Praise for Christi Caldwell

“Christi Caldwell writes a gorgeous book!”

—Sarah MacLean, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author

“Along Came a Lady is exactly what I needed to read right now. Edwina and Rafe’s love story is ribboned with subtleties about gender roles and class expectations that make this novel both thoughtful and delightful all at once.”

—Jodi Picoult, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Book of Two Ways on Along Came a Lady

“Christi Caldwell’s crisp, sparkling writing is infused with emotion, passion, and a belief in the healing power of love. This is terrific Regency romance!”

—Amanda Quick, New York Times bestselling author on Along Came a Lady

“Emotional, funny, and filled with passion—everything I want in a romance.”

—Lorraine Heath, New York Times bestselling author of The Duchess Hunt on Along Came a Lady

“In addition to a strong plot, this story boasts actualized characters whose personal demons are clear and credible. The chemistry between the protagonists is seductive and palpable, with their family history of hatred played against their personal similarities and growing attraction to create an atmospheric and captivating romance.”

—Publishers Weekly on The Hellion

“Christi Caldwell is a master of words, and The Hellion is so descriptive and vibrant that she redefines high definition. Readers will be left panting, craving, and rooting for their favorite characters as unexpected lovers find their happy ending.”

—RT Book Reviews on The Hellion

“Christi Caldwell’s The Vixen shows readers a darker, grittier version of Regency London than most romance novels . . . Caldwell’s more realistic version of London is a particularly gripping backdrop for this enemies-to-lovers romance, and it’s heartening to read a story where love triumphs even in the darkest places.”

—NPR on The Vixen

“Exceptional . . . an intoxicating romp sure to delight fans of historical romance.”

—Publishers Weekly (starred review) on In Bed with the Earl

“Sizzling, witty, passionate . . . perfect!”

—Eloisa James, New York Times bestselling author on In Bed with the Earl

OTHER TITLES BY CHRISTI CALDWELL

Wantons of Waverton

Someone Wanton His Way Comes

The Importance of Being Wanton

A Wanton for All Seasons

Lost Lords of London

In Bed with the Earl

In the Dark with the Duke

Undressed with the Marquess

Sinful Brides

The Rogue’s Wager

The Scoundrel’s Honor

The Lady’s Guard

The Heiress’s Deception

Wicked Wallflowers

The Hellion

The Vixen

The Governess

The Bluestocking

The Spitfire

All the Duke’s Sins

It Had to Be the Duke (novella)

Along Came a Lady

One for My Baron (novella)

Desperately Seeking a Duchess

Scandalous Affairs

A Groom of Her Own

Taming of the Beast

My Fair Marchioness

It Happened One Winter

Heart of a Duke

For Love of the Duke

More Than a Duke

The Love of a Rogue

Loved by a Duke

To Love a Lord

The Heart of a Scoundrel

To Wed His Christmas Lady

To Trust a Rogue

The Lure of a Rake

To Woo a Widow

To Redeem a Rake

One Winter with a Baron

To Enchant a Wicked Duke

Beguiled by a Baron

To Tempt a Scoundrel

To Hold a Lady’s Secret

To Catch a Viscount

Defying the Duke

To Marry Her Marquess

Devil and the Debutante

Devil by Daylight

The Heart of a Scandal

In Need of a Knight (A Prequel Novella)

Schooling the Duke

A Lady’s Guide to a Gentleman’s Heart

A Matchmaker for a Marquess

His Duchess for a Day

Five Days With a Duke

Lords of Honor

Seduced by a Lady’s Heart

Captivated by a Lady’s Charm

Rescued by a Lady’s Love

Tempted by a Lady’s Smile

Courting Poppy Tidemore

Scandalous Seasons

Forever Betrothed, Never the Bride

Never Courted, Suddenly Wed

Always Proper, Suddenly Scandalous

Always a Rogue, Forever Her Love

A Marquess for Christmas

Once a Wallflower, At Last His Love

The Theodosia Sword

Only For His Lady

Only For Her Honor

Only For Their Love

Danby

Winning a Lady’s Heart

A Season of Hope

The Brethren

The Spy Who Seduced Her

The Lady Who Loved Him

The Rogue Who Rescued Her

The Minx Who Met Her Match

The Spinster Who Saved a Scoundrel

Brethren of the Lords

My Lady of Deception

Her Duke of Secrets

Nonfiction Works

Uninterrupted Joy: A Memoir

Title Page

Copyright Page

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

Text copyright © 2022 by Christi Caldwell Incorporated

No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

Published by Montlake, Seattle

Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Montlake are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

ISBN-13: 9781542033954

ISBN-10: 1542033950

Front cover design by Juliana Kolesova

Back cover design by Ray Lundgren

Dedication

Found family is some of the greatest family one can ever know. When my son was born, we discovered family in other mothers and fathers who also had children with Down syndrome. It was during my boy’s first hospitalization that a friend entered my life. She came and sat beside me. She brought me snacks and food and magazines. She promised when he was discharged, we would take our boys on a playdate . . . and we did. It was my boy’s first playdate. When my family had to move, I promised my friend I’d someday return. It was ten years before I did. And when we did . . . she was there, waiting. Tamara, thank you for being not only the best of friends, the kind of woman I know I can always count on, but also my “found” sister. Val and Myrtle’s story is for you.

