at https://amzn.com/dp/B009HX5VUA. It is also available in print and audio.
OTHER BOOKS BY
MICHELLE WILLINGHAM
A Most Peculiar Season Series
(Regency)
A Viking for the Viscountess
A Maiden for the Marquess
Secrets in Silk Series
(Regency Scotland)
Undone by the Duke
Unraveled by the Rebel
Undressed by the Earl
Unlaced by the Outlaw
The Earls Next Door Series
(Victorian England)
Good Earls Don’t Lie
What the Earl Needs Now (Coming in 2017)
Forbidden Viking Series
(Viking Age Ireland)
To Sin with a Viking
To Tempt a Viking
Warriors of Ireland Series
(Medieval Ireland)
Warrior of Ice
Warrior of Fire
MacEgan Brothers Series
(Medieval Ireland)
Her Warrior Slave
“The Viking’s Forbidden Love-Slave” (novella)
Her Warrior King
Her Irish Warrior
The Warrior’s Touch
Taming Her Irish Warrior
“The Warrior’s Forbidden Virgin” (novella)
“Voyage of an Irish Warrior” (novella)
Surrender to an Irish Warrior
“Pleasured by the Viking” (novella)
“Lionheart’s Bride” (novella)
Warriors in Winter
The MacKinloch Clan Series
(Medieval Scotland)
Claimed by the Highland Warrior
Seduced by Her Highland Warrior
“Craving the Highlander’s Touch” (novella)
Tempted by the Highland Warrior
“Rescued by the Highland Warrior” (novella in the Highlanders anthology)
The Accidental Series
(Victorian England/Fictional Province of Lohenberg)
“An Accidental Seduction” (novella)
The Accidental Countess
The Accidental Princess
The Accidental Prince
Other Titles
“Innocent in the Harem”
(A novella of the sixteenth-century Ottoman Empire)
“A Wish to Build a Dream On”
(time travel novella to medieval Ireland)
“A Dance with the Devil”
(in the Bedeviled anthology)
About the Author
Kindle bestselling author and Rita® Award finalist Michelle Willingham has published more than thirty romance novels and novellas. Currently, she lives in southeastern Virginia with her husband and children, and is working on more historical romance books in a variety of settings, such as medieval and Viking-era Ireland, medieval Scotland, and Victorian and Regency England. When she’s not writing, Michelle enjoys baking, playing the piano, and avoiding exercise at all costs. Her books have been translated into languages around the world and are also available in audio. Visit her website at www.michellewillingham.com to find English and foreign translations.
Scandal on His Doorstep
Deborah Hale
Dedication
To my mother-in-law, Jean McFarlane, a strong, smart, capable lady who has always been such a great supporter of my romance writing career.
Chapter One
Mayfair, London ~ February 1811
“WE HAVE A regency at last,” Jack Warwick muttered in a tone of disbelief as he and his two closest friends walked the short distance from Carlton House to the premises they shared on Bruton Street. “Rory, you have shown remarkable restraint in not reminding me of the wager I owe you. Or is the sum of fifty guineas beneath your notice these days?”
“Hardly!” The Honorable Riordan Fitzwalter gave a self-deprecating chuckle. “My luck at the tables has been as vile as ever, which you would know if you troubled yourself to darken the door of the club these days. There is a rumor going about that you have turned Methodist.”
“Rubbish!” Jack muttered. Standing about for two hours at the Prince’s first levee making idle chat had put him out of temper.
“So it is,” replied Rory. Even after twenty years in England he had not lost the hint of an Irish brogue from his childhood. “And we defended you most strenuously against such slander. Didn’t we, Gabriel?”
Lord Gabriel Stanford nodded. “To demonstrate our sincerity, we made a wager in the betting book that you would show yourself at the Club within a fortnight. So unless you want your fifty guineas to trickle through Rory’s fingers, you shall have to put in a token appearance.”
“It would serve you both right if I didn’t.” Jack knew his tetchy humor would only fuel their impudence. But he could hardly blame them. A few months ago, he would have behaved the same way if their situations were reversed.
They reached Piccadilly, busy with foot and carriage traffic. Rory and Gabriel darted across and just missed being struck by a phaeton speeding toward Hyde Park. While his friends hurled abuse at the driver, Jack crossed the street with greater care.
Young fools! Did they imagine themselves immortal? He might have chided them if he thought it would do any good.
“Does it not seem odd to you,” asked Gabriel, as if nothing had happened, “to be coming home from Carlton House while the sun is still up?”
