Guarding the Countess Read online

  Guarding the Countess

  By Lily Reynard

  Published by Philtata Press

  Originally published by Awe-Struck Press as Twist of Honor.

  Text copyright 2007. All rights reserved.

  Cover art by Aria Tan – Resplendent Media

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Table of Contents

  Author's Note

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Epilogue

  Afterword: Historical Lies and other Poetical Licenses

  Also by Lily Reynard

  Author's Note

  This novel was my very first published historical romance. I loved the time period and hoped that this Restoration-era tale might find a bigger audience someday.

  A few months ago, I received the rights back from the small press that had originally published it as Twist of Honor. Reading through the manuscript, I saw a number of places where it could be tightened and improved, and so I launched on a rewrite and edit before re-releasing it with a new title and cover art.

  Although this book is a little different from my subsequent historical ménage romances, I hope you'll enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it!

  Lily Reynard

  Dedication

  Dedicated with deepest affection to Jennise Hall and Marian Huntsman, who believed, encouraged, and critiqued both wisely and compassionately. Thank you both.

  Chapter One

  "...marriage entitles [the husband] to your person, and to all you bring with it of worldly goods, and he can do with it what he pleases without your consent."—John Evelyn, 1620-1706

  Long Cranbourne, Kent, April, 1666:

  Something woke Antonia in the darkness.

  She lay rigid in the great bed, her eyes straining to pierce the deep gloom produced by the enclosing bed curtains.

  It was very late—or very early. The only sounds she could hear were the drumming of her heart and her maid Mall's gentle snores on the other side of the bed.

  Long seconds passed. Antonia began to doubt that she'd heard anything. Perhaps it was nothing more than her overwrought nerves, strained from another day of fending off persistent suitors while struggling to maintain the dignity befitting the youngest Dowager Countess in Cranbourne's history.

  Now that she was a widow, and a wealthy one, every fortune-hunter in England seemed determined to marry her, thereby reducing her from independent countess to subjugated wife.

  But she resolved to outwit them all, for she would not allow—Wait! Is that a floorboard creaking under the weight of someone's foot?

  Antonia's heart started pounding again, as she stared intently at the shadowy tracery of embroidered flowers and vines decorating the bed curtains.

  She had just convinced herself that she'd been dreaming the noise when a sudden clatter broke the silence, followed immediately by an outraged squawk from her parrot.

  "Clumsy wench!" Sweetheart shrieked from his cage, in the exact tones of Reeves, the household steward. "Damn you!"

  Someone is in my bedroom!

  Antonia reached over and shook Mall, hard. "Wake up!"

  Sweetheart shrieked again.

  The bed hangings billowed and shook, followed by the rapid scrape of the curtain rings against their rod. Antonia and Mall sat bolt upright in the bed. As the last length of curtain was jerked aside, moonlight spilled onto the rumpled coverlet and was almost immediately eclipsed.

  The intruder threw himself onto the bed, pinning Antonia's legs. Startled out of their temporary paralysis, Mall and Antonia screamed in unison for the footman:

  "JEMMY!"

  Then Mall hit the intruder with one of the two oaken cudgels concealed between the ornately carved headboard and the pillows. Antonia followed a second later with the other cudgel.

  "Ow!" The intruder raised a shadowy arm to shield himself.

  Mall and Antonia, working in outraged unison, rained blows on him. Grunting, he rolled back and forth on the bed, trying to escape their attack.

  Then he lunged and caught Antonia's forearm, wresting the cudgel away from her.

  "Jemmy!" Antonia screamed again.

  Where the devil is he? Mall's seventeen-year-old brother, Jeremiah Jenkins, was supposed to be guarding her bedroom door.

  Even if Jemmy had fallen asleep, this commotion could wake the dead.

  The intruder, still holding Antonia's arm, was pulling her forward, trying to yank her from the bed, despite the fact that he lay across the coverlet covering her legs.

  Antonia thrust her free hand under her pillow, scrabbling for the dagger she always kept there. Finding it, she thrust with left-handed awkwardness into the only part of her attacker she could see in the dark—the white of his shirtsleeve. The impact jarred her hand, and the blade, unexpectedly, stuck fast.

  The man shrieked, inciting Sweetheart to add his contribution to the cacophony.

  The doors to Antonia's bedchamber banged open—finally!—and the moonlight was evicted by the golden glow of candles.

  Young Jemmy burst in, clad only in breeches and a billowing shirt. His short red hair stuck up in tufts all over his head.

  "My lady?" he called, blinking as he peered around.

  It seemed an eternity since Antonia had started awake, but it had likely been only a minute or two.

  "Get him off me!" Antonia shouted.

  Jemmy hastily banged the candelabra down on her dressing table.

  Antonia had lost her dagger somewhere, and trapped as she was by the weight of the intruder, she could do little more than frantically try to push him away.

  Mall was still trying to defend Antonia, and some of her blows were landing painfully on Antonia's legs, where the thin coverlet did little to shield them.

  "Oi, get off milady and m'sister, you!" Jemmy hauled the intruder off the bed, wrestled him to the floor, and immobilized him by the simple expedient of sitting on his back.

