Leah Ball - The Mammoth Book of Regency Romance

Tilting back her head, she studied him with a piercing intensity. As if hoping to see into his very soul.

And perhaps she was, he ruefully acknowledged. He had destroyed her trust once before. She would not easily offer it again.

Justin clenched his teeth, suddenly realizing what a man on trial must feel like just moments before his sentence is pronounced. Was he to be offered mercy or sent to the gallows?

Amelia’s lips parted, but before she could speak there was a tap on the door.

“Lady Spaulding?” a maid’s timid voice whispered through the door. “Your guests are concerned. Is everything all right?”

Justin frowned, but before he could order the servant to leave them in peace, Amelia had placed her hand over his mouth, her emerald eyes glowing with a happiness that nearly sent him to his knees in relief.

“Thank you, Mary, you may inform my guests that for the first time in my life, everything is absolutely perfect.”

One

“‘He’s dead,’” she read.

Aunt Mary grabbed for the letter that dropped from Millie’s hand. “Dead? Who’s dead? When did he die?”

Aunt Mary held the page closer to her eyes, as if that would help her read the solicitor’s letter. It would not. Miss Marisol Cole was born of an age when women’s brains were considered too small to shelter facts or figures. What she lacked in education, however, Aunt Mary made up for in eccentricity. She turned to peer at her pets, three small sleeping canines of undetermined parentage and one ill-tempered tabby guarding the window seat: Finn, Quinn, Min and Grimalkin.

“The animals are not upset, so it cannot be anyone important.”

“It’s Papa,” Millie said through a throat that was suddenly dry and scratchy.

“You see? No one important. The dogs always know. The cat must know too, but she never tells.”

Millie took the letter back. “My father. Your brother.”

“Who wrote both of us off after The Incident, the cold-hearted churl. What was that, five whole years ago? And we have not heard one word since. I am certain he did not mention either of us in his will, so no, he is not worth a single tear.”

Millie dabbed at the one that trickled down her cheek. “He was my father. I always hoped, that is—”

“Jedediah Cole never forgot or forgave an insult in his life. He crossed both of us out of the family Bible, didn’t he?”

With a big puddle of ink, Millie thought. She’d been told this by the solicitor who’d arranged their departure from the Baron’s estate. All because of the scandal.

When a schoolboy was said to ‘blot his copybook’, it meant his penmanship was messy, his essay or test or practice page irredeemably ruined. Ah, but when society considered that a young miss had ‘blotted her copybook’, her whole life was irredeemably ruined. No matter the truth, gossip labelled her loose, immoral, tainted beyond repair, unfit for polite company or prospective suitors. Especially if the man involved was not standing by with a special licence that could magically erase many a black mark. There’d been no such rescue for the motherless Miss Mildred Cole, who’d been young and in love.

Helped by that selfsame involved man — no gentleman, he — the scandal spread like a fistful of mud thrown against a whitewashed wall. It cost her father his good name and, worse for Jed Cole, his money. It cost Millie’s brother Ned his membership at his London clubs, and her younger sister a come-out season. Neither of them forgave her either. Her letters went unanswered; the small gifts she sent went unacknowledged.

Millie and Aunt Mary (who played a part in The Incident, as well) were banished to a tiny cottage in a village outside Bristol, with a piteously small, begrudgingly given, allowance and no communication with their family or former friends. Of course they’d made new acquaintances, a place for themselves in the small community. A community where the bachelors were all farmers and tradesmen, uninterested in a dowerless bride or a penniless spinster, no matter their pedigrees.

“Five years,” Aunt Mary mused, lifting the nearest dog on to her lap. “We have done enough mourning for our own lives. Why should we mourn for his?”

The dog scratched its ear.

“You see? We shouldn’t bother.”

Millie took up the letter again. “It seems we need not put on black anyway. Papa died six months ago, of influenza.”

“And no one thought to tell us?” Aunt Mary snorted.

“Papa made them all swear not to. But now that I have reached my twenty-fifth birthday, the solicitor wishes to speak about—”

“Money!” Aunt Mary’s eyes lit up. “Perhaps the old curmudgeon left you something after all.” She clapped her hands, which set two of the dogs to shrill barking. “Yes, the darlings think so, too. I am sorry I spoke so unkindly of dear Jed.”

“What if the solicitor wants to tell us we’re being evicted? Or that our pittance ends with Papa’s death?”

“That dastard!”

Papa or the solicitor? Millie wondered. “I’ll write back immediately to find out.”

“What would we do? Where could we go? How could we feed the dogs?”

“I suppose we could throw ourselves on my brother’s mercy.”

“Your brother is as clutch-fisted and cold-hearted as your father ever was. And spineless, else he would have stood by us despite your father’s commands. Now that Edwin has succeeded to the barony, he’ll be more insufferable. And that priggish female he married is no better.”

Millie had to agree. Ned’s wife Nicole had been mortally offended by The Incident. Then mortally disappointed when her dreams of becoming a grand hostess in London had disappeared in that same dark cloud of Millie’s scandalous fall from grace. Besides, she was all too happy to see Millie and Aunt Mary ostracized far away across Britain, leaving her sole mistress of the baron’s London residence as well as the family seat at Knollwood, in Kent. She would not want the black sheep wandering back to the fold. “We cannot know anything until I hear more from the solicitor.”

“I think we should go speak to him.”

