by Nichole Van
Contents
Dedication
Epigraph
PROLOGUE
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
TWENTY-FOUR
TWENTY-FIVE
TWENTY-SIX
TWENTY-SEVEN
TWENTY-EIGHT
TWENTY-NINE
THIRTY
THIRTY-ONE
THIRTY-TWO
EPILOGUE
Author's Notes
Reading Group Questions
Other Books by Nichole Van
About the Author
Copyright
Preview of Seeing Miss Heartstone, A Regency Romance
Preview of Intertwine: House of Oak Book One
Preview of Gladly Beyond: Brothers Maledetti Book One
To Kian—
My little Mr. Positive.
Always keep shining.
To Dave—
So, about this kilt swish thing . . .
But to see her was to love her,
Love but her, and love forever.
—Robert Burns
Prologue
The notice appeared in The Edinburgh Advertiser on a blustery Tuesday in March.
The Brotherhood of the Tartan will hold their second annual meeting at the Black Bull Inn on Falkirk Road on Friday, March 19, 1819. Let nothing be forgotten.
The notice was not on the front page with the other announcements. Instead, it was placed on page seven, nestled between the deaths and the corn share report, clearly having been added in haste after the front page had gone to print.
The Rake was the first to see the notice as he sat eating toast soldiers and eggs in his father’s townhouse. The butler laid the newspaper—freshly ironed to set the ink—beside his breakfast plate.
The Physician saw it next when he stopped to purchase a newspaper on George Street after a night spent at the bedside of a dying, elderly patient.
The Artist spotted the announcement that afternoon as he took a break between client portrait sittings in his studio in Old Town.
The Sailor didn’t see the notice until the evening when he finally retired to his rooms. He had spent the day assessing damage to his ship docked in Leith harbor.
The Merchant saw it last as he flipped through the newspaper the next day, curious about the price of corn shares. But then he had no need to look for the notice, as he had been the one to post it in the first place.
The nineteenth of March marked the third anniversary of Jamie’s death.
And on that night, the Brotherhood of the Tartan would gather to honor Jamie’s life—to drink a dram and unburden their collective grief and guilt. Most importantly, they would plot ways to bring Jamie’s murderers to justice.
Nothing would be forgotten.
1
Alsbourne, Sussex
March, 1819
Everyone knew it was an unmitigated disaster.
Some even deployed the adjectives “biblical” and “calamitous.”
For her part, Lady Jane Everard simply hoped to survive the afternoon without anyone drawing blood.
She took a sip of her tea, politely listening to the women buzzing around the drawing room. Her younger half-brother, the Honorable Mr. Peter Langston, sat beside her. The black mourning band around his upper arm spoke tellingly of their situation.
After six months of full-mourning for her stepfather, the late Earl of Hadley, Jane’s family had resumed afternoon at-home hours. Their neighbors had called upon them, ostensibly to lend support during their current hardship. Such concern only thinly veiled their delight in watching the Langstons of Hadley Park descend the social ladder.
Jane’s mother, the widowed Lady Hadley, sat across the room, holding court over the tea tray. Lady Hadley had overcome the death of two aristocratic husbands—a duke and an earl. A few venom-tongued busybodies would not defeat her.
Though Lady Hadley declared herself a devout Anglican, Jane believed her mother’s true religion was a fervent belief in her exalted station in life. The lady defended her social position with the ruthless tenacity of a medieval Crusader, carefully calibrated silences and chilly reserve being her weapons of choice.
“Gracious, what a disaster,” Lady Whitcomb declared, leaning to take a teacup from Lady Hadley. “You are scarcely out of full-mourning, and the new Lord Hadley is at your door.”
“Is it true what they say? That Lord Hadley is barely civilized?” Mrs. Smith asked, darting a glance up from her own cup.
“But, of course.” Lady Whitcomb tilted her head, her graying curls swaying with the motion. “He is an impoverished, coarse Scot, after all.”
Jane considered Lady Whitcomb’s opinion to be slightly redundant, as all Polite Society knew the word Scot already encompassed impoverished and coarse.
“You have the right of it.” Mrs. Burton tsked, accepting a teacup with a mournful shake of her head. “Rumor says Lord Hadley was raised in a crofter’s hut deep in the wilds of Scotland.”
The way Mrs. Burton pronounced Scotland imbued the word with a thousand years of history—the medieval battles between Robert the Bruce and King Edward, the horror of England suffering a succession of wastrel Scottish kings after Elizabeth’s glorious reign, the more recent Battle of Culloden and the current Highland Clearances, all threaded through with Scotland’s uncivilized behavior and loose understanding of decorum.
Lady Hadley did not react, proving again her ruthless control over her emotions. Jane followed suit, keeping her own expression polite, resting her cup and saucer on the table beside her before folding her hands in her lap with exacting precision.
Lady Hadley and her daughter were well-known for their exquisite manners. It was what made the current situation all the more horrific and, to be honest, horrifically delightful to those observing from the outside.
Peter, predictably, snorted.
