The Beauty and the Earl: A Historical Regency Romance Novel

by Hamilton, Hanna

  He walked with a cane, dependent upon it to remain mobile, because of his horrific war injuries. He was thin, nearly to the point of feebleness, from frequent illness, and his skin was pale and sallow. And to make it that much worse, his hair was thinning on top. The overall effect made him seem older than he was. He might have been pathetic—might have been—were it not for the Duke of Bainton’s extraordinary poise, dignity, and imposing personal presence.

  Though William Nielsen, by that time, probably weighed twice what his brother did, he was afraid of Richard. He always had been. As boys, Richard had been his idol, and winning his approval, and Susana’s, was all that he had ever wanted. And Richard made such a task almost impossible by practically never approving of anything.

  Though Will had mostly grown out of his idolatry toward his older brother, he still admired Richard in many ways, and, despite his poor physical condition, he feared Richard's wrath.

  William knew that Susana had far more to fear in the days following her coming-out party than he did, but he still anticipated some of Richard’s ire falling upon his own head. Richard had always disapproved of how close Will and Susana were, and whatever iniquities he found in Susana seemed to be equally William’s fault as they were hers.

  The morning after the disastrous party, William sat at breakfast with his brother. Richard’s complexion was ghastly white, and there were dark circles under his eyes. His mustache, however, was trimmed to perfection, and each hair that remained on his head was combed and patted into place with pomade.

  Despite his recent illness, he was fully and splendidly dressed in a jacket, waistcoat, and trousers. The only outward sign of his condition, other than his pallor, was the fact that he took only broth for the morning meal, while William took a hearty plate of sausage, muffins, syrupy prunes, and boiled eggs.

  The two young men had scarcely spoken yet. The Duke was temperamental under the best of circumstances, but Will had learned over the years not to speak to him before he’d had at least two cups of tea. The silence was pregnant, but William was content to eat and be quiet, until Richard was the one who broke the silence.

  “Where is Susana?” said the Duke, dabbing at his lips with a napkin.

  “Oh, uh... in her room, I suspect,” said Will. “Why?”

  “Less than twelve hours have elapsed, yet I have already received half a dozen notes from our associates here in London, informing me of last night’s events.” The Duke turned his unsettling, icy blue gaze on William. “What have you to say on this matter, brother?”

  “Oh, uh...” William cleared his throat. “What have the notes been saying, Richard?”

  The elder brother sat back in his chair and removed from the inner pocket of his jacket a sheaf of papers. He set them down, selected one, unfolded it, and read aloud:

  “Your Grace ought to be informed that his ward, one Miss Susana Alvin, made a spectacle of herself at last night’s function, in more ways than one. I shall leave the particulars to her to relate to Your Grace, but Your Grace must be advised. It does not bode well for her social standing.”

  Richard quirked his brows pointedly and set the note aside. He picked up another one and unfolded it with even more deliberate care than the previous. He cleared his throat, coughed a little into his handkerchief, and read aloud:

  “As we have known one another for many years, Bainton, I write to you as your friend to inform you of your ward’s deplorable conduct during her coming-out party. I regret that you were not in attendance, as your presence may have had some tempering effect on her slovenly ways.”

  “Slovenly!” William cried. “Who sent that? I will have a word—nay, several!” He reached for the note, but the Duke whisked it out of his reach.

  “Our Susana has always been in want of greater discipline when it comes to her personal tidiness. It is a stretch of the imagination to call her slovenly, William, but my—! My mind does run riot, trying to intuit what this girl has done to receive such an evaluation on her first night in society!” The Duke leaned away from William and rested on the arm of the chair with an air of feigned nonchalance, his eyes narrowing. “What do you know of this?”

  William set his jaw. “I know that Susana is a lovely girl with a good heart, and that she tries her best to fit in with these ridiculous society people. I also know that the harshness of their evaluation neither surprises me, nor strikes me as accurate!” Finally, he met his brother’s eyes. “I will not enumerate every little thing to you as some kind of inventory of her perfectly ordinary, human imperfections. It is your own fault for setting such high expectations.”

