The Bad Baron's Daughter

by Laura London

Genres: Historical Fiction; Historical Romance; Regency Romance

Synopsis

From acclaimed author Laura London, a classic novel of an innocent girl, an indecent proposal, and a wicked lord who's impossible to resist. THE BAD BARON'S DAUGHTER As the daughter of a blacklisted gambler, Katie Kendricks has few options in life but to work in a back-alley gin shop like the Merry Maidenhead. But when the most refined and dashing man she has ever seen-hellion Lord Linden-defends Katie's honor from a drunken brute, her life takes a surprising turn . . . Concerned for her safety, the handsome Lord Linden vows to take Katie under his wing and teach her the ways of the world. He will educate her on the duties of a proper duchess-and train her in the skills of a celebrated courtesan. But in transforming this simple duckling into a glorious swan, Linden unwittingly ignites a change in his own hardened heart. By some miracle, this innocent waif soon turns into the most desirable woman he has ever known. And now it is he who must be saved . . . by the unexpected pleasures of love.

Release date: April 1, 2014

Publisher: Forever Yours

Print pages: 258

Sample

Outside the gin shop lay one of the most wretched slums in London; it was an area of boarded windows, barefoot begging children, and the desperate hacking cough of consumptives. The dirty winding alleys teemed with pickpockets, and prostitutes with matted hair plucked slyly at the sleeves of passersby and exchanged insults with men and women sitting slumped in doorways or lounging against the rough-grained brick buildings. The stucco frame of the gin shop sat squat between two of these raw brick giants with the half-mischievous, half-bored air of a schoolboy squashed between two plump matrons on a public carriage. A rectangular wooden sign hung outside the doorway announcing The Merry Maidenhead in amateurish italic lettering with the line drawing of a bottle labeled “gin” below.

It was, without doubt, the last place anyone would expect to find a young lady of gentle birth, and yet there was Baron Kendrick’s daughter standing behind the French-polished mahogany bar, her head framed on either side by an assortment of bottles with such titles as “The No-Mistake,” “The Real Knock-Me-Down,” and “The Out-and-Out.”

The evening was unusually humid for May, and moisture from the still air had settled into her hair, causing springy ginger wisps to curl damply against her high forehead. There were freckles on that forehead and across the short, shapely nose and soft cheeks, too, scattered in a soft radiant dappling. Her mouth was wide and untemperamental, and her eyes, now darkened slightly with apprehension, were the soft pastel blue of a robin’s egg. She was tallish and fine-boned, so slender that the casual observer might be pardoned for thinking that he beheld a boy, particularly as the young lady was indeed dressed in men’s clothing: gray leggings, breeches of indeterminate color with one patched knee, an old-fashioned tricornered hat, an olive jacket riddled with grease spots, and a square apron tied around her waist. It was haute couture from Mrs. Coalbottom’s second-hand clothing cart on Monmouth Street.

The young lady, Kathleen Janette Kendricks, as she had been christened; Katie, as she was known, was engaged in a careful survey of the gin shop, or at least what she could see of it, for the sun had fled some hours past and the only light in the narrow, high-ceilinged room came from the smelly tallow candles set in brass sconces widely spaced along the smoke-discolored walls. The Maidenhead was crowded on Katie’s first night on the job; the airless tenements had disgorged their contents into the streets and gin rooms.

At the end of the room, the doors swung in soft rhythm from the steady arrivals and unsteady departures of the patrons. A group of truculent Irish laborers had staked out a territory in the far corner and were alternately boasting, toasting, and threatening to carve one another. Occasionally the group would band together and hurl loud insults at the nearby table, where some sailors on shore leave were beginning to relax, adding dribbled tobacco juice to the salt stains on their tight-fitting reefer jackets. A few scattered clusters of students were enjoying the ambiance; their blasé expressions were belied by the speculative looks they directed at the table where a convivial band of gaudy prostitutes camped. As Katie watched, the oldest prostitute, gray-haired and naked to the waist like her younger sisters, collapsed face forward on the table, upsetting her flagon. She was none too gently conveyed by her friends to the pile of straw at the rear of the room to join others in her condition, where she restlessly nodded off into an alcoholic dream of what might have been and certainly never was.

If you hadn’t any dreams of your own, The Merry Maidenhead could supply them. For the price of one penny, you could get drunk, for two pennies dead drunk. Some called it Blue Ruin, some called it Strip-Me-Naked, but it was little more than raw alcohol flavored with juniper. Katie’s responsibilities in the scheme of things had been summed up thus: “Fill their empty flagons, collect their money ’n mop up the floor after they casts up their accounts.” This occurred frequently, but not as often as the foul quality of the brew merited, thought Katie. She would have as soon drunk sewage.

