A Ravishing Beauty in Disguise: A Historical Regency Romance Book

by Emily Honeyfield

  William. The man could only be Lord William Abernale.

  It was a fact that left her stricken with countless questions. Why on earth had William snuck up behind her? Why was he there, in the enormous estate of the Marquess—wearing a black hood?

  It was yet unclear if William recognised her back. But seconds later, William stretched his hands forward and gripped her elbows. Harriet felt a shriek ripple through her but forced her teeth over her lip to stifle it. Her hood fell back, revealing her long, luscious curls.

  In a fit of panic, Harriet flung her hand across her neck, alerting him not to make a sound.

  In response, William arched his brow. “I wasn’t the one who shrieked.”

  Harriet felt there was only one way to distract him. With her black mask over her face, she sensed he couldn’t yet recognise her. She took a slight step forward and drew her lips against his, nearly inhaling him with passion. Her ears thudded with the strength of her heart.

  William’s hands wrapped around her back, latching her tight against him. Her breasts were heavy against his chest. Between her thighs, she felt herself grow hungry for him. He fell against the opposite tree, his lips sucking at her lower one. A deep moan escaped his lips.

  But just as the kiss deepened, Harriet tore herself away from him and stretched her legs wildly away—racing towards the gate. She knew William wouldn’t be able to call after her. Plus, after the intensity of that kiss, she felt sure he was stricken, unable to move. Harriet ran quicker, surging towards her horse. When she finally reached him, she unravelled his reins quickly and barrelled down the road, her heart still snapping away in her throat.

  She prayed that William hadn’t the good sense to suspect her.

  Yet—why on earth had William been there, lurking behind her? How had he discovered her? And what would happen in the wake of that kiss—one that had made her weak at the knees and aching for more?

  She felt terribly unsure of everything. When she arrived home, she threw her cape across her bed and paced, raking her fingers through her curls. Out of an enormous collection of regrets from the evening, one of the biggest was that she hadn’t figured out why the men from south of the Thames had decided to bring the bags to the Marquess’ in the first place.

  Her life was filled with amorphous questions. Nothing seemed truthful or right. And she hadn’t a clue how to fix it. Not yet.

  Chapter 22

  The kiss had felt like a robbery in and of itself.

  The dark, shadowy figure he’d seen lurking up ahead of him had spun round, revealing luscious curls and bright eyes. Unfortunately, the shadows beneath the trees had allowed him very little comprehension of who this figure was. Yet, it was clear that whoever it was — the thief was a she.

  Why did he feel so certain that the figure was the thief everyone was speaking about? He felt it like a stone in his belly, an assurance he couldn’t question. When he arrived home nearly an hour later, he remained upright and pacing, his hands linked behind his back.

  Before long, grey sunlight filtered in through the window. Soon, Thomas would awaken—assuredly hungover, aching like a child. And in the wake of all that had happened the previous evening at the Arnolds’ estate, he could hardly focus on anything else: he’d nearly discovered the root of the current London chaos.

  It was true, admittedly, that he was rather jealous of this creature. She was far brasher than he was, robbing from the Marquess in the midst of his own ball—altogether under his nose. He’d only imagined himself sneaking into the mansion and robbing whatever he could in the darkness of the night. Of course, he hadn’t envisioned the estate to be so brightly lit, clearly a source of something rather sinister.

  Just after seven in the morning, he heard a rap on his door. He swung round to stare at it, blinking quickly, hoping to rid his face from any sort of fatigue. “Come in,” he called, regretting it almost immediately.

  Thomas revealed himself to be the hungover sad-sack William had envisioned. His eyes were blotched and red; his cheeks hung low. He allowed his arms to sag on either side of his body as he murmured, “Oh. You’re already awake. How? I thought surely you’d be just as wildly sick as I am.”

  “Perhaps I am,” William offered, trying to draw a bandage over his current situation, so that Thomas wouldn’t notice. “I’ve been up the past hour, trying not to vomit.”

  “Good. I’m grateful to know that I’m not alone in this.” Thomas sighed. He forced a leg into the room, then his second one, before sliding to the ground. He allowed his head to fall into his hands. “I don’t suppose you want to indulge in some sort of breakfast with me? Something especially greasy and salty. Anything you have on-hand.”

  “I’ll see what the cook can drum up,” William returned.

  Before long, William found himself seated like a kind of ghost across from his best friend—a man that could have been a total stranger, what with all the chaos in William’s current mind. The cook brought in a platter of sausages, of eggs, of rolls, and an enormous slab of butter, ogling them with big eyes that lurked just above her massive cheeks. William thanked her with a voice he didn’t recognise.

