A Lord Rotheby's Holiday Bundle (44 page)

Zeus spun around on Aurora’s lap to
face her husband, now that they were eye-to-eye. The dog nipped his
nose, earning Quin’s laugh. “Yours too, pup. But tell me, Aurora.
Tell me you love me.”

“
I do,” Aurora said through
a fresh wave of tears. “I love you so much it terrifies me. I might
have loved you since before I met you, when you were just a pirate
in my stories and not a real in-the-flesh man, but I love you more
now. So much it hurts.” And therein lay their problem. “Love ought
not to hurt—not like this. It seems rather contradictory, do you
not think?”

He had the effrontery to chuckle at
her. She ought to swat him. It was downright churlish to poke fun
at her distress.

“
I think,” he said once he
pulled his mirth back under control, “that unless one has
experienced the lowest of lows, one cannot truly appreciate the
highest of highs. That one must experience pain and sorrow in order
to appreciate joy. If love didn’t hurt like this, how would we know
when we finally had it right?”

Which was rather circuitous thinking,
if one should ask her. But when had Quin ever been known to ask her
for anything? Only just now, when he wanted to hear her say she
loved him. The truculent boor. He ought to ask her for things more
often.

They would have to work on
that.

“
So what will happen when
we return to the abbey and inform Lord Rotheby about my
miscarriage?” Aurora asked. “Do you think he’ll send us away
immediately? If so, perhaps we could stay at one of Father’s
estates, at least temporarily.”

Quin took her hand and led her from
the hermitage. Zeus ran along beside them, nearly tripping them
with almost every step as he weaved in and around their feet. “We
won’t know until we go tell him, will we? There is no time like the
present.”

Oh, dear good Lord. Would it not be
better to wait until the morning at least? But she and Quin, they
could face anything together. Even Lord Rotheby.

Epilogue

13 June, 1812

If this child does not
stop kicking me in the ribs, I swear I will not wait two more
months for its birth. It is inconceivable to allow a baby that has
not even been born yet to continue to abuse its mother. Quin will
have to give this child a serious talking-to. Or else, perhaps, I
will have to break out the Mother Voice. Minerva has been giving me
lessons on how to use the Mother Voice to great effect. We’ve been
practicing on Quin, of course, since he is the one who went and
mucked everything up in the first place by impregnating me again,
so he clearly deserves to be practiced upon. I daresay it will
prove to be invaluable to me in future relations with him, too, not
just with our child. For that matter, I might be inclined to use it
more with him than with the babe. After all, he is a grown man of
three-and-thirty. He ought to know how to behave by now, and to
know how to refrain from annoying me. Sadly, it does not seem to be
the case. Tomorrow morning and afternoon, we expect the remainder
of our guests to arrive. Everyone who joined us for the house party
last summer will be back, though there have been a few changes.
Namely, of course, Rebecca being the new Lady Norcutt, and Miss
Vivian Osbourne is no longer a miss, but is now Lady Tucker Flynn.
How very wrong I was last year about the four of them.

~From the journal of the
Very Pregnant Lady Quinton

“
Quinton,” Lord Rotheby
shouted from the card table in the salon at Quinton Abbey. “Your
wife is in need of assistance. Move your arse.”

“
I can manage perfectly
well on my own, Grandfather,” Aurora said. Which was not entirely
untrue. She
could
manage to raise herself up from the settee upon which she sat
without help, but only with a rather indecent amount of huffing and
puffing and straining to raise her added girth from where it
preferred to rest on her lap like Zeus always had. These days,
there was no room for him. Her belly wasn’t the only thing that had
grown by leaps and bounds, after all.

She was not given the chance to prove
her mettle, however. Both Nia and Sir Augustus were at her side
before she had finished her objection, each taking an arm to help
to pull her up.

“
I honestly don’t know what
I’ll do if I get any larger,” Aurora said to them. “But thank you
both very much for your assistance.”

Quin rushed into the room then,
looking around with an addled expression. “What’s wrong?” he asked
finally, glaring at his grandfather as he did so.

“
Your wife needed help
rising. You ought to pay closer attention to her,” Rotheby
grumbled. “I will be rather cross with you if anything should
happen to my great-grandchild. Or great-grandchildren, as the case
may be. Are you certain there are not twins in there,
Aurora?”

It was touching how he had come to
dote upon her in the last year. Indeed, after their first house
party the previous summer, he had taken to calling upon them rather
often. Not because he didn’t trust that Quin would maintain the new
lifestyle he had taken upon himself—Rotheby assured them he was
quite satisfied with the turnaround Quin had made in his deportment
and so the abbey and its profits were theirs until such time as
Quin inherited everything—but because he was an old and lonely man,
and it was his prerogative to do as he pleased.

Which, he claimed, it pleased him
greatly to be in Aurora’s presence. Any chit who could convince his
grandson to leave behind his wayward path had to be an entertaining
young lady, to be sure.

After six months had passed with
Rotheby making regular visits, Aurora took it upon herself to give
the earl an open invitation to come stay with them whenever the
mood struck him. After all, the abbey was vast. Quin’s grandfather
could have an immense amount of freedom staying there, but he could
also have company when he so chose. And she and Quin would be there
to care for him, should he become ill or frail. Most days it was
hard to imagine the curmudgeon as frail. But time was no longer on
his side.

Quin hadn’t been overly pleased with
the arrangement, but he eventually gave in to Aurora’s request,
particularly because it proved to him she was no longer thinking
primarily of herself. It seemed he was beginning to heed his
mother’s unremitting refrain: Aurora is always right. Except in
those instances when she was egregiously wrong, like in her
assessment of Lord Norcutt the previous year.

