Captivated by the Earl (Regency Romance) (Regency Tales Book 5) Read online

  Contents

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  BONUS CHAPTER 1:WINNING THE VISCOUNT’S HEART

  BONUS CHAPTER 2:THE DUKE’S SON TO THE RESCUE

  Copyright © Regina Darcy 2016

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher and writer except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a contemporary work of fiction. All characters, names, places and events are the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously.

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  reginadarcy.cleanandwholesomeromance.com

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  ONE

  The young woman who was briskly walking to her destination did not notice the interest of the men—not all of them gentlemen—who paused in their labours and conversations to admire her impeccable posture, resplendent hair the colour of cinnamon, and her straightforward gaze which did not employ the coy habits of other women of marriageable age. Had any of them wished to engage her interest, they would have failed in their attempts if they chose to praise her for her beauty, or to strike a sonnet in tribute to her carriage. But if any of them had the inspiration to talk of ships, of ports in other countries or the products that sailed upon the ships populating the oceans of the world, or the unassailable legacy of seafaring London, they would have had no trouble in attracting her attention.

  Unlike others of her sex, who had been reared to regard themselves as matrimonial quarry, Elizabeth Hargrave had been raised by a widowed father who, a novice in the upbringing of daughters, had treated his only child like a beloved apprentice. Henry Hargrave was a merchant, a very successful one, and his faith in the East India Company was unswerving. The bustle of the docks, the crowds made up of merchants, ship-owners and shipbuilders in many ways had been her formal schooling. Her father had become a widower and a father in the same moment Elizabeth’s mother died in childbirth. But he had accepted God’s will and brought up his daughter with a reverence for England’s commerce that probably, if he considered it at all, rivalled his sense of duty to the Almighty. He was proud of his reputation and his business prowess and his daughter was an integral part of what he had built.

  There was always something new to discover on the docks and Elizabeth had grown up with London as her classroom. To see London through its ships was to witness the true England, the nation which had become an empire because its fleet was bold, its sailors experienced, and its seafaring identity one which had been constant throughout the country’s existence. The new century that was just two years old seemed so very modern compared to the previous one. While it was true that Great Britain’s King George III was regrettably mad, English eyes kept their focus on the goings-on across the Channel. There, the French bloodbath of the previous years had seemingly been staunched by the rise to power of a man named Napoleon; his ambitions kept politicians and military leaders throughout Europe and Russia vigilant. She thought of Napoleon often, as did most British, but Great Britain itself seemed to go on as it always had. Napoleon had been heard to dismiss the British as a nation of shopkeepers, but Elizabeth’s father, instead of being insulted by the reputed remark, had applauded it. Britain, he told Elizabeth, would continue to thrive as long as its shopkeepers, merchants, and the East India Company continued to be the backbone of the Empire.

  It seemed to Elizabeth that surely all the world passed through London by way of the docks. When she was a child, she had thought of the docks as London’s doors, opening wide to let in the ships of all nations and their products. She remembered her father laughing at her words, but with pride, as if she had happened upon knowledge beyond her years.

  As she made her way to her father’s office, it was the building, not the eyes of male admirers, along the dock that held her in rapt attention. The West India docks, now nearing the end of their construction, would soon be bearing the wealth of the world as it was unloaded from the ships; the docks would showcase the sugar, tea, grain and the other products of other places. They were a new mercantile adventure, one which bore close observation. Her father was a vigorous supporter of the enterprise and his hard work and advocacy were poised to enrich the commercial fortunes of London and also make Henry Hargrave a wealthy man.

  Having reached her father’s office, a three-storey building located in the pulsing heart of the commercial sector of the docks, Elizabeth opened the door and disappeared from view, unaware that one keen pair of eyes in particular had been following her closely. The gentleman looked at the sign above the entrance way. His eyebrows rose. Hargrave and Daughter, East India Company, was neatly lettered, boldly announcing to all who passed by that here, on England’s newest docks, was a man of business who apparently did not know that women’s brains were not suited for the intricate workings of commerce. The Earl of Strathmore, intrigued by this revelation, bade farewell to his companions and continued on his way, his thoughts spinning like the silken strands of a spider’s web as he pondered the potential of this development.

  Inside the office, Elizabeth went directly to her desk. Mr George had already arrived and had brewed tea.

  “Good morning, Miss Hargrave,” he said, formal as always as he poured her a cup.

  “Good morning, Mr George,” she replied. Mr George was her father’s right-hand man, assisting him in the many aspects of his work as a merchant. There was nothing that Henry Hargrave could request of him that Mr George would not accede to and her father trusted his assistant completely. Mr George had come into the business by a most curious process. Henry Hargrave regarded slavery as an abomination; he was a vigorous supporter of Wilberforce’s campaign to abolish the institution but for a few days in the late 1790s, he had been a slave-owner. That was when he had seen Mr George on the auction block, the proud black man with the accent of Jamaica, bearing the scars of past whippings, offered for sale to whomever had the price. Offended by the practice, Henry Hargrave had outbid every man there. He had brought Mr George to his place of business and offered him his freedom and a job. The dignified young man had been wary at first but he soon realised, when his manumission papers were in his hand, that Henry Hargrave had been serious.

