Love Regency Style

by Samantha Holt

  The butler barely turned to give her a nod, not quite cer­tain of the viscountess’ sarcasm.

  “Elizabeth!” Hannah gushed as she hurried to greet her best friend, her hands held out in front of her. A very large dog, brown and white in coloring, with a square head and floppy ears, raised itself from the hearth to regard the visitor.

  “Hello, Harold,” Elizabeth said by way of greeting the Alpenmastiff. “No kisses, please,” she added with a wave. The dog settled his massive body back down onto the tiled hearth, as if understanding her ladyship’s refusal of one of his primary functions in life.

  Smiling, Hannah kissed Elizabeth’s cheek and stood back to have a look at her attire. “You look splendid in that shade of green,” she said as she fingered the superfine. “Whenever did you have time to have a fitting?” she wondered, realizing the carriage gown had to be new.

  “I left the office early last week to see Madame Bouvier. The worker bees had everything under control, so I gave myself the afternoon off.” Elizabeth’s charity, Lady E and Asso­ciates—Finding Working for the Wounded, had its recently enlarged office in Oxford Street and boasted a staff of four full-time office workers and several part-timers. They also had contracts with several tailors, hat makers, and boot makers in London for the purpose of outfitting war veterans for employ­ment. The burgeoning charity, which Elizabeth had begun just before her introduction to the viscount nearly seven months prior, was a huge success. The men she had hired were from among those who responded to her ads offering help in locat­ing employment. The ex-soldiers were responsible for find­ing positions in which wounded soldiers could work, despite those men having only partial sight or hearing, missing limbs, or some other malady resulting from their time spent in the war against France.

  Sometimes those employers were only willing to hire a wounded man if a bribe was involved. In those cases, Eliza­beth sent out one of her employees to negotiate the employ­ment contract. At one time, she had been the one to see to that part of the business. With her growing belly, her husband had suggested, very carefully and with a good deal of tact, and perhaps using a bribe of his own, that Elizabeth allow her min­ions to do the jobs for which they were paid out of the charity’s coffers and allow her to do the part of the charity she did so well—matching men to jobs.

  “Spoken like a true queen bee,” Hannah teased as she motioned for Elizabeth to take her favorite chair. She waved to the butler for tea to be brought and settled in the chair opposite her friend. “And when did you start using Madame Bouvier?” she wondered, never before having heard Elizabeth mention that particular modiste.

  “Oh, there’s a first time for everything,” her visitor sighed. “Lady Pettigrew suggested her because she specializes in maternity gowns, and ever since I saw her niece Lucy wear­ing that peach confection at Lady Worthington’s musicale last month, I thought to try her.”

  Hannah leaned back in her chair, admiring her auburn-haired friend. Beautiful, with aquamarine eyes, full lips, and a peaches and cream complexion, Elizabeth was not much older than Hannah’s twenty-one years. Her condition made her look as if she was lit from within by a dozen candles. “And?”

  Elizabeth regarded Hannah for a moment. “She’s brilliant.

  And she eschews corsets! Which means George approves.” This last was said with an elegantly arched eyebrow, which was

  Elizabeth’s way of pointing out anything that might be consid­ered naughty by gentlewoman standards.

  “And how is George?” Hannah wondered, noticing the maid rolling the tea cart over the threshold. “Thank you, Rose, I can serve this morning,” she said as an aside. Normally, she would allow the maid to do the honors, but she knew her friend would not speak freely with a servant in the room.

  Angling her head to one side, Elizabeth grinned but didn’t say anything. Hannah’s eyes grew wide. “Oh! What have you two done now?” she wondered as she leaned forward to pour the tea. There was something positively salacious about hav­ing a friend who shared tales of her sexual exploits. Despite the embarrassment she felt at hearing them described in such detail, Hannah found herself looking forward to Elizabeth’s tales.

  “Characters from storybooks,” Elizabeth offered, not immediately elaborating on just what she meant.

  Hannah handed over a cup and saucer and poured one for herself, adding milk and sugar. “Like Cinderella and her Prince Charming?” she guessed.

