An Independent Miss

What’s love to do with
anything? …

Immersed in her herbal laboratory, Lady Felicity secretly yearns
for a dashing, romantic love straight from a gothic novel. So when her
brother’s houseguest, Lord Andover, presses her hands to his chest, and
proposes, she is too stunned to take in his words of undying love. Words he
surely spoke. Didn’t he? Oh, drat, she should have listened…

Victims of misguided and inept medical men, Lord Andover’s
father and brothers are in their graves, his mother lost to the apothecary’s
opium. Desperate to save his mother, give her a will to live, he sets three
goals: marry a sweet, soothing young lady, produce an heir and free his homes of
herbalists and quacks. In return, he offers all that he is, all that he owns,
except his beleaguered heart.

Title, wealth, and
good name are all a man need offer.

AN INDEPENDENT MISS

BY

BECCA ST. JOHN

AnIndependentMiss©2014 Martha E. Ferris

All rights reserved

Cover Art © 2014
Kelli Ann Morgan / Inspire Creative Services

www.inspirecreativeservices.com

Edited by

Barb Wilson
~ http
://www.editpartner.com

Nancy D. Wall,
Wordsmith ~
[email protected]

This book is a work of fiction.
References to real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locales
are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity, and are used
fictitiously. All other characters, and all incidents and dialogue, are drawn
from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER 1 ~ THE GENTLEMAN

CHAPTER 2 ~ EN GARDE

CHAPTER 3 ~ A LADY’S SECRET

CHAPTER 4 ~ OBSTACLES

CHAPTER 5 ~ ONE IN EVERY FAMILY

CHAPTER 6 ~ INDISCRETION

CHAPTER 7 ~ CONSEQUENCES

CHAPTER 8 ~ SEEKING CALM

CHAPTER 9 ~ PLANS MADE

CHAPTER 10 ~ SILHOUETTE KISS

CHAPTER 11 ~ REVELATIONS

CHAPTER 12 ~ MONTFORT ABBEY

CHAPTER 13 ~ HAUNTED

CHAPTER 14 ~ WAYLAID

CHAPTER 15 ~ CHANGING GOALS

CHAPTER 16 ~ THE TREE CLIMBER

CHAPTER 17 ~ A PARENT’S COUNSEL

CHAPTER 18 ~ MISGUIDED WORDS

CHAPTER 19 ~ WEIGHTED REQUESTS

CHAPTER 20 ~ DOUBTS

CHAPTER 21 ~ ANOTHER MAN

CHAPTER 22 ~ DUPLICITY

CHAPTER 23 ~ WHAT OF LADY COMFREY?

CHAPTER 1 ~ THE
GENTLEMAN

Lady Felicity Westhaven pushed
through the tradesmen’s entrance of Ansley Park Manor, stripping off her work
gloves and calling, “Humphrey!”
though she needn’t have bothered. He stood in the vestibule, waiting, knowing,
as he always did, precisely when someone would come through a door.

Any door.

It was unnerving.

Felicity sighed. “Father said a
gentleman is waiting to speak with me.”

“Yes, Lady Felicity.” Humphrey took
her gloves in one hand, held the other out, ready for her apron.

“Don’t.” Felicity warned, at the
infinitesimal rise of his nose as she handed over the offending garment. “I
know I look a fright—” she brushed clumps of dirt from her skirt,
“—but I am in the middle of a difficult concoction and do not have time
for this consultation, let alone changing. Whoever it is will have to take me
as he finds me.”

Humphrey’s nostrils flared. She
ignored it. “How is your lumbago, Humphrey? Any better?”

“Yes, thank you.”

“Are you using that salve I made up
for you?”

“Yes, miss.”

“And Cook’s sister’s impetigo?”

“Much better, thank you miss.” He
almost hid his smile, but she caught it nonetheless.

“Well then.” Felicity headed toward
the study. “If I stayed neat and tidy, you would have very different answers
for all those questions.”

“Lord Redmond’s friend…”

She spun before he could say more.

“Oh!” She looked down at her
rumpled dirty dress, much as Humphrey had. “Yes, of course, Thomas’s friends
are visiting.”

Oh,
Lord, how could she have been so thoughtless? Her brother’s guests could be
anywhere.

“I believe they are outside,
fencing.” She said, more to herself than to Humphrey, trying to remember if
she’d seen them all out on the lawn or just Thomas and Lord Upton.

So far, she’d managed to avoid
seeing them when she worked in the stillroom or the greenhouses. It would be
beyond embarrassing to run into them now. “I’ll slip into the study and out,”
she assured Humphrey, “and be quick as a cricket. No one will see me.”

Offering no time for protest, she
hurried to the study, stepped through the doorway and glanced down the long
length of the room. Her ‘Good morning’ halted, hands flailing as she fought the
momentum of her forward stride.

The gentleman stood at the far end
of the room, his back to her, absently massaging a limb she knew should hurt
like the devil. She’d seen the fall that injured that leg. A nasty tumble as
the blind man, in a game of blind-man’s bluff with her younger siblings. The
children did not play fair.

