Engaged to the Earl Read online

  Dedication

  For Cheryl Pientka, again and of course

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  An Excerpt from The Worst Duke in the World The Worst Duke in the World

  About the Author

  By Lisa Berne

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Prologue

  In later years Gwendolyn would look back to the moment she fell in love with the Earl of Westenbury, and smile.

  “He was the handsomest man I’d ever seen,” she would say. “When he walked into Almack’s that evening, I was dancing with someone else and nearly stopped dead in my tracks. But I did see that he was looking at me too, and my heart seemed to lift, and soar—oh, like a bird in flight!

  “After the dance was over, my partner—whose name I could barely remember, I was so giddy—he took me back to my relation the Duchess of Egremont. Standing next to her, it took all my self-restraint not to stare around the room, to search with my eyes for the handsome stranger. She was talking about horses, I think, but I couldn’t tell you for sure. My mind was, well, elsewhere.

  “And then Mrs. Drummond-Burrell—the haughtiest, most minutely correct of the Patronesses—came walking—no, gliding toward the Duchess and me, with him at her side, as if by magic, it seemed to me. A wish made manifest with all the incredible dreamlike logic of a fairy tale.

  “He smiled, and I felt so joyful it was as if a thousand lanterns within me were lighting all at once. And I smiled back.

  “‘Your Grace,’ Mrs. Drummond-Burrell said to the Duchess, in that cool measured way of hers, ‘here is, as you see, the Earl of Westenbury. He has just yesterday arrived in Town, and wishes me to present himself to you as a desirable partner for Miss Penhallow.’

  “The Earl bowed, and oh, he was even more handsome at close range! He was wearing the dark knee-breeches considered de rigueur for Almack’s back then, with a dark long-tailed coat and a beautiful snow-white cravat tied just so. And I could see that his eyes were a lovely deep green, flecked with gold, and that his hair was a tawny light-brown, cropped à la Brutus—also very fashionable at the time—and his shoulders were wonderfully broad, and—well, it was all a dazzling jumble of impressions and I’m not sure I was even breathing!—and then he was saying ‘How do you do, Miss Penhallow’ in that marvelous deep voice of his, and that was that.

  “Love at first sight.

  “Inexplicable, indefinable, practically indescribable.

  “Yet there it was.

  “It nearly hurt me physically to tell him that all my dances were taken, but, feeling myself very clever, I added, as casually as I could, that the next evening I was to attend Lord and Lady Mainwaring’s ball.

  “Imagine my happiness when the Earl immediately said that he was going as well, and might he secure two of my dances. I would have given him all my dances, but he could only ask for two, you see, because any more would have been considered dreadfully risqué. And then I had to wait twenty-three hours—yes, I counted them, I really did!—until I could see him again. And he danced so beautifully. He didn’t step on the hem of my gown, or try to squeeze my hands in a vulgar way or bring me too close during a waltz as some other gentlemen tried to do and which made me absolutely furious.”

  Here Gwendolyn would pause, and into her eyes would come a look of warm nostalgia.

  “The Mainwarings’ ball took place two weeks after I arrived in London for the Season. After that, the Earl and I met at other gatherings, at assemblies and art galleries, at Vauxhall Gardens and Venetian breakfasts—every day, sometimes more than once!—and he would smile at me, and I’d fall in love with him all over again.

  “And then suddenly the Earl disappeared. He was seen heading north in his curricle and four, traveling fast. I hardly knew what to think. He left no message for me. Where had he gone, would he come back, had he left me forever? I was beside myself with anxiety.

  “Then, after what felt like the longest fortnight of my life, Hugo, my dear older brother Hugo, arrived! The Earl had traveled to Whitehaven, and formally requested from Hugo—he was my guardian, you know—my hand in marriage.

  “‘Is this what you want, Gwennie?’ Hugo asked me.