  A very unladylike snort erupted from Elizabeth. She lifted one foot from the floor and pulled up her gown to reveal her unfashionably large feet. “I think not,” she replied with a shake of her head. “And I’m not about to be an ugly stepsister. No, my dear, more like …” And here, she paused, for there were times her friend could be a bit of a prude, and she dared not shock the poor girl too much. Given Hannah’s appearance—she was the one who looked like a fairy princess with her cornflower blue eyes, berry colored lips, pale complexion and pale blonde hair pinned up in a mass of curls atop her head and wispy ringlets scattered about her temples—she would have been the perfect person to play the damsel-in-distress captured by a fire-breathing dragon. George, with his finely honed skill at fencing, slew the dragon, used the tip of his sword to deftly remove every last button from Elizabeth’s new French chiffon gown, and then, despite her swollen belly, had his way with her.

  Her maid was, at this very moment, sewing all the buttons back onto the gown.

  “Oh!” was all Hannah could say when Elizabeth described the scene.

  “Really, Hannah,” Elizabeth admonished her with a shake of her head. “When it comes to a husband, you must keep him guessing. Keep him interested. Keep him entertained,” she said with a naughty eyebrow. “You just have to use your imagination.”

  “I will remember,” Hannah replied with a grin, her face having turned a bright shade of pink. How could she forget such a tale?

  And how would she ever be able to look at George again without blushing?

  Chapter 3

  An Earl Spies a Lady

  At precisely ten o’clock on the very same morning, Henry Forster, Earl of Gisborn, peered out the carriage window at the grand Palladian mansion of the Marquess of Devonville. An odd excitement was building in his gut, one that made him wonder if he might be sick or if he was merely nervous. He had done this same reconnaissance mission the evening before, after making the journey from Kirdford in West Sussex to London in what might have been record time.

  His sole purpose for the trip was to secure a bride. Which, considering how much he really didn’t want to get married, seemed suddenly ludicrous. But inheriting an earldom from a deceased uncle more than a year ago, and being nearly thirty years of age, apparently required one to have a wife and a nurs­ery with an heir and a spare. Henry could only hope this could be done as quickly as possible (the marriage, of course—the heir and the spare would just have to come on their own time).

  He intended to call on the marquess, and then, once he had secured permission to court Lord Devonville’s daughter, he planned to request an audience with Lady Hannah Slater. But propriety had prevented him from approaching the front door of Devonville House last evening. It was after seven o’clock, far too late in the day to be paying a call on a member of the ton.

  Last evening’s trip proved somewhat successful, though, for when the coach pulled up to the carriageway in front of the stately home, Henry spied a rather large brown and white dog bounding about in the gardens next to the house.

  At least, he was fairly certain it was a dog.

  His initial guess had him thinking it was a short, over­weight horse. Then he heard the unmistakable sound of a bark and remembered Lady Charlotte’s description of the hairy beast. Harold MacDuff, she had called him. Lady Hannah’s pet and constant companion. Lady Charlotte had assured Henry that if he was able to befriend the Alpenmastiff, he was sure to be more readily accepted by the dog’s mistress, Lady Hannah.

  At second glance, Henry thought perhaps the dog was no larger t
han a collie or sheepdog. But when a vision in pale lav­ender appeared from behind the house and ran up to wrap her arms around the dog’s neck, the earl stared in disbelief. The beast had to be at least twelve stones! And then the girl began to laugh, the musical sound barely reaching his ears, as she angled her head to one side while the dog licked her neck.

  He was sure she was a fairy.

  Her pale blonde hair was braided and wrapped atop her head like a coronet, while ringlets danced around her delicate, rosy cheeks. Her eyes, closed as if she meant to protect them from her pet’s long tongue, were slightly upturned and sur­rounded by dark lashes. With her berry-colored lips shaped into a gleeful smile, her teeth shown white despite the deepen­ing twilight. And then she was up and running away from the dog, giggling in delight as her long limbs were silhouetted in the fabric of her gown. She disappeared from view as quickly as she had appeared.

