The Viscount and the Vicar's Daughter: A Victorian Romance

by Mimi Matthews

  Her vision clouded with tears. She turned from the private parlor, mumbling an apology to Mr. Boothroyd as she went.

  “Miss Reynolds?” Mr. Boothroyd called. “Have you changed your mind?”

  She looked back, confused, only to see that the other lady was gone and that Mr. Boothroyd stood alone in the entryway. From his seat by the fire, the tall gentleman ruffled a newspaper, seeming to be wholly unconcerned with either of them. “No, sir,” she said.

  “If you will have a seat.” He gestured to one of the chairs that surrounded a small supper table. Upon the table was a stack of papers and various writing implements. She watched him rifle through them as she took a seat. “I trust you had a tolerable journey,” he said.

  “Yes, thank you.”

  “You took the train from London?”

  “I did, sir, but only as far as Barnstaple. Mr. Finchley arranged for passage on an accommodation coach to bring me the rest of the way here. It’s one of the reasons I’m late. There was an overturned curricle in the road. The coachman stopped to assist the driver.”

  “One of the reasons, you say?”

  “Yes, I…I missed the earlier train at the station,” she confessed. “I’d been waiting at the wrong platform and…by the time I realized my error, my train had already gone. I was obliged to change my ticket and take the next one.”

  Mr. Boothroyd continued to sift through his papers. Helena wondered if he was even listening to her. “Ah. Here it is,” he said at last. “Your initial reply to the advertisement.” He withdrew a letter covered in small, even handwriting which she recognized as her own. “As well as a letter from Mr. Finchley in London with whom you met on the fifteenth.” He perused a second missive with a frown.

  “Is anything the matter?” she asked.

  “Indeed. It says here that you are five and twenty.” Mr. Boothroyd lowered the letter. “You do not look five and twenty, Miss Reynolds.”

  “I assure you that I am, sir.” She began to work at the ribbons of her gray silk travelling bonnet. After untying the knot with unsteady fingers, she lifted it from her head, twined the ribbons round it, and placed it atop her carpetbag. When she raised her eyes, she found Mr. Boothroyd staring at her. “I always look much younger in a bonnet,” she explained. “But, as you can see now, I’m—”

  “Young and beautiful,” he muttered with disapproval.

  She blushed, glancing nervously at the gentleman by the fire. He did not seem to be listening, thank goodness. Even so, she leaned forward in her chair, dropping her voice. “Does Mr. Thornhill not want a pretty wife?”

  “This isn’t London, Miss Reynolds. Mr. Thornhill’s house is isolated. Lonely. He seeks a wife who can bear the solitude. Who can manage his home and see to his comforts. A sturdy, capable sort of woman. Which is precisely why the advertisement specified a preference for a widow or spinster of more mature years.”

  “Yes, but I—”

  “What Mr. Thornhill doesn’t want,” he continued, “is a starry-eyed girl who dreams of balls and gowns and handsome suitors. A marriage with such a frivolous creature would be a recipe for disaster.”

  Helena bristled. “That is not fair, sir.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I am no starry-eyed girl. I never was. And with respect, Mr. Boothroyd, you haven’t the slightest notion of my dreams. If I wanted balls and gowns or…or frivolous things…I would never have answered Mr. Thornhill’s advertisement.”

  “What exactly do you seek out of this arrangement, Miss Reynolds?”

  She clasped her hands tightly in her lap to stop their trembling. “Security,” she answered honestly. “And perhaps…a little kindness.”

  “You couldn’t find a gentleman who met these two requirements in London?”

  “I don’t wish to be in London. Indeed, I wish to be as far from London as possible.”

  “Your friends and family…?”

  “I am alone in the world, sir.”

  “I see.”

  Helena doubted that very much. “Mr. Boothroyd,” she said, “if you’ve already decided that someone else is better suited—”

  “There is no one else, Miss Reynolds. At present, you’re the only lady Mr. Finchley has recommended.”

