Wealthy heiress Vanessa Hawkesworth is offered as the stake in a card game by her half-brother Gerald in order to cover his gambling debts.
Clifford Stone, their nearest neighbor, only agrees to play for her hand in marriage in order to free her from Gerald’s excesses. Clifford is fascinated by the lovely if unworldly young bluestocking.
As his attraction grows, so too does his certainty that his new-found love is in increasing danger from malevolent forces who will stop at nothing, not even murder, to seize her newly-acquired fortune.
Vanessa must learn to trust a complete stranger with her heart, and her entire life. Stunned at her new fiance’s accusations against Gerald, she is sure she is going mad, torn between loyalty to her family and the wildfire passion that flares every time Clifford touches her.
As new a series of crimes in the district threatens her new-found love and happiness, Vanessa must gamble all herself in order to protect her beloved Clifford, and bring the men responsible to justice before it’s too late.
Prologue
Somerset, August 1802
It was an idyllic summer’s afternoon. The cerulean sky was cloudless, the birds twittered in the trees, and a cool breeze wafted though the ornate gardens behind the lovely red brick Elizabethan manor house.
It was a perfect day for a visit to the elegant maze which had been planted at the same time the mansion had been built. The dense box hedges were now over thirty feet high, and offered a great deal of shade from the beating sun. It was also the ideal place to play hide and seek, and sit and read fairy tales on one of the many marble benches within.
The tall russet-haired woman clad in a flowing blue dress to match her eyes called cheerfully, “Come out, come out, wherever you are.”
A twig snapped behind her, and she turned with a welcoming smile. The smile became a round O of dismay. She stepped backwards, clutching her rounding belly protectively. “What are you doing here?”
“Just here for a little visit.”
“We thought you were in Town. To what do we owe the pleasure?” she asked, forcing herself to be polite, though she wanted to do nothing more than flee.
“I heard your news from a friend. Thought I would offer you congratulations, you trollop.”
She had always been fearful of this bizarre stranger in their midst whom she had tolerated for so many years for her husband’s sake. Now something especially wild in his sharply handsome face as well as his scathing words betrayed his true nature at last.
She tried to stride past him as if continuing the game. “Darling, come out now. It’s my turn to hide,” she called.
Rough hands grabbed her as she drew level with him. The seams of her sleeve began to give way under his violent wrenching.
“My God, what are you doing!” she gasped, staring up into his granite expression with alarm.
“Treating you like the whore you are,” came the chilling reply. “Look at you, you slut. Which one of the servants has been tupping you? And if you gave him a taste, why not me?”
“Have you lost your mind?” she gasped. “I’m a decent woman. My husband-“
“Is a fool to trust you. All women are the same. Whores, the whole lot of you. You want me, you know you do. A virile man to warm your bed, not that old fool.”
“No, no, you’re wrong!” she panted in horror. “I love my husband. How can you say such horrid things? It’s not decent. And after everything we’ve done for you!”
“Indeed, you’ve always been so kind,” he sneered, making her sound like even more of a harlot. “So now you’re going to render me some even more personal services. I’ve had enough of your lies. Your facade of virtue. I know what you are. And now I’m going to show the world your true character.”
He tried to ram his mouth down over hers, but she ducked from side to side to avoid the loathsome contact, twisting her own arm desperately to try to break his crushing grip.
“Why? Why are you doing this?” She tried to wrench away with all her might, but he only dragged her closer, his hot breath on her cheeks almost making her faint with revulsion.
The very idea of being unfaithful chilled her. And with him of all people…. It was just too horrible to even contemplate.
“Don’t be stupid. The brat you’re carrying changes everything. I know what you’re trying to do. You want to edge me out of your lives, out of my share of the family fortunes. I won’t stand for it.”
“No, it’s not t-t-true, we all l-l-love you. And are so p-p-pleased to see yoy whenever you visit,” she stammered, trying to fend off his hands.
But he seemed to have sprouted a dozen. No matter how hard she grabbed one, two more snatched at her, pinching and twisting, rending her clothes, until the tears flowed down her face in pain in pain and despair.
She began to lose all hope that she could ever escape his unwanted attentions. She prayed to the Almighty to keep the child safe, no matter what happened to her.
“You know you’re always welcome here,” she maintained, as a different tack came to mind. Perhaps if she pretended to be willing, she could get him to let go of her long enough to make her escape…. “As for your inheritance, my husband is the best of men and has always dealt with everyone in the family most liberally. This child would change nothing between us all, I swear.”
“So you say, my dear. But every word out of your mouth is a lie. So now I’m going to gag you. Then I’m going to see what talents you possess that have turned the old coot’s head so completely.”
