Prelude for a Lord (2 page)

“Yes, my sister.”

Mona’s nostrils flared almost as large as her watery blue eyes, and Wilfred’s narrow face turned purple. “How dare you mention—” he sputtered. “You are never to mention such persons in this house.”

Considering they had ejected her from her home less than twenty minutes after arriving, Alethea had lost all pretense of politeness. In addition, she had an unfortunate tendency to rebel when someone told her what she could not do.

“Are you referring to my half sister, Lucy Purcell?” she said in a loud voice.

Mona’s narrow shoulders flinched. Wilfred’s grey eyes bulged and grew bloodshot.

Alethea’s anger sent strength to her wobbling knees and she rose, shaking out her brown woolen skirts. She had forgotten about the broken fingers on her left hand, and the motion sent a stab of pain up her arm, but it only stoked the fire in her chest. “Yes, Lucy lives in Bath. It will be nice to be close to her again. We have only
exchanged letters since she moved two years ago to take a post as a housemaid. Your cousin is a lady’s maid now, Wilfred,” Alethea said sweetly.

“She is not my cousin!” Wilfred choked out.

“Half cousin,” Alethea corrected herself. “Pray, excuse me.” She swept toward the door, half amused when the butler opened the door from the outside of the drawing room before she reached it. She gave him an impudent smile, which the very proper servant did not return with so much as a crack in his stately facade, although Alethea could have sworn his chin twitched.

As she climbed the stairs, her smile faded, and her anger burned to ashes. This was no longer her home. Gone were the long hours walking the hills and running down them when no one was around to see her. Gone also were the long hours playing her violin . . .

She checked herself. She hadn’t played since the day her brother broke her fingers.

But perhaps in Bath she would find a better doctor, one who would enable her to play again. And Bath had more concerts she could attend, more access to published music. And Bath had Lucy.

What did it matter where she lived? She only had three more years to wait. She had thought she would spend them here, but instead she could spend them close to Lucy, where they could make plans and ready themselves.

Three more years before she would be free.

CHAPTER ONE

12 Months Later

A
prickling sensation spread across the back of Alethea’s neck, which had nothing to do with the brisk air of Bath in the winter.

She looked up from the cabbage she was considering and glanced around the busy marketplace. People shifted in and out of her vision, none looking at her. She twisted to look in the other direction, but again no one paid her any attention.

So why had she felt as if she were being watched?

The farmer, John, looked at her with brow wrinkled. “Something worrying you, miss?”

Alethea had never corrected him. By now, she was used to being called “miss” as opposed to “my lady.” After all, who would believe an earl’s daughter was out in the market buying potatoes and parsnips? But today it took her a moment to realize he was speaking to her. “What? Oh, I beg your pardon, John. Yes, I’ll take the cabbage.”

The prickling feeling returned. Alethea casually turned to the side as if considering some leeks and quickly glanced up.

She caught a man staring at her.

He looked away as if her gaze burned him. Alethea continued to watch him, studying his grey thinning hair, dirty leathery skin, cadaverous build. She wasn’t sure what she was searching for, perhaps something silly like an indication he’d been watching her, but then he entered into a conversation with a man selling knives, apparently bargaining for something.

Had he been watching her or did he just happen to look in her direction? She would have been a terrible spy.

She slipped the cabbage into her market basket, then paid and thanked John before leaving. She was being ridiculous. Who in the world would care enough to want to follow her? She had no money of her own that she controlled, and no social connections since her one season in London had been so uneventful. Besides which, she was a tall, plain, eight and twenty-year-old and not some pretty, dewy-eyed young miss just out of the schoolroom.

She turned up Milsom Street, which bustled mostly with maids, manservants, and merchants this early in the morning. The more fashionable set would emerge in several hours, but for now she was relieved that, as usual, no one would recognize her. It was the reason she’d flown against convention and volunteered to do the cook’s marketing—the opportunity to stroll the streets of Bath, breathe in the crisp air, and walk for an hour or two with no young ladies to titter at her strong stride, no old biddies to disparage her rosy cheeks from the exercise.

A year ago she had arrived in Bath with the hopes it would have a more diverse, broad-minded set of people. Instead, Bath contained a fashionable set who professed to be liberal and intelligent, but who all seemed to disdain Alethea’s passions as ungenteel. Their wit could cut as sharp as the people in London, and for some of them, politeness was merely a veneer.

She could not avoid them at the evening parties, but she could shake their influence loose from her mind during early mornings
like these, when she could disappear into the servants of Bath. She strolled through a cluster of shopkeepers, completely unnoticed.

Almost.

A coach-and-four barreled down the street, much too fast for the narrow way. Several people leapt out of the way of the horses with cries of alarm, but the crowds forced the coachman to finally slow his headlong dash, right where Alethea stood pressed against a shop wall.

“Why are we slowing?” a deep male voice demanded from the depths of the coach.

Alethea had been breathless on account of being forced to the side, but now the air stopped in her throat.

It couldn’t be him. Not here, in Bath.

She glanced up just as a man from within the coach looked out—and met her eyes.

Dark eyes, shadowed, solitary. He had always reminded her of a hawk, its power and beauty, its lonely existence. But she now noticed that there was a dark pain, something that had aged him beyond the eleven years since she’d seen him last.

His eyes flickered, and she tensed. Surely he wouldn’t recognize her. She had been one woman in a crowd of hundreds at his concert in London who had danced at the same balls, attended the same operas. Fallen half in love with dashing Mr. Terralton, son and heir to Baron Dommick.

No, he was Lord Dommick now—she had read that his father died last year, three months after Mr. Terralton returned to England, injured from fighting Napoleon on the continent.