  “But the woman who was here before—”

  “Mrs. Standish?” Mr. Boothroyd removed his spectacles. “She was applying for the position of housekeeper at the Abbey.” He rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Regrettably, we have an ongoing issue with retaining adequate staff. It’s something you should be aware of if you intend to take up residence.”

  She exhaled slowly. “A housekeeper. Of course. How silly of me. Mr. Thornhill mentioned the difficulties you were having with servants in one of his letters.”

  “I’m afraid it’s proven quite a challenge.” Mr. Boothroyd settled his spectacles back on his nose. “Not only is the house isolated, it has something of a local reputation. Perhaps you’ve heard…?”

  “A little,” she said. “But Mr. Finchley told me it was nothing more than ignorant superstition.”

  “Quite so. However, in this part of the world, Miss Reynolds, you’ll find that ignorance is in ready supply.”

  Helena was unconcerned. “I should like to see the Abbey for myself.”

  “Yes, yes. All in good time.”

  “And I should like to meet Mr. Thornhill.”

  “Undoubtedly.” Mr. Boothroyd shuffled through his papers again. To her surprise, a rising color crept into the elderly man’s face. “There are just one or two more points at issue, Miss Reynolds.” He cleared his throat. “You’re aware, I presume…That is, I do hope that Mr. Finchley explained…This marriage is to be a real marriage in every sense of the word.”

  She looked at him, brows knit in confusion. “What other kind of marriage would it be?”

  “And you’re agreeable?”

  “Of course.”

  He made no attempt to disguise his skepticism. “There are many ladies who’d find such an arrangement singularly lacking in romance.”

  Helena did not doubt it. She would have balked at the prospect herself once. But much had changed in the last year—and in the last months, especially. Any girlish fantasies she had harbored about true love were dead. In their place was a rather ruthless pragmatism.

  “I don’t seek romance, Mr. Boothroyd,” she replied. “Only kindness. And Mr. Finchley said that Mr. Thornhill was a kind man.”

  Mr. Boothroyd appeared to be surprised by this. “Did he indeed,” he murmured. “What else did he tell you, pray?”

  She hesitated before repeating the words that Mr. Finchley had spoken. Words that had convinced her once and for all to travel to a remote coastal town in Devon, to meet and marry a complete stranger. “He told me that Mr. Thornhill had been a soldier,” she said, “and that he knew how to keep a woman safe.”

  Justin Thornhill cast another brooding glance at the pale, dark-haired beauty sitting across from Boothroyd. She was slight, but shapely, her modest traveling gown doing nothing to disguise the high curve of her breasts and the narrow lines of her small waist. When first he’d seen her in the taproom, he had thought she was a fashionable traveler on her way to Abbot’s Holcombe, the resort town further up the coast. He had no reason to think otherwise. The Miss Reynolds he had been expecting—the plain, sensible spinster who had responded to his matrimonial advertisement—had never arrived.

  This Miss Reynolds was a different class of woman altogether.

  She sat across from Boothroyd, her back ramrod straight, and her elegant, gloved hands folded neatly upon her lap in a pretty attitude. She regarded the curmudgeonly steward with wide, doe-like hazel eyes and when she spoke, she did so in the smooth, cultured tones of a gentlewoman. No, Justin amended. Not a gentlewoman. A lady.

  She was nothing like the two, sturdy widows that Boothroyd had interviewed earlier for the position of housekeeper. Those women had, ironically, been more in line with Justin’s original specifications—the spec
ifications he had barked at his aging steward those many months ago when Boothroyd had first broached the idea of his advertising for a wife.

  “I have no interest in courtship,” he’d said, “nor in weeping young ladies who take to their bed with megrims. What I need is a woman. A woman who is bound by law and duty to see to the running of this godforsaken mausoleum. A woman that I can bed on occasion. Damnation, Boothroyd, I did not survive six years in India all so I could live like a bloody monk when I returned home.”

  They were words spoken in frustration after the last in a long line of housekeepers had quit without notice. Words that owed a great deal to physical loneliness and far too many glasses of strong spirits.

