A Guiding Light for the Lost Earl: A Clean & Sweet Regency Historical Romance Novel

by Abby Ayles

  About Abby Ayles

  Abby Ayles was born in the northern city of Manchester, England, but currently lives in Charleston, South Carolina, with her husband and their three cats. She holds a Master’s degree in History and Arts and worked as a history teacher in middle school.

  Her greatest interest lies in the era of Regency and Victorian England and Abby shares her love and knowledge of these periods with many readers in her newsletter.

  In addition to this she has also written her first romantic novel, The Duke's Secrets, which is set in the era and is available for free on her website. As one reader commented “Abby’s writing makes you travel back in time!”

  When she has time to herself, Abby enjoys going to the theatre, reading and watching documentaries about Regency and Victorian England.

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  Melting a Duke’s Winter Heart - Preview

  Chapter 1

  Sarah Lockridge pulled herself upright in the carriage, stretching her short legs forward across the seat and casting a playful grin in her friend’s direction.

  “Long trips like these always leave me aching to run about or splash in some cool water. I am not sure I will be able to abide this carriage one more moment.”

  “You speak as though you had a choice,” Margaret Hayward said with a playful note of her own.

  She was the opposite of Sarah in every way: tall, dark-haired, and dark-eyed. She had been of marriageable age for a few years, just like Sarah, but unlike her hot-headed friend, Margaret had multiple suitors lined up for her hand and the opportunities therein.

  Sarah leaned out of the carriage and let the warm summer wind lift her hair up in the breeze and carry it gently aloft.

  Her hair was so blond it was almost white, a feature that only seemed starker when matched with her brilliant green eyes. Her father, who rarely seemed to notice her existence, had once acknowledged that she looked like an old Irish selkie, the mystical seal folk who could shed their skin and, in some cases, enchant poor fishermen to their doom.

  “I’m not ready to be home,” Sarah said softly, leaning her cheek against the window sash. “Perhaps at Fuller Mill we might take a break?”

  “It’s a short walk from the Mill to your parents’,” Margaret said. “Someone might see us dabbling in the creek.”

  “Perhaps the coachman will let us out early.”

  Sarah brightened and straightened, knocking against the wall of the carriage until the driver opened a small door for communication.

  “Could you drop us at Fuller Mill, Hopkins? We wish to stretch our legs. You can carry our belongings on to Talon Hall.”

  “What about Miss Hayward?”

  “Her parents are sending a coach to take her on from Talon Hall, I’m sure they won’t mind if she’s a few minutes late.”

  The coachman paused for a moment, clearly facing a familiar dilemma - whether to give in to his mistress’s commandment and risk her father’s disapproval or to hope for the best.

  In the end, Sarah saw the carriage slowing near the peaceful mill, and she and Margaret were allowed to clamber out of the carriage with only their bonnets to carry home across the fields.

  “Give my best to my parents,” Sarah said with a blithe smile, “and tell Lucille I’ll be home directly.”

  “You could have brought Lucille, you know,” Margaret said as the two girls picked up their skirts and waded through the tall prairie grass towards the silent mill. “You are two peas in a pod, and I’d have enjoyed her companionship along with yours.”

  Sarah smiled to herself. When most people used the phrase “two peas in a pod” they meant it figuratively, but in her and her sister’s case, there was never a more literal interpretation.

  Born identical twins, Sarah and Lucille Lockridge were indistinguishable to most people. They were the same height, had the same waist-length white-blond hair, and had similar mannerisms and tones. They could only be told apart by their clothing choices and their personalities.

  While Sarah Lockridge wore daring colors and brilliant hues, Lucille wore pastels in the simplest styles. While Lucille was content to quietly collect fans and gloves and shut herself away indoors, Sarah had a hungry mind and longed for adventure.

  Many people didn’t even know that Lord Edgar Lockridge, the Earl of Huxley, had twin daughters. Because Sarah so often went out in society alone, they just assumed she was his only daughter, and when Lucille ventured out, they were often mistaken for one another.

  “Lucille has been quiet as of late,” she mused as the two girls drew near the shallow stream beneath the turning mill wheel. “I’ve enjoyed our time together, but I worry about her.”

  “Lucille has always been quiet. It’s just her way.” Margaret looked over at her friend with alarm. “What are you doing?”

  Sarah had already stripped off her stockings and slippers and was hiking her bright blue skirts up to wade into the stream.

  “My feet are aching,” she said with a joyous laugh. “Would you leave them to languish in slippers after a day of travel?”

  “But what if someone were to see?” Margaret gasped, putting one foot behind the other as though to ward off Sarah’s unseemly ways. “It would be scandalous. Sarah, I can see your knee!”

