Once Upon A Regency

by Samantha Grace

  After long minutes of solitude, with only the whisper of the wind over the moors to interrupt the silence, Lilith felt calm enough to sort through the choices before her. In was then she realized she hadn’t any choices left. They’d gone the same way as her secrets. Spewed across the terrace of Breckenridge House.

  “You ought to travel on with your sisters.”

  Lilith kept her gaze on the road for fear she would see some show of concern on Dunaway’s handsome face. Or worse yet, pity. “I’ll continue to Town with you.”

  “Somehow I thought you’d say so.”

  “As you know me so well.”

  “It would seem I don’t know you at all,” Dunaway said after a slight pause. “I’m beginning to wonder if I know any of my daughters. You’ve all proven contrary of late. But for Harry who is as predictable in her loathing as she is in her discernment of humanity’s many foibles.”

  “She accused me of pouting,” Lilith replied on a fractured laugh, swiping one hand over her eyes, her fingertips coming away wet. “I thought she was referring to Sissy, seeing as the girl clearly enjoys a good sulk now and again.”

  “Come, if we’re for London we’d do well to make Taunton tonight.” Dunaway clasped Lilith’s hand and gently turned her back toward the crossroads where three of his daughters and an infamous courtesan waited. “What were you pouting about?”

  “My father’s inability to keep his trousers buttoned,” Lilith answered with a wobbly smile.

  “I am sorry, kitten.” Dunaway squeezed her fingers when she attempted to pull away. “Not so much for my inability to keep my trousers buttoned but for bringing you along on this misbegotten journey.”

  “I’m not certain I see how it was misbegotten for you,” Lilith retorted. “After all, you got precisely what you wanted.”

  “I never wanted to see you hurt,” the earl protested with what sounded like sincerity. “In truth, I thought you more like me.”

  “Immune to heartbreak?”

  “I hope I am not immune to heartbreak, for how does one recognize true happiness without first knowing utter despair?”

  “Have you known utter despair?” Lilith could not imagine the brash, carefree earl ever feeling half so miserable as she did now.

  “I became intimately acquainted with the emotion when your mother tossed me out with nary a chance to explain.”

  “How did you intend to explain getting a child on Gwendolyn’s own cousin?” Lilith asked in genuine, if begrudging, curiosity. “Immaculate conception?”

  “Hmm, I hadn’t thought of that,” Dunaway replied as if the idea actually held merit. “Do you think she would have believed it?”

  “As much as it pains me to say it, you might have been able to talk her around to believing such rubbish,” Lilith replied in amused exasperation. “Had it been anyone but Arabella you’d gotten with child, that is.”

  “I thought Monty would call me out when he learned of the affair.”

  “If I’d been in your shoes, I’d have worried about Auntie Bathsheba and Alabaster. Or even Eve Marie.”

  “Fearsome creatures, every one of your female relations,” Dunaway replied as they approached the quartet of beauties waiting at the juncture of what was no more than two paths leading to the same eventuality. “Is it any wonder you come by it naturally?”

  “I don’t feel fearsome just now,” Lilith whispered, more than a little unsettled by the admission.

  Dunaway pulled Lilith to a stop in the middle of the road. Gently lifting her chin, he forced her to look up into eyes as solemn as those she’d seen in the mirror this morning. “Listen to me, Lil. I’ve committed a great many sins in my life. In fact, some might say my entire life has been one long chain of sins, beginning with marrying a woman for purely monetary reasons rather than for love or even affection or respect. I suppose I ought to regret those sins, perhaps even find a way to atone. But the truth is I regret none of it. How can I? When for those sins I was blessed with six daughters whom I love to distraction. Soon to be seven if my luck holds.”

  “Oh, Dun,” Lilith murmured, surprised and a bit befuddled by the man’s sentimental drivel. “You truly are ridiculous.”

  “So you are forever telling me,” the earl replied with a smile that did not reach his somber eyes. “Still, I am not so ridiculous I cannot comprehend the sacrifice you made for me. And for your sister. But mostly for Malleville, though I don’t imagine he will ever know of it.”