  “‘Oh yes, oh yes,’ I answered firmly. Rapturously. The Earl, I’d come to learn after our first meeting, had been for well over ten years one of the ton’s most eligible gentlemen, but hadn’t found anyone he liked well enough to even consider marrying. And now he wanted me—as much as I wanted him! I didn’t know whether to dance around the room like a zany, or collapse in a chair to try and take it all in.

  “‘You’re sure?’ Hugo said.

  “‘Yes, I am.’

  “‘It’s all happened rather quickly,’ he observed.

  “‘Yes,’ I said. ‘But Hugo, sometimes one just knows.’

  “And of course Hugo had to agree with me, having been so fortunate in his own marriage. To have found his own true love.”

  Gwendolyn would nod wisely, and then go on:

  “And so, in April of 1818, the Earl and I were officially betrothed. He gave me a ring, too. It had been in his family for generations—it was a gift from Queen Elizabeth to a previous Lady Westenbury who served as her Mistress of the Robes. Oh, it was so beautiful! It was made of gold, with a large, milky-white pearl in the center. Around the pearl were tiny, perfect rubies which made it seem to absolutely glow.

  “When I was alone, I’d hold up my hand and stare at the ring. A symbol of my future happiness. No—my present happiness. I was engaged, I would tell myself over and over, and to the most wonderful man in the world.

  “Engaged to the Earl.”

  Gwendolyn would look down at her left hand, and smile yet again.

  Chapter 1

  Whitehaven, England

  Autumn 1811

  “Christopher, may I talk with you, please?” Gwendolyn Penhallow said, and Christopher Beck, irritated at the interruption, brought his axe down with a thunk into a fat yew log and split it in two.

  They stood in the long yard to the back of his house, where he’d come to chop wood—over Father’s objections, who said it was a servant’s job, not that of a gentleman—and all he wanted was to be left alone after yet another of Father’s long-winded lectures.

  So what if he’d been sent down from university? For “vulgar and pernicious conduct,” according to the Chancellor, which was a high-minded way of describing the fights with his fellow students: those, that is, who objected to attending classes with a person of what they considered inferior birth, and who made their views known publicly and repeatedly.

  As far as he was concerned, they deserved the black eyes and bloody noses. The damned haughty bastards. Who, incidentally, had not been sent down. He rolled another log into place with his boot and lifted his axe high.

  “Christopher, please,” said Gwendolyn, and with a scowl he lowered the axe and looked down at her. Gwendolyn lived next door and was his younger sister Diana’s friend. She was just a girl, as uninteresting and annoying as Diana; he supposed they’d hardly spoken twenty words between them over the years. Which w
as fine by him.

  “Well?” he said curtly.

  “You see, I’ve had an idea.”

  “Bully for you.”

  “Will you listen to me?” she demanded.

  “Apparently I must.” He leaned on the axe handle and eyed her sardonically. “I am, as they say, all attention.”

  Gwendolyn, clearly deciding to take him at face value, said: “I must say I think it’s quite a brilliant idea. You know, of course, that we’re dreadfully poor?”

  “No.”

  “Well, we are, and Mama’s very worried, though she never says anything. But I can tell. And I do want to help! Diana says that an uncle of yours left you a great fortune, so I thought that you and I could get married, and then you could give Mama some of your money. I’m not asking for all of it,” she added reassuringly, “just enough for our debts, and perhaps a new gown for Mama, and a horse for Percy, and some books for Francis, and something for Bertram’s laboratory—oh, and Cook would absolutely love to have a new stove, and I do wish we could give more to the indigents’ charity. Also—”

  “Get married?” he interrupted. “Are you mad?”

  “Of course I’m not mad,” she replied, indignant. “It seems to me a wonderfully clever plan.”

  “In case you hadn’t noticed, you’re a child.”

  “I’m not. Girls do get married at fourteen.”

