A Lady for the Brazen Earl: A Historical Regency Romance Book Read online

  A Lady for the Brazen Earl

  A REGENCY ROMANCE NOVEL

  BRIDGET BARTON

  Copyright © 2017 by Bridget Barton

  All Rights Reserved.

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  A Lady for the Brazen Earl

  Introduction

  When Lady Imogen Pennington falls upon the idea of using the London Season as a means of raising funds for a charitable scheme, she thinks it will be the simplest of things. With her friend, Lady Redmond at her side, the two embark upon a mission to attend as many social events as possible with the intention of opening every wealthy purse in sight. But it is all for a good cause; and a heartbreaking one as Imogen discovers when she and Lady Redmond find themselves wandering the dismal corridors of a workhouse for the poor of Lambeth.

  Heath Montgomery, the young and arrogant Earl of Reddington had always enjoyed a life of privilege, free from cares and conscience. Looking forward to the London Season as always, he allows his determined mother a little latitude in searching for a wife for him; one with wealth of her own to swell the coffers of the Reddington Estate. Miss Jemima Ravenswood, daughter of a rich and ambitious Baron, seems to fit the bill. She is beautiful and as keen to secure herself a title as her father is.

  But when the Earl finds himself crossing conversational swords with the caring and tenacious Lady Pennington, he wonders if beauty and fortune are enough for him anymore. When he finally falls for the curious Lady Pennington, will the Earl find he has gone too far and been too arrogant to ever win her heart?

  Chapter 1

  “It looks like such a noble building, and yet there is something in its curious austerity which is unmistakable,” Lady Imogen Pennington said sadly.

  “Yes, whilst they are built in a slightly different style from area to area, town to town, city to city, it is always easy to tell a workhouse, is it not?” Lady Adeline Redmond reached out and placed a reassuring hand on her young friend’s arm for a moment. “But if you allow yourself to become lost in the sadness, if you allow yourself to drown in it, then you are too busy rescuing your own feelings from the murky depths to be of any use to these people at all.”

  “Thank you, Adeline. I think I needed to hear that. What on earth would I do without you?” Imogen smiled and even gave a small laugh.

  As kindhearted as Lady Adeline Redmond was, she was equally practical and in no way sentimental. Of course, she had many long years’ service in charitable works which had helped to shape her ways, cool her sentiment, and turn the saddest of feelings into a bright sort of energy which gave her the impetus to be something of a formidable force.

  “I am sure that you would do very well, my dear. Really, you are most effective in your own right.”

  “Adeline, you really are too kind to me.”

  “Not at all. I am always truthful, my dear, as well you know.” Adeline spoke in the sort of hooting tone which Imogen recognized well. It was the tone which signified that she was going to be, albeit most lovingly, bullied just a little. “And I am going to have to insist that you start to recognize your own qualities. You really didn’t ought to need me to tell you about them all the time. And it is not immodest to recognize one’s own talents. It is a very clever thing to do for it allows you to work with your finest skills uppermost. Now then, does that make sense?”

  In resting pose, Lady Adeline Redmond’s face had the round kindness of late middle age. However, when she became intent on any subject, her countenance became something else altogether. Her relaxed and kindly brown eyes became small and shiny like little beads, and they spoke volumes of the shrewdness behind them.

  In fact, her ability to change demeanour so quickly often caught people off-guard and found them parting with more money for charitable works than they had originally intended to. More than once, Imogen had wondered if it was a well-practiced tactic rather than a natural propensity.

  “Yes, it makes perfect sense. And, of course, delivered in your own special style, my dear, it would appear to be something that cannot be argued with.”

  “Jolly good, you know how I do not like to be argued with,” Lady Adeline said and laughed heartily.

  “So, do you think your friend will be able to secure us admittance? I mean, I think it would further our cause if we were at least able to see inside the workhouse.” Imogen turned her attention back to the immense building before her.

  They were standing on Princes Road in Lambeth, both facing the enormous Lambeth workhouse. The great beige stone frontage of the building seemed to stretch for miles, although she knew it did not. There were two single-story entrance ways attached to the front of the building, and the thought of walking through one of them sent a shiver down Imogen’s spine. In truth, she could hardly think that she would feel more nervous entering the doorway to the Bedlam.

  Of course, the workhouse was not exactly an asylum, but they no doubt shared inmates in common.

