Regency Romance Omnibus 2018: Dominate Dukes & Tenacious Women

“Audrey!” Aunt Bette called, shaking the girl from her trance.

“I-I’m sorry, Aunt Bette!” Audrey exclaimed, nearly tripping on the wet floor.

“This is the girl?” Agatha asked. A gray-haired woman with a daunting frame and a strong body, she doesn’t look much like any ordinary domestic servant - more like a bodyguard, with how broad she looks. Audrey began to understand why her aunt felt comfortable leaving Audrey under the watching eye of this aging woman.

“Don’t be put off by the wandering mind,” Aunt Bette chuckled. “This is just all a lot for Audrey to take in. She hasn’t see anything more elegant than the expensive suites back at her uncle’s hotel.” Agatha struck a chord of fear in Audrey’s heart, and the small girl shrank away from the tall woman’s shrewd glare. Just as Audrey’s fear reached a fevered pitch, Agatha’s expression broke into an oddly inviting smile. She wrapped her arms around Audrey, who wriggled awkwardly, even as she sighed in relief.

“It was a lot for me to take in at first, too,” Agatha laughed boisterously. “Outrageous, that someone could afford all this, yes?” Audrey nodded anxiously. “Even more outrageous - the idea of cleaning it all!” Bette and Agatha laughed together; Audrey managed to force a small, but tense, chuckle.

“I-I’m Audrey, Audrey Fisher,” the girl’s nerves burned, the only warmth in her body; her teeth chattered as the manse’s drafty halls throbbed with a cool wind that chilled along her shivering spine.

“Poor dear, here,” Agatha crooned, pulling a blanket from atop one of the couches and throwing it across Audrey’s shuddering shoulders. The girl exhaled deeply, Agatha drying out some of Audrey’s hair with the cloth. “How’d you get stuck walking up the hill? I could’ve sent the carriage,” Agatha frowned.

“You know me well enough to know I don’t do charity, Agatha,” Bette grumbled; Agatha smiled in response.

“You’re right. I’m certain your girl feels the same way?” Agatha turned her appraising gaze to Audrey, who nodded excitedly.

“I’m looking forward to working hard,” Audrey chirped. “The lord—”

“I’m certain your aunt has already spoken with you about the... master, of the house,” Agatha interrupted with authority. She and Bette shared a skeptical gaze.

“She knows,” Bette nodded. “I couldn’t send my niece here unprepared, after all.”

“He’s certainly not all that bad,” Agatha laughed a loud and deep laugh, something that nearly shook the windows. “He just has... certain feelings, habits, that he has little control over. It’s the nature of men, isn’t it?” Agatha lamented. Audrey laughed anxiously, not quite sure how to respond.

“I-I suppose it is,” Audrey replied. “I don’t... well, I don’t have much in the way of experience, therein.”

“No?” Agatha asked, surprised. “...The master will quite like you, then,” Agatha said.

“Twas my fear,” Bette interjected cautiously. “Audrey has spent most of her life on a farm, or in my inn, but she knows her place. And she knows how much trouble there is in the life of a Duke.”

“I don’t...” Audrey began to feel nerves welling in her chest, a mix of embarrassment and anger. “I’ll do my duties as you assign, Ms. Agatha. I think that should suffice,” she concluded, uncomfortable with so frank a discussion of her life. Agatha respected that, a slow smile forming on her lips.

“Anxious to get to work, then? I adore that mindframe,” Agatha barked. “Good.”

“Is this the new one?” A derisive chant erupted from behind Agatha. “What happened? Got stuck in the rain? And she’s tracking it all through my foyer,” the woman sighed. Short, petite, and with an expression full of vitriol, the maid clad in black, her hair long and dark, glared venom at Audrey, her arms crossed atop her chest.

“Stow the attitude for now, Ana. She’s new here, and she and her aunt, a good friend of mine, had to hike up the hill in the rain storm. Be accommodating, can’t you?” Agatha implored.

“We didn’t need another maid anyway. Or maybe Lord Parris sent for another for different reasons?” Ana asked shrewishly. “If that’s the case, she needn’t even settle in. There’s no more room for that in the manor.” Audrey blushed at even the faint thought of indulging in an evening with a duke.

“I’m not here for that,” she murmured self-consciously.

“Ana! What’s gotten in to you, to speak so boldly? Especially in front of company,” Agatha rumbled.

“We have no more room for lusty maids on the lord’s staff, is all,” Ana insisted haughtily, standoffish in the threshold of a heavy wooden door at the rear of the foyer. A feather duster in hand, she tidied off the table nearest her, though her vicious eyes never left Audrey, who remained both embarrassed and now shyly defiant.

“I’ve heard enough from you, Ana. Your jealousy doesn’t befit the senior member of my staff,” Agatha boomed. “This is Audrey. Be courtesy and introduce yourself.” Ana grudgingly sighed, trudging across sparkling tile floors to curtsy before Aunt Bette and Audrey, who returned a pensive curtsy of her own.

“Ana Morris,” the dark-haired maid intoned coldly, her eyes afire while she watched Audrey’s gr

aceful movements. Agatha stood between the two, keeping clashing attitudes separated with her strong, broad presence. “Senior staff, beneath Ms. Agatha. Listen to me, and to her. Don’t go making messes. Do your tasks. And don’t sleep with our master,” she snarled.

“Enough. Ana, back to chambers,” Agatha roared, a bony finger pointed towards the door deep in the back of the foyer, clutched in shadow. With one parting glance, searing in its rage, Ana stormed back through the door; it slammed shut behind with a resounding boom, one that made Audrey wince. Bette and Agatha shared terse looks, mild amusement in Bette’s expression.

“I apologize for her behavior,” Agatha sighed. “Her relationship with Lord Parris is... complicated. She has a protective attitude towards him.”

“I can’t imagine why,” Bette intoned sarcastically. Audrey blinked.