by Carrie Lomax
Poor Mr. Featherstone’s eyes bugged out of his head. After a full minute of recovery, the man asked weakly, “I shall need Mr. Walsh’s signature on the form.”
“I can handle that,” Richard replied, moving into view over Miriam’s shoulder. She beamed up at her doting husband radiantly. “I am here to sign on behalf of Marshall Walsh, whom you see before you.”
“I half-guessed. Your title, however, carries no weight here.”
Miriam smiled sweetly. After all, the man had never gotten her into trouble over her activity. He could have shut down her account at any time.
“Ah, but have I introduced you to my husband, Lord Richard Northcote. He is half-owner of the Howard Shipping Alliance, a transatlantic shipping concern. We are six months into the venture and preparing to solicit investors later this year.” Miriam grinned up at her husband. “I thought you may wish to know. In case you need to recover from your Latin American losses. About Mr. MacGregor’s fictional Poyais…” Miriam clicked her tongue. “Such a pity.”
She scribbled her name across the bottom and awaited her confirmation of the purchase. When it was done, they pulled up the collars of their outerwear and went arm-in-arm to find Mrs. Kent. A snowstorm had fallen in the night, and the wind off the river whipped a funnel of snow about them. Richard bent down to kiss her.
Whether in England or America, Miriam found being a Viscountess very satisfactory adventure, indeed.
This Christmas, Amity meets her match beneath the mistletoe.
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Author’s Note
Before researching The Lost Lord, I knew little about the history of the New York Stock Exchange beyond its oft-repeated founding beneath a buttonwood tree on Wall Street. Unfortunately, the NYSE between 1800 and 1865 is not readily available outside of archives. I have therefore taken creative license to describe Miriam’s visit to Mr. Featherstone.
What is true about this scene is Gregor McGregor’s role in causing the run on stocks in London, with spillover to New York and Latin American markets. MacGregor issued bonds for a fictional country called Poyais and declared himself “Cazique,” or prince. It was all an elaborate lie.
The BBC has a terrific article about this colorful charlatan.
Considering the wild characters of the 19th century financial world, writing a woman who trades under a fictitious name seems downright reasonable!
A second point of fiction is the crossing of the Atlantic. While it was technically possible to complete the voyage in four weeks or so, as Richard, Miriam, and Lizzie do, the average crossing from New York required 6-8 weeks, and could take as long as twelve. As this would have been tedious for readers, I sped things up for the sake of the story.
Read more about the history of packet ships and transatlantic shipping at the Smithsonian.
Finally, I was astounded to discover that the first recorded successful C-section in the British Empire was conducted by Dr. James Barry, sometime between 1815 and 1821, in South Africa. Dr. Barry was born Margaret Ann Bulky in Ireland. Margaret assumed the identity of James Barry as a teenager and lived as a man until her death in 1865. Dr. Barry served in Cape Town, South Africa, for 10 years. It is during this time he successfully performed the operation. (I use “he” as that was his preferred pronoun in life.)
However, according to the U.S. National Library of Medicine, there had been reports of indigenous people performing successful C-sections well prior to D. Barry’s arrival. Wine was used to semi-anesthetize the mother and sterilize the incision site. Notably, these procedures were successful well prior to Western surgeries. For comparison, no woman is recorded to have survived a C-section in Paris between 1787 and 1876, due to poor sanitary practices and misunderstanding of female physiology.
Acknowledgments
I am ever grateful to my husband, Mr. Lomax, whose support in the areas of cooking, dishwashing, and entertaining the Little Lomaxes ensures no one starves as I pursue my dream!
My gratitude also to the librarians at the Library of Congress, The New-York Historical Society, and the Smithsonian, both for digitizing records and responding to my extremely specific requests about the NYSE in 1825. All errors are my own.
Without the help of Anya Kagan at Touchstone Editing and Margaret Bates from Maryland Romance Writers, this manuscript would not deserve to reach your e-reader. To Shae at Addendum Designs, thank you as always for the speedy turnaround. A special shout-out to my PA, Sara Cunningham, for helping to get the word out about The Lost Lord and the rest of the London Scandals trilogy.
About the Author
Carrie Lomax grew up in the Midwest. After a stint teaching in France, she moved to New York City for 15 years, where she acquired a pair of graduate degrees, a husband and a career as a librarian. She lives in Maryland with two budding readers and her real-life romantic hero.
She is also the author of the well-reviewed Say You Will contemporary romance trilogy + bonus novella. Carrie was a finalist in the 2018 Virginia Fool for Love contest for her historical romance, To Win a Wicked Widow.
Follow her on BookBub to stay abreast of new releases.
Also by Carrie Lomax
Regency Historical Romances
The Lost Lord: London Scandals Book 1
Becoming Lady Dalton: London Scandals Book 2
Twelve Nights of Scandal (12/1/2019)
Contemporary Romances
Say You’ll Stay
Say You Need Me
Say I Do
Say You’re Mine
Twelve Nights of Scandal
Handsome, arrogant and charming, Lord Weston is nothing like the boy Amity grew up with. As her dearest childhood friend, Ellis Weston laughed at her jokes and encouraged her playful instinct for trouble.
