Regency Romances

by Grace Fletcher

  “Enough with the talking.” Andrea’s voice echoed closer to her. Laura slowly swept her eyes open, aware of the close proximity between them. Instead of Andrea being alone in the room with her this time around though, she noticed with a glint of hope that the Dowager Duchess was a few feet behind Andrea.

  When? How? The door behind the dowager duchess was slightly open. Andrea had been too preoccupied with the hatred for her, she hadn’t noticed the intruder in the room. Laura feared the Dowager Duchess might not get to Andrea in time though, so she willed her body to swerve out of the way as Andrea charged suddenly towards her, raising the blade to stab her.

  Whatever she had hoped to do to save herself, her body betrayed her. She had only moved an inch before Andrea got close to the bed. However, before she could take a step further and bury the blade in her chest, the large portrait of an older Kent Laura had seen earlier slipped from the wall and crashed over Andrea’s frail body.

  There was an explosive sound as the solid wood crushed her body beneath it. Dowager Duchess Hartley had reached for the only weapon she could find to save her–her husband’s portrait, and she was breathing heavily as she ran around it to ask if she was hurt.

  Laura could see her lips moving, but she could neither hear nor breathe evenly. Pain spread through her entire body from the fright she had suffered after facing death a third time in a month. The door across the room swept open, letting the duke and Josephine in at the same time that her eyes fluttered shut.

  She was going to rest now, she thought. Everything was going to be fine when she woke up.

  It always was.

  Epilogue

  They were at the gazebo–Kent, Laura, James, and Bruce. It was in the middle of the afternoon, but the weather was kind and soothing. Soft breezes accompanied the warmth of the sun, setting a happy mood for the day.

  “Laura, you have been awkwardly quiet,” Kent whispered, smiling at her.

  Laura glanced at him, absentmindedly. Although it had been a month since she had almost been murdered in the Hartley Manor, she sometimes thought about it. Andrea had survived being hit by a large portrait, but Kent had sent her off to another employer’s service, along with Josephine. The Dowager Duchess had seen to it personally that the carriage took them as far away from the manor as possible with the stricture that they never return.

  “You are doing it again.”

  Laura blinked, jolting out of her thoughts. “Doing what again, Your Grace?” she asked.

  “Getting coy around me, Laura. Do you do this with all your employers, or is it just me?”

  She laughed as she remembered the first time he had asked her the same question. His tone was different this time around though. He called her by her first name and inched so close to her, nothing except the empty air stood between them. Instead of staring at her feet as she had often done around him, she placed her hands on his shoulders and waited for him to inch close enough, their lips would be a few inches from each other. “It is just you, Your Grace,” she whispered.

  “It is just Kent now, Laura,” he smiled at her. “And maybe your husband.”

  She frowned questioningly at him as he took a step away from her and went on his knees. He had pulled a ring from his pocket and was holding it out to her.

  “About time, Father!” James grinned beside them, holding a baffled Bruce who seemed to be oblivious of what made his brother so cheerful.

  “It has been a difficult year in the manor, I know, Laura,” Kent whispered. “I want to make the remaining years of both our lives worth it. I still want you, Laura Williams of Southend. I do.”

  Laura waited. She wanted to hear the words. She wanted to see the genuine love in his eyes as he said them. When he finally did, it felt as if they were the only ones in the world. She could see the dowager duchess smiling from one of the windows of the manor, but that didn’t matter either. It was the love story she was finally going to be a part of.

  “Yes, Kent,” she whispered. “I would like to spend the rest of my life with you.”

  *** The End ***

  love’s embrace

  at christmas

  Regency Romance

  Grace Fletcher

  Prologue

  Treason

  It was midnight by the time Cornelia jerked awake in bed, roused by the heavy thuds on her door. For a second, she sat still, staring at the half-moon that dotted the dark sky outside of her window, and wondering why anyone apart from the night guards was awake and prowling the servant quarters at the time of the day.

  The thuds didn’t stop. There were more and more of them, growing rampant, and someone was already yelling out her name.

  “Cornelia, it is Martha. Something has happened. You need to wake up now.”

  She blinked from the sleepiness that she felt and finally rushed towards the door, picking up a lantern on her way. “Martha?” she whispered, shoving the door strap out of its lock. “What are you doing out of bed?”

  “It—it is your father,” the older woman stuttered. Her eyes were slightly red as if she had just woken up from a deep slumber too.

  “What? What is wrong with him?” she asked, her mind already reeling with fright. “Is it the cough again? Is he sick?”

  “No, no, far worse, Cornelia,” Martha breathed. She held her hand and pulled her out of the room. “He is being dragged out of his room by the guards as we speak.”

  Dragged? Cornelia couldn’t spare a second to ask more questions. She trailed after the much frantic Martha, wondering what was happening. Why were the guards with her father? She gritted her teeth irritably as she noticed doors slipping open around them as the rest of the housemaids were roused from their sleep by Martha’s worried voice.

  Eventually, they ran down the stairs, and Cornelia began to hear loud noises from the dining hall. At first, she recognized His Grace, the Duke of Durham’s strong voice, and then, there was her father’s voice, asking for mercy. What had happened?