  Whilst the workhouse was intended to provide the most basic sustenance for the elderly, the poor, and the infirm, each one of those groups undoubtedly contained some people whose reasoning might otherwise, on a different day of the week, have seen them locked away in an asylum.

  “I have known Daniel Travers a good number of years, Imogen, and I have no doubt he will find some way of getting us inside.”

  “And Mr Travers is a trustee?”

  “No, Mr Travers is one of the guardians of the poor of the parish of Lambeth, to give them their correct and ridiculously long-winded title.”

  “I can hardly believe you have a friend who has such a title. After all, there is much talk in charitable circles about the so-called guardians and their very obvious connections to local industry.”

  “Yes, but Daniel has no such connections. He is a retired man of inherited wealth and has never had to rely on such dubious methods to ensure his income. That is why he is in such a good position to see it all happening around him. And that is why he is prepared to take the risk of discovery that might well come from showing us about the place. After all, he is a guardian for the sake of being a guardian. Unlike the others, he does not lose out financially were he to be dismissed from that particular post.”

  “I am so torn, Adeline. There is a part of me that is so keen to charge in through those doors and look around that I can almost not bear to stand idle upon the spot a moment longer,” she said, her pale blue eyes wide with passion. “But there is another part of me that is so afraid of stepping foot in such a place. I have seen the poor, my dear friend, but I have never seen them enslaved.”

  “And as much as the rest of the country might not care to admit it, enslavement it is,” Lady Redmond agreed and nodded firmly.

  “There is a part of me that is terrified to walk into that place. There are so ma
ny windows and chimneys that it makes the building seem even larger than it is. Large and imposing, despite the paleness of its stone and the beautiful sunshine of the day. I feel it is a place that one dare not walk into for fear that one might not be allowed out again.”

  “In many ways, I understand your sentiments entirely, Imogen, since they are almost always inordinately clever. But in other ways, I cannot help thinking you one of the most fanciful people I have met.”

  “As always, my dear friend, your compliments are handed out in the most delightfully rough manner.”

  “Thank you kindly.”

  “You are welcome.” Imogen laughed and shook her head.

  There was not a person in the world, barring her father, whom she cared more about than she did Lady Adeline Redmond. Imogen could hardly remember a time when Adeline was not something of a feature at Pennington Hall, her father’s estate in Hertfordshire.

  Adeline had always been a regular attendee at events in her father’s home right back to the days when Imogen’s much-adored mother had still been alive. And since Lord and Lady Pennington had always been famed for entertaining people they wanted in their world rather than people they thought ought to be in their world, it was clear to Imogen that Adeline had always been a welcome visitor.

  Her father, in particular, had always enjoyed the company of people whom he described, in his own words, as having something about them, and Adeline certainly had that. Lord Pennington liked interesting people as opposed to influential people, and his wife certainly had no objection to his outlook on life.

  Imogen had already held Lady Adeline in high regard by the time her own wonderful mother had died and, in no time at all, Lady Adeline’s kindness and bustling attentive manner had seen to it that the two had become firm friends. In truth, their friendship had a mother-daughter quality to it and likely always would. After all, there were three clear decades between their respective ages, and Adeline had stepped in at a time when Imogen, at just sixteen years, was at her most vulnerable. She had lost her mother and had been looking all about her for someone who might go some way to easing the loss. And there was Lady Adeline Redmond; young for a widow, and awfully, awfully busy almost all the time.

  “Of course, dear Daniel has only been one of the guardians for a matter of months. He is doing his best, of course, but it might be some time before we finally get to see the conditions inside for ourselves.”

  “The idea of waiting seems a little unbearable, Adeline. The sooner we know how it all works, the sooner we can make a plan of our own. I cannot bear to be hanging in limbo.”

  “I suppose that is the problem with charity work, my dear. What you have seen of it so far has been the hustle and bustle of small and very personal acts of charity. They all seem to happen quickly, and the gratification is almost instant. But we are not simply talking of charity here, Imogen. We are talking about great changes which are nipping at the heels of social reform. Really, that you cannot find a little patience for something so great.” Adeline was teasing her again and laughing warmly.

  “As much as I should want to protest your words, Adeline, I know them to be true. And you are right; there is an instant gratification from the small acts of charity. Perhaps I ought to continue to throw myself into them whilst we are waiting for an audience with Mr Travers.”