Contents

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Chapter 1

Chapter 1

London, England

December 1813

Neighbors, servants, and passersby to Ten Yardley Court could—and had—long attested that the din emitted by the familial household of the Earl and Countess of Abington was enough to rival a raucous affair at Vauxhall and the most competitive, closest horse match held at Ascot, combined.

Then again, such was to be expected of a noble family consisting of three sons and three daughters born of Scottish origin, and the hapless mother and father desperately attempting to be heard over their unruly offspring.

It was why all had breathed a collective sigh of relief when that same family had announced plans to vacate their London townhouse and retire to the country until long overdue renovations to their home had been completed.

It was also why those sighs of relief had fast turned to groans of regret as the timeline of work had been shifted to the winter months, when all of London went quiet and the peers retired to their respective country seats.

The noise this particular evening was even more resounding than on most others. Which was saying a good deal indeed about the McQuoid household.

Or perhaps it was just that Lady Myrtle McQuoid, gone four years and returned only two days from Mrs. Belden’s Finishing School, had been removed from her family for so long that she’d forgotten how voices swelled as her kin competed to be heard, and how booming laughter or high-pitched whines of annoyance rose above the blur of the chatter.

At that moment, Myrtle stood on the landing above the foyer and assessed the bustling activity below.

Servants scurried about with trunks and valises atop their broad shoulders, making a march to the wide, double front doors that hung open. Her younger siblings—a nine-year-old sister, Fleur, and a ten-year-old brother, Quillon—rushed about, giggling, as they hid from Myrtle’s young cousins, also aged ten, who now visited for the Christmastide Season.

As they did every Christmastide Season.

They, along with the rest of their many siblings and parents, Mr. and Mrs. Francis Smith, Myrtle’s aunt and uncle.

And just as at every family gathering before it, Myrtle’s eldest sister, Cassia, broke off and paired herself with cousins Meghan and Linnie. Fleur and Quillon joined up with near-in-age twin cousins Andromena and Oleander. While Myrtle’s eldest brothers, Dallin, the future earl, and Arran, rode and played billiards or did—as they referred to them—all the gentlemanly things with their male cousins, Brone and Campbell. Or, at least, Arran took part when he was not traveling.

Through it all, Myrtle remained alone. Invisible.

Nor was her forgotten state a product of the fact she’d been gone these past years. Rather, she’d always been left out of the melee. As a young child, she’d chafed at being the forgotten one. She’d hated the fun her family members had enjoyed, only because she’d remained on the fringes, wishing to be part of it all. Determined to make herself be seen, Myrtle had gone out of her way to carry out every wicked prank on her kin, and to be as loud as she possibly could.

Which also, no doubt, accounted for one of the reasons she’d been sent off to finishing school and not kept around with a governess as her elder sister had.

And hating that miserable finishing school, Myrtle had done absolutely everything within her power to prove herself a lady so she might get out of there as quickly as possible.

She’d stayed out of mischief—or at least carried it out in a clandestine enough way to have evaded the miserable headmistress’s notice.

She’d attended to her lessons with a diligence and solemnity, laughing about the absurdity of it all only under the covers with the other girls, who’d hated that place as much as Myrtle had.

She’d dropped more flawless curtsies than she could count.

Had perfected her stitches and singing.

Well, perhaps not her singing. Mrs. Belden had cringed and banged her cane, accusing Myrtle of having the tones of a drowning cat trying to scratch her way out of a metal tub. And even as Myrtle had strenuously disagreed with that harsh assessment, she’d not challenged the miserable old biddy, but instead had focused on playing the pianoforte—at the appropriate tempo and volume.

She’d learned to perform steps of the quadrille La Boulangère and even the scandalous waltz—as best she was able to without a male partner leading.

Along with the rules of propriety and decorum, she’d been schooled on needlework and the practical study of household management. She’d learned and practiced her discourse with other students and instructors, in both English and French—always speaking on topics suitable for polite discussion when she made her Come Out this spring.

Through it all, Myrtle had conducted herself with grace and aplomb.

