Copyright
Copyright © 2019 by Lucinda Nelson
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Table of Contents
Get Lucinda’s Exclusive Material
Building a relationship with my readers is the very best thing about writing.
Join my newsletter for information on new books and deals plus my first published novel A Duke Most Desirable for Free.
You can get your books for free by signing up here.
Table of Contents
Copyright
Get Lucinda’s Exclusive Material
Table of Contents
An Earl for the Broken-Hearted Duchess
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Epilogue
The Extended Epilogue
Book 3 – A preview
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
About Lucinda Nelson
A Short Note About Starfall Publications
Also By Lucinda Nelson
An Earl for the Broken-Hearted Duchess
Chapter 1
Lady Margaret Abigail Baxter, Duchess of Lowe
Duchess of ridicule. She touched the curls of oaky hair springing beside her son’s cheek and lowered her face until she could smell the vanilla sweetness of him.
Ezra’s hair was a warm nest and it soothed her to breathe him in. Hearing his little hiccup of sadness, Margaret touched her handkerchief to the purple circles under his eyes, wiping away his tears drop by drop.
He had not slept well since her husband’s death.
Neither had Margaret.
“It will soon be over, sweet boy,” she said, and offered him a watery smile.
Ezra looked at her with a countenance that was at once resigned and doubtful. It was, perhaps, a foolish thing for Margaret to say to him. Impossible as it was for even her to believe it.
Though the funeral would soon come to an end, there was no end to their troubles in sight as of yet. Had she not been a mother, she might have already accepted that there was little hope for their future happiness. But mothers have a way of holding onto even the most measly chances of contentment for their children.
The body was about to be lowered into the earth when a rustle rippled through the crowd. A less attentive ear might have believed that a breeze in the willow vines had made the sound.
But Margaret knew the sound of whispers well enough. She had heard plenty of them in the recent days. Her eyes, like clean and mossy pools of green, lifted.
The whisperers were not smiling or laughing. They daren’t at a funeral, though Margaret knew that they would not afford her and her son the same courtesy in a more private capacity. Here, they leaned into one another and moved their lips in little twitches.
A gentleman shook his head, frowning, as a lady breathed into his ear as though he was disappointed by the news.
But Margaret could see the twinkle of excitement in his dry eyes. He was already plotting who he would tell next.
Gossip was the bread and butter for these men and women.
Her eyes closed, and a solitary tear passed her lashes. The pain was as ripe as the humiliation when she imagined how they must have found her husband the night he’d died.
Pale, cold and stiff, with his mistress weeping by the bedside. As if that woman ever had a right to love him as Margaret did. With the knuckle of her forefinger, Margaret wiped away the tear.
She saw Ezra looking at the whisperers, then to the coffin with eyes like his father’s. Margaret had always loved the color of her husband’s eyes, which were like icy blue waterfalls.
Now, when she looked to her son’s eyes, identical starbursts of blue, she felt a sting and was reminded of Joshua.
Margaret once rejoiced that her son had a keen mind. But for the first time, she wished him to be naïve so he would not have to know the shame being brought upon them.
“It is time to say goodbye, my love,” she explained.
He sniffled quietly and looked quite the tiny soldier as he took a step closer to the coffin. “Goodbye, Father,” he said. “We will miss you.”
Margaret felt a sharpness in her chest. “Miss Hallow,” she said as she touched Ezra’s shoulder. Miss Hallow, Ezra’s governess, stepped up beside them. “Will you take Ezra to the carriage?”
Miss Hallow curtsied and said, “Your Grace.”
As Ezra was led away, wiping at his eyes, Margaret looked to the coffin. Had there not been eyes on her, she might have touched the wood.
She would have liked to touch the wood, though she was not certain why. Perhaps to feel closer to Joshua one last time, though he deserved nothing but her disdain. “He will miss you, indeed,” she breathed ever so quietly. “I, too, will miss you – perhaps. When I am feeling foolish and forgetful.”
Her lips hardened into a thin line, but another tear trickled free. “Goodbye, Joshua.”
