A Fallen Woman

A
Fallen Woman

Kate Harper

Prelude

If there
was one thing the Earl of Worsley was determined never to do, it
was to ask Rachel to marry him… again.

He had
done it once, fronting up to the imposing white house on Grosvenor
Square and had made Lord Sheridan the happiest man in London when
he asked for his eldest child’s hand in marriage. And he had every
reason to be confident that his suit would be welcome. At the age
of twenty, Nash Guthrie, heir to the Earl of Worsley, was next in
line to one of the largest estates in England with a yearly income
of over fifty thousand pounds. Not only that, but he was tall,
healthy, in possession of a full head of hair and all of his own –
very impressive – teeth. He had been told, with varying degrees of
sincerity that he was a very good-looking young man, of excellent
intelligence and no small wit.

It was
amazing what fifty thousand pounds a year could do for one’s
popularity.

Still, it was not
all
nonsense and he had alighted at the house of his beloved
with high hopes. Nervous, for what man wasn’t when it came to
asking a woman to marry him? But confident, for all of
that.

What had
started out well, did not end quite so well, however.

After his
successful interview with her father, he had been allowed to see
Rachel alone. In all the years that passed between, he could still
see her in his mind’s eye on that day; she had been a picture,
dazzlingly lovely in the sunlight that had been slanting through
one of the high windows of the conservatory, slender figure dressed
in a soft primrose gown, golden hair a cascade of ringlets around
her slender shoulders.

Rachel
Sheridan; the Incomparable.

Nash had
gone down on bended knee and placed his hand over his heart as he
professed his undying devotion. Now; forever and whatever lay
between… all the way to eternity and back again. His love would
outlast time itself.

Not bad for a
lad of twenty, the words that had tumbled from his mouth. And he
had meant every word, all of them straight from his foolish green
heart.

Retrospectively, the look of dawning horror on her face
should have given him a hint that things were not going as he had
hoped they would. That he had assumed they would. No, dammit, that
he had been
assured
they would!

He was (to be) the 9
^th
Earl of Worsley and every eligible woman
in London would have given her eyeteeth to be his
countess.

Except Rachel
Sheridan; a celestial beauty with a heart that did
not, apparently, belong to him.

She had
not been unkind. When he had analysed her rejection later,
examining the nuances behind her words, each subtle syllable, each
carefully phrased response, he had known she had tried very hard to
deflate him gently. Not that it helped, especially not when his
face had been buried in a glass of claret (or anything else that
happened to be alcoholic). No, he’d concluded; it had not been
unkindness that had so devastated him, but that indefinable air of
sympathy, as if hurting him had somehow hurt her. He was glad about
that, about whatever pain she had felt although he’d known it was
just a poor reflection of what he was feeling.

Damn
Rachel; It had never been sympathy he had wanted from the girl,
never that. Sympathy was the very devil itself.

He had listened
to her explain, voice low and musical, how she could never marry
him. Not now. Not ever. She was very sorry, of course. Nash was the
best of men and she wished him every happiness in his future life;
but she was not the woman for him.

It might
be supposed that her mother and father might have intervened on his
behalf, for they’d certainly had no objection to their eldest child
marrying a future earl. T’was a consummation most devoutly to be
wished for, in fact.

Like Nash, the future 9
^th
Earl of Worsley, they did not get their
wish.

He had been
crushed.

Calf love
is a callow love, all consuming and utterly crushing if not
returned and Nash, accordingly, had been crushed. He had retired
from the house on Grosvenor Square in broken-hearted defeat and the
very next day he had booked passage to the Continent. He wanted to
get away from everything, to never have to look at the same things
he looked at when he had loved Rachel Sheridan and hoped that she
had loved him in return.

He needed
to look at fresh things, new and colorful and amusing things. And
so he went to Europe.

And an
extraordinary thing had happened to him there.

Away from the humiliation and misery and his own, dreary
memories, he had begun to have adventures. And love affairs. Quite
a few love affairs, if the truth be told. Initially it was to help
blur and bury the memory of Rachel but after a time it had turned
into something more. He discovered he was actually rather good at
making love to women. And, as with so many things in life, the more
he practiced the better he became until he developed something of a
reputation. In Barcelona he was a welcome sight; in Tuscany and
Florence, in Munich and the deliciously warm climes of the
Mediterranean… wherever he went, Nash discovered fresh delights
that distanced him even more from the sad, green boy he had once
been. Over a period of time (and this had absolutely nothing to do
with being the future 9
^th
Earl of Worsley and having rather a lot of money)
he discovered that he was a hit.

The callow lad vanished, along with his silly dreams of
romance. Nash learned what women
really
wanted. There was no trick to it. All they
wanted was… attention. To be listened to. And for their bodies to
be wooed, taken to new heights, made to sing the sweet, secret
songs that were a mystery to most men. Nash roamed the world and as
he wandered he felt himself grow lighter; freer – as if he were
sloughing off the past and moving towards a better future – a
better him.

When the
time came for Nash to finally return to England permanently, he
faced the prospect with equanimity. He was his own man now, subtly
changed in a thousand different ways.

As his
father teetered on that shadowy brink between life and death,
finally falling into the darkness of forever – at long last, Nash
became what he had always been destined to be.

The 9
^th
Earl of Worsley.

A man who
had briefly gone off course in his life, but was now firmly back on
track once again.

No woman
would ever do that to him again; especially not Rachel
Sheridan.

