Read Heiress Without a Cause Online
Authors: Sara Ramsey
Heiress Without a Cause
A MUSES OF MAYFAIR NOVEL
Sara Ramsey
Heiress Without A Cause
is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidences are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. The Publisher does not have any control over and does not assume responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
Copyright © 2012 Sara Wampler
All Rights Reserved.
Cover Design by Hot Damn Designs
ISBN: 978-1-937515-22-5
For my parents, who gave me the courage to explore the world, a safe haven to return to, and the love that makes every day sparkle.
CHAPTER ONE
London - 6 April 1812
She stood outside her aunt’s ballroom and breathed as deeply as her stays allowed. She had walked into innumerable ballrooms in the past decade, but she still felt that old excitement — that moment of speculation, wondering if tonight would miraculously distinguish itself from all the other nights that stretched behind and before her in a dull grey line. Her life had all the color of a debutante’s closet. Since she would never wear the rich colors of a matron (or, better, a widow), that grey line was unlikely to change.
Chilton, her aunt’s butler, ushered her through the great double doors to the ballroom. “Lady Madeleine Vaillant,” he announced to the horde mingling below.
None of them turned.
They wouldn’t, after all. She lived with her aunt and had been a fixture at Salford House since her parents died eighteen years earlier. Still, the contrast between tonight, at this proper ball, and the previous night, in a very different milieu, was sharp enough to hurt.
Here, in a white muslin ball gown, with her brown hair tucked into a spinster’s cap, no one spared her a first glance, let alone a second.
Last night, wearing breeches and a wild, unkempt wig, everyone cheered at her feet.
She kept a vague half-smile on her face as she descended the steps into the ballroom. Aunt Augusta had trained her well, and she never displayed her disappointment when each night became just like every other. There were a few guests ahead of her on the landing, waiting to greet her aunt and her cousin Alexander Staunton, the earl of Salford. The delay ensured that her mask was firmly in place before Aunt Augusta saw her.
“Are you feeling well, dear?” her aunt asked when she finally reached them.
“Well enough, Aunt Augusta,” Madeleine said, making her voice sound the tiniest bit tired. She had feigned illness for the past two weeks and planned a final relapse the following night, but she couldn’t miss her aunt’s opening ball of the season. She should have come down almost an hour earlier, but she used her illness as an excuse to cut the night short.
Augusta frowned. “You should retire early. No one will miss you, I’m sure.”
She knew her aunt didn’t mean for the words to cut like a blade, but she still winced.
Then she sternly told herself to stop being dramatic. It was just one night, like any other night. Her aunt and cousins loved her, even if the ton didn’t. And her inconspicuous nature gave her the freedom to behave as she had the past two weeks — she should be grateful that she could take such a risk.
So she smiled and said in her sunniest voice, “I’m sure a ball is just what I need to recover. I feel better than I have in an age.”
“Don’t dress it up too much, cousin,” Alex said. “When have these affairs ever improved our health?”
He grinned, a fellow prisoner to Aunt Augusta’s expectations. He escaped more frequently than Madeleine, since he often chose his club over the events of the marriage mart. But if he hadn’t inherited the earldom when his father died, he probably would have left London entirely.
She grinned back. “There is always a first time. Perhaps Aunt Augusta’s ball will magically cure us all.”
Her aunt sighed. “Do try to behave, both of you. Not that I usually have to request good behavior from you, Madeleine, but your illness seems to have addled your senses.”
“Why do you say that?” Madeleine asked.
“You can’t fool me forever, dear. According to the doctors, there is nothing physically wrong with you. You just seem preoccupied — like my sister before she married her French marquis.”
Augusta pressed her lips shut after she spoke, the severe gesture marring a face that was still beautiful even in her early fifties. With her fading blonde hair and sharp blue eyes, she was an older version of her daughter Amelia, but her age had made her more circumspect. It was an unusual slip — she rarely mentioned Madeleine’s mother.
Madeleine didn’t respond. More guests arrived and she seized the opportunity to flee, with a stricken look from Augusta and another sympathetic smile from Alex. As much as she loved the adventure she had created for herself, and as much as she would cherish the precious memory of these past two weeks, she still hated lying to Alex and Augusta. At least Sebastian, Alex’s younger brother, was on his Bermuda plantation this year. She couldn’t have kept her secret from the cousin who understood her desire for rebellion.
But even he wouldn’t support her decision to risk everything and act on a public stage. And since she was too careful to be caught, no one beyond Amelia needed to know.
She took a seat at the edge of the ballroom. The chairs were new, upholstered in green velvet to match the lush new drapes. Aunt Augusta’s redecoration made the ballroom feel like a fairy forest, filled with the bright sounds of the hidden orchestra and illuminated by hundreds of candles in the chandeliers. Madeleine was just grateful that Augusta had replaced the chairs along the walls; the last batch had hit her just wrong, making her feet fall asleep at every ball.
As she settled in, her friend Prudence emerged from the crush. The woman sank into the chair beside Madeleine as though the effort of escaping the crowd had left her mortally wounded.
“Do you think Aunt Augusta bought these chairs because she knows we shall always sit in them?” Madeleine asked, too familiar with her friend to waste breath on greetings.
Prudence ignored her question. “Madeleine, you will
never guess
who is standing in your aunt’s foyer.”
