The Alter Ego

by Elizabeth Bramwell

  Alex turned to Mr Jones and inclined his head. “I may not be Arthur’s guardian, Mr Jones, but some of his fortune remains in my control for a few months longer. Let us follow the ladies, and discuss any Settlements that you consider necessary.”

  Mr Jones gave a short bow. “Thank you, your Grace, but I think you will discover that my Annie is more than adequately provided for. Now, there is a question of property…”

  They shut the door behind them, closing it with a dull click.

  *

  “They do realise that they have no right to discuss our finances like that, don’t they?” fumed Anna. “I have full control over my fortune, and I suspect you control everything that you won on those bets last Season!”

  “If it gets them out of the room, then they can discuss every penny that’s every slipped through my fingers,” said Arthur. He moved across the room, and then gently sank to his knees on the floor beside her, their heads now level.

  She glanced down at her hands, suddenly embarrassed.

  “Anna, please look at me,” he said softly. Arthur placed a hand gently on her chin, softly urging her to turn her head and meet his gaze.

  “I’m angry at you,” she whispered. “You should not have lied to me.”

  “I know,” he replied. “Anna, I’ve been a fool, and while I was playing my silly game, I found myself falling deeper and deeper in love with you. I was so determined to remain a bachelor that I didn’t even realise it had happened until I found myself unable to imagine life without you.”

  “Then why didn’t you tell me the truth?”

  His shoulders dropped. He looked so miserable that Anna longed to wrap her arms around him.

  “I could not think of a way to tell you that would not result in your contempt. I was trying to confess everything yesterday, but it seemed like we were talking past each other, and the whole conversation went awry.”

  Anna bit her lip. “Yes, yes I suppose we were,” she said carefully.

  Arthur took her hand in his. “My dear Mrs Clyde,” he began, but Anna reached over and placed a finger to his lip.

  “Not yet,” she said.

  Arthur looked puzzled as she moved her away. “I don’t understand.”

  Anna looked down at their clasped hands.

  “I won’t deny that I’m in love with you as well, Arthur, but I’m scared because I don’t know where the charade ends and the real you begins. Take your clothing – why, I have never seen you look more handsome and well dressed as you do right now, but is that the true you, or are those clothes that her Grace advised you to wear to look more presentable?”

  He winced and smiled at the same time. “It’s possible that I’m known as a Pink of the Ton in London.”

  “There! Although I suspect you know London well, I have no idea how much time you are in the city, or if you’re Whig or Tory, or if you’re a good judge of horseflesh, or if you support charity. I have gleaned little bits, but I worry about how much was the Mister, and how much was the Lord.”

  The look on his face was heartbreaking. “Have I no hope, then?”

  She closed her eyes to stop the tears welling there from falling.

  “I’m not saying that at all, Arthur. I’m saying I would like to get to know you better.” She paused, her cheeks starting to heat up. “I… I have never been courted, you know.”

  He looked surprised at this. “Not even by Matthew Clyde?”

  She shook her head. “No, for although I was happy and terribly fond of him, it was nothing but a marriage of convenience. He asked, and I agreed.”

  “Oh,” said Arthur. His expression slowly went from shocked to a grin. “Oh, well, in that case, my love, I shall court you with such fervour and flare that every other woman in England shall be envious of you. They will write books about my romantic sensibilities, and how they eventually won over my perfect woman.”

  She laughed. “I’m not sure if that is a promise or a threat.”

  “Both,” he replied, and then leant in to kiss her.

  The door to the parlour opened, and Arthur jumped back, leaving Anna feeling bereft of his presence.

  “Anna, darling, I just remembered something. I’m not interrupting, am I?” asked Lily as she walked into the room, her attention on the squirming pug in her arms.

  “Just a conversation between Arthur and I,” she replied. “What is it?”

  “Do you remember how I won our bet yesterday? Well, I have decided on what wish I want to be granted.”

  “Here it comes,” groaned Anna. “I don’t care what I said, if your wish is another pug then I will be moving out!”

  Lily laughed. “Nothing of the sort! Her Grace told us that she is having a house party, and must return tomorrow, but she has invited your family to go with her, even the girls! I thought your mother would faint away when she learned how many eligible young men will be there, and your sisters are in transports over it.”

  “And what does this have to do with your wish?” asked Anna

  “Well, Her Grace said that Lord Arthur really has to go back as well, especially because he owns the house, but also because she thinks he should hide from the world at large until his hair grows back.”

