His Lordship's Last Wager

by Miranda Davis

  Contents

  Copyright

  His Lordship's Last Wager

  Dedication

  Prologue

  1 In which our hero behaves badly with the best intentions.

  2 In which our hero’s Achilles heel develops blisters.

  3 In which our hero bets his life.

  4 In which our hero’s words haunt our heroine.

  5 In which our hero tames a shrew. Or not.

  6 In which a birthday wish is granted too late.

  7 In which were the best and worst of times.

  8 In which our hero wins at love, albeit secondhand.

  9 In which is illustrated the meaning of Tempus Fugit.

  10 In which his lordship makes his last wager.

  11 In which a goose serves a gander some sauce.

  12 In which almost everyone is taken by surprise.

  13 In which all bets are off but two.

  14 In which our heroine waves a red flag at a bull.

  15 In which our heroine wins over our hero. Sort of.

  16 In which our hero questions his hearing. And sanity.

  17 In which are made the customary introductions.

  18 In which part of our hero’s penance is a walk in the park.

  19 In which one must beware heroes gifting bears.

  20 In which our heroine beards a lioness in her den.

  21 In which chickens come home to roost.

  22 In which plans are afoot.

  23 In which our hero finds managing our heroine is much like pulling teeth.

  24 In which our heroine is in hot water with Bath.

  25 In which Reading or not, here she comes.

  26 In which our hero disciplines our heroine the way

  our heroine disciplines strays.

  27 In which a runner joins the chase.

  28 In which compromise is reached: our hero compromises and our heroine lets him.

  29 In which our heroine bluffs again.

  30 In which an egg breaks an impasse.

  31 In which our hero learns what's in the eyes of the beholder.

  32 In which plop goes the weasel.

  33 In which our heroine and hero revisit the past.

  34 In which Mr. Whitcombe dooms a bear to save his own hide.

  35 In which our hero limps into Limpley Stoke.

  36 In which our heroine gets her wish but wishes she hadn't.

  37 In which our heroine lets the cat out of the bag.

  38 In which our hero is one.

  39 In which a bear on a boat sails for safe harbors

  40 In which push comes to shove. Or rather, slap comes to grief

  41 In which our hero enjoys his second-to-last supper.

  42 In which our hero faces his demons.

  43 In which an early morning meeting misfires.

  44 In which our hero bears the blame.

  45 In which the eternal question is answered: A bear lives in the woods.

  46 In which our hero and his grace nearly come to blows.

  47 In which one farewell breaks two hearts.

  Epilogue

  Historical Notes

  About the Author

  Excerpt from the fourth and final book

  Excerpt from The Duke's Tattoo

  Excerpt from The Baron's Betrothal

  Notes

  This is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s overactive imagination and are not to be construed as real, or they are noted historical figures used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Aspen Street Press, RJP, LLC

  P.O. Box 1321

  Espanola, NM 87532

  Copyright ©2017 M. D. Hansen

  Cover photo ©2012 M. D. Hansen

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used, shared or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the author’s written permission, except in the case of brief quotations properly referenced and used within the context of critical articles and reviews.

  His Lordship’s Last Wager

  A Regency Romance between Bitter Enemies

  Book Three of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse series

  Miranda Davis

  To Carolyn Smith Hansen

  1927-2014

  Mother, best friend, and first reader.

  I miss you every day.

  And to Jill, for stepping into the breach during

  the longest night of my life.

  Prologue

  17 September 1806

  Athlingcourt

  Principal Seat, Duke of Bath

  Somerset

  “Go home, Pest!” barked George Babcock, the Duke of Bath’s heir apparent. “We’ll not have you tagging along.”

  He addressed a scrawny, towheaded girl trailing the hunting party off to shoot partridge. The young men and their dogs were just leaving the woods to make for an open field’s distant fence line.

  “Sisters,” he sighed. “Filthy urchin’s like glue.” He addressed himself to his friend, Lord Seelye Burton,1 second son of the Marquess of Exmoor, whose estate lay on the fence’s far side.

  George directed a scowl the girl’s way to send her back from whence she came. Seelye noted his resemblance to the forbidding duke, the same lowered brow and frown whenever the youngest Babcock made herself the object of displeasure by being present. He cast a sidelong glance at Lady Jane.

  The bedraggled child stood apart from them, crestfallen at her brother’s rebuke. She wore a hopelessly dirty dress and mud-crusted nankeen boots. When she lifted her mucky hem to step closer, the stockings on her scrawny legs had snags and holes. Her pale hair was a tangle of brambles from her headlong pursuit.

  She drew herself up and straightened her shoulders. Her bright blue eyes locked on his, her expression watchful. Young as she was, she was too proud to beg and this earned his sympathy.

  “Don’t be such a stick, George,” Seelye said.

  “She’ll get in our way.”

  “She has pluck, let her come. We’ll need all hands to carry our braces of birds.”

  The others cheered, ‘huzzah!’

  George grimaced.

  “Mustn’t let envy interfere with our sport,” Seelye said. “We all know she’s a better shot than you.”

