"I've no interest in Eugenius Miller's matters," she snarled in response, the composure of the lady she had so precisely and perfectly cultivated cracking like the glass of a shattered mirror. "We had quite a productive conversation between the two of us, Ellery - and I felt certain we had come to an understanding on how this... woman," she spat the word in Isobel's direction, "...was using, seducing you; all the trouble and ruin it would bring upon your names, both hers, and yours. Had we not come to an accord?" Lady Maryweather tried to play sweet with a sugary tone in her voice and a smile on her lips, though the reality lurking beneath her face could scarcely be hidden by now.
"A courteous accord? That's what we call blackmailing now?" Ellery retorted, his voice full of airy sarcasm and smug satisfaction. Isobel could feel it too.
"These sorts of accusations only hurt yourself, Ellery," Lady Maryweather spoke through angrily gritted teeth, her eyes full of spite.
"But that's what it's called, is it not - blackmail? Please, correct me if my brain, so mired with worry and the want of lovely Isobel, has made a grave trespass in calling it as its appropriately termed," Ellery crowed. Lady Maryweather's cheeks burned brighter the more frustrated and irate she grew.
"Perhaps we need to come to a new agreement, Lord Brighton," she rasped in revilement.
"Blackmail, Lady Maryweather - and from the tales I've heard, I'm not your only victim, am I?" Lady Maryweather's rage broke with that statement into a fractured image of worried confusion; Ellery smiled. "I've said this far too many times in the last day, love, but - Lady Emily Maryweather, you certainly didn't think yourself to be the only noble in all of northern England to associate herself with coy saboteurs and 'little birds', did you?" Lady Maryweather took a step back, hand to her chest, as if ready to faint.
"I... I don't quite underst... and," she stammered.
"I'm certain you do. The difference, though, m'lady," Ellery stated authoritatively, sauntering along the top of the staircase as he spoke; Isobel savored every second, her expression growing full of warmth - and so full of pride, at seeing him assert himself to her. He truly had forced off his chains. "...the difference, is that my friend is not a 'little bird'. No, my friend is far from a dove. My friend is a vicious bird of prey, its talons sharpened, its eyes quick, its manner merciless," he said. Isobel watched the doorway - and she saw the gleam in his eyes. Just as Lord Brighton described. He smiled a sick smile - a smile that had so long kept her in wary suspense and writhing fear. It was then, when he grinned up at Lord Brighton with those eyes, that she realized the identity of Lord Brighton's spy. Perhaps the most loyal - and the person she had least expected it to be.
Arthur Ellsworth's ghastly gaze fell then upon Isobel, whose face brimmed with stunned surprise. He tipped his hat to her, giving her his smile. She had never trusted him... but perhaps that's precisely why he made the most effective spy, in all Lady Maryweather's entourage.
"Who—what?" Lady Maryweather gasped; she stumbled backwards, revelations overwhelming her.
"If I revealed too much, that'd spoil our game, wouldn't it, Emily?" Ellery announced proudly. "Now, my hawk has far more evidence of your wrongdoings than simple blackmail - no, that'd be silly, even expected, from a woman like yourself. But some crimes my hawk has seen your hand sullied with..." Lord Brighton clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth, shaking his head. "Perhaps the Duke of Thrushmore wasn't as wicked a man, if we dared compare him to you, love. Though, you're in luck - it seems likely he'll be needing a friend to wallow in ruin with."
"You... you snake," Lady Maryweather managed. She took hobbling steps towards the stairwell, full of rage, before tripping on her long and flowing dress, falling to her knees with a yelp. Quivering, fearful and broken, she could take little more. "I'll ruin b-both of you," she vowed weakly, before the excitement claimed her and she fell faint with a sigh at the foot of the stairs.
Isobel rushed to her lover's side, grasping at his waist; she looked down on the fallen lady with pride. Just like the Duke of Thrushmore, Lady Maryweather had been a lie. And as Lord Brighton held her tight and kissed her, she felt a satisfying warmth fill her from head to toe.
Gentlemen, ladies, deception and ruination... none of it mattered. For no amount of lies or financial ruin could bankrupt the love they shared.
