The Lady Who Broke the Rules. Marguerite KayeЧитать онлайн книгу.
would only result in a more brutal assault. Virgil knew it, too, but it made no difference. He continued to struggle, his muscles straining with every last ounce of their power to free himself, to reach her.
He called her name over and over. Their eyes met across the dusty courtyard. The overseer readied himself, unbuttoning his breeches. His white buttocks would have looked absurd under any other circumstances. Millie screamed. One almighty surge of energy and Virgil was back on his feet.
The two blows fell at once.
The overseer smacked Millie hard across the mouth. Silenced but still conscious, she fell onto her back and Harlow made short work of rucking up her brown sackcloth skirts.
The cosh hit Virgil hard across the back of the head. He fell, his face biting into the hot dust, into an oblivion denied Millie as the overseer set about the brief and brutal business of punishing her for her lover’s crimes.
Chapter One
Maer Hall, Staffordshire, 1816
‘Kate! So glad you could make it.’ Sarah Wedgwood pushed her way through the crowd to greet her friend. ‘I was afraid you were still in the Lake District.’
Lady Katherine Montague grimaced. ‘No, I returned a couple of weeks ago, just in time for my cousin Araminta’s wedding.’
‘I heard that your other cousin, Ross, ran off with a ladies’ maid,’ Sarah said sotto voce, eyes agog as she led Kate to a quiet corner of the room. ‘Surely that cannot be true?’
‘We don’t actually know what happened. When my Aunt Wilhelmina discovered that Ross’s intentions towards the girl were honourable, she rather lost the rag with the poor soul and sent her packing. Ross was furious —he headed hotfoot after her, and frankly we have no idea where they are now. Wherever it is, I do most sincerely hope they are married, for it seemed to me that Ross was quite besotted, and of course,’ Kate said with a mischievous smile, ‘to discover that her meddling has had the exact opposite effect of what she intended will make my dear aunt furious. She can talk of nothing but nourishing vipers in her bosom, and my father—actually, I’m not sure that Papa takes in anything much these days, since Edward and Jamie …’
Kate broke off, the familiar lump in her throat preventing her from continuing. Though it had been more than a year since Ned died at Waterloo, longer since Jamie had disappeared, the loss of her brothers still felt unreal. Both were buried in the distant lands where they fell. She wondered sometimes if that was it—with nothing to mark their passing, she could believe that they were still abroad, fighting. At times, she could wholly understand her father’s desire to live in the past. Though Jamie had always been too much the duke-in-waiting for her to do anything other than spar with him, she had loved Ned.
‘Sorry,’ she said to Sarah. ‘Things at home have become rather horribly complicated. I won’t bore you with the details, but suffice to say that your invitation for tonight was most welcome, though my aunt was furious at my accepting it. But I could not deny myself such an opportunity. Where is your guest of honour, I do not see him here?’
‘That is my fault, I fear,’ Josiah Wedgwood, son of the famous potter and the owner of Maer Hall, interrupted. ‘Mr Jackson was with me at the Etruria works, and I did not notice the time. He is changing for dinner, but he should not be long. How are you, Lady Katherine? It is very good to see you.’ Josiah bent low over Kate’s hand. ‘Our Mr Jackson made his fortune in American stoneware, you know, and we plan to do some business together, but I will not bore you with the details, my dear. Tell me how the duke does?’
‘Bearing up. He sends his regards,’ Kate said, a barefaced lie, for her ailing father was not even aware that she was here in Staffordshire, and would never have thought of sending his regards to a man he would consider to be a tradesman. ‘Never mind Papa, tell me about Mr Jackson. I cannot tell you how excited I am about meeting him. What is he like?’
‘See for yourself,’ Sarah replied, nudging her arm in a most unladylike manner. ‘Here he is now.’
As the double doors at the end of the Great Hall were closed by the Wedgwoods’ head footman, a ripple of excitement fluttered through the assembled guests. All eyes turned towards the man making his way down the room. Whispers, like the ruffle of a spring breeze playing on new leaves, rose to a murmur of anticipation. Silks rustled as the ladies of the company vied surreptitiously to be the first to greet him. Gentlemen edged closer to their host with the same intention.
The focus of all this attention seemed oblivious. He was tall, which was the first thing which struck Kate. And he was exceedingly well-built too, with muscles straining at the cloth of his coat, though he carried himself with the grace of a predator. There was about him something fierce, an aura of power, of sheer masculine force which should have repelled her but which Kate recognised, with a frisson of awareness, was actually fatally attractive. In every sense, Mr Jackson was different from any man she had ever met.
As his host stepped forward to greet him, Virgil Jackson resisted the urge to pull his coat more closely around him. A huge fire blazed at the end of the long gallery, but the heat it emitted radiated out to a distance of a few feet only, before disappearing into the chilly air. The copious renovations which Josiah had explained to him in detail during the tour of the hall the day before had not extended to this great gallery, which was part of the original Jacobean building. Despite the tapestries and hangings, a permanent breeze seemed to flutter around the cavernous space. The English didn’t seem to notice the cold, however. The ladies were all bare-shouldered, the rich silks and lace of their evening gowns low-cut, showing an expanse of bosom that in Boston would have been deemed shocking.
The starched collar of his shirt was chafing Virgil’s neck. The gathering, which his host had described to him earlier as ‘a few choice friends,’ seemed to consist of at least thirty people dressed in their finest. He smiled and made his bow to a stream of faces it was not worth his while remembering, relieved that he’d had the sense to visit a London tailor upon arriving in England.
Though he had nothing to be ashamed of in the quality of his Boston-made clothes, there was no denying that they were behind the times compared to English fashions. The dark blue superfine tailcoat he wore tonight was fitted so tightly across his shoulders and chest that it was frankly a struggle to put on, but the tailor had assured him that this was how it should be. His knitted grey pantaloons seemed indecently tight, and a far stretch from the formal black silk breeches and stockings worn on such an occasion back home, but the valet he’d hired—much against his own inclinations—had assured him that in the country evening dress was reserved for balls. The man had been right. He had been damned finicky, fussing over the perfect placing of a pearl pin in the cravat Virgil had been forced to allow him to tie after his own third attempt ended in a crumpled heap with the others, but he’d been right, and though it irked him that it should be so, Virgil was grateful for this small mercy. In attire, at least, he was the same as every other male guest in the room.
Of course, in virtually every other sense he was quite different. Virgil suppressed a sigh. He was grateful for the effort that Josiah and his wife had made to welcome him into their home, but with business concluded, he would much rather have avoided this soirée and the collection of influential people Josiah had invited for the sole purpose of demonstrating their support for what they perceived to be a shared cause. So many variations of that famous abolitionist medallion created by Josiah’s father were being brandished under his nose—the manacled slave cast in gold and silver worn as a bracelet, a necklace, a fob or a hair ornament—that he could be in no doubt of their goodwill. But the people of Old England were as ignorant of one salient fact as those in New England. It was one thing to cut the chains of slavery, quite another to be free. No one in this room knew that better than he.
He was the only black person at the gathering. Since leaving London, Virgil felt as if he was the only black man in England. Being so distinctively different nibbled away at the edges of his hard-earned confidence. He felt as if he were constantly teetering on the precipice of some irrecoverable faux pas, for though his success made him accustomed to mix with the highest