Shout-outs
Another great story about the Somerset sisters. Hyacinth is the youngest and terribly shy and scared of her own shadow. At least that's what everyone, including herself believes. Then along comes Lachlan Ramsey, a man with secrets, but an eye for Hyacinth - an eye that sees past her shyness to the woman she can be. Ms Bradley weaves a wonderful story between these two.lcdolphin
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Synopsis
A beautiful debutante in Regency London seems destined to make a good match. But the Somerset sisters have made courtship and matrimony a deliciously scandalous affair....
Hyacinth Somerset's debut is the most anticipated event of the season, as it will be the reclusive young lady's first public appearance. But within moments of being asked to dance by a dashing stranger, Hyacinth calls him a murderer, then faints dead away! Now all the town is a aflutter over Hyacinth's baffling shun of their most intriguing newcomer — the wildly handsome Lachlan Ramsey....
Recently arrived from Scotland, Lachlan only wishes to claim his place in society to secure his sister's future. When that is threatened by the accusations of a hapless slip of a girl, he will do anything to protect his family. Yet it appears Hyacinth has only damaged her own hopes, inspiring the label of hysteric — and ultimately inspiring Lachlan to shelter her from harm. Now if only there were a defense for the surge of feeling he has every time Hyacinth turns her gaze his way. If only there were a way to make her his — while keeping the true secret in his past from destroying everything — and everyone — he cares about....
Contains mature themes.
Release date: November 13, 2018
Publisher: Lyrical Press
Print pages: 320
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More or Less a Temptress
Anna Bradley
Prologue
Lochinver, Scotland
January 1818
His mother was going to die.
Lachlan Ramsey stood beside her bed, staring down at her wasted face, and he knew this, as surely as he knew the sun would rise this morning, and again the morning after that.
She might not die today, or even tomorrow, but one day soon the sun would rise, and she wouldn’t be here to see it.
Elizabeth Ramsey plucked at her bedclothes with pale, skeletal fingers. “What of Isobel Campbell? Surely she hasn’t forsaken—”
“She has.” Lachlan, unable to bear the pathetic hope on her face, cut in before she could finish speaking. “Isobel, and Ewan as well.”
Isobel Campbell, his brother Ciaran’s betrothed, and her brother Ewan, Lachlan’s oldest friend. He hardly had a memory that didn’t include Ewan Campbell. Tearing across the moors on their ponies as boys, brawling with the Fitzwilliam brothers as restless youths, and later, chasing redheaded Scottish lasses as randy young men—Ewan had been by his side for every bloody nose, every schoolboy infatuation. Less than a month ago, Lachlan wouldn’t have believed Ewan could ever turn his back on him.
But he had. They all had.
“Isobel, and Ewan, too.” Elizabeth closed her eyes for a long, quiet moment, and when she opened them again, they were bright with fevered determination. “It’s over, Lachlan. There’s nothing left for you here. Take Ciaran and Isla and leave this place, and once you’ve gone, never look back again.”
“They could still change their minds.”
“They won’t. You know the people here—how stubborn they are, and how proud. They won’t change their minds.”
“We won’t leave you—”
“There will be nothing left of me to leave. I’m dying, Lachlan. Let’s not pretend otherwise.”
He wanted to deny it—to rail at her—to storm through this castle’s every room. He wanted to leave nothing but wreckage in his wake—anything to vent the impotent fury clawing at him, its talons ripping deep into his flesh.
But rage would do him no good. His mother was right. Elizabeth Ramsey had never been one to cheat the truth, no matter how painful it was. She would die, and they would leave her behind, buried in the cold ground, her grave the only evidence the Ramseys had ever been here at all.
“Where will we go?” He didn’t say, it doesn’t matter where, though it was true.
Elizabeth rolled her head on the pillow, and gestured weakly toward the small table beside her bed. “There, in the drawer. A key. Fetch it for me.”
Lachlan fumbled through the drawer until his large fingers closed around a tiny silver key. “This?”
He held it up, and his mother nodded. “In my dressing closet, buried under a pile of quilts, there’s a wooden box. Bring it to me.”
Lachlan did as he was bid. The muted thud of his boots and the rattle of her labored breaths were the only sounds as he crossed the room and entered her dressing closet. He knelt down and shoved the blankets aside, but when he found the box, he paused, sitting back on his heels.
It was a plain wooden box, unremarkable in every way, and yet the moment he laid eyes on it, a shadow seemed to pass over the room. Lachlan couldn’t have explained why, but everything inside him recoiled at the thought of opening that box.
“Lachlan?”
He turned at the sound of his mother’s voice, then rose to his feet and hefted the box into his arms. No use hesitating now. Whatever it was, it couldn’t be worse than what had already passed.
Much later, after his mother had revealed her secrets, and he, Ciaran and Isla were on the road to England, he’d think about this moment, and curse himself for a fool.
Things could always be worse.
“Put it here, on the bed.” His mother was struggling to sit up, and Lachlan helped settle her against the pillows behind her. He tried not to notice how emaciated she was, but as he lifted her, a memory of a dead bird he’d found as a small child drifted through his mind. The dogs had killed it, and underneath the scattered feathers was a pile of tiny, fragile bones—white, impossibly thin, pathetically breakable.
His mother turned the key in the lock. Lachlan lifted the heavy lid and peered inside.
Papers—thin stacks lay neatly on top of each other. Most were letters, their seals broken. It looked as if a crest had been pressed into the dark red wax, but it had cracked and hardened over the years, and he couldn’t make it out.
“The papers, Lachlan. Hand them to me, will you?”
Again, Lachlan did as his mother bid. Instead of reading them, his mother sagged against her pillows. Her thin fingers clutched at the yellowed sheets. “Perhaps I was wrong to keep this from you, but I’ve never had much use for regrets. They serve no purpose, and they won’t do us any good now. When I die, Lachlan, I wish to be buried beside Niall Ramsey.”
Niall Ramsey. Not ‘your father,’ but Niall Ramsey.
He should have anticipated what would come next, but he didn’t.
He didn’t, because how could he? How could anyone?
“Once I’m buried, you will take your sister and brother to Buckinghamshire—to an estate there called Huntington Lodge. Present yourself to Phineas Knight when you arrive. He’s the Marquess of Huntington. He may not be pleased to see you—by all accounts, he’s a proud, stern sort of man—but that doesn’t matter. He can’t refuse to acknowledge you.”
