A Ravishing Beauty in Disguise: A Historical Regency Romance Book

by Emily Honeyfield

  But as she stood, shifting her weight, she heard a creak behind her. Without waiting a moment more, she flung herself around to see a lurking man in the doorway. Immediately, she knew him to be the second man from the last time she’d been south of the Thames—the one she’d hustled behind, following him directly here. To the home of the Marquess.

  Now, he slowly spread a horrendous smile across his face, showing rotting teeth which glowed in the moonlight. Harriet allowed her hands to fall to her side. She knew that the man understood precisely why she was there—that there was no real reason why she would have dug herself into the attic unless she knew what the Marquess was up to.

  “Darling, beautiful girl,” the man said, leering. “What have you gotten yourself into, hmmm?”

  “It’s—it’s not what it looks like,” Harriet murmured, her voice wavering.

  “It’s not what it looks like? Then what, pray tell, do you think it looks like? Hmm?” he asked, his voice growing high-pitched. “Please. You sound incredibly—what is it—educated. I’m sure you'll be able to drum up a sort of meaning for all of this. Please, darling. I want only to hear how successful you are at lying.”

  “The Marquess—his wife—at the ball …” Harriet tried, although her voice caught in her throat. “It’s really all a misunderstanding …”

  The man stomped towards her. When he stood over her, he was over a foot taller, an enormous shadow of anger. She beamed only fear. She felt like a quivering child, willing to fold into herself at any moment. She raised a single hand as if this would stop him.

  “Please. All I want to do is go home …” she whispered.

  But the man lashed his hand over her wrist, gripping hard. He lifted her little fist into the air, making it shake as though it was a toy for him alone. Again, his smile stretched out. “You’re in big trouble,” he sang. “How much fun for me—to finally deliver the thief to the Marquess! And to think. He’s imagining this big, hulking man. But I’ll deliver him a little woman! In a dress!”

  Harriet pulled her fist away, but the man held tight. Her lower lip bounced. She wished she could fully control her physical form, but the fear had a mind of its own.

  “What are you going to do to me?” Harriet asked.

  “Oh! You mean before the Marquess gets home?” the man asked. He tossed his head around, making his dirty curls shake. “Let’s see. I should get creative, shouldn’t I? I should celebrate!”

  Suddenly, he lashed back and gripped a rope, located just behind one of the black bags filled with money. Harriet’s heart dropped into her belly.

  “What do you think about this?” he asked. “Do you think this is interesting enough?”

  “You can’t get away with this,” Harriet blurted. “Robbing from all these children. From the poor! How can you even live with yourself, knowing what you’re doing? How can you look into the faces of these children and know …”

  “Come off it,” the man said. His eyes flickered in the moonlight. “Look at me. And look at you. You’re clearly from some kind of wealth. Perhaps you don’t have the buckets of cash the Marquess has—but I reckon you’ve never gone hungry a day in your life.

  “Now, let me return your attention to me. I absolutely reek. You smell that? It’s because where I live, we don’t necessarily get the fresh water for a bath. We don’t necessarily always have something to eat, either. I got a few kids of my own at home. And you know what’s going to benefit them? All this work I’m doing for the Marquess. You see, I get a cut of everything I steal. And catching you, that should lend me a pretty penny. I’m not one to brag, but this could alter the course of my life. I suppose it’ll alter yours, too.”

  “How can you wrong your own people?” Harriet demanded. Her teeth clattered so quickly, she thought she might bite her tongue. “How can you live with it …”

  “Come off it, my girl,” the man said, although it was clear he was affected, at least briefly. “I’m sure your father will cut some sort of deal with the Marquess. Sure, you might be run out of the city. Your life will be altered forever. But it’s not as though you’ll go hungry on the street like the rest of us might. You know, I’ve lost countless friends. My mother, she died out on the street. We lost her for days—didn’t know where she’d gone. You know how old I was? I was eight years old.”

  Harriet’s head surged with anguish. “I can’t possibly translate to you how sorry … how sorry I am …”

  “Shut up,” the man said. He wrapped the rope around her wrists and cinched it tight, making her screech with pain. He tied it fast, wrapping it around her other wrist, and forced her to the ground. Tears squeezed out of Harriet’s eyes, although she would have given anything in the world to make them stay in her skull. How idiotic she felt. How wildly stupid. Why had she thought she could change the world?

  Harriet forced her eyes closed. The man continued to speak, tying up her ankles, latching her tighter to the pole that churned up from the floor and into the attic ceiling. She tried to envision her future, one in which she’d been labelled the thief by the Marquess.