  “How dare you!” the Duke bellowed with a voice far too broad and commanding for one so thin and ill. The sound resonated in the breakfast hall, and made William jump a little in his seat.

  “How dare you impugn the honor of those in attendance last night by suggesting that their accounts—all of which corroborate one another—are somehow falsified? That there is some sort of conspiracy of society against your precious Susana? And furthermore, how dare you insinuate that any of it is my fault, when I have never done a thing in my life without first calculating it to be of maximum benefit to this family?” Richard’s mustache quivered with his righteous indignation. “I took in that ridiculous little girl at your behest, William, and you must answer for her!”

  “You speak as if she has chewed your favorite pair of slippers, Richard. She is a lady, not a dog! For the love of God!” William cried, throwing his hands up.

  “Do not blaspheme in my house,” Richard said severely, pushing himself back from the table. A servant stepped forward to hand him his cane, and to assist Richard in rising to his feet. “Go fetch her, and the both of you will meet me in the blue parlor in fifteen minutes’ time. I’ll not take no for an answer, and you let that girl know that if she refuses to cooperate, I will turn her out and have her sent to the workhouse. Is that clear?”

  William, seething with anger, could not muster a polite or pertinent response.

  “Is that clear?” Richard cried, thumping his cane against the floor with each word. “If you think that you are beyond my jurisdiction because you are my brother—”

  “Yes, yes, all-powerful Ra'jah Sultanate Master of the Empire Richard Francis Nielsen, Duke of Bainton,” William said, barely suppressing a roll of the eyes. “I will fetch our sister immediately.”

  “Do not refer to her as if she were my blood relation. She is not. And, sometimes, I suspect, neither are you.” With that, Richard left the breakfast room, his steps slow but dignified, his chin held high, and his manservant nearby, should he falter.

  William watched him go, somehow both disgusted by his brother’s irascibility and infirmity; and also impressed by how commanding and decisive Richard was. He was ever the lord of the house. William envied it, in a way, for though he was a strong and capable young man in the early years of his prime, he could seldom so much as decide what to eat for breakfast.

  The young and noble naval officer rose from his seat, once Richard’s uneven steps were out of earshot. Two at a time, Will took the stairs to the second floor, not wanting to further aggravate Richard by making him wait. He knocked on Susana’s door, and pressed his ear against it to listen for her response.

  ‘Go away!” Susana all but shouted. “Leave me alone! I am going to stay in here until I die!”

  “No, you will not, for my brother is most displeased with you, and I have a sneaking suspicion he will chop down the door himself in order to remove you, if he must,” said William.

  Susana shuffled about inside for a few moments, then opened the door by an inch, peering out at William.

  “What do you want?” said she. Her voice was thick, most probably from crying.

  “Richard must speak with you presently,” said William. “I have not seen him this upset since the Pollard children let their dogs loose on his quail.”

  “Oh, no,” Susana moaned, sagging against the door frame. “I cannot face him like this, W
illiam. I feel like such a fool!”

  “I care not if I am the only person in England who says it,” said William, pushing the door open a bit wider. “Miss Susana Alvin, you are no fool!”

  “William, you are too good to me!” the girl wailed, hiding her face in her hands. “I did everything wrong last night, did I not?”

  “Well,” said William, “more or less, yes, but—”

  “See?!”

  “But—” William took her wrists in his fingertips, marking how warm and slight they were, meaning to take her hands away from her face. It made him feel strange, however, to touch her in such a manner. Abruptly, he let go, in the interest of maintaining as much of his comportment as possible.

  “But I have met women—and men—with impeccably perfect manners, who have the blackest and coldest hearts of anyone I have met, regardless of class. And you, my dear sister, have the warmest and kindest heart I have ever met, of any class.” William tucked a finger under her chin, raising her face to look into her eyes.