  “You mustn’t tell him, Dun,” Lilith ordered in a bit of a panic. “Promise me you’ll say nothing to anyone or it will all have been for naught.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of depriving you of such a wondrously valiant deed,” Dunaway assured her. “In fact, I am quite awed by the sheer bravery and benevolence you displayed. Though, I cannot imagine how you came by such traits. Certainly you didn’t inherit them from either of your parents.”

  Lilith made no reply, and apparently none was required. Dunaway released her chin and returned to her side. Hand in hand they joined the ladies clustered together beside Alabaster’s carriage like a flock of colorfully plumed worry hens.

  “Lilith, are you for London, then?” Alabaster asked, though clearly she knew the answer if her frown was any indication.

  “I’ve much to do,” Lilith replied, dutifully planting a kiss on her grandmother’s offered cheek. “I’ll see you when you return to Town.”

  “What will you do in London all by yourself?” Sissy asked, leaning in as if she expected Lilith to buss her cheek as well.

  “The same as I’ve always done.” Drat it all, there was nothing Lilith could do but give in.

  She kissed the young girl’s cheek, and before she quite knew how it came about, she was enveloped by three pairs of arms.

  Dunaway grinned unabashedly, clearly delighted by the sight of his daughters entangled in an embrace, never mind Lilith’s squirming about in a futile bid for freedom.

  Surrendering to the inevitable, Lilith stilled and allowed the girls to hug and pet her, even wrapped her arms around the lot of them, clumsily patting backs and shoulders. When they finally broke apart and Lilith stepped back, she realized she would miss them.

  Odd that, seeing as she’d lived most of her life on the periphery of theirs, rarely venturing near enough to feel any sort of true attachment.

  Oh, she supposed she felt a bit of affection for Kate. But who wouldn’t? What with her sly wit and unabashedly sunny disposition.

  And for all Harry hid her soft heart and brilliant mind behind a façade of brittle humor and contemptuous mockery, Lilith felt a fond sort of connection to the girl.

  Sissy was another story entirely.

  Lilith certainly would not miss the earl’s petulant, spoiled daughter.

  * * * *

  Oddly enough, it was Sissy Lilith missed most of all during the long, interminable journey back to London. She missed the silly girl’s ceaseless chatter, grating giggling, naïve proclamations and pouting protestations. All of which Lilith now recognized as the opening refrain of a well-orchestrated scheme to play upon her sympathy.

  Though how the girl had come to suspect Lilith might possess anything of the sort was something of a mystery.

  As Dunaway’s carriage trundled over miles of rutted roads, past fields of grain waving in the wind and endless stretches of moorland dotted with sheep and the occasional scrubby tree and rock outcropping, Lilith even found herself missing Sissy’s lofty lamentations.

  In fact, she would have welcomed them in any language, even Prussian with its jagged stops and starts, if only to slice through the silence.

  Dunaway, ever restless and unable to sit still, spent much of the journey on horseback, leaving Lilith alone with her thoughts.

  Those thoughts were weighty, as heavy and thick as the angry gray clouds gathering over London as they approached the city she’d called home her entire life.

  Lilith didn’t feel as if she were coming home. Instead she felt as if she were ventur
ing into a foreign land, alone and uncertain of her welcome.

  The odd sensation only increased with each street traversed and every corner turned until the carriage finally reached The Strand.

  After four years living on the busy street running along the bend in the River Thames, Lilith had become accustomed to the cacophony of noise accompanying the constant hustle and bustle of carriages, carts and horses in the road and pedestrians ambling along the walkways.

  She’d always fancied there was a certain unwieldy rhythm to the sounds, rather like an orchestra of musicians unused to playing together but game for the challenge nonetheless.

  Only today the noise was deafening, a dissonance of shouting, banging and assorted discordant sounds Lilith vaguely remembered from the year previously when Hillsborough House had been demolished to make way for a new thoroughfare to the river.

