The Lady's Fortune

By Celia Swift

Miss Adelaide Forsythe was raised in a lavish and loving home... right up until her parents perished at sea and she was packed off to live with her abusive aunt. After a year of the worst kind of toil and misery, she finds herself suddenly dropped back into the role of a proper lady, but she's not sure how much she will ever be able to feel at home in that role again.

Viscount Kendrick has pinned his hopes on the Kellynch estate to fund his sister's season, but much to his dismay, arrives to find it in a terrible state. There is a glimmer of hope, though, in the form of the beautiful Miss Forsythe, a lady with haunted eyes and warm brown skin. She seems to understand his trauma from serving in the war more than anyone else, but will those who protect her believe he wants to be with her for love and not just money? All will be revealed by the time the Christmas ball is finally held.

This at times tender and at times thrilling conclusion to the sweet Christmas at Kellynch Regency Romance Trilogy is full of hope and light.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Celia Swift
• Release date: Oct 21, 2015
• ISBN: 9781310149672

Celia Swift

Celia Swift has been reading romance novels since she was ten years old. She loves the journey romance takes, and believes the world always needs more happily ever afters. In addition to reading and writing, she loves drinking from vintage teacups and keeping company with cats.

Book preview

The Lady’s Fortune

by Celia Swift

Book Three of the Christmas at Kellynch Regency Romance Trilogy

The Lady’s Fortune

Copyright 2015 Celia Swift

Published by Soaring Hearts Press at Smashwords

Castle photo Copyright Martinfasanek | Dreamstime Stock Photos & Stock Free Images. Photo of woman Copyright Suricoma | Dreamstime Stock Photos & Stock Free Images.

This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events are products of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously.

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Table of Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Extras

Chapter One

Miss Adelaide Forsythe was nearly nineteen, but she felt as though she were nearing fifty. When she awoke in the darkest hours of night, shivering and aching despite the three layers of heavy blankets, she felt that burden of agedness more than ever.

She drew herself up to a sitting position and fumbled at her bedside for the candle and tinderbox she always kept in reach. When the flame grew strong and steady, she pulled out the latest novel Lady Cynthia had pressed upon her and tried to turn her attention to the story. It didn’t work, of course. It never did at these times, when she woke from dreams of the past so unpleasant and stifling that they would keep her from sleeping again until well into the morning.

It had not always been like this.

The first years of Addy’s life had been beautiful and joyous—as the daughter of a baronet, she enjoyed all the luxury and pampering that any young child could wish for. She had loving parents, a cozy nursery in a big rambling house, and an attentive governess at her beck and call.

In the winters she enjoyed tea with honey and milk and warming spices by the light and heat of a roaring fire. In the summers she was allowed to run wild all over the Devonshire countryside. It was everything a young and energetic lady could want. When she grew older, her governess taught her more refinements, and her parents allowed her to come down to mix in the company they often entertained at Meadowbrooke. She had, just two years prior, at the age of sixteen and a half, been ideally situated to marry well and live out the rest of her days in that same halcyon splendor.

What a difference two years could make.

Addy was seventeen when the news came that her parents were lost at sea, thrown overboard in a pirate raid while sailing home from Portugal. That shock alone, of finding herself suddenly an orphan, would have been enough to age her some, but what came next was to be even worse. The estate was entailed, of course, and passed to a distant cousin. She did not know him, but he was above forty and married with a passel of children ages two to thirteen. They would take over the house immediately, leaving Addy to take the meager possessions she could call her own, and remove to the home of her aunt, Mrs. Bletchley, who had once been married to Mr. Forsythe’s elder brother.

Mr. Bletchley had stepped in after Milton Forsythe’s demise and helped his new wife squander what inheritance might have seen her comfortably into her dotage. Twenty years her senior and with a fondness for getting deep in his cups, he followed in his predecessor’s footsteps and died well before his wife, leaving her a widow twice over long before Addy had been born. She had never met Mrs. Bletchley in her life before she was forced to take herself and her trunks to far away Melton-on-Stult in the dank and dreary north.

Fate was not done knocking her about yet, though. Upon her arrival, Addy was dismayed to find that the small cottage in which her aunt resided was cramped and dark. It sat in a crowded lane, nearly flush with the houses on either side. The wretched alleyways in between the buildings were rank with the stench of refuse. When Addy alighted from the carriage that brought her to the place, her nose wrinkled at the smell, and it was all she could do not to retch.

Mrs. Bletchley was no more welcoming than the lane. She made it clear that Addy’s stay was an imposition, and furthermore, that her very existence was abhorrent. When Mrs. Bletchley first set eyes upon Addy, she said, Of course Milton’s dearest bratling of a brother would not only take the title of baronet, but also saddle me with a savage. Make no mistake, girl, you will not be allowed to leach away my hard earned comforts. Not here.

Being advised of her savagery, her less than human nature, her dirtiness, and her inherent corruption of body and soul, Addy was sent to the attic to make herself as comfortable as she could be in the role of servant. Her tiny room was bare of decoration and devoid of any heat. She shared it with the other maid in her aunt’s employ, a scrawny younger girl named Patsy.

Of Addy’s time in Melton-on-Stult, the best thing that could be said was that she had gained a friend. The worst was unconscionable. Mrs. Bletchley did not stop at lowering her gently bred niece to the station of scullery wench and privy chamber cleaner. She claimed all the girl’s belongings for herself, selling anything of value and destroying the rest. Addy had not brought much, but her beloved tea service (a gift from her parents on the occasion of her sixteenth birthday) had been the first thing to go, fetching Mrs. Bletchley a couple of pounds, which she promptly lost in a wager.

All that came from Mrs. Forsythe’s homeland of India was burned in the fire (in the case of letters and the silk slippers that showed a bit of wear), or sold in a lot to the curiosity shop owner a few streets away. Addy was allowed to keep only her most serviceable cotton day dresses, each of which was ruined beyond any standard of respectability upon the first day of hard use. If Addy’s general tasks were not enough to make her appear slovenly and unkempt, Mrs. Bletchley would set her more, the dirtier work, the better. And that was before Mrs. Bletchley found out that the local boys would delight in her young charge’s torment and pay a pittance for the pleasure of it. Once she’d worked that out, scarcely a day went by that Addy was not subjected to a face full of mud or rotten produce. The better to match your complexion, my dear.

Addy had born it all, somehow. She knew not how exactly, except that some fire buried deep within would not allow her to collapse in despair. She’d clung to fantasies of stealing away in the night to find the solicitor who had been in charge of her father’s funds. Somehow, if she could find her way to London, away from those inclined to sympathize with her aunt… perhaps then she would be safe.

It was not to be, of course. Mrs. Bletchley kept an eagle eye on her possessions, and, from the moment Addy had entered the horrid place, she was numbered among them. She had no freedom, and no privacy, save inside the confines of her unspoken thoughts. So it was that a full year