***
Lord Nathaniel Sterling, the Earl of Comptonshire
“It is an entirely simple matter, Nathaniel.” At a ripe age of 51, Nathaniel’s father – Lord Edgar Cole Sterling - still stood as though he was about to be faced with a test of his fortitude. A test he greatly welcomed.
His voice was stern in a way that had made Nathaniel shiver as a boy. But he has had many years to overcome the influence of his father’s stare. Facing war had served him well in that regard.
“Simple, perhaps, for you. It is not so simple for me,” Nathaniel said, as he listened to the plink of ice knocking as he swirled the contents of his glass of whiskey.
“I will not have this dilly dalliance,” his father said.
“Dilly dalliance? My brother is scarcely cold in his grave.”
“Nathaniel,” his mother, Lady Emilia Sterling, exclaimed with her hand held across her heart. Nathaniel regretted having spoken so callously the moment the words were from his mouth.
He watched his father put his hand upon his mother’s shoulder and pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger.
“Forgive me,” he said. “I only mean that it is too soon, and I needn’t rush.”
“We have afforded you time aplenty,” his father said. “Your brother’s death is testament to how fragile life can be.”
“There are other matters that could benefit from my attention.”
His father shook his head. “Securing an heir takes precedence.”
Nathaniel did not speak for a moment. He watched the amber of his whiskey shine in the bottom of his glass, and imagined it as the eyes of a dragon breathing down
his neck.
“My dear boy,” his mother murmured. “Do you not want to marry?”
He took in his mother’s countenance. “Certainly, I do.” Certainly, I do not. But he did not believe that his dear old mother could cope with the truth.
Feeling his father’s flat brown eyes on him, he stole a look at his face. His father was an intelligent man. He won’t be so easily fooled. But Lord Edgar did not care for his son’s aspirations. Duty came first.
Nathaniel understood duty, better than most men. In the past, he had been lucky enough to evade the burden of a title.
His brother had served as Earl after their father’s retirement and Nathaniel had been anything but envious.
He was not a man who shirked responsibility, or shied away from hard work, but he bore a barely bridled disdain for all the titles, the etiquette, and the rules which – to him – had little to no real meaning.
He had seen, time and time again, how quickly a title, estate and hefty inheritance could warp a man’s principles. He had seen the detriments of rank, and watched innocent men and women bear the brunt of it.
Nathaniel wanted no part of it.
Yet here he was, an Earl with quite the job on his hands by the look of the state his brother had left his affairs in.
It riled him that his parents continued to preach marriage and heirs given all he had to do to rectify the chaos left in his brother’s wake.
Nathaniel could not imagine anything of less importance at this particular time. Nor did he especially want to pander to the whims of some woman more interested in the prospect of a title and a generous sum than she was in him. He had walked that path before.
Nathaniel took a swig of his whiskey.
He had never imagined that he might miss the war. But as a military man, he had been at his best. On the battlefield, station was insignificant.
On the battlefield, they were but men, united by camaraderie and a shared cause. They did not fight for themselves. They fought for others.
He had left at eighteen, to escape the aimlessness of ‘good society’ and make something better of himself.
Fate has a strange way of remaking a man.
“I am losing my patience,” his father said. “You will marry by the end of the London Season to a lady I have expressly approved. Am I quite clear on that, Nathaniel?”
Nathaniel met his father’s eye directly, and they shared a tense moment. He was no longer accustomed to bowing to the whims of those around him, but he’d learnt long ago when to press with his father, and when not to. Still, it was tempting. Until he looked to his mother, whose warm blue eyes reminded him of a childhood spent pebble skipping on the lakes.
Such hopeful eyes, that he wondered if she’d ever had a sour thought.
“As you wish,” he said, and finished the remains of his whiskey.
Chapter 2
Lady Margaret Abigail Baxter, Duchess of Lowe
Margaret sat with a book in her lap in the drawing room, though she was not reading. Instead, her chin rested upon her hand and she gazed out across the estate.
Though the gardens were beautiful, they looked barren to her. She was so accustomed to seeing Ezra down beside the fountain, running circles around the hedges, with his governess doing her utmost to keep pace with him.
It would make her smile so to see him that way.
But since the funeral, Margaret had seen very little of Ezra.
“You called for me, Your Grace?”