  The beast finally lifted his massive body from the grassy lawn and lumbered after her, barking and jumping about, his tail wagging about behind him. A stick flew through the air and landed very near to where the two had just been sitting in the grass, the dog barking and bounding back to where it landed. Rather than retrieve the stick and take it to his mis­tress, however, the dog settled his heavy body back onto the lawn and began chewing on the large twig. “Harold,” he heard then, the word called out in a voice that had Henry wishing his own name was Harold. “Time for your dinner, you hairy beast,” the girl called from somewhere out of sight. And then she reappeared, all proper and ladylike as she strolled toward the dog. She slapped her hand against the front of her gown and then turned back toward the house, disappearing once again.

  Her brief appearance just then afforded Henry the best view of her. Almond-shaped eyes, rosebud lips, a pert nose.

  Good God, the girl wasn’t a girl at all, but a gorgeous young woman!

  Not gorgeous like the elegant painted courtesans who fre­quented the theatre in Drury Lane, or the beautiful debutantes Henry noticed during the few soirées and musicales he had attended two Seasons before. No, this woman truly looked like he imagined a fairy tale princess to look. Was she Lady Han­nah? Could I see myself married to her? he wondered suddenly. That was the only reason he was here, after all. He needed a wife. She wasn’t betrothed. And Lady Charlotte had assured him that Lady Hannah would be the perfect match for him and his situation.

  His situation.

  His mind wandered once more to the predicament he found himself in. Just a week ago, a mail coach had arrived at Gisborn Hall in Oxfordshire with a summons from Harold Bingham, the Earl of Ellsworth. Could Henry make the trip to Mayfair on an urgent matter regarding Ellsworth Park? The land, which included a beautiful but slightly shabby country mansion, bordered his own land in Oxfordshire, and it was Henry’s intention to purchase the property at a fair price and annex it to his own. He thought Lord Ellsworth’s summons meant the man was finally willing to sell him the property.

  Unbeknownst to Henry at the time, it seemed Ellsworth was quite insistent his daughter, Lady Charlotte, be married to someone other than the second son who had recently inher­ited the Chichester dukedom. With most of the Wainswright family having perished in a fire last August, Joshua Wainwright was now the duke, and since Charlotte had been betrothed to the heir apparent and now deceased John Wainwright II, she was quite sure her betrothal now applied to Joshua.

  Her father, however, was not about to have his only daugh­ter married to a man who had been badly disfigured in the fire. His Grace with half a face, some in the ton called him. With her twenty-first birthday just a couple of weeks away, Ellsworth was determined to see his daughter settled.

  To Henry Forster, Earl of Gisborn.

  Henry thought Ellsworth’s summons rather timely. There being no evidence the Earl of Ellsworth planned to occupy the estate house at Ellsworth Park nor employ more than a few tenants to work the lands that extended south to the River Isis, Gisborn hoped to simply purchase the property. He had plans for the Gisborn lands—plans to employ more productive farm implements and to create a gated irrigation system using the nearby river as a water source. So he made the trip to London expecting to pay a fair amount for Ellsworth Park.

  He was not expecting Lord Ellsworth to offer Ellsworth Park as a dowry.

  But in Ellsworth’s apparent haste to marry off his daugh­ter, he had already made arrangements with his solicitor to sign over the title of the unentailed property to Henry. Had the man no knowledge of Henry’s own betrothal to Joshua Wain­wright’s sister? Jennifer Wainwright had died in the same fire that took the lives of John and the duke and duchess. Although Henry had met the girl, it had been years ago, when she was still in leading strings and he was barely twelve. He hadn’t seen her since and found it difficult to mourn a girl he couldn’t remember. At the same time, he found the circumstances uncomfortable at best.

  According to Ellsworth, if Henry could wait a couple of weeks, Lady Charlotte would reach her majority and could marry without her parents’ permission. Or Lord Ellsworth assured Henry he could marry her by special license the very next day.

  Henry left the Ellsworth townhouse with the title and the intention of calling on Lady Charlotte later that week. Given his infrequent visits to London, he had errands to run, such as ordering a signet ring from a goldsmith in Bond Street (to replace the one his son had lost while using it as pirate trea­sure), choosing a wedding ring from a jeweler in Ludgate Hill, obtaining a special license from the bishop in Doctor’s Com­mons, meeting his boot maker and tailor, and, perhaps the most important of all, taking possession of newly built coach at Tillbury’s.