Lord Weston, however, sighs and scolds Amity for being too loud, too lively, and altogether inappropriate.
Now, he’s in need of a wife. She has twelve days to sabotage her former friend’s courtships by any means necessary.
And Ellis has twelve nights to prove Amity has always been the only lady in his heart.
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Twelve Nights of Scandal
The Wild Lord: London Scandals Book 1
"You wanted to see me, Dr. Patton?"
Harper Forsythe stopped midway through the door, tucking a honey-brown strand of hair behind her ear. As her eyes adjusted slowly to the gloom, she realized that she had directed her question to the wrong place. The good doctor was not at his desk.
"Yes, come in, Miss Forsythe. I'm just finishing up with our patient." Dr. Patton sat beside the white-clad form of an adolescent girl lying catatonic on the couch. Long blonde hair spilled over the couch and fell nearly to the floor. The effect might have been pretty but for her eerie, vacant stillness. One hand dripped, claw-like, over the edge of the couch, as lifeless as if made from candle wax.
The doctor’s gentle stubbornness that Camilla could be roused from her catatonic state made Harper grit her teeth to hold her tongue. Privately, Harper considered his efforts to be a waste of time. Camilla Grey was a lost cause.
Still, she understood the doctor’s uncompromising stubbornness to save a patient. They had argued over her patients, as well.
England’s most renowned sanatorium director leveraged himself out of his chair with a huff of effort. He shuffled to his desk. "Pass me Yorick and sit, Miss Forsythe. Miss Grey will not disturb us, I'm sure.”
Harper’s lips resisted a smile. She placed the tips of her fingers around the circumference of the skull sitting on the seat of a battered wingback chair and peered into the gaping sockets. She delicately offered her mentor the skull, then tucked her skirts neatly beneath her and sat primly gazing at the gruesome wall behind Dr. Patton’s desk.
Brains. At least twenty of them lined the shelves behind the desk, each shriveled specimen sulking in pickling fluid in a glass jar ringed with beeswax.
“I can see from the look on your face how hopeless you conside
r her cause. Yet I detect some signs of life in her. Where there is life, there is hope. You'll forgive the curtains." The last was not a question. Harper nodded. Miss Grey curled away from the sun like a snail retracting into its shell.
The farther he advanced into middle age, the less Dr. Patton seemed inclined to deal with the most intractable of his patients. Miss Grey was the exception. The responsibility for the ongoing care of the more damaged individuals left in the care of Patton's Asylum for the Mentally Disturbed fell increasingly onto the shoulders of his assistants—of which, Harper was the best.
She had to be. A woman alone in the world, she was lucky to have meaningful employment at all. Harper therefore counted her rewards by watching the seedlings of trust that sprouted in her patients’ eyes rather than pounds sterling.
Another subtle reward was the doctor’s confidence. The doctor did not call his assistants to his office idly. Something was afoot, and he had chosen her to know about it first. Pride swelled comfortingly in her chest.
"I received a letter of particular import this morning," he went on, shuffling through the stack of papers on his desk until he found the one he sought. Dr. Patton fished in his pocket for a pair of silver-rimmed spectacles. On his nose, they lent an owlish cast to his appearance.
"Are you aware of the Earl of Briarcliff?" the doctor asked.
Harper racked her brains. She had little interaction with the aristocracy, and no time to spare for gossip rags about people she didn't know.
"I am not."
Patton appeared unsurprised, aware that his most favored assistant rarely took the time for anything other than her patients. He wagged his head like a shaggy, aging dog.
“Even the wrongheads know more of the world beyond these walls than you do,” Dr. Patton commented with a sigh.
Harper raised her chin. “Enlighten me.”
The doctor settled his bulk into the chair before speaking. Harper shifted in her seat and prepared for one of her employer’s famously long-winded stories.
“The previous earl of Briarcliff was the present earl’s brother. Both brothers worked for the British government during the Napoleonic Wars. The elder brother was a spy and met a rather grisly death at the hands of the French in early 1808.” He tented his fingers over the round expanse of his belly.
“The present earl, however, was an ambassador to the Portuguese court. Faced with Napoleon’s armies, the entire court—ten thousand people—fled almost overnight to Brazil, accompanied by British warships. At the time, the earl had with him his two eldest sons, Edward and Richard. Surely you recall reading something of this story as a child?”
“A little,” Harper said defensively. Thanks to Dr. Patton and his wife, she had received a more than adequate education for a single young woman of few prospects. She thus pretended familiarity with the story, lest she insult their generosity.
“In the chaos of the departure, the present earl was forced to bring along his children for an unexpected trip to Brazil. Tragically, the eldest son disappeared during a tour of the Amazon rainforest in 1808, not long after the court’s arrival.”
"How sad. Was he kidnapped? Or simply lost?" Harper asked.
"No one knows. The interior of the South American continent has never been fully explored, and although expeditions were dispatched, only rumors of the boy were ever unearthed. Until now," the doctor said with a waggle of his eyebrows. Harper rewarded him with an indulgent smile.
"You really don't read the newspapers, do you?" he asked.