"Now," Ellery whispered against her lips. "We've a wedding to plan, don't we?"
The Duke’s Headstrong Woman
True Love In London
By Virginia Vice
CHAPTER ONE
From the sparkling coasts of India's shores to the rough frontier of Canada; along the steamy coasts of British Africa and the harsh Australian climes, Lady Nadia Havenshire had ventured across and beyond the scope of the empire her father considered himself a proud part of. She'd shared dinner with company men in the islands near Siam and she'd fanned herself in the steaming sands of the Near East.
Now life back in dreary northern England seemed positively dull - though not simply for the change of weather, but that figured quite a bit into her frame of mind no doubt. Her father, the Duke of Emerys, had sent for Lady Havenshire - and though she had enjoyed life outside the prison of waistcoats and dresses and dinner parties and 'courting' and old Lady Henrietta's gossip, Nadia's father had always treated her well and had loved her dearly; or, at least, he'd treated her as well as a father could treat a daughter when straitjacketed by the expectations of society built against daughters. She loved her father, but that silent resentment could never be undone - even, or perhaps especially considering, all she'd learned while traveling the world.
Lady Nadia had seen women across, and even outside, her father's beloved British Empire - of course, the social constants remained the same; women were mothers, women were daughters; women fed the family and women kept the home, and this was no different from the expectations of many women in the world from which Nadia had come. Things were not always the same, though, much to her surprise. In the ports along the coasts of the fledgling America, Nadia had even seen women drinking and dancing with sailors! In Africa, she'd seen local women hunting; fighting, protecting their kin, with status the same as their beloved brothers and husbands. The thought fascinated her, and she'd even indulged in the thought of abandoning the craggy, rain-spattered forests of northern England for a life free of expectations, as a woman indulging in the freedom so often afforded English men.
Instead, she sat in a carriage rolling across cobblestones, the clop-clop of horse hooves her only comfort, the whistle of her driver faint and dull, like a cudgel banging against the base of her skull. She rubbed her temples; the trip across the sea hadn't been comfortable, as she'd been forced to book passage at the last minute on any ship that would take her, and wound up amid rowdy sailors amid a creaking wooden frame tossed by rough waves, water creeping and seeping through every hole and loose crease and every rotted beam on the timber-woven frame. The to-and-fro left her back sore and her head pounding in faint ache, and on the long trip from the ports along the roads to northern England she'd spent two days bouncing and bobbing gently, until the rhythm had made her back numb.
She expected about the same level of comfort when she attempted to ease back in to her 'old' way of life. She didn't know that she'd be able to go back to that ever again - not with the knowledge she'd gained abroad. She'd met teachers, strong women and strong men who saw her and wanted to see her actualized, as they termed it. One of women who'd accompanied her on her trip to Africa had taught her a woman's place is wherever she wishes; the headmaster of a boarding school had taught her arithmetic, language, and literature, and had commented that Lady Nadia took to education as a fish to the English Channel. More than anything, Lady Havenshire had learned her worth while sailing the seas and venturing into lands few had ever seen. And when a woman with heart and spirit like Lady Nadia Havenshire learns she has worth to the world, the idea of subjugating that worth in a society controlled by men feels less and less appealing with each clopping hoof
-step taken along the rural roads towards towering manses and cloaking forests.