  “Is not.”

  “Even Papa says so,” the little lady piped up on her own behalf.

  “If she gets herself blown to smithereens, it’s on your head, understand?” George fumed and pointed an accusatory digit his way. “You alone take the caning this time.”

  Seelye held out a hand to help the littlest Babcock over a fallen tree limb across the path.

  “Now after all that, mind you don’t get yourself shot, Jane. You will obey me, yes? And stay behind us at all times.”

  She pulled a face. “Why can’t I shoot?”

  He regarded her, noted the mulish set of her mouth and her cornflower blue eyes beginning to swim in moisture.

  “You should know, waterworks never work on me.”

  She stiffened, her limpid eyes never left his face. “I am not crying. My boots are wet and pinching.”

  “I see,” he said. “That does hurt.”

  “I’d rather aim at tree knots than the poor birds anyway.”

  “As you wish, my lady,” he said and drew her down the path. “Now, the rules. You will remain behind me when not shooting beside me. You will use my gun, which I shall load for you, and shoot at targets that I deem safe. Absolutely no whining about how many shots you have either.” He winked at her and said in a carrying voice, “We must let your brother save face. Poor fellow won’t hit a thi
ng.”

  “Rubbish,” George said and strode off to join the others. “Little rogue, why must you encourage her?”

  She beamed up at Seelye, executed a hasty curtsey, and thanked him.

  “You are most welcome, my lady,” he responded with an extravagant bow over the nibbled nails of her grubby fingers. “I daresay you’ll grow up to be a heartbreaking beauty or a hellion of biblical proportions.”

  “Why not both?”

  “God help us all,” he replied, much diverted by the imp’s ready wit.

  She pulled him along, saying, “But I promise not to break your heart, my lord.”

  “Thank you. I am reassured.”

  And off they went, hand in hand, to join the rest.

  * * *

  Lady Jane fell madly in love with Lord Seelye that instant.

  He was the tallest and handsomest of her brother’s friends as well as the shooting party’s natural leader. His features were smooth and in the perfect symmetry of one of her father’s classical marble busts. His sculpted chin had a dashing cleft. His green eyes were a little deep set for ideal, but this gave his regard and his amusement greater intensity.

  Most endearing of all, he was kind. When Lord Seelye noticed her, he never made her feel like the pest her brother insisted she was.

  Jane made a second, momentous decision soon after. She vowed to marry him and no other—even though his lordship had a courtesy title and his family’s finances were dashed to flinders. This resolution about a commoner twice her age posed challenges to an almost eleven-year old duke’s daughter. But that, as George often muttered, was Jane all over.

  Also characteristic was her reaction to the news that Lord Seelye’s father had managed to purchase him a pair of colors.

  In early 1807, Lord Seelye left to become a cavalry officer in the 1st Royal Dragoons. Jane languished for days, convinced she would succumb to the deprivation. There would be no more glimpses of his golden head from an upper story window to set the butterflies loose in her belly, no more teasing to make her giggle or dashed-off portraits to make her to blush.

  She mourned his absence every waking hour for nearly a week. After that, she became purposeful.

  It was her nature to plan and make every effort to see a scheme through, which was how she accomplished much of what she set out to do. And she was determined to become the lady who deserved to stand by Lord Seelye’s side when he returned from war.

  It never occurred to her that he might die in the conflict. Or worse, change.

  After Napoleon’s final defeat in June, 1815, Lord Seeyle returned to England a much-celebrated war hero. Yet, Jane’s path did not cross his for many months in spite of their families’ intimate connection, formalized years before when her brother, George, married his eldest sister, Gertrude.

  Jane anticipated her first encounter with the hero at every social event she attended. In Mayfair ballrooms or Bath assembly rooms, she stood perfectly poised in the entrance for the announcement of her name. (She’d rehearsed his first glimpse of her so many times in a cheval glass, it came naturally by now.) As if bored, she’d cast her eye over the guests, searching faces for Lord Seelye’s beloved features.

  She always schooled her outward expression but inwardly agonized: Would he recognize her? Or she him? What sort of man was he after so many years? Would he seem as tall? As handsome? Would he be heavyset now? Would his hair—if he still had it—be tarnished blonde? Would he tease her to make her blush? Or greet her formally?

  She rarely experienced this sort of breathless trepidation under normal circumstances, for Jane had established herself as a self-possessed lady at the pinnacle of the ton years before Lord Seelye’s return.

  In this way, her infatuation with Lord Seelye survived until the spring of 1816, when the two spoke for the first time in almost a decade.

  Chapter 1

  In which our hero behaves badly with the best intentions.

  Late spring 1816

  Bath

  Jane finally spied Lord Seelye in the crowded Upper Rooms and suffered the jolt of recognition she’d long anticipated. He was easily the most dashing man present, tall, well-proportioned, and elegantly attired. He claimed everyone’s attention, not only because he had few rivals in Bath with most of the beau monde in London for the Season, but because he was magnificent—a paragon.