Lachlan stared at her. “Acknowledge me as what?”
“As his brother.” Her fingers tightened around the sheaf of papers in her hand. “The previous Marquess of Huntington recognizes you as his son in these letters. The current marquess, Phineas Knight, is your elder brother, Lachlan.”
“Ciaran’s my only brother.” Dozens of confused images of Ciaran flooded his mind—Ciaran as an infant, cradled in their mother’s arms, and later, Ciaran as a boy, always running after Lachlan on his stout little legs, tedious in his adoration, in the way of all younger brothers.
“No, Lachlan. Ciaran is your half-brother, and Isla your half-sister. Niall Ramsey is their father, but he…he’s not yours. He loved you as his own—no man could have loved you more—but your real father is the late Marquess of Huntington, father to the current marquess.”
Lachlan took the papers from her hand and stared at them blindly for a moment, then tossed them aside. Even if they did prove his claim to another life, he couldn’t make them mean anything, or connect them to himself in any way. They were just marks on a page, rendered in fading black ink.
“I’m the bastard son of a marquess?” It was odd, how calm he sounded—almost as if his life hadn’t just been torn apart, and the pieces rearranged in a pattern he didn’t recognize.
“You’re not a…I was married to Lord Huntington when you were conceived. When I met your fa—when I met Niall Ramsey, you were already growing in my belly.”
Lachlan sucked in a quick, hard breath, as if he’d just taken a powerful blow to the stomach. “You fled your marriage, and left your first son behind? What kind of mother—”
What kind of mother leaves her son? What kind of father lets her go, knowing she’s carrying his unborn child?
He bit down hard on the bitter words, because what did it matter what her reasons had been? There was no answer she could give that would make any of this right in his head, and recriminations were as useless as regrets.
Then something else occurred to him and his chest tightened with dread. “What about Ciaran and Isla? The Marquess of Huntington divorced you after you left him, didn’t he?”
Because if he hadn’t, if there’d been no divorce…
“No. He died several years later. I married Niall Ramsey then, but not before—”
“Not before Ciaran was born.”
“Not before, no.” There was no hesitation, and no shame—only determination. “You’re my son, Lachlan, the legitimate son of the late Marquess of Huntington, and younger brother to the current marquess. Isla is my legitimate daughter with Niall Ramsey, and Ciaran—”
“Was born a bastard.” Lachlan stared at the wooden box, half-expecting a nest of poisonous snakes to slither out. “It’s dumb luck he’s not a bastard still, and I’m…Jesus. I’m not even Scottish. I’m an Englishman.”
He shook his head, dazed. Less than an hour ago, he’d entered this room as Lachlan Ramsey, son of Niall and Elizabeth Ramsey, brother to Ciaran and Isla.
Now he was someone else. Someone he didn’t know, and didn’t have the first bloody idea who to be.
“Not just an Englishman, but an English lord, son to a marquess. It’s your birthright, and your future. Listen to me, Lachlan.” His mother gripped his hand with surprising strength in one so ill. “When you leave Lochinver, you must leave your past here. Isla’s…misfortune, and everything that followed it—you can’t breathe a word of it to anyone. Promise me.”
He jerked his hand away, repulsed by the touch of her cold, shrunken fingers. “More lies? Haven’t they done enough damage?”
“Not nearly as much damage as the truth will do, should anyone in England discover it. You need look no further than Lochinver for proof of that. These people have known you your entire lives, and they’ve all turned their backs on you. Do you suppose strangers wouldn’t do the same, if they knew the truth? I lived among the English aristocracy, Lachlan. I know them, how vicious they can be. The past must stay in the past. If it doesn’t, Ciaran and Isla will be the ones to suffer for it.”
And Ciaran and Isla have suffered enough.
His mother didn’t say it, but she didn’t need to. Lachlan had witnessed their pain. Their wounds had left scars on his own heart.
“Protect them, Lachlan. I’m begging you, on my deathbed, to keep the secret. Start a new life, without the burdens of the past weighing on you.”
Wasn’t a secret its own kind of burden? He laid a hand against the wooden box, and recalled how heavy it was.
Heavy with secrets and lies…
Tears stood in his mother’s eyes. “Promise me, Lachlan.”
Promise her, when she’d broken every promise she’d ever made to him, and to Ciaran and Isla, by keeping the truth hidden away in her dressing closet, locked inside a wooden box.
But she was his mother, and she was dying, so in the end, Lachlan gave her the promise she demanded. Not only because she’d begged him to, and because he loved her still, no matter what she’d done, but because he couldn’t deny the truth of her words.
He couldn’t trust anyone. Not those you believed to be your friends, or the man you’d called your father, and not your mother, who had secrets of her own, and would have seen them buried along with her, if she could have.
By the time the sun rose the following morning, Elizabeth Ramsey was dead. By the end of the week, they buried her. The flowers they placed on her grave were still fresh when Lachlan, Ciaran and Isla left for Buckinghamshire.
Their mother had warned them to forget their past, and they heeded her words. They left the only home they’d ever known, the only friends they’d ever had, and two cold, silent graves behind them.
Not a single one of them looked back.
There was no reason to. There was nothing left to see.
Chapter One
Aylesbury, England
Late January, 1818
Blood oozed from the corner of Lachlan’s lip, trickled down his chin, and dripped onto the snowy white folds of his perfectly knotted cravat.
Damn it. Another night, another brawl, and another ruined cravat. “Damn you to hell, Ciaran. Why do you always have to strike me in the mouth?”
Lachlan seized his younger brother by the neck of his shirt and shoved him backwards, and the two huge hands squeezing Lachlan’s neck fell away as Ciaran stumbled against the railing behind him. He and Ciaran were of a similar size, so it was no easy feat to send his brother sprawling, but then Ciaran was already staggering before Lachlan laid a finger on him.
Drinking the better part of a bottle of whiskey could do that to a man.
Ciaran, who was far too drunk to know any better, staggered to his feet and lurched forward again. “It’s not a proper brawl without blood, brother, and mouths bleed.”
As if to prove his point, one of Ciaran’s enormous fists came barreling straight for Lachlan’s face, but before he could land the blow, Lachlan grabbed his hand, threw him off balance with a twist of his arm, and slammed his foot into the side of Ciaran’s shin.