  Lilith slid across the seat and looked out the window, only mildly surprised to see workmen crawling over scaffolding erected along the front façade of Dunellen House. More men scurried out of the open door carrying furnishings and fixtures to carts parked at the street.

  Dunaway rode up beside the carriage on his black gelding, shouting orders to his driver to take it slow in order to avoid any debris in their path. The dawdling pace allowed Lilith a good look at the grand old house which, by the looks of things, would soon be but a memory.

  It would be the third house on the south side of The Strand to be demolished in the four years Lilith had resided on the Thames. While she was practical enough to appreciate the need for additional roads to accommodate the traffic between Blackfriars Bridge and the city proper, she hated to see the opulent old mansions go.

  The carriage crept past a sprawling house built along Roman lines, with towering columns supporting an ornate domed portico and two huge marble lions standing sentinel beside the door. The gray stone façade was polished to a high sheen, the tall windows topped with heavy, elaborate cornices. The house had always struck Lilith as something of a relic of by-gone days, stubbornly clinging to old-fashioned customs while all around it the world changed with the times.

  Rather like its current inhabitant.

  A short distance beyond the Romanesque ode to a long lost era stood an imposing baroque monstrosity complete with pointed, arched windows and gargoyles lined up along the roof staring down at anyone daring enough to approach the heavy, intricately carved wooden doors. The house had been designed and built by a gentleman with more money than sense, and as far as Lilith could fathom, solely to annoy and aggravate his neighbor.

  Wedged between the two ostentatious dwellings sat a quaint three-story, red brick and timber cottage. Constructed after the Great Fire had ravaged the stately homes along the river, Charmed Crossing had been in Dunaway’s family for generations. With its proximity to various entertainments and its discreet river access, Charmed Crossing had traditionally housed the earls’ mistresses.

  Gwendolyn had refused to step foot in the cozy little cottage, insisting Dunaway purchase the house in Hanover Square before she entered into an arrangement with him.

  Lilith could hardly blame her mother. The area was no longer fashionable and the river had long since swallowed the boat dock along with the steps leading up to the back gardens. The house listed slightly to the left, the wood floors were warped, the slate roof leaked from time to time and the old mullioned windows allowed the winter wind to seep into every cramped room.

  Still, the little house tucked away from the road behind an orderly garden of neatly pruned rosebushes and hedgerows was as close to a home as Lilith had ever known.

  And two feuding brothers wanted it enough to pay a pretty penny to claim it.

  TAMING BEAUTY

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  At two and twenty, the ninth Baron Malleville had arrived in London believing the city to be the center of the world, a testament to English superiority, a gathering place for learned men and elegant women, and above all else, a mecca for all things enlightened.

  He’d departed after only three months believing London nothing more than a stinking cesspool of thievery, dissipation and desperation. He’d held to that belief for twelve years, shunning all things London, from fashions to friends to gossip.

  Upon his long unanticipated and unheralded return, Jasper discovered the city was all he remembered and then some.

  Bigger, certainly. Louder and dirtier. The stench of the river and refuse, along with a hundred other rancid aromas he made no effort to identify, filled his nostrils and clung to the back of his throat.

  And he’d be damned if it wasn’t more crowded. Everywhere people rushed about—peddlers, ragged urchins, laborers, servants, clerks, well-to-day ladies and gentlemen. They swarmed the walkways and crossed the street at all angles, never mind the fancy carriages and beer carts whizzing by.

  Jasper’s first stop upon arriving in Mayfair, that bastion of wealth, privilege and pedigree, was Grosvenor Square where he learned the Earl of Dunaway was not in residence. Nor was he anticipated to return any time soon.

  If he couldn’t run the earl to ground, Jasper would have to make do with his daughter. Thus, he found himself in Hanover Square at the home of the notorious Gwendolyn Aberdeen.

  An ancient butler showed Jasper to a parlor garishly decorated in crimson velvet and gold silk, a portrait of a stunningly lovely, dark-haired woman dressed in nothing but a pair of red slippers hanging over the mantle.