  And then, the unthinkable had happened. That very night, Lord Ellsworth had taken a nasty fall in his study, hitting his head on a massive mahogany desk as he did so. Since he had dismissed the servants for the evening, his poor wife and their daughter, Lady Charlotte, apparently found the man uncon­scious on their return from an evening out.

  A Bow Street Runner had investigated the scene. Finding no evidence of foul play, the Runner ruled the fall an accident.

  Only Lady Bingham and her daughter knew what had truly happened that night. At least, they were the only ones who knew until Lady Charlotte explained it to him the day before, whilst Henry was at Wainwright’s home near Kirdford. Henry winced as he recalled the sight of the scar on Charlotte’s back, a long, ugly wound put there by the hand of her angered father. She had boldly refused his order to marry the Earl of Gisborn and been horse whipped for it. But her mother, appalled at her husband’s drunken behavior, had pushed him as he was about to raise the whip to strike his daughter a sec­ond time. In his unsteady state, the earl fell, his head hitting the desk and rendering him unconscious.

  Harold Bingham now lay in St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, Lady Ellsworth at his side. The heir to the Earl of Ellsworth’s estate, Nicholas Bingham, was said to be anxious to inherit the earldom if for no other reason than to secure more funds for his gambling habit. And there was the issue of his having drained Lady Charlotte’s ten-thousand pound dowry account. It seemed Nicholas intended for the empty escrow account to go unnoticed and unnecessary by arranging for her to be killed in an explosion.

  Henry shuddered to think what would have happened if the Duke of Chichester’s home had been set afire again—it was still under reconstruction due to the fire that had disfigured the new duke and killed his family. Nicholas’ hired henchman had attempted to pull off that very scenario when he set gun­powder to explode in a nearby tree. The oak tree, located just outside the bedchamber in which Lady Charlotte was stay­ing, blew apart in the subsequent explosion. Charlotte could have been killed. And, upon the death of her father due to the head injury, her cousin would inherit the earldom and all of its assets, just as he planned.

  The henchman had failed in his assassination attempt, though. And even though Henry held the title to Ellsworth Park, Lady Charlotte still intended to marry the Duke of Chichester.

  Which left Henry witho
ut a bride.

  If only Sarah would agree to marry him!

  He sighed as he considered the only woman he had ever loved. The mother of his son. His bastard son. Although the ten-year-old was the light of life, his mother, Sarah, refused all his requests that she marry him. Over the years, she was quite insistent that Henry would one day need to marry a woman suited to the ton. A woman who would be accepted by the peerage because she was already a part of it. The daughter of an earl or a viscount or even a baron would suit just fine, Sarah thought.

  The daughter of a marquess would be even better.

  After a rather restless night spent at his rarely used town­house in Bruton Street, Henry had decided that he rather liked the idea of being married to a beautiful fairy princess.

  Which was why Henry sat in a town coach in Park Lane at ten o’clock in the morning, the driver waiting for space to clear in the drive in front of the house. He would have stepped out of his coach and made his way up the steps, but another town coach, a very new one with a glossy black finish, sat in the semi-circular drive.

  He watched as a beautiful, somewhat overweight woman descended the stairs and, with the hand of a groom support­ing her, stepped into the marked coach. From her auburn hair and rounded front, Henry knew it wasn’t the woman he had watched in the park the night before. Which meant Lady Han­nah was probably still in the house.

  Once the town coach departed from Devonville House with its passenger, the driver of his coach set the horses in motion. Another minute, and the coach had come to a halt.

  Yes, Henry decided, I could see myself married to Lady Hannah.

  Now he just had to convince her to marry him.

  Henry pulled his thoughts back to the present. The driver was dismounting and about to open the door. The last thing Henry wanted was to be caught daydreaming about the woman he had seen the night before. If she truly was Lady Hannah Slater, then Lady Charlotte had been almost remiss in not describing her with the more generous attributes the woman deserved. “This is the Marquess of Devonville’s resi­dence, my lord,” the driver said, motioning to the grand house with the wide expanse of parkland to one side. Henry noted that the driver had pulled into the semi-circular carriageway. The equipage was parked at the base of the five stone steps leading up to the massive double doors framed by a portico and Grecian columns.