Ciaran dropped to his knees, and Lachlan was over him in a flash, his fingers gripping Ciaran’s hair to keep him still as he lowered his nose to within an inch of his brother’s. “Noses bleed, too. You’re begging for my fist in yours, but I’ve no wish to spill your blood tonight.”
He’d spilled Ciaran’s blood the night before, and the one before that, but any hopes Lachlan had he wouldn’t have to spill it again tonight vanished when a sudden blow to his ribs ripped the breath from his lungs.
“Oof!” He toppled sideways, and landed on the ground next to his brother, gasping for air. He rolled onto his back, but before he could scramble to his feet, Ciaran’s knee landed in the center of his chest and pinned him to the ground.
“Aw, come on, Lach, you should have seen that one coming.”
Lachlan only grunted in reply. He didn’t have the breath to argue, and besides, it was true enough. He should have seen it coming. Even when they were boys Ciaran had always gone for the mouth first, then the ribs, and then—
Oh, Christ.
He didn’t have time to spit the curse out before Ciaran’s knuckles crashed into his jaw.
Mouth, ribs, jaw. Always the jaw.
“You’re not even trying,” Ciaran complained. He grabbed a fistful of Lachlan’s hair, jerked his head up, and then dropped it back into the dirt with a hard thump. “It’s no fun if you don’t even try.”
Lachlan was trying—trying to end this brawl without having to hurt his brother, but he’d relied too heavily on the whiskey to do the job he didn’t want to do with his fists. “Damn it, how the devil are you still conscious, Ciaran?”
Ciaran grinned. “No bloody idea, but here we are, brother, and I doubt your face will be as pretty tomorrow as it was today.”
Lachlan jerked and flailed like a fish on a hook, but trying to throw Ciaran off him was like trying to topple a horse. It would have to be a blow, then—either that, or he’d be leaving a puddle of his blood and maybe a tooth or two behind when he left this inn-yard.
Lachlan’s arm tensed. He clenched his hand into a fist and waited, knuckles facing out. Ciaran liked his brawls bloody, so he’d go for the mouth again, or perhaps the nose, and when he did his body weight would shift ever so slightly, and…
Now.
Ciaran drew his fist back, but he didn’t get a chance to strike before Lachlan’s own fist shot up from the side, just far enough to the right so Ciaran never saw it coming. Lachlan winced at the crack of his knuckles against his brother’s cheekbone, but the blow did the job. Ciaran listed sideways from the force of it, and before he could regain his balance, Lachlan shoved the heels of his hands under Ciaran’s knee, threw him flat onto his back, and leapt to his feet.
“You’re set on more bloodshed tonight then, eh Ciaran?”
For a man so deep in his cups, Ciaran staggered back to his feet with impressive agility. “No need to spill another drop of yours. This isn’t your fight, brother—not as long as you get out of my damned way.”
But it was his fight. His and Ciaran’s, just as every fight since they’d left Scotland had been their fight. Instead of accepting his fate, Ciaran’s resentment was spreading like an infection from a festering wound.
Helped along by great quantities of whiskey, of course.
“If I was going to get out of your damned way, I would have done it by now.” Lachlan turned in a slow circle, facing his brother as Ciaran closed in on him. “Now get up to your bedchamber before I knock that thick head of yours off your neck.”
“No, I don’t think I’ll go up just yet. I fancy another drink.”
“You’ve had enough to drink.” If Ciaran returned to the inn and happened to come face to face with the Englishman he’d just accused of cheating at cards, he’d have far more to worry about than Lachlan’s fist in his face.
The Englishman’s ball between his eyes, for one.
Ciaran laughed, but there was an ugly edge to it. “A Scot who’s trapped in England can’t ever have enough to drink. But you wouldn’t know anything about that, would you, brother, what with you being an Englishman now?”
Lachlan’s hands curled into fists. Since they’d arrived on English soil nine days ago, he’d carved a dozen small half-moon scars into his palms. “I’m still Scot enough to knock you unconscious for the rest of the night.”
Ciaran shrugged, then raised his fists. “Have it your way. First your blood, and then his.”
“Get on with it, then.” Lachlan dropped into a crouch, and waited for his brother to strike.
It was one o’clock in the morning, and so dark Lachlan could just make out Ciaran’s face in the dim glow filtering into the yard from the inn’s window. Ciaran was so drunk he likely wouldn’t remember this encounter tomorrow, but Lachlan would still have to pummel his brother bloody before this would end tonight.
His stomach heaved in protest at the thought.
Didn’t matter. He could heave all he liked, and it wouldn’t make any difference. Whatever else might come of this evening, one thing was certain.
He and Ciaran were going to brawl.
Again.
* * * *
Two inches only. A mere sliver and no more than that. Two inches was all she dared.
Hyacinth Somerset scrambled to her knees on the window seat, pressed her cheek against the cold glass, and raised her chin so what little fresh air there was could drift across her open mouth.
It had come to this, then. Her world had been shrinking for weeks…no, longer than that. Months? A year? It had been narrowing, tightening, falling in on itself, and now she was to be smothered in an airless tomb, silent but for the low, continuous drone of impending doom buzzing in her ears, and—
“Hyacinth! What in the world are you doing, child? Close that window at once.”
Hyacinth jumped at the sharp command, and her bottom hit the window seat with a hard thump.
Oh, very well, then. She wasn’t trapped in an airless tomb, but in a cramped bedchamber at the Horse and Groom Inn. The drone wasn’t so much impending doom as it was her grandmother’s snoring.
At least it had been.
How in the world was her grandmother still conscious? Despite Hyacinth’s warning, she’d dosed herself with enough laudanum to fell a horse.
“Oh, it’s dreadful, traveling on country roads,” Lady Chase fretted. “Hyacinth? Didn’t you hear me? Close the window, and go to bed.”
Hyacinth sucked in one last desperate breath of fresh air, and then closed the window with a defeated sigh. “I thought you were resting. Indeed, I’m certain you’d feel much better after a long, deep sleep.”
A deep sleep, or a swoon—any form of unconsciousness would do. Hyacinth was an affectionate and dutiful granddaughter, but after hours trapped in a cramped carriage without a breath of fresh air, her patience was at an end.
She hurried across the room and perched on the edge of her grandmother’s bed. “Now, lie back and close your eyes, won’t you?”
Lady Chase rested the back of a feeble hand against her forehead. “I can’t possibly sleep. All that dust and dirt has overset my nerves.”