But his gaze didn’t leave hers for a few heartbeats, as if trying to place her.

Then he turned away as the man sitting next to him said, “Bay, I’m sure it would hamper your rescue attempts if you were arrested for killing a bystander with your coach.”

Alethea recognized him as Lord Ian Wynnman, and sitting across from them was the Marquess of Ravenhurst.

Her heartbeat galloped. Three of the Quartet, here? She would have expected them to be wintering at their country estates, not mouldering in Bath with invalids taking the waters.

“Bay, your stepfather is a fool. A delay of a few minutes will not mean your sister’s ruin,” Lord Ravenhurst said.

Alethea recalled an announcement in the papers about Lord Dommick’s mother remarrying, although she couldn’t remember to whom.

“He may be a fool, but I know nothing of his nephew,” Lord Dommick replied as the coach pulled away from Alethea. “I intend to allow him no time for any malicious scheming . . .”

Alethea stared at the back of the coach as it continued down the street, her heartbeat returning to normal. For a moment, she’d thought the Quartet was in Bath to give one of their famous concerts, but that was a silly notion. After Lord Dommick and Mr. David Enlow had gone off to join the fighting on the continent, the Quartet had not played together in seven years. She had not heard anything about Mr. Enlow but supposed he must still be in the army.

The Quartet’s concerts had been glorious, but the pain of the memory of her first meeting Lord Dommick made her insides twist like a kitchen rag being wrung of water.

She straightened her shoulders. She was a fool to allow old memories to hurt her. She continued up Milsom Street, although her steps resembled a march more than a stroll.

If those three bachelors were to remain in Bath, she would more than likely see them at the social entertainments of the winter months. One or all of them would be trapped by some well-meaning older woman into being introduced to Alethea, and she would need to admit they had already been introduced years ago in London.

But perhaps they were simply here for a day or two before
travelling on to London or their estates. She might be worrying for nothing.

Alethea walked toward her aunt’s home in Queen Square. It had been a new, expensive development during the time Aunt Ebena’s husband had bought it, but in more recent years it had begun to fall out of favour, inhabited by a more dowdy set than the fashionable residents of the Crescent and Laura Place, and now the homes in Queen Square reminded Alethea of aging baronesses attempting to hide the ravages of time and neglect.

She was near her aunt’s home when she heard from behind her, “Pardon me, milady. Might I have a word?”

She froze, partly because of “milady,” and partly because the male voice was unfamiliar to her, uncultured, with a slick overtone that reminded her of cold congealed beef.

She should have simply walked on. After all, it could be nothing but trouble for a lady to be so rudely accosted on the street by a stranger. But because he’d startled her by knowing she was no ordinary miss, it gave him the opportunity to hurry around her stiff figure to stand before her.

She had anticipated the sticklike grey man from the marketplace, but she was almost relieved to find this man was different. He had a round belly that strained his bright yellow-and-green striped waistcoat and spindly legs encased in puce breeches. The puce at least matched the amethyst stickpin in his starched cravat, and the yellow stripes almost matched his blond hair.

Something tight coiled in Alethea’s stomach at his audacity and the fact they were alone on this remote street. The general stamp of her neighbors were unlikely to bestir themselves to chivalry and rescue her.

“Mr. Golding at your service, milady. I wish only a moment of your time.” The man’s mouth curved in a strange V shape that tilted his eyes up at the corners and made his face seem to leer at her.

How did he know her rank? Was it a guess? Nothing in her plain straw bonnet, dark blue dress, and wool cloak indicated she was anything more than an upper servant. “Pray excuse me.” She attempted to sidestep him, but he blocked her way.

“I have a lucrative proposition for you.”

“Let me pass,” she said.

“Perhaps you have in your possession a violin?”

Of all things he could have said, that was the last she expected.

“My employer is willing to pay a substantial sum, if you were in the mind to sell it,” Mr. Golding said.

“Who is your employer?” she demanded.

“My employer wishes to remain anonymous.”

“Of course he would,” she said dryly, then realized the man hadn’t identified his employer as a man or woman.

“You may name your price,” he said. “Enough to buy another violin. Enough to afford better lodgings for yourself and your aunt.”

The cold of the season suddenly made itself known to Alethea through her woolen cloak. How did he know about her aunt? Perhaps the same way he knew about her violin and her rank. The words had been amiable, but the man delivered them like a faint threat.

No, she was being silly. This was exactly like the time the new butcher in the village had tried to insist that the rotting meat he had delivered was the same quality as always. As lady of the manor at Trittonstone Park, she had put him in his place when she had the cook prepare a piece and demanded the butcher take the first bite.

She drew herself up. “I refuse to have any interactions with someone of whom I know nothing.”

Mr. Golding’s brown eyes narrowed, and his V smile flattened.

“However, should your employer wish to call with a note of introduction, I would be pleased to receive him. Good day.”

She stepped around him and continued down the street as quickly as she dared. She half expected him to follow her, but instead she heard the heavy stamp of his footsteps moving away. She peeked around and saw his broad back, encased in purple superfine, as he headed away from her. He had turned the corner and was out of sight by the time she reached Aunt Ebena’s door.

She was surprised by a post chaise stopped in front of her aunt’s home. The coachman who stood holding the horses’ heads gave her an insolent grin, which she froze with a cold glance. Raised voices sounded from behind the front door, causing Alethea to quickly enter the house.

The narrow front foyer was chaos. A trunk took up most of the space, while the rest was filled with a woman twice as broad as Alethea, shouting at Aunt Ebena, who stood firmly at the foot of the staircase.