The Enigmatic Lady in the Ivory Tower Read online

  The Enigmatic Lady in the Ivory Tower

  A Historical Regency Romance Novel

  Hazel Linwood

  Contents

  A Lovely Gift From Me to You

  Prologue

  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

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Epilogue

  Extended Epilogue

  Also by Hazel Linwood

  About the Author

  A Lovely Gift From Me to You

  I am so grateful that you have joined me on this journey of mine. Having you beside me is a dream come true for me!

  In a way for me to thank you for your support, I am offering you a free book. The Awakening of the Lost Baroness will be available in a few weeks time but only to people who have downloaded one of my books will be able to get it!

  You can get your free copy by clicking the image below or this link here…and you’ll be the first to get notified when my book is out!

  Thank you for being by my side!

  Hazel Linwood

  About the Book

  Theirs is a love against all odds...

  To the Ton, Lady Diana well knows, marrying the one you love is a scandalous act.

  When she refuses to marry the man her parents force on her, they are unmoved by her tears. Sent to live with a tyrannical Marchioness, she feels her life is ruined. But her confinement to the country turns out to be more than just lessons for proper manners.

  A life of toil as a stable hand is everything Gabriel Rowan has ever known. Though well aware of his place, Diana’s visits to the stables awaken in him feelings he is forbidden to express.

  With the appearance of Diana’s suitor, Gabriel’s heart is shattered and reminded of what he can never have. But a single truth is enough to make a castle of lies crumble. And that truth, hidden and concealed for decades, falls in Diana’s hands in the form of a letter. A letter from the late Marquess addressed to his second son...

  Prologue

  The Seven Sisters, East Sussex, England

  Lady Diana Bexley stood staring in horror at her elder sister, Georgette, standing at the edge of the white cliffs known as the Seven Sisters.

  “No! Georgette you cannot do this. Please, you cannot do this. You will love again. This is not the end of your life, but a heartbreaking chapter. Please, you cannot do this.”

  “I have nothing left to live for! My Adam is gone, taken from me by Napoleon’s army. I will never love again.” Georgette cried out, preparing to leap over the side of the chalk white cliffs. Her fiancé, Adam Worth, heir to the Earl of Arlow, had been a noble officer fighting in the Napoleonic Wars when he had been killed in France. Georgette had just been given the news. In her rush of pain, she had chosen to not live at all rather than to live without the man she loved.

  “I am so very sorry that this has happened to you, but no matter how much it hurts now, you cannot do this.” Diana searched her heart and mind for anything that she could say to stop her sister from making such a terrible mistake.

  “Adam would never forgive you if you took your own life.” It was a bold choice of words, but Diana was desperate and willing to do anything that it took to save her sister’s life.

  Pain can be eased with time, but only God can bring back the dead.

  The sea air whipped around them as tears poured down both of their cheeks. The wind blew so fiercely that Diana feared that they might both be ripped from the cliff side and flung onto the earth below. Diana and Georgette were both quite slender, of medium height among their female companions, with silky light brown hair that reflected different colors of brown, blond, and hints of red in the light, and amber eyes the color of good brandy that danced when they laughed like the falling leaves in autumn.

  Diana looked into her sister’s liquid amber eyes, a mirror reflection of her own, and pleaded with everything that she possessed within her soul. “Please do not do this! Live, if not for yourself, then for me and for Adam. Please do not leave me to face the same pain that you feel now, all alone. If you jump, then I jump.”

  Diana saw something flicker in her sister’s eyes at her words and a sagging resignation fell upon Georgette’s shoulders.

  “I will not leave you,” she promised. A tiny glimmer of shame, mixed with anger, crossed over her features. The shame, Diana knew, was for having come so close to hurting her little sister in such a way, but she was not sure whether the anger was pointed inward or outward—more than likely it was both.

  “I would never wish such pain upon you. I love you too much for that.” Georgette shook her head in sorrow. “But I will never love another man again. Never…”

  “Simply live, the rest will come in time.”

  “Living is all that I can promise.”

  “Living is all that I ask.”

  Georgette nodded resolutely. “Then live I shall, but that is all.”

  Diana took Georgette’s hand and led her back home to Kilgrave Manor, but the echoes of her sister’s promise still hung in the air around them. “I will never love again. Never…”

  Never is a very long time.