Hyacinth hadn’t seen a particle of dust or a speck of dirt since they’d left Huntington Lodge, because her grandmother had insisted they seal the carriage up tighter than…well, than a tomb.
Still, she owed her grandmother’s nerves a debt of gratitude. If it wasn’t for their irascibility, they wouldn’t have stopped at Aylesford on their way back to London, and Hyacinth would still be trapped in that coach. If only her grandmother’s nerves would take the good lady off to sleep, Hyacinth would be grateful to them, indeed.
“Have you my vinaigrette, Hyacinth?”
Hyacinth pressed the bottle into her grandmother’s hand, and tucked the coverlet under her chin. “Yes, here it is. Now, go to sleep, won’t you?”
Lady Chase patted her hand. “I’ll try. You’re a good girl, my dear.”
She was a good girl. So good—so docile and accommodating.
A sweet young lady, to be sure, and an heiress, of course, but there’s no denying she’s a bit odd, and meek to a fault. Indeed, you will not find a more timid young lady in all of London. It will be so diverting watching her attempt to survive her season, though indeed, it’s unlikely the poor thing will make it through a single ball without fleeing to the ladies’ retiring room and cowering there for the rest of the night.
Was this her own voice, taunting her in her head, or was she simply repeating the whispers she’d heard others murmur behind her back? Hyacinth had given up trying to work it out. In the end, it made no difference.
It wasn’t, after all, as if the voice were wrong.
There was no sense in dwelling on that now, when her lungs were one gasp away from giving up entirely.
“You see how fragile Iris is, Hyacinth.” Her grandmother straightened against her pillows as if she’d suddenly caught a second wind. “I doubt she’ll be of much use to us this season.”
Hyacinth’s sister Iris and her husband Finn, the Marquess of Huntington, had accompanied them on the journey to London, and intended to remain in town for Hyacinth’s season. Their other sister Violet and her husband Nick, the Earl of Dare, were on their way from Ashdown Park, as well.
And thank goodness for it, because Hyacinth would need every resource at her disposal if she were going to survive her season. If one was going into battle, her brother-in-law Finn was just the gentleman to lead the charge. Not just because the ton paid such deference to his rank, but because he was grand, stern, imposing, and fiercely protective.
Finn was, in short, rather terrifying. It was a useful quality, particularly when one must deal with the ton. “Finn will be there.”
Lady Chase let out a heavy sigh. “Yes, yes, but men are never much help with such things, though I daresay he’ll prove more useful than either Iris or Violet.”
Her sisters were both enceinte, and suffered from extreme irritability—ah, that is, from fatigue. Yes, yes, that was the proper word for it. Even the short journey from Huntington Lodge had aggravated…that is, exhausted Iris, and Finn had taken her away to the privacy of their room as soon as they’d arrived at the inn this evening.
“A child is a blessed event, to be sure, but I don’t see why both your sisters must be blessed now. It’s most inconvenient of them. I don’t doubt I’ll be left to manage your season myself. It’s certain to take a toll on my health, but it can’t be helped, and you know I never think of myself in these cases.”
Hyacinth surreptitiously wiped her hands on her skirts. Her palms went damp when anyone so much as breathed a word about her upcoming season. There was no telling what wardrobe disaster might occur when she found herself trapped in the middle of a ballroom.
Flimsy silk was, alas, no match for sticky panic.
“I know, Grandmother, and it’s your health I’m concerned with at the moment. You need to rest.” Hyacinth tried to keep the desperation from her voice. “Consider your nerves.”
“Yes, yes. I will.” Lady Chase obediently closed her eyes, but before Hyacinth could draw a relieved breath, they popped open again. “That is, I’ll try to rest, but I daresay I won’t sleep a wink. Not a single wink, Hyacinth, until you’re safely married. Another marquess, I think, or even a duke this time…”
Hyacinth watched her grandmother’s lids grow heavier, then heavier still. Any moment now…
Lady Chase’s eyelashes fluttered, and at last, she let out a long sigh. Her head lolled back against the pillow, and the buzz of a snore filled the room.
“Grandmother?” Hyacinth waited, breath held, for her grandmother’s eyes to snap open again, but Lady Chase had succumbed to the laudanum at last.
Thank goodness.
Hyacinth loved her grandmother dearly, but the old lady was at her most cantankerous when her routine was disrupted. It was cause for concern, since Hyacinth’s launch into the marriage mart was a mere week away, and certain to be a disruption.
At best.
At worst, it would be an utter catastrophe.
It wasn’t as if she wanted a season. She didn’t. The very idea of being on display for every aristocratic gentleman in London to gawk at made her stomach roil with nausea.
She wanted…something. Anything, really. She didn’t much care what, as long as it made a tiny crack in the shell she’d built around herself.
The trouble was, she hadn’t the faintest idea what that thing might be. A suitor, a courtship, a marriage—she didn’t have much hope her season would bring her any of those things, but perhaps it would bring her something else.
Something I never could have imagined…
Before her sisters married, Hyacinth had told herself she’d be content to live out her days in her grandmother’s Bedford Square house. After Iris and Violet were gone, the silence she’d once treasured became deafening, and her solitary peace an aching loneliness. With every day that passed the walls of that house pressed in upon her, closer and closer, and her world narrowed by another inch.
No one, not even she, could live within such a tiny sliver of space. So she’d agreed to a season, because she had, quite literally, nothing to lose.
Hyacinth rose from the bed and snatched her cloak from the back of a chair, but she paused when she caught sight of her reflection in the window, illuminated by the light from the lamp behind her.
She hesitated, her cloak clutched in her hand. She’d thought to take a quick turn around the inn-yard for some air, but it was darker than midnight outside. She didn’t like to wander about an inn yard in the dark, but neither did she like to deprive her lungs of oxygen, and she’d been half-smothered all day.
She could open the window now, but the bite of cold air was sure to wake her grandmother. Perhaps she’d be better off simply going to bed. Surely, she could hold off on breathing for another eight to ten hours…
For pity’s sake, you’re frightened of the dark now? Has it come to this, then?
It was one thing to dread her season—seasons were dreadful, after all—but it was quite another to succumb to childish fears. If she kept on like this, what would be next? Ghosts? Thunderstorms? Large dogs? Spiders?
No. She wouldn’t indulge it. It was utter nonsense. Well, all but the spiders, perhaps, because they were wretched, crawly things.
