The Rusticated Duchess

A Total-E-Bound Publication

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The Rusticated Duchess

ISBN # 978-1-78184-290-4

©Copyright Elle Q. Sabine 2013

Cover Art by Posh Gosh ©Copyright April 2013

Edited by Eleanor Boyall

Total-E-Bound Publishing

This is a work of fiction. All characters, places and events are from the author’s imagination and should not be confused with fact. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, events or places is purely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any material form, whether by printing, photocopying, scanning or otherwise without the written permission of the publisher, Total-E-Bound Publishing.

Applications should be addressed in the first instance, in writing, to Total-E-Bound Publishing. Unauthorised or restricted acts in relation to this publication may result in civil proceedings and/or criminal prosecution.

The author and illustrator have asserted their respective rights under the Copyright Designs and Patents Acts 1988 (as amended) to be identified as the author of this book and illustrator of the artwork.

Published in 2013 by Total-E-Bound Publishing, Think Tank, Ruston Way, Lincoln, LN6 7FL, United Kingdom.

Warning:

This book contains sexually explicit content which is only suitable for mature readers. This story has a
heat rating
of
Total-e-burning
and a
sexometer
of
2.

This story contains 270 pages, additionally there is also a
free excerpt
at the end of the book containing 15 pages.

The Misbegotten Misses

THE RUSTICATED DUCHESS

Elle Q. Sabine

Book two in the Misbegotten Misses series

Lady Gloria Swenson has lived through eighteen months she can never forget or escape. Can Lord Clare help her to live, when all she wants to do is hide?

When Jeremy Blessing, better known as the Marquess of Clare, discovers a proud young lady wandering his father’s lands, he finds himself looking for her angelic smile and golden head at every turn. But Gloria Swenson has lived through eighteen months she’ll never forget or escape, no matter how far she’s already run. When he insists on her time, then her trust, and finally offers a marriage to protect her, they’ll have to confront the thorny issues of all complex relationships one difficult negotiation at a time. Money, family, children, and a vindictive, greedy man all collude to separate them, but it is Gloria’s reticence that Clare has to conquer more than any other obstacle. Will Gloria conquer her fears and her disillusionment? What will Clare have to sacrifice to bring them together?

Dedication

When in disgrace with Fortune and men’s eyes,

I all alone beweep my outcast state…

Happily I think on thee, and then my state,

Like to the lark at the break of day arising,

From sullen earth, sings hymn’s at heaven’s gate;

For thy sweet love remember’d such wealth brings

That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

~ William Shakespeare, Sonnet 29 ~

Prologue

November 1823

“She must leave London.”

Gloria heard the words as if they had come from a great distance instead of from the settee four feet away. Had the numb emptiness in her body spread to her mind? No, she knew quite well that her father-in-law sat opposite her, his lined face aged with the weight of decision.

The words of His Grace, the Duke of Lennox, held absolute authority among the small gathering of titled men and women gathered in the upstairs ‘closet’. They’d chosen the room—lined with ancient ledgers and family records—for its privacy. The heavy shelving and glass cases made eavesdropping through walls impossible, particularly when the duke’s personal footman guarded the only entrance to His Grace’s private sitting room and study beyond.

In the last week, the duke’s privacy had become of utmost importance. In the same last week, Gloria’s future had blurred into a confusing fog.

She wept silently, though her outward patina as an elegant young matron of London remained calm. Mean-spirited sentiments from her time as an unmarried young lady on the marriage mart had returned to haunt her, even in her own drawing room. ‘Ambitious gold-digger. Drove him to it’, they said. ‘Undeserving fortune hunter. Got what was coming to her. Never going to see that tiara now’.

The other men, and Gloria’s mother, did not disagree with His Grace’s announcement. Instead they were ominously silent, until Gloria whispered, her heart in her throat, “Is it truthfully the only way?”

Beside her, Gloria’s Uncle Neil shifted on the settee and drew her stiff, cold hand inside his sober ones. As the Earl of Hanover, he had political influence and financial security, zealously guarding the interests of his family and friends. He was also increasingly reclusive and quiet, as responsibility for his ailing wife aged him, taking him away from the centre of political power and lessening his influence among the Lords. “It is not the
only
way, but it is the safest way. We cannot say what he would do if he established physical custody of you. And if things do not go our way in Chancery, you would be here in London—easy enough for him to seize you.”

“Your Grace, would I not be safe, even within this bastion of Lennox House?” Gloria demanded, her eyes meeting the duke’s. She pursed her lips together as she waited for an answer, though no sign of stress was otherwise visible. Even her elegant hand rested easily in her uncle’s palm.

