The Lady’s Masquerade (A Regency Romance Book)

By Deborah Wilson

Good girls don't go snooping where they don't belong.

But Lady Delia Scarborough never claimed to be a good girl.

Lady Delia Scarborough wants her sister back from the grave.

Since that can't happen, she'll settle for the next best thing…

Making sure her sister's murderer does not go free.

Lady Delia's happy to play the part of maid as long as it gets her inside the home of Kieran Dearborne, Duke of Cowanfield.

He may be able to fool his young daughter into thinking he's innocent, but he can't fool Delia.

She knows a murderer when she sees one.

But the attraction that blossoms between them throws her plans into chaos.

The more Delia gets to know the Duke, the more she thinks his innocence is no act.

But every clue she uncovers points to him, and he acts strangely whenever she's around.

Delia will do anything to avenge her sister's death, but that means putting her own life in peril.

Can the duke's love pull Delia back from the brink of danger?

Or was her fate sealed the moment she stepped into the Duke's home?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Deborah Wilson
• Release date: Oct 22, 2019
• ISBN: 9781393488873

Deborah Wilson

As a young girl, Deborah has been an avid fan of Regency authors such as Jane Austen. Deborah has always been in love with the Regency era. Despite the fact that this era is filled with great social, political, and economic upheavals and happenings, yet there is still plenty of room for episodes of romance happenings. In this era, love was pure. In this era, one can still find men and women who would have the courage to express their love while living amongst strict social customs for courtships. In such times, romantic gestures could be small yet they have a beautiful, meaningful impact. It is Deborah’s desire that through her writings, one will find the courage to love, to profess love and to pursue love. And the reason is simple. Everyone deserves to love and be loved. Pure and simple. Deborah is the author of ❦ VALIANT LOVE ❦ series. While the wealthy and titled men and women of the early nineteenth century were known for their extravagance in dress and decor and the rules that governed ‘polite society’, she wanted this series to focus on something different. Honor. What makes a man or woman honorable and where does love fit into all of this? “Let good be thy fortune and honor thy wealth.” Read and find out now for yourself Sign up now to Deborah’s VIP email list. Why? You will never miss a new release. You will be notified by Deborah personally as soon as her next book is out. →⟫⟫ http://eepurl.com/dHxqRD And please don’t forget to connect with Deborah on facebook. She loves hearing from her readers and sharing her thoughts and writing progress. →⟫⟫ https://www.facebook.com/deborahwilsonbooks

Book preview

prologue

*   *   *

May 1805

The storm had been threatening for days. Later, they would say that it was one of the worst storms of the last decade. The road would have been inky black, with nothing to mark the perilous turns. Were the driver and team reliable? Was Lissa afraid?

Probably not, Delia decided. Her little sister might have been dreamy, and perhaps she was inclined to leap before she looked, but no one would ever have called her a coward.

The storm would have broken quickly in the night, rolling down on the carriage like an ancient and terrible wrath. The horses ran along the road, eager for shelter, but then a thunder clap deafened them. One reared, taking its mate with it, and the carriage tilted on two wheels. For a moment, just a moment, there was a chance it would right itself. But no.

The horses, the slick road, the darkness... It was all too much. The carriage rolled, the wooden shell cracking like an egg, the timbers as sharp as teeth and—

And as she was loved, so she will be loved, and as she wept, so now she brings tears...

Delia realized that she must have made some kind of sound. All around her, bonneted heads turned toward her subtly, some in concern, some for gossip's sake, and all unwelcome.

Behind her black veil, Delia lowered her eyes, mutinous until she felt her father's hand fumble for hers. There was a palsy to his grip that had gotten worse when the news came to them of Lissa's death, and she squeezed his hand hard, wishing she could give him some of her strength.

She was Delia Scarborough, the daughter of the Marquess of Winsbury, who had fought at Marseilles and even farther afield. She was the descendant of eight generations of noblemen who had all served their country, loved their families, and died doing what they knew was right. She would not disgrace herself at her sister's graveside, no matter how hot her eyes felt or how thick the lump in her throat.

She almost made it. It was only when they began to lower her sister's casket into the ground that a small voice piped up in the back of her mind, a dusty memory.

Delia, it's so very dark, can I sleep with you?

Suddenly, it was as if the very air had been knocked from her lungs. Delia wavered, and for a moment, she was certain she would simply faint from the weight of the grief that dropped upon her.

She had a sudden mad impulse to insist that they stop. Lissa hated the dark; she hated the crawling things that burrowed through the earth. They could not do this.

The only thing that kept her back was the sight of her father, positioned in his elegant wheeled chair at the head of the grave. The marquess's sorrow ravaged him, left him a frame of a man rather than the full one he should have been, and Delia took a deep breath.

