The Deceptive Earl: Lady Charity Abernathy: A Regency Romance Novel Read online

  Also By Isabella Thorne

  The Ladies of Bath

  The Duke’s Daughter ~ Lady Amelia Atherton

  The Baron in Bath ~ Miss Julia Bellevue

  The Deceptive Earl ~ Lady Charity Abernathy

  The Hawthorne Sisters

  The Forbidden Valentine ~ Lady Eleanor Hawthorne

  Other Novels by Isabella Thorne

  The Mad Heiress and the Duke ~ Miss Georgette Quinby

  The Duke’s Wicker Wager ~ Lady Evelyn Evering

  Other Short Stories by Isabella Thorne

  The Mad Heiress' Cousin and the Hunt ~ A Short Story

  Mischief, Mayhem and Murder: A Marquess of Evermont ~ A Short Story

  Mistletoe and Masquerade ~ 2-in-1 Short Story Collection

  Colonial Cressida and the Secret Duke ~ A Short Story

  Would you like to be notified of new releases, special updates, and giveaways?

  Sign up for my VIP Reader List!

  And receive a FREE STORY just for joining

  Click Here to Join

  To find more Regency Romance stories, please visit my

  Amazon Author Page

  Or my website

  www.isabellathorne.com

  Like Isabella Thorne on Facebook

  https://www.facebook.com/isabellathorneauthor/

  Share or comment on an Isabella Thorne Facebook post for a

  chance to win an Amazon gift card

  The Deceptive Earl ~ Lady Charity Abernathy

  A Regency Romance Novel

  All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination and are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The Deceptive Earl Copyright © 2018 by Isabella Thorne

  Cover Art by Mary Lepiane

  2018 Mikita Associates Publishing

  Digital Edition

  Published in the United States of America.

  www.isabellathorne.com

  Table of Contents

  Also By Isabella Thorne

  Sign up for my VIP Reader List!

  ~ Part 1 ~ Artifice

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  ~ Part 2 ~ Disgrace

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  ~ Part 3 ~ Loss

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  ~ Part 4 ~ Honesty

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Epilogue

  Sneak Peek of: The Duke’s Daughter

  Chapter One

  Sign up for my VIP Reader List!

  ~ Part 1 ~

  Artifice

  Chapter One

  Lady Charity Abernathy, the only daughter of the Earl of Shalace was in her dressing room with her mother and her maid. It was a beautiful and fashionable dressing room, but Lady Charity could think of nothing but escaping it, and her mother’s fussing.

  Mother, please,” Lady Charity Abernathy said. “Enough.”

  “My dear Charity,” her mother said as she rouged the valley between her daughter’s breasts so that they looked like round melons barely contained in her dress, “men, even gentlemen,” she continued, “must be enticed to see what you want them to see. They are not quite as intelligent as they would have you believe; or as we women, would have them believe they are.”

  “But mother,” Charity began again, and her mother tutted as she so often did, hustling Jean, Charity’s lady’s maid, out of the w she could tend to her only daughter.

  Charity threw her maid a pleading look, but of course, there was nothing Jean could do once Charity’s mother got a thought in her head.

  “Your face is quite passible, my dear, but not quite as beautiful as your friend Lady Amelia’s. She will outshine you at every turn unless you give the gentlemen something else to look at. Even the scandal cannot dim her beauty.”

  Charity glowered. “Amelia is engaged,” she reminded her mother. “Her year of mourning is nearly past.”

  “An engagement is not a marriage,” her mother observed with her usual cynicism. “Amelia Atherton is still a duke’s daughter, and if she no longer has quite the position, she still has her looks.

  Charity sighed. She did not even want to think about Lady Amelia Atherton’s beauty right now, or whether or not her friend had truly found love. They had not parted on the best of terms, and if Charity was honest wither herself she was still a bit jealous of Amelia. She was glad the duke’s daughter was not her to outshine her.

  “Amelia is not even in Bath,” she told her mother as she made a sweeping gesture toward the window of her dressing room. On the other side of the panes of glass lay the cobbled streets that boasted fountains with the medicinal waters. Lady Charity and her family had removed to Bath for the summer holiday to take their leisure in her father’s townhome. Amelia Atherton had elected to remain in London as she made preparations for her impending nuptials. Charity was not like to cross her path for another month or two, at least. “Besides, Mother, as Amelia is presently engaged, she is no threat to my attentions.”

  Lady Shalace blew out a breath as if in disbelief of her daughter’s ignorance, before launching into a lecture on Charity’s lack of enthusiasm to tie down a proper suitor.

  “A woman who dawdles so in her engagement can be back to the market in an instant. The gentlemen will wait until she is set and tied, to be sure, but with all the scandal, she should have had him seek out a special dispensation, lest she find herself alone.”