  Thomas dug into his food, drawing his teeth over the sausages. He chewed like a child with his mouth wide open. William’s stomach curdled, but he forced himself to eat. Whenever Thomas brought up the topic of Tatiana, he grinned and answered in a manner he felt appropriate, although he hardly remembered what he said. It seemed well enough for Thomas, though. He just needed any sort of echo chamber.

  After breakfast, William made an excuse and told Thomas he had to return to bed, that the illness was growing too great. He stretched out on his back and blinked at the ceiling, feeling the vibrant day erupt outside. The day wasn’t for him.

  Who on earth had this female thief been? And what kind of woman had the sort of bravery to embark out in the middle of the night to steal from the Marquess—especially after having stolen from him already, thus putting his guard up? Perhaps the woman was absolutely mental, the sort of person one was better off avoiding at all costs.

  But of course, after so many years abroad, William hadn’t the sort of initial instincts of a Londoner any longer. Rather, when he saw pain, darkness, fear, he longed to rush towards it, rather than be completely in the dark.

  Now, as his eyelids flickered closed, he made it a mission for himself to find this woman thief and ask her precisely what her mission was. Perhaps—and this was a thought that lurked far in the back of his mind—they could join forces. Perhaps this was precisely the sort of woman he’d been searching for all along.

  Chapter 23

  Throughout the days after the incident at the Marquess’ estates, Harriet lived in constant fear of being discovered. The anxiety caused her to stay up all night long, her teeth mangling her nails and her eyes searching for light in the distance, near the estate.

  She’d never allowed herself to be seen before, had never even come close. And just because previously she’d “trusted” William Abernale—even felt affection for him (as much as that mattered now)—didn’t mean that the moment he figured out who she was, he wouldn’t mention it to someone. Harriet had to operate under the belief that no one was to be trusted.

  Now, she felt completely exposed.

  Her mother, of course, caught on to Harriet’s wild-eyed behaviour. At breakfast, a few days after the event, Harriet shifted her eggs about with an ominous knife, turning her eyes towards the window.

  “Harriet. Harriet. I’m trying to speak with you …” her mother said.

  Harriet blinked at her. “Oh? I’m terribly sorry, Mother. What was it you said?”

  Her mother allowed her cheeks to sag. “Are you really so lost in that skull of yours that you’re resistant to a single conversation? Lately, it’s been akin to living with a ghost, you know. I’ve taken to searching for your howls in the night, although it seems not to have grown so dire.”

  Harriet offered her mother a soft laugh. “I’ve had trouble sleepin
g is all. Perhaps I’ll take some tonic prior to bed tonight.”

  Her mother allowed her shoulders to droop. Without Harriet’s father there—he’d gone away for business—the air in the room grew tense and expectant, as though Harriet was meant to craft conversation. But her brain felt heavy with only one topic.

  “It’s really quite ridiculous, all these robberies,” Harriet finally tried, choosing instead to lean into it. “It’s not that I pity them …”

  “Oh, and didn’t you hear?” her mother said, her voice simmering with gossip. “Another one. Two nights ago, I believe. That wretched Baron Vanderbilt. The one your father was tempted to go into business with a few years before until he learned of his dealings. He actually married for love when he was a young man, you know, yet soon became a different sort of creature.”

  “What exactly do you mean?” Harriet asked. Her heart beat so loudly, it echoed in her ears.

  “It seems that money became increasingly important to him, which immediately eliminated whatever affection he still had for his wife. Within a few months, he’d conned her brother into a bad business deal, then took on several other members of her family. She’s so mortified, having married such a terrible man, that she won’t get out of the marriage. She told Martha—you know, my friend in Sussex—that she hasn’t a lick of love for him left, yet feels so terribly foolish that she has to just … pretend for the rest of her life.”

  Harriet’s heart felt squeezed. Unsure of what else to do, she dropped a portion of egg onto her dry tongue and began to chew. She hadn’t been the one to thieve from Baron Vanderbilt. Yet again, she felt an ache of both resentment and intrigue for this unknown figure.

  Again, she questioned everything:

  Had William Abernale been trying to discover who these thieves were, in his lurking outside? Was that why he’d nearly “captured” or discovered her?

  Or had he been the very one to perform this task of thieving, just as she was?

  “Do you know what they took?” Harriet asked. Suddenly, she grew wildly hungry, shoving yet another morsel of egg into her mouth.

  “I don’t see how that’s relevant,” her mother said, sniffing.

  “Well, it’s terribly interesting, isn’t it? To know just exactly the sort of heartache these wretched people are experiencing …”

  “Harriet!” her mother cried. “Really. Just because these people operate so poorly amongst themselves, doesn’t mean they should be stolen from. It’s a terrible thing to wish such a thing on anyone, and produces poor will for us.”

  “That’s a bit of witchcraft, isn’t it?” Harriet sighed.