Jane forgave him. What else could she do? Growing up, she and Peter had only had each other and that fact had not changed over the years. No matter what he did, she loved Peter more than anyone else in the world.
That said . . . snorting was decidedly ill-mannered.
Jane surreptitiously nudged Peter with her foot, a silent reproof.
“Indeed,” Mrs. Burton replied. “Given the Earldom of Hadley’s history with Scotland, the situation is decidedly . . .”
“Ironic?” Lady Whitcomb supplied, mouth pursing into a simpering moue before sipping her tea. “That the hunter has become the hunted?”
Lady Hadley replied with a taut smile.
The facts were decidedly ironic, Jane supposed.
The first Earl of Hadley had been raised to the peerage for, Invaluable services to the Crown in assisting His Majesty’s troops to defeat the unruly Scottish rebellion at Culloden. In short, the first Earl had been a celebrated English war hero noted for his savagery in dealing with wild Scottish rebels.
However, his grandson, Henry—born to be the third Earl of Hadley—did not view Scots in quite the same fashion. So much so that, while on a hunting trip in the Highlands, Henry had abruptly married an impoverished local lass. (Lass was the kindest w
ay Jane could describe the woman. Others used more colorful words, the politest of which were trollop and light-skirt.)
Horrified at finding himself with a low-born, Scottish daughter-in-law, the old earl had cut Henry off without a farthing and never spoke to his son again. If it had been within his power, the old earl would have even barred Henry from eventually succeeding to the title. Fortunately, Fate listened, and Henry had died before his father.
So it was now Henry’s son, Andrew Langston—the Scottish lass’s offspring and therefore uneducated, crude, and completely unfit—who had become the third Earl of Hadley. The very sort of Scot the first Earl of Hadley had valiantly tried to exterminate.
Irony, indeed.
“They say Lord Hadley is a veritable savage.” Lady Whitcomb practically quivered in delicious excitement, her pinched face narrowing further. “He certainly doesn’t mix in polite company. There has never been a whisper of him at any ton event.” She arched her eyebrows before biting into a buttery biscuit. “My cousin, Lord Wanleigh, stated as much in his most recent letter.”
Lady Whitcomb’s cousin was the aging Marquess of Wanleigh—a fact no one was allowed to forget. Jane had never met the man, but she often wondered if he was as pompous in person as he sounded on paper.
“And why should the new Lord Hadley have mingled with Polite Society? Savages don’t attend balls.” Mrs. Burton pronounced her words with zealous conviction. Jane was quite sure fealty had been sworn with less fervor.
Peter angled himself fractionally closer to Jane, snorting again. “Of course savages attend balls,” he muttered under his breath.
Jane concentrated on not smiling.
Do not react.
She pressed her fingernail into her palm, pressing hard enough to feel a bite of pain but never breaking the skin.
Peter leaned into her ear, clearly undeterred. “One must be nearly feral to survive the London Season. Cannibalism is the ton’s modus operandi. We thrive on devouring our own—”
Jane barely swallowed back the laughter climbing her throat. She shot Peter a quelling side-glance.
“Hush.” She managed to say the word without moving her lips, for all the good it did.
Peter was determined to win this round.
It was a game they played. Peter said outrageous things, and Jane bravely refrained from reacting beyond a discreet pinch or sotto voce reprimand. Abruptly smiling, frowning, smirking, eye rolling, or heaven forbid, giggling would earn Jane a dressing down from their mother after guests departed.
After all, she had an image to maintain.
Ladies never indulge in broad emotions, Jane, Lady Hadley would say. Emotion, if it must be shown, should be conveyed through a raised eyebrow or slight tonal inflection. Nothing more.
Peter, of course, had no such constraints. He could make faces all he wished, and their mother would never say a word. Facts he well knew.
Thankfully, Peter obeyed Jane’s quiet reprimand and sat back, crossing his arms, his black armband straining from the movement. But the smile lurking on his lips promised more harassing torment.
Her brother knew her polite, elegant manners were studiously learned; a facade she carefully donned. Unladylike behavior and rowdy thoughts lurked just beneath her polished veneer, defaults she constantly strove to quash.
In true younger brother fashion, he delighted in reminding her of these facts. Over and over again. Endlessly.
Jane forced herself to focus by pressing another fingernail into her palm, leaving a clear half-moon shape. It was a habit born years ago. She had found that the small pain channeled her emotions, keeping them off her expression. After a particularly trying afternoon, her palm would look like fish scales, the markings taking an hour or more to fade.
“However will you manage, Lady Hadley?” Mrs. Burton tsked, reaching for a biscuit. “A coarse, bawdy Highlander as the Earl of Hadley—”
“Oh, a Highlander.” Mrs. Smith’s gaze went wide and a little dreamy-eyed. “Like one of the heroes of a Walter Scott novel?”
“No, Martha. The man is not to be fictionalized,” Lady Whitcomb admonished, much as one might reprimand an overly-eager poodle for jumping up on the furniture. “I shan’t permit you to romanticize the severity of this situation.”