  Be that as it may, his reception simply astonished her. Among his admirers of both genders he walked like Moses parting the Red Sea. Those assembled separated for the golden hero to pass, while he smiled, greeted, and joked with acquaintances in the throng.

  When her name was announced, his languid gaze fell on her and she felt as if she were suddenly startled awake.

  He made a show of surprise and advanced in state with a number of hangers-on in his wake. She recognized most from previous Seasons, for all but Lord Seelye had courted her.

  She drew herself up, heart drumming against her corsetry. It was time to embark on the rest of her life. What would he say? What should she reply?

  When he drew close, he offered a quirk of the lips in lieu of a smile. With a flourish, he produced a quizzing glass, peered at her through it, then cast an arch look left and right. Those at his shoulders hid their amusement with coughs.

  Finally, he drawled, “Why, if it isn’t Lady Jane Babcock cleaned up and sparkly. You’ve grown into a terrifying beauty, or so I hear.”

  Jane’s temper came to her rescue when the shock of his greeting might’ve left her speechless, or worse, tearful.

  “Given your well-publicized exploits in battle, Lord Seelye,” she gave his courtesy title a sneering lilt, “I’d have thought nothing could frighten you, much less a mere female.”

  “I regret to admit you’d be wrong. There is nothing mere about you. Your reputation precedes you—and makes me quake in my dancing slippers. You are merciless to men, I understand. Quite the Ice Maiden—brrrrrr!” he said, with a fake shiver. “But then, you and your baubles do overwhelm one so.”

  She froze. In silence, she let him survey her diamond tiara, diamond ear bobs, and finally the diamond necklace about her neck. He eyed them like paste trumperies. She could not credit that this snide dandy was her beloved Lord Seelye.

  “Why so cold and cutting, my lady?” he quizzed her.

  More muffled sniggers came from the men around him.

  Without acknowledging their gawkers, she said, “Because I wish to be.”

  “It amuses you to give gentlemen frostbite or lash them bloody with your tongue? Tsk, tsk, tsk.” He slowly shook his head in reproof. “Seems cruel to punish a fellow merely for seeking your favor.”

  London’s wittiest nonpareil meant to give the Ice Maiden a proper setdown, something few dared to do, but many prayed to see done. Jane struggled to make sense of it.

  “You were not impossible or insufferable when I knew you,” he was saying. “But now, I wouldn’t have recognized you from what I’ve been told.”

  His claque’s barely-stifled snorts stoked Jane’s anger to sizzling hot.

  “And for my part, I wouldn’t have recognized you either,” she trilled. “There is such a surfeit of wastrel lordlings outliving their good name and credit these days.”

  She raised an eyebrow and let her dismissal encompass all the men present.

  Masculine mirth died away.

  “In fact,” she said, “I find it near impossible to distinguish one fellow drowning in the River Tick from another. Hm, hm.”

  With that dry chuckle, she intentionally rubbed their already out-of-joint noses in what these men resented most about her: they had no hope of having her or her money.

  She tapped her closed fan against her chin as if in contemplation.

  “Though for your sake, Lord Seelye, I could watch for a head of blonde hair dressed à la Brutus floating by and throw guineas at it, I suppose.”

  “How philanthropic of you,” he replied, his green eyes hard shards of serpentine. “I thought to speak up because
I knew you once long ago and cared for you then.”

  “And I looked up to you long ago, but you were a gentleman in the past,” she said. “I know your type too well now to care what you think of me.”

  Lord Seelye flushed. His fixed features told her she’d hit his quick but she was too angry to care.

  “My type?” he echoed dangerously.

  “Beau. Dandy. Coxcomb. There are so many synonyms for fashionable inconsequence, which do you prefer?” she asked with false solicitude. Her sole desire was to demonstrate that she was more than the hero’s match in a war of words.

  The deflated eavesdroppers awaited their man’s counter riposte, too cowed to add anything themselves.

  “Call me what you will, my lady. I hope I am a man of taste in my own feeble way.” She heard the steel in his offhand reply. “Second sons and others less fortunate than your type must live on credit and their good names.” He gave the sleeve of his superbly-tailored cutaway coat of dark green superfine a tug. “It’s the way of our world and I, for one, am no revolutionary.”

  “Pity,” she said and was about to elaborate on what else he was not.

  “Enough, sister-in-law,” he cut in. “Let’s not make more of a spectacle of ourselves. Will you accept an inconsequential coxcomb’s olive branch and walk with me?”

  He offered his arm and gave her a look she dared not defy. She rested nothing but the tips of two fingers on his forearm and let him lead her out of earshot of the others.

  “Be thankful you’re rich and female,” he said under his breath. “You can afford to be nothing more than a wasp-tongued drawing room decoration. You need never face life’s realities. It’s enough that you’re well born, well heeled and passably well made.”

  “Yet, I strive to be more.”

  “Duchess perhaps? Mustn’t set your cap at Ainsworth, old thing. That shall never be. Ne-ver.”

  “It shall, if I wish it,” she said. “But as it is, Lord Seelye, I prefer to devote myself to more worthwhile causes.”