Regency Rescues by Isabella Hargreaves

Author:Isabella Hargreaves
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: regency romance, mother, sweet, Mothers Day, clean
Publisher: History in Focus
Published: 2017-05-14T04:00:00+00:00

A True Gentleman

London, Spring 1818

John Wright, valet to Sir Henry Blanche, strode swiftly down the main staircase into the drawing room of his master’s house in Berkeley Square. It was early in the day and the housemaids and footmen were busy lowering curtains under the steely eye of Yates, the butler.

Vases of bright flowers from the rear garden still decorated tabletops and the mantelpiece. Parlour maids cleaned ash-filled fireplaces of their debris from the previous evening’s card party.

John retrieved his master’s cigar case from a card table set up in one corner of the room, and retraced his way to Sir Henry’s dressing room.

As he stepped into the small space, he heard Sir Henry’s voice in the adjoining bedroom growl, “You waste of space, when will you ever serve me well? You haven’t given me an heir, and you slop around like a maudlin old jade!”

“I’m sorry.” Lady Emma’s voice trembled.

John’s stomach contracted. Not again!

Then came the sickening sound of Sir Henry slapping his wife’s face.

She gasped.

John’s hand clenched around the cigar case.

“You useless hag!” Sir Henry shouted.

Anger ignited in John’s gut. The worthless piece of base humanity. How a gentleman could treat a lady in such a way... how any man could treat a woman so, disgusted him. He wanted to storm into the room and punch the swine’s vile face until it spewed blood all over his starched cravat.

But he was Sir Henry’s valet.

For how much longer, he didn’t know.

John backed away from the door and moved around the dressing room, making as much noise as possible to let his pig of a master know there was a witness to his behaviour. He had seen Sir Henry’s increasingly cruel acts over the last three years. Part of the cause of the escalation was Lady Emma’s failure to give him a son, when her husband desperately wanted to ensure the succession.

If his violence continued, he would eventually kill her.

John wasn’t going to let that happen.

The outer door to Sir Henry’s room banged closed. The brute had left. The danger to her was over, for now.

Should he go into the room to check how she fared? Or spare her the humiliation of having her husband’s servant find her red-cheeked and probably crying?

John remembered the naïve, trusting, very young woman who had arrived in the house on her wedding day; the sparkle of love for Sir Henry in her blue eyes, the joy in her demeanour, the energy and excitement in her bearing.

Slowly, through angry words, spiteful blows, and more lately, vicious attacks of rage, she had become a solemn, dull-eyed ghost of herself.

John continued with his tasks, expecting any moment to hear her ladyship leave Sir Henry’s room, or for her to appear at the doorway, eyes downcast, returning to her room.

He finished tidying the narrow dressing room. Still he hadn’t seen or heard her leave.

John took tentative steps to the doorway, listening for Lady Emma. He knocked quietly on the open door.

No answer.

Still unsure about disturbing her, he stepped into the room.

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