Regency 02 - Betrayal

A Regency Romance

Jaimey Grant

Smashwords Edition

copyright © 2008 Laura J Miller (Jaimey
Grant)

cover art © 2009 Laura J Miller All rights reserved. No portion of this work
may be reproduced in print or electronically, other than brief
excerpts for the purpose of reviews, without the written permission
of the author.

Other titles by Jaimey Grant at
Smashwords.com:

Spellbound:
http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1375

Heartless:
http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1385

Redemption:
http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1433

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Paperback edition available
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ISBN:
1440414688
(EAN-13:
978
1440414688)

List Price $9.95US

The following is a work of fiction. Names,
characters, places, and incidents are fictitious or used
fictitiously. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, to
factual events or to businesses is coincidental and
unintentional.

London

Early December 1816

The once beautiful young woman slumped
against the cold stone of her prison cell, her knees drawn up to
her chest, her tattered skirts pulled carefully down to cover her
skinny limbs. She wondered if she would ever be free. It seemed no
matter where she went, no matter how she changed her appearance,
she was always found. Then, to avoid starving, she had stolen a
measly loaf of bread and ended up here.

Newgate.

The very name was enough to strike fear into
most human beings. But some were so desperate for food they took
the risk to feed themselves and their families. Anyone unlucky
enough to get caught faced deportation or worse, hanging.

Some actually viewed deportation as the worst
of the two, but this young female prisoner was infinitely sorry she
had been sentenced to hang instead. If she were deported, even as a
criminal, she would have been able to finally escape those that
pursued her, forget about her past, and start a new life.

She shivered and pulled her threadbare shawl
tighter around her painfully thin body. It was very cold in her
cell since prisoners of her kind did not rank high enough to
warrant a fire or any type of comfort. What was the point? They
would all die eventually anyway.

She almost laughed at the consternation that
would quickly run through all those faceless men who had decided
her fate if they were aware of who she was and exactly what
position she held in the
haute ton
.

But she wouldn’t tell them. They wouldn’t
believe her, of course, if she did tell them, but they might ask
her family, who would reply with great breaths of relief that she
had stubbornly run away and they had been searching for her this
age. Then they would let drop that she was quite mad and cite
several instances where she had appeared to be so. She would be
handed over and locked up in a madhouse, where they said she
belonged.

She would never go back there. She would die
first.

And all this over a few measly pounds and
paltry title she didn’t even want.

Perhaps it wasn’t a few pounds, she thought
as a shuddering cough wracked her frail body. Sixty thousand a year
made her one of the richest women in the country. The title wasn’t
paltry either. There were very few women in England who could claim
a title in her own right. But it was all very useless when there
were several titled family members swearing to your insanity and
doing everything in their power to lock you away. If she were
proven mad, the family would have control of her money until the
day she died, although the title would remain hers until that
time.

A guard passed her cell and leered in at her
and she knew it was only a matter of time before he had his way
with her. She thought about it in a detached sort of way, by this
time too jaded to really care and having lost her virtue long ago,
she knew she was damaged goods, unmarriageable, so it didn’t
matter. In cynical Society, if one man had had you, you might as
well have given yourself to all of them.

And to avoid starvation, she had very nearly
done just that.

She would have thought that her looks had
gone off enough that she would not have to worry so much about
being molested. Her red hair was dull and cut ruthlessly short by
an inexpert hand causing it to fall in limp dirty strands all
around her gaunt face, her skin was sallow and scarred, her figure
had gone from seductively curved to miserably skinny, and even she
knew that she smelled something awful having not had the luxury of
soap and water for quite some time. The only claims to beauty that
she seemed to have retained were her large green eyes, which still
flashed with anger or mirth depending on her mood, and her deep
bosom.

She reflected ruefully that of all the
attractions she could have done without, her breasts were it.
Breasts seemed to cause thoughts of lust in even the most staid of
gentlemen, no matter their age, station or current marital
status.

If she had had less spirit and less pride—and
if the threat to her life had not been quite so great—she could
have become some man’s mistress and lived her days out in comfort.
Even though red hair was considered quite unfashionable, this
particular lady was undeniably beautiful.

Was, past tense.

Now she looked like any hungry waif off the
street, grimly awaiting the fulfillment of her sentence. It would
be a release, she thought with resignation, suddenly not caring
that they would hang her just so long as she didn’t have to hurt
anymore.

She was so tired of running. She was tired of
making friends only to have to leave them when it became too
dangerous. She was tired of casting furtive glances over her
shoulder fearing she was being followed.

She was tired of wishing that a certain
gentleman were looking for her because he cared and not because her
family had asked him to do so.

She heard the key grate in the lock and
wondered which of the poor souls around her would go next. She
didn’t turn to look at the man who owned the heavy tread but she
dimly noted that he came her way. She just assumed it was the guard
come to take his pleasure of her then turn her over to her
fate.