  The literal-minded Boothroyd had taken them as his marching orders.

  The next morning, before Justin had even arisen from his alcohol-induced slumber, his ever-efficient steward had arranged for an advertisement to be placed in the London papers. It had been brief and to the point:

  MATRIMONY: Retired army officer, thirty-two, of moderate means and quiet disposition wishes to marry a spinster or widow of the same age. Suitable lady will be sensible, compassionate, and capable of managing the household of remote country property. Independent fortune unimportant. Letters to be addressed, post paid, to Mr. T. Finchley, Esq., Harley Street.

  Justin had initially been angry. He’d even threatened to give Boothroyd the sack. However, within a few days he had found himself warming to the idea of acquiring a wife by advertisement. It was modern and efficient. As straightforward as any other business transaction. The prospective candidates would simply write to Thomas Finchley, Justin’s London attorney, and Finchley would negotiate the rest, just as competently as he’d negotiated the purchase of Greyfriar’s Abbey or those shares Justin had recently acquired in the North Devon Railway.

  Still, he had no intention of making the process easy. He’d informed both Boothroyd and Finchley that he would not bestir himself on any account. If a prospective bride wanted to meet, she would have to do so at a location within easy driving distance of the Abbey.

  He’d thought such a condition would act as a deterrent.

  It hadn’t occurred to him that women routinely travelled such distances to take up employment. And what was his matrimonial advertisement if not an offer for a position in his household?

  In due time, Finchley had managed to find a woman for whom an isolated existence in a remote region of coastal Devon sounded agreeable. Justin had even exchanged a few brief letters with her. Miss Reynolds hadn’t written enough for him to form a definite picture of her personality, nor of her beauty—or lack thereof. Nevertheless, he’d come to imagine her as a level-headed spinster. The sort of spinster who would endure his conjugal attentions with subdued dignity. A spinster who wouldn’t burst into tears at the sight of his burns.

  The very idea that anything like this lovely young creature would grace his table and his bed was frankly laughable.

  Not but that she wasn’t determined.

  Though that was easily remedied. Folding his paper, Justin rose from his chair. “I’ll take it from here, Boothroyd,” he said. He watched as Miss Reynold’s eyes lifted to his. He could see the exact moment when she realized who he was. To her credit, she didn’t cry or faint or spring from her chair and bolt out of the room. She merely looked at him in that same odd way she had in the taproom when first she beheld his burns.

  “Miss Reynolds,” Mr. Boothroyd said. “May I present Mr. Thornhill?”

  She did rise then and offered him her hand. It was small and slender, encased in a fine, dark kid glove. “Mr. Thornhill.”

  “Miss Reynolds.” His fingers briefly engulfed hers. “Sit down, if you please.” He took Boothroyd’s chair, waiting until his loyal retainer had removed himself to the other side of the parlor before fixing his gaze on his prospective bride.

  Her face was a flawless, creamy porcelain oval, framed by dark brown hair swept back into an oversized roll at the nape of her neck. Her nose was straight—neither too short, nor too long—and her gently rounded chin was firm to the point of stubbornness. If not for the velvety softness of those wide doe eyes, she might have appeared prideful or even haughty. And perhaps she was, if her clothing was anything by which to judge.

  Granted, he knew nothing of women’s fashion—aside from the fact that the hooks, laces, and miles of skirts were damnably inconvenient when one was in an amorous frame of mind. But one didn’t have to know the difference between a petticoat and a paletot to recognize that everything Miss Reynolds wore was of the finest quality. Even the tiny buttons on her bodice and the fashionable belt and buckle that encircled her waist appeared to have been crafted by a master.

  Next to her, the suit of clothes he’d chosen to wear that morning to meet his intended bride felt rather shabby and third rate. Far worse, he was beginning to feel a little shabby and third rate himself.

  “You’ll forgive the deception,” he said. “As you can see, I’m not the sort of man a woman would wish to find at the other end of a matrimonial advertisement.”

