White Regency 03 - White Knight

  This novel is dedicated to

  thousands of Scottish Highlanders

  who lost their homes, their heritage,

  and oftentimes their lives

  during the period of time known as

  “The Clearances”

  ~

  And for Diana,

  Princess of Wales,

  and what might have been

  Contents

  Part One

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Part Two

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  Yet where so many suffered one more wail

  Of anguish scarce was heeded! Rang the dale

  With lamentation and low muttering wrath,

  As homestead after homestead in the strath,

  As hut on hut perched tip-toe on the hills,

  Or crouched by burn-sides big with storm-bred rills,

  Blazed up in unison, till all the glen

  Stood in red flames with homes of ousted Highland

  men.

  From The Heather on Fire: a Tale of Highland

  Clearances

  by Mathilde Blind (1841-1896)

  Part One

  No bird soars too high,

  if he soars with his own wings.

  — William Blake

  Chapter One

  It is a truth universally acknowledged,

  that a single man in possession of good fortune,

  must be in want of a wife.

  — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

  London, 1820

  Lady Grace Ledys stood in the midst of her uncle’s study, a room so scarcely used that the newspaper sitting on the desk was dated six months earlier. The servants, underpaid as they were, rarely bothered dusting the place and had even taken to using the room for storage, knowing it would never be noticed. For this occasion, though, the draperies that were usually closed had been drawn back and a fire burned happily in the hearth that had previously been home to a family of house mice.

  Appearances, after all, were everything to the Marquess of Cholmeley.

  He sat before her now, her uncle, looking quite at ease in this place he never frequented. His hair had been styled a la Brutus, brushed carelessly forward and curled over his forehead. His boots wore a fresh polish and his waistcoat was one she’d never seen before. He’d summoned her there a quarter hour before, but his attention wasn’t focused on her. Not at all. Instead, his entire focus was wholly taken up with the man sitting beside him.

  The renowned Duke of Westover was a man who must surely have already known his sixtieth year. His thinning hair, pulled back in a waspish-looking queue, showed white against the darkness of his coat. His fingers held loosely to the golden knob atop his polished Malacca cane and the fourth finger of his other hand was adorned by a ruby the size of a small walnut. Two gold fob watches hung over the top of his breeches and he was grinning at her—more precisely he was grinning at her breasts, as if the dark mourning silk that covered them had suddenly grown transparent.

  “Tell me, girl, are your breasts genuine?”

  He was trying to unsettle her, she knew, and if he had directed such a question at her just six months ago, he would indeed have left Grace wide eyed and gasping with astonishment. Adverse circumstances, however, often had a way of dulling one’s sensibilities.

  Before coming to live at the London home of her uncle and guardian, Grace had known a blissful, refined existence at Ledysthorpe, her family’s ancestral estate in Durham. She had been raised there since a babe under the gentle care of her grandmother, the Dowager Marchioness of Cholmeley. Her life had been touched only by softness and light. She hadn’t yet seen the smoke-clouded spires of London’s churches, had never known the noise and stench and filth of living amongst the other million or so souls in England’s capital city. The farthest she had ventured had been the short, tree-shaded buggy ride to the village of Ledysthorpe where everyone knew her and greeted her with waves and smiles and inquiries after her health.

  On her first day in London, Grace had nearly been run down by a passing carriage and just missed having the hem of her skirts spat upon by a strange little man selling brick dust.

  The duke’s voice came again then, returning her from her thoughts to the unavoidable here and now.

  “Did you not hear me, girl? I asked if that is your true bosom.”

  Grace stared at the duke, determined not to allow him the satisfaction of her anger and said calmly, her voice as chill as a winter wind, “Would you have me open my bodice to prove it, Your Grace?”

  The duke looked momentarily taken aback. Her uncle’s voice, however, came sharp as a rap on the knuckles.

  “Grace!”

  Grace turned to where the Marquess of Cholmeley sat in his carved chair just the other side of the Axminster carpet. The Irlandaise knot on his cravat looked to have slipped a degree off center and his mouth was fixed most unpleasantly amidst his bushy side whiskers. But instead of directing his hostility at the man who had just insulted her, his only niece, he was staring with displeasure at her.

  Surely even Uncle Tedric must recognize the impropriety of this interview. But he wasn’t moving. He wasn’t even speaking. In fact, he was smiling, damn him, smiling at her in the same way that wily clerk at the glove-maker’s shop had when he’d tried to fool her into buying that pair of gloves with the overlong pinky fingers. They’ll shrink with age, the clerk had said—as if he had actually expected she’d believe him. Grace frowned again, looking from her uncle back to the duke; shrunken with age, indeed. Suddenly the clerk’s words couldn’t have rung any truer.

  “I assure you, Your Grace,” her uncle said, giving Grace a smile that held so little warmth it made her shiver, “there is no artifice. Everything you see of my niece is indeed what the good Lord endowed her with.”

