“What did he do?” Audrey answered reflexively, gulping hard. Aunt Bette’s nostrils curled and she crossed her legs.
“He’s done a whole lot,” she blustered, snorting like a bird, its feathers ruffled. “The Lord Parris is a virile young man, as far as nobility goes,” Aunt Bette snarled. Audrey, the poor thing, had plenty of experience helping Bette and her cleaning staff clear out Uncle’s inn rooms - but she had little experience with a certain, zesty side of life. Her head tilted, Audrey’s empty gaze brought a pained sigh from her aunt.
“He has a dastardly habit of taking certain liberties with the women in his employ - at any chance he can,” Aunt Bette’s language remained euphemistic - too euphemistic for innocent-minded Audrey. Dressed in her simple gown of black and white linen, Audrey remained confused.
“Liberties? Should I fear him holding out on paying me? I won’t let him walk all over me,” Audrey protested, summoning up all the courage her meek and mild-mannered young body could handle.
“Audrey, I mean quite a separate set of liberties taken,” Aunt Bette clarified. “He has a habit of using women,” she emphasized. “Using not just their talents in the realm of the domestic.”
“You mean he—” the truth dawned finally on sweet Audrey, who gulped down a sudden and startled breath, her cheeks burning bright-red. “A-Aunt Bette, I didn’t know— mean—” she stammered, naivete clear in her stunned expression.
“He enjoys the scandal,” Aunt Bette lamented. “And I’m certain he enjoys the sensation of pliable young bodies against his. I’m warning you of this because it’s not your place to fall in with royalty, Audrey,” Aunt Bette’s voice grew stern. “You can earn much working for royalty - including a good reputation. Should scandal fall on your name, only trouble will follow - and you’ll never be anything more to Lord Parris than a few nights of pleasure. There’s boundless promise before you, Audrey,” she opined whimsically, “and it need not be drowned in a sea of gossip, because of the lewd proclivities of the Duke of McClellan.”
“A-Aunt Bette, please,” Audrey begged anxiously, her voice soft and tiny. “I’m... I’m not the sort, not the sort of woman to... do... that,” she assured her Aunt. A girl of only twenty, Audrey had never indulged in the lust that so often took most men and women her age. Chastened, Audrey had thought occasionally of the night she would spend with a man she loved, and how only then would she give in to temptation - but she had no interest until then. Certainly not with habitual philanderers. Aunt Better regarded her warily nevertheless.
“I don’t take you for the sort to sleep with any man who offers, Audrey,” Aunt Bette warned, “but I do take you for the type to fall in love with a man of charm and forceful personality. Exactly the sort of man Lord Parris is. And fall in love you would, if he said the right words to you - but it would be a one sided love,” she continued, speaking perhaps from sullen experience. “A Duke, and a powerful man, could never give you what you need. You’d be at best a mistress, a toy for him to play with when he wished. You would love him dearly, and you would live miserable, knowing he couldn’t give you the love you want - and deserve, Audrey. You’re young, and sweet, and your heart is soft. Don’t let any man tread upon it, yes?” Aunt Bette pulled her shawl over her shoulders as the wagon took a hard corner, picking up speed along another straightaway.
The sun had begun to set over the broad moors and green fields in the distant edges of the McClellan lands. The carriage driver knocked on the small wooden door separating the two women from the outside world - as the sun fell, rainclouds began to move over the orange glow, casting ominous shadows long across the path ahead.
“Nearing the manor, loves,” the driver informed them, “an’ it looks like a storm’s waiting for us.” Audrey’s mind dwelt on her aunt’s words, worry creeping into her mind.
“I don’t want a man like that,” Audrey swallowed, reassuring her aunt. In truth, young Audrey had no concept of a Duke, ever loving her. Her family had loved her - and the nice boy who worked for the fishmonger had once admitted to loving her, but the concept was only a fairy tale to Audrey; the sort she would read in one of her mother’s heavy tomes, back at the inn, the only heirlooms her parents had left her.
“Because you’re a smart woman, Audrey. Don’t let your heart be used,” Aunt Bette cautioned.
