E-Book, Englisch, 400 Seiten
Vasti Earl Crush
Main
ISBN: 978-1-80546-401-3
Verlag: Corvus
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
The steamy and witty Regency romance perfect for fans of Bridgerton and Lex Croucher
E-Book, Englisch, 400 Seiten
ISBN: 978-1-80546-401-3
Verlag: Corvus
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
Alexandra Vasti loves coffee, beignets, and books, in no particular order. She is the author of Ne'er Duke Well and the Halifax Hellions series. In between writing swoony Regency romances with hijinks and heart, she teaches British and Caribbean literature in New Orleans.
Autoren/Hrsg.
Weitere Infos & Material
Chapter 1
“Based upon our respective financial situations, our mutually agreeable political interests, and the general compatibility of our persons,” Lydia Hope-Wallace said, “it seems to both our advantages that we unite in holy matrimony.”
Her voice shook only a trifle, which was a notable improvement.
Her friend Georgiana Cleeve gazed at her from across the post-chaise, expression impassive. Bacon, Georgiana’s dog, gave Lydia a sympathetic moan from his position on Georgiana’s lap.
Lydia winced. “Too wordy?” She fiddled with her sheaf of papers, trying not to look at her notes. Again. “I was afraid of that. Perhaps there is some way I can compress the language of the third clause—”
“I am not certain the is the problem.”
“Perhaps not.” Lydia chewed on her lower lip and stared blearily down at the papers in her lap, draft after penciled draft of marriage proposals in her own hand.
Marriage proposals. To a man she had never met.
It turned out it was rather di?cult to get such a thing right.
She pulled out the pencil she’d stuffed into her coiffure and scratched out a hasty revision. “How about this: ”
“ Lydia, you are the third-richest unmarried heiress in London. The benefits are all Strathrannoch’s.”
“Second-richest, I think.” Lydia frowned and drew a line through , which suddenly struck her as a bit indecent. “Hannah Harvey got engaged last week to that fellow in tin from Birmingham.”
She drew a line through as well, for the sake of caution.
Georgiana cleared her throat, and Lydia redirected her gaze to her friend’s finely drawn, deceptively innocent face.
“Perhaps,” Georgiana said—as though she had not said it half a dozen times in the last week—“we might consider a social call on Lord Strathrannoch first. You might discuss your ‘mutual interests.’”
Lydia clenched her teeth. Her heart beat harder in her chest, as it did every time Georgiana proposed an alteration in their plan. “No.”
“I can ask for a tour of his castle. You can take tea in his parlor. And then we can return to Dunkeld for the evening.”
They had left the posting inn in Dunkeld that morning to set off for Strathrannoch Castle. It had taken quite a bit of coin to persuade the postilion to take them from Perth and Dundee, rather than those centers of civilization—a fact that had given Lydia a moment of pause—but the farther afield they traveled, the more the view out the hazed glass soothed something inside her. Softened the spiked edges of panic in her chest.
They’d spent nearly an hour winding along the river before they’d passed into a forest of thick-branched oaks and clustered fir trees. When they’d emerged, it had been to a wide soft vista of green—all hills and sun-spangled water and no other humans as far as the eye could see.
Lydia had loved every moment she’d spent peering out the coach window. It was only when she looked down into her lap, at the rumpled papers and scratched-out notations in her own neat hand, that panic resettled itself somewhere above her breastbone.
“You needn’t propose to the man immediately upon meeting him,” Georgiana went on. Also not for the first time. “Perhaps you might consider making him earn the privilege of your hand. Men perform better when they are required to rise to the occasion.”
“No,” Lydia said again.
Her blood had begun pounding in her ears. Her stomach churned.
She could not recall a time—even in the furthest reaches of her memory—when she had been comfortable with basic social congress.
In her own home, within the comfortable knot of her friends and family, she was perfectly capable of human interaction. Outside that circle, however, she tended to fade silently into the background—or, alternatively, become so flustered and dizzy that she fainted in the middle of a drawing room and had to be carried out by a footman.
She knew herself. There was no possible way that she could sit down with the Earl of Strathrannoch and make polite conversation for several days before revealing the truth of why she had come to his castle. She had to get it over with as quickly as possible before she made an utter cake of herself.
“We’ve come this far,” Lydia said. She looked down at the papers in her lap—some in her own hand and some in Strathrannoch’s, dozens of his clever, charming letters—and tried to force the tremble out of her voice. “I’m not going to give up now.”
She could not. She had hidden her whereabouts from her mother and brothers, revealed the truth of her plot only to her closest friends, and set out for Scotland armed with nothing but a trunk and a fresh pencil.
, she had thought to herself.
Three years ago, Lydia had begun writing radical political tracts, distributed anonymously by the scandalous circulating library Belvoir’s. Lydia’s first pamphlet had called for universal suffrage for both men and women. Her second had argued for the complete abolition of the aristocracy in England.
It had been that second pamphlet that had prompted the Earl of Strathrannoch’s response, delivered care of the library.
, he had written.
(Lydia had, of necessity, employed a simple pseudonym for her pamphlets. for . for and . for and )
, she had written back.
Two weeks later, she’d had his reply:
She’d written back. And in the months and years that had followed, she and the Earl of Strathrannoch had developed a peculiar friendship.
He did not know her true identity. He did not know she was an absurdly rich spinster. He had no idea that she was so terrified of interacting with other humans that, despite her fortune, she’d been a disaster during her seven unbearable Seasons.
But he knew her, in a way. He knew the heart of her—at least, the political part—and the shape of her ideas. And he agreed with them all, even the most outrageous.
When Strathrannoch had confessed in his last letter that his ancestral home in the Scottish Lowlands could scarcely support itself financially, that he was struggling to keep the place running, an idea had crystallized in her mind.
She could marry him.
Strathrannoch needed money, and Lydia had coin in abundance.
And Lydia needed—
Her chest felt tight. She rubbed her fingers at the ache there and stared down at the papers in her lap.
In the years since her ignominious debut, she had folded in on herself. She’d hidden behind the protective wall of her older brothers and let herself become smaller and smaller. More and more invisible.
Her anonymous pamphlets had felt almost miraculous at first. Suddenly, she had a voice—a way to make herself heard even when she could not manage to speak aloud.
But the rich, honeyed taste of independence that her writing had given her only made her crave more of the same. Her pamphlets were secret, hidden; she had no real autonomy. Almost no one in her life knew of her work—to everyone else, she was only silent, mousy, helpless Lydia Hope-Wallace.
Except to Strathrannoch. He did not know her for an awkward wallflower. He saw only her radical spirit, the bright ferocity of her writing.
And if she had her way, he would never know the way the perceived her. If she marched into his house and proposed a marriage of convenience—if he said yes—
She could the woman from the pamphlets, strong and independent. She could be proud of who she was.
“This is my chance,” she murmured to the letters. “I will not waste it.”
“I beg your pardon?”
She blinked and met Georgiana’s gaze. “I am not going home in disgrace. I can do this. It’s going to work out.”
“Your abilities are not my primary concern,” Georgiana said. Her lovely face had gone slightly peevish. “I don’t doubt that you persuade this stranger to marry you. I wonder whether you are certain...