Still, despite his injury, this
gentleman was not a patient.

Afraid to breathe, lest he hear her
and turn around, she tiptoed backward and spun out of the room.

Back pressed against the hall wall,
she fought to stay upright.

Ridiculous…

She was being ridiculous.

Nothing to be afraid of.

She took a deep breath, stood tall,
and straightened her skirts with a sharp flick. Sure quick movements had her
old blue shawl neatly criss-crossed, like a milkmaid’s wrap, over her bosom.
She lifted her chin. No reason to be missish. She was a grown woman of twenty,
with responsibilities far beyond her age, a capable adult.

She peeked around the doorframe for
one more glimpse.

A hand landed on her shoulder.
Felicity shot back, knocking her younger sister Caro against the wall. Without
apology or explanation, she shushed Caro as she propelled them both down the
hall.

“Who’s in there?” Caro hissed,
despite Felicity’s command for quiet. “Who are you hiding from?”

“Oh, Caro.” Felicity fought against
her own foolishness. “You startled me.”

Caro raised an eyebrow.

“Really, you caught me off guard,
that’s all.” Felicity smoothed her hair, found too many tendrils hanging loose
and desperately tried to tuck them into place, while avoiding her sister’s eye.
“Father told me someone waited to speak with me.”

A gentleman, he had said and she thought
‘gentleman’ in the broadest sense. A man looking for a tonic, or a salve, or
some such. Only this was not one of ‘those’ gentlemen and she was too
unsettled, too flustered for being unsettled, to discuss it with Caro.

“Bit strong, your reaction.” Caro
argued, though she relaxed with her older sister’s explanation. “What is the
matter with this one? A putrid boil you don’t want to face?”

“Nothing like that.” Felicity
twined arms with Caro. “Certainly not as interesting as you in your new
travelling frock. Does this mean you are going? I thought you weren’t leaving
until afternoon?” She led them further away from the study.

“I’m traveling with the Downings.
Beth sent a note around this morning. She wants to get back to Easton early.
Last term and all.”

“Ah, yes, our beloved Easton
Academy for Young Women.” Felicity mocked with gravity. “Some do love it
there.”

“Some of us do,” Caro teased. “Just
not you.”

“Now, now,” Felicity objected. “I
did my penance, no squirming out of it, though I can’t say it made a vast
difference to my life.”

“That’s because you aren’t like the
rest of us who abhor edifying literature and actually enjoy the niceties of the
finishing process.”

“I’m finished!”

Caro laughed, her gaze prompting
Felicity to look down at her practical muslin dress, rumpled from working in
the stillroom.

“There is that.” Felicity bit her
lip.

Caro bumped her side, hip to hip.
“What?”

Felicity hesitated, only to be
bumped again. “What?” Caro pried.

It was just too embarrassing to
admit to Caro who, not even out in society, understood matters of the heart.
Her younger sister knew what reciprocated love felt like. She would never
understand unrequited, soul-destroying adoration.

Caro crossed her arms, tapped her
foot. Loudly. Loud enough someone could hear from another room.

Finger to her lips, Felicity
unwound the arm twined with Caro’s and pointed back toward the study door.
Delightfully intrigued, Caro skipped to the opening, peered into the room. A
breath later she pulled back, large blue eyes even larger and mouthed, “Is that
who is waiting for you?”

Forlorn, another glance at her
dress, Felicity nodded. Caro rolled her eyes.

“Is he ill?” Caro asked. “He’s been
limping. Perhaps what you prescribed isn’t working.”

Felicity shook her head. “I didn’t
prescribe anything.”

“Nothing?”

“Close your mouth, Caro, it’s not
becoming.” Felicity pulled her sister away from the door again, worried he
might hear them. “He wouldn’t discuss his limbs with me, declined any
conversation of a healing nature.”

“But everyone talks to you about
their aches and pains.”

“Yes, they do. His conversation has
been quite singular in that respect. Delightful, really.” They talked about
books, they played chess, they laughed at the family’s antics. Like she was an
ordinary young lady. Perfectly mundane. Far too wonderful. He terrified her.

“A welcome respite, no doubt.”

“Yes, I rather think so.” She
doubted he even knew of her interest in the healing arts. She swallowed her
fear, headed back toward the study.

Caro stopped her. “You should change.”

“No,” Felicity shook her head.
“I’ve been too long already.” It wouldn’t matter. He was not the one adoring.

Hand trembling, she gripped the
doorframe, peeked one more time, as if something might have changed. It hadn’t.
The Marquis of Andover, her brother’s friend and houseguest, a gentleman in the
strictest top-of-the-tree sort of way, waited.

Alone.

Definitely alone. No one else
there, just the Marquis, at the window, facing the gardens, hands clasped
behind his back. The spring sun, so elusive of late, cast a halo about him. A
trick of light. He was no pious saint. Not at all. He was a heathen god carved
from granite, all sharp cheekbones and a dark slash of brow. Intimidating, even
for a young lady not prone to intimidation—and that was before he smiled.