“Hear, hear. The new Lord Hadley certainly does not belong to the Church of England.” Mrs. Burton nibbled her biscuit daintily, obviously enjoying the conversation immensely. “More likely he is a pagan heathen.”
Peter huffed, quiet and low.
“Or, worse,” he whispered, “a Presbyterian.”
He nudged his foot against Jane’s.
I know you want to laugh, his movements said.
Jane pinched her lips, keeping her head determinedly faced toward their mother. You shall not defeat me.
She supposed most sisters would feel aggravation over such teasing. But Peter’s actions showed louder than anything that he understood, that he knew her.
And Jane adored being known. Being known meant she was loved, accepted just as she was.
Was it any wonder she loved Peter so thoroughly in return?
The ladies continued their gossip.
“Indeed,” Lady Whitcomb agreed. “A pagan Scotsman might do for a novel but place such a man in an English drawing room . . .” She drifted off, giving a violent shudder.
In that moment, Jane nearly pitied Lord Hadley. The man would be walking into a hornet’s nest of expectations and rigid etiquette rules he clearly did not understand, crofter’s hut or not. He was in for a brutal time of things.
Lady Hadley offered a restrained smile, expression politely arctic. “It has been a dreadful shock. Thankfully, we have the care of kind friends to buoy us up.”
Her mother delivered the words with dripping sweetness. Lady Whitcomb did not miss their venom, her lips pinching in response.
Jane longed to roll her eyes and lounge back in her chair, posture slumping.
She took another sip of tea instead.
The Langston family had already survived four Scottish kings, three German ones, and pink powdered wigs. It would surely outlast this catastrophe.
Jane herself was no stranger to disaster. Her father, the Duke of Montacute, had died when Jane was still a babe. When Jane was a toddler, her mother had remarried, this time to the widowed Earl of Hadley. Lord Hadley had not been a cruel stepfather to Jane. He had simply never acknowledged her existence beyond the occasional polite nod or word.
Jane might have taken offense at this, but the old earl treated everyone that way—his wife, relatives, his deceased son, Henry . . . even Peter, his only child with Jane’s mother. No one mourned when, after years of poor health, the earl had finally passed on six months ago. Only his lordship’s creditors and immediate family considered his death a calamity.
No, the true horror came in the aftermath of his lordship’s funeral.
Jane vividly remembered the palpable gasp in the room as the family solicitor politely informed them that the old earl had made a series of unwise investments, leaving the earldom heavily in debt and on the verge of bankruptcy. Lady Hadley would receive her dower portion, as was legally required, but no other allowances had been made.
Peter, his lordship’s English second son—the spare, not the heir—had received nothing.
Instead, what little remained had been left to his lordship’s Scottish grandson, the new Lord Hadley.
Laws of primogeniture being what they were, the title had to pass to the eldest son of the eldest son—the Scot, Andrew Langston.
But . . . the ailing estates, lands, and investments were not currently entailed. Some portion of them—or all, quite frankly—could have been left to Peter. Yet, for some unfathomable reason, the old earl had utterly cut his second son from his will. The question was why?
The old earl had been ill for years before his death. Had he simply neglected to update his will in a timely fashion? Or, had he truly been so uncaring of Peter? Regardless of the old earl’
s finances, to deny his son any inheritance whatsoever seemed excessively callous.
Peter had borne it all with a stoic, white-lipped silence—the same wretched, suppressed fury with which he greeted all information about the new Lord Hadley. Having spent her whole life concerned for her brother’s welfare, Jane found it physically painful to witness.
The disorderly heart of her—the inner wild self she kept contained and thoroughly battened down—raged at the injustice. That Jane wanted to raise the old earl from dead, just so she could send him to his Maker again. This time in a more painfully lingering fashion.
Of course, such thoughts merely underscored why she kept her inner self thoroughly contained. No one wanted a lady who behaved in such a fashion. Her past had proved this most cruelly.
“When do you anticipate his lordship’s arrival?” Mrs. Smith asked Lady Hadley, interrupting Jane’s thoughts.
Though Lord Hadley had immediately petitioned Parliament for a Writ of Summons, he had waited six months before making an appearance in Sussex.
The previous week after Sunday service, Mrs. Smith had the audacity to muse that it was to his lordship’s credit that he had waited until the family was out of full mourning before visiting them. She was immediately silenced.
“His man-of-affairs said to expect him in three weeks’ time,” Lady Hadley replied.
“The earl did not write you himself?” Lady Whitcomb was all astonishment.
“No.”
Silence greeted Lady Hadley’s curt response. Unspoken assumptions hung in the air—if Lord Hadley hadn’t written the letter himself, was his lordship even literate? However, he did employ a man-of-affairs, so perhaps opinion was divided on that score?
Smiling stiffly, Lady Hadley motioned toward the tea tray. “Would anyone care for another biscuit?”
Eventually the ladies rattled through their gossip about the new Lord Hadley and took their leave.
“Well, I cannot say I missed afternoon calls when we were in full mourning,” Peter said as the door closed on the last of them. He stood, walking over to the fireplace. “I’m quite sure my ears are bleeding from their lacerating witticisms.”