Now that Aurora was rather well along
in her pregnancy, Lord Rotheby had taken it upon himself to be her
protector. Of course, Quin also thought himself to be just that.
And Zeus, being her diligent companion, also thought it to be his
job.

Needless to say, Aurora could hardly
sneeze without one of them yelling at another to do something about
it.

Which was rather nice, actually. But
also rather tedious.

Perhaps, once the abbey was once again
filled with other guests, they would have someone else to look
after at least some of the time. It would be rather unsporting of
them to expect her to do it all.

But then again, Rebecca and Nia had
both promised to assist with Aurora’s plans for all of the
entertainments, and Minerva had requested permission to take over
the responsibility for planning three full days’ events. She would
not be alone in her efforts.

Indeed, all of the assistance she
would be receiving might be just the thing she needed in order to
resume her matchmaking enterprises. Aurora looked over to where Nia
sat with her mother by the hearth, working on her
embroidery.

Perhaps she ought to direct
the girl’s attention to another gentleman this summer—someone other
than Sir Jonas. Perhaps
then
the two would realize they were destined for each
other and stop fighting against it. The wheels of Aurora’s mind set
to turning as she planned how she would go about it, schooling her
features into a placidly content look as Quin came over to steal a
hurried kiss before returning to his business affairs in the
undercroft. No reason to raise anyone’s suspicions. Least of all
his.

Aurora made her way over to the
escritoire by the window and took a seat. She pulled out some
foolscap to set upon the blotter, and then dipped a quill into her
inkpot.

It was time to write again. A smile
threatened to consume her entire face. This time, she would not
write of her own life. Nor would she write of her fantastical,
imagined life.

Indeed, she would not write of the
lives of anyone she knew, real or otherwise.

This time, she wanted to write a
story. A novel, to be precise. It wasn’t quite fashionable for a
lady to be a writer, but when had Aurora cared about being
fashionable? Scandal was, after all, her middle name, it
seemed.

She would ask for Quin’s favor later.
After all, it was much easier to beg forgiveness than
permission.

Saving Grace

Catherine Gayle

Dedication

To the Lady Scribes and the rest of
the Historical Romance Critique Group on Yahoogroups, for believing
in me and helping me to hone my craft.

Prologue

March, 1813

“
Ungrateful
whore!”

Lady Grace Abernathy’s cheek burned
where the back of her father’s hand struck her, but she fought to
conceal her emotions.

Crying could come later, but not
before Father. He fed on weakness and fear. Tears would only add
fuel to his fire. She refused to encourage him. “A whore, Father?”
Grace focused on her nerves to refrain from stuttering. “What do
you mean?”

How on earth had he learned what had
happened? Could someone have hidden in the library and watched
while the Earl of Barrow ravished her?

“
You are a harlot! Barrow
told the whole of White’s how you pushed yourself at him during
Lord Everton’s ball. How he tried to convince you any sort of
dalliance would be an enormously bad idea, but you refused to take
no for an answer. Do you want to know who was in White’s that
night, Grace? Do you?”

Her father, the Marquess of Chatham,
rose to full temper. His bulbous head turned an unnatural shade of
purple and appeared as though it might burst at any moment. Grace
rather thought she might like to see it burst. His eyelids twitched
over his wide eyes, and the thin bits of greyed hair covering his
scalp flopped back and forth with each syllable.

“
The Duke of Walsingham!
Your betrothed, that’s who. A good half the
ton
was at White’s. As soon as
Walsingham learned of the trollop you truly are, he came to my
library and called off the betrothal. He ripped our agreement and
tossed it in the fire. You are ruined, Grace. No one will
condescend to have you now.”

He dropped into the chair behind his
aged desk and held his head in his hands.

Grace’s jaw dropped when she learned
of the extremity of Lord Barrow’s revenge for Father breaking off
their agreement. And of course, her father and his drink-addled
mind had fallen right into Barrow’s trap, and Grace took the brunt
of it. Why should she have expected anything different?

“
But Father, no, that is
untrue.” He must understand. “I never dallied with Lord Barrow. He
forced himself on me.”

His head rose and he stared upon her
with apprehension. A pit of ire rose up in her over his dubious
expression. Would the man never believe her, not even over
this?

“
I tried to stop him, but I
was not strong enough.” Her words rushed forth. “He wanted a
settling of the score with you, for not honoring the arrangement
for our marriage.”

“
Lies.
Lies
! You are a whore. You are no
daughter of mine.” He spat the words at her. “After all I have done
for you to secure an eligible match. You were to be a duchess. I
would be aligned through your marriage to the Duke of Walsingham.
But now what? All is lost.”

Of course, everything inevitably
rested on status. Father had never concerned himself with her
welfare, but only cared about the connections he had within society
and the coin lining his coffers. How could he do better than
marrying his daughter off to a duke? Grace wouldn’t doubt if there
were some sort of monetary agreement involved as well—something
which would be more favorable than whatever Lord Barrow had
offered, since Father had blatantly ignored the agreement with the
Barrow—therefore garnering the earl’s wrath—and leaving Grace to
deal with the consequences.

Why could Father not, just once, love
her? He slumped forward in his chair and wept. She waited, still as
could be, to see what he would do next.

After several long moments, her father
looked up again, unseeingly, at her. “There is still a possibility
to resume the broken understanding with Barrow. I will work on that
prospect again, or on making some other advantageous match if I
cannot settle things to my liking.” He rose and paced his library.
“Barrow absconded—er, I mean left—for the continent, and I know not
when he will return. But that is of little consequence.”