Page 1 of Lady Beast's Bridegroom
Chapter One
Greenmount, the Midlands, January 1817
“An empty threat,”Mr. Richards insisted. “Your cousin has no authority to have you committed to an asylum for the insane, my lady.”
The frown that creased his forehead and pinched his mouth hinted that her solicitor was not as certain as he wanted Lady Arial Bledisloe to believe. Arial shared his doubts. She lived secluded with her companion and her servants but read widely. She knew that the law tended to favor men over women, earls over commoners, and those with money over those without.
Her cousin—second cousin, to be precise—was a man and an earl. She was a commoner, with only a courtesy title. She did have money, but with two of three counts against her in the eyes of the law, the money her father had left to his only living child, rather than to his heir, became the essence of the problem.
To add insult to injury, Father had not appointed guardians to manage Arial’s inheritance, but had trusted Arial to take whatever advice she needed and make her own decisions.
At first, Josiah, now Earl of Stancroft, had declined to believe it. Then he had confronted Arial and demanded that she hand everything over to him in return for a small allowance. After she refused, he ordered his lawyers to challenge the will. When theyreported that they could find no legal pretext for such a move, he had come up with this.
“There are no grounds for finding you insane,” Mr. Richards said, but his frown deepened as he resettled his glasses on his nose. “Even if he demands a committal hearing, he will fail.”
“I am a woman, horribly scarred, and a known recluse,” Arial pointed out, her voice calm though she felt far from it. “These may be grounds enough. Tell me the results of your research, Mr. Richards. Have you found anything we may use to discredit him?”
Mr. Richards shook his head. “Nothing apart from mismanagement, my lady. Failing to make money from his investments and lands shows stupidity, but stupidity is not a crime or even a scandal.”
Arial grimaced. Stupidity might not be criminal, but it was dangerous. In the minds of her cousin and his wife, her continued existence was an affront, preventing them from living in the style to which they thought they were entitled.
Marjorie had said as much to Arial’s face, on the one occasion she and Josiah had visited Arial here at Greenmount. “You don’t need the money,” she had complained. “You don’t leave your property. You have no visitors.”
Arial did not retort that she went to church every week, socialized within the local community, and occasionally enjoyed dinner with the squire and his wife, or the local countess and her aunt. To Marjorie, only London Society counted.
In any case, Marjorie did not pause to allow her time to comment. “You will never marry or have children. How can you, when you are so ugly that you are afraid to show your face? You might as well give us the money your father should have left us. It will all come to us eventually, anyway. We are your only living relatives.”
Arial was stung by the accusation of cowardice and made reckless by Marjorie’s unerring strike on her deepest sorrow, her lack of children. She had dropped the half-mask she wore to protect others from the sight of her and had had the dubious satisfaction of seeing Marjorie blanch and shrink back in her chair.
Josiah, made of sterner stuff, only swallowed hard, but neither he nor Marjorie looked directly at Arial for the rest of the visit, even when she outraged them by explaining her death would not serve them, since her will was made, and the bulk of her fortune had been left to some of the philanthropic organizations she supported, with small legacies to her faithful servants.
Remembering her visitors’ faces, Arial told Mr. Richards, “Josiah will not give up. Not as long as he sees me as vulnerable.”
Mr. Richards tapped his steepled fingers against his lips and then said, “Give me permission to discuss the matter with your neighbor, Sir Thomas Repton, my lady. He is the local magistrate, is he not? It would be as well for you to have someone at hand to protect you should Lord Stancroft take the law into his own hands.”
It was good advice. Sir Thomas and his wife were among the few people she trusted. “I will send him an invitation for dinner tonight, if you will join us, Mr. Richards.”
That decided and the message sent, Mr. Richards declared himself satisfied, but Arial had a plan of her own, the seed of which Marjorie herself had planted with her taunts.
“Sir Thomas’s influence may suffice in the immediate crisis, Mr. Richards, but it will not inhibit Josiah in the long term. I need a husband. I want you to help me get one.”
Mr. Richards resettled his glasses again and stared up into the corner of the room for good measure.
“You disagree?” Arial asked.
He cleared his throat, looked down at his hands, and again lifted his eyes to the corner—all signs he had something he needed to tell his client, and was unsure how she would receive it.
Arial put him out of his misery. “I would be no beauty, Mr. Richards, even without the fire. As it is, I cannot expect a man to choose me without a considerable incentive. I propose that you find a man who needs money. A great deal of money. Someone whose embarrassments are so compelling he will be prepared to marry Lady Caliban.”
The unkind nickname predated her scars. A childhood acquaintance had claimed that she was misnamed. The girl claimed Arial looked nothing like the ethereal spirit Ariel from Shakespeare’s play,The Tempest, but instead like the shambling beast Caliban from the same play.
Mr. Richards winced, whether at Arial’s use of the nickname or her plan, she couldn’t tell.
“I realize that a husband has the potential to be an even bigger problem than my cousin. I need you to investigate candidates, particularly as regards their character, and to draw up a marriage settlement that protects me as much as possible.”
Faced with the parameters of the challenge, Mr. Richards’s frown cleared. “And any children,” he added. “Or did you mean it to be a white marriage, Lady Arial?”
Arial blushed. “My preference would be for a true marriage.” If any man could be found who was prepared to bed her. “That would be a matter for negotiation.”