  “Aren’t you?” She tilted her head. The small movement brought her hair in the path of a shaft of sunlight filtering in through the parlor window. It glittered for an instant in her fashionable coiffure, revealing threads of red and gold amongst the brown. “Why do you say so?” she asked. “Is it because of your burns?”

  He was hard pressed to conceal a flinch. Damn, but she was blunt. He wouldn’t have expected such plain speaking from a decorative little female. “You can’t claim that the sight doesn’t offend you,” he replied. “I saw your reaction in the taproom.”

  Her brows drew together in an elegant line. “I had no reaction, sir.”

  “No?”

  “I was, perhaps, a little surprised,” she admitted. “But not because of your burns.” Her cheeks flushed a delicate shade of rose. “You are…very tall.”

  His chest tightened. He was uncertain what to make of her blushes—or of her personal remark. She was such an elegant, finely made little creature. He wondered if she thought him too big. Good God, he was too big. And too rough, too coarse, and too common and a host of other negative traits, the distastefulness of which he had not fully appreciated until being in her presence.

  “You were expecting someone shorter?”

  “No, I…I didn’t know what to expect. How could I have? You never mentioned anything of that sort in your letters.”

  Justin recalled the polite and wholly impersonal letters he had written to her over the last months. He’d described Greyfriar’s Abbey, the seasons and the weather and the sound of the waves hitting the rocks beneath the cliffs. He’d mentioned the repairs to the roof, the new outbuildings, and the persistent trouble with keeping on servants.

  His own appearance had not merited a single line.

  “Would you still have come, had you known?” he asked.

  “About your burns, do you mean?” She did not hesitate. “Yes, I think so. But there’s no way to prove it now, is there? You shall have to take my word for it.”

  He allowed his gaze to drift over her face, taking in every feature, from the dark, mahogany brows winging over her wide set eyes, to the gentle curve of her cheekbones, and down to the impossibly sensual bow of her upper lip. It was not the face of woman who had to answer a matrimonial advertisement in order to find a husband.

  Take her word for it? “I suppose I must,” he said.

  As always, I owe tremendous thanks to those who helped to polish the final manuscript of The Viscount and the Vicar’s Daughter into the story that it is today.

  To my wonderful British and American beta readers, Sarah and Flora, thank you for your time, your generosity, and all of your helpful feedback. I am so grateful to have you both in my corner.

  To my fantastic editor, Deb Nemeth, thank you for all of your kind comments and suggestions. Your scrupulous attention to detail has made this a stronger book (and me a better writer).

  To my amazin
g publicist, Emma Boyer at Smith Publicity, thank you for your tireless efforts on my behalf. I’m so happy to have a fellow Victorian era (and dressage!) enthusiast to promote my fiction projects.

  To my fabulous friends, fans, and followers across social media and print, thank you for your readership. Your kind comments, messages, and reviews make all the hard work worthwhile.

  And, finally, to my parents, Vickie and Eugene, thank you for supporting and encouraging my writing—even when it’s a project I don’t let you read.

  Mimi Matthews writes both historical non-fiction and traditional historical romances set in Victorian England. Her articles on nineteenth century social history have been published on various academic and history sites, including the Victorian Web and the Journal of Victorian Culture, and are also syndicated weekly at BUST Magazine. In her other life, Mimi is an attorney with both a Juris Doctor and a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature. She resides in California with her family, which includes an Andalusian dressage horse, two Shelties, and two Siamese cats.

  To learn more, please visit

  www.MimiMatthews.com

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  NON-FICTION

  The Pug Who Bit Napoleon

  Animal Tales of the 18th and 19th Centuries

  A Victorian Lady’s Guide to Fashion and Beauty

  Coming in 2018 from Pen and Sword Books

  FICTION

  The Lost Letter

  A Victorian Romance

  The Advertisement

  A Victorian Romance

  Coming in 2018 from Perfectly Proper Press

  Table of Contents

  Title Page