A Ravishing Beauty in Disguise: A Historical Regency Romance Book Read online

  Harriet sat at the far end of the table, her arms latched across her chest. She scowled at her parents, seeing this display entirely braggadocios and outside the bounds of reason, given what they’d just experienced. Her plate was entirely untouched, her fork still shining against the napkin. Her mother noticed this, now, and cut Harriet a dry look.

  “Harriet. You know, not eating your dinner isn’t going to help all the hungry people in the world,” she said.

  Harriet’s heart bludgeoned itself against her ribcage. She willed herself to think of an appropriate response, one that would put her mother in her place. But she sensed that her mother was correct, if only in this.

  “All that will happen to the food, once you’ve not eaten it,” her mother continued, her voice lowering, “is that it will be scraped out into the garden to help us grow even more food for ourselves. It will be a waste until the next harvest. What good would that do for a beggar?”

  “There’s no reason I can’t take it out to the streets even now …” Harriet tried.

  “At this time of night?” her mother asked, tittering. She turned her head towards Lord Arnold, her voice heavy with sarcasm. “This daughter of yours. She has all sorts of ideas, doesn’t she? I blame you for it.”

  Harriet’s cheeks felt warm. She stretched her fork through her potatoes, watching as the butter oozed through the cracks.

  “It’s only just that I can’t understand why life is so cruel to people like that,” Harriet said, speaking mostly to her plate. “I don’t understand how we can sit here so easily and have so much, while the rest of the world grows hungrier and hungrier.”

  There was silence at the dinner table. Harriet sensed she’d sliced through any comfortable conversation they might have had, and had certainly ended her father’s bragging-moments—all regarding his apparently very prosperous deals while away. At 23, of course, Harriet did feel a bit ridiculous, causing so much ruckus. She felt like a toddler, throwing her hands to and fro.

  “Harriet. It really is admirable that you think in such a manner,” her father finally said. He sipped his wine, letting it stain the bottom of his teeth.

  “It’s only admirable if I actually find a way to do something about it,” Harriet returned.

  But it was as though she hadn’t said a thing. Her father continued without recognition.

  “There is a great deal I’ve had to see in this life,” her father continued. “As Duke and as a businessman in my own right, I’ve encountered countless people who are lesser-off, who will never rise through the ranks from their poverty. Indeed, I have seen things that I would never say aloud to you, my darling daughter, as I only wish to protect you. In fact, it will be my dying wish to protect you from much of the world’s evil.”

  “I don’t wish to be protected!” Harriet tried. Her throat felt squeezed. “I wish only to …”

  “I’ve seen beggars, just like the one we saw this afternoon,” her father continued. “I’ve seen corpses, strewn across the streets of London in the early morning. I’ve seen people dying of hunger, of thirst.”

  Harriet dipped lower in her chair. This list seemed only to highlight her point: that they needed to do something, anything. She allowed her fork to knock against the plate once more. Her stomach churned with panic.

  “But on the other side of that,” her father continued, “we aren’t the evil people in the world that leads to this havoc.”

  Harriet’s eyebrows stitched together over her nose. “What do you mean, we aren’t the ones?”

  “Don’t busy her head with such things …” her mother tried.

  “No. Please. Tell me,” Harriet said, her voice growing louder.

  “It’s only the sorts of people I frequently deal with,” her father continued. “Let’s just say that many of the men with serious property and wealth in this city didn’t necessarily get it through completely honest means.”

  Harriet crept forward in her chair, staring at her father as though he had two heads. “You’re saying that the people you frequently correspond with are—are exactly this brand of evil?”

  “I don’t know if it’s—perhaps evil was too strong a word,” her father tried, ambling backwards. “I don’t mean to say that they know any better. They’ve been presented with a life that seems a bit more like a game than anything else. You can imagine that this life isn’t necessarily a game for, say, the beggar woman outside the church.”

  “No. Absolutely not,” Harriet blurted.

  “But to them, this beggar woman is simply a pawn in a greater story,” her father continued.

  “And what are we?” Harriet demanded.

  “That’s the thing, darling,” her mother continued. “We are much better players in this game. We’re completely lucky in this regard. People don’t steal from us because we’re far too good at the game to allow them to. But in return, we have to allow them to continue as they are. It’s simply the nature of—”

  “That’s so ridiculous.” Harriet sighed. She forced herself to inhale, exhale, to remind herself that her parents weren’t the sorts of evil villains they currently seemed to be, based only on this conversation. In fact, they were still her two most favourite people in the world, the creatures she turned to for late-afternoon laughter and early-morning banter. She wanted nothing less than to obstruct their relationship. Yet her stomach tightened with panic.