Hyacinth straightened her shoulders, pulled her hood low over her face, and tiptoed across the room and down the stairs. When they’d arrived at the Horse and Groom late this evening, the inn-yard had been crowded with carriages, but not a single soul graced the rows of wooden tables in the dining room now, and the entryway was eerily silent.
A strange shiver of apprehension shot down Hyacinth’s spine at the stillness, but she shook it off and made her way toward the open space around the corner of the building, on the side removed from the stables. She’d take a quick turn in the yard to get the blood flowing through her stiff limbs, and then she’d return to her bedchamber—
“…still Scot enough to knock you unconscious for the rest of the night.”
Hyacinth turned her head toward the voice, confused, but as . . .
Lochinver, Scotland
January 1818
His mother was going to die.
Lachlan Ramsey stood beside her bed, staring down at her wasted face, and he knew this, as surely as he knew the sun would rise this morning, and again the morning after that.
She might not die today, or even tomorrow, but one day soon the sun would rise, and she wouldn’t be here to see it.
Elizabeth Ramsey plucked at her bedclothes with pale, skeletal fingers. “What of Isobel Campbell? Surely she hasn’t forsaken—”
“She has.” Lachlan, unable to bear the pathetic hope on her face, cut in before she could finish speaking. “Isobel, and Ewan as well.”
Isobel Campbell, his brother Ciaran’s betrothed, and her brother Ewan, Lachlan’s oldest friend. He hardly had a memory that didn’t include Ewan Campbell. Tearing across the moors on their ponies as boys, brawling with the Fitzwilliam brothers as restless youths, and later, chasing redheaded Scottish lasses as randy young men—Ewan had been by his side for every bloody nose, every schoolboy infatuation. Less than a month ago, Lachlan wouldn’t have believed Ewan could ever turn his back on him.
But he had. They all had.
“Isobel, and Ewan, too.” Elizabeth closed her eyes for a long, quiet moment, and when she opened them again, they were bright with fevered determination. “It’s over, Lachlan. There’s nothing left for you here. Take Ciaran and Isla and leave this place, and once you’ve gone, never look back again.”
“They could still change their minds.”
“They won’t. You know the people here—how stubborn they are, and how proud. They won’t change their minds.”
“We won’t leave you—”
“There will be nothing left of me to leave. I’m dying, Lachlan. Let’s not pretend otherwise.”
He wanted to deny it—to rail at her—to storm through this castle’s every room. He wanted to leave nothing but wreckage in his wake—anything to vent the impotent fury clawing at him, its talons ripping deep into his flesh.
But rage would do him no good. His mother was right. Elizabeth Ramsey had never been one to cheat the truth, no matter how painful it was. She would die, and they would leave her behind, buried in the cold ground, her grave the only evidence the Ramseys had ever been here at all.
“Where will we go?” He didn’t say, it doesn’t matter where, though it was true.
Elizabeth rolled her head on the pillow, and gestured weakly toward the small table beside her bed. “There, in the drawer. A key. Fetch it for me.”
Lachlan fumbled through the drawer until his large fingers closed around a tiny silver key. “This?”
He held it up, and his mother nodded. “In my dressing closet, buried under a pile of quilts, there’s a wooden box. Bring it to me.”
Lachlan did as he was bid. The muted thud of his boots and the rattle of her labored breaths were the only sounds as he crossed the room and entered her dressing closet. He knelt down and shoved the blankets aside, but when he found the box, he paused, sitting back on his heels.
It was a plain wooden box, unremarkable in every way, and yet the moment he laid eyes on it, a shadow seemed to pass over the room. Lachlan couldn’t have explained why, but everything inside him recoiled at the thought of opening that box.
“Lachlan?”
He turned at the sound of his mother’s voice, then rose to his feet and hefted the box into his arms. No use hesitating now. Whatever it was, it couldn’t be worse than what had already passed.
Much later, after his mother had revealed her secrets, and he, Ciaran and Isla were on the road to England, he’d think about this moment, and curse himself for a fool.
Things could always be worse.
“Put it here, on the bed.” His mother was struggling to sit up, and Lachlan helped settle her against the pillows behind her. He tried not to notice how emaciated she was, but as he lifted her, a memory of a dead bird he’d found as a small child drifted through his mind. The dogs had killed it, and underneath the scattered feathers was a pile of tiny, fragile bones—white, impossibly thin, pathetically breakable.
His mother turned the key in the lock. Lachlan lifted the heavy lid and peered inside.
Papers—thin stacks lay neatly on top of each other. Most were letters, their seals broken. It looked as if a crest had been pressed into the dark red wax, but it had cracked and hardened over the years, and he couldn’t make it out.
“The papers, Lachlan. Hand them to me, will you?”
Again, Lachlan did as his mother bid. Instead of reading them, his mother sagged against her pillows. Her thin fingers clutched at the yellowed sheets. “Perhaps I was wrong to keep this from you, but I’ve never had much use for regrets. They serve no purpose, and they won’t do us any good now. When I die, Lachlan, I wish to be buried beside Niall Ramsey.”
Niall Ramsey. Not ‘your father,’ but Niall Ramsey.
He should have anticipated what would come next, but he didn’t.
He didn’t, because how could he? How could anyone?
“Once I’m buried, you will take your sister and brother to Buckinghamshire—to an estate there called Huntington Lodge. Present yourself to Phineas Knight when you arrive. He’s the Marquess of Huntington. He may not be pleased to see you—by all accounts, he’s a proud, stern sort of man—but that doesn’t matter. He can’t refuse to acknowledge you.”
Lachlan stared at her. “Acknowledge me as what?”
“As his brother.” Her fingers tightened around the sheaf of papers in her hand. “The previous Marquess of Huntington recognizes you as his son in these letters. The current marquess, Phineas Knight, is your elder brother, Lachlan.”
“Ciaran’s my only brother.” Dozens of confused images of Ciaran flooded his mind—Ciaran as an infant, cradled in their mother’s arms, and later, Ciaran as a boy, always running after Lachlan on his stout little legs, tedious in his adoration, in the way of all younger brothers.
“No, Lachlan. Ciaran is your half-brother, and Isla your half-sister. Niall Ramsey is their father, but he…he’s not yours. He loved you as his own—no man could have loved you more—but your real father is the late Marquess of Huntington, father to the current marquess.”
