Regency for all Seasons: A Regency Romance Collection

by Mary Lancaster

  “I will see to a bedchamber they may carry him to,” Cassandra said. She hurried from the room just as Lady Marksworth came into it to see to the dowager.

  Cassandra dashed up the stairs to find a suitable room. She suddenly remembered her uncle’s room. Though he had long passed, Lady Marksworth had noted that she’d never redone it as it suited her to maintain one masculine chamber.

  She threw the door open, refusing to consider the lord laying lifeless in the street. She must only concentrate on what needed to be done. Cassandra raced down the hall to a small closet that held various materials for bandaging and brought them back to the room.

  She threw open the curtains so the doctor might have more light just as Racine and Ben came through the door with Lord Hampton on a litter.

  His eyes were closed and he was pale. There was a trickle of blood that ran in a steady stream down his forehead and onto his cheek.

  He had struck his head. Cassandra well knew the consequences of an injury such as that. He might never regain consciousness. He might simply stop breathing. She had seen Mr. Drescher die in just such a way after being thrown from a horse—he breathed until he did not.

  At the thought of the lord’s breath fading from him, Cassandra’s mind was at once all clarity. Where her thoughts had felt muddled, they now presented themselves as clear as crystal.

  She loved him. Of course she did. She had all along. She’d only let her hurt pride hide it from her. Now, he might be taken from her. How stupid she was! To allow embarrassment and stung feelings to overshadow love.

  He would die and it would be her fault. She had been the reason he’d been on Lord Dalton’s steps. It had been her dog who’d raced into the street.

  They would both be punished terribly for her idiocy—he, not to live the life he had been given, and she to live a joyless one.

  Racine and Ben had carefully laid the litter on the bed and shifted the lord out of it. He moaned softly.

  Cassandra raced to him and took his hand. It was warm to the touch, it had not yet begun to go cold.

  His eyes fluttered open.

  “My lord,” Cassandra said, chafing his hands.

  “Edwin, to you,” he rasped.

  When she did not answer, he squeezed her hand. “Edwin, say it.”

  Cassandra looked away and said softly, “Edwin.”

  He attempted to sit up but did not get far with it and rested his head back on the pillow. “I am sorry,” he said hoarsely.

  “Oh, do not speak of that now!” Cassandra cried. “You are hurt!”

  “Ah,” he said, his voice rough, “had I known I must only be run down by a carriage to convince you to speak to me, I would have done it days ago.”

  “You should not speak,” Cassandra said. “You really should not. The doctor has been sent for.”

  “Of course I must speak. This may be my last opportunity.”

  Cassandra took in a breath. What did he mean, his last opportunity? Did he feel himself dying? She had sat at enough bedsides to comprehend that the dying often knew when it crept close. He could not die. He simply could not.

  “Do not talk of dying, my lord… Edwin,” Cassandra said.

  Edwin smiled and then winced. “I have no intention of dying just now. I have yet to win the heart of Miss Knightsbridge.”

  Cassandra looked away. “Oh, that,” she said quietly.

  “Yes, that. I cannot undo what has been done. I, we, can only go forward, if I can convince you of it.”

  “I am sure now is not the right—”

  “It is exactly the right moment,” Edwin said, his voice low and guttural. “I will be miserable all my life if I do not have my heart’s desire.”

  Cassandra had no words. She’d rehearsed no end of words to punish, but none to acquiesce. Her feelings had crystallized only a moment ago and words had not yet attached to them.

  Lord Hampton smiled, seeming to comprehend that something in her feelings had shifted. “To convince you of the attractiveness of my offer, I vow that I will buy you an arsenal of guns and you may shoot my estate to pieces if it pleases you.”

  “Well,” Cassandra said softly, “you did rescue my dog. I am very fond of her.”

  “And then there is the little matter that I love you. Entirely. I think someday you might come to love me too.”

  “Perhaps,” Cassandra said slowly, even now resisting a surrender. “I suppose anything is possible.”