  Alternately, Harriet thought now, her teeth working madly, William could be on some sort of hunt for the very men she’d been after that night. The men with the bags in the back alleys, south of the Thames. Was there a possibility that William understood the inner workings of this dark business? How on earth could he have stumbled into it without lurking south of the Thames himself?

  She swam in sudden panic. Suddenly, Oliver’s face flashed before her eyes. Every minute that she sat elsewhere, not fighting for the betterment of his life and the lives of those he knew, felt wasted. Now that the doors had been opened to the horrors of the world, it felt ridiculous to sit at the sun-drenched breakfast table, the silverware and china glistening. As if on cue, the maid ambled in, asking in a bird-like voice if they required anything else.

  Harriet hung her chin in shame.

  Her mother requested that the windows be cleaned in the front parlour. Harriet felt the words ringing in her ears. Harriet shoved herself away from the breakfast table and excused herself, muttering something about going to read in her room. Her mother sighed inwardly, clearly disappointed.

  “I don’t know what I’ve done to displease you, Harriet. But you walk about this place as though it’s no longer suiting to you.”

  Harriet dropped herself atop her bed, forced her face into her pillow, and let out a strange, volatile scream, one that was stifled with the cloth and stuffing of the pillow. She made up her mind to head back into the field soon—regardless if William was lurking in the shadows or not. She couldn’t very well return to her ordinary life—breakfast, lunch, tea, gossip, dinner. It felt void of meaning.

  Chapter 24

  The thieving from Baron Vanderbilt had been a spontaneous action, inspired by a conversation he had with Thomas when they met for a drink near Bond Street. When William was able to tug Thomas away from conversation about Tatiana—a task that was no small feat, admittedly—Thomas lowered his head and muttered, “There she is. The wife of the Baron Vanderbilt. Just a shadow of what she used to be.”

  William’s eyes scanned the crowd before falling upon a skeletal figure, her cheeks hollow. Her hands scuttled across her chest, looking like tiny spiders.

  “What do you mean?” William asked, which forced Thomas into the rabbit hole of the dramatic story of the Baron Vanderbilt himself. How he’d once been in love with his wife but had soon tossed away that love for a bigger one of money. He’d wronged nearly everyone in her life, and had even stolen from his own brother, his own father. Of course, his dramatic level of wealth ensured that nobody crossed him, regardless of the treachery he committed.

  “I reckon he’s next, though,” Thomas said, his eyes glittering.

  “Next? What do you mean, next?” William asked.

  “All these villainous rich men are being robbed from,” Thomas said, shrugging. “If I was going to bet the next one, it would be him.”

  “I won’t take that bet,” William said. “I reckon you’re right.”

  “Who do you think it is, anyway?” Thomas said, furrowing his brow. He glanced about, as though scanning the crowd might reveal the perpetrator. “It’s never been such a dangerous time to be rich. I bet they’re all finding new resolutions for hiding their riches. As though anything could stop these people …”

  “So, you think there’re multiple people, then?” William asked.

  “Sure. How could there be so many robberies over such a short amount of time if there wasn’t an entire team?” Thomas tipped his beer towards his lips and sipped, causing his Adam’s apple to bulge out.

  This was fascinating to William, learning the various ideas Londoners had regarding the robberies. William still could only claim one-quarter of all the robberies and suspected that the rest of them belonged to that shadowy, beautiful—incredibly kissable—woman out in front of the Marquess’. But there was very little way he could prove it.

  Several days after robbing from Baron Vanderbilt, William received an invitation for a small garden party at Zelda and Renata’s estate. As he’d had little contact with many humans in the wake of this recent robbery (it had left him wildly sleepless and fearful, this one—as Thomas had been correct in the fact that these rich men were finding better ways to hide their riches), William accepted, asking Thomas to tag along with him. As Thomas hadn’t heard from Tatiana in several days, he begrudgingly accepted, citing the fact that he needed something to take his mind off the treachery of Tatiana’s toying with him.

  William, Zelda, Renata, Thomas, and the eternally-lovely, yet ever-seemingly sleep-deprived Harriet, sat in the garden in the shade of a tree. Renata tittered playfully, recounting a story from her recent dinner at her suitor, Hayward’s.

  It was clear she wanted only the people in her current surroundings to regard her as someone who was in love and who was loved. As Renata had always been a youthful jolt of energy, William never grew terribly annoyed at her near-constant drivel. It was a nice distraction from his constant panic.

  Occasionally, when William sipped his tea, he found his eyes connecting with Harriet’s across the table. Always, her eyes lingered on his a moment too long, as though she was trying to analyse him without his knowing.

  William’s heart surged with a strange sense of longing. He tried to maintain eye contact longer, yet always, she dropped it, returning her eyes to the platter of untouched biscuits. What was go
ing on in that mind?