  Charity turned away from her mother under the guise of adjusting the pleats of her gown. She had had enough of this conversation, day in and day out. How often had she been told that Lady Amelia was first engaged and Lady Patience first to be wed? She could almost speak the words before they slipped from her mother’s lips.

  “Lady Patience married well enough, the first born son of The Earl of Blackburn,” Lady Charity hooked her daughter’s shoulder and spun her back around to continue her ministrations. Charity bit her tongue rather than remind her mother that the opening ball was not for another week yet, and there were few enough in Bath whose notice would matter before that day. “And she, even with all that garish red hair, managed to capture a son of an Earl,” mother continued.

  Charity stared out the window and only half-listened to her mother’s prattle. Mention of Patience had presented the opening that The Countess had needed for the reminder that Lord Barton, Patience’s elder brother, was still wholly unattached, and that he was also the son of an earl.

  Patience’s brother, Reginald had escorted the three friends so often upon their previous excursions, that he felt more brother than suitor to Charity. Still, there was no use telling her mother that.

  “How is it that my daughter is the last to be married?” Lady Charity made no attempt to conceal her distain for the situation. “Even those others, the Misses. What are their name
s? They are married before you, titled and all.”

  “Julia and Lavinia,” Charity provided in monotone to appease her mother’s rant.

  “You ought to have been the first, if only you would listen to my instruction.”

  “Mother,” Charity sighed. “I am not the last. Nor have I years enough to be shamed for it.”

  “Oh?” Lady Charity mused. “Who remains? The Poppy sisters, all the dozens of them? It is no wonder that so many daughters cannot be married off.”

  “That is a gross exaggeration,” Charity replied. “Six children in all to the Poppy’s and only four of the fairer sex, and do not forget Constance is married.”

  “Very well, then. Half dozen,” her mother corrected. “Still, our families have long been friends, but what a shame it is that the sons must suffer their income be divided by so many dowries.”

  Charity knew better than to suggest that there might be more to marriage than income or status. Her mother valued little else and took pride in the fact that her daughter could boast possession of both.

  “Don’t frown so,” her mother said. “It makes wrinkles.” She ran her fingers along Charity’s brow, smoothing it, and brushed a blonde curl back from Charity’s blue eyes. “You must put your best self forward. You are beautiful and personable, but do not be too forward. Men do not like pert women. Save your opinions until after you are married, dear. And mind your tendency to gossip.”

  “I do not gossip,” Charity retorted. “Nor am I pert.” A single arched brow on her mother’s fine face revealed her disagreement with the latter statement. For the most part Charity, would rather speak her mind, and was uncomfortable with the subterfuge her mother and many other ladies seemed to thrive upon. She wondered aloud, what if men practiced the same deception. She explained that she certainly would not like it.

  “Dear, men have only one thought when it comes to women,” her mother said. “And it is not how to deceive them. They are at their core simple creatures,” her mother continued. “Don’t complicate things. Let them see what they wish to see…within reason of course, and they will do what you wish them to do.”

  Charity shuddered at her mother’s machinations but there was no help for it. The Ton had despised her mother in her youth, and she viewed them all through those wounded eyes.

  “Mother,” Charity protested. “I cannot really disguise the fact that I am an heiress. Everyone in the Ton already knows that. I wager they will only see my money anyway…” although she herself could barely tear her eyes away from the apparent ludicrous size of her bosom in the glass. Charity shot a small smile to Jean, her maid, who waited patiently. Jean would help her to fix this.

  “And that is exactly why you want them to see you, Charity, dear.” Her mother pinched some color into Charity’s cheeks, because, according to her, paint on the woman’s face was gauche. “And not just your father’s money,” her mother concluded with a smile.

  Is this really all that I am? Charity mulled over the thought as her mother attempted to tug the neckline of her gown ever lower. Thankfully she had been laced to an inch of breath and the garment would not budge.

  “Ah well,” Lady Charity sighed. “It shall have to do.”

  Charity stood in obedient silence as her mother instructed her to laugh more and scowl less.

  “Your face shows every moment of disapproval,” her mother tweaked Charity’s chin and enacted a perfect example of false laughter. “You must learn to hide some of it. You’ll not fully approve of any man, though they must never learn the truth of your thoughts.”

  Charity sighed. Agree always, fawn, and be ever in need of some service or another. Those were her mother’s strict instructions. In all, Charity determined that she must be anything a man might desire of her. Anything, that is… but herself.

  Charity was not sure it was an improvement to have the man drooling over her breasts instead of her money. At least, a gentleman who wanted to marry her for her money would be honest in his aims. There was little he could do to hide poverty. It was a scent that carried far and wide among the Ton. A lecher was in Charity’s opinion, harder to bear, and certainly harder to ignore.