  “No one is passing this way, dear.” Sarah closed her eyes and felt the subtle current tug at her ankles like a needy child. “The water is so cold. You should try it.”

  “Who knows what is in that water. Can’t you wait until we are home and can draw a proper bath?”

  “Margaret,” Sarah scolded, leveling a laughing gaze on her friend. “You speak grandly of how brave you are and how many adventures you wish to go on, but when it comes to a simple matter of standing in a clear stream, you balk at the drama of it all.”

  Margaret looked from side to side with a nervous giggle. “Alright then,” she sniffed daintily. “I will touch it with my hand.”

  She knelt down and sunk her pale wrist into the water until it covered halfway up her forearm, and then withdrew her arm just as quickly.

  “With bravery like that, we will conquer the world,” Sarah said drily.

  She waded a bit farther into the stream, letting the water lick at her knees.

  “I want to do things, Margaret. Not silly little things like this, but the sort of things I read about in my books. Men get to travel all over the world on boats and have all sorts of adventures. They come back telling their tales, and we women are meant to swoon over them without hungering for adventure ourselves. It isn’t fair.”

  “You always were obsessed with books. Didn’t your father used to warn against it?”

  “You really haven’t spent much time at Talon Hall in recent years,” Sarah said, half teasing, and half sad.

  Margaret’s mother wasn’t a fan of the Lockridge family, and Margaret had spent more and more time traveling with her family and locked in music studies as the years went by.

  “Nothing’s changed with my father,” she went on. “He would still prefer I kill the adventurer in me before it causes him embarrassment in the House of Lords.”

  “What does the House of Lords care about a young girl?”

  “You know what Father always says,” Sarah said quietly. “If I bring shame on the family name, then there’s no coming back from it for him. I would ruin him, and that would ruin the plans he has for the government.”

  “Then stop fussing about it,” Margaret said sensibly, drying off her arm with the edge of her shawl.

  “Stop reading books and longing for things you can’t have. There’s no reason to indulge in such a way, especially when you know you’ll end up married just like the rest of us, sewing and caring for children and attending grand parties.

  “The best you can hope for is a kind and interesting man who will leave you alone most of your life.”

  It sounded horrible to Sarah, but Margaret
spoke of it all as though it was the ultimate dream; as though nothing else in the world could be as perfect as settling for a man who was boring enough to leave you alone for the rest of your life.

  Sarah had known Margaret since they were young girls. In fact, they’d met at their first coming out season when they were sixteen years old.

  Lucille had been there, too, but she’d spent the whole of her time in the upstairs of the mansion, examining the paintings in the art hall.

  Bored, Sarah had wound her way about the ballroom avoiding the offers to dance and pretending vague interest in the goings-on therein. She’d sighted Margaret Hayward leaning against a banister with a wan little look of nerves on her face and she’d walked up to her.

  “I know it seems like a bore,” she had said, “but if you stick with me, we shall bring some magic to the evening after all.”

  They had been fast friends ever since, even if that friendship had looked more like occasional letters and rare social gatherings as of late.

  It didn’t matter so much for Margaret, who seemed to have a bevy of female friends at her beck and call, but for Sarah, there was no one else except Lucille, and in some ways, she and Lucille were so similar, that it was more like being friends with oneself.

  One’s quiet, distant self.

  She climbed out of the creek and wiggled her toes in the sunshine. “I don’t want to climb back into my shoes,” she said softly.

  In truth, she didn’t want to climb back into her life. A week at the seaside with Margaret was like fresh air, and she knew the stale coffin to which she would be returning.

  When her stockings were on and her slippers laced up again, the girls began walking across the open fields towards Talon Hall.

  “Margaret,” Sarah said after taking a deep breath. “I so rarely get to travel to your house, and you so rarely travel to mine. Do you think we live similar lives?”

  “It’s hard to know,” Margaret said, snapping a head of wheat off a nearby grass and rolling it in her slender fingers. “After all, you rarely talk about your family.”

  She shrugged. “I suppose most families are the same, though. Sometimes they’re annoying and drag at your nerves, but more often than not, everything is very quiet and peaceful.

  “It’s easy enough, living with your own family. You know everyone’s rhythms and desires; you know that, no matter what happens, they’ll be there for you, even if they scold you first.”

  Sarah kept her head turned so that Margaret couldn’t see the tears in her eyes.

  That’s what she’d always wondered - if her family situation was the same as other people’s - and she’d had something of an answer just now.

  It wasn’t annoyance, or dragging at nerves, or scolding that plagued her family. It was a silence that was unexplained, a complete absence of camaraderie or shared trials; the thought that anyone would care enough to scold in the first place.

  Lucille was too quiet to be of assistance, too willing to fold under her father’s iron will.