  She was looking up at him and suddenly it struck Christopher that her eyes were like great deep sapphire pools, sparkling with summer light. It also struck him that Gwendolyn Penhallow was, in fact, beautiful. Tall, willowy, with delicate features and bright golden hair and a mouth the color of a ripe peach. She was right: girls did get married at fourteen. To cover a rush of confused—confusing—emotions, he said sarcastically:

  “I thought girls were supposed to wait for a proposal.”

  She waved a delicate-looking hand in the air. “Oh, who cares? Besides, wouldn’t it be a splendid adventure? We could leave in the dead of night and slip away to Scotland! Gretna Green’s only fifty miles away. I checked in our atlas. Just think of it,” she went on, dreamily. “Married over the anvil, just like a hero and heroine in a romantic story.”

  Revolted, he said, “It sounds ghastly.”

  “I’d have to leave a note, of course.” Gwendolyn’s expression was still dreamy. “The heroine usually does. She leaves it on her dresser, and sometimes it’s all splotched with her tears. Although you’d think the ink would run and make the note difficult to read, wouldn’t you? I won’t cry, naturally, but I do think a note is important. I’d hate for Mama and everyone to be worried about us. Would you leave a note for your father and Diana?”

  Christopher straightened up, his mind racing. A note. What would he say? Take that, you old windbag. Father was always prosing on about university, the importance of getting good marks, the need to be prudent and cautious, how he was looking forward to Christopher joining him in his offices (a damned horrid stuffy place filled with people who sat around shuffling papers back and forth), and on and on till Christopher all too frequently felt as if he would explode with anger and impatience.

  Now, picturing Father’s reaction upon discovering that his only son had, at seventeen, embarked on a runaway marriage—a decidedly imprudent, incautious act—Christopher felt defiant glee overtake him. Ha! How furious Father would be. He tossed his axe aside.

  “Let’s do it.”

  Gwendolyn laughed and gave a little bounce on her toes. “Oh, Christopher, that’s wonderful! It’ll solve everything. Thank you very much. By the way, did you know we have a cousin in Scotland? He’s a chieftain named Alasdair who lives in the Highlands. We’ve never met him but I’m positive he’s one of those fierce, bloodthirsty sorts, so we’d probably better avoid that part of Scotland. Although wouldn’t it be a lark to meet a real Scottish chieftain? Do you think he wears kilts every day? Will you start wearing kilts? I wonder if your knees will get cold.”

  Revolted all over again, Christopher said, “Focus, for God’s sake. When shall we leave?”

  “Oh, the sooner the better! And at night, don’t you think? The moon will be full in a few days, which means we can travel more quickly. Also it will be more romantic that way.”

  Romantic or not, she was right about the moon making it easier to travel. And that it would be better to leave under the cover of darkness. What else? He’d need to pay for their coach fares, and for lodgings and food also. After they were married, they could travel further north, up into the coastal wilds of western Scotland (and, he supposed, bypassing her unsavory relation Alasdair). How much money did he have on hand? He thought about it. Probably thirty pounds or so. It was enough to get them away from here. And gone forever. No more useless arguments with Father, ever again. No more university, either. Freedom beckoned—

  Then he remembered something.

  A small, minute, critically important detail.

  Oh, bloody hell, but he was fortune’s fool.

  He told her, “I won’t come into my money till I’m twenty-one. You can have it. You can have all of it. But not now.”

  Even as he said it, he saw the happiness fade from Gwendolyn’s exquisitely pretty face.

  “But that’s years from now. That won’t do at all. Oh, Christopher, we need it right away.”

  Well, that was that, then. His world closed in upon him again—his many failures, Father’s disappointment and disapproval, Diana fluttering around him like a small maddening moth in a house far too big for just the three of them—and Christopher could feel his scowl returning, his brows drawing together, the quick downturn of his mouth. He shrugged, turned away, picked up his axe. “Sorry,” he said, and didn’t wait for her to leave before he brought the axe down into another yew log and sundered it in two.