When the carriage carried Nadia past the crumbled stone wall along the roadside, and she began to recognize the old weathered posts holding dead lanterns that swayed with passing breezes, she knew she'd arrived at the fringed edges of the Duchy of Emerys, the leaf-choked land of green and plenty she'd left behind years ago. Now turning twenty, Nadia's gut sank as she thought on precisely what she'd be expected to do with her waning youth. To the world in northern England, many women her age had already found men to marry; dukes to court them and to control their lives, making decisions for the young women so that they'd never need to make any themselves. The very idea of a man with a title crossing the threshold of Havenshire Manor to seek her life as his to control made her wretch, and not simply because she'd seen that women could do as they wish in other parts of the world. The whole idea had always felt... wrong, to her, even as a child; perhaps that had been the reason that, upon reaching her seventeenth birthday, Lady Nadia had chosen to venture past the gates of her family's manse in the first place. She'd seen the way her friends' lives had unfolded - a childhood playmate, the Lady Emily of Staffords, had been betrothed to a man since the day she'd turned sixteen. She had not been the only one - and in spite of her father's insistences, Nadia refused to go to the debutante balls and lavish parties that her friends had wrapped themselves up so readily in. The very thought of marrying a man she'd scarcely even met, so that he could take her land and her name and title and demand of her how she would dress and talk and walk, and even what thoughts she could think... none of that lifestyle had appealed to her, even in her youth. Her father had always called her a 'willful, blythe young spirit.' She'd never known what it meant, but after her time among beggars and teachers and kings in foreign lands, perhaps she'd begun to see just what he had seen in her.
"We'll be coming up on the gates soon, m'lady," Egan commented. Her father had had the courtesy of sending a man Nadia knew and could trust; Egan, an aging, rotund laugh of a man with stringy, graying hair and a bushy beard, had gained quite a bit of weight since Nadia had last seen him, though it only added to the boisterous, loud and jolly chauffeur she had known since her youth. He hummed away, which while it would normally give her a sense of peace of mind, instead only created an unnerving reminder of what she was returning to.
"You've hummed the same tunes for twenty years, Egan," she commented wryly, her head pulsing and her heart pumping; the sound reminded her of home, and being reminded of home didn't quite have the comforting cheeriness it held for many others. To her home was a doomed existence she had no interest in. "Haven't you learned any new tunes since I've been out of England?"
"Your father was always right about you, since you were a little thing, Lady Nadia," Egan chortled, glancing through the window in the wall separating the damp, cool air of England from the cramped confines of the rather spartan carriage Nadia's father had sent to fetch her. "A willful firebrand of a daughter, he said you'd grow up to be."
"And I'm presuming your implication is that I grew up to be willful? Is a woman willful for wanting to hear a different tune, Egan?" Nadia responded with a grin. She had no shame in that title, though she knew it would be spoken scathingly in the whispers of crass bachelors discussing available brides with prestigious titles.
"I only know that when your father hired me he admonished me, asking me to hum a few tunes for him to break the silence. And now, with as much conviction as he had, you want me to stop. You're certainly his daughter," Egan said with a nod.
"I didn't say stop. Just a different tune, is all," Nadia protested.
"The classics never change," Egan joked. Concern crossed Lady Nadia's face; she reasoned that perhaps she could divine some of the details of this rather sudden visit of hers from Egan, who had always been one of her father's loyal and trusted servants. Before he began to hum again, she interjected quietly.
"Egan, have you any idea why my father's sent for me? I had not forgotten about him, or about the family estate, but I simply had been enjoying my time abroad, learning of the way of things. Certainly not something he could fault me for, yes?" she asked, guarded, fearing that perhaps something had angered her father and that on her return she would be subject to his wrath.
"Oh, no, I don't think your father considered you estranged or anysuch, m'lady, at least not by the manner in which he spoke of you. Not a fiber in him has lost love for his only child, I assure you, Nadia," Egan laughed. That did little to assuage her fears, though. Lady Nadia could handle an argument with her father - and if nothing so simple faced her when the carriage climbed the hill upon which Havenshire Manor sat, fear of the unknown struck her instead.
"Then... what could have troubled him, do you think?" Lady Nadia asked innocently. Egan hesitated; she could feel a tension in him, as his eyes kept to the broad and empty road; the silence mired her in dread.
"Begging your pardon, m'lady, but I think it... best, for Lord Havenshire to explain the situation to you himself. I'm but a simple driver, after all," Egan commented, and she knew what that particular choice of words meant; he was playing ignorant, perhaps at the direct request of her father. Frustrated and quietly frightened, Nadia's breath rattled as she exhaled deeply.
"Certainly, he wouldn't be cross with you for giving a single hint of a detail, Egan?" Nadia whispered, closing conspiratorially towards the window near Egan's ear. She could see his features - vexed, perhaps by his loyalty to her father, but most certainly vexed just the same with a deep-seated worry of his own.