  Edwin struggled to prop himself up on his elbows. “Then you will? You say yes? You must say it! I have asked you to wed and you have said you will.”

  Cassandra pushed the lord back on his pillow. “I agree to it at great cost to myself and only if you will stay still.”

  The dowager rushed into the room, “The doctor will be here in moments. Good, he is awake. That is promising.”

  “We’re to be married,” Edwin said to his grandmother. “She’s said it, let you be a witness. She cannot change her mind now.”

  The dowager’s expression showed worry. “Lord, he’s delirious. That is not a good sign.”

  “He is not delirious,” Cassandra said quietly, finding herself somewhat embarrassed to have reversed herself so entirely.

  “I promised her a lot of guns,” Edwin said.

  The dowager crossed her arms. “I hope, dear grandson, you also spoke of love.”

  “Most ardently,” Edwin said. “I believe she will come to love me too, over time.”

  “We shall see,” Cassandra said, turning her head away.

  “Cassandra Knightsbridge,” the Dowager said rather sternly. “Now is not the time to prevaricate.”

  Cassandra blushed up to her ears. She did not know how the dowager had divined her real feelings, but it appeared that she had. Perhaps she had before Cassandra even knew them herself. “If you imply,” she said to the Dowager, “that I love him already, well then I do. Though it is certainly not my fault!”

  Edwin squeezed her hand tight in his own. “My darling, darling girl,” he whispered.

  The dowager turned to Ben, who stood near the door, red in the face. “Do be good and fetch my writing things. There is a gentleman here who needs to pen an appeal to a certain young lady’s father before the sun has set.”

  “Ma’am! He is grievously injured,” Cassandra said. “He will not have the ability to write a letter so soon.”

  The dowager turned back to Cassandra. “My dear, if he has one ounce of strength left in his limbs, he will manage it. We have not come this far to cry off now.”

  “Just so,” Edwin said.

  “I will send your maid in to chaperone while we wait for the doctor,” the dowager said, “though I warn you, I will be remarkably slow about it.”

  Cassandra blushed up to her ears. The dowager, seeming pleased that she had arranged things to her satisfaction, bustled from the room.

  “You have truly forgiven me?” Edwin asked with some trepidation.

  “I have,” Cassandra said, playing with the torn cuff of his sleeve.

  “I expect when I irritate you on some matter, which I am highly likely to do, you’ll wonder to yourself why you ever did forgive me.”

  “Perhaps,” Cassandra said. “But then I will remind myself that I have come out of this experience far different than I went into it. Goodness, when I first arrived, I was so frightened of the ton and doing everything right and not disappointing anybody.”

  “You? Frightened?” Edwin said. He laughed, and then clutched his head.

  “Do be still,” Cassandra said in a firm tone. “Yes, I was frightened. And I was terribly affected by other’s opinions of me.”

  “But you are not now?”

  “No, I am not now. I hope you meant what you said, for I have every intention of shooting your pheasant out of the sky to my heart’s content.”

  “If your heart is content, then so is mine,” Edwin said.

  *

  The doctor had seen to Lord Hampton and pronounced him having a slight con
cussion. He would not be any worse for it, though it would be some days before he could be moved. The doctor had also been prevailed upon to examine May, who had come out of the whole thing with only a few scratches and a strained hindquarter.

  The viscount had received Lord Hampton’s letter in good time, which had been prefaced with great apologies for not arriving in person due to the accident. Cassandra’s father wrote his daughter back that he would be as good as his word. She was to decide for herself who she would marry and she’d have to live with it if she chose wrong. It was perhaps not the most ringing endorsement, but it suited the couple well enough.

  Though the lord’s concussion may have been slight, the care he received at Marksworth House was not. Racine directed all manner of bone broths made and sent them up to the sickroom on a regular schedule. News of the accident spread like a fire, as was only too predictable. Perhaps it was also predictable that the story grew to Lord Hampton being run over by all four carriage wheels and somehow surviving it on the strength of his love for Miss Knightsbridge.