  “Indeed,” the duke repeated as he shifted from one buttock to the other in his seat, “although she certainly wouldn’t be the first chit to have puffed out her bodice with a wad of stuffing to wheedle a man into marrying her.”

  With a sniff, he returned his attention to her. “Walk here to me girl.”

  Grace shot one last look at her uncle, silently begging him to stop this unprincipled humiliation. But instead of speaking out and protecting her as he should in his role as her guardian, he simply nodded, his eyes telling her his thoughts more clearly than any words.

  He was determined that the duke should offer for Grace’s hand and bless them all with his guineas in the process.

  How had she never before realized the truth of her uncle? Gr
ace could remember as a child how her grandmother had tsk’d and shaken her head over her youngest son. Self-indulgent, she’d called him. An epicure. But to Grace, from the time she’d been old enough to walk, her “Uncle Teddy” had been nothing short of the most handsome, most distinguished man she’d ever known, the closest thing on earth to his elder brother, her father.

  Until now.

  In the time since she had come to live under his guardianship, Grace had come to see Tedric Ledys, Marquess of Cholmeley, undistorted by childhood adoration. In reality, her uncle was everything anyone else had ever termed him. It was he and no other who had brought her to standing as she was before the Duke of Westover, feeling like a mare on the block at Tattersall’s.

  “Take a turn now, my girl.”

  Grace lifted her chin, fixing on the stare she’d seen her grandmother employ so many times during her childhood, most often whenever Grace had misbehaved. It seemed to succeed, too, this particular look, for the duke actually knit his brow in a moment of confusion. Bolstered by his reaction, Grace took a short turn, then stood stiff as a lamppost before his chair.

  At this nearness, she could see that the duke was even older than she’d first thought, perhaps nearing his seventieth year. He stood nearly half a head shorter than she, cloaked in the heavy clove scent of his cologne. Grace closed her eyes. Good God, in the name of all that is holy, please do not allow Uncle Tedric to marry me off to this man.

  “You’ve spirit,” the duke said on a half smile that revealed decaying teeth. “I like that.”

  Grace swallowed, calling on every ounce of fortitude she possessed to remain still and hide her revulsion at the mere thought of sharing any form of marital intimacy with him. She schooled herself to hold her tongue until after the duke had gone, when she would inform Uncle Tedric as firm as she could that no amount of wealth was worth having to wed the Duke of Westover.

  “Thank you, Your Grace,” she said, fighting to keep her voice cold and detached.

  The duke took her chin between his fingers, turning it to stare at her profile.

  “Your teeth.”

  “What of them?”

  “I should like to see them.”

  Grace frowned, peering at him from the corner of her eye. “And shall I whinny for you as well, Your Grace?”

  Tedric cleared his throat behind her. “You may take your seat, Grace.”

  Her uncle was frowning with displeasure as she headed for her seat. He would take her to task later, she thought—or perhaps he’d just sign the marriage contracts now in front of her, consigning the rest of her life to this horrible man.

  Damn Uncle Tedric, Grace thought as she sat stiffly on a bench between the two men, to the right her past, to the left—God forbid—her future. Why, oh why had her uncle handed her the sole responsibility of restoring the family coffers? His part, of course, had been to empty them through whatever foolish means he might find, be it gaming, drinking, or philandering—talents he had come to perfect—leaving them to live under the very real threat of debtor’s prison.

  It had taken him six months to reach his present crisis—the span of time since her grandmother had passed away leaving the government of the Cholmeley finances to him. While Nonny had lived, Uncle Tedric had been given an allowance which he’d always managed to spend long before he should receive the next, necessitating a quarterly trip to Durham seeking more. Grace could remember the visits throughout her childhood, listening as he catalogued his expenses for her grandmother over their supper, bemoaning the state of wretched thrift under which he was forced to live. Occasionally Nonny would relent and release additional monies to him. But on those occasions when she refused, Grace had recognized a dangerous light in Tedric’s eyes and watched the muscle on the side of his jaw stiffen against the words he so obviously would have liked to say. He was left to bide his time until the dowager would no longer hold the authority over the family finances. And it hadn’t taken long.

  After Nonny’s death, while Grace had dressed herself in mourning black and avoided any amusement save her books and drawing, Tedric had gone like a fox henhouse, wild, squandering his way through his substantial inheritance before running up debt on the Cholmeley estate. He had no hope of ever repaying. He soon turned his. sights upon Grace—or more accurately upon her inheritance, which was held in trust until she wed or reached her twenty-fifth year, a portion of which was to become his as her guardian. Standing before the duke as she was, it was clear to Grace that Uncle Tedric had decided the eighteen months before she reached five-and-twenty was too long to ask his creditors to wait. Surely, though, there must be some other way for them to raise the funds he needed. Grace quickly decided she would do everything to convince her uncle to it as soon as the duke was gone.