The swinging doors opened again, causing a wash of moist night air to freshen the atmosphere in the shop, and a group of young men entered. The impeccable cut of their clothes, the polish of their boots, the snowy whiteness of their cravats, and the self-assured arrogance with which they carried themselves marked them, even to Katie’s inexperienced eyes, as slumming aristocrats. Her attention was drawn to one man in particular. That he was a figure of some distinction was obvious. He attracted deferential attention from his companions, and was popular with the crowd, who cheered his arrival and opened ranks magically, allowing him to make his way, accompanied by his cohorts, to a corner table.

He was the most attractive man Katie had ever seen. Once, as a little girl, when Katie’s father had been teaching her how to ride, typically on far too large and temperamental a horse for her tiny size, he had sent her to jump a five-barred gate. The horse had refused, sending Katie flying to the ground with a force that drove the air from her lungs. She felt that same breathless confusion now, as the crowd parted to allow her a clear line of sight.

His face was too young to look so cynical. There was restless intelligence in the rich brown eyes, and a contemptuous tilt to the unsmiling lips. The copper candlelight warmed the crisp onyx curls that fell over one eye.

He took his place, having dislodged a sleeping old man, and crossed his long legs on the table in front of him, causing a clatter of overturned empty bottles, then rocked back on the hind legs of his chair, seemingly oblivious to the stir his entrance had created. A large plebian crowd quickly gathered to watch as a pair of dice rolled out onto the table, the tattered clothing of the spectators contrasting with the cut and color of the gentlemen’s attire. Shouts of laughter and excited comments arose from the throng as the dice began to tumble and pound notes began to flash.

Katie had been leaning her elbows on the smooth surface of the bar, her small chin cupped firmly in one palm. She was joined by a tall, twentyish youth, clad, as she was, in a bartender’s apron. His thinnish black hair hung lank to his shoulders where it curled under slightly against a gray cotton shirt with cutoff sleeves. He tugged at the dirty blue and white dotted kerchief knotted around his neck, regarding Katie with amusement in his cunning gray eyes.

“Hankering after the nation’s heartthrob, eh, Katie? You and every other female in London.”

“Was it so obvious?” asked Katie. “Who is he, Zack?”

“That’s Lesley Byrne, Lord Linden. His earldom’s English, of course, but his mother’s from the old French aristocracy—hates Bonaparte. Linden’s our latest romantic hero, back from the French wars, where he was pursuing a line of God knows what skullduggery on behalf of His Majesty. That was until he almost got himself killed about a dozen times. He’s a prime favorite with the prince, and old ‘prinny’ decided that good drinking companions were harder to find than good spies and ordered Linden home. But damned if it wasn’t a lot easier on Merry Old England when Linden was off among the Frenchies. Like caging a panther, if you ask me. The boy’s a regular hellion. Been back only two months and already he’s killed a man in a duel, seduced a string of society lovelies, and caused more riot and rumpus than Beelzebub spittin’ in holy water.” Zack rubbed a hollow cheekbone with the back of his hand and began wiping down the bar with a bleached muslin rag.

“Zack, do you think Lord Linden is like Papa? Easily bored, I mean?” asked Katie.

“Ain’t no doubt o’ that. Rumor barely gets out that Linden’s playing with one woman, but what she’s dropped and he’s picked up someone else.” Zack collected the empty bottles from the bar and bent down to put them into a wooden crate. “Still worrying over your papa’s absence, are you? The baron’ll turn up, Katie, he always does.”

“You can call it absence, if you please to, but I call it disappearance,” said Katie unhappily. “He hasn’t sent me a letter in weeks, not a line, not a word. And if even you don’t know where he is… Zack, something’s happened, I know it.”

Zack straightened and gave Katie a few consoling swats on the shoulder. “Oh, aye, something’s happened, like a cock fight or a boxing match or a congenial card game. Katie, you know your old man has no more sense of time passing than the rock of Gibraltar. And if you think that because he and I crony around together he keeps me informed of his every turn and sway, then you’re dead wrong. The last I heard from him he was off pursuing some damned intrigue or other with a married woman in Dorset.”

“Zack, if only you knew her name, then we might…”

“Oh, no, we might not!” said Zack quickly. “Your father wouldn’t thank us for bustling into his affairs, and anyway, I don’t know the wench’s name. Damme, Katie, do you think I keep a list of your father’s particulars?”

Katie transferred her chin to her other palm. “No. But Zack, perhaps if you thought very hard, you might remember the lady’s name? I mean, this is an emergency.”

“Oh, is it, Miss Mousemeat?” said Zack, pretending amazement. “You’ll have to explain to me why.”