  What would her parents say to her when they learned? Certainly her affirmation that she was “doing the right thing” would fall on deaf ears. And her cousins? What would they say? For her entire life, they’d been her very best friends, her confidants. Now, she would be like a stranger to them.

  Suddenly, there was a thud, followed by a screech. Harriet’s eyes burst open, and she searched through the darkness of the attic, trying to figure out what had just happened. The man who’d been tying her was no longer directly in front of her. Rather, he was strewn out across the attic floor, his head across several of the black bags. His eyes were closed, and his limbs were pell-mell on either side of him. Above him stood another figure, dressed all in black.

  “Harriet!”

  The voice was scratchy and familiar and warm.

  “William?” Harriet whispered, hardly able to utter the words. “Oh my goodness, William! You’re here!”

  William leapt across the unconscious man and scrambled to untie her. Slowly, the ropes fell from her wrists. She brought her fingers over the textured skin, feeling tears of relief escape down her cheeks. Immediately, William flung himself over her, hugging her close and pressing her head against his chest. He inhaled sharply, clearly trying to cover up his own tears. “Harriet, you imbecile. Harriet, you absolute—”

  “We should go,” Harriet blurted, blinking towards the unconscious man. “He could wake up any minute.”

  William popped to his feet and gripped her hand. Together, they stepped gingerly over the unconscious man and stepped into the hallway. Harriet’s eyes returned to the bags and bags of money and she pointed, pulling William’s hand.

  “That’s what the Marquess has stolen from the people south of the Thames,” she murmured. “His operation is absolutely atrocious. He’s hired men like this man—this man who hasn’t a single reason to say no—and has taken from poor children who walk the streets at night, earning all they can. We have to put a stop to it, William.” Her eyes burned into his. “We cannot let this go on.”

  William draped a hand across her cheek. “We can’t deal with it just now, Harriet. There’s too much at stake. And already, you’ve been away from the ball for hours …”

  “The ball!” Harriet cried. She’d completely forgotten. She blinked down at her gown, tugging at the fabric. “I would give anything to collapse upon a mattress with you.”

  “And yet, all I can offer you is another dance,” William returned.

  Chapter 30

  William and Harriet snaked down the staircase at the Marquess’ mansion. William struggled to maintain a sombre facial expression. He didn’t want to alarm Harriet with his enormous fears. Rather than move towards the cellar door from which they entered, he shot towards the front door, a fact that led Harriet to falter. She tugged him, saying, “We can’t possibly, William. The Marquess will know we’ve been here …”

  “He’ll know r
egardless,” William affirmed. “The sooner we escape this place, the better. Don’t be afraid.”

  William and Harriet rushed across the fields, their feet falling a bit too deep in the damp mud beneath the grass. Before long, they reached the horses, with William’s latched up directly beside hers. He watched as she draped her arms across the horse’s neck, inhaling his scent. It was a beautiful sight, this reunion. She looked as though she thought she’d never see such a familiar thing again.

  “I’m terribly sorry,” she muttered, speaking into the horse’s ear. “I should never leave you alone for so long.”

  “He’s all right, Harriet. We all are,” William said. He swept his hand across her brown curls. Her cheeks glistened from her tears. He could hardly imagine the amount of terror she’d had, tied up in the attic like that. Everything they could have ever built together could have been ruined.

  “You don’t think we’re being followed, do you?” Harriet asked. Her eyes darted back towards the mansion. “The Marquess is surely still at the ball …”

  “When I left him, he was bragging endlessly about this man he’d left at home. Someone he felt sure would capture the thief.”

  “He wasn’t wrong,” Harriet said.

  “An enormous man taking advantage of you, Harriet,” William said. “It’s not as though you had the upper hand at any point.”

  “It was wrong of me to think I was infallible,” Harriet murmured. “I was an idiot for going out alone. I should have—I should have asked you to come along with me.” She slung her hand across her gown, her lower lip quivering. “And dressed like such an imbecile. I deserved to be captured.”

  “Your cockiness was alarming,” William said, trying to tease her. But the severity of the situation made his words seem oddly sour. He paused and then continued, “I really need to tell you something.”

  Would he have the strength to say the only thing that mattered, the thing that grew heavier on his mind? She stared at him, gripping the horse’s reins. “What is it, William?”

  “Harriet, we’ve been through so much together already, only in a few months,” William murmured.

  “And now I owe you for saving my life,” Harriet returned.

  “You don’t owe me anything, Harriet,” William said. “In fact, I think I owe you for saving me. Perhaps it sounds strange, but I wasn’t sure what I was returning to London for after Glasgow. I imagined myself getting involved in the law, attempting to alter the course of humanity from—from the safety of a desk. It was a depressing idea.