Lachlan took the papers from her hand and stared at them blindly for a moment, then tossed them aside. Even if they did prove his claim to another life, he couldn’t make them mean anything, or connect them to himself in any way. They were just marks on a page, rendered in fading black ink.
“I’m the bastard son of a marquess?” It was odd, how calm he sounded—almost as if his life hadn’t just been torn apart, and the pieces rearranged in a pattern he didn’t recognize.
“You’re not a…I was married to Lord Huntington when you were conceived. When I met your fa—when I met Niall Ramsey, you were already growing in my belly.”
Lachlan sucked in a quick, hard breath, as if he’d just taken a powerful blow to the stomach. “You fled your marriage, and left your first son behind? What kind of mother—”
What kind of mother leaves her son? What kind of father lets her go, knowing she’s carrying his unborn child?
He bit down hard on the bitter words, because what did it matter what her reasons had been? There was no answer she could give that would make any of this right in his head, and recriminations were as useless as regrets.
Then something else occurred to him and his chest tightened with dread. “What about Ciaran and Isla? The Marquess of Huntington divorced you after you left him, didn’t he?”
Because if he hadn’t, if there’d been no divorce…
“No. He died several years later. I married Niall Ramsey then, but not before—”
“Not before Ciaran was born.”
“Not before, no.” There was no hesitation, and no shame—only determination. “You’re my son, Lachlan, the legitimate son of the late Marquess of Huntington, and younger brother to the current marquess. Isla is my legitimate daughter with Niall Ramsey, and Ciaran—”
“Was born a bastard.” Lachlan stared at the wooden box, half-expecting a nest of poisonous snakes to slither out. “It’s dumb luck he’s not a bastard still, and I’m…Jesus. I’m not even Scottish. I’m an Englishman.”
He shook his head, dazed. Less than an hour ago, he’d entered this room as Lachlan Ramsey, son of Niall and Elizabeth Ramsey, brother to Ciaran and Isla.
Now he was someone else. Someone he didn’t know, and didn’t have the first bloody idea who to be.
“Not just an Englishman, but an English lord, son to a marquess. It’s your birthright, and your future. Listen to me, Lachlan.” His mother gripped his hand with surprising strength in one so ill. “When you leave Lochinver, you must leave your past here. Isla’s…misfortune, and everything that followed it—you can’t breathe a word of it to anyone. Promise me.”
He jerked his hand away, repulsed by the touch of her cold, shrunken fingers. “More lies? Haven’t they done enough damage?”
“Not nearly as much damage as the truth will do, should anyone in England discover it. You need look no further than Lochinver for proof of that. These people have known you your entire lives, and they’ve all turned their backs on you. Do you suppose strangers wouldn’t do the same, if they knew the truth? I lived among the English aristocracy, Lachlan. I know them, how vicious they can be. The past must stay in the past. If it doesn’t, Ciaran and Isla will be the ones to suffer for it.”
And Ciaran and Isla have suffered enough.
His mother didn’t say it, but she didn’t need to. Lachlan had witnessed their pain. Their wounds had left scars on his own heart.
“Protect them, Lachlan. I’m begging you, on my deathbed, to keep the secret. Start a new life, without the burdens of the past weighing on you.”
Wasn’t a secret its own kind of burden? He laid a hand against the wooden box, and recalled how heavy it was.
Heavy with secrets and lies…
Tears stood in his mother’s eyes. “Promise me, Lachlan.”
Promise her, when she’d broken every promise she’d ever made to him, and to Ciaran and Isla, by keeping the truth hidden away in her dressing closet, locked inside a wooden box.
But she was his mother, and she was dying, so in the end, Lachlan gave her the promise she demanded. Not only because she’d begged him to, and because he loved her still, no matter what she’d done, but because he couldn’t deny the truth of her words.
He couldn’t trust anyone. Not those you believed to be your friends, or the man you’d called your father, and not your mother, who had secrets of her own, and would have seen them buried along with her, if she could have.
By the time the sun rose the following morning, Elizabeth Ramsey was dead. By the end of the week, they buried her. The flowers they placed on her grave were still fresh when Lachlan, Ciaran and Isla left for Buckinghamshire.
Their mother had warned them to forget their past, and they heeded her words. They left the only home they’d ever known, the only friends they’d ever had, and two cold, silent graves behind them.
Not a single one of them looked back.
There was no reason to. There was nothing left to see.
Chapter One
Aylesbury, England
Late January, 1818
Blood oozed from the corner of Lachlan’s lip, trickled down his chin, and dripped onto the snowy white folds of his perfectly knotted cravat.
Damn it. Another night, another brawl, and another ruined cravat. “Damn you to hell, Ciaran. Why do you always have to strike me in the mouth?”
Lachlan seized his younger brother by the neck of his shirt and shoved him backwards, and the two huge hands squeezing Lachlan’s neck fell away as Ciaran stumbled against the railing behind him. He and Ciaran were of a similar size, so it was no easy feat to send his brother sprawling, but then Ciaran was already staggering before Lachlan laid a finger on him.
Drinking the better part of a bottle of whiskey could do that to a man.
Ciaran, who was far too drunk to know any better, staggered to his feet and lurched forward again. “It’s not a proper brawl without blood, brother, and mouths bleed.”
As if to prove his point, one of Ciaran’s enormous fists came barreling straight for Lachlan’s face, but before he could land the blow, Lachlan grabbed his hand, threw him off balance with a twist of his arm, and slammed his foot into the side of Ciaran’s shin.
Ciaran dropped to his knees, and Lachlan was over him in a flash, his fingers gripping Ciaran’s hair to keep him still as he lowered his nose to within an inch of his brother’s. “Noses bleed, too. You’re begging for my fist in yours, but I’ve no wish to spill your blood tonight.”
He’d spilled Ciaran’s blood the night before, and the one before that, but any hopes Lachlan had he wouldn’t have to spill it again tonight vanished when a sudden blow to his ribs ripped the breath from his lungs.
“Oof!” He toppled sideways, and landed on the ground next to his brother, gasping for air. He rolled onto his back, but before he could scramble to his feet, Ciaran’s knee landed in the center of his chest and pinned him to the ground.
“Aw, come on, Lach, you should have seen that one coming.”
