A Duke's son to the rescue (Regency Romance) (Regency Tales Book 4)
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Authors: Regina Darcy
Copyright © Regina Darcy 2016
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher and writer except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a contemporary work of fiction. All characters, names, places and events are the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously.
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Unlike everyone else in the village of Walsing, Battington, Charlotte Smith was wishing that it would rain. She had no desire to ruin the village fair, which would take place the following day, but a cool, soaking rain would mean that the work she was doing would have to be postponed.
The vast acreage of Walsingham Hall, where she and her parents lived and worked, demanded long days of labour spent tending to flowers, trimming bushes and hedges, tending the fruit trees in the orchard and the vegetables in the kitchen garden. She was toiling, under the sun, during a day when the rest of England was enjoying the warmest July that anyone could remember.
For Charlotte, this meant another day drenched with perspiration in the only dress she owned. Her parents had work clothes and Sunday best clothes, but for Charlotte there was only this one dress; a worn, faded frock which had once, long before she owned it, had a pink and white flowered skirt with a pink bodice. Now, the colours were washed out and the flowers like real blooms, had long since faded away.
What would happen, she wondered drearily, as she continued trimming the bushes that bordered the gazebo on the hall grounds, when the dress was too tattered to wear in public?
Would her parents purchase cloth so that she could make a new one, or would they, once again, acquire a garment left by another dead woman for Charlotte to wear? She wiped her brow. With a deep sigh she looked up at the estate.
She had overheard her mother saying that his lordship, Jonathan, Lord Davenport, the Marquess of Marsfield, was home from the American colonies. His father, the Duke of Battington was tremendously pleased with his safe return and the festivities were partly to celebrate this. The Marquess would be taking part in the horse race which was scheduled for the second day of the fair.
Charlotte recalled seeing his lordship when he was a child. She couldn’t recall the earlier years of her life; for some reason, she had no recollection of anything that had happened before she was ten years of age. But one of her earliest memories was meeting his lordship. He had been with his tutor, a kindly old man who was leading him about the meadows near the house, teaching him about the wild plants. Charlotte watched in silence as the tutor introduced his lordship to each plant as if he were making its acquaintance. The tutor told him the plants name in Latin, the name it was known by, when it had been planted and how long it bloomed. They had caught her observing them. Her memory of it was as clear as the day.
Seven years earlier
“Hello little girl,” the tutor said with a smile. “Do you like flowers?”
Charlotte nodded silently.
“Well, we are playing a game,” the tutor continued. “It’s called, name that flower.”
Charlotte looked at the man and then back at the boy, who was smiling tentatively at her. The old man bent down and pointed at a nearby blossom.
“Can you name this flower?” he asked, his eyes twinkling.
Bolstered by the almost imperceptible nod of the boy, Charlotte found the courage to answer.
“It is a…Belladonna. The flower has a lovely smell and grows from a bulb like a daffodil’.”
The tutor looked pleasantly surprised, “Do you know its full Latin name?”
“No sir,” Charlotte replied shyly. “But I do know they are extremely soft. Especially if you touch the leaves underneath.”
The tutor and the young lord bent over and did just that. His lordship gave her an admiring look as if she’d discovered something miraculous.
“You are quite the botanist,” the tutor said, chuckling. “The Latin name,” he’d told Charlotte, “is Amaryllis Belladonna.”
The rest of the afternoon passed by in a flurry, as Charlotte joined the pair in their discovery of the plant life in the garden. Before Lord Davenport and his tutor left for the day, each had thanked Charlotte for her contribution to their lesson.
After they left, Charlotte stood wistfully wishing that her life was full of flowers, plants and lovely walks in the garden. She did not see the slap coming. Just the stars as the pain shot through her face.
“You sneaking little ingrate!” her father shouted.
He started to beat Charlotte with a stick cut from a tree.
“Never intrude upon the gentry again! You are a commoner!” he bellowed, “and don’t you dare forget it.”
The next day, when his lordship and his tutor came out to continue their lesson, Charlotte had been on the other side of the grounds, pulling up weeds.
Charlotte
shook her head, trying to shake off both the pain of the past and the present. The memory of that day was burned permanently in her mind. It didn’t bear thinking about.
Booths were being set up about the grounds for the local vendors to sell their wares, and the estate staff hurried in and out of the elegant house delivering messages from the Duchess who would be presenting the prizes to the winners of the various contests. On a day when the anticipation in the village was so tangible, Charlotte felt as if she was the only person in Walsing who had little to look forward to except more drudgery. Despite the fact that the other gardeners were also working on the estate, the cheerfulness with which they went about their task, was not rubbing off on Charlotte.