  And all the kind and encouraging words he had meant to say went straight out of his head. In his absence at sea, Susana had gone and become utterly beautiful. He had never noticed it until now, their faces mere inches apart, with her looks full of innocence and distress.

  Her eyes were green, shot through with gold and brown, and so luminescent they reminded him of a tree canopy in a young forest, shot through with sunlight, and just as sparkling. Something about her face had changed, too. Her cheeks had lost the fullness of girlhood, while her lips had gotten plumper. Freckles scattered across her nose and cheekbones, and William smiled, admiring each one from his close proximity.

  She was small and delicate compared to his height and brawn, and for this he felt the urge to defend her, as he had always done. But her demeanor was also remarkable, her spirits high, and her heart pure. It only increased the protective sentiments of bygone years, making him wish he could spare her from his brother’s imminent lecture, if only to cease her apparent distress and stem the tears that glittered in her eyes.

  “Are you thinking ill of me, William, after all?” said Susana, breaking his reverie. “You have gone so quiet.”

  “Never, Susie. Now, come, we must go to Richard in the parlor,” said the young man, shaking his head. “His usual foul temper is compounded by illness, you know, so beware. Make haste. I will meet you there.”

  Without waiting for a reply, William turned and skipped down the stairs, his thoughts perplexing him. He wondered whether all brothers had a moment in which they viewed their sisters as beautiful, as they grew older together. Or, perhaps, there was simply something wrong with him. Susana was not his sister by blood relation, but she had lived with the Nielsen family as his sibling for some thirteen years. Maybe that made his assessment less strange. She had become a beauty, there was no denying it.

  Although, to hear Richard tell it, that would not do her any good toward the prospect of marriage. After the previous night’s follies, she had made herself woefully ineligible to everyone in England, even all of Europe, if the gossipmongers had their way.

  Richard had taken a seat in the blue parlor in a wing-backed chair near the fire. He was reviewing some papers with deep concentration, and did not look up when William entered, and took a seat on the small couch across from him.

  “Where is that girl?” Richard muttered into the papers.

  “She will be along in a moment,” said William. “You ought to know, Richard, that she is as distraught as you are.”

  “I can hardly believe it,” Richard scoffed, finally sparing his brother a glance. “If she had the barest notion of what has happened—of how vitally important last night really was to her social status—well, then the incident never would have happened!” The elder brother turned his head, coughing delicately into a handkerchief.

  “Are you quite sure you have the strength to scold her?” William drawled. “I fear you may suffer an apoplexy with your health so far diminished.”

  “Your concern is touching, my dear little brother, but I think I shall manage,” said Richard, tucking the handkerchief back into his pocket. “Ah, here she is! The wretched little barnacle herself.”

  “Richard, really!” William cried, leaping to his feet.

  “That is quite all right, Will, I am sure I deserve it,” said Susana, hanging her head as she shuffled into the parlor. She pulled a chair over and sat between the two brothers, looking pale and small in her dressing-gown, with dark circles around her haunted, sleep-deprived eyes.

  Richard folded his papers and fixed Susana with a stare, his features neutral, but his eyes flashing with anger and disdain. “After all I have done for you,” he growled.

  “I know. I am sorry!” said Susana, dabbing at her tears with a handkerchief. “I did not mean to—”

  “Not nearly sorry enough, if you have yet to die of shame!”

  “This has gone far enough!” William jabbed a finger at his brother’s chest. “Say what you need to, Richard, and do what you will, but you will maintain common decency with this young lady. She may have made a faux pas or two, but she does not deserve this onslaught of verbal abuse. I will throttle you myself if you continue like this. See if I don’t! I care not if you are ill or a war hero or a Duke—you will be civil, if not kind, to this lady.”

  Richard looked up at his brother, and to Will’s deepest shock, he smiled. “Very good, Master William,” he said. “Be seated.”

  Dumbfounded, William sat back down as near to Susana as he could be. He reached out and took her hand, which was soft and cold and small, the delicate fingers twitching nervously in his grasp.