  “We’re lucky, Harriet,” her mother said, turning kind eyes towards her. “It’s really all we can say in this world.”

  There was silence once more. It seemed to blanket over everything, causing her parents’ amnesia. Within moments, her mother strode forth into a conversation about society and courting—declaring that she’d seen several “quite beautiful” women at Bond Street that afternoon, but that none could compete with Harriet.

  “You know the men think there’s something terribly exciting about you,” her mother said, pressing her lips together. “Something free and wild. Different than the other girls …”

  “I think they’re delusional.” Harriet sighed.

  Her mother let out a light chuckle. “There it is. That fire.”

  “I heard that Lord Fitzgerald will be returning from his business travels soon,” her father said. “Perhaps you should ask to be introduced at the next ball …”

  “Lord Fitzgerald? Isn’t he nearly 40 years old?” Harriet asked. “Father, I can’t imagine marrying someone with such—“

  “Fine, fine, Harriet,” her father replied, fingertips resting on his furrowed brow, “it’s not as though …”

  “But what about Lord Timothy Jeffries?” her mother said, arching her brow. “I seem to remember the pair of you dancing quite frequently last season. The look in your eyes when you looked at him! Perhaps …”

  “Honestly, whatever look in my eyes I had for Timothy was surely some sort of wish to flee,” Harriet said. “He was a lacklustre conversation partner and an even worse dancer.”

  “Well, this pickiness,” her mother said. “It really is unbecoming. How do you think you’ll find any sort of suitor like that?”

  “It’s not as though I think my entire worth in this world is wrapped up in who I plan to marry, Mother,” Harriet said.

  Her mother and father exchanged a look, one that caused Harriet’s shoulders to curve forward.

  “We’ve had quite a beautiful life together, Harriet,” her father tried. “Are you telling us that what you’ve seen here, in the home in which you grew up, isn’t enough for you?”

  Harriet felt she’d backed herself into a corner. She stirred through her potatoes, willing herself to change the subject. But her head swam with panic, continually returning to the image of the beggar woman, hungry and strewn out on the streets. How could she possibly divert her attention to the concept of romance when the world ached with such unfairness, such evil?

  “I really don’t think I feel well,” Harriet said tiredly. “Do you mind if I wrap up this food and have it tomorrow?”

&nb
sp; “Don’t be silly, darling,” her mother said. She turned her head towards the doorway, where the head maid, Stephanie, lurked. “Stephanie, could you please have Harriet’s plate taken away? She’ll be retiring for the evening.”

  Stephanie ambled forward, muttering a soft, “Of course, My Lady,” before lifting the plate from the table and hurrying back towards the kitchen.

  Harriet drew herself from the chair and swept her hands across her skirts. She was surprised to find her palms sweaty. Her father and mother’s eyes remained upon her until she disappeared into the hallway. She felt she was walking like a ghost, nearly invisible, her footsteps too soft to be heard against the hardwood.

  When she reached her bedroom, she collected herself in a ball on her bed and shook back and forth. She felt the darkness of nightmares wrapping themselves around her brain, drawing her into their depths.

  She hadn’t a thing to do but go along with it, feast in the horrors of whatever her mind delivered. What a wretched thing, to realise just how privileged she was, only to learn that there was nothing to be done.

  Chapter 4

  William had been gone a long time.

  And he frequently said this fact to his peers at Glasgow University, those who addressed him with an air of confusion at his accent. “You’re a Londoner, you say, and yet your accent—it’s becoming something else entirely.”

  “I am a man without a home,” William tried this time, mere days before he would embark back to London to return for good. “I can’t imagine what I will make of life in London after nearly 11 years away. And yet, I feel I must return to the life I was meant to have. I cannot explain it better than that. Only that my parents are growing older. They expect me to join them. To become whatever it was I was meant to become.”

  William had left London when he was 18 years old to attend university in this foreign, grey and rain-speckled city, grateful to build a life that hadn’t the shadow of the success of his family. To the other students, he was just another one amongst them—not a man with all the privilege and prestige of his London family. For this reason, he’d been allowed the bliss of several years of law study, without pause and without any bother with ordinarily London society routines, like courting.