  The dowager stayed on at Marksworth House to assure the rest of the family that Edwin progressed well. That her son, the duke, was delighted to hear that his own son had finally decided to marry, and that he’d chosen Miss Knightsbridge, was a foregone conclusion. The duke admired Miss Knightsbridge’s fortitude in the face of difficulty and even went so far as to cease referring to his eldest son as an idiot.

  Not many an engaged couple had the opportunity to spend so much time together, almost alone. Peggy sat in a corner pretending to sew but mostly asleep, May and George came in and out as they pleased, and Cassandra and Edwin spent hours talking. Cassandra would invariably bring in a book she planned to read to the patient, but very little was actually read. They had much to discuss.

  Theirs was to be an unconventional marriage and they were thoroughly agreed that Cassandra must ride as she pleased and shoot when she felt the inclination. Their children would be raised the same—there would be no drooping violets in the lord and lady’s nursery.

  As for becoming a duchess, Cassandra had developed a different view, thanks to the dowager. She began to see its convenience—she might do what she liked and nobody would dare breathe a word about it. She might back the next Cassandra when some worthy girl ran into a difficulty. She might quash the bad intentions of those of Lady Montague’s ilk. But most of all, she might wake each morning to her beloved’s presence beside her. They were thoroughly agreed that wherever the lord went, his lady would go too. This duchess was never to be left behind, lonely on a country estate.

  Their respective mastiffs, Mayhem and Havoc, were to have the run of Carlisle House, chewed-up valuables be damned. With any luck, Cassandra and Edwin might find themselves overrun with a new generation of pups determined to destroy everything they owned.

  When Edwin was not planning his future with his intended, he was busy sending people here and there to organize it. He obtained a special license so there should be no delay to the marriage, and he arranged for a wedding trip to Italy.

  He would meet his intended at St. George’s, and he fully expected to find the soon to be viscountess and future duchess in a gown sparkling with diamonds. She would not care who said what about it, and neither would he.

  When he was finally permitted to rise and leave the sickroom, Edwin sent word to the gentlemen of the pact to meet at Dalton’s house at a proscribed hour.

  He found them there, sitting around the table in the library, while the ever-decrepit Bellamy shuffled round with brandy. It was as if nothing at all had changed, but of course everything had changed.

  “There he is,” Lord Dalton said, as Edwin entered the room. “Rumors of broken bones were obviously exaggerated.”

  “Let us hope some other things have been exaggerated,” Lord Cabot said.

  “It was in the newspaper,” Lord Lockwood said to Lord Cabot. “I cannot fathom how you still hold out hope that there is no engagement.”

  “Still,” Lord Ashworth said, “it seems a rum sort of game. The man was injured and helpless, they had him a veritable captive in that house. Who knows what a man might agree to while suffering a concussion?”

  “Undue influence,” Lord Grayson said, nodding knowingly. “Course, if he was to try to wrangle his way out now, he might be slapped with a breach of promise.”

  The men around the table fairly shuddered at the mention of breach of promise.

  “She might call it off, though,” Cabot said hopefully. “She already shoots bird, I don’t suppose she’d mind becoming a jilt.”

  “The fact is,” Dalton said to Edwin, “if you carry through with the marriage, it will only encourage our fathers in this ridiculous pact of theirs.”

  Edwin had listened to his friends’ outrageous statements with equanimity. Nothing they’d said had surprised him in the least. How could it, when he had himself been in a similar frame of mind so recently?

  He waited patiently as his friends flailed this way and that, grasping at even the slimmest hope that might present itself. Lockwood speculated that Miss Knightsbridge might suddenly realize that Hampton was not such a good catch after all. Cabot wondered if Miss Knightsbridge had even yet noticed Hampton’s sad lack of humor and wit. Grayson concurred and postulated that it would dawn on her soon enough that he was a dead bore. Finally running out of ways to abuse him, they fell into silence.