  Tedric spoke up then. “There is no history of illness, either physical or mental, in our family, Your Grace. My niece’s parents, my brother and his wife, were tragically lost while at sea when she was a child, leaving my mother responsible for her upbringing. The marchioness saw to it that Grace received her education from the best ladies’ tutors. Grace hasn’t yet entered society. She was raised solely at our family’s country estate in the North, thus her character is sterling. And as I think you will agree, she is quite lovely to look at.”

  “Her age,” said the duke, studying her again. “Three-and-twenty, you say? A bit long in the tooth to have not yet been introduced to society.”

  “I shall turn four-and-twenty in the fall,” Grace added quickly.

  Tedric shot her a quelling stare before saying to the duke, “My niece gave up a coming-out before now so that she might pass the last years of my mother’s life at her side, seeing to her care. You may have heard Lady Cholmeley left us this past winter, just after she reached her seventieth year.”

  The duke’s severe expression seemed oddly to soften. “I had heard tell of Lady Cholmeley’s passing.” He paused a moment, almost as if offering a prayer to her memory and then said, the crustiness returning, “I would suspect, however, the reason for your niece’s delay in coming to society is due more to your habit of gaming beyond your means.” He leveled her uncle a hard stare. “Yes, Cholmeley, I have done a bit of digging into your affairs. It would appear you are nearly twenty thousand pounds in arrears.”

  Twenty thousand!

  Tedric’s face blanched. The duke watched him, brow aloft as if he awaited a denial. There came none. Only a lengthy and telling silence.

  Grace could but stare. How? How had he amassed such an enormous debt? She had thought perhaps a thousand pounds, even two, but this? Her chances for convincing Tedric to abandon his ideas of her marriage were futile in the face of such a figure. Still, the fact that the duke knew their circumstances offered one consolation. Surely he would never marry her now. In fact, Grace made to rise from the bench, thinking his departure was surely imminent.

  “Lady Cholmeley…,” the duke murmured then to no one in particular. “…We were acquainted once. Many years ago. She was a lady in every sense of the word.”

  The fondness in his voice, the affection, was unmistakable, and it brought Grace to dropping back onto her seat. It seemed he wasn’t totally discounting her as a prospect. Tedric wasted no time in using whatever affinity the duke held for her grandmother to his advantage. “Grace was named for my mother, you know. I believe you can see that my niece resembles her closely.” He motioned across the room to where the famed Gainsborough portrait of her grandmother hung above the hearth. “Did I mention they were quite close?”

  Grace, Lady Cholmeley had been the truest reflection of an age when elegance had reigned, when women had been cherished, and when honor had meant everything. Her stance regal, her hair perfectly coiffed, she stood surrounded by her spaniels on the riverfront lawn at Ledysthorpe. Even with her present situation, Grace found herself smiling at the portrait, longing for the days when it had been just the two of them—before Uncle Tedric, before London, before the Duke of Westove had come to assess her as
a prospective bride.

  The duke turned, regarding Grace once again, comparing her, she knew, to her grandmother’s image before he returned his attention to her uncle. After a moment of silent contemplation, he made to rise, thunking his cane once on the floor before him.

  “I shall take the matter of a marriage under consideration, Cholmeley.” He turned for the door. “My man will write to you should the need arise.”

  As she watched the duke leave, Grace quickly began a mental catalogue of the Cholmeley silver, wondering how much she might fetch for it in sale.

  Chapter Two

  Christian Wycliffe, Marquess Knighton, alighted from the steps of his shining yellow barouche even before his coachman could reach the door to open it properly for him.

  The coachman’s name was Parrott, one that suited him well for both his peculiar habit of always repeating the last words of what was said to him and for his nose, which did indeed resemble a hooked beak.

  “I’ve got it, Parrott,” said the marquess, nodding to the man as he swept toward the front door of the Georgian town house shaded by elms before him.

  “Got it,” repeated Parrott, bowing to the marquess’s backside. “Got it indeed, my lord.”

  Parrott had been in Lord Knighton’s employ ever since his cousin Willem had vacated the post upon leaving England for America five years before. Willem had recommended Parrott as his replacement before he’d gone, a day the coachman would never forget no matter if he lived to see one hundred years.

  How nervous he’d been as he had tooled his lordship about the streets of London, demonstrating his skill with the horses; how struck by the young marquess’s affable and unruffled demeanor. In his efforts to impress his prospective employer, Parrott had nearly run down a wealthy-looking matron who was crossing the street. He’d managed to turn the horses before striking her, knocking her instead on her bottom upon a patch of grass. Crestfallen, Parrott had thought his chance for the Post immediately lost, but Lord Knighton hadn’t so much as batted an eye as he’d tipped his tall hat to the affronted madam while congratulating Parrott on his success at finding her such a soft place on which to land.