  As it turned out, Gwendolyn’s brother Hugo arrived in Whitehaven a week after that and within a matter of days was betrothed to a fantastically rich heiress who lived just outside town, thereby neatly solving at a stroke all the family’s money problems. Which was just as well, Christopher thought, because Diana had come trailing after him with the news of Hugo’s engagement, and added in a low voice trembling with excitement:

  “And Gwennie told me that her mama said that Papa asked her to marry him!”

  He paused just outside the stable, stupefied all over again. The things girls said! “What the devil are you talking about, you nitwit? Father wants to marry Gwendolyn?”

  “Gwendolyn? Oh, no, Christopher, how could you think such a thing? Papa asked Gwennie’s mama to marry him! But she said no. Even though she’s a widow, and Papa’s a widower. Oh, Christopher, I do wish she’d said yes, she’s the nicest, kindest lady in all the world! And then Gwennie and I would be sisters! And you would be her brother! We’d all live together in the same house, and maybe, someday, I could marry Percy—or Francis—they’re so very handsome—though I can never tell which is which. I do wish they weren’t identical twins! But then they wouldn’t be themselves! They’d be somebody else. And then I wouldn’t want to marry them.”

  “O God,” said Christopher, nauseated to his very soul, then took one long step inside the stable and slammed the door in Diana’s face. He brushed aside the groom’s offer to saddle his horse and did it himself, doing his best to keep his hands gentle despite the anger firing up inside him again, and within five minutes he was on the wide sandy beach, bent low over his horse’s neck, riding hard, half-wishing he could plunge straight into the turbulent blue-green waves and ride, like the mighty Poseidon in his mythical chariot, to someplace far, far away.

  A few years after that . . .

  Whitehaven, England

  Winter 1815

  “Oh, Gwennie,” exclaimed Diana, “isn’t this the most beautiful gown you’ve ever seen?”

  The two girls were sitting close together on a sofa in the large, comfortable drawing-room of the Penhallow house, poring over the current issue of La Belle Assemblée, all around them the cheerful sounds of a conviv
ial holiday gathering.

  Gwendolyn studied the illustration of an improbably elongated lady wearing an elaborate dress of striped silver gauze, its glossy silver-edged hem drawn up to the knee (boldly displaying the white satin slip beneath) and ornamented with a large cluster of artificial flowers. She was also wearing a gauzy silk headdress, a low-set wreath of brilliants, enormous ruby ear-bobs, half a dozen bracelets on each wrist, and had wide silver ribbons dangling negligently from her bodice—these additional adornments praised in the caption as the height of modish elegance. They may well have been, but to Gwendolyn the lady looked more like an overdressed actress in a bad play than anything else. But of course, taste was a subjective thing, and so to Diana she only said:

  “Yes, very pretty.”

  “Do ask your mama to have it made for you! And you must wear it to Almack’s! Everyone will be looking at you!”

  Gwendolyn was sure they would, but perhaps not for the reason Diana imagined, and wondered, not for the first time, what it would be like to step into the hallowed halls of Almack’s, that exclusive and supremely fashionable London institution. What it would be like to have her Season at last, after years of waiting. There was a time, before Hugo returned from the war, when the idea of a Season had been an impossible one. How different things were now—how infinitely better!

  A burst of laughter near the mantelpiece interrupted Gwendolyn’s musings, and she glanced over to see Hugo laughing at something his business partner, Mr. Studdart, had said. She let her gaze sweep around the room. It was lovely having her three other brothers home from Eton—and how tall they’d become, too, though they hadn’t quite yet reached Hugo’s great height. Percy stood next to Hugo, and Francis was talking to Grandpapa; Bertram, two years younger than herself, sat next to Hugo’s wife Katherine on a sofa, his hand on her rounded belly and on his face a look of deep interest.

  “Did you feel that, Bertram?” asked Katherine, and he nodded.