  He’d taken a room in the centre of Glasgow, grateful for its four sturdy brick walls, its tiny kitchen, and its windows that overlooked the bustling streets. He’d taken friends that hardly asked questions about his past, who stayed up nights with him arguing about law and about their commitment to it, and what that meant about what they could do in the world. How they could make it better. More and more every year, William had lost any sort of image of London that he appreciated.

  And yet, his mother’s letters had grown increasingly frantic, worried that he might never return or marry.

  “I worry ever that you’ll never enjoy the sort of happiness that your brother enjoys as a husband and a new father,” his mother wrote. “I worry that you’ll stumble through the law in Glasgow, never honouring your father and I with your return. It was a wretched thing to say goodbye to you all those years ago—but I told myself continually that one day I would have you home with me once more. And yet, it seems that you’re set on fighting that belief.”

  Days before his departure back to London, William lay splayed on his back on his bed, fully dressed. His shoes glowed, slotted over the side of the mattress, pointed towards the ceiling. William focused on his breath, sweeping his hands over his belly as it grew up and then deflated.

  11 years abroad. 11 years of study, of practice, of stitching himself through a reality that had never been his proper plan.

  Now, it was over. He would never be within the four walls that currently held him.

  He wanted to halt the winds of change, to press his hands against the feeling of time and keep himself there in the moment, never having to know what would happen next. For whatever reason, it terrified him.

  He heard the call of his name down below, from the streets. For a moment, William thought he’d imagined it, that it was coming from the caverns of his brain. But then he heard it again.

  “WILL! WILL ABERNALE!”

  William smirked, remembering his ordinary title back home—Lord William Abernale. Here in Glasgow, he was Will, a scrappy lawyer with a pure belief in his ability to change the world.

  Gosh, he would miss this.

  William jumped from the bed and strode towards the window. He was an enormous man, over six feet tall, with broad shoulders, and wild brown curls that rolled around his ears and flirted with the tops of his shoulders. He knew his mother would have something to say about his hair when she saw him; although, at 29, he felt he didn’t need to listen to such opinions any longer.

  William’s best friend Peter Lighter stood at the base of the window, waving his string-bean-like arms to and fro. When William leaned out of the window, he felt rain on the top of his head.

  “Why are you yelling down on the street like an imbecile?” William asked, his smile stretching from ear to ear.

  “Me? The imbecile? I told you, I want to take you out drinking in celebration of the life you might have lived here in Glasgow, with me!” Peter cried.

  “You’re such a romantic, Peter,” William said.

  “That’s the pot calling the kettle, isn’t it? You optimistic lawyer!” Peter returned.

  William swept back and reached for his long black coat, swirling it over his shoulders. He placed his black hat on his head and trudged for the door, touching the cold kettle, the half-packed suitcase filled with clothing, the painting that still hung on the wall. He would remove it within the week.

  Peter and William strolled down the streets of Glasgow, with William viewing the city with a far different set of eyes.

  “Years before, when I first arrived, I hadn’t a clue that I would stay here so long,” he murmured. “I was just a silly English brat. So sure of my place in the world. And now, the only thing I know after so much law school, and even practicing here, is that there’s nothing I actually know in this world.”

  Peter clapped his hand across William’s back, shuffling him into a little shadowed pub. William slotted onto a stool and watched as Peter sat beside them. This had been their routine for the previous eight-some years since they’d encountered one another at law school and gotten into some sort of heart-wrenching argument about poverty, one that had ultimately found them both on the same side of the coin. They were never able to understand how they’d gotten so mixed up, so unsure of the other’s principles. But they didn’t speak of it now.

  Peter ordered them a round of drinks. They clicked their beers together and sipped long, sombrely. William felt he hadn’t the proper words to describe just how essential Peter had been to his entire story. He felt a bit like he was abandoning him—for reasons he didn’t fully understand. Was it really enough that his mother wanted him back?

  Could he actually make the sort of impact in London he’d been making here in Glasgow?

  “Have you thought about it?” Peter asked then. He arched his brow, his black eyes glowing.

  “What do you mean?” William asked.

  Peter dug his elbow into William’s bicep. “You know. That girl you told me about. The one you were supposed to marry, but never did, since you were caught up in some sort of idea about saving the world. We all know that’s bullocks now, don’t we?”

  “I like to think we’ve done a bit with our corner of the world,” William tried.

  “That’s your beautiful and reckless optimism again,” Peter said, grinning. “But come now. I’ve had enough of talking about the law. Enough about poverty. Enough about the things we cannot change quickly enough. I wish instead to discuss this beautiful little woman you left behind.”