  “I expected loyalty from you, Kolb.” The duke was gritting his teeth agitatedly. “You tend to the estate gardens, and I have been everything but kind to you…to young Cornelia.”

  “Mercy, please, Your Grace,” her father whispered. “There must have been a mistake somewhere….”

  The sight that greeted her as soon as she stepped into the hall almost gave Cornelia a heart attack. She paused in her step, with the lantern suddenly feeling heavier in her hands, as she noticed her father stripped of his shirt and brought to his knees in front of the duke. Please, he is aged and defenseless, she almost yelled at the guards that kept firm grips on his shoulder.

  “And here she comes, come, Cornelia.” The duke was already rising from his chair. He was wearing a long robe and seemed quite remorseful that she had to be present when he had her father on his knees. “Do speak to him and tell him he shall hang by the pole for what he has done.”

  “Hang? Done?”

  Cornelia was both speechless and terrified at the same time. She stared into her father’s face and noticed as his gaze fell to his knees. Instinctively, she fell to her knees too, placing the lantern beside her and crawling towards the duke’s feet. “Mercy, Your Grace,” she pleaded too. “Whatever Father must have done, it must have been by oversight, or by mistake. His health allows him nothing these….”

  “Oversight?” A long hiss interrupted her. She glanced over her eyelashes to notice the Dowager Duchess stepping out of the shadows beside the duke. “You speak with naïveté, dear child.” She snickered. “Your father, a mere gardener, has been found guilty of treason. He spreads rumors that David Garnett, the Duke of Durham, isn’t the rightful heir to the dukedom.”

  She couldn’t believe her ears. It was impossible. It was. She tried to look into her father’s eyes again, but he averted them, preferring to keep to himself. What mess had he gotten himself into? Everything had gone perfectly for him in the past few months.

  “Your Grace, perhaps we can both plead for mercy and a lifetim
e in a cell instead of the pole?”

  Oh, dear Martha, Cornelia whispered under her breath. The older woman, with her equally failing health, had bonded with her father since their employment into the Garnett Manor. She had slouched to her feet too and had her entire body sprawled before the duke. “I am sure Kolb himself regrets his actions.”

  It would have helped if the duke was listening to them alone, at least without poisonous words from his mother, the Dowager Duchess. “Treason isn’t a fire that stops on its own, Durham,” she pointed out. “It is a fire that moves from one portion of land to another, stoking more fire. You should get rid of the rat as soon as it is found.”

  There was nothing neither she nor Martha could do anymore–Cornelia knew this the moment the duke heaved a sigh, threw her father a menacing glare, and then looked at her pitifully. “Imprisonment it is,” he whispered to the guards. “Make sure he is fed only once a day and nothing more. He is to never see the light of day again.”

  He was the duke and the law, and the guards sprung to action immediately. Cornelia hurriedly crawled to hold her father’s hand, but he was briskly taken…no, dragged away from her. Regardless of the little cough and groan that escaped his lips, neither men looked at him before hauling him down the stairs that led to exit doors.

  “I didn’t do it, Your Grace!”

  They were the last words she heard from him before tears welled up in her eyes, and Martha’s arms wrapped around her body.

  This wasn’t the life she had hoped for hours ago when she smiled herself to sleep.

  It was going to be Christmas in another two months, and she had really hoped it was going to be the happiest one of her life.

  Chapter 1

  The Duke of Durham

  The duke hated that it had come to a point where he couldn’t trust his own men, but he figured that was what he deserved for being kind and unprejudiced. In the past three years that he had taken over his late father’s place, there hadn’t been a single man to defy him, although there had always been whispers of those who thought he wasn’t fit and strict enough to lord over the whole district.

  He had always thought ruling over a duchy wasn’t often about displaying strength, but rather showing compassion. If there was anything he had learned by his father’s side for over fifteen years, it was how so many men and women, families within and outside the shores of Durham included, obeyed him out of fear more than they did out of love. Eustis James Garnett was valiant and ruthless with his subjects; he wasn’t just the kind of man anyone could love.

  But he was different. Durham knew how different he was to his father the many times he had looked away disapprovingly whenever his father passed a harsh judgment. He kept quiet and resolute beside him, obediently doing his bidding, but he wished for it to stop one day. He wished no one could look at his carriage running down the streets without fear glinting through their eyes.

  He hadn’t just thought his wish was going to come true sooner than he thought.

  “You are doing it again, David…staring absentmindedly out the window.”

  For a second, Durham blinked rapidly, oblivious of where he was or what he had been doing before he was lost in thoughts. By the time it dawned on him that he was staring needlessly out the window of his office, Lydia, his childhood friend had already stepped close enough to place her hand on his shoulder. “A penny for your thoughts, Your Grace?” she smiled at him.

  They were supposed to spend the entire afternoon reading to each other, and he had totally forgotten about her.

  He shook his head at her question, managing to smile back at her. Just to avoid telling her he had been worrying about the difficulties he had begun to face in respect to his latest title, he glanced back at the vast field in front of him and snuffled. “Ever wondered what our lives would be if we weren’t born to have so much, Lydia?” he asked.