I will survive this. This is as hard as it ever gets. I will walk through this, and on the other side, I will have vengeance for Lissa.

That night, after the mourners had been seen off, the curate paid, and her father seen to his bed, Delia retired to her room earlier than usual. For a moment, she wanted nothing more than to crawl off to her familiar bed, placing her round spectacles in their accustomed place, and hope she dreamed of Lissa in some happy land.

Instead, she carefully laid her black crepe gown over the top of her chair for her maid, and she went to her closet where she removed a gown of drab serviceable gray linen. It was one of four, the other three already packed in her small worn bag. They were identical to one another, and only the excellent fit saved her from looking like a servant who worked below stairs.

Dressed in the gray gown, Delia pulled her brown hair down from its fashionable braids and pulled the fine strands straight back from her face, scraping it all into a large bun at the nape of her neck.

When she examined herself in the mirror, she found no trace of a marquess's daughter, not even the eldest bookish girl who had few marriage prospects and little interest in looking for one.

I look like a governess. The thought satisfied her, and again, she glanced at the white handkerchief that she had seldom let out of her sight since she had received it from the wreckage.

It was clutched in Miss Scarborough's hand, Miss Delia. She hung on to it so tight, we could barely pry it out.

Her baby sister had held on to it as she lay dying on a lonely road heading north. Their driver was killed in the same accident, but of the man in the carriage with her, the one who had booked it, who had held her sister's arm as if they were already married, there was no trace.

The inn where they had spent the previous night had thought they were husband and wife, and if they had made it to Gretna Green, they would have been.

Delia's thoughts were ice-cold.

Imagine. In another world, I would be scolding Lissa for her insane recklessness and meeting my new brother-in-law. I would have no idea that he was the kind of blaggard who would seduce a girl and leave her to die in a wrecked carriage.

She wondered if Lissa would have called for him in her last moments, if she would have brought the handkerchief to her lips in prayer, listening for his return.

It didn't matter now. Her sister was dead, and the man who had caused her death was still alive. He was missing a handkerchief, however, and that was careless of him, especially as the initials on the corner and the meticulously stitched crest identified him as swiftly as an actor's spotlight on Drury Lane.

Delia slipped out of the home she had lived in all her life, avoiding the creaky floorboards and the reluctant doors. There was a note for her father left folded on his bedside, and there was a man in the village who was willing to take her to Hove, where she could find her way onto the Royal Mail coach.

Folded tightly into a tiny package at the bottom of her bag was the damning handkerchief, and as she made her way into the night, Delia's thoughts were grim.

You are going to pay for what you did to my sister, my lord Duke of Cowanfield.

∫  ∫  ∫

0 1

*   *   *

All right, that one was worse than the first. Cross her off the list.

Before I do, exactly what reason can you give for your dislike? She had excellent references, and she wasn't so hard on the eyes either.

Kieran Dearborn, twelfth Duke of Cowanfield, glared at his best friend, who was seated at the secretary with his quill held imperiously over a list with a diminishing number of unrejected names. Hiring a governess was woman's work, but where he could find a woman to do this for him, he had no idea.

I didn't like the look of her. She looked shifty, as if she might give Alice laudanum on days where she was feeling too tired to deal.

Neil Marsh, the Earl of Cottering, raised an eyebrow. Really? You've been reading too many of those lurid broadsides. They do that in the slums, not in the finer houses.

Oh, yes, and I'm sure that all London gentlemen are the pictures of restraint when it comes to the gambling table and all London ladies are as faithful to their husbands as old dogs are to their masters.

Neil laughed. Well, I suppose that you know something about that, don't you, Cowanfield?

Shut your mouth about that. We don't talk about that in front of her.

They both glanced at the divan set alongside the window, where Alice Dearborn slept as deeply as it seemed only a three-year-old could. She had pale blond hair, as unlike Kieran's own dark hair as possible, but the moment he had seen her green eyes, twin to the ones he saw in the mirror every morning, there was no doubt in his mind that she was his.

Along with that realization had come a sudden rush of desperate and protective love unlike anything he had ever felt in his dissipated thirty-two years. She was his; he had to protect her, nurture her, and see her grown... and he had no idea at all how to do it.

The governess had been something that finally occurred to him after Alice had cried herself out on her first night at Brixby Hall, the ancestral home of all Dearborns. The little girl had fallen asleep in a pile of tears and wails, and still, Kieran couldn't leave her alone. He sat in the darkness of the nursery, holding her tiny soft hand, and tried to figure out what to do next.

Neil, when next he spoke,