His vice-like grip around her waist pinned her to him helplessly while he began to unfasten his own clothes with his other hand. The sight of him opening the falls of his breeches made her struggle even harder to escape.
Never had she felt so sick to her stomach. The prospect of what was about to happen, the thought of such monumental sin, even if she was being taken against her will, was more than she could bear.
“Please, you can’t! My daughter will be here any minute. Do you want the poor child to see?”
“She’ll love it. Think it’s a game. A pretty little trick. I wonder why I didn’t think of that myself? We can play hide the sausage.”
At this threat to her unsuspecting little girl, the desperate woman didn’t even stop to think. She hauled off and slapped her assailant with every ounce of strength she possessed and broke free.
“If you harm her, so help me–“
“No matter what you say, everyone will think that you invited my attentions,” he threatened, his mocking tone filling her with terror as she ran, hardly knowing which way she went in the wending maze. “I shall reluctantly confess that the child within you is mine. That you tempted me, and I just couldn’t help myself. Then where will you be? I win no matter what, my dear.”
His mocking laugh made her break out in a cold sweat. He was more than capable of it, she knew.
Who would believe her innocent? This was a man’s world. She could be pure as the driven snow, but one whispered word of calumny could ruin her life and her daughter’s forever. A tiny sliver of gossip from this vile man’s lips could cast doubt on her entire marriage, and label the innocent child within her a bastard.
Her sense of outrage on behalf of her innocent babes caused her to rally once more. “And an eight-year-old girl invited them as well?” she cried over her shoulder, weeping as though her heart would break as she tore up the hedge-lined avenue. “You’re disgusting!”
She kept on running through the maze, left, right, right again, praying she had the pattern memorized correctly. If she could just get back to the house…
“Come out, come out, wherever you are!” he called in sneering tones.
Her previous sense of panic was as nothing compared to the thought of him luring her daughter out of her hiding place and into his clutches.
“No, pet, stay where you are!” she screamed. “Stay. Mummy will find you in a minute, I just have to go get Nursey too. And Phipps the butler. Stay where you are, pet!”
“Here, pussy, pussy, pussy,” she heard from just on the other side of the hedgerow. I
She nearly jumped out of her skin. She had been running as hard as she could, but he was so close. “Damn you, I’ve remained silent long enough. I’m going to tell my saintly spouse exactly who and what you are. A monster. A filthy, despicable monster!”
She ran on in terror, counting her footfalls to try to stop the black lump of panic welling in her throat from choking her. Only a bit further and-
There it was. The entrance. Thank god. Just a few more steps. Phipps would believe her, and she was sure the nurse would too. She would see how ill-used she had been and then–
She never saw it coming. Never imagined death could be so near. The arrow whistled through the air and smacked her squarely in the back.
She pitched forward face first onto the grass, tumbling out of the maze and onto the wide expanse of lawn which led up to the mansion.
“Pity, darling. Such a waste. Why could you not just have played nicely?”
“You’ll hang for this,” she wheezed, already feeling the blood rushing from her body, the air from her lungs.
Her last breath was so close. She screamed her husband’s name, but her voice was nothing more than a feeble croak. “People are going to find out what lies beneath. God help them all if they don’t.”
A pair of wide violet eyes watched in horror from under the shrubbery as the man partly raised the woman’s head off the grass and rammed his mouth over hers. The child could see a dark coat, the glimpse of a chin.
He looked as though he were sucking the last breath from the woman’s body, almost like a vampire. As if he were reveling in the taste of the blood welling up from her punctured lung.
The child crammed her fist in her mouth to stop from crying out. One peep, and she would be next…
“Since I’m such a monster, darling, I shall take a perverse satisfaction in being the last thing you ever see, hear, smell, taste, feel. I always loathed you, do you know that? Hated your sickly sweetness. Wanted to debauch and corrupt you.”
He dragged her back into the maze by one leg as though she were a side of beef, and began to rend her clothes from her.
“Silly woman. I didn’t plan to kill you. But now I can see just how perfectly this will all work out. Do forgive me, my dear. But I need to be sure.”
He twisted the arrow in her now bare back until she howled in agony and begged for death.
“Oh God, no, no!” she wept feebly, beseeching God to save her child as her own life ebbed away. The horror of the spearing pains tormented her in her last moments on earth.
A nearby peacock screamed, drowning out the sound of the woman’s final wail of pain and horror.
The sound of running footsteps fleeing in terror.
The sound of a girl’s voice weeping to be saved from the nightmare her life had suddenly become…
The Mad Mistress
A Rakehell Regency Novel
Sorcha MacMurrough
ISBN: 978-1-58345-099-4
Setting: Regency England, 1812
Word Count: 101,000
Rating: Mildly sensual
Price: $3.99