Harper shook her head once, decisively. "I haven't time. My patients need me."
"Are you feeling overworked here?"
Harper blinked at the doctor's question. She had not taken a holiday in years, but that was in part because she had nowhere to go. Her only family, a sister, lived in the north of England, which might as well be the moon given the time and expense it would take to make the journey.
Ever since the doctor and his wife had given her a home, an education and a purpose here at the asylum, she had never felt the need to be anywhere else. Her secret hope was that the Pattons would leave her the asylum to run as her own someday, when they were old enough to want more peace and rest. It was a hope she dared not voice for its breathtaking audacity—yet.
"Not at all," she replied honestly.
"Several of your patients are making remarkable progress. The Kilbourne girl, the one afflicted with severe melancholia, she is nearly ready to be released, is she not?"
"Yes." The loss of little Jenny would hurt despite her joy at the girl’s recovery. There would be new patients. There were always people who needed help—and that meant there would always be a place for her here at the asylum.
“Well done. What of Mr. Smith?”
Harper’s heart sank. Smith believed himself to be persecuted by demons and witches who tortured him without mercy. Nothing Harper had tried in her considerable knowledge of creative treatments could convince him otherwise.
"I am dismayed to report no progress with Mr. Smith." To Harper her inability to improve his life was the worst sort of personal failure.
"Some cases are sadly incurable," the doctor commented without judgment. Patton had warned her that she would waste valuable time trying to treat Smith, but Harper had insisted on taking his case. The disorder appeared in late adolescence and progressively deteriorated. Harper had proven powerless to stop it. She glanced at Camilla Grey’s lifeless form.
In his wisdom, Dr. Patton had let her try and fail. The next time she had such a patient, she would better direct her efforts into patients for whom there was hope of improvement.
"Returning to our previous subject, the earl's son has come back from the South American continent with severe disorders. He understands English, or some of it, but he is prone to rages and melancholia. He hasn’t harmed anyone, yet the household is terrified of him.”
A frisson of anticipation made Harper clench her fingers together in her skirts. Surely the doctor was telling her, in his roundabout way, that he would take the case and be gone for some duration. Any earl was an important client. Dr. Patton must have called her here to say that he was leaving her in charge of the asylum in his absence. This could be her opportunity to show the Pattons that she was capable of managing things. They weren’t getting younger, and she was the closest thing they had to a daughter. If she did well, she would be on solid ground in approaching them to ask for her dream. Harper folded her hands to keep them still. Her foot tapped the air beneath her skirt.
"The earl understandably wishes to see the firstborn son inherit if his sanity can be restored. He has made me a very, very generous offer for my exclusive services."
Harper fought a grin and lost. It was exactly as she had imagined.
“How wonderful for you, Dr. Patton.”
"Unfortunately, I am entirely too busy with the asylum to accommodate the earl's request."
Harper's smile faded. Her boot froze mid-tap.
"In my reply to the earl, I will recommend sending my very best assistant to do an initial evaluation. You."
Harper felt like a stone thrown over a cliff. "What about my patients?"
"Miller and Skitchum will divide your patients between them. I will ensure that they follow your instructions to the letter. With Jenny about to be discharged and Mr. Smith receiving maintenance care as you have recommended in your reports, the burden won’t be unmanageable. If need be, I can hire an assistant with the salary I won't be paying you.”
Harper gasped. “You cannot mean that I am to be replaced.”
The doctor peered at her over the tops of his silver spectacles. “Harper, dear girl, don’t be so dismayed. This is a tremendous opportunity. I made my name by curing the Duke of Mayham’s son. The money I earned was enough to allow me to start my own asylum."
“I can't start my own asylum!” Her knuckles turned white as she balled her fists into her skirt. “Who would send patients to a woman doctor? One who is young and untried, at that?"
The older man rose from his comfortable leather chair, his paunch scraping against the edge of the desk. “You underestimate yourself. You are not untried, Harper. You've been tending your own patients for six years. You can establish your reputation as a healer by curing the Earl of Briarcliff's son. It will take you further than any apprenticeship with me ever could. The boy is disturbed, but surely all he needs is someone to help him acclimate to his natural environment. You can be that person, Harper. Teach Lord Northcote to behave as befits an earl and you will be utterly free of your dependence upon me.”
“I don't want to be free of you,” Harper declared fiercely. She would not cry here. She could not. “You and Mrs. Patton are my family. You have been my teachers and supporters. Now you want to send me away?”
“Oh, no, my lyrical little Harp. Nothing like that. I won't force you if you don't want to go. It is only that I hate to see you chained to this place of human suffering when you could do so much good for the world, if you would only stretch your wings.” The doctor was patting her ineffectually on the shoulder. Her face was hot, and she bit her lip to stop it from trembling.
“If I may speak as a father, in place of the true father you lost…”
Harper sniffed.
“I am concerned that you have become too attached to this place. I understand that your childhood was untethered, to say the least. This is the only home you have ever known as your own. But it is not a home for a grown woman. You should have beaux. You should dance and try your hand at being a normal girl. You’re twenty-five years old—”
“Twenty-six next week.”
“Of course. I hadn’t forgotten your birthday, dear.”