“I had the very devil of a time finding you,”
muttered an annoyed voice very close to her ear.

She turned her head wearily and smiled in
defeat at the exceedingly attractive and very perturbed gentleman
that crouched next to her. “What took you so long?” she asked
conversationally. “Come to watch me dangle, have you?” She laughed
bitterly and turned away, not wanting him to see the tears that
unaccountably sprang into her eyes.

The very elegant Adam Prestwich wrinkled his
nose fastidiously. “Faugh, you smell abominable!”

“And where, my charming sir, do you suppose I
would get a bath? I can hardly trade my favors for hot water and
soap when any man here can have me without going to so much
trouble. I am the lowest bloody form of human life: a poor female
criminal with no one to protect her,” she replied candidly, still
not looking at him, her voice thick with sudden grief over her
sorry lot in life.

“You speech is abominable as well. One would
never know that you were once a lady. Or that you hold one of the
oldest titles in the land,” her companion growled roughly.

Adam Prestwich looked at her with chilly
gray-green eyes. She couldn’t read his thoughts since the man was
so damn good at concealing them. But she knew he was not pleased to
see her here.

“Why are you here?” she finally asked.

“Stand up” was his terse reply.

She obeyed since it was quite stupid to argue
with any man when you were little better than a trollop and a thief
and condemned to die. On the other hand…she was going to die.

When he turned away and commanded her to
follow him, she balked.

“Go to hell,” she replied equably, a
wraithlike smile twisting her thin lips. Some of the other female
prisoners sniggered and one cackled at her to go with the swell
and—the rest was better left unsaid.

He didn’t bother trying to convince her to
go. He picked her up, slung her over his immaculately clad shoulder
and marched from the cell. She pounded on his back ineffectually
and finally attempted to kick him in a very tender area. She
received a hard swat on her rump for her pains.

“Behave or I will take you back and let you
die, brat.”

“Then take me back!” she retorted
angrily.

He didn’t reply so she lapsed into furious
silence, trying to block out the vulgar remarks and catcalls that
followed them every step of the way from the prison.

She knew he would return her to her family.
She didn’t know why. She had been running from this particular man
for years now. He was determined to find her and return her to the
bosom of her “loving” family. She wondered what sort of Haymarket
scene of tender filial devotion he had been treated to.

The cold night air hit her like a hammer
blow. Mr. Prestwich walked down the street and she wondered crossly
if he was planning to walk all the way to Lancashire to deliver her
to a fate worse than death. She began to shiver uncontrollably from
cold, exhaustion, and long suppressed emotion.

They stopped suddenly and she was bundled
into a closed carriage. Mr. Prestwich laid her on one seat with the
utmost tenderness and covered her carefully with two heavy rugs.
His solicitation frightened her more than if he had beaten her to
within an inch of her life. Every traumatic thing in her short life
converged on her in a rush of intense emotion and she fainted for
the first time.

Adam watched her in the dim light thrown from
the carriage lamps. He was surprised he had recognized her under
all her rags and layers of dirt. How the devil had she ended up on
the street and hungry enough to steal? It was sad to see a once
pert and beautiful woman brought so low.

Which only made him wonder yet again what had
kept her running. He had met her family and they seemed all that
was proper in a loving family that feared for the safety of the
runaway heiress. He was cynical enough to realize that it probably
had more to do with her title and inheritance than any altruistic
motives on their parts. But he had to wonder at the sanity of a
girl who would rather hang as a thief than try to cope with even
the worst of relatives.

The carriage swayed gently over the rough
cobbles of London. Gaslights on the street shined in through the
open windows of the conveyance highlighting the deathly pallor of
his companion and he wrenched the curtains closed. It was unlikely
that any members of the
ton
would see them at this time of
the morning, but he didn’t want to take any chances.

The coach eventually turned into Berkeley
Square and came to a stop before a mansion in Berkeley Street. Adam
opened the trap and called up to the coachman.

“Go around to the mews, John. I want to go in
the back.”

The coachman said nothing about this rather
odd request but everyone knew the Quality had strange ways about
them. Hadn’t he just driven his very elegant master to Newgate
where said master had returned with a woman of skin and bones? John
Coachman grunted, the trap banged shut and the coach moved on.

They stopped again and Adam leaned forward,
gathering the unconscious girl in his arms. She didn’t move and for
one brief panicked moment, he thought she was dead. The thought
caused a strange twinge in his heart, which he put down to travel
fatigue. He had searched practically the length and breadth of
England for this particular quarry, always avoiding London since it
would be damned stupid of her to enter the metropolis, and he was
deuced tired. He was also annoyed to finally find her where he had
never thought to seriously look.

He climbed down from the carriage and peered
closely at her in the growing light of dawn. The air had a metallic
taste, heralding forthcoming snow.

Her face was deathly pale, her eyes sunken in
her head, and her lips were an alarming shade of blue. She suddenly
inhaled and a ragged cough wracked her whole body.