“I’ve already explained so many times that I think my head will spin from my shoulders if I say it again,” said Katie with pardonable exasperation. “I’ve been evicted from our cottage in Essex for nonpayment of rent. Not only do I not have a penny to my name, I’m monstrously in debt to the tune of ten thousand pounds to that man with the gold tooth who came to the cottage and said that he would put Papa in prison if I didn’t give him the money immediately. Plus there’s the fifty pounds Papa and I owe in back rent and the fourteen shillings outstanding on the butcher’s bill.”

“Bugger the butcher’s bill!” advised Zack. “I keep telling you that you’re not the one who’s ten thousand pounds in debt, it’s your father! And if there’s some weasel trying to get that much money out of your father, then all the more reason for him to play least in sight. I can’t see what good you think it would do if your old man was to walk through the door right this minute. You’d still be evicted from that shack you call a cottage, you’d still be stone broke, and the shark with the gold tooth would still be waiting for his ten thousand pounds. Name one time that the baron’s ever gotten himself, much less anyone else, out of debt.”

Struck by the undeniable truth of this statement, Katie lapsed into a short, depressed silence.

“Things do look dismal, don’t they?” she said looking at her reflection in the polished surface of the bar. “I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t given me this job in your shop. I know you didn’t want to on account of your not hiring women, but thanks.”

“I could hardly throw you out on the street, could I? Your old man did keep my mother in style for a few years. While the winnings lasted.” Zack took a coin from a customer’s grubby hand and slid a glass of gin across the bar.

“I wish he could win more often,” said Katie.

“The man already wins more than Lady Fortune intends for him to, Katie. But that’s the way things are with a gambler, more ups and downs than the peg of a butter churn. As for my not employing women, Katie… has it ever occurred to you why I don’t hire them? Because it’s too much trouble to be responsible for them. Do you know what I mean by that? No, I can see you don’t. Now listen. You have no way to make a living. You’re not employable. You have no talents that I know of. You’ve got only one asset.” He reached over to straighten her second-hand cravat. “You’ve got the kind of looks that make a man want to take you to bed.”

Katie blushed until her freckles disappeared. “Za-ck!”

“Well, Katie,” he said matter of factly, pinching her chin. “It’s about time somebody pointed it out to you. We bought you those boy’s clothes this afternoon and that may put off some of the bigger beefwits, but not for long. People are going to start catching on. How long do you think I can protect you? Sooner or later, and probably sooner, there’s bound to come a time when I’m not there at the right moment—or the wrong moment. And you know what’s going to happen to you? You’ll get it whether you want it or not, probably from a dozen rascals at once.”

“Za-ck!” she repeated. Her blush turned into a blanch.

“There you go again! I know my own bloody name!” He gestured toward the drunken prostitute slumbering on the straw pile. “Take a good look, Katie. That’s your future if you stay in the Rookery, unless you let your… looks work for you instead of against you. Listen to me, Katie. I have a lot of connections who could help us find someone to look after you. It wouldn’t be hard to get a generous settlement, enough so you could set up a comfortable house, pleasant circumstances, maybe even a few servants. Now don’t stare at me as though I’d smacked you in the mummer, it ain’t as bad as that. The fellow doesn’t have to be old and ugly. We could arrange for you to meet him first, before anything’s settled, and then if you didn’t like him or the arrangement, we’d look around for someone else. I wouldn’t want you to be with someone you couldn’t like. What do you think?”

“You want to know what I think?” asked Katie, her fists clenched, fire blazing in her eyes. “I think you took off your hat and your brain stuck to it. That is the worst idea I’ve ever heard. You’re saying that I ought to become someone’s mistress, aren’t you?”

“Don’t have to shout in my face, Mousemeat, I’m only two feet away. Damned if I know how a whipsy-gypsy rabblerouser like your old man ever hatched a chick so full of whims and prudery as yourself,” said Zack, reaching behind him to retie the slack strings of his apron. “Take my mother, for instance. She lived with your father for six years after your mother died—can you tell me that we weren’t as happy as any legal family? And look at my mother now, set up in Vienna in a bloody villa, mind you, by that German fellow, having the time of her life and enough money left over from her housekeeping accounts to send me the bacon to purchase the Maidenhead.”

“I don’t want to live in a villa in Vienna and I don’t want to buy The Merry Maidenhead,” said Katie. She frowned and patted Zack on the chest. “The trouble with you, Zack, is that you have no morals.”

“Sure, Katie. Fine, upstanding morals and a penny’ll get you a glass of gin. What good have morals ever done you? Anyway, you’re not in any position to be able to afford a satchel of morals. Save it ’til you’re sixty-five and have ’em then.” Zack leaned back against the bar’s brass railing and studied Katie’s angry face. “What are you doing, saving it for marriage? Anyone who’d want you, you wouldn’t want. Who’s going to marry the impoverished daughter of an outcast peer? On the other hand, there’s a pretty good field of men who would want you as a mistress.”

