Tight Laced
Tight Laced
Book I of the Dragon Duchess Series
Copyright © 2015 by Roxy Soulé
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, except for brief quotations attributed to the author.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, occurrences and places are of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Published by
words in a hurry
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NOTE: Due to strong sexual content, this book is intended for the 18+ reader
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Cover by
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Tight Laced
is dedicated to my maternal grandfather, Joseph Rudgunas, who died in a coal mine in 1942.
Yourself and your family are respectfully invited to attend the funeral of Lord Bloomsbury, the Earl of Highcastle, from the Rosehaven Church of St. Sebastian on the Third of October, 1877, at 11:00 in the morning, to proceed to Rosemount Cemetery.
~ funeral invitation sent from Highcastle
L
ADY LACILIA TURNED
the mourning locket over in her hands. Her father had given it to her years earlier, when her mother passed, and now he was gone as well. She brought her lips to the clasp, and then gazed up at the ceiling – though she really didn’t think that the idea of heaven as something
above
the world made any sense at all. Heaven, if there was such a place, dwelt in one’s heart.
She whispered into the stilted quiet of the room, “I didn’t even have a chance to say good-bye, Papa.”
Lacy had drained herself of tears, but the shock of her father dying so suddenly, and the entire manor switching from normalcy to grief, now sat upon her heart like a chunk of marble.
Out in the hall, she heard sharp footsteps. Those of her stepmother, no doubt.
All of Highcastle was in high mourning; she, Lady Bloomsbury, and Lady Sarah Jane had been outfitted in appropriate attire from Jay’s of Regent Street. Paramatta silk and stiff, black crepe – and so it was to be for months to come. The dress Lacy wore matched her spirit: sorrowful and bleak. And angry, too, truth be told.
She’d adored her father, though the earl had been nearly fifty when she was born. Her mother, too, had not been young. The original Lady Bloomsbury had been a spinster, having lost many suitors to disease and accident, and it was a miracle, Lord Bloomsbury always told her, that Lacy had been born at all.
Now, her parents both lay in the ground. Her mother, long dead of consumption in one plot of earth, her father in another. He’d remarried straight away, giving Lacy, in short order, a new mother
and
baby sister before she could even tie her own boots.
Her stepmother had been a thorn in Lacilia’s side since day one.
Upon returning from the funeral weeks earlier, Sarah Jane had broken out in a rash that still had not healed. Lacy supposed that her half-sister had reacted to the spray of lilies on the coffin. Sarah Jane, poor dear, was highly allergic to anything living: dogs, grass, flowers.
It pained Lacy that there were never any animals or fresh-cut blooms inside the main house, but, of course, she understood. After all, it must be quite dreadful to be so sensitive to all that was beautiful.
And poor, dear Sarah Jane was anything
but
beautiful.
Whereas Lacilia was fair, Sarah Jane was pale. Lacy enjoyed a thick head of honey-colored hair, and her half-sister’s thin, dried wheat-colored tresses barely covered her pate.
Spring and autumn assaulted the younger Bloomsbury girl each year causing fits of wheezing, sneezing and hives. The elder daughter came alive in those same seasons, rushing headlong into the meadows surrounding their estate (which bordered the beautiful town of Rosehaven), feeling fresh sun on her face and breathing in all the joyous scents: heather, daphne, ripe acorns and chestnuts.
She had been named well: Lacilia Bloomsbury. Strong of constitution and stunning to the eye, but with a delicate side. The legs of a filly, fawn-like eyes. Her neck was long and graceful.
At least that’s what people told her.
She preferred the willowy flowers: delphinium, columbine, and would spend hours in the meadow in summer, gathering nosegays that she’d have to leave on the grass, or in the stable where only the ponies could enjoy them.
But now that her dear papa was rejoined with the earth, it seemed utterly cruel that there be a dearth of flowers at Highcastle. Lord Bloomsbury, an avid orchid collector in his younger days, would have eschewed all of the darkness of mourning. Had he a say in the post-death goings on, he would have demanded they behave as always. He so loved color about him. Black attire, he’d often complained, is acceptable for opera and nothing more.
Dark. Drab. Dead.
It was awful. If Lacy had her way, mourning would look quite differently. Emotion – yes, but the artifice of creating an environment much like the inside of a coffin? The earl would not have agreed to it.
Lady Bloomsbury demanded the drapes be drawn, and every clock in the manor stopped at the time of the earl’s death: ten past midnight. Though Lord Bloomsbury had been transferred from the home almost immediately, Lady Bloomsbury had insisted that the mirrors in the common rooms be shrouded until after the holidays.
The footsteps out in the hall clattered into the parlor. The shush-shush of stiff skirt. And now, a clap of hands.
“Get up!” ordered the countess upon spying Lacy on her knees near the fireplace. “You look a fright, I dare say. Like a beggar. We have company expected.”
Lacy raised her eyes and beseeched those of her stepmother. The elder woman’s harsh face, pinched lips and furrowed, penciled brow gave the younger a start. At the gravesite just a few weeks earlier, her stepmother had behaved so lovingly. She’d leaned her head upon Lacy’s shoulder and wept. Her veil shuddering with every sob. The guests had all marveled at how lucky Lady Lacilia was to be saved from the label of “orphan” with a stepmother so warm.