  “You mean if your father wasn’t the Duke of Durham, and my father, Duke of Wilmington?” she chuckled, trailing the movement of his eyes. “Would it be okay if I said I had never thought of it?”

  He didn’t expect that she would. While the Garnet family was perhaps the strongest and the most popular in the whole of the country, Lydia’s family, the Clintons, had more wealth and larger lands. Their money was as old as time itself, and it was rumored not a single Clinton in a thousand years had difficulty owning the finest of horses.

  “Why do you think of it?” Lydia asked him.

  He shook his head again. “It is just a stupid thought. How is the book coming?”

  If Lydia noticed he was avoiding her questions, she didn’t show it. She padded away from him and picked up a book she had left open on the sofa beside him. “You weren’t listening,” she accused him.

  “Indeed, and I am truly sorry,” he apologized.

  “It is okay. Karl does that all the time too. I guess it just comes with becoming a duke for the first time.”

  “I have been a duke for two years now, Lydia,” he grinned at her. Her brother, Karl Benjamin Clinton, had only taken over the reign of Wilmington six months ago, after their father’s unfortunate death.

  “Not long enough.” Lydia pulled a face at him. “And two years hardly seems enough time to get used to being called Your Grace and Duke of Durham by everyone, even your childhood friend, Your Grace.”

  He grinned under his breath, hardly going to let it slip by that he knew that she was making a jest of his new title. “I see why Karl is keen to let you travel far away from him, at least out of his sight,” he sniggered.

  Lydia gasped, feigning shock and anger. “Oh no, you didn’t, David.”

  “Yes, I did. You are a disturbance, dear Lydia, and Karl has found the Garnett Manor to be the perfect place to keep you every weekend.”

  She threw her book at him, but he had foreseen that. He ducked in time, slouched unto the sofa and raised his eyebrow at her. “Now, what were you saying about calling me Your Grace,” he whispered.

  She raised her finger at him and gritted her teeth fiercely while he roared with laughter. Halfway, he noticed she was laughing too, and he paused to smile at how beautiful she looked, especially whenever she spent weekends with him, forcing him to read or walk the garden behind the manor with her.

  There was some part of him that enjoyed their friendship, along with the faultless loyalty between their families, but there was another part that hoped that nothing beyond friendship was expected from them from their families. Eventually, Lydia stopped smiling, and he quickly averted his eyes from her.

  She sat beside him and held his hand. “Now, Your Grace,” she beamed, “about the distant thoughts earlier, is it about the treason the Dowager Duchess has mentioned to me?”

  Durham hadn’t seen that coming. “She spoke to you about that?”

  “No, I actually brought it up the moment I arrived in the manor and spoke to her. There had been the same whispers in Wilmington too.”

  He heaved a sigh, hating that he didn’t have a choice anymore than to talk about it. “The culprit has been caught and disposed of.”

  “Yes, the dungeon. The dowager duchess wasn’t quite satisfied you resorted to a little mercy, unlike….”

  “My father?” he asked after he noticed how she paused to stare at their linked hands.

  She shook her head while he pulled away from her. “You think I should have hung him too? A man that has tended the garden of this manor for as long as either of us could remember…the same garden you praise its beauty whenever we walk through it.”

  “It doesn’t matter what I think, Dav—Your Grace,” Lydia whispered. Her voice had dropped a notch, indicating her regret for bringing the topic up. He wasn’t done chiding her for having the same thought as his mother though, so he inched farther away from her.

  “He hasn’t even confessed to the crime.”

  “As any guilty man wouldn’t.” Lydia stubbornly closed the gap between and held his hand. “And it would be a shame if you were to be angry at me for bring
ing this up. I wasn’t the man that was disloyal to you. I am here, in your home, just as I have been every month, to spend time with my friend and not quarrel over ruling matters.”

  She was right. He closed his eyes briefly and tried to steady his breathing by heaving a sigh. Lydia placed both hands on his cheeks, and he blinked his eyes open to find her smiling at him.

  “You are right,” he whispered. “I guess I just wasn’t ready to be betrayed by anyone in the manor yet. It is bound to happen in every house.”

  “Aye, that it is.” Lydia also heaved a sigh.

  He smiled at her, locking his hand in hers again and nodding towards the book she had thrown at him earlier. It lay face down on the floor. “Want to try reading that again?” he asked her.

  “If you would listen,” she pouted her lips at him.

  He hoped he would, even though his mind had slipped back to Kolb, and his poor daughter he had had no choice but to keep in the manor, regardless of what her father had done.

  He refused to let Cornelia suffer from her father’s impudence because of the strange compassion he had always felt for her.

  ***

  “And what about the devil’s spurn? You don’t intend to keep her around, do you?”

  Cornelia sauntered down the stairs to the dungeon with the dowager duchess’s words three nights ago echoing in her head. She had tried everything to hold back the tears, but immediately she glanced at Duke Durham and noticed him staring pitifully at her, the tears had snuck out of her eyes unto the floor. She was grateful he hadn’t ordered him to be executed, but having him spend the rest of his life in the dungeon wasn’t a better fate. Her father would never betray the house he had served for over fifteen years.

  “Stop! Who goes there?”