  “But then, I heard tell of this—this creature. This thief in the night. Someone who was willing to take laws into their own hands and give back to the less fortunate in this city. And immediately, I began to copy. The first night I stole from the Baron, I thought I was going to faint with fear. Slipping his things into a bag, I wondered what would happen if I was captured. What would my father and mother say? What would become of my career? Would I be hung? I’m sure you thought about all of this.”

  Harriet nodded slowly. Her eyes glowed. He felt her approval of him growing, magnifying, with his admittance that he was the second thief.

  “And then, when I spotted you outside the Marquess’ estate, I understood something deep within me. Something that’s rather difficult to acknowledge, given how clunky I can be with my own emotions. You see, Harriet. I’m completely and totally in love with this person. This person who risked her life for the good of others.”

  He reached forward and slipped his hand over hers, drawing it towards his lips. He yearned for nothing but to touch this hand, to gaze into this face, for the rest of his days. He dropped a kiss onto her hand and held it, staring at her.

  When he broke it, he said, “I hope you understand what I mean, Harriet. I’m completely in love with you. I love what you do and how you do it.”

  Harriet pressed her lips together. She quivered, perhaps with fear, perhaps with chill. William couldn’t know fully. She stepped towards him to whisper, “I love you, too.”

  With that, William drew his arms around her and cinched her close to him. Their bodies held no air between them. It was as though they’d been cut from a single cloth. She tilted her face towards his, and he answered, closing his eyes and placing his lips over hers. The kiss was long, passionate, tugging at his heart and telling him, once and for all, that he belonged to her, and she to him.

  When the kiss broke, Harriet gave him a crooked smile. “I can’t believe you copied me,” she said.

  William broke into a surprised grin. “Is that really something you’re going to hang over my head? What is that expression, anyway? Imitation is the finest form of flattery?”

  “Sure. That’s what they say. And there you go, imitating this great, amorphous THEM, all of a sudden,” Harriet said, winking. She hung back, letting out a sigh. “I’m anxious about returning to the ball. It feels as though it started three weeks ago. But we’ll arrive, and it will be all the same. My mother will be just as drunk, if not more. My father will go on with his many braggadocios tales. And the Marquess! Imagine seeing him, after this …”

  “We’ll be there together,” William affirmed. “In everything we do, we do it together from now on. Okay?”

  At first, William had the altogether hilarious instinct to help Harriet upon her horse. She gave him an incredulous look before leaping up and smirking. “As if I need your assistance, Lord Abernale.”

  “I’m terribly sorry for insulting you in such a manner,” he said, his voice sarcastic, yet bouncy.

  Perhaps this was the sort of love he’d been searching for all along. The sort of love that bantered, that picked foolish fights. The sort of love that allowed the other to exist and to grow.

  Harriet’s horse led the charge back to the ball. William rode behind her, lost in thought. The many bags upstairs in the attic—had Harriet a clue what those were? His mind flashed with images of the unconscious man, whom he’d knocked out of this world for at least a brief time. He’d never grown so physical with someone before. His fist still ached with the memory of it.

  Of course, it warmed him to remember that the result of that had been the fact that he’d saved Harriet’s life.

  Harriet’s horse picked up speed just outside the Arnold estate, seemingly recognising the way. He traced a path towards the stables, where he paused briefly outside the stable to allow Harriet to leap off. The motion was so graceful, all skirts and curls and whipping, lithe arms. William paused moments later and jumped off the horse as well but nearly stumbled to his knees in the process. Harriet chuckled at his unfortunate circumstance, her eyes alight.

  “If you’re going to keep up with me in this life, I hope you’ll try better than that.”

  Harriet and William led their horses into the stable, only to find the stable hand passed out in the hay. Harriet clucked her tongue, mentioning something about his drunkenness and affinity for wine.

  “It’s really our luck, isn’t it?” William said. “Otherwise, he might see us. Produce a scandal.”

  Harriet nodded, snaking the horses into their separate stalls. “Now that you’ve said that, I’m endlessly anxious. Let’s get back inside.”

  When they stepped from the stables, Harriet paused a final time and brought her fingers through William’s. She gazed up at him, her eyes enormous, and said a final time for the evening, “I love you.”

  William felt that his heart might explode with emotion.

  Chapter 31

  It was a difficult thing, realising she might have been murdered or captured (difficult, also, to decide which of those happenings was worse) that night, if not for William Abernale’s assistance. Now, poised outside the mansion in which she’d grown up, Harriet swept her lithe frame against his burly one, hungry for a kiss.