The Marquess of Temptation Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  About the Author

  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

  Epilogue

  The Captain of Betrayal

  The Marquess of Temptation

  Claudia Stone

  Copyright © 2017 Claudia Stone

  Copy Editing by E. C. Hamilton

  All rights reserved.

  For Henry and his owner Claire, with love and best wishes for all your adventures.

  About the Author

  Claudia Stone was born in South Africa but moved to Plymouth as a young girl. Having trained as an actress at RADA, she moved to New York to pursue her dream of acting on Broadway in 1988. She never did see her name in lights, but she did meet a wonderful Irishman called Conal who whisked her away to the wilds of Kerry, where she has lived ever since.

  Claudia and Conal have three children, a dairy farm and a St. Bernard called Bob. When she has any time left over, Claudia enjoys reading Regency as well as writing it.

  Fans can write to Claudia at [email protected]

  If you would like to hear from Claudia about her new releases, you can sign up for her newsletter by clicking the link below:

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  Chapter One

  "Never marry for love, Hestia. Love only works in fairy tales."

  This was the sage advice that Hestia Stockbow's mother, Georgina, imparted to her almost daily, for the whole of her childhood.

  "Love won't heat your home," Georgina would grumble mid-winter, when a damp chill permeated their small, stone cottage on the Cornish coast. "Or put food in your children's bellies. Do you understand me?"

  Hestia would nod solemnly, taking in every word, whilst her mother worked furiously at the bellows, trying to get a flame to catch hold in the kitchen stove. Georgina Stockbow was a beautiful woman, her exquisite face topped by an abundance of golden curls, which Hestia adored brushing with the mother-of-pearl comb that Georgina kept on her dressing table. The comb was the final vestige of Georgina's previous life, and Hestia knew to handle it with the utmost care and respect.

  Her mother had grown up as the only daughter of a Viscount and by all accounts had been adored by her parents. On cold evenings, when her father was away, Hestia's mother would regale her with tales of all the dresses and toys that she had owned when she was a girl. She made her previous life sound like a fairy tale; filled with large houses, glamorous people, elegant carriages and balls that went on until the wee hours of the morning. Unlike the story books that Hestia devoured, however, Georgina's fairy tale had ended when she fell in love.

  "Now my life is just hard work, an aching back and a husband that's gone more than he's home," she would grumble, shooing Hestia away to bed. Poor Hestia, who was rather serious for such a cheerful looking child, took her mother's words to heart, and where other children feared the dark or goblins and ghouls, Hestia feared meeting Prince Charming, falling in love and being consigned to a life of drudgery.

  Being a rather astute child, Hestia noted that while her mother loudly and frequently protested that love was the most abominable thing known to man, she promptly forgot this the moment her father walked through the door. David Stockbow was a most handsome man; over six foot tall, with a shock of black hair, he always cut a dashing figure in his impeccable breeches and boots. Hestia would watch, with a rather detached amusement, as her mother would momentarily feign annoyance with him, for having left them for so long, before quickly falling under his spell, as he wooed her with the spoils of his travels. Silks, mink, and sometimes jewels would be placed on the kitchen table, like an offering for an olden day Empress, for her mother to inspect. Georgina would squeal with delight, fling her arms around her husband's neck and order Hestia outside to play for a few hours. Depending on the length of her father's stay, Hestia would end up spending rather a lot of time in the great outdoors, which she did not mind - but she did find it bothersome when he chose to return in winter.

  Inevitably, when her father returned to sea, Hestia would be summoned back inside the confines of Rose Cottage to help her mother decide which of her father's gifts should be brought to the pawn shop in Truro first. Once everything that could be pawned was gone, Georgina would dress Hestia in her Sunday best and frog-march her through the countryside to pay Lady Bedford a visit.

  "He's away again?" the old woman would say, with a sigh that wracked her whole body, when Hestia and her mother were ushered into the drawing room.

  "You know I hate to ask..." Georgina would whisper.

  "I do."

  And so did Hestia. She knew from her mother's slumped shoulders and the deepness of the marionette lines, which dragged her smile into a frown, that asking Lady Bedford for help was almost as soul destroying an act as falling in love.

  "I'll fetch my purse," Lady Bedford would sigh, before pointedly adding, "Your poor mother was right about him."

  "I know," Georgina would whisper.

  That Lady Bedford knew Georgina from her past life was a source of endless fascination for Hestia. Sometimes, when her mother was struck down with her mysterious, unknown ailment, Hestia was shipped off to Bedford Hall, to be looked after by her Grandmother's old friend.

  "Tell me about my Grandmama," she would beg and Lady Bedford would duly oblige. The Viscount and Viscountess Havisham had adored their only daughter, nearly more than their only son. Which was unthinkable really, for girls were little more than a pretty accessory, designed to complement the male off-spring.

  "They were heartbroken when your mother ran off with that scoundrel," Lady Bedford never referred to Hestia's father by name, preferring to Christen him with new monikers like; that scoundrel, that reprobate, that pirate. "Your Grandfather insisted that she be cut off, though when I found out that you were living just outside Truro, your Grandmother often wrote to me, asking for news of you both."