  “A fair point,” said Arthur, but the look he threw at Anna made her sure that he had no wish to be separated from her. It made her heart beat faster, and her mind feel just a little bit giddy.

  “Yes, so that means we would be left alone in Bath.”

  “We wouldn’t be alone at all,” laughed Anna. “Only Arthur would be leaving from our circle of friends!”

  “Quite. Alone,” repeated Lily, her jaw set. “Which brings me to my wish.”

  “I knew we’d get there eventually,” said Anna, flashing her stepdaughter an encouraging smile.

  “My wish is to spend the rest of the summer at Darlington Park as guests of their Graces. And before you ask, yes, we’ve been invited.”

  Anna stared blankly at her smiling stepdaughter.

  “Are you trying to play matchmaking mama?” she asked.

  Lily just laughed and sauntered out of the room. She paused at the door, looking over her shoulder as she said: “Not at all, but I do think it’s only fair to warn Lord Arthur that a real matchmaking mama will be present at Darlington as well – your mother!”

  Arthur chuckled. “I’d be on the same team as Mrs Jones, so I don’t fear her in the least.”

  “Good, I shall tell everyone that it is agreed,” said Lily, and disappeared out of the room.

  Arthur returned to her side, reclaiming possession of her hand.

  “Would you like this, Anna? To spend the summer with half the Ton, being gawked at while I try my best to impress you with every foolish declaration of my love I can conceive of?”

  She met his gaze, saw the vulnerability, the fear she would say no, and the love that matched her own. A weight lifted from her shoulders, and she smiled.

  “It sounds perfect, my love,” she told him, “but I would like these declarations to be truly spectacular.”

  “I swear it,” he replied. “I’ve already got an idea for the first one, and all it’s going to need is three chickens, pineapple from the hothouse, and Governess.”

  He gave her no opportunity to start worrying about his plan, however, for he pulled her into a tight embrace and kissed her so thoroughly that she could not remember a word he had said.

  Which, as it would turn out, was probably for the best.

  The End

  AUTHOR NOTES

  Hello!

  First off, I must make an apology to those lovely long-time readers of mine, who have supported me while I have worked on these books:

  I’m sorry it took me so long to finish The Alter Ego, but I hope it was worth the wait. I'm also sorry that the promised Christmas novella, The Winter Wallflower, never materialised, although I do have a pretty cover for it on my hard drive, alongside the first three chapters.

  Without going into too much detail, the last
six months have seen me battling a chronic illness that took a long, unexpected flare for the worse. I put everything on hold, including finishing my Regency Romps books, to concentrate on getting well and being there for my kids. I hope you can forgive me for letting you down and not delivering the promised books, but the good news is that thanks to some pretty significant lifestyle changes, I am once again able to get back to the Regency.

  As always, it means so much to me that you choose to spend your leisure time with my characters, and I hope you get the same enjoyment out of them as my Reader-In-Chief (my mum!) does. As I’ve said before, these books are primarily written for her pleasure, but I genuinely hope they provided some fun for you, as well.

  As I’ve previously mentioned in author notes and in my newsletter, I absolutely love hearing from my readers and fully appreciate any historical errors you have found in my books. I am in no way an expert on the Regency, just a very enthusiastic amateur, and sometimes I get things wrong. A great example would be from the knowledgeable reader who pointed out that I kept addressing the Duke of Devenish incorrectly in The Foolish Friend (a fact my Reader-In-Chief missed – thanks mum!) and that’s not the type of thing my proofreader is likely to catch. I’ve since gone back and corrected those errors, so if you’re new to the series, don’t worry – Dukes and Duchesses are addressed as your Grace, and never my Lord, and it’s okay if you were wondering what I was talking about.

  I must admit, though, to being utterly, completely and totally mortified to discover that I have been misusing the word erstwhile for the last decade, and no one has ever corrected me. The horror comes from the realisation that when I’ve used that word in conversation, people either didn’t know (and didn’t ask) what I meant, or they thought I was trying (and failing) to sound smart.

  My Reader-In-Chief informs me that when I’m in the throes of writing a Regency story, I start using Georgette Heyer-isms and introducing thieves’ cant into my everyday language, so it’s entirely possible people just ignored me like usual. I think she wanted me to feel better.

  Anyway, I’ve hired a second proofreader to go back through all my existing works to double-check my language, as well as review the new ones. But yes, cheeks still burning with embarrassment over the erstwhile thing. I’ve fixed it.

  I think I also have to address the elephant in the room here when it comes to The Alter Ego: what on earth happened to the book I said would be next in the series, The Penniless Peer? The answer is that you’re reading it.