Love was a myth
and he was free.

Chapter
One

‘Are you all right Rachel
? You seem a little quiet
today.’

Rachel
smiled at her sister, brushing a strand of hair out of her
eyes. ‘I am perfectly well. And so are you, in that dress. You look
utterly lovely, Charlotte.’

Charlotte
Sheridan turned her eyes back to the full-length mirror and
considered her reflection for a long moment. Then she nodded
thoughtfully, which made her sister smile all the more. That was
Charlotte through and through. Thoughtful. Composed. Elegant.
Considered. Despite the fact that she was to be married the day
after the next, she appeared to be as cool as a cucumber, even as
she buzzed with subdued excitement at the prospect of seeing her
beloved again. Her wedding dress, cream sarcenet over a silver
tissue slip worn beneath was truly beautiful, trimmed with French
lace and seed pearls. She would wear the Sheridan diamonds,
naturally. They were very impressive; brilliant rose cut diamonds
set in filigree gold with matching teardrop earrings. There was
also a fine coronet of diamonds and pearls to be placed in her
chestnut hair.

The coronet had been a gift from her intended’s mother, who
seemed to be delighted with her son’s choice of bride, which had
been an unspoken relief to the Sheridan’s
en
masse
. It could easily have been otherwise.

Rachel
, who was on her knees checking the length of the dress for
the last time (just in case her sister had shot up or shrank in the
past three days – one could not be too careful) looked up at
Charlotte and arched a teasing eyebrow. ‘Happy,
dearest?’

Charlotte
smiled, a secret smile that belonged to a woman in love. ‘So very
happy. It is really quite ridiculous how happy I am.’ Rachel
grinned appreciatively, before bending to her task again, so did
not see the cloud that chased across her sister’s face. Charlotte
looked down her sister’s golden head from atop the low stool she
was standing on. ‘And what about you?’

Rachel
looked up, startled by the question. ‘Me?’

‘Yes. Are
you
happy, Rachel?’

‘I
certainly am,’ she gave a cheeky grin. ‘You’re marrying a man with
a house in France. Imagine the holidays!’

Charlotte
laughed. ‘Only you – and Liza, of course – would think of such a
thing! But you know, we shall have some marvelous times there now
that that wretched war is finally over. Only imagine Liza when she
sets eyes on the grounds. Adam says that there are acres and acres
of vineyards and orchards. We shall lose the little wretch for days
at a time.’

Rachel gave a small gurgle of laughter
. The youngest of the Sheridan
sisters – who some would say was rather a scandalous afterthought
on the part of her parents, having arrived some ten years after the
arrival of Charlotte – was something of a tearaway. Shamelessly
indulged by her parents and her siblings, especially her sisters,
Elizabeth Sheridan had yet to acknowledge the fact that she was a
young lady and spent her days at the Sheridan estate in
Northumberland giving her governess the slip to go off and do more
interesting activities than needlework and music. She liked to
ride, climb and run, more or less in that order. Her boisterous
sister was of considerable comfort to Rachel, who had spent over
three years virtually cloistered in her home, socializing rarely
and then usually only with people she considered trusted friends of
long standing. She had learned quickly enough, in the years
following her fall from grace, who it was she could really call a
friend. Quite a few people had distanced themselves from the
Sheridans, and from Rachel in particular after she had abruptly
withdrawn from London Society. When she had finally felt able to
face the world again, she had been only mildly surprised to
discover that she was no longer included on invitations to local
events; a moment’s thought had told her that it was inevitable for
it was a certainty some version of her folly would have reached the
avid ears of her neighbors. Truth be told, it wasn’t that she was
excluded that had stung. What chafed the most was that her entire
family were no longer included in the social calendar of some of
the families they had considered friends. It was by no means an
absolute snub, of course. The Sheridans were too much a feature of
the area for them to be uniformly shunned. But it occurred enough
to make Rachel feel even more wretched that she had brought such
shame upon those she held dearest. Not that it ever seemed to be an
issue to the Sheridans themselves. Her family, bless them, never
made her feel as if she was the reason they had been turned into
social pariahs and they had staunchly refused to attend any event
unless she was included as well. This, necessarily, had seriously
curbed their social life but nobody had complained.

Family
solidarity. In many ways it had made her feel the dreary weight of
her guilt even more profoundly. She had done this to them. But on
another level, it had warmed her to the core of her being. How
could it not, when those that she cared for the most showed her
their regard in such a way?

Still,
there were few enough people she could call friends in the
place where she had been raised. She had retained the good regard
of Bethany Fortnum, her childhood friend and a creature with an
unfailing sweet disposition. The Fortnums were one of the few
families that had continued to receive her, but Beth had married
the previous spring and was now living in Suffolk. That had taken
her social connections down to zero. There were numerous gentlemen
who would still have been happy to spend time in her company, but
Rachel had good reason to suspect their motives. Her reputation was
in tatters and she shuddered to think what the neighbors actually
thought about her. She had resolutely elected not to dwell on it,
lest it depress her, although there were times when ignoring it was
difficult, especially when even the vicar tended to avoid her –
although Rachel could not help but think this was to her benefit,
as the man was unbearably tedious. As Rachel had long since stopped
attending church, unwilling to sit through the silent censure of
the other Sunday penitents, their contact was infrequent. No doubt
turning up every Sunday to be silently castigated was character
building, but Rachel could not help but feel that her character had
grown enough. Much more and it might collapse under its own
weight.