An Unexpected Earl
Page 30
The men had yet to discover Scepter’s endgame, why they wanted those men in the government, why they were willing to have them placed as low-level trustees. Yet the men had succeeded in drawing attention to government appointments, which would be made more carefully at all levels going forward. In that, at least, they could claim a victory.
Scepter was still alive, but they’d succeeded in cutting off another arm from the monster. Someday, they’d kill it outright.
Pearce grinned. “I want to give you your engagement gift.”
His thoughtfulness warmed her. “But I didn’t get you anything.”
“You’ve given me your heart. I don’t need anything more.” But then he paused. “Except your dowry. That I need from you right now.”
She blinked, caught completely off guard by that. “But we’ve never discussed—”
“Your locket.”
Her hand shot up to her neck to clasp it. “I don’t—I don’t understand…”
“I want it back.”
She didn’t stop him when he reached behind her neck to unfasten the ribbon. But she didn’t like this. Not at all. When he slipped it away, she felt utterly naked and exposed.
Unease twisted her belly. “Pearce, what are you playing at?”
“Nothing. I’m perfectly serious. I’m giving you your engagement gift.”
He reached into his inside breast pocket and slowly withdrew a long blue ribbon. From the end dangled a new gold locket.
Her eyes blurred with tears, and she trembled as he fastened it around her neck. To do something this thoughtful, this poignant… At that moment, she couldn’t find her voice to tell him how much she loved him.
“But it’s also our marriage settlement.”
“Pardon?” She wasn’t expecting that. They hadn’t negotiated anything.
“I put it inside the locket.” When she hesitated, he insisted gently, “Go on. Open it.”
With trembling fingers, she opened the tiny clasp and revealed the slip of paper tucked within. She unfolded it to read—
She couldn’t believe her eyes. Her tearful gaze darted up to his, and he smiled lovingly at her shocked reaction.
“This…can’t be right,” she whispered hoarsely, overcome with emotion. His masculine handwriting declared that she would keep all of her current fortune, including Bradenhill. To do with however she’d like.
“I assure you it is. Merritt told me that it can stand as a legal contract in court once you agree to it.” He took the slip from her trembling fingers, refolded it, and closed it inside the locket with a soft snap. “But I warn you that none of the terms I’ve proposed are negotiable. Especially my pledge never to put a turnpike through your property.”
“I love you.” She flung her arms around him and pressed him close, as tightly as all her strength would allow. “I love you so much!”
When he kissed her, she tasted his love for her in return.
She leaned into the embrace, and desire sparked instantly between them. He kissed her possessively and hungrily, and a soft whimper of need rose from her throat. One he answered with a growl and a caress of his hand along the side of her body.
She shivered and reluctantly reminded him, “We can’t…let this…get out of control.”
“Oh yes, we can.” He tilted her head to the side and nipped his teeth at her exposed neck.
Somehow finding enough resolve through the fog engulfing her, she slipped from his arms. “We cannot.” But dear heavens, how much she wanted to! Panting to catch back the breath he’d stolen, she reminded him, “We don’t know how long it will take for the annulment to be formalized. No matter much I want you—and believe me, my love, I dearly want you”—she punctuated that with a caress of her hand down his waistcoat—“we can’t risk that I might become enceinte. We’ve already taken too much risk already.”
“It will be a long time, then,” he agreed, raking a gaze of such heated longing over her that she ached from it. “A very, very long time.”
Her lips parted, about to murmur terms of surrender—
“Perhaps not as long as you think,” a deep voice called out from the shadows near the open terrace door.
Startled, she wheeled around with a gasp.
Merritt Rivers stepped inside the house. Dressed all in black from head to boots, he blended eerily into the night and came fresh from horseback, right down to the scent of the stable that wafted around him and the half-dried mud on his boots.
“How long were you standing there?” Pearce demanded irritably.
“Long enough.” Merritt grinned at their expense and flamed the blush heating Amelia’s cheeks. “Sorry to interrupt, but I stumbled across something you might like to have.”
He reached up his sleeve and withdrew a rolled sheet of paper torn from a book, then held it out to her.
Frowning, she unrolled it and scanned over the page. Columns of signatures, dates, occasions, witnesses…her own signature next to Aaron’s a third of the way from the bottom of the page.
Her breath rushed from her lungs. She couldn’t believe… “The parish register?”
“My wedding gift,” Merritt corrected with a smile. “Your name is no longer in the church records.”
She didn’t know what to say. Except… “And now neither is anyone else’s on this page.” Shaking her head against the temptation of keeping it, she handed it back. “You have to return it.” She blinked rapidly to fight back the tears. To come so close to erasing everything—but she simply couldn’t. “Those other couples might need proof that they were legally wed. I could never destroy that for them.”
“I thought you’d say that.” Merritt’s eyes twinkled mischievously. “So I replaced that page with a copy that faithfully renders all the other signatures and conveniently skips over yours.”
“Faithfully rendered,” Pearce repeated. “Forged, you mean.”
Merritt fixed a meaningful look on Pearce. “Do you really care about the difference?”
“No,” Amelia replied, answering for both of them. She pressed the page against her bosom, unwilling to relinquish it. “Not at all.”
With a knowing grin, Merritt nodded at Amelia and slapped Pearce on the back as he turned to leave, heading back into the night. “Congratulations.”
Amelia stared down at the page. Could it be real? She could barely believe it. Now, after so many years, the thing that had cast such dread and agony over her life…the thing that was keeping her from the man she loved—the scrawl of her signature on a thin, weightless piece of paper.