  Antonia sat for a second, panting, trying to recover her composure.

  Drawing the coverlet virtuously high around her neck, she leaned over the edge of the bed and looked down. She could see little but limp gray-streaked hair and a bloodstained sleeve.

  "Who is he?" she asked, her voice breaking in an undignified squeak.

  Reaching for the candelabra, she raised it as Jemmy rolled the intruder over.

  Antonia inhaled sharply as she recognized the
neighbor whose suit she had politely rejected last week. Her fear vanished, and anger took its place.

  "Sir Nicholas Finch! Shame on you!"

  His face pasty-white with shock and dewed with sweat, Finch made no reply, but his gaze flinched away from her pockmarked face, naked of its usual concealing silk mask or any cosmetics.

  Antonia reflexively began to raise her hands to hide her cheeks, then resolutely dropped them. What did it matter if Finch found her repulsive?

  "Summon the magistrate," she ordered Jemmy.

  Sir Nicholas is going to regret his actions of this night, oh yes.

  She noticed that her dagger was still embedded in Finch's forearm. She added, "Best fetch the chirurgeon, too."

  Still clutching the coverlet to her chest, she glared down at Finch. "And don't you dare bleed on my Turkey carpets, Sir Nicholas."

  * * *

  An hour later, properly gowned in her widow's weeds, Antonia descended the grand staircase to the ground-floor hall.

  Her Steward of the House, Harry Reeves, met her at the base of the stairs. He was a short man, a little stout, with sandy hair and bad teeth. Antonia noticed that his shirt was unevenly tucked into his breeches, further evidence of the early morning disruption.

  "My lady," he said, puffing a little. "Sir Ralph Bellamy has arrived. Terrible, what happened—what if we'd been murdered in our beds?"

  "It was rather a shocking way to greet the day," Antonia agreed, dryly. "Where did you put Sir Ralph?"

  "In the library, my lady," answered Harry, nodding to a closed door to the left of the entrance hall. "And Sir Nicholas in the Green Parlor, with young Jenkins to keep him from any further mischief."

  "Very good, Harry, thank you," said Antonia, turning towards the library.

  The heavy black silk of her skirts swished against the polished red flagstones of the hall. She was pleased that Reeves had had the foresight to keep her two visitors separated.

  Antonia had been strongly tempted to order Sir Nicholas trussed like recalcitrant livestock, but it would not do to treat a member of the gentry so, even if he had been trespassing.

  She sighed, and smoothed her veil over her hastily arranged hair as Reeves opened the library door for her.

  "The Right Honorable Dowager Countess of Cranbourne," he announced.

  "Lady Cranbourne." Sir Ralph Bellamy, tall and silver-haired, rose from his seat.

  A Puritan like herself, he wore a sober dark wool doublet and matching narrow breeches that had been fashionable twenty years ago, and no wig. A wide square lace collar lay stiffly starched over his shoulders.

  As the local justice of the peace, Sir Ralph had duties ranging from administering oaths and fining absentees from church to ordering the imprisonment of vagabonds and trespassers. He was also one of the Elders in the congregation that Antonia belonged to.

  "Sir Ralph," Antonia said, warmly, giving him her hand. He bowed over it with courtly grace, his fingers still cold from his dawn ride to Cranbourne House. "I hope Lady Bellamy is well? And your daughters, the Misses Bellamy?"

  "Indeed, they are. And I thank you for asking," he replied, releasing Antonia's hand. "How may I be of service to you, my lady? Your messenger said it was urgent...?"

  Antonia felt her anger, banked during the lengthy ritual of dressing and toilette, spark to new life as she recounted the morning's events as briefly as she could.

  As she spoke, she scrutinized Bellamy's expression for any sign of where his sympathies—or alliances—might lie. She could not recall whether Bellamy and Finch were friends or not.

  Would that affect how he viewed her version of events?

  But she saw only concern and dismay on Bellamy's face.

  "He's not been the same since his wife died of the plague last summer," Bellamy said, when she had finished. He expelled a gusty sigh. "Where is he now?"

  * * *

  Reeves opened the doors to the Green Parlor, which was presently hung with black cloth in mourning, but did not announce Antonia and Sir Ralph.

  Sir Nicholas Finch sat, half-slumped, in one of the heirloom chairs with carved dragons that poked painfully into the spines of the unwary.

  He was jacketless, and his formerly fine linen shirt was grimy and torn, with great reddish-brown blotches of dried blood staining one sleeve and smeared down his right side. He looked up blearily as Antonia entered, then recoiled.

  "You shameless harridan!" he said hoarsely. "How dare you hold me captive! I'll—"

  He caught sight of Bellamy looming behind Antonia, and fell abruptly silent.

  "Sir Nicholas," Bellamy said coolly.

  After a moment, Finch sputtered, "Ah…Sir Ralph!"

  "Lady Cranbourne has given me her account of your presence here," Bellamy said, in the same cool tones. "What have you to say for yourself?"

