Page 1 of A Countess Captured for the Captain
Chapter One
“Iwill not be your servant, Regina, get it yourself!” Samantha Crawford cried, slamming the door behind her as she rushed out into the hallway.
“You are behaving like a spoiled little wretch. I am with child. The least you can do is go out to Bond Street and pick up my list,” her stepmother shouted back.
The two women had been arguing for the past half an hour, while Samantha’s friend, Catherine Ferguson, looked helplessly on. They always argued, for they had never seen eye to eye. As far as Samantha was concerned, her stepmother, Regina, was an interloper who had stolen her father’s affections and left Samantha out in the cold. That they were both the same age and possessed of similar pretty looks and fiery temperament only added to the divisiveness of their positions.
“I am the spoiled little wretch? And who was it that threw a tantrum when her dress was not trimmed with the precise lace she had demanded? Or who kicked the poor maid who combed her hair with too much vigor? You think that because you are with child, you can have anything you want, Regina. Well, you cannot have me. I will not play your servant all day, nor be toyed with by your swings of mood,” Samantha declared.
She was the only daughter of the Duke of Hampton, a slender woman of twenty-five years old, with long curly black hair and deep blue eyes. But in her sex, she was already at a disadvantage, for her father had always made it clear he wanted a son and not a daughter. Samantha had grown up with this knowledge, and when her mother had died of a terrible fever, he had been swift to move his mistress into the house, claiming that now the time would come for a son and heir to be produced.
“I am your stepmother,” Regina snarled, though in truth she possessed no proper authority.
Samantha thought that Regina, with her silly, girlish ways and coquettish nature, her long blonde hair and fluttering eyelids, was the most ridiculous creature in all the ton. Now, she stood in the hallway with her hands upon her hips, her stomach bulging with the weight of the child, red faced and angry.
“And I do not require a stepmother, for I have a mother, albeit one in memory alone. You are not my stepmother, you are nothing to me,” Samantha retorted, and had it not been for Regina’s current condition, she would gladly have showed her anger with the back of her palm.
“Perhaps a walk, Samantha,” Catherine suggested, standing nervously between them.
She and Samantha had been the closest of friends since finishing school. Catherine was a pretty woman, with long red hair and hazel-brown eyes, always impeccably dressed, and with the slenderest of figures. If it were not for Catherine’s company, Samantha would have gone quite mad cooped up at Hampton Manor with her father and his china-doll wife who only loved him for his money and her title of Duchess.
“Why should I be driven out of the house, becausesheis in one of her moods?” Samantha demanded, and Catherine faltered.
“Well… can there be any agreement between you?” Catherine replied, though she too held Regina in thinly veiled contempt.
“There can when she does as she is told and shows me the proper respect I am due,” Regina shouted, stamping her foot angrily.
“You are nothing to me, and certainly you have never displayed one shred of maternal instinct, not that I would welcome it if you did,” Samantha retorted
She had had enough of Regina ordering her around, playing the long-suffering matriarch, bossing her as though she possessed the same authority as Samantha’s father. Regina was nothing to Samantha, and had it not been for Regina’s liking for the pleasures which her status afforded her, she may well have driven her from the house without a second thought. But Regina was there to stay, and Samantha knew that in all things her father would take her stepmother’s side against her. She hated Regina’s perceived authority, for she would never refer to her as mother, nor even as an acquaintance. Regina was an inconvenience, and Samantha had no qualms in telling her so.
“Then perhaps you should leave, Samantha. Your father and I are having a child, and there is nothing you can do about it. It will be the son he has always wanted, and you will find yourself even more unwanted than you already are,” Regina replied, drawing herself up and looking down her nose at Samantha, who scoffed and shook her head.
“And how do you know it will be a boy? Perhaps it will be a girl, and you will become just as much of a disappointment as I am, Regina. Be careful, for if my father can choose you as his mistress, then he can just as easily choose another poor creature, too,” Samantha replied, and Regina’s lip trembled at this inconvenient truth.
The Duke had always been a womanizer, consumed by his desire for a son. Regina was nothing special, though in certain circles they considered her pretty. What mattered was her fertility, and having come from a large family, the Duke had thought her ripe to bear the son he had always longed for.
“It will be a boy, I know it,” she declared, but Samantha only smirked.
“I hope for your sake that it is, otherwise we shall soon bid one another farewell,” she said.
Regina pursed her lips, her fists clenched, just as the door of the Duke’s study flew open and the man himself appeared before them. Randolf Crawford was an angry man, possessed of a temper which was not helped by his penchant for the brandy bottle. He was usually drunk, and if he was not drunk, then he was on the way to becoming so. Now, he looked around the hallway, his face red and puffed, his beady eyes fixing Samantha with an angry stare.
“How is a man supposed to concentrate on his work with this noise going on out here? Samantha, be quiet. All I can hear is your voice,” he cried.
“Oh, Randolf, thank goodness,” Regina said, adopting a faux meekness, ever playing the wounded party.
Samantha rolled her eyes.
“Here come the theatrics,” she whispered to Catherine.
“What is it, my darling? Has something upset you? Or someone?” the Duke asked, as Regina fell into his arms, in a pitiful mocking faint.
“I try to be a friend to her. I try my very best. It is all so wearing, Randolf, she will not listen to me, she constantly berates me. I feel as though I am living on the edge of a precipice, about to fall into the abyss. Why will she not accept me? I have done nothing wrong,” she said, her voice exaggeratingly faint.
“Oh, my dear Regina, you poor thing,” the Duke exclaimed, helping her to a chair next to a table in the hallway, before turning angrily to Samantha.
“I feel quite faint,” Regina said, bringing the back of her hand pathetically to her forehead.