“That,” said Katie, in a hurt voice, “was not a kind thing to say.”

A lanky, doe-eyed girl with a red kerchief on her head came up in time to hear the last, and leaned over the bar with one hand on her hip, a saucy smile revealing the lack of one front tooth.

“ ’Ey, Zacky, m’man. Are ya bein’ unkind to yer little friend ’ere and ’er jest arrived this afternoon? That’s a record even for ya.”

Zack leaned over the bar on his elbows and met the new arrival’s offered lips with a quick kiss of greeting.

“Hullo, Winnie. How goes the revolution?” said Zack.

“Not as good as th’ gin business looks. ’N ya can stop makin’ fun o’ me chosen avocation. Ain’t ya interested in th’ struggle fer th’ rights o’ man?” replied Winnie.

“There’s only one man’s rights I’m interested in,” said Zack. “My own.”

“Aye, it’s a ’eartless self-seeker, y’are,” said Winnie, mischievously. She turned to look at Katie. “Oi see ya changed genders since oi left this afternoon. Are ya all rested up from yer ride out from Essex this day on ’at rattle-trapsy stagecoach? Was a fair piece ta come by yerself, wasn’t it? So. You talked Zacky around ta employin’ ya ’ere.”

“Yes, with difficulty. Now Winnie,” said Katie, with a quick glance toward Zack, “tell the truth. Zack says people will be able to see through this disguise and be able to tell I’m a girl. Even with my hair up under my hat like it is. Is he right?”

Winnie subjected Katie’s trim form to a critical appraisal. “Oi’ll tell ya, sis. Yer so blisterin’ pretty even as a boy ’n there’s some ’at come in ’ere won’t matter to ’em one way or t’other.”

Katie was shocked. “It seems to me, Zack, that you’ve set up your business in an awfully wicked part of London.”

Zack shook his head. “That’s what I’ve been telling you, Mousemeat. It’s no place for the likes of you. There’s some bad people down here.”

“Yes, and if it was up to you, I’d be one of those bad people,” said Katie.

“Ooh, my, speakin’ o’ bad people,” exclaimed Winnie. “Lookee there who jest walked in th’ door. It’s Nasty Ned Fabian ’n ’is nasty friends.”

Katie followed Winnie’s gesture to the front of the shop, where a rough-looking bunch of foul-mouthed, dirtily dressed men were wading their way through sloshing tankards and sloshed customers and hailing a barboy for some gin. They set themselves up at a table near the gambling aristocrats and immediately began spitting gin on each other, “accidentally” dropping and breaking their flagons, and creating a loud disturbance. They were led by a nasty-looking brute indeed, well over six feet tall, with a crude, heavy face, glowering red-rimmed eyes, and a muscular, top-heavy look.

“Damn,” said Zack in a low voice. “Why does he have to pick my place?”

“Who is he?” asked Katie.

“Those lads likes t’ mill, oi’m tellin’ ya,” Winnie informed her. “See ’at big bloody rampsman in th’ middle, there, talkin’ louder than even th’ rest o’ ’em? That’s Nasty Ned. ’E’s tried fer years ta make it in th’ ring ’n was almost top man a few times, but they say ’e played too rough ’n never really caught on. Now ’e’s got nothin’ ta do but lead ’is bloody gang o’ troublemakers ’round ’n bust up gin shops. ’E’s so mean ’e’d spit in ’is own mother’s eye!”

“He’s a lot more than mean,” said Zack. “He’s a hired fist. If he’s in here, that means only one thing, that he has some business with someone. Katie, if he calls for anything, let me or one of the boys handle him. You stay away.” He glanced worriedly toward Katie. “If I had any sense, I’d send you up to your room now.”

“Zack, you can’t send me upstairs every time the clientele gets a little rough, or how am I going to be able to work here? And if Winnie can live in the Rookery, why can’t I?”

“Oh, pshaw,” said Winnie good humoredly. “Oi can take care o’ meself from point go. Anyone bothers me, oi jest tell ’im oi got th’ French pox, or ’at it’s me time o’ th’ month.”

“Kate, you can’t compare yourself to Winnie,” interjected Zack. “She was born and raised here. Do you know that Winnie carries a knife in her garter? Do you think you could learn to do that? Or more to the point, do you think you could ever use it on anyone? I remember going fishing with you, and you couldn’t even hook the worm because you felt sorry for it. Katie, Katie, you can’t work in The Merry Maidenhead the rest of your life.”

“I’m not saying for the rest of my life,” protested Katie. “It’s only until I find Papa, or he find. . .