Madeleine laughed. Prudence Etchingham was the academic bluestocking in their little circle, but she had a sense of adventure that she kept well hidden from her formidable mother. “Napoleon?”
“Even better.”
Madeleine would have liked for it to be Napoleon, if only so she could join the queue of people who wished to skewer him. Aunt Augusta would like it too — Napoleon’s death in her receiving line could only enhance her position as one of the top hostesses in the ton.
But killing Napoleon wouldn’t revive her parents or buy back her life in France. Before she could press Prudence about who was in the foyer, a disturbance at the top of ballroom steps caught her attention. It wasn’t a disturbance, precisely — more like an unexpected silence, which spread in a slow wave across the ballroom as people turned to the entrance.
Chilton cleared his throat with unusual vigor. “Her grace the duchess of Harwich. His grace the duke of Rothwell.”
The butler’s announcement, designed to carry out over the room, dropped like a cannonball into the crowd below. Heads snapped up from their conversations, dancers missed their steps, and Madeleine heard the shattering of at least one champagne glass. They hadn’t noticed Madeleine, but they couldn’t ignore the latest arrival.
Rothwell had finally returned to London to claim his title. He had last been seen nearly a decade earlier, when everyone knew him as Ferguson — a third son with no prospects and a scandalous reputation. Now, inheriting a dukedom in circumstances that the ton had speculated about for over a month, he was a sensation.
“I thought he went mad,” Madeleine whispered.
Prudence shook her head. “I heard it was the French pox that kept him out of London, but he looked healthy enough when I saw him in the foyer.”
“He could look quite healthy and still be mad, Prue. His brothers were always pleasant enough. But why did he choose to make his first appearance at Aunt Augusta’s ball?” Madeleine asked, watching him bow over her aunt’s hand. “I heard he arrived in town days ago. And Aunt Augusta is powerful, but not powerful enough to wait for.”
“Perhaps he had to wait for the moon to turn so that he could appear sane,” Prudence said with a giggle.
Madeleine stifled a snort. Even at this distance, Rothwell’s dark auburn hair gleamed in the light of the massive chandeliers. Sophronia, the duchess of Harwich and his father’s sister, stood beside him, more ramrod straight than usual. She looked ready to battle anyone who might have an opinion about her nephew — not that anyone would dare to cross one of the highest-ranking women in Britain.
“Rothwell hardly seems cut up over his father’s death, does he?” Prudence observed.
She was right. The new duke wore a tightly fitted dark blue jacket and buff breeches, without even a black armband to indicate mourning. Madeleine had heard that he skipped the funeral, and his attire suggested that he intended to forget his father entirely.
Lady Amelia Staunton, Aunt Augusta’s only daughter, joined them then, taking the chair on Madeleine’s left. “Isn’t this a shock! I would dearly love to ask him for the real story of the old duke’s demise, if only I thought he would share it.”
Prudence laughed. “You would care more about the story than anything.”
“Better a story than some dry treatise on ancient Babylon,” Amelia said. It was their usual argument. Prudence wrote academic papers — under a male name — that were well received by other scholars, but Amelia secretly wrote novels. If Madeleine could pursue her artistic passions as easily as they did, perhaps she wouldn’t feel so restless.
She tried to redirect them to the topic — or rather, the man — at hand. “You can’t ask him what happened to his father, Amelia. The
Times
said it was a carriage accident, and we must leave it at that.”
“Of course the
Times
would say that if they were paid enough. I like the rumors better.”
“Your Gothic sensibility has addled you, dear,” Prudence said primly. Then she grinned. “Of course, patricide in powerful families is a common historical theme.”
Amelia smiled victoriously. Madeleine rolled her eyes before turning back to watch the new duke. He finished with Aunt Augusta and strode down the steps like he owned them, already so in command of his title that he took others’ deference for granted. A half-smile played on his lips, as though he expected such toad-eating and was amused by it.
If that were all Madeleine saw, she would have hated him on sight. Arrogance was not a trait she found attractive. He had gone into exile in Scotland a year before her debut, but she had heard enough to know that even as a third son, he was never humble. Still, the amusement lurking on his face intrigued her. It was almost like he was playing a role — and laughing at those who could not see through his deception.
She knew how that felt.
The old urge to dance flared up again. This time, it was the partner she desired more than the movement. She bit down on her desire before it fully formed. The most notorious rake, now duke, in London would never notice the spinster she appeared to be.
Near the base of the steps, where he could still survey the room, he turned to his aunt. She made a gesture toward the back of the room — more precisely, toward Madeleine’s circle. Rothwell raised his quizzing glass to examine them, the amused look never leaving his face. Then he set off again, lost in the crowd.
Unless Sophronia warned him away from their corner, there was little doubt that he would soon appear in front of them.
“Prepare yourself, Amelia. You may get to ask your question when he dances with you,” Prudence said.
Neither Amelia nor Madeleine disagreed with Prudence’s assessment of the duke’s intentions. Of the three of them, only Amelia still attracted suitors. Madeleine could have landed a husband if she wasn’t so shy in her first years and bored in the later ones — while her dark hair and green eyes were unfashionable, her uncle Edward had given her a dowry equal to Amelia’s, and it was large enough to cover any number of flaws. Prudence had light brown hair and serious brown eyes, but worse, she had no dowry and no hope of attaining one.