Margaret glanced over her shoulder to see Miss White, her housekeeper, standing in the doorway.
Margaret had let much of the staff go, with a heavy heart, because she could not justify keeping them. Without the Duke, and with no inclination to receive company herself, there was simply no use for many of the household staff members. But she could not part with Miss White.
“Yes, Miss White. I wonder, where is Ezra?”
Miss White smiled sadly. “I believe he is with Miss Hallow, Your Grace.”
“You seem forlorn,” Margaret noted as she turned to peer at Miss White more directly. “Do his lessons not go well?”
Miss White hesitated a moment before speaking again. “I cannot say, Your Grace. Though I do believe that Miss Hallow has found the lessons more challenging of late.”
“Challenging?”
“Yes, Your Grace. Young Lord Baxter has been-” She paused once more, and shifted her hands in her skirt.
“Go on, Miss White.”
“I would not like to, Your Grace, for fear I give a false report.”
Margaret nodded, though there was a crinkle between her fine brows. “Would you send for Miss. Hallow?”
Miss White curtsied and sad, “Certainly.”
In her absence, Margaret recalled the events of the weeks since the funeral. She could not count how many times she had choked back tears in that time.
Nor how many times she had smiled for Ezra’s benefit. Or begged him to speak to her, when he had seemed far more inclined to silence.
The whispers she had heard echoed about her mind, over and over and over.
Just two days prior, the Duchess and Duke of Rothenham had called at the estate.
“Oh, how terrible,” the Duchess had said upon entering. “I have heard, my dear, that you have let much of the household staff go. Terrible. Terrible that you should go without. When she must have certainly benefited from the good Duke’s patronage.”
Margaret had mustered a terse smile. “We had a surplus of staff. Many were unneeded.”
The Duchess looked to her husband, then back to Margaret, as though she had encountered a trapped rodent and pitied it awfully. “Terrible,” she said again. “Just terrible.”
By the following morning, word had spread so far as Margaret’s cousin, who heartily expressed her indignation that Joshua had thrown his money at his mistress, and left his own family wanting.
“I suppose you have heard this from the Duchess of Rothenham?” Margaret had said with cheeks beginning to redden with mortification and rage.
“Rothenham? No, dearest. From the Peterlys.”
“The Peterlys. Does news travel so fast in good society?”
“Be at peace, cousin.”
“I will not. It is slander. We are not poverty-stricken, Alicia.”
“You are not?”
“Certainly not.”
“Then the Duke-?”
“The Duke, I am sure, spent a great deal on his mistress.” Her voice had tightened. “But not so much that we are left bereft.”
“Sweet cousin-”
“Do not believe all that you hear, cousin.”
She will believe all that pleases her, as will everyone else, Margaret thought as she awaited the arrival of her son and his governess.
She felt this achy throb in her head. The headaches had been almost constant since Joshua’s death.
“Your Grace.”
Margaret had her eyes closed. She opened them and looked to the door where the governess was curtsying.
“Ezra is not with you, Miss Hallow?”
Miss Hallow kept her head low. “I am afraid not, Your Grace.”
“For what reason?”
“He will not come.”
Margaret blinked. “He will not come? On what grounds?”
“He is in the Duke’s study, Your Grace.”
“And how does he seem to you?”
“Quite stricken, Your Grace.”
Margaret felt a pang and stood. “Very well. If he will not come to me, then I shall go to him.”
And so she did. Upon reaching the study, she saw her small boy – just six years old – sitting in his father’s chair. He was playing with a handful of marbles, but with only the mildest of interest.
“Dearest?” Margaret called.
“Yes, Mother,” he answered without looking up at her.
She was silent, then said, “Will you not look at me, my love?”
He shook his head, and she saw that his cheeks ar
e glistening, though his countenance was stiff. Margaret approached and stood beside him.
She touched his shoulder, but still he would not look to her. “What has hurt you, Ezra?”
“I am not hurt,” he said with conviction, and swiped at his tears with the back of his hand. “I am angry, Mother.”
“Then you must tell me why, darling.” She retrieved her handkerchief as she spoke, but when she tried to dab at his eyes he pushed her hand away.
An Earl for the Broken-Hearted Duchess Page 1