“Aunt Bette, I’ve never...” she swallowed, both proud and a little ashamed at her admission. “I’ve never spent the evening with a man, much less a lord.” She had nary shared a kiss with a man, in fact, and had only held hands with one once, squeezing her friend Brian’s hand as the sun began to fall over the horizon, but that had been years ago. She maintained her innocence, even as the world grew dirty around her with age.
“I hope that you don’t intend to start now, then,” Aunt Bette responded. “Your innocence is a precious thing, girl. Savor it. And if the Duke asks you to a dance, kindly excuse yourself,” she bristled.
“A dance? What harm could come from a dance?” Audrey giggled.
“You’ll be on your own now, Audrey, and you’ll need to learn that when a man tries to spend time alone with you, especially a rake as scurrilous as the Duke of McClellan, his mind is on things other than your sweet personality, or how well you can clean,” Aunt Bette groused. “Now collect your things, lovely, we’ll be arriving at the manor soon.”
“What if his mind isn’t on other things?” Audrey asked anxiously. “Perhaps he’d simply like to share an evening with his staff, once in a while.” She gathered the small linen bags littering the inside of the cart - her clothing and effects, packed tightly, cramped inside the rickety carriage, the only one the family could scrape together the money to afford. “I certainly wouldn’t want to offend my new employer... and refusing such a request puts me in a difficult position.”
“Offense taken or not, you have your dignity and your future to concern yourself with. Use your instincts, Audrey,” Aunt Bette implored. “I should hope I’ve taught you a thing or two worth knowing in the time you’ve lived with me. You’re all we have left,” Aunt Bette’s roughened countenance broke for a moment, letting slip the concern in her heart for her niece. “I swore to my sister I’d make you a happy, smart and successful woman. I think I’ve succeeded,” Bette admitted, a tear on her cheek.
“You have,” Audrey whispered. “You’re right, Aunt Bette. And I’ll do what I have to to make you proud,” she said, a small tear on her own milky-white cheek. “And I’ll make uncle proud. And my parents.”
“Okay, ladies! End of the line!” The call of the carriage driver fell beneath the rumble of a thunderstorm breaking just over the horizon, the shatter of a bolt of lightning crackling into the two women’s ears. Hustling free form the tight carriage confines, Aunt Bette gazed warily at the storm rolling over the sunset-colored sky. With burlap sacks and linen bags full of effects thrown over her shoulders, Audrey stumbled from the wagon, nearly tripping and falling on the carriage’s broken stair.
“This isn’t the manor,” Aunt Bette snarled. Glancing up a long and winding path, up a steep grassy hill, Bette spied the familiar mansion - towering, its facade gleaming bright-white, reflecting the dying sun while harsh charcoal clouds shroud around it. “Carriage driver, can’t you take us up the roadway? It’s going to begin raining—”
“I was paid to drop you off here, and I’m dropping you off here,” the driver, a burly man in a black robe, yowled back at the two ladies. “Besides, storm’s rolling in, and I need to make it to an inn before night comes and it all falls down on top of my head.”
“We have a lot to drag up that hill,” Aunt Bette grumbled. “Can’t you—”
“You’d better get started then, yeah?” he snobbily quipped, crackling his whip against the horses and urging them down the road as another thunderclap filled the air.
A storm coming, heavy bags hanging from her every limb, Audrey Fisher’s first day of her new life didn’t appear to be shaping up very well.
“Let’s go,
” Aunt Bette grumbled sourly, helping to drag some of the bags along the winding path.
Chapter 2
“Hello! Agatha! Agatha!” Aunt Bette pounded relentlessly on the front door to the manor, tall and flanked with stained-glass windows tinted a deep green. Rain soaked through their linens, clothes clinging to skin as the last rays of sunlight fell dim over the horizon and darkness began to seep into every corner of the land. And while the thunder roared and Aunt Bette pounded and cried out for her friend inside the mansion, all Audrey could see and think about and comprehend in her mind was how big everything felt. A bell tower, taller than anything she had seen since London; a mansion plastered a blinding white, with pillars like a Greek temple lending inscrutable class to the seemingly endless structure. With architecture trimmed in gold and marble more expensive than anything her family had ever owned, awed silence struck Audrey, the shock of surprise in her mind muting the loud patter of rain and dulling her feeling of the freezing chill woven up her spine by the rain, coming down in heavy sheets on top of her and her aunt.