Lennox appeared uncomfortable as he thought. “Within the house, yes, I think you would be safe,” he finally answered. “No watch captain or Bow Street Runner in his right mind would enter without a warrant, and most magistrates in London would be demonstrably reluctant to issue one for Lennox House, even to a belted earl. But Winchester is capable of using less than legal means to take you, and we would be in a greatly weakened position if he somehow succeeded in removing you from this residence, whether by force, deceit or both.”

“Gloria.” The single, soft word, spoken by Gloria’s mother, drew the younger woman’s attention. She blinked, inwardly shocked, at her regal but melancholy mother, who in this company was known simply as Johna. For more than a year she’d refused the title that had come with her marriage to the Earl of Winchester, though when she left the confines of the House she was still nominally Winchester’s wife. “Even without physical possession of your body, he might again be named your guardian. The last time he had the right to decide your future…”

Johna broke off, but Lennox finished her thought with cutting precision. “The last time he was legally your guardian, he forced you into marriage with my reprobate son.”

Gloria shuddered and a light perspiration broke out on her skin. She concealed her reaction from her male relatives by looking down and re-arranging the black silk shawl over her shoulders. The duke’s words were true, even an understatement. Her father by law and in the eyes of society, but not by blood or emotion, was the Earl of Winchester. He had been enraged fourteen months earlier to discover that his society wife Johna had been having an
affaire
for years with their London neighbour, the Duke of Lennox. The ripple effect of his discovery had led to the revelation that Winchester’s late son and four daughters were not
his
children at all, but the products of long-ago relationships Johna had sought with other men in a desperate attempt to give Winchester the children he had not naturally begotten with her.

In the end, Johna had virtually disappeared from Winchester House and the earl had brutally cut the girls from his life by obligating three of them to less than welcome marriages.

All Gloria had gained from Winchester’s revenge was the promise of a title, a nightly terror and the admitted comfort of a financially secure future. The title held no value to her, despite claims to the contrary by society at large and even her own family members. The financial security was welcome but hardly recompense for the horror she’d endured during the first five months of her marriage.

Following the debacle between Johna, Winchester and Lennox, Gloria had found herself betrothed to the Earl of March, Lennox’s eldest son and heir. It was true he’d had an eye on her for several months before the match was made and it ought to have been ideal for Gloria to be wed to the son of her mother’s lover, but Gloria had always kept him at a safe distance for very good reasons. Despite her efforts, gossip had begun to haunt her, for though she dodged any private encounter with March, he was persistent and focused in his attentions. March had danced with no other maiden, strolled with no other maiden and approached no other maiden in the Park.

He was known for his dissolute misbehaviour and impulsive wildness even more than for his father’s name, and only a few meetings had been necessary for Gloria to wish he spent his evenings in the train of some other female.

Gloria had been shocked by the engagement announcement, which Winchester had contracted without consulting her. Lennox had been furious when he’d discovered March had gone behind his back to contract the marriage through a private solicitor March retained outside the family’s affairs.

Lennox had told Gloria privately that he loved having her as a daughter-in-law but wouldn’t wish March on any lady. In the end, though, Lennox hadn’t rescued her. With the announcement made, Lennox had tried to ease Gloria’s way instead. He’d forced March to agree that she would stay in London at Lennox House, by threatening to eliminate March’s allowance, which would have trapped March at Eynon Castle without income. Lennox had personally funded her marriage settlements, so that she would have income of her own without being dependent on March, during her marriage or after. He’d given her a suite of her own in the massive Lennox House in London and put her in charge of the house and its staff so that she could organise their daily lives to suit her preferences. Gloria had ensured she was rarely, if ever, alone during the daylight hours.

Still, Lennox hadn’t been able to protect her physically from March’s violent tendencies and drunken rages, though a footman had stood outside the door to her suite ‘for her welfare’ on the nights when March had arrived home amorous and in his cups. Gloria had had no choice but to submit to that danger bravely and to hold her head high in the aftermath.

She’d battled for her safety, bargained for her independence and finally been defeated by March’s own hand. Overcome by the effects of a bottle of spirits after years of poisoning his mind and body, he’d pulled a pistol from inside his jacket on the steps of Covent Gardens, red-gowned prostitute on his arm, waved it about and sent the patrons fleeing in terror, then shot himself in the head. As if living with him hadn’t been enough of a nightmare, Gloria thought bitterly, in arranging for his own death in such a publicly humiliating and scandalous fashion, March had managed to turn even the good parts of her life into a living hell.

To her mind, the worst part of the fiasco was that he probably hadn’t even intended the outcome. In his increasingly bizarre descents into alcoholic stupor, he’d become outlandish and dangerous. At least this last time he’d only managed to hurt himself.