“What are you going to do with it?” Pearce asked quietly.
The only official record of her marriage, the only proof that existed in the world that she’d stood in that church and pledged her life to a lie… She shook her head. “All those years,” she whispered, “I thought I was married…”
She raised her gaze to his. For the first time, there was no longer any shame, no humiliation, no secrets. Now, there was only Pearce.
“But there was never a marriage. Only vows that were lies, a love that was never shared…no honoring or obeying. Only years of punishment.” She stepped slowly over to the fireplace. “No one can argue that what I had was a true marriage, in the eyes of God or the Church. So no one can argue with this. This marriage gets no more of me.”
She cast the page into the flames. The sheet burned, and with every black curl of the paper, a spark of freedom lit in her heart.
Pearce came up behind her and slipped his arms around her, pulling her against him.
“It’s all over now,” he assured her, nuzzling her hair.
“No.” Her hand rose to her neck, to the little gold locket that hung there. And always would. “Our life together is just beginning.”
Order Anna Harrington’s next book in the Lords of the Armory series
An
Extraordinary Lord
On sale June 2021
Author’s Note
I had a fabulous time writing this romance, one that proved to be a rollicking good time. As you might have guessed, I drew on several historical facts—and one literary—to bring you this adventure.
Let’s begin at the end…of marriage. It was nearly impossible in Regency England to end one, even a tragically cruel one. It took an act of Parliament to secure a divorce, which was seldom granted, always scandalous, and usually a humiliating experience for both parties who had to publicly disclose their evidence, no matter how degrading. For a husband, the only grounds for divorce was adultery. But to claim so was to admit that he’d not only been cuckolded but also wasn’t man enough to satisfy his wife’s carnal desires. No wonder, then, that most men only sought divorce after their wives had publicly left the marriage. A woman seeking divorce had to prove not just adultery but also extreme cruelty. Not an easy task considering that husbands were legally entitled to beat their wives so long as it was done in moderation with the intent to correct their misbehavior. Further, most divorced women had to surrender all their property, all their social standing, and all their rights to their children. Obtaining an annulment was even more difficult and damning. Annulment was allowed only in cases of fraud, incompetence (in which either party was underage and married without the guardian’s consent, or proven legally insane), or impotence; nonconsummation was not grounds for annulment. Only in 1937 were women allowed to divorce on grounds of abandonment, cruelty, and incurable insanity.
Shooting the bridge! Pearce and Amelia order the waterman to “shoot the bridge” in order to escape. That meant running the boat through the dangerously swirling waters of the Thames as it flowed beneath old London Bridge. Over the years, as the bridge grew in size, the narrow arches where the river flowed between the stone foundations—known as starlings—became narrower and fewer. The result: the river sped beneath the bridge at an astonishing rate, resulting in life-threatening rapids and a drop in water level of at least six feet. Only the brave or the very foolish attempted to guide a boat through the bridge during a flood or high tide; many drowned. Although in 1751 its two center arches were replaced by a wider, single span to make the bridge more navigable, paintings after this change still show whitewater churning around the starlings. A new bridge opened in 1831. No one knows exactly when watermen stopped shooting the bridge. During my research, none of the historians I contacted were able to provide a definitive answer, including the Museum of London, except to say that it had ended by 1832 when the old bridge was demolished. So at the slight risk of historical inaccuracy, I let Pearce and Amelia shoot the bridge. After all, I’ve never been able to resist a really good chase scene.
As many of you might have guessed, Amelia’s sham marriage at the hand of her brother was inspired by Charles Dickens’s novel, Great Expectations. In the Dickens book, Miss Havisham’s brother tortures her for inheriting the family fortune by arranging for a man to court her, propose to her, and jilt her, destroying her life to secure his revenge. I took that idea a step further by having Frederick Howard let Amelia believe she was lawfully married and then abandoned in order to get his hands on her money. (In fact, Amelia was named after the Dickensian version of Miss Havisham.)
And finally, the Hellfire club. In the eighteenth century, it became fashionable for gentlemen to establish Hellfire clubs where men of “quality” could partake in immoral acts. The one in this book was based on the club established by Sir Francis Dashwood, the most infamous of the Hellfire clubs. With a motto of Fais ce que tu voudras (“Do what thou wilt”), the club played on religious and pagan themes, with meetings held in Medmenham Abbey, beneath which ran a series of caves carved out for meetings and decorated with mythological themes, phallic images, and other sexual symbols. The members addressed each other as brothers and the leader as the abbot, and during meetings, members wore ritual clothing—white trousers, jacket, and cap—while the abbot wore red. Prostitutes, referred to as nuns, were often present. Rumors claimed that the club sacrificed to Bacchus, Venus, and Dionysus, and meetings often included mock rituals of a pornographic nature, drinking, banqueting, and wenching.
I hope you enjoyed this historical glimpse into Regency England as much as you enjoyed spending time with Pearce and Amelia. Happy reading!
About the Author
Anna Harrington is an award-winning author of Regency romance. She writes spicy historicals with alpha heroes and independent heroines, layers of emotion, and lots of sizzle. Anna was nominated for a RITA in 2017 for her title How I Married a Marquess, and her debut, Dukes Are Forever, won the 2016 Maggie Award for Best Historical Romance. A lover of all things chocolate and coffee, when she’s not hard at work writing her next book or planning her next series, Anna loves to fly airplanes, go ballroom dancing, or tend her roses. She is a terrible cook who hopes to one day use her oven for something other than shoe storage.
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