Though spring was nearly a month away, the mild western breeze made it feel more like April than February.
“It seems od
d to me to be coming home from Carlton House sober,” Rory quipped. He thought for a moment then added, “... mostly sober.”
Gabriel laughed heartily.
Jack shook his head. “You should not encourage him.”
“Why not?” Rory demanded, only half in jest. “You would have, once. I warn you, too much moral rectitude is bad for the wits, as old King George has demonstrated.”
Before Jack had a chance to remind his friend that His Majesty’s mental state was not a fit subject for humor, Gabriel spoke up. “He’s right, you know. You’re not half as much fun since you became heir to your uncle’s earldom.”
When Jack flinched, his friends fell into sheepish silence, as if they suddenly realized they’d gone too far... which they had.
He did not lash out at them as they might have expected. It was Fate he longed to rail at. “The death of a cousin one loved like a brother can have that effect.”
Frederick’s death during an outpost skirmish on the Portuguese frontier had set him adrift somehow. His former devil-may-care existence now seemed hollow and meaningless. But what alternative was there? Become a bitter recluse like his uncle?
By now the three friends had reached Bruton Street. They lived there in a comfortable townhouse which Jack had inherited, along with his fortune, from an uncle of his late mother. The neighborhood was no longer as fashionable as it had once been. The end near Berkeley Square housed some persons of good family but a public house and a number of shops occupied the other.
“What is that noise?” Gabriel’s handsome features twisted in a grimace of bewildered disapproval. “It sounds like a squalling infant.”
Jack looked around for the source of the din. The child clearly possessed a healthy set of lungs, as well as some pressing grievance. But there was no sign of a nursemaid taking her young charge out for a walk. Nor did the nursery windows in any of the neighboring houses appear to have been left open.
The closer Jack and his friends drew to his address, the louder the bawling grew.
“What the devil...?” Jack spied a large wicker basket resting on the doorstep.
He sprinted the last several yards then froze. This loud object in front of his house was precisely what he’d hoped it would not be. Swaddled tight in blankets, only a round red face was visible. Its eyes were screwed tight shut, perhaps to allow its mouth to open wider. How could something so tiny produce such a deafening racket?
Jack was no stranger to loud sounds—a pack of hunting hounds in full bay, the thunder of cannon, the roar of a crowd at the Newmarket races. None of those clawed at his nerves the way this frantic howling did.
“How do we make it stop?” he implored his friends, not caring that he must sound like a gibbering coward. The fifty guineas he had wagered Rory was nothing to what he would give whoever could quiet the wailing creature.
“Why are you looking at me?” Lord Gabriel had gone pale as a ghost. “I am the youngest of six. I was the baby of our nursery.”
He peered up and down Bruton Street. “Who can it belong to? Why did they leave it here?”
The street was unusually quiet. Some tradesmen and an older gentleman, who also appeared to have returned from the Prince’s levee, gazed toward Jack and his friends. None of them gave any indication of having misplaced an infant.
“Rory.” Jack seized his friend by the coat cuff. “You have nieces and nephews. Surely you must know something about infants.”
Rory drew back with a look of disgust. “Not the slightest, I assure you. There is always a nurse on hand to manage the little ones with their vile excretions. Besides, no small relation of mine ever produced such caterwauling. It sounds like a banshee. Do you suppose it is hurt?”
The poor creature must be mortally wounded to make such noises. Pity tempered Jack’s panic.
He seized the handle of the basket as eagerly as he would have plunged his arm into boiling oil. “We can’t leave it out here in the cold. Rory, go fetch a physician. Gabriel, inquire all down the street if anyone has lost a child or saw who left this one.”
His friends looked absurdly relieved to have an excuse to get away. They fled so fast it was a wonder they did not trip over their own feet.
Jack was left to deal with the bawling baby. “I suppose the least I can do is get you inside where it’s warm.”
He shuddered to think how the little creature’s piercing shrieks would echo through his townhouse.
But what was this?
When he hefted the basket and moved toward the door, the howling eased. The baby sobbed and snuffled. Jack felt as if he could breathe again.
“Poor old thing.” He heard himself speak as if the infant could understand. Clearly this whole incident had unnerved him. “If I were your size, I don’t suppose I should take kindly to being abandoned on a stranger’s doorstep on a winter day.”
He knew a little something about abandonment. After his father had been killed in a duel over his mother’s adultery, she had fled abroad with her lover. Young Jack had been left to the care of his disapproving uncle. Now his heart went out to this forsaken child, in spite of its efforts to deafen him.