  Edgar Lockridge was a pale weasel of a man who looked unassuming at first glance but was in fact as strong physically as he was politically. He had a tight fist on all his business holdings, whether domestic or abroad, and that fist didn’t loosen when it came to Talon Hall.

  Sarah still remembered the first time he’d caught her reading a book on the anatomy of insects.

  Lucille had been in the room, doing her embroidery by the fireplace as was her wont, and Sarah hadn’t even noticed her father’s presence until Lucille let out a little startled cry.

  Edgar Lockridge had snatched the book from Sarah’s hands and perused it in silence for a few moments before sending it skittering across a nearby tabletop.

  “There’s no use for a girl to read such things,” he’d snapped.

  “But, Papa,” she’d cried, too young and naïve to know how idiotic it was to disobey him. “I want to learn. Don’t you want a child that you can be proud of, who might be able to help run Talon Hall when you are gone?”

  “The only way you could have been a child I was proud of is if you’d been born a boy,” he’d hissed, slicing at her heart with every word. “I ask God for a boy, and he gives me two girls. What kind of joke is that?”

  Eventually, the Earl had gotten his heir, a youngest son named Edmund, but Edgar Lockridge was never satisfied. He had political ambitions that needed to be acted out in the now, not in the vague future, and Sarah could feel his frustration whenever she was in the room.

  If he had been given sons instead of daughters, he often told her, he would already be at the top of the social sphere.

  As might be expected, this cold reception taught Lucille and Sarah to stay far away from their father. Their younger brother, Edmund, was at first a joyous addition to the family; but as he grew older, he spent more and more time with his father and grew jaded and shallow.

  All this might have been softened by the presence of a tender mother, but though Sarah had only good things to say about her mother, Marianne, she rarely saw her.

  Marianne and Edgar spoke to each other only when necessary, and Marianne spent most of her days locked away in a darkened room, complaining of a headache or some other such malady.

  She turned to Margaret as Talon Hall came into view beyond the last hill. “Thank you for walking with me, friend, and for the welcome distraction this week.”

  “My pleasure,” Margaret answered with an empty smile. Sarah wondered what she was thinking, and thought she could guess.

  It’s unlikely I’ll see you again for some time. She bit back her disappointment, and the remainder of the walk continued in silence.

  The Hayward carriage was already drawn up outside the impressive Talon Hall structure, and when Sarah had seen Margaret safely inside, it took off down the sedate drive lined with birch trees.

  Sarah watched until her friend’s ride was out of sight, and then walked quietly up the marble steps and through the front door.

  Inside, the family’s long-time butler, Ellis, greeted her with proper formality and, relieving her of her bonnet and gloves, held out his hand toward the dining room.

  “Your family is waiting for you in the dining room, Miss Lockridge.”

  Sarah blinked. Her family never ate together except when hosting guests, and even then, it was shocking to have them all present. “Do you mean my father, Ellis?”

  “All, my lady.”

  “My mother?”

  “Yes, my lady.”

  “Sarah!” It was Lucille, with Edmund close behind.

  Edmund’s face was drawn and grim, and for the first time, Sarah thought she could see something of a man in his dark eyes.

  Lucille, in contrast, looked beside herself. “I’m so glad you’re back. Sarah, something dreadful has happened—”

  “Lucille!” Edmund interrupted with a frown. “Papa said not to say a word until dinner.”

  Edmund turned to Sarah in a tone that bordered on imperious. “He asks you to change and come down to dinner at once.”

  Sarah looked past Edmund. “Do you want to accompany me upstairs?” she asked softly.

  “Lucille will stay with me,” Edmund said, laying a hand on his older sister’s arm. He was looking more and more like his father every day.

  Sarah cleared her throat. “I’m not sure what’s going on, but I’ll change at once and come down. Tell Father I’ll only be a few more moments.”

  “I’ll send a maid up,” Lucille said softly.

  She seemed different; broken. Sarah’s heart went out to her, but she didn’t want to make matters worse by interfering before she knew the facts.

  She bowed quickly to her brother and sister and made her way upstairs, her heart in her throat and her mind spinning with new worries.

  Chapter 2

  “We’ll call this session to a close,” the Lord Speaker announced in the same droning monotone he’d been employing all day.

  In response, the gathered gentlemen in the gold-hung H
ouse of Lords stood in a cacophony of screeching shoes and tapping canes, to stream out of the meeting room like children from a schoolhouse.

  It had been a particularly long day. Augustus Sutton, Duke of Whitehall, sat in his seat as the other lords left, wiping a hand across the beads of sweat on his brow and wishing, more than usually, that he had rescinded his right to his father’s seat and escaped all the nonsense of political intrigue.

  Today’s drama had centered around the Earl of Huxley’s new bill, a chance to gouge more money out of the poorer class by raising the candle tax yet again.