"You're a woman who's come of age, m'lady, and your father has... concerns, quite reasonable concerns, as to the disposition of the family estate. These are, of course, concerns common to every man and woman of station, m'lady, and so you... need not worry too greatly, yes?" Egan tempered rather grave matters of speech with a comforting tone and a toothy grin, but Nadia could tell that whatever had happened troubled trusty Egan just as deeply as it troubled her father. Nadia saw no need to press; she knew Egan would reveal little else. With worry on her brow Lady Nadia reclined across the carriage's padded bench, watching the countryside roll by. She recognized the landmarks; the crumbled statue, an old guardhouse situated along a long-rotted wooden wall. Much of the manse appeared frozen in time; her father had little interest in the stodgy cobbled-together structures that had once littered the grounds, preferring the bright and dominant architecture of the new designers from London, with windows and white paints and swirling facades lit by the glow of the sun. Still, something cast a long shadow over the rest of the trip - and not just her own pained memories of men slighting her or the controlled society she had now chained herself to once more, the manacles tightening further and further with each step taken closer to the manse.
"We'll be scaling the hill soon, m'lady," Egan said, rather dour; the remainder of the trip came in silence. No more humming, no more curious questions; no laughs or boasts of joy. Whatever had driven this reunion weighed heavily on the both of them.
CHAPTER TWO
"Quite a ride, eh, m'lady?" Egan asked, once more wearing his usual manner of joyful grin, though it felt far more manufactured now than it had been in years past, as if he hid something beneath the mask of mirth. Lady Havenshire stepped out of the carriage, the breathtaking size of the manor reminding her starkly of how small the world here was, where a wealthy duke's manor, garden, and the bounteous lands beyond dwarfed so much of the surroundings. The sun setting as evening began to creep in, Lady Nadia yawned, holding her gloved fingers to her lips out of courtesy. The windows, an entire gleaming array of them, spat back her reflection as the sun shone brightly; dressed in her simplest dress, a lacy affair of golden-yellow with a laced bodice of brilliant pearly white, her hair fell in curled, vibrant fiery-auburn coils along her dainty shoulders. Though she had a reputation as trouble among the local nobles, she didn't quite have the imposing stature of the firebrand they certainly all imagined - a petite woman, of only five
feet tall and a thin, lithe figure, that small personage hid a vibrant mind and independent personality.
"One never quite realizes how large the estate is, until spending so much time away, Egan," she commented in a quiet tone. Standing tall and broad, with rows upon rows of windows and white pillars and archways, the mansion reminded her of the pictures of crumbling temples of classical antiquity, rebuilt to soar as they had in their prime, and glowing with a glorious marbled sheen. Egan offered his hand to escort her through the garden pathway and to the manor's front door; wrought-iron trellises overgrown with vibrant white-tipped ivy leaves lined the entrance to the mansion, beds of sprouting flowers nestled at their metal feet.
"Nelson has done quite well keeping the gardens as alive as I remembered," Lady Nadia observed.
"You won't let me escort you into the manor, m'lady?" Egan said with a frown, his hand still outstretched as the redheaded woman passed him by. With a playfully chiding look she turned to the aging chauffeur, her arms crossed atop her chest.
"You expect a willful firebrand like myself to take an offer, just because you're a man?" she joked. "Would my father have accepted such a request, had he been a woman?"
"I think he would have, if only to make a tired old man happy for a few moments," Egan said with facetious sadness. Lady Havenshire sighed, smiled, and finally took Egan's hand, its surface hardened like worked leather after years of laboring and handling rough, hempen ropes.
"Is this making the tired old man happy?" Lady Nadia joked, as the two of them walked to the manor's front door. Emotions overcame the aging driver, a longtime friend of the family; Nadia couldn't remember a time when Egan hadn't seen to her father and mother, before she passed. He looked away, sullen, and concern crept into Nadia's features.
Regency Romance Omnibus 2018: Dominate Dukes & Tenacious Women Page 16