Lachlan only grunted in reply. He didn’t have the breath to argue, and besides, it was true enough. He should have seen it coming. Even when they were boys Ciaran had always gone for the mouth first, then the ribs, and then—
Oh, Christ.
He didn’t have time to spit the curse out before Ciaran’s knuckles crashed into his jaw.
Mouth, ribs, jaw. Always the jaw.
“You’re not even trying,” Ciaran complained. He grabbed a fistful of Lachlan’s hair, jerked his head up, and then dropped it back into the dirt with a hard thump. “It’s no fun if you don’t even try.”
Lachlan was trying—trying to end this brawl without having to hurt his brother, but he’d relied too heavily on the whiskey to do the job he didn’t want to do with his fists. “Damn it, how the devil are you still conscious, Ciaran?”
Ciaran grinned. “No bloody idea, but here we are, brother, and I doubt your face will be as pretty tomorrow as it was today.”
Lachlan jerked and flailed like a fish on a hook, but trying to throw Ciaran off him was like trying to topple a horse. It would have to be a blow, then—either that, or he’d be leaving a puddle of his blood and maybe a tooth or two behind when he left this inn-yard.
Lachlan’s arm tensed. He clenched his hand into a fist and waited, knuckles facing out. Ciaran liked his brawls bloody, so he’d go for the mouth again, or perhaps the nose, and when he did his body weight would shift ever so slightly, and…
Now.
Ciaran drew his fist back, but he didn’t get a chance to strike before Lachlan’s own fist shot up from the side, just far enough to the right so Ciaran never saw it coming. Lachlan winced at the crack of his knuckles against his brother’s cheekbone, but the blow did the job. Ciaran listed sideways from the force of it, and before he could regain his balance, Lachlan shoved the heels of his hands under Ciaran’s knee, threw him flat onto his back, and leapt to his feet.
“You’re set on more bloodshed tonight then, eh Ciaran?”
For a man so deep in his cups, Ciaran staggered back to his feet with impressive agility. “No need to spill another drop of yours. This isn’t your fight, brother—not as long as you get out of my damned way.”
But it was his fight. His and Ciaran’s, just as every fight since they’d left Scotland had been their fight. Instead of accepting his fate, Ciaran’s resentment was spreading like an infection from a festering wound.
Helped along by great quantities of whiskey, of course.
“If I was going to get out of your damned way, I would have done it by now.” Lachlan turned in a slow circle, facing his brother as Ciaran closed in on him. “Now get up to your bedchamber before I knock that thick head of yours off your neck.”
“No, I don’t think I’ll go up just yet. I fancy another drink.”
“You’ve had enough to drink.” If Ciaran returned to the inn and happened to come face to face with the Englishman he’d just accused of cheating at cards, he’d have far more to worry about than Lachlan’s fist in his face.
The Englishman’s ball between his eyes, for one.
Ciaran laughed, but there was an ugly edge to it. “A Scot who’s trapped in England can’t ever have enough to drink. But you wouldn’t know anything about that, would you, brother, what with you being an Englishman now?”
Lachlan’s hands curled into fists. Since they’d arrived on English soil nine days ago, he’d carved a dozen small half-moon scars into his palms. “I’m still Scot enough to knock you unconscious for the rest of the night.”
Ciaran shrugged, then raised his fists. “Have it your way. First your blood, and then his.”
“Get on with it, then.” Lachlan dropped into a crouch, and waited for his brother to strike.
It was one o’clock in the morning, and so dark Lachlan could just make out Ciaran’s face in the dim glow filtering into the yard from the inn’s window. Ciaran was so drunk he likely wouldn’t remember this encounter tomorrow, but Lachlan would still have to pummel his brother bloody before this would end tonight.
His stomach heaved in protest at the thought.
Didn’t matter. He could heave all he liked, and it wouldn’t make any difference. Whatever else might come of this evening, one thing was certain.
He and Ciaran were going to brawl.
Again.
* * * *
Two inches only. A mere sliver and no more than that. Two inches was all she dared.
Hyacinth Somerset scrambled to her knees on the window seat, pressed her cheek against the cold glass, and raised her chin so what little fresh air there was could drift across her open mouth.
It had come to this, then. Her world had been shrinking for weeks…no, longer than that. Months? A year? It had been narrowing, tightening, falling in on itself, and now she was to be smothered in an airless tomb, silent but for the low, continuous drone of impending doom buzzing in her ears, and—
“Hyacinth! What in the world are you doing, child? Close that window at once.”
Hyacinth jumped at the sharp command, and her bottom hit the window seat with a hard thump.
Oh, very well, then. She wasn’t trapped in an airless tomb, but in a cramped bedchamber at the Horse and Groom Inn. The drone wasn’t so much impending doom as it was her grandmother’s snoring.
At least it had been.
How in the world was her grandmother still conscious? Despite Hyacinth’s warning, she’d dosed herself with enough laudanum to fell a horse.
“Oh, it’s dreadful, traveling on country roads,” Lady Chase fretted. “Hyacinth? Didn’t you hear me? Close the window, and go to bed.”
Hyacinth sucked in one last desperate breath of fresh air, and then closed the window with a defeated sigh. “I thought you were resting. Indeed, I’m certain you’d feel much better after a long, deep sleep.”
A deep sleep, or a swoon—any form of unconsciousness would do. Hyacinth was an affectionate and dutiful granddaughter, but after hours trapped in a cramped carriage without a breath of fresh air, her patience was at an end.
She hurried across the room and perched on the edge of her grandmother’s bed. “Now, lie back and close your eyes, won’t you?”
Lady Chase rested the back of a feeble hand against her forehead. “I can’t possibly sleep. All that dust and dirt has overset my nerves.”
Hyacinth hadn’t seen a particle of dust or a speck of dirt since they’d left Huntington Lodge, because her grandmother had insisted they seal the carriage up tighter than…well, than a tomb.
Still, she owed her grandmother’s nerves a debt of gratitude. If it wasn’t for their irascibility, they wouldn’t have stopped at Aylesford on their way back to London, and Hyacinth would still be trapped in that coach. If only her grandmother’s nerves would take the good lady off to sleep, Hyacinth would be grateful to them, indeed.
“Have you my vinaigrette, Hyacinth?”
Hyacinth pressed the bottle into her grandmother’s hand, and tucked the coverlet under her chin. “Yes, here it is. Now, go to sleep, won’t you?”
Lady Chase patted her hand. “I’ll try. You’re a good girl, my dear.”