She heard the sound of hooves drumming a steady rhythm upon the expanse of the beautifully manicured lawns. Raising her head above the crown of the foliage she was tending, she saw Davenport mounted on a splendid black horse. She knew nothing of horsemanship, but during the seven years that she’d been living in the estate grounds, she’d observed many riders and it was obvious that Lord Davenport was born to the saddle. He sat with his back straight and his hands light but firm on the reins. The horse was spirited, that was apparent, but it obeyed him without question.
She watched as the bright sunlight struck Davenport, turning his blond hair an even brighter shade of gold. With his fair colouring, white ruffled shirt and tan breeches, the sable steed was the perfect foil for his handsome appearance.
What was it like, she wondered as she watched him over the hedge, to be dressed as he was, in clean, fashionable clothes; to sit astride a horse that could take him anywhere he wanted to go, and to enjoy his life? What was it like…
A stick, coming through the air, struck her neck. It hadn’t fallen, she realised. It had been aimed at her birthmark, the red, horseshoe-shaped mark on the neck that had been there as long as she could remember. She was ashamed of it and wished that she could cover it up with a shawl or a wide collar, but her parents forbade her to conceal the mark. It was God’s punishment, they told her, because she was a wicked child and she must let it be visible so that everyone who saw it would know that she was to be avoided.
“You worthless, lazy slattern!” Her father came closer, his deeply-lined face revealing the bitterness he felt at his lot in life. “Back to work! Those hedges need trimming before the fair begins, and you’ll get them done, if you’re obliged to stay out here all night, do you hear me?” He was carrying the branch from which he’d stripped the stick.
When she didn’t answer, he raised the stick. “Do you hear me, child?” his voice thundered.
“I hear you.” she burst out. “Why shouldn’t I go? Everyone in the village is looking forward to the fair but me.”
“Be grateful that you have a roof over your miserable head and food in your wretched body,” he told her. “Fairs aren’t for the likes of you. You’re lowborn, put on this earth to work until you die.”
“But even the other commoners are going,” she argued.
She saw the stick descending and then felt it on her back. Even as she felt the pain, she gritted her teeth, trying to prevent herself from crying out. She would not give him the satisfaction. Instead, she took two steps backwards, so she was no longer within reach. Nowadays, that’s all it took to make him stop. He was no youngster to be running after her all over the estate grounds. He spared her one last furious gaze before stamping away. Sighing deeply, Charlotte closed her eyes and made the same prayer she had been praying as far as she could remember.
“Father, hear my prayer. I beg you, take me away from this life of drudgery, hurt, anger and pain. You have said to those who believe in you:
‘Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.’
Please Father, I am asking, I am seeking. Do not let me live and die in this misery. In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, amen.”
As she finished her prayer, she felt much restored. Swiftly she went back to work.
“You miserable girl! Your father told me what you were doing. Trying to catch his lordship’s eye. Calling attention to yourself. What would his lordship want with an ugly, worthless girl like you?” her mother sneered as she set a bowl in front of her.
It was broth, made from the leftover, worthless bits the butcher had after he’d finished trimming the meat for the Duke’s table, but the Smiths were steady customers for his wares because the casings, fat, and bone made a broth that, when added to the carrots and potatoes that they were given at the end of the day’s work, served as their daily supper. The blobs of fat that congealed in the broth were loathsome to look at and as Charlotte swallowed each spoonful, she closed her eyes when she dipped the spoon into the bowl again.
“She’s always been ungrateful,” her father added, pulling out his chair and sitting in it with a thud. “Peering over the hedges like she thinks she’s something worth seeing. Shameful it is.”
“I wasn’t—that’s not what I think!” Charlotte uncharacteristically retorted. Both parents looked at her in surprised silence. Finding her courage she continued, “I was only looking. He’s got a fine-looking horse.”
“What would you know about a fine horse?” jeered George Smith, dipping his spoon into the bowl and smacking his lips with appreciation. “You, who’ve never been in a saddle in your whole life, what would you know?”
“Giving herself airs, I shouldn’t wonder,” Martha Smith continued the tirade as she sat down opposite her husband. “No doubt thinking that if she attracts the attention of his lordship, there’s an easy life ahead.”