  But, Charity gave in to her mother’s ministrations with the understanding that as soon as she could excuse herself, she would scrub the rouge off of the tops of her breasts, or Jean would help her to camouflage the paint with powder. This was a ritual that she and Jean had perfected.

  Mother would take no notice once they had made their departure. Too busy she would be making her flirtations to men nearly half her age. ..On Charity’s behalf, of course.

  “If you shall not make yourself appealing,” her mother would scold, “then I shall cast the hook by singing your praise.”

  She couldn’t really blame her mother. Lady Shalace had begun life as a poor somewhat distant relation to a Peer, and used her own bountiful assets to catch Charity’s father. She had never been accepted by the Ton, and she wanted more for her daughter. Her mother was convinced that no one was truly who they said they were, and in that, Charity supposed she was right. Truth was hard to come by in the Ton. Charity certainly knew that gossip distorted every bit of news, but she longed for honesty in her own marriage, honesty and love; even her mother had that. She knew her father loved her mother to distraction, and she thought her mother loved her father too, in her own way even if it was only caring and mutual respect. There had never been a question in their devotion to one another, even when her father’s illness had bound him to the house. Her mother remained faithful and had simply directed her energies toward their daughter instead.

  “I want to marry for love,” Charity had once said when she was very young.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” her mother had retorted. “Do you wish to be poor as well?”

  Charity didn’t think it would be awful to be poor, not if you had love. It seemed rather romantic to her to have nothing but one another and told her mother so. Only once more had she broached the subject. When Lavinia married, Charity had been overcome with happiness for the lovers. Mother had said that Lavinia, who often spoke in wistful fancy, was naïve and childish. Perhaps it was so, yet her friend had married well, and for love. Was it really such an impossible dream?

  Mother had laughed heartily in a most unladylike manner, the picture of coarseness that the Ton despised in her, and Charity had never again brought up the subject of love with her mother. Charity had however spoken with her father, before his mind began to wander.

  She loved the easy comradery that existed between herself and her father, and wished at least that regard from her husband: Someone she could talk to. Someone that required no rouge or guise. Someone that could see the truth behind the trappings and still want Charity for who she was inside.

  “I want to say good night to Father before we leave,” Charity told her mother as she completed her own toilette. They were off to a private concert held by her mother’s dear friend, Mrs. Thompson, one of the greatest gossips in Bath. Charity knew there would be little chance of escaping the plotting of the two older women. The night would be a bore at best for even the musicians were little more than local names.

  “Hmmm,” her mother had said, as her maid came into the room carrying one of the gigantic turbans her mother loved so well. Lady Shalace put the monstrosity on her head and began to pull out artful curls to frame her face. The turban was turquoise and had several large diamonds studding the front of it so that her mother could show off her wealth. It was beautiful if a bit ostentatious. Charity supposed her mother had inured herself to the gossip of the Ton and decided to give it a path to follow. “Don’t be long, dear,” Lady Shalace muttered as Charity exited the dressing chamber. “I shall wait for you in the carriage.”

  After her last minute ablations to remove some of the rouge her mother had applied, Charity hurried to her father’s room. She hoped he wasn’t asleep already. He usually was abed early, but he liked to look at her before she went on an outing. Charity was of the opinion t
hat her father, was at one time, and perhaps still, deeply in love with her mother despite the discrepancy in their ages. Now, however, his mind was failing and he sometimes mistook Charity herself for her mother. Still, the best part of many a day, was spent at his bedside reading to him or doing needlework while listening to his stories.

  “Father?” she whispered as she visited his sick room.

  “Come in, Charity. Oh, you are a vision of loveliness. You look so like your mother when she was young,” he told her and she smiled as she twirled before him. His skin was thin, but not without color. It was the look of a man who rarely ventured out yet was not so far gone that his mortality was of immediate concern.

  “Only the best for you, dear one” he said, clasping her gloved hand with his liver spotted one and bringing it to his lips for a kiss. “Only the best; do you hear me?”

  “Yes, Father.”

  “Has a man been chosen for your fancy?” he asked with a gleam in his eye that made Charity giggle. Her father often teased about her mother’s goals, knowing full well that Charity would not be pressed.

  “Not yet,” she winked. “For, as Mother says, not all the gentlemen have arrived for the summer. We must view the whole selection before we set our mind.”

  All of a sudden, her father’s expression lost its humor and turned serious. “Find a man who can look past all the trappings and see the woman inside; as I did your mother.”

  Charity wasn’t altogether sure that was true, her father seemed blind to her mother’s flaws, but she took him at his word.