The M.C. Beaton Regency Collection by M.C. Beaton

Author:M.C. Beaton
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781472109705
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

‘Dear Miss Armitage,’ she read. ‘You may think Lord Sylvester Comfrey enamoured of you, but as you will see from the page which I took the Liberty of extracting from White’s Betting Book, you have been made the subject of a Vulgar Wager.

‘Be on your guard!

Yr Humble & Obedient Servant,

A Friend.’

Minerva looked slowly at the page of the betting book again. This time, the item at the bottom of the page seemed to leap out at her. ‘Mr F, Sir Y and Lord S do hereby wager 50,000 pounds to be paid to the one who succeeds in winning the prize of Miss A’s affections,’ she read.

She let the papers fall to her lap. Now Lord Sylvester’s generosity to her father seemed suspect. It would seem he had gone to great lengths to secure his prize.

But I gave myself to him, she told herself fiercely.

She shivered, feeling soiled and stupid and alone.

Someone knew about it. She had been made the subject of a wager, laughed about in the clubs.

All at once, she realized she had to get away, get back to Hopeworth. She did not want to see Lady Godolphin. Lady Godolphin was very much part of this hateful world.

There was only one letter she meant to write before she left.

Minerva arose and set about her business like a martinet. She packed only one small trunk. Fortunately, she had enough pin money left to pay for her travel.

She got a hack to the City, and from the City, the stage coach to Hopeminster, her slender resources only allowing her a place on the roof.

At Hopeminster, the landlord of the Cock and Feathers gladly agreed to supply miss with a chaise to take her to Hopeworth, saying her father would pay her shot on his next visit.

The day was dreary with a fine grey drizzle falling mournfully over the fields. Candles were being lit in the cottage windows as Minerva finally saw the squat tower of her father’s church.

The fatigue of the two-day-long journey had served to calm her. She decided to tell her father that she had been so delighted to get his letter that she had left on the spot. Fortunately, during her short stay in London, she had spent most of her pin money shopping for presents for her family rather than buying things for herself, and these presents made up the major part of her luggage, and would make it seem more like a planned departure.

Her mood swung from rage where she dreamed of confronting Lord Sylvester and throwing the sheet of the betting book in his face, and bitter sadness when she thought she would be pregnant and have no future other than the bottom of the River Blyne.

When she thought of the Marquess’s drunken state it all seemed part and parcel of that brutal world of men. Cock fighting, prize fights, and deflowering virgins, all a sport.

And to add to her burden of misery, her love and longing for him would not cease.

Perhaps she had

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