"Oh? Was it not but a day past that you stood in my study positively bragging about how the little bird had told you everything? About how much leverage you held above my head? You seemed quite proud of your cunning plot when we spoke, m'lady," Ellery crowed with authority. "Now that the Duke of Thrushmore's fortunes have turned quite bleak, now you've no interest in a good, classic gloat, I suppose?"
"I've no interest in Eugenius Miller's matters," she snarled in response, the composure of the lady she had so precisely and perfectly cultivated cracking like the glass of a shattered mirror. "We had quite a productive conversation between the two of us, Ellery - and I felt certain we had come to an understanding on how this... woman," she spat the word in Isobel's direction, "...was using, seducing you; all the trouble and ruin it would bring upon your names, both hers, and yours. Had we not come to an accord?" Lady Maryweather tried to play sweet with a sugary tone in her voice and a smile on her lips, though the reality lurking beneath her face could scarcely be hidden by now.
"A courteous accord? That's what we call blackmailing now?" Ellery retorted, his voice full of airy sarcasm and smug satisfaction. Isobel could feel it too.
"These sorts of accusations only hurt yourself, Ellery," Lady Maryweather spoke through angrily gritted teeth, her eyes full of spite.
"But that's what it's called, is it not - blackmail? Please, correct me if my brain, so mired with worry and the want of lovely Isobel, has made a grave trespass in calling it as its appropriately termed," Ellery crowed. Lady Maryweather's cheeks burned brighter the more frustrated and irate she grew.
"Perhaps we need to come to a new agreement, Lord Brighton," she rasped in revilement.
"Blackmail, Lady Maryweather - and from the tales I've heard, I'm not your only victim, am I?" Lady Maryweather's rage broke with that statement into a fractured image of worried confusion; Ellery smiled. "I've said this far too many times in the last day, love, but - Lady Emily Maryweather, you certainly didn't think yourself to be the only noble in all of northern England to associate herself with coy saboteurs and 'little birds', did you?" Lady Maryweather took a step back, hand to her chest, as if ready to faint.
"I... I don't quite underst... and," she stammered.
"I'm certain you do. The difference, though, m'lady," Ellery stated authoritatively, sauntering along the top of the staircase as he spoke; Isobel savored every second, her expression growing full of warmth - and so full of pride, at seeing him assert himself to her. He truly had forced off his chains. "...the difference, is that my friend is not a 'little bird'. No, my friend is far from a dove. My friend is a vicious bird of prey, its talons sharpened, its eyes quick, its manner merciless," he said. Isobel watched the doorway - and she saw the gleam in his eyes. Just as Lord Brighton described. He smiled a sick smile - a smile that had so long kept her in wary suspense and writhing fear. It was then, when he grinned up at Lord Brighton with those eyes, that she realized the identity of Lord Brighton's spy. Perhaps the most loyal - and the person she had least expected it to be.
Arthur Ellsworth's ghastly gaze fell then upon Isobel, whose face brimmed with stunned surprise. He tipped his hat to her, giving her his smile. She had never trusted him... but perhaps that's precisely why he made the most effective spy, in all Lady Maryweather's entourage.
"Who—what?" Lady Maryweather gasped; she stumbled backwards, revelations overwhelming her.
"If I revealed too much, that'd spoil our game, wouldn't it, Emily?" Ellery announced proudly. "Now, my hawk has far more evidence of your wrongdoings than simple blackmail - no, that'd be silly, even expected, from a woman like yourself. But some crimes my hawk has seen your hand sullied with..." Lord Brighton clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth, shaking his head. "Perhaps the Duke of Thrushmore wasn't as wicked a man, if we dared compare him to you, love. Though, you're in luck - it seems likely he'll be needing a friend to wallow in ruin with."
"You... you snake," Lady Maryweather managed. She took hobbling steps towards the stairwell, full of rage, before tripping on her long and flowing dress, falling to her knees with a yelp. Quivering, fearful and broken, she could take little more. "I'll ruin b-both of you," she vowed weakly, before the excitement claimed her and she fell faint with a sigh at the foot of the stairs.
Isobel rushed to her lover's side, grasping at his waist; she looked down on the fallen lady with pride. Just like the Duke of Thrushmore, Lady Maryweather had been a lie. And as Lord Brighton held her tight and kissed her, she felt a satisfying warmth fill her from head to toe.
Gentlemen, ladies, deception and ruination... none of it mattered. For no amount of lies or financial ruin could bankrupt the love they shared.
"Now," Ellery whispered against her lips. "We've a wedding to plan, don't we?"
The Duke’s Headstrong Woman
True Love In London
By Virginia Vice
CHAPTER ONE
From the sparkling coasts of India's shores to the rough frontier of Canada; along the steamy coasts of British Africa and the harsh Australian climes, Lady Nadia Havenshire had ventured across and beyond the scope of the empire her father considered himself a proud part of. She'd shared dinner with company men in the islands near Siam and she'd fanned herself in the steaming sands of the Near East.