  "What did you tell her about me?" Hestia would ask, with wide eyes.

  "That you were perfectly perfect," Lady Bedford would smile, "Even if you were born out of scandal..."

  Lady Bedford detested scandal. Her own sister, Mrs Actrol, had brought great shame on her family by becoming a Bluestocking author. Hestia, in turn, adored Mrs Actrol, who when she visited, said things which made Lady Bedford cluck her tongue in disapproval. As the years went on and Hestia's mother spent more time in bed, afflicted by a mysterious illness that left her pale and wan, Hestia spent more and more time at Bedford Hall, reading aloud to Lady Bedford or walking one of her many King Charles Cavaliers.

  "Lord Bedford detests dogs, he can't bear to be in the same room as them."

  If Hestia thought it was rather strange that Lord Bedford's wife had thusly surrounded herself with no less than eight of the creatures, she kept it to herself. She had become much wiser about marriage as she grew; her own parents' tempestuous relationship had near ended since war was declared with Napoleon and her father had taken to sea. Not to fight for a noble cause, her mother would point out with a
nnoyance, rather to plunder the ports of war stricken countries. Before he had left for, what was to be the last time in their marriage, Hestia had overheard her mother reading aloud from the paper.

  "Do you see this David? My cousin Amelia has married a Marquess - Lord Delaney. What a sensible girl she always was and now she has married a man with means."

  "You were never sensible, my love," Hestia's father had crooned in return, though rather than give a giddy laugh to his flirting, like she usually did, Hestia's mother had emitted a small sob. "No, I don't suppose I was."

  By the time that Hestia turned sixteen, her mother had wasted away to skin and bone, and spent most of her days in bed. Hestia kept up her visits to Lady Bedford, both for the comfort that the warmth of Bedford Hall brought, and the few coins that the Lady of the house would slip into her palm as she was leaving. The few coins bought food and firewood, but what her mother needed more than either fuel or food, was a physician. One night, when her mother's breathing became shallow and erratic, Hestia penned a missive to the current Viscount Havisham of Kent, begging for funds to help his ailing sibling.

  He arrived a fortnight later, a tall man with a shock of blond hair like his sister's. His face was awash with disapproval as he surveyed the small, stone cottage where his sister had raised his niece.

  "I shan't pay a penny for her treatment," he said by way of greeting when Hestia opened the door, "She brought poverty on herself by marrying that cur, and the scandal sent my parents to an early grave. I won't pay for anything, do you hear me?"

  "You won't have to spend a penny my Lord, for we buried her only yesterday," Hestia duly intoned, before shutting the door on the only member of her mother's family that she had ever laid eyes on.

  Somebody, Hestia wasn't sure who, managed to get in contact with her father. He returned a month after Georgina's death, to fetch Hestia from Bedford Hall, where Lady Bedford had insisted she stay. He was unrecognisable from the man she had known; his hair was no longer black but grey, and his handsome face was concealed by a bushy beard that resembled Bedlam straw.

  "You look so like your mother," he whispered, as he caught sight of Hestia for the first time in three years.

  "Thank you," Hestia replied softly, shy of this strange man before her. Her father, once they were home in Rose Cottage, walked from room to room wearing a vacant expression.

  "She's gone," he whispered, to which Hestia nodded. "I loved her, did you know?"

  "I knew," Hestia refrained from sighing; oh how she knew about her parent's love for each other. Instead of finding strength from her father's presence, Hestia found herself playing the care-giver, as David Stockbow, the legendary adventurer, fell into a deep depression.

  "I loved her so much," he would whisper, as he paced the house wearing his now customary vacant expression, his frame half starved with grief.

  Love. Hestia deplored that word. Love had done nothing for anyone, bar cause misery and upset. Her father was unable to work, save for pottering around the garden, and once the treasures he had brought home with him were pawned, Hestia found herself once again paying daily visits to Lady Bedford.

  "Can he not go out to work?" Lady Bedford would sigh, as she handed Hestia a fistful of coins.

  "He can't seem to do anything," Hestia confessed from the corner of the room, where she was in danger of being smothered by what was now a dozen, boisterous Cavaliers. "He spends all day in the garden, building his..."

  She trailed off; for she had no idea what it was her father was building. He had piled dozens of stones atop each other in the garden, before planting a bevy of wild roses around them. If she didn't know any better she would say he was building a shrine to her mother, but she did know better than to voice such concerns to Lady Bedford. Lady Bedford did hate a scandal - and nothing was more scandalous than a man losing his mind.

  It was around the time of Hestia's nineteenth birthday, that her father's past came back to haunt him. Hestia returned home from Bedford Hall one evening, to find him hidden inside the cottage with all the shutters closed on the windows and the poker for the fire clutched in his hand.

  "Has anyone in the village been asking after me?" he asked from a dark corner, his voice a low rasp.