  “I have had multiple notes from friends and associates of mine, detailing your ridiculous and uncouth behavior from last night,” said the Duke, brandishing the letters to punctuate his point. “I will spare you the pain of recounting the incident in detail, for several of these friends of mine are avid gossips who seem to have been taking notes throughout the evening. You have thoroughly embarrassed me and the family name, and, what is more, you have ruined your own chances of receiving a decent proposal of marriage this season.”

  “Oh, Richard, I am so very sorry!” Susana cried again.

  “And you shall soon be sorrier. I will not say you’ve been ruined, Miss Alvin, but something very like it. London society does not forget easily. You will forever be known as the girl who ate so many cordial ices that she bathed in one during her coming-out party.” Richard shook his head and tutted.

  “But I—” she tried to speak, but he cut her off.

  “From the day that William found you and brought you home, I have exerted my every last ounce of effort to rear you into a proper young lady who would bring honor to the Nielsen name. But I see, now, that I have failed utterly. Every lesson I have tried to teach has ricocheted off the thickness of your head. Every grace I intended to bestow has been cast aside for your own ideas of wildness and frivolity. I have seen new meaning to the phrase, casting pearls before swine.”

  “Richard,” William growled in warning.

  “And while my brother’s staunch, chivalrous defense of your character is, no doubt, charming, it is misplaced. William, you ought to spend your energies finding yourself a wife. Unmarried at eight-and-twenty is hardly fitting for a Nielsen.” Richard’s mustache twitched. “Goodness knows I tried to relieve you of that burden, but God also saw fit to recall my beloved Amelia to Heaven, as well as our only son. My only legacy now may be improving the family’s status, which the both of you seem determined to undermine at every opportunity. Susana, by making a fool of herself. And you, William, by undertaking to be a naval surgeon, of all things, and not bothering to marry. It is—”

  “I will marry when I see fit,” William interrupted, “and I hardly think that one night of social misfortune has ruined Susana forever.”

  “No, it shan’t, because I have a plan,” said Richard, folding his delicate hands upon his knee. “If our mother taught me anything, it is s
ocial grace, and I think I may know how to salvage Susana’s reputation—and, by extension, our own. But, Susana, you must cooperate.”

  “As you wish, Richard. I will do anything you ask,” said the girl, trying to hold back her tears, clutching at her handkerchief. “I am so sorry to have embarrassed you.”

  “Save your breath for worthier pursuits. You can say nothing to ingratiate yourself to me, until you have secured a marriage proposal from someone of the royal peerage. I shall be satisfied with nothing less!” Richard spat, coughing again with the force of his words. “Oh, this dratted cough.”

  “You ought to go back to bed—” said William, rising from his seat yet again. He sat back down at a forceful wave of his brother’s hand.

  “I am not yet fully an invalid, nor will I ever be. I shall die before I am committed to my bedchamber like some old dowager,” muttered the Duke. “Susana, I am sending you back to Silkstone for the rest of the season.”

  The girl’s eyes bulged a little, for such was practically unheard-of after a girl’s coming-out. Then again, a disaster of Susana’s proportions was likewise unheard-of.

  “When I am well enough, I shall make your excuses to society. We shall tell them that you have been unwell and must return to the country to recuperate your strength.”

  “But Richard, that is a lie,” said Susana. “I am perfectly healthy.”

  “Ill health is the only plausible excuse for last night,” the Duke rebutted, with a look of indignation. “I should not be surprised if you really are ill. So you shall go to Silkstone to recuperate, and keep away from polite society for the rest of the season. I have determined that it is your want of proper feminine influence during your formative years, which has rendered you so willful and wanton.”

  “I do not mean to be,” Susana murmured miserably.

  “Therefore, I will be making an inquiry to a close personal friend of mine, the Dowager Duchess of Boroughbridge, to ask if she would condescend to spend some time with you. She may be able to refine your manners and attempt to instill in you a modicum of poise and gentility. For she is among the finest of any ladies I have ever met, with unparalleled manners and grace. If anyone can save you, Susana, it is she.”