Now life back in dreary northern England seemed positively dull - though not simply for the change of weather, but that figured quite a bit into her frame of mind no doubt. Her father, the Duke of Emerys, had sent for Lady Havenshire - and though she had enjoyed life outside the prison of waistcoats and dresses and dinner parties and 'courting' and old Lady Henrietta's gossip, Nadia's father had always treated her well and had loved her dearly; or, at least, he'd treated her as well as a father could treat a daughter when straitjacketed by the expectations of society built against daughters. She loved her father, but that silent resentment could never be undone - even, or perhaps especially considering, all she'd learned while traveling the world.
Lady Nadia had seen women across, and even outside, her father's beloved British Empire - of course, the social constants remained the same; women were mothers, women were daughters; women fed the family and women kept the home, and this was no different from the expectations of many women in the world from which Nadia had come. Things were not always the same, though, much to her surprise. In the ports along the coasts of the fledgling America, Nadia had even seen women drinking and dancing with sailors! In Africa, she'd seen local women hunting; fighting, protecting their kin, with status the same as their beloved brothers and husbands. The thought fascinated her, and she'd even indulged in the thought of abandoning the craggy, rain-spattered forests of northern England for a life free of expectations, as a woman indulging in the freedom so often afforded English men.
Instead, she sat in a carriage rolling across cobblestones, the clop-clop of horse hooves her only comfort, the whistle of her driver faint and dull, like a cudgel banging against the base of her skull. She rubbed her temples; the trip across the sea hadn't been comfortable, as she'd been forced to book passage at the last minute on any ship that would take her, and wound up amid rowdy sailors amid a creaking wooden frame tossed by rough waves, water creeping and seeping through every hole and loose crease and every rotted beam on the timber-woven frame. The to-and-fro left her back sore and her head pounding in faint ache, and on the long trip from the ports along the roads to northern England she'd spent two days bouncing and bobbing gently, until the rhythm had made her back numb.
She expected about the same level of comfort when she attempted to ease back in to her 'old' way of life. She didn't know that she'd be able to go back to that ever again - not with the knowledge she'd gained abroad. She'd met teachers, strong women and strong men who saw her and wanted to see her actualized, as they termed it. One of women who'd accompanied her on her trip to Africa had taught her a woman's place is wherever she wishes; the headmaster of a boarding school had taught her arithmetic, language, and literature, and had commented that Lady Nadia took to education as a fish to the English Channel. More than anything, Lady Havenshire had learned her worth while sailing the seas and venturing into lands few had ever seen. And when a woman with heart and spirit like Lady Nadia Havenshire learns she has worth to the world, the idea of subjugating that worth in a society controlled by men feels less and less appealing with each clopping hoof
-step taken along the rural roads towards towering manses and cloaking forests.
When the carriage carried Nadia past the crumbled stone wall along the roadside, and she began to recognize the old weathered posts holding dead lanterns that swayed with passing breezes, she knew she'd arrived at the fringed edges of the Duchy of Emerys, the leaf-choked land of green and plenty she'd left behind years ago. Now turning twenty, Nadia's gut sank as she thought on precisely what she'd be expected to do with her waning youth. To the world in northern England, many women her age had already found men to marry; dukes to court them and to control their lives, making decisions for the young women so that they'd never need to make any themselves. The very idea of a man with a title crossing the threshold of Havenshire Manor to seek her life as his to control made her wretch, and not simply because she'd seen that women could do as they wish in other parts of the world. The whole idea had always felt... wrong, to her, even as a child; perhaps that had been the reason that, upon reaching her seventeenth birthday, Lady Nadia had chosen to venture past the gates of her family's manse in the first place. She'd seen the way her friends' lives had unfolded - a childhood playmate, the Lady Emily of Staffords, had been betrothed to a man since the day she'd turned sixteen. She had not been the only one - and in spite of her father's insistences, Nadia refused to go to the debutante balls and lavish parties that her friends had wrapped themselves up so readily in. The very thought of marrying a man she'd scarcely even met, so that he could take her land and her name and title and demand of her how she would dress and talk and walk, and even what thoughts she could think... none of that lifestyle had appealed to her, even in her youth. Her father had always called her a 'willful, blythe young spirit.' She'd never known what it meant, but after her time among beggars and teachers and kings in foreign lands, perhaps she'd begun to see just what he had seen in her.
"We'll be coming up on the gates soon, m'lady," Egan commented. Her father had had the courtesy of sending a man Nadia knew and could trust; Egan, an aging, rotund laugh of a man with stringy, graying hair and a bushy beard, had gained quite a bit of weight since Nadia had last seen him, though it only added to the boisterous, loud and jolly chauffeur she had known since her youth. He hummed away, which while it would normally give her a sense of peace of mind, instead only created an unnerving reminder of what she was returning to.
"You've hummed the same tunes for twenty years, Egan," she commented wryly, her head pulsing and her heart pumping; the sound reminded her of home, and being reminded of home didn't quite have the comforting cheeriness it held for many others. To her home was a doomed existence she had no interest in. "Haven't you learned any new tunes since I've been out of England?"
"Your father was always right about you, since you were a little thing, Lady Nadia," Egan chortled, glancing through the window in the wall separating the damp, cool air of England from the cramped confines of the rather spartan carriage Nadia's father had sent to fetch her. "A willful firebrand of a daughter, he said you'd grow up to be."