  Edwin had remained standing, his arms clasped behind his back. He smiled and said, “Get married, you idiots.”

  With that, he turned and strode from the room.

  The End

  The Dukes’ Pact Series

  The Viscount’s Sinful Bargain (Book 1)

  The Marquess’ Daring Wager (Book 2)

  The Lord’s Desperate Pledge (Book 3)

  About the Author

  By the time I was eleven, my Irish Nana and I had formed a book club of sorts. On a timetable only known to herself, Nana would grab her blackthorn walking stick and steam down to the local Woolworth’s. There, she would buy the latest Barbara Cartland romance, hurry home to read it accompanied by viciously strong wine, (Wild Irish Rose, if you’re wondering) and then pass the book on to me. Though I was not particularly interested in real boys yet, I was very interested in the gentlemen in those stories—daring, bold, and often enraging and unaccountable. After my Barbara Cartland phase, I went on to Georgette Heyer, Jane Austen and so many other gifted authors blessed with the ability to bring the Georgian and Regency eras to life.

  I would like nothing more than to time travel back to the Regency (and time travel back to my twenties as long as we’re going somewhere) to take my chances at a ball. Who would take the first? Who would escort me into supper? What sort of meaningful looks would be exchanged? I would hope, having made the trip, to encounter a gentleman who would give me a very hard time. He ought to be vexatious in the extreme, and worth every vexation, to make the journey worthwhile.

  I most likely won’t be able to work out the time travel gambit, so I will content myself with writing stories of adventure and romance in my beloved time period. There are lives to be created, marvelous gowns to wear, jewels to don, instant attractions that inevitably come with a difficulty, and hearts to break before putting them back together again. In traditional Regency fashion, my stories are clean—the action happens in a drawing room, rather than a bedroom.

  As I muse over what will happen next to my H and h, and wish I were there with them, I will occasionally remind myself that it’s also nice to have a microwave, Netflix, cheese popcorn, and steaming hot showers.

  Come see me on Facebook! @KateArcherAuthor

  Eleanor Fitzherbert’s Christmas Miracle

  Dangerous Lords, A Novella

  Maggi Andersen

  Chapter One

  Broadstairs Court, London

  February 1821

  Eleanor Fitzherbert’s young sister Georgina, the Duchess of Broadstairs, entered the small salon where Eleanor was sitting working on
a poem.

  “Why are you in here, dearest?” Georgina asked. “The chimney is blocked. We have called for a sweep.”

  A sheet had been spread over the rug in front of the fireplace. Eleanor looked around the room she had adopted for her personal use since she’d come from Devon to live with her sister and the duke. The walls were painted her favorite duck-egg blue, the furniture less formal than the other reception rooms, with a comfortable blossom-pink sofa, a card table, and a piano and music stand where an occasional musical evening was held. But what Eleanor liked most was that in this huge mansion, the salon was of a modest size, and felt more intimate and homelier.

  She wrote her poetry here and received friends. She and Hetty, Lady Fortescue, had worked on a poem together at the table while drinking copious cups of tea. She played chess with her brother John’s wife, Sibella who beat her far too often. This room served to help her forget that she had once had a home of her own when her husband Gordon was alive. And even though he had been ill for most of his life, they’d been content together, but for the sad fact that they’d not been blessed with children.

  Now she was alone, and her life was a series of balls and routs and card parties, where Georgina hoped to find her a husband. Several years past thirty, and childless after a long marriage, a husband seemed unlikely. The men who danced with her, even flirted with her, had an eye to young women who would give them an heir. Even the widowers with children, seemed to want more sons.

  “We have a ball to attend this evening,” Georgina said, tidying her dark brown hair before the gilt-framed mirror hanging above the Adams fireplace mantel.

  Eleanor buried a sigh. “Yes, I haven’t forgotten. I expect Lord Beacham to be there.”

  Georgina turned to gaze at her, her dark eyes concerned. “You didn’t warm to Lord Beacham?”