  “Yes, there is always room to make oneself of good use. But we are not entirely in limbo, Imogen. There is much to think about and many plans we can still make. After all, we do have a very good idea of what goes on inside these places, even if we have not seen it with our own eyes. There is nothing to stop us setting down on paper the plans we intend to follow in the end. I cannot think that they would change a great deal once we have seen inside the Lambeth workhouse, nor any other workhouse for that matter.”

  “But if we are to attempt to offer an alternative to the workhouse system, then surely we must know the workhouse system in its entirety.”

  “That is so sensible, Imogen,” Adeline conceded. “And we shall know the system in its entirety, fear not. But I do think we have the bare bones, and we do know enough to begin our little crusade, do we not?”

  “Do we?”

  “What we are going to offer, if I am not mistaken, is charity without any need to repay the favour, as it were. Real charity, rather than the ostensible charity of commerce preying on the poor and the weak as a means of cheap, or indeed free, labour.”

  “Yes, that is precisely our goal, Adeline.” Imogen nodded vehemently, her bright red hair threatening to break free from the clips which barely contained its great tresses on the back of her head.

  “Then we now need to begin to concentrate upon the details of such a thing. We cannot wait for our tour of the workhouse before we set about it all. We can at least commit the thing to paper and decide between us exactly how such an endeavour is to be run. There are many practicalities to be addressed, such as suitable buildings and perpetual funding. After all, a charity that runs as a true charity and nothing more will always need funding from the purses of others. We shall need to decide upon a means of ensuring we always have enough money, not only for starting it all up but for keeping the thing running in perpetuity.”

  “The idea of securing enough funding in the first place rather frightens me, Adeline.”

  “Frightens you how, my dear?”

  “I suppose I am frightened that we will not be able to secure such funding. I mean, if we are to find a building and purchase it, or rent it at the very least, and then fit it out in such a way as to make the most use of it, we are going to need such a great amount of money in the very beginning to get things going.” Imogen let out a great sigh. “What if we do not get that far? What if we do not even raise enough money to secure some premises from which to operate?”

  “My dear girl, you are anticipating failure before we have even begun. Really, you cannot let your spirits flag before we have even got going upon the thing.”

  “You are right, of course. It is that as I stand here now looking at such an immense building, wondering how many souls reside within, I realize what a task we are undertaking. And I hope that I am up to the challenge, as it were. After all, the running of that place is funded by the Parish, is it not? We shall not be funded by anything other than the kindness of others.”

  “It need not be the kindness of others, my dear. People can always be bullied and manipulated, I promise.” Lady Adeline let out such a hoot of laughter that she drew the attention of a rather stern looking driver sitting atop a carriage outside the small coaching inn some yards away. “All we need to do is gather enough of them in one room and set them against one another. The moment we have one good donation, especially a high-profile one, everybody else will be clamouring to show themselves charitable also. You know what society is like, my dear. You know how it all works.”

  “But where are we to go to gather such a group of people? And will one event be enough to get the sort of money we need? I can hardly think so.”

  “Then we will arrange as many events as we can,” Adeline said, linking her arm through her young friend’s and turning her to walk back in the direction of her carriage which was parked at the top of Princes Road.

  “But for us to arrange these events would surely cost money in the first place?”

  “That is the way of charity, my dear. You have to spend out, sometimes rather a lot, just to get a little back over the odds.”

  “But that will take forever. What we really need …” Imogen stopped walking and stood in the middle of Princes Road with her mouth agape.

  “Have you thought of something or are you just a little unwell? Do close your mouth, dear,” Adeline said, looking at Imogen with an amused sort of concern.

  “I have just thought of something. I have thought of a way to surround ourselves with such people of society as you have described without it costing us a penny.”

  “Have you indeed?” Adeline raised her eyebrows.

  “The Lon
don Season,” Imogen said and spread her arms wide, freeing herself from her friend’s grasp. “We can attend as many society events as we can manage over those few months, can we not? And think of the people whose purses we might be able to raid on account of it.”

  “Are you really, in all honesty, suggesting that you and I attend this year’s London Season?” It was now Lady Adeline’s turn to stand in the middle of Princes Road with her mouth agape.

  “That is precisely what I am suggesting.” Imogen’s smile was as bright as it had ever been.

  Chapter 2

  “There is always so much to think about before one sets off for London, is there not?” Veronica Montgomery, the Countess of Reddington, flung herself down onto the velvet covered couch as if the whole idea exhausted her.