“Make no mistake, girlie, the likes of him have no truck with the likes of you, unless it’s to pass an hour’s sinful pleasure, and even the harlots of London are prettier than you are. Not to mention cleaner.”
“I have just one dress, rarely washed because it’s all I own,” Charlotte replied in a trembling voice. “My dress is what it is.” She tucked back into her disgusting broth.
“Be grateful you have something to cover yourself with, you ill-mannered girl! If not for us, you’d be in the poorhouse. You’d—”
Mrs Smith fell silent at a warning glance from her husband, who unaccountably changed the subject. Usually the diatribe against her went on as long as the food was on the table.
It had not always been this vicious. It seemed the older Charlotte got the more spiteful her mother became. Charlotte wondered for the umpteenth time what she had ever done to deserve such hatred.
Mr Smith said to his wife, “There’s talk that Lady Elizabeth, over Fenley way, is dying.”
“She’s been ill for months, they say. But dying? She’s barely forty. I remember when she and Lord James Anthony used to come every year for the festival,” his wife replied.
“She hasn’t done that in years,” Mr Smith said. “Lord Anthony is said to be distraught.”
“He’s in his prime. He’ll marry again.”
“Perhaps he will. They do say that he loves her ladyship, for all that she thinks herself better than anyone else, even the Duchess.”
“That blood runs blue,” Mrs Smith recalled. “She’s royal through her father’s line. No wonder she looks down her nose at all the other aristocrats in the county when her people have sat on the throne of England.”
Charlotte barely listened as her parents discussed the lineage of the dying aristocrat. Her miserable existence preyed on her mind.
How could she go on living her life this way with nothing to look forward to, with never a kind or loving word spoken to her, and no one to care whether she lived or died? She couldn’t help but think of Lord Davenport and the way he looked on his horse. Would she ever so much as sit on a horse? It didn’t seem likely. Nothing seemed likely except that she would end her days in misery. What would happen to her when her parents were gone? Would she even be allowed to stay on at the hall, doing what she did, which was the kind of labour done by men on most estates.
She doubted His Lordship knew that he’d hired a man who forced his daughter to do a man’s labour. Perhaps he wouldn’t care if he did know, she thought dully. Why should anyone care about the fate of a lowborn girl?
She might be a commoner, but Charlotte knew that her parents were wrong about one thing. She wasn’t plain.
She’d seen her reflection in a mirror once, when she’d been ordered to bring in freshly cut flowers for the Duchess. Her father hadn’t dared to challenge the order although he’d glared at Charlotte for obeying the footman who delivered it. Once inside, she’d handed the flowers to the housemaid and turned to go. She’d stopped abruptly when she caught sight of her reflection in a mirror positioned over the bookcase.
She saw a young girl with a heart-shaped face framed by a cloud of dark hair that was coming loose from the gardening twine holding it back. The dark brown eyes that looked back at her were bright and inquisitive; the bruise around one from a recent beating had been plain to see. As was the birthmark on her neck, the red circling horseshoe-shape showing up vividly against the pale skin of her slender neck.
She had been surprised by her looks and as she scurried from the house, she tried to reconcile what she’d been told about her features with what she’d seen. It seemed to Charlotte that if she had clean clothes and didn’t have to work out of doors in all weathers, hot and cold, every day, she would look quite presentable enough to be seen in public.
That thought had been a comfort to her in the years since it happened. It didn’t change her life, but it altered her perception of herself.
But the question remained: who would marry a girl with no dowry? One who owned just one dress. Her choices would be limited to the poorhouse or the life of a strumpet. Sighing, she poked at her disgusting broth.
“Are you still here?” her mother said suddenly. “Who do you think is clearing the dishes? I suppose you believe them fairies are going to take care of the housework?” she mocked.
Wearily, Charlotte rose from her chair and took the spoons, tankards, and empty bowls to be washed. When she had finished, she went to her room and took off her dress. As she did every two days, she washed it in a bucket and put it by the open window so that it could dry out during the night. With a fragrant breeze, it would feel a trifle fresher and cleaner on the morrow.
She shuffled to her bed cot in the kitchen. Curled up on it, and lay her head on the pile of sacking over straw that acted as her pillow. The tears she had been holding back began to fall. It was as much a part of her nightly ritual as her forlorn prayers that God would rescue her from her unhappy circumstances, and lead her to a destiny which held promise of a better life; one in which she lived away from the parents who hated her. If she ever married, Charlotte vowed silently through the streaming tears, she would never treat a child so cruelly.