She pulled back, slumped against
the hall wall, hand to heart, and fought for calm; breathe in…breathe out…
He is just a man…he is just a man…he is…

Caro sidled up beside her. “You
look beautiful and the dress isn’t bad, it’s just worn.”

Sisters were good to have. “I never
think about such things.”

“I know,” Caro agreed. “You are too
busy with your medicines. It’s rather good to see you wake up to it now.”

“Caro, what am I going to do? I’m
not a bit like you and Mama. You both know…well, you just know about things.
About people.” She gestured at the length of her sister in her pretty spring
outfit and new bonnet. “And you always look just right, so fashionable, slim
and tall, both fair and fiery.”

“Fiery?” Caro screwed up her face. “What,
because we have red hair?”

“Look at me,” Felicity groused.
“Ordinary brown hair, brown eyes. Not even the tiniest hint of curl for
redemption. All I can do is pull it back. And my skin?” She cringed. “A moment
in the sun and I’m as brown as a nut.”

“A moment in the sun and I’m as
burnt as a hot coal,” Caro argued.

“What about my eyes? They’re too
large.”

Caro stepped back. “What has come
over you? I am calming Lady Calm herself? I’ve never seen you like this. People
from five parishes choose you over a physician or apothecary. I swear the vicar
is praying for your very soul over the idolatry you provoke, and you are
worried about what you look like?”

“Obviously, you never needed to
notice before, so I will tell you what you have failed to see. You are
beautiful, like a doe, gentle and quiet.”

Felicity picked at her dress, wide
enough to accommodate hips decidedly wider than her waist. “These current
styles don’t suit me.”

Caro threw up her hands. “That’s
because you have a figure. Mother has always said some women look better
undressed.”

“Undressed?”

Caro snickered, wickedly.

Felicity gave her a shove and
moaned. “That doesn’t help. It only makes me more nervous.”

“Delicious. Felicity as a mortal,
and a wet-behind-the-ears fledgling mortal at that.” Caro chuckled.

Too distracted to listen, Felicity
merely agreed “Perhaps,” frowning as she realized what she had just said.

They stood quietly in the hallway.

“Is he proposing?”

Felicity’s head snapped up as she
tamped down girlish notions. “No.” It was impossible, a foolish dream. “Of
course not. He is committed to Lady Jane.” She shook her head as if words
weren’t enough. “I’m sure of it.” She shook her head again, feeling a bit
woozy. “No,” she repeated.

She’d assumed he sought her company
because she was the only quiet one in a boisterous family and on this, his
first step out of mourning, he would need peace. The Redmond household was not
a gentle first step.

Caro was right, she just had to go
in there and see what he wanted. It didn’t matter what she wore. No one would
call her an incomparable, nor did he expect to see her as one. Hesitating in a
doorway would not change that.

With a deep breath she stepped off
a veritable cliff, into the room, her stomach roiling as self-assurance
plummeted, her confident self swept away in the fall, revealing an unfamiliar
shy, vulnerable girl she never thought to be.

“Lord Andover?”

He turned to her, fit and handsome
in buff trousers and a superfine jacket a rich shade of cobalt. His neatly
knotted cravat, secured with a sapphire pin, complemented the coat. A glint of
sun highlighted the ebony dark of his hair, perfect foil to cerulean eyes. Not
that she could see those eyes with the sun at his back. But she knew them.

“Lady Felicity.” He reached out
both hands, naked of gloves, as were hers.

Did
he mean for her to take them? To touch, flesh to flesh? So casually?
Heat
blossomed in her cheeks as she crossed the room, hands clutched at her waist,
uncertain of his intention in reaching for her like that. Jarred by that
uncertainty.

“Allow me this liberty.” He took
her hands, eased them open, pressed them against his chest as he spoke in that
deep, comforting voice of his. It poured over her, a warm waterfall of sound,
as she stared, enthralled by the sight of her hands caught between the warmth
of his body and the hardness of his palms.

A thrilling, foreign intimacy, the
steady thump of his heart, the vibration of his baritone. A language of the
senses.

Earthy heat radiated through his
shirt, carried the scent of his cologne. She inhaled the spicy exotic fragrance
and swallowed, afraid she might melt, right there, into a puddle at his feet.
Grappling for security, she reminded herself she was a pragmatic, intelligent
young lady, vastly more mature than most women her age and far beyond being
carried away by bare skin. She knew the feel of flesh in a clinical, detached
sort of way.

But not like this. Nothing like
this.

Silence.

Startled, she looked up. He
finished whatever he was saying, watched her with a small smile.

Oh
Lord, she should have paid attention.

“Will you?” He finally asked again, for
she was certain he had already asked her once. “Will you do me the honor of
marrying me?”

She blinked, stunned. “Me?”

His chuckle washed over her, as he
freed one hand to brush a finger across her cheek. “Yes, you.”

She swallowed again, just to be
certain she could, as she tried to reign in the tumult of thoughts his words
provoked.

“Is this a prank?” She looked about
for her brothers. Thomas for certain, possibly Edward, even Annabel, though a
bit young, would be up to this sort of game. No one popped out from behind a
settee. No suspicious lumps or toes peeked from where the curtains were
gathered.