  Chapter 1

  One Year Later, Kilgrave Manor

  “I will not marry anyone and that is that,” Georgette firmly stood her ground for what seemed like the hundredth time since their parents had made her officially come out of mourning, in spite of her vehement protests on the subject. “I will never love another man again.”

  Diana sat on the settee next to her sister, with their parents sitting on the settee across from them. She knew from experience that it would not be long before their attention would turn to her own unwed state.

  God in heaven, help me.

  She groaned inwardly at the unpleasant thought.

  “Love is not necessary for marriage, Georgette, as you well know,” their father, Benjamin Bexley, the Earl of Kilgrave, reminded his eldest daughter.

  Diana knew that their father did not mean his words to be as uncaring as they sounded. Their parents were quite loving, but Kilgrave lacked a male heir and the matter weighed heavily upon his heart. The Earl was constantly concerned for the future of the earldom and having a grandson to secure his legacy was, to his mind, the best solution for everyone concerned.

  “Regardless, I will not be moved on the matter. I will never marry, and you must resign yourselves to the fact.” Having made her point quite clear, Georgette arose and walked out of the drawing room with her head held high in glorious rebellion.

  The Earl sighed and turned his attention to his youngest daughter. “Diana,” he began, clearly believing that she would be more compliant. “Your mother and I have spoken and have decided that Tobias Blythe, the Earl of Appley, would be an excellent match for you. We have spoken to Appley’s mothe
r, the Dowager Countess, and she agrees.”

  Diana closed her eyes to steel her nerves and shook her head.

  “No, I will not wed a man I do not know. I will marry for love, as Georgette intended to do, or I will not wed at all.” When she opened her eyes, she found both of her parents frowning disapprovingly at her.

  “Your sister has been a negative example to you in this matter. As your elder sister, she should have already been wed. At five-and-twenty she is rapidly approaching spinsterhood. At twenty, you are still young enough to avoid such a terrible fate. You must listen to reason.”

  “And what reason is there in choosing to wed a perfect stranger?”

  “Legacy, economic and social security, motherhood,” her father gave her a pointed look at the last one, his dark amber eyes firm and steady, unwavering in their intensity. “There are many reasons, as you well know, not the least of which is the commandment for you to honor your father and mother.”

  Diana sighed. “It is not a fair argument for you to bring God into it.”

  “God is in everything, my dear,” her mother, Mary, the Countess of Kilgrave, gently reminded, her soft dove-grey eyes filled with compassion for both of her daughters’ plights. Her soft blonde curls swirled around her face, a lacy frame giving her an angelic appearance. It was the very reason that the Earl often called his wife by the endearment, “my angel.”

  “Your mother is correct, Diana. You must come to terms with this arrangement. I will not have both of my daughters turning into rebellious spinsters, leaving the earldom without a proper heir. You will wed the Earl of Appley and that is that.”

  “I will not,” Diana refused, setting her jaw in stubborn determination.

  “Then you give me no choice,” her father shook his head sorrowfully. “I was afraid that this would be your answer and as a precaution against further rash outbursts of the kind, I have arranged for you to go and stay with a dear friend of my late mother. Theodora Jenson, the Dowager Marchioness of Westwallow, is well-skilled in the art of social decorum. She has agreed to guide you along the path to becoming the lady that I know you are capable of being. Once you have been removed from the sphere of your sister’s negative influence, I am certain that you will come to see reason.”

  “I will not go!”

  “You will and that is final!” Her father’s warning tone allowed for no further argument. “You will leave upon the morrow.”

  “Father…” Diana began to argue anyway, in spite of her better judgement, but was cut short by a gentle shake of her mother’s head. Her grey eyes warned that argument was futile and would cause further pain for all of them.

  “You will go, my dear,” her mother’s soft voice affirmed. “And I pray that you make the most of your time there. Westwallow is a beautiful estate with much to offer a young woman of breeding. I expect you to represent our family with grace and honor.”

  Sighing, Diana had no choice but to surrender. Her parents had dominion over her life. As the unwed second daughter of an English earl, she did not.

  “Yes, Mother,” she murmured, resignedly. She could have argued with her father all day without remorse, but she had never been able to argue with her mother for very long. She could not bear the hurt look that would enter her mother’s eyes and the argument would instantly cease, her mother getting whatever it was that she desired.