She was a good girl. So good—so docile and accommodating.
A sweet young lady, to be sure, and an heiress, of course, but there’s no denying she’s a bit odd, and meek to a fault. Indeed, you will not find a more timid young lady in all of London. It will be so diverting watching her attempt to survive her season, though indeed, it’s unlikely the poor thing will make it through a single ball without fleeing to the ladies’ retiring room and cowering there for the rest of the night.
Was this her own voice, taunting her in her head, or was she simply repeating the whispers she’d heard others murmur behind her back? Hyacinth had given up trying to work it out. In the end, it made no difference.
It wasn’t, after all, as if the voice were wrong.
There was no sense in dwelling on that now, when her lungs were one gasp away from giving up entirely.
“You see how fragile Iris is, Hyacinth.” Her grandmother straightened against her pillows as if she’d suddenly caught a second wind. “I doubt she’ll be of much use to us this season.”
Hyacinth’s sister Iris and her husband Finn, the Marquess of Huntington, had accompanied them on the journey to London, and intended to remain in town for Hyacinth’s season. Their other sister Violet and her husband Nick, the Earl of Dare, were on their way from Ashdown Park, as well.
And thank goodness for it, because Hyacinth would need every resource at her disposal if she were going to survive her season. If one was going into battle, her brother-in-law Finn was just the gentleman to lead the charge. Not just because the ton paid such deference to his rank, but because he was grand, stern, imposing, and fiercely protective.
Finn was, in short, rather terrifying. It was a useful quality, particularly when one must deal with the ton. “Finn will be there.”
Lady Chase let out a heavy sigh. “Yes, yes, but men are never much help with such things, though I daresay he’ll prove more useful than either Iris or Violet.”
Her sisters were both enceinte, and suffered from extreme irritability—ah, that is, from fatigue. Yes, yes, that was the proper word for it. Even the short journey from Huntington Lodge had aggravated…that is, exhausted Iris, and Finn had taken her away to the privacy of their room as soon as they’d arrived at the inn this evening.
“A child is a blessed event, to be sure, but I don’t see why both your sisters must be blessed now. It’s most inconvenient of them. I don’t doubt I’ll be left to manage your season myself. It’s certain to take a toll on my health, but it can’t be helped, and you know I never think of myself in these cases.”
Hyacinth surreptitiously wiped her hands on her skirts. Her palms went damp when anyone so much as breathed a word about her upcoming season. There was no telling what wardrobe disaster might occur when she found herself trapped in the middle of a ballroom.
Flimsy silk was, alas, no match for sticky panic.
“I know, Grandmother, and it’s your health I’m concerned with at the moment. You need to rest.” Hyacinth tried to keep the desperation from her voice. “Consider your nerves.”
“Yes, yes. I will.” Lady Chase obediently closed her eyes, but before Hyacinth could draw a relieved breath, they popped open again. “That is, I’ll try to rest, but I daresay I won’t sleep a wink. Not a single wink, Hyacinth, until you’re safely married. Another marquess, I think, or even a duke this time…”
Hyacinth watched her grandmother’s lids grow heavier, then heavier still. Any moment now…
Lady Chase’s eyelashes fluttered, and at last, she let out a long sigh. Her head lolled back against the pillow, and the buzz of a snore filled the room.
“Grandmother?” Hyacinth waited, breath held, for her grandmother’s eyes to snap open again, but Lady Chase had succumbed to the laudanum at last.
Thank goodness.
Hyacinth loved her grandmother dearly, but the old lady was at her most cantankerous when her routine was disrupted. It was cause for concern, since Hyacinth’s launch into the marriage mart was a mere week away, and certain to be a disruption.
At best.
At worst, it would be an utter catastrophe.
It wasn’t as if she wanted a season. She didn’t. The very idea of being on display for every aristocratic gentleman in London to gawk at made her stomach roil with nausea.
She wanted…something. Anything, really. She didn’t much care what, as long as it made a tiny crack in the shell she’d built around herself.
The trouble was, she hadn’t the faintest idea what that thing might be. A suitor, a courtship, a marriage—she didn’t have much hope her season would bring her any of those things, but perhaps it would bring her something else.
Something I never could have imagined…
Before her sisters married, Hyacinth had told herself she’d be content to live out her days in her grandmother’s Bedford Square house. After Iris and Violet were gone, the silence she’d once treasured became deafening, and her solitary peace an aching loneliness. With every day that passed the walls of that house pressed in upon her, closer and closer, and her world narrowed by another inch.
No one, not even she, could live within such a tiny sliver of space. So she’d agreed to a season, because she had, quite literally, nothing to lose.
Hyacinth rose from the bed and snatched her cloak from the back of a chair, but she paused when she caught sight of her reflection in the window, illuminated by the light from the lamp behind her.
She hesitated, her cloak clutched in her hand. She’d thought to take a quick turn around the inn-yard for some air, but it was darker than midnight outside. She didn’t like to wander about an inn yard in the dark, but neither did she like to deprive her lungs of oxygen, and she’d been half-smothered all day.
She could open the window now, but the bite of cold air was sure to wake her grandmother. Perhaps she’d be better off simply going to bed. Surely, she could hold off on breathing for another eight to ten hours…
For pity’s sake, you’re frightened of the dark now? Has it come to this, then?
It was one thing to dread her season—seasons were dreadful, after all—but it was quite another to succumb to childish fears. If she kept on like this, what would be next? Ghosts? Thunderstorms? Large dogs? Spiders?
No. She wouldn’t indulge it. It was utter nonsense. Well, all but the spiders, perhaps, because they were wretched, crawly things.
Hyacinth straightened her shoulders, pulled her hood low over her face, and tiptoed across the room and down the stairs. When they’d arrived at the Horse and Groom late this evening, the inn-yard had been crowded with carriages, but not a single soul graced the rows of wooden tables in the dining room now, and the entryway was eerily silent.
A strange shiver of apprehension shot down Hyacinth’s spine at the stillness, but she shook it off and made her way toward the open space around the corner of the building, on the side removed from the stables. She’d take a quick turn in the yard to get the blood flowing through her stiff limbs, and then she’d return to her bedchamber—
“…still Scot enough to knock you unconscious for the rest of the night.”
Hyacinth turned her head toward the voice, confused, but as . . .
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More or Less a Temptress
Anna Bradley
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