  The Penniless Peer was intended to be a completely different book, and Arthur had a completely different heroine to fall in love with. Unfortunately, he disagreed with me, and stubbornly refused to do anything I wanted him to do without making it feel like wading through treacle. I gave up 10k in and binned that version. Once I started recovering from my illness, I decided to give Arthur another shot at love, mainly because Mum demanded it, and tried again. The next thing I knew, an ugly pug was running around a coaching inn, and Arthur was pretending to be someone he wasn’t. This story flowed smoothly, and Anna is a much better fit for Lord Arthur than my original suggestion for him. I’m still going to use The Penniless Peer as a title eventually, mainly because I like alliteration.

  Mum mentioned, when reading this book, that she was surprised that Lady Seraphinia’s mother had been a Muslim Princess. There is a fascinating book by William Dalrymple called The White Mughals: Love and Betrayal in Eighteenth-Century India, which talks about interracial marriage between white East India Company staff and Indian women. Dalrymple discovered that one of his own ancestors was a Muslim Princess that had been erased from the family tree (probably during the Victorian era), and that his relatives were far from the only example of this. East India Company records show that one in three wills between 1780 and 1785 mention a marriage, or cohabitation, between a staff member and their Indian Bibi. Seraphinia would have been born several decades before this, but the evidence is there. It’s a fascinating book and worth the read!

  Even Charvi’s deliberate suppression of her Hindustani roots is based in historical documents. There is a journal entry from an Indian gentleman, during his first visit to London, where he notes how there are many Indian women married to British gentlemen, but they have adopted English fashions, dress, and mannerisms so completely, that he would never have known they were from India.

  I keep saying that at some point I am going to set up a blog so I can share some of my research materials with readers. I’m only an enthusiastic amateur and far from an expert, but I have a swathe of really excellent history books that contain some fascinating details about Regency life that, as a society, we seem to have forgotten. I try to bring these things to life in my books, and I don’t always get it right, but I genuinely believe this is one of the most fascinating periods in British history, and so much more complicated than we sometimes give the Georgians credit for.

  Back to The Alter Ego - I do hope you were happy to see Devenish again! Yes, he WILL be getting a book in the future, and yes, so will Mr Percival, and you’ll even see Eugenia again as I’ve had requests to grant her a happy ending of her own. I promise that I’ve read and responded to every email, and your input means the world to me. As always, let me know if there are any other minor characters from the books that you want me to write about. That’s the only reason Lord Arthur and Trix Manning ended up with their own books, so please email me at Elizabeth@ElizabethBramwell.com with your suggestions. I love to hear from you!

  Moving forward, I hope to return to a regular writing schedule. Thanks to the support of my family and a wonderful doctor, I'm doing well in getting my illness under control. I've had to quit the day job, but that means I get more time to write!

  The plan right now is to split the remaining, upcoming stories into new series based on the characters in them. Many of you have commented that you would prefer longer books with increased accuracy, and so I will put them into their own groups, so it is easier to distinguish the different types of reads. They will feature characters you’ve already met, and all the people that I’ve promised will have their own book (plus a few surprises!). I do intend to put some seasonal novellas into the Romps series as well, including The Winter Wallflower, so I'm not abandoning the shorter reads, either.

  I do have one other series in the works right now, that I am super excited about because it combines two of my favourite things – the Regency period, and fairy tales! The Once Upon A Regency series will be based on the classic stories but with an 1800’s twist to them, and will still be sweet romance albeit a little darker, thanks to their fairy tale roots. The first book in the series, Miss Belle and Lord Beast, will be up for preorder shortly, so please join my reader group so you will be able to get a sneaky peak at the cover and grab a copy at the lower, preorder price.

  Do you have a favourite fairy tale that you’d like to see get the Regency treatment? Are you more a fan of Snow White, or Cinderella? Do you know the story of the Swan Princess or Rose Red? So many choices! Please feel free to email me and let me know!

  Well, it’s just after midnight as I’m finishing up these notes, and I’m feeling a great sense of relief at having been able to finish a book again after my enforced health break. Thank you for sticking with me, and thank you for taking a chance on my books. It honestly does mean the world to me, and I hope you enjoy the new series as well as this one.

  And I’m so sorry about the erstwhile thing.

  Never living that down.

  Beth xxx

  *****These author notes were added on June 24nd, 2018, and includes information on the preorder of Miss Belle and Lord Beast*****

 

 

 
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