  “Good, it is settled then. You will leave for Westwallow upon the morn.” Her father stood, pleased that the argument had come to its conclusion, kissed his wife with tender affection, then left the room for the seclusion of his own library calling for the butler, Reeves, as he went.

  Diana almost smiled as she watched Reeves scurry after the Earl. George Reeves had come to work for the former Earl of Kilgrave as a lad. He had advanced from a footman to the butler of the manor long before Diana had been born and had been an influential element in her life and acted as a grandfatherly figure for her. His wife, Agnes, the head housekeeper, had acted as a grandmother.

  It is not going to be easy to leave everyone behind.

  The thought upset Diana more than she wanted to admit. She looked up at her mother, still sitting across from her, and saw the tears in her eyes. “Are you well, Mother?”

  “I am well, my dear, do not worry. I will miss you, but I am indeed well.”

  “How long must I be away?”

  “Until the Dowager Marchioness deems you sufficiently educated in the ways of society. I am ashamed to see that I have failed you and your sister so in this matter.”

  “You have not failed me or Georgette, Mother, never!”

  “I have, my dear. You would not need to be taught by another noblewoman had I done my job satisfactorily. You both have a rebellious tendency that I fear is my fault for being too gentle with you.”

  “You could never fail me. This is my fault, not yours. It is I that have failed you.” Diana hung her head in shame that she had caused her mother such distress. “I am sorry, Mother.”

  “Duty is important, Diana. Our birth gives us a responsibility that others, who do not possess noble blood, do not carry. I did not love your father when I married him and he did not love me, but we grew first to respect each other, then to like each other, and from that mutual respect and admiration came a love that has far outlasted any youthful affection that we might have held for another.”

  “You did not marry Father for love?” Diana stared at her mother in shock. She had always assumed that they had been madly in love from the first time they had laid eyes upon each other.

  “No, I did not.” Her mother shook her head, a slight smile turning up the corners of her rose-pink lips. “Love grew between us and it can do the same for you. All I ask is that you try."

  Diana looked into her mother’s eyes and saw the truth of her words in their depths. She nodded slowly, unable to deny the force of her mother’s admittance. “I will try.”

  Her mother’s smile grew, but the tears did not leave her eyes.

  “Thank you, my darling. Our very future depends upon it.”

  Come morning, after a restless night of sleeplessness, Diana climbed up into her father’s carriage with her lady’s maid and dearest friend, Frances Crow. They had been together since they were both children. Frances had been her designated playmate as a child and once they had grown, Frances had become her maid.

  The carriage bumped along the road toward Westwallow Manor. Diana’s stomach felt as if it were tied up in knots. She was a nervous wreck and did not know what to expect upon her arrival. She had heard many times of the famed Dowager Marchioness of Westwallow from her late grandmother, but she had never actually met the noblewoman before. The Marchioness was renowned for her exceptional sense of decorum and social grace. Diana was not convinced that such was a positive trait.

  “How long will we be staying at Westwallow Manor?” Frances asked from the other side of the carriage. Diana had no idea how the maid was able to ride backwards as she did. Every time that Diana had tried doing it, she had gotten sick to her stomach. She greatly envied anyone who possessed the ability.

  “I do not know. Mother said that the length of our stay would be entirely in the hands of our hostess. I regret being forced to leave Kilgrave. The anniversary of Adam’s death so recently passed and I do not like the idea of leaving Georgette alone.”

  “Lady Georgette has the Earl and Countess to aid her should things become difficult to bear, My Lady,” Frances reminded her gently. “As much as it pains you, you are doing the right thing by obeying your father’s edicts.”

  Diana smiled at her friend. “You always have such faith that everything will be well in time. I envy you that ability.”

  Where Diana was rebellious by nature, Frances was a born rule follower. They were complete and total opposites, yet they worked well together in most areas of life. What one girl lacked in something, the other had in plenty, making theirs a friendship of respect and mutual need.

  “Not at all. I simply have faith in
your family.”

  “Apparently, more than I do, at the moment,” Diana admitted.

  “No, you are simply having a disagreement. It will work itself out in time.”

  Diana sighed. “I hope that you are right. I do not know what I will do if I cannot make them see reason.”