He opened the door of his townhouse and carried the basket inside as if it contained a dozen eggs that might explode at the slightest jostle. In this fashion, he conveyed it to the drawing room where they encountered his valet.
“Sir?” Godfrey’s thick eyebrows shot up as he stared at the basket. He did not need to say anything more.
“Left on our doorstep.” Jack held the basket out to his trusty servant. Now that his movement had slowed, the sniffles were coming faster. Perhaps Godfrey would have some idea how to prevent another outburst. “We found it when we returned from the Prince’s levee. I don’t suppose you have any idea how it came to be there?”
“None whatsoever, Mr. Warwick.” Godfrey backed away as his master approached. He eyed the basket warily. “Though I see a sheet of paper tucked into the basket. Perhaps it might offer some explanation.”
“Paper?” Jack set the basket down and examined it with greater care than he had been able to do earlier.
Godfrey was right. A folded sheet of paper had been stuffed into the basket beside its small occupant.
Jack extracted it as the baby’s sniffles turned to whimpers which rapidly increased in volume. “I say, Godfrey. You wouldn’t happen to have any experience with children?”
“None, sir.” His valet retreated further in the direction of the servants’ stairs. “Nor do I wish to acquire any.”
Jack doubted any of the other servants would either. His was an exclusively male establishment, much to the disgust of the footmen who grumbled about having to perform duties usually reserved for housemaids.
With no immediate prospect of assistance, Jack could only repeat the one action that had proven to quiet the child. He picked up the basket and began to walk around the drawing room. To his vast relief, the sounds of distress subsided once again.
It was only a temporary solution, he knew. The baby-laden basket weighed at least twenty pounds and Jack was no longer in condition as he’d been during his soldiering days. He turned to ask Godfrey to carry it for a while, only to discover his valet had fled. Coward!
Perhaps warned by Godfrey, none of the other servants came to assist their master. Somehow Jack managed to keep moving, shifting the handle of the basket from one arm to the other. After what seemed like an eternity, but the mantle clock insisted was less than half an hour, both his arms felt as if they were being wrenched from their sockets. But that was preferable to having his eardrums punctured.
The whimpers and sniffles had subsided at last. When Jack risked a closer peek at his small burden, its eyes were closed and its soft plump features relaxed. The face was no longer an alarming shade of scarlet, but a rather attractive creamy pink.
He slowed his steps. When that produced no adverse reaction, he gingerly set the basket down. Then he collapsed onto the nearest armchair. He longed for a brandy to res
tore his nerves. But he feared any further movement or noise might wake the baby. He had no intention of risking that for the world.
One task he might safely manage would be to read the note he’d retrieved from the basket. Perhaps it would reveal some clue to the identity of the child’s parents, so the poor little mite could be safely returned. He would have some strong words for them about their neglect.
Jack unfolded the paper with excessive care, for fear the faintest crackle might rouse the sleeping infant. He had just finished reading the brief message when Gabriel returned. With wild motions and grimaces, Jack signaled him to keep his voice down.
“No one I spoke to is missing an infant,” Gabriel whispered, casting anxious glances toward the sleeping baby. “Though someone from the public house recalled seeing a woman carrying a basket. I got some very odd looks from my inquiries. There will be gossip, I warn you.”
“I do not doubt it.” Jack held out the note toward his friend. “I imagine there will be a perfect scandal when word of this gets around.”
“What is that?” Gabriel made no move to take the paper. “Where did you get it?”
“I found it tucked in the basket.” Jack read the words again with an irrational hope that he had mistaken their meaning the first time. “It appears to be a message from the infant’s mother.”
“Thank heaven.” Gabriel exhaled a long breath. “Who does the child belong to?”
Jack’s arm fell, as if he no longer possessed the strength to lift the note. “It... she belongs to one of us.”
The infant’s howls drew nearer, penetrating the flimsy walls and door of Annabelle’s rooms. The sound took her back to the nursery at Eastmuir and the endless succession of young cousins she’d tended while living on the charity of her aunt and uncle. Would someone not take pity on the poor little creature and make an effort to soothe it?
Apparently not, for the cries grew increasingly shrill as they approached. Then someone knocked frantically on Annabelle’s door. Suppressing a squeak of fright, she seized the poker from her small hearth and edged toward the door. Though this lodging house stood on the fringe of fashionable Mayfair, the immediate neighborhood was rather unsavory. She hoped to find work as a governess soon and move to a more respectable address.
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