The dog in her lap yelped, which Aunt Mary took to mean they should start packing. Millie thought it meant the dog got squeezed too hard.

“To London?” Aunt Mary might have suggested they consult the man in the moon.

“No, we haven’t the proper clothes, and I doubt we’d be received, not after That Man guaranteed our reputations were destroyed. But your father was never one for clever City lawyers, or their fees. He always had a man of affairs near the Knolls.”

Millie checked the letterhead on the thick sheet. “You are right, although I do not recognize the name.”

“I’d wager he’s fat and finicky and smells of snuff, but it’s better to know what he wants, isn’t it, rather than sit and worry while waiting for a reply?”

“But what if Ned and Nicole do not admit us to the Knolls? That would be mortifying.” And they might not have funds to return to Bristol.

“They wouldn’t dare, because we’d put up at the inn in the village and tell everyone they were too miserly to house their own kin. You know how much public opinion means to them at home.”

Home. Millie felt a pang of longing she’d thought suppressed years ago. She’d been happy in Kent, while her loving mother lived, at any rate. She could ramble across the fields, visit with the neighbours, knowing everyone within miles. She’d played with the miller’s daughters and the viscount’s sons. So what if her hems dragged through the dirt or her red hair was snarled with leaves. She was her mother’s cherished child then. Returning to Knollwood could never restore that love, that freedom, or that carefree innocence. Why, she’d thought she’d grow up to live happily ever after. Millie looked around the tiny room they called a parlour, where no one came for afternoon calls and where the tea set had chips and the tea was reused until it had no colour. The curtains were clean but faded, the furniture all cast-offs from the previous owner. Their gowns were home-made, and of second-rate material at that. They had one old manservant to carry wood and tend the chickens and the old horse they kept for the old carriage, and a woman who came once a week to mop and do the laundry. They’d learned to cook and clean and grow vegetables. How much worse off could they be if the solicitor had ill tidings? Or if Ned tossed them out?

“I suppose we might as well go. I have some coins put by, enough for the coach fare, I hope.”

“Nonsense. The dogs cannot travel in a public coach. Henry will drive us.”

Henry, the coach and the mare were equally ancient. Who knew which would collapse first on the way to Kent?

“No, we can use my savings to hire a carriage. And the egg money for rooms along the way.” That might be less costly. They could bring a hamper of food with them rather than paying for mediocre meals at exorbitant prices on the road. They’d have to carry their own provisions if the dogs were to come — and sleep in the carriage if the nights were warm enough.

Millie knew better than to suggest her aunt’s pets stay behind. “But not the cat. I still have scars from the last time we tried to give her a bath.”

“I daresay Grimalkin wouldn’t travel well. If Henry stays back, he can feed her and keep an eye on the cottage, although everyone in miles knows there’s nothing to steal here. But what if we don’t return? If we are invited to stay at Knollwood?”

If Ned and his wife did invite them, Millie thought, it could only be because they needed free servants in the nursery or the scullery. Either way, Millie had no intention of returning to this decrepit, draughty cottage, or to the meanest cat in creation. If worse came to worse, Millie still had her pearls, her gold locket and a pair of diamond eardrops to sell. She’d been saving them for an emergency. The end of their financial support, such as it was, counted as just such a crisis. “We can send Henry funds to take Grim home with him.”

The cat rolled over and swatted at the threadbare curtains, leaving a jagged tear behind. Aunt Mary nodded. “I suppose that means she doesn’t like it here, either.”

So they were going. Back to the past with hopes for a better future.

That night Millie wept, not for the father who’d always been distant and disapproving, certainly not for leaving the place where she’d lived the past five years. No, she cried for the memories of what once was.

Two

“It is I, Whitbread. Ted.”

The white-haired butler stared at the unkempt brute at the entrance of Driscoll Hall, ready to slam the carved oak door or call for the footmen. And a blunderbuss. Then he looked past the bushy hair and the darkened skin. “Master Theodore? Is that truly you?”

The tall bearded man in rough leather — coat, boots, and breeches — stepped closer and smiled, showing even white teeth against the tan. “Truly, Whitbread. I am home at last.”

“Oh, Master Theodore, how glad I am to see you after all these years. And looking so, ah, hearty. But I forget myself. I should be calling you Lord Driscoll, should I not?”

“Not yet, my friend. I still have to prove myself alive to anyone outside the family before I can officially announce my return. Then I have to prove myself innocent of countless spurious charges. I have much to do before I can present myself as Viscount Driscoll or take my seat in Parliament.”

Whitbread led the way into the library, where generations of Driscolls had gone over accounts, entertained their cronies and escaped the day’s worries in a glass of spirits. “I trust hiring a valet and seeing a tailor is among the first priorities.”

Ted smiled again, this time with pleasure at the old retainer’s unspoken affection, as well as the fine cognac Whitbread was pouring out. He pushed his long dark hair away from his eyes and smoothed out his untrimmed beard as best he could. “My first priority must be staying alive, hence the frontiersman disguise.” Which was no disguise at all, simply the way he had looked and dressed for the past several years in the Canadian provinces. “I shall repair my appearance and my wardrobe in time, but not until I restore my good name and bring to justice those who tried to destroy it, and me.”

Now the butler shook his head and frowned. “To think that anyone would try to murder you, much less label you a traitor and a deserter, My Lord. Not that anyone in the family would harbour suspicion for an instant. Not knowing what a fine young man you are, how loyal and honest and—”