  "I…ah…that is…" Finch sputtered. He looked around wildly, took a deep breath and exploded, "I don't know what she's told you, but don't trust a thing she says, Sir Ralph! She's a deceiving Eve! Invited me here, she did, and look what she did to me! Like a wild beast, she was—"

  From the doorway, Jemmy made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a growl, but he might have simply been clearing his throat.

  He entered the room and stood behind Finch.

  "I never heard such a lie—" Antonia began indignantly.

  After everything he's done, how dare he try to besmirch my reputation!

  Bellamy interrupted her. "You stand accused of trespassing, Sir Nicholas, and quite possibly assault."

  He looked down his long nose at his disheveled neighbor, and Finch's gaze slid uneasily away. He slumped again, and hastily straightened up as the carved dragons exacted their revenge.

  "Lady Cranbourne," said Bellamy, formally. "I understand that you have a complaint to make against this man?"

  "I do indeed, Sir Ralph," Antonia said, heatedly.

  When she had finished recounting her version of events once more, Bellamy turned to Finch. "And you, Sir Nicholas, what have you to say to this?"

  After his initial rebuff by Bellamy, Finch had evidently rethought his strategy. Now he addressed the justice in a falsely hearty tone. "Sir Ralph, I do admit to gaining entrance to Lady Cranbourne's bedroom, but as I did but desire to offer her honorable marriage, I understand not why I was attacked, and am now treated so poorly."

  "The accepted way of honorable courtship, Sir Nicholas," Antonia said, seating herself opposite Finch, "is to call upon the lady during daylight hours. In her parlor."

  "My lady." Bellamy cleared his throat. "Sir Nicholas mentioned his suit for your hand. Had he perhaps reason to believe he might be welcome here, at, um, so an unusual hour?"

  "He most certainly did not!" Antonia said, firmly. "Sir Ralph, you have before you the lowest sort of man, who would rape a lady in her own bed." As Finch flushed guiltily, she struggled to keep her tone even. "I am a woman wronged both in deed and in word. Sir Nicholas clearly hoped to deprive me of my good name by wicked subterfuge, trespass, and assault!"

  Bellamy nodded, fixing Finch with a censorious gaze. "Sir Nicholas, I have daughters of marriageable age with dowries. I cannot think but how I should feel if a suitor tried to compromise them into marriage as you have attempted to with Lady Cranbourne this morning."

  Finch blinked. "But—but she's a widow, Sir Ralph! Everyone knows that widows are lusty creatures—"

  "Enough!" Bellamy interrupted as Antonia choked on bile. "A lady who sleeps chaperoned by her maid clearly does not welcome your sort of rough wooing. As you've already suffered a wound for your impertinence," Antonia saw Bellamy's mouth twitch as he glanced at Finch's bandaged forearm, "I shall not have you flogged, but instead fine you fifty pounds for trespass."

  "F-fifty pounds? That is an outrage, sir!" Sir Nicholas rose, pointing dramatically at Antonia. "Look at her—hiding her poxy face with paint! She ought to be grateful for an honest offer of marriage!"

  "That is quite enough, Sir Nicholas." Bellamy's voi
ce now matched the hardness of his expression. "I could still imprison you for assault and disturbing the peace. In addition to the fine, you will also write Lady Cranbourne a letter of apology, and read it aloud in church next Sunday before the assembled congregation."

  Finch sputtered and subsided into a sulky silence.

  Antonia folded her hands in her lap, feeling dizzy with relief. Sir Ralph believed me!

  Without looking at her neighbor, she said, "You may leave now, Sir Nicholas. Never set foot in this house again."

  As Jemmy stepped forward with a menacing glower on his youthful features, Finch pushed himself awkwardly up out of the chair.

  Finch strode out, stiff-legged and clutching his bandaged arm, followed closely by the broad-shouldered young footman.

  Antonia took a deep breath to compose herself. "Tea, Sir Ralph? Or would you prefer something stronger?"

  "I would welcome a cup of tea," Bellamy said, taking a seat.

  Antonia rang for a maidservant.

  When the tea had been served, she set to making conversation about the price of wool, and the results of last month's lambing, and whether this year's barley crop would be better than last year's.

  It was comforting to discuss these things with Bellamy. It reminded her that the Cranbourne estates offered her a life where she felt useful and valued for attributes other than her face and fortune.

  After Antonia had poured them each a cup of her precious Chinese tea, still a novelty out here in the country, she said, "Thank you again, Sir Ralph, for your assistance this morning."

  He cleared his throat. "Your servant, my lady."

  "I was afraid you might believe him," Antonia said, with a sigh. "I'm still in mourning. Why can't Finch and the others leave me in peace?"

  Bellamy took a long sip from his cup. "Your fidelity to the memory of your late husband is admirable, most admirable, my lady. But, if I might be so bold, your present widowed state does give you a certain vulnerability without a father or brother to protect you."

  He leaned forward, the picture of fatherly concern, and Antonia felt a prickling of alarm at his intense gaze.

  "Finch was a thorough scoundrel, no doubt about it," Bellamy continued. "But a year has passed since the earl's death, and I fear that unwelcome suitors will only become more frequent."