  Mr George soon learned the business of the docks and he had an advantage that another assistant would have lacked. Mr George knew commerce from its seamy underbelly. He was aware of the graft and corruption, the evil and greed that ruled many of London’s merchants and nowhere was this side of the city more visible than in the transactions that took place within the naval outposts of Great Britain. If Mr George regarded his former owner as naïve, he never said so, but Elizabeth knew that Mr George, unlike her father, had no illusions about his fellow man. He had seen too much.

  “Is Papa already out?” she asked, sipping her tea and appreciating the generous serving of sugar which Mr George had added. Sugar was not merely a sweetener that added flavour to the beverage; it was another of the products of the docks which travelled from ship to port to customer, expanding the profits of the canny merchants who sold it. Elizabeth had learned to her sums upon receipts and bills of lading; geography had been a lesson taught according to the flags under which the world’s ships sailed; she perfected her French, mastered German, and acquired Spanish as a result of the business which passed through her father’s office. She was less adept at emb
roidery, watercolours, and playing the harp than other young ladies of genteel upbringing who sought to impress their prospective suitors with their feminine accomplishments, but adding a column of numbers in her head, arguing costs in a merchant’s native tongue, and knowing which ship carried which cargo were attributes prized by her father. Henry Hargrave had no notion of how he should rear a marriageable daughter, and there was no woman at home to guide him in these arcane concepts, so he did the best he could.

  Her father did not know that there were times when Elizabeth wondered if her zeal for business should have been muted in favour of the quest for a husband. At twenty-five, well past the age when most Englishwomen were married and had started a family, she was aware that she was decidedly a spinster in the ‘old maid’ category, on the shelf and unlikely to entice matrimonial prospects. Any young gentlemen she knew, such as Nathaniel Woodstock, she counted as friends or colleagues in business, wholly separate from the work of Love. But it was not something she could discuss with her father, who saw her as the heir to his business, and not as someone’s potential wife.

  The door opened. Elizabeth looked up from her ledger and Mr George’s head turned from the teapot.

  “Good day to you both,” said the gentleman who had entered. He brought with him a sense of action rather than leisure and his complexion gave evidence of an active life spent outdoors that seemed at odds with his exquisitely-tailored garments, the cut of his coat, and his aristocratic bearing, which bespoke, even before he gave his name, of a lineage that was familiar to Debrett’s New Peerage. “Might I have a word with Mr Hargrave?”

  TWO

  “Mr Hargrave is not in,” Mr George replied with his customary gravity. While Elizabeth and her father had their individual responsibilities, it was Mr George who ran the office. Her father was insistent upon giving Mr George his due and Elizabeth found that it was much easier to rely on Mr George, whose organisational skills were vast, although it discomfited many of the other merchants who were thereby forced to treat Mr George as an equal. Henry Hargrave’s liberal policy regarding his freed slave was not universally popular, but her father believed that God did not condone the ownership of men and therefore the rest of the business world needed to comply with God.

  “Then perhaps Miss Hargrave can help me?” The gentleman bowed in Elizabeth’s direction.

  If Hargrave’s customers were discomfited at being expected to regard Mr George as a legitimate member of the business, they were generally even more outraged at the thought that they should conduct their business with a female. Hargrave was, in the minds of most, boneheaded to announce to the world that his daughter was his heir, without having first found a husband to conduct the affairs of business on her behalf. Therefore, it was startling for Elizabeth to hear herself actually requested as a substitute for her father.

  “Please sit down--” she paused so that their customer could provide an introduction.

  “Very sorry, remiss of me. I’m Lord William Grove.”

  “The Earl of Strathmore?” Elizabeth inquired, scarcely believing her ears. While her father’s business interests brought him into contact with all levels of society, it was unheard of for the gentry to come to the docks in person and meet with him.

  Strathmore bowed. “At your service, ma’am.”

  “Does my father have an appointment with you, my lord?” Elizabeth asked. “If so, I assure you that he will be here presently. He is never late for an appointment; something must have detained him.”

  Strathmore smiled. With his raven-black hair and dark eyes, he seemed to come from a more exotic lineage than the typical blueblood; his golden-tanned skin was evidence of hours spent in outdoor pursuits not confined to the aristocratic pastimes of fox hunting or fencing. It gave him the appearance of a man who did not seek to shield himself from the same sunlight that branded common labourers whose skin was unprotected. Even in his stylishly form-fitting buckskin trousers, high-topped boots, intricately folded cravat, top hat and tailcoat, he evinced more of nature than the drawing room. But his voice was pure Beau