  The same woman, elegantly adorned in a deep purple gown, was shooing a half-dressed young buck from the settee when the butler cleared his throat.

  “Oh, Baron Malleville, how positively divine to meet you.” Gwendolyn Aberdeen dipped a curtsy, baring a good bit of bosom and studying Jasper with big, brown doe eyes.

  That she was beautiful came as no surprise to Jasper. The resemblance between mother and daughter was something of a revelation, as he would have sworn Lilith was her father’s daughter through and through. But the resemblance was there in the tilt of her chin, in the shape of her nose and in the small, mocking smile curling up one corner of her lips.

  Over the next twenty minutes, Lilith’s mother served Jasper tea and biscuits, brought him up to the mark on the latest gossip about the Prince Regent and flirted with him in a manner he suspected was second nature.

  She also claimed to be unaware of her daughter’s whereabouts. “It’s been years since Lilith felt the need to consult with me as to her coming and goings. If Dun were in Town, he might know where to find her. Unfortunately, he departed for the country three days ago. The imminent birth of an heir and all that.”

  “You haven’t seen your daughter in three days?” Jasper asked, not certain why the knowledge had his temper fraying.

  “I haven’t seen Lilith in months, perhaps a year.”

  “Lilith doesn’t live here with you?”

  “We don’t get on well,” she replied with a delicate shrug of one shoulder, the gesture so reminiscent of Lilith his heart gave an extra thump in recognition. “Too alike I suppose.”

  Jasper had a sudden recollection of Lilith worrying Meg wouldn’t make it from the hills she’d been gamboling across her entire life to the house without becoming lost.

  “You’ve no idea where your daughter is currently living?” Damn the proprieties, Jasper rose to stand, glaring down at the shallow, self-absorbed woman sitting before him batting her eyes and smiling a siren’s smile while admitting she’d lost track of her only child for the better part of a year.

  “She took up residence with my mother in Bloomsbury for a time.” If Gwendolyn recognized Jasper’s poor manners or growing anger, she gave so sign of it. “But that was three or four years past, and she didn’t stay long. Oh, yes, I seem to recall she moved into one of Dun’s properties. But last I heard he’d sold the house, so I suppose Lilith must have relocated elsewhere.”

  Good God, the woman rivaled Dunaway for the honor of worst parent of the century.

  “You say your mother lives in Blooms
bury?” Jasper asked, already turning for the door.

  “Lilith would hardly move back in with Mother,” Gwendolyn said. “She has puritanical leanings, Lilith does, and Mother’s household is rather boisterous. Perhaps you ought to call upon the Duke of Cheltenham.”

  Jasper spun around and advanced two steps back into the tacky parlor.

  “His Grace and Lilith are fast friends,” Gwendolyn said, all wide-eyed innocence. “Kindred spirits, Mother says. The Duke might know where she’s gotten off to.”

  After a futile trip to Bloomsbury, only to discover Alabaster Sinclair had set off for Edinburgh with Miss Harry O’Connell the day before, Jasper reined in his mount before a stately gray-stoned mansion on The Strand.

  Of course the Duke of Cheltenham was not at home to the Cornish baron who presented himself attired in a dusty coat twelve years out of fashion, a wilted cravat and mud-spattered boots.

  Jasper considered pushing past the supercilious butler and the dozen footmen lurking in the dimly lit great hall, but he’d likely get lost in the mausoleum for hours and still not find the Duke of Cheltenham.

  With a muttered curse, he retreated down the steps and walked to the edge of the street.

  His horse gave a whinny in greeting, or more likely in despair. The poor old fellow had been ridden harder in the last two days than in the two years previously.

  He supposed he could walk his horse to a hotel somewhere nearby, get cleaned up and return in hopes His Grace would deign to allow him inside the hallowed halls of his home.

  Taking in his surroundings, he saw a huge gothic house on the corner with what appeared to be stone dragons and bats sprouting up along the rooftop. Jasper had read about the grotesque water spouts, he’d even seen paintings of them, but he couldn’t remember actually seeing a gargoyle up close.