But this? This day and this moment were pushing Myrtle in every way, as through the roar of the household activity she threatened to erupt, undoing everything she’d done to get out of Mrs. Belden’s.

From her central vantage point, she searched the bustling crowd of servants below.

A young maid approached, and to make herself heard over the din, Myrtle called out to her loudly. “Do you know where my mother is?”

“No, miss,” the unfamiliar young woman responded, and then dropping a curtsy, she hastened around Myrtle.

Myrtle followed the maid’s descent to the marble foyer, where Hanes, the family butler, stood in wait, directing the maid amidst the commotion.

Another servant rushed past—this time a footman.

Myrtle stretched out a hand, almost wishing to catch him like a spotted trout in her family’s ponds and hold on so he’d have no choice but to look at her and answer. “Excuse me, I’m looking for my mother.” Her mother, who ruled the roost in this household and, according to Myrtle’s doting father, the world. “Can you point me toward her?”

He dropped his stare to the floor. “I cannot say, my lady.” A ruddy flush stained his cheeks, and he stepped quickly around her . . . and fled.

Myrtle rocked back on her heels.

He could not say?

He could not. Nor could any of the previous six young men and women to whom she’d posed her questions.

And though she prided herself on being quite clever and intelligent, it wouldn’t take much deduction from a person with even half her wit to gather that the staff had been instructed to avoid her.

Nay, more specifically, they’d been advised to hide their mistress.

Myrtle headed downstairs and attempted to wheedle an answer from four more servants before she caught sight of someone who could help.

No matter how inadvertently that may be.

“Aunt Leslie!” she called loudly, for her tiny, heavily rounded, bespectacled aunt and godmother was headed out one door and over to the adjacent chambers her eldest daughter was invariably assigned every holiday house party.

Bypassing a pair of servants with a trunk between them—with Myrtle’s trunk between them—Myrtle rushed to intercept her aunt. “Aunt Leslie. Have you seen my mother?” she asked without preamble when she reached the frizzy-haired woman.

“She is in your chambers, packing,” her aunt said and then let herself inside. “There you are,” she said to whichever one of her kin she’d been looking for. “I told you we must . . .” Aunt Leslie’s words faded as she shut the door behind her.

Knocked back on her heels once more, Myrtle stared at the panel. “Packing?” she repeated aloud.

Her mother?

Her mother, who delighted in having servants and wouldn’t be able to pick out a trunk from a valise, suddenly found herself actively engaged in packing those very items—and in Myrtle’s rooms, no less?

Though in fairness, it was also the last place Myrtle would think to look for her.

Sure enough, when she reached her rooms, Myrtle found her.

Them.

“Mr. Phippen is set to begin immediately,” her mother was saying to her husband as she sorted through an array of jewelry set out on Myrtle’s vanity, then instructed her husband to place the properly wrapped item in the valise.

Ah, they were hiding together.

Then again, Myrtle’s mother had never much been one for being alone. Myrtle had often suspected it was one of the reasons her parents had wished for—and had—their brood of six children.

“The servants have already begun draping the sheets,” her father said. “But for the chambers that will be in use this evening . . .”

She’d hand it to them: they didn’t manage to look even a tad bit guilty.

In fact, they didn’t so much as pause in their work and acknowledge her. Nay, they were far more engrossed in talks of whoever this Mr. Phippen fellow was.

“Who is Mr. Phippen?” Myrtle called out. When neither parent looked up and over, she folded her arms at her chest and resisted the urge to stamp her foot like she’d done as a small, stubborn girl. Not that they would have noticed anyway. “I asked, who is Mr. Phippen?”

That managed to force their attention over to her.

Her mother frowned. “Mr. Martin Phippen is only the best master builder in the whole of London and the one who’ll be overseeing the renovations of our home.”

Alas, Myrtle would have had to have been in London and truly part of the McQuoid brood to have known about the renovations planned for their home. It was just one more reminder of how much a stranger she was here.

Best builder Mr. Phippen forgotten, Myrtle frowned as her parents carried on as they’d been. “You are packing?”

Her parents looked up as one and stared at Myrtle as if she’d just entered the room.

“Your mama is quite capable, dearest,” her father responded for the pair as Myrtle’s mother turned back to the vanity table and the tiaras resting there. “Very much, indeed.”

The attention they paid her proved brief, as with that avowal, husband and wife resumed their rapid discourse, leaving Myrtle in the state that had become increasingly common these last three years.

Oh, Myrtle didn’t doubt for a moment that her mother could have single-handedly done the work of the Sixth Coalition to rid Boney of his quest to conquer the world. Neither, however, did Myrtle believe for one single Scottish minute that her mother had developed a sudden affinity for packing her own belongings.