The door finally cracks open, inhabitants cautious as specks of rain splash inside the foyer.
“Who’s there?” A stodgy voice called from inside. “We’ve no room for lodgers and travelers in this estate, so—”
“Agatha? Agatha, it’s me!” Aunt Bette exclaimed, relief in her tone. Audrey huddled beneath what little cover the flowerboxes and other attachments hanging from the floors above provided. The cold settled in and the luster of the manor wore thin as she glanced at her linen sacks, full of cleaned clothes - or, they used to be clean. Now, they lay soaked through with dirt-filled rainwater. She frowned. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all, she pondered.
“Oh! Dear, I hadn’t expected you today, with it being so late,” the voice behind the door croaked. “A thousand apologies, Bette - come in, come in! You must be drenched, with the rain.” The doors swing open in a foyer that could charitably be described as opulent. Paneled in carved marble and oak, cut into extraordinary shapes, gargoyles and lions and heroes lined every wall, trimmed in gold and carved carefully into each panel. Sofas upholstered with gold buttons and ornately designed in the finest styles sat casually, cluttered around gold-trimmed coffee tables, flanking a grand staircase carving through the center of the manor. A grand statue of a cherub greeted newcomers to the manse, its marbled surface bisecting the twisting staircase as it met the ground floor. The magic had begun to wear on Audrey, until the foyer reignited her entranced curiosity once more. She could barely catch her breath; the sweet scent of roasted peppers and cinnamon wafted through the hallways, with doors twice as tall as the small maiden lining each wall. Candles danced on each table, casting long shadows in the crevices of the manor, the storm growing rougher as the door slammed shut behind Audrey and her aunt.
“Audrey!” Aunt Bette called, shaking the girl from her trance.
“I-I’m sorry, Aunt Bette!” Audrey exclaimed, nearly tripping on the wet floor.
“This is the girl?” Agatha asked. A gray-haired woman with a daunting frame and a strong body, she doesn’t look much like any ordinary domestic servant - more like a bodyguard, with how broad she looks. Audrey began to understand why her aunt felt comfortable leaving Audrey under the watching eye of this aging woman.
“Don’t be put off by the wandering mind,” Aunt Bette chuckled. “This is just all a lot for Audrey to take in. She hasn’t see anything more elegant than the expensive suites back at her uncle’s hotel.” Agatha struck a chord of fear in Audrey’s heart, and the small girl shrank away from the tall woman’s shrewd glare. Just as Audrey’s fear reached a fevered pitch, Agatha’s expression broke into an oddly inviting smile. She wrapped her arms around Audrey, who wriggled awkwardly, even as she sighed in relief.
“It was a lot for me to take in at first, too,” Agatha laughed boisterously. “Outrageous, that someone could afford all this, yes?” Audrey nodded anxiously. “Even more outrageous - the idea of cleaning it all!” Bette and Agatha laughed together; Audrey managed to force a small, but tense, chuckle.
“I-I’m Audrey, Audrey Fisher,” the girl’s nerves burned, the only warmth in her body; her teeth chattered as the manse’s drafty halls throbbed with a cool wind that chilled along her shivering spine.
“Poor dear, here,” Agatha crooned, pulling a blanket from atop one of the couches and throwing it across Audrey’s shuddering shoulders. The girl exhaled deeply, Agatha drying out some of Audrey’s hair with the cloth. “How’d you get stuck walking up the hill? I could’ve sent the carriage,” Agatha frowned.
“You know me well enough to know I don’t do charity, Agatha,” Bette grumbled; Agatha smiled in response.
“You’re right. I’m certain your girl feels the same way?” Agatha turned her appraising gaze to Audrey, who nodded excitedly.
“I’m looking forward to working hard,” Audrey chirped. “The lord—”
“I’m certain your aunt has already spoken with you about the... master, of the house,” Agatha interrupted with authority. She and Bette shared a skeptical gaze.
“She knows,” Bette nodded. “I couldn’t send my niece here unprepared, after all.”
“He’s certainly not all that bad,” Agatha laughed a loud and deep laugh, something that nearly shook the windows. “He just has... certain feelings, habits, that he has little control over. It’s the nature of men, isn’t it?” Agatha lamented. Audrey laughed anxiously, not quite sure how to respond.
“I-I suppose it is,” Audrey replied. “I don’t... well, I don’t have much in the way of experience, therein.”
“No?” Agatha asked, surprised. “...The master will quite like you, then,” Agatha said.
“Twas my fear,” Bette interjected cautiously. “Audrey has spent most of her life on a farm, or in my inn, but she knows her place. And she knows how much trouble there is in the life of a Duke.”
“I don’t...” Audrey began to feel nerves welling in her chest, a mix of embarrassment and anger. “I’ll do my duties as you assign, Ms. Agatha. I think that should suffice,” she concluded, uncomfortable with so frank a discussion of her life. Agatha respected that, a slow smile forming on her lips.
“Anxious to get to work, then? I adore that mindframe,” Agatha barked. “Good.”
“Is this the new one?” A derisive chant erupted from behind Agatha. “What happened? Got stuck in the rain? And she’s tracking it all through my foyer,” the woman sighed. Short, petite, and with an expression full of vitriol, the maid clad in black, her hair long and dark, glared venom at Audrey, her arms crossed atop her chest.
“Stow the attitude for now, Ana. She’s new here, and she and her aunt, a good friend of mine, had to hike up the hill in the rain storm. Be accommodating, can’t you?” Agatha implored.
“We didn’t need another maid anyway. Or maybe Lord Parris sent for another for different reasons?” Ana asked shrewishly. “If that’s the case, she needn’t even settle in. There’s no more room for that in the manor.” Audrey blushed at even the faint thought of indulging in an evening with a duke.
“I’m not here for that,” she murmured self-consciously.
“Ana! What’s gotten in to you, to speak so boldly? Especially in front of company,” Agatha rumbled.
“We have no more room for lusty maids on the lord’s staff, is all,” Ana insisted haughtily, standoffish in the threshold of a heavy wooden door at the rear of the foyer. A feather duster in hand, she tidied off the table nearest her, though her vicious eyes never left Audrey, who remained both embarrassed and now shyly defiant.
“I’ve heard enough from you, Ana. Your jealousy doesn’t befit the senior member of my staff,” Agatha boomed. “This is Audrey. Be courtesy and introduce yourself.” Ana grudgingly sighed, trudging across sparkling tile floors to curtsy before Aunt Bette and Audrey, who returned a pensive curtsy of her own.
“Ana Morris,” the dark-haired maid intoned coldly, her eyes afire while she watched Audrey’s gr
aceful movements. Agatha stood between the two, keeping clashing attitudes separated with her strong, broad presence. “Senior staff, beneath Ms. Agatha. Listen to me, and to her. Don’t go making messes. Do your tasks. And don’t sleep with our master,” she snarled.
“Enough. Ana, back to chambers,” Agatha roared, a bony finger pointed towards the door deep in the back of the foyer, clutched in shadow. With one parting glance, searing in its rage, Ana stormed back through the door; it slammed shut behind with a resounding boom, one that made Audrey wince. Bette and Agatha shared terse looks, mild amusement in Bette’s expression.
“I apologize for her behavior,” Agatha sighed. “Her relationship with Lord Parris is... complicated. She has a protective attitude towards him.”
“I can’t imagine why,” Bette intoned sarcastically. Audrey blinked.
“She’s...” Audrey swallows hard. “She has nothing to worry about! I said...”
“We know. And I’ll hold you to that,” Agatha crowed. “Stick to your responsibilities. And stay out of the master’s bedchamber, unless you’re polishing the silver, or tidying the sheets. Keep your head down. Don’t mind Ana. And everything should go wonderfully.”
“Is there anything else I should know?” Audrey asked. Before Agatha could answer, a loud rapping echoed through the halls; the front door boomed with the sound, knuckles loud against the wood. Agatha sighed in irritation.
“Another late caller. And in this storm!” Agatha exclaimed. “Who is it?” she shouted, loud enough that even the door and the storm couldn’t obscure her cry.
“Open the door, Agatha,” slithered a shrill and snakelike voice into the hall. Startled, Audrey recoiled, her heart racing in her chest for fear of what may be waiting. Agatha recognized the voice, shaking her head.
Regency Romance Omnibus 2018: Dominate Dukes & Tenacious Women Page 56