  "Not more than usual," Hestia replied diplomatically, for nobody in the village ever enquired after her father, though she hadn't the heart to tell him.

  "I saw a man yesterday, a blond man, poking around the garden," her father licked his lips nervously. "And then I got a letter."

  He gestured toward the kitchen table, upon which there was a page, much creased as though it had been read and folded a dozen times. Hestia glanced at her father, who was eyeing the page nervously and supposed that it had been manhandled more than once.

  "I know what you stole, Stockbow," Hestia picked up the page and read aloud, trying to keep the note of alarm from her voice, "And I will kill you for it. Goodness, father, who sent this?"

  "I don't know," her father's eyes were wild, "It could be anyone, Hestia. You're not safe here. You'll have to go back to Bedford Hall."

  "I can't leave you," Hestia protested, though her father ignored her, waving his hand to silence her.

  "You're not leaving me," he said, his voice firm and controlled, the voice he had spoken with when she was a child. The threat to his life seemed to give him strength and he visibly grew before her eyes. "I shall set off for Bristol at once. I'll send you on money, once I have it, until then stay with Lady Bedford."

  He would broker no argument and Hestia soon found herself, for the second time that day, traipsing the country lane to Bedford Hall, where an unquestioning Lady Bedford had the maid show her to one of the less impressive guest rooms for the night. It was past midnight when the sound of voices from the entrance hall woke Hestia from her slumber.

  "Dead as a doornail," she heard a deep voice boom, "Put a bullet through his head. Well, even you said that he had gone slightly mad since his wife passed, my Lady."

  "How awful," Hestia heard Lady Bedford exclaim in response, "What an awful scandal for poor Hestia to bear."

  What was an awful scandal? she wondered, creeping quietly down the grand staircase to where Lord and Lady Bedford and the local magistrate stood huddled together.

  "What's an awful scandal?" she voiced, bile rising in her throat as the pale faces of the Bedfords turned to her.

  "Your father has only gone and blown out his brains with a blunderbuss," Lord Bedford, who was hard of hearing and low on tact, bellowed so loudly that his words echoed off the cavernous ceiling of the entrance hall. Hestia felt as though the very ground beneath her had become unstable and she gripped the nearby banister to keep herself from falling.

  "He can't have," she protested, "He was going to Bristol - he told me he was leaving for Bristol."

  No matter how many times Hestia repeated this fact, she was ignored. Over the next few days her life was a blur of people traipsing in and out of Bedford Hall, speaking in whispers to the Lord and Lady of the house. She overheard the words "coroners court" and "suicide", spoken once or twice, and finally Reverend Plucker arrived to have a quiet word with her.

  "We cannot bury your father on Church grounds, Hestia, I am sorry," he said, wiping his brow with a white linen handkerchief. "I would like to help, for you know how fond I am of you, but it's gone beyond my hands."

  The only thing that Hestia found surprising in the Reverend's statement was to hear that he was fond of her, for previously he had barely even deigned to glance at her. She supposed that it was his job to offer kind words to the bereaved, though he evidently thought his job was finished, for he soon left.

  A week after his death, her father was buried under the cover of darkness in unconsecrated ground just outside of Truro, beside criminals and thieves. Hestia was not present for the burial, though she intended to visit at some stage to pay her last respects, but then the papers caught wind of the story...

  "It's a terrible scandal," Lady Bedford proclaimed, setti
ng down the newspaper and looking at Hestia gravely. "I don't know what we shall do. Your name has been dragged, irrevocably, through the muddied waters of your father's life and death. I don't know what you shall do - no one will ever marry you."

  Hestia, who had never thought of marrying anyone, picked up the newspaper curiously. On the front page there was a large caricature of her father as she had remembered him as a child, tall, strong and handsome, beneath a headline which read: "Verdict of Suicide Declared in Case of Notorious Privateer."

  Underneath the headline was an in-depth article, describing, in great detail, the earlier scandal of her parent's marriage, her birth and her father's illustrious career as a thief of the seven seas. She read with wonder of his escapades in the Mediterranean during the War, the Egyptian treasures he had allegedly stolen from a Navy ship and how he had nearly died on numerous occasions, in spectacular ways. Had her father really been a pirate? This was all news to her. It would make sense, however, what with his penchant for disappearing to sea for years before returning with a haul of treasures for her mother.

  "You cannot stay Hestia," Lady Bedford continued, jolting her from her reverie. "We shall have to send you away, somewhere no one will recognise you. Oh, this is indeed a terrible scandal."

  Lady Bedford sent Hestia out to the gardens, to walk six of the dogs whilst she stayed inside and thought of a plan. By the time Hestia returned, her skirts muddied to her knees, the next chapter of her life had been plotted out by the industrious Lady Bedford.

  "Mrs Actrol reliably informed me on her last visit, that the new Lady Jarvis is seeking a companion for her sister-in-law, Miss Jane Deveraux." Lady Bedford stated from her seat at her mahogany writing bureau. "I shall write to this new Viscountess with a glowing character reference for you --and include a few subtle reminders of my good standing in the ton, of course."