“We must leave early in the morn,” the countess was saying. “It will allow us just four stops until we reach Scotland . . .”

So they were off to Scotland. The place of her father’s birth and their family’s country estate.

Only, their London townhouse was where they called home.

Or that had been the case.

Those were the memories Myrtle held of so many of her favorite Christmases. In winter and even more so after the little season when the lords and ladies of London scattered to their country properties and the McQuoids had turned the town into a playground of sorts. In fact, some of the earliest memories she still carried went back to days spent skating on the canal in Saint James’s Park or on the Serpentine River in Hyde Park.

Cupping her hands around her mouth, she raised her voice in a manner that would have absolutely extended her sentence at Mrs. Belden’s. “I don’t wish to leave London for the holiday.”

When neither parent acknowledged her, she swept over. “Hullo,” she said, waving her arms back and forth, forcing them to see her. “Did you hear me? I said I do not wish to leave.”

Her mother set down hard the necklace she’d been examining. “You don’t wish to leave?” she asked. “You don’t wish to leave?”

And Myrtle really should have known by that repeated question that no answer was required, and that her mother was set to deliver a scathing lecture.

Alas . . .

She managed a tight nod.

Her mother shot an arm up, pointing skyward. “We have a roof that has begun to leak.”

As if on cue, a single drop of water fell, landing with a surprisingly loud plink in the flowerpot that had been set beneath to catch it.

“The floorboards are rotting.” To punctuate her point, Mother stomped the floor with her foot, and the oak panel dipped in a precarious way. “The walls are drafty.” Even Mother Nature chose to cooperate with the countess. The wind battered the windows, rattling the panes and sending such a chill through the room that, despite a raging fireplace, Myrtle couldn’t keep from hugging her arms to ward off the nip.

Her mother was not done with her, however. “Of all your siblings and cousins, you are the only one to make this difficult. Neither your brothers nor your sisters wish to leave for the holiday. Nor do your cousins. They are good enough to know that if these renovations do not happen at this juncture, then the household will not be ready for this London Season. Am I making myself clear?”

Myrtle had always been hopeless at conceding defeat. “Linnie and Meghan, and for that matter, Cassia, wouldn’t know if they were in Scotland or the sea,” she said, and not unkindly. Her female kin were flighty at best, empty-headed at worst.

Her mother frowned. “I suggest you heed your father’s advice and gather up your Mr. Newberry books and marbles—”

“It is Pride and Prejudice in three volumes By a Lady,” Myrtle gritted out. And it was a sin of the world that the real author must hide her identity away behind a pseudonym. But then, hadn’t Myrtle learned at the hands of her own family that the last thing the world wished was a woman with a voice? “It is Pride and Prejudice, and it was given to me by Miss Cassandra Austen.” The Austens were only Aunt Leslie and Uncle Francis’s neighbors in Hampshire and her favorite family outside of her own. Actually, of late, including her own. “Furthermore,” she went on impatiently when neither of her parents so much as acknowledged her, “I haven’t read Newberry’s books since I was a girl, and those pieces you refer to as marbles are in fact fossils Arran brought—”

Her mother gave a dismissive wave. “Whatever they are. If they matter to you, see them packed up, and either bring them in your valise or tuck them away here, as Mr. Phippen’s men are set to begin work.”

“At Christmas?” In feigned innocence, Myrtle batted her eyes. There were, after all, but two sacred times for the McQuoid mother: the London Season and the Christmastide one. “Never tell me you’re having these poor men begin before the holiday?”

“Of course we would nev—” At Myrtle’s triumphant look, her mother instantly clamped her lips together. She turned an entreating look on her husband. “Harold.”

Just like that, his name a command, Myrtle’s father, ever the peacemaker, stepped between them. He rested his hands on Myrtle’s shoulders and steered her gently toward the door. “Why don’t you run along, dearest, and pack up your marble collection.”

“They are not marbles, Father,” she said, her exasperation rising by several notches. “They are minerals. Minerals.” She’d expect a collector of fine marble pieces would appreciate the difference and, at the very least, respect her collection.

“Yes, well, do have a care with them. Your aunt Leslie nearly shattered her neck on several pieces you left out.”

Her heart fell. Left out? She’d had them in the Corner Parlor, that room so aptly named for its placement at the end of the townhouse that provided glass windows throughout and offered views in three different directions of London, and also light enough to examine those stones her brother Arran had given her right before he’d made his first journey abroad. “Did she break them?”

“Why don’t you run along and see,” her father suggested, his tone more hopeful than suggestive.

Run along and see . . .

As though she were a child.

She may as well have been for all the attention they paid her.

After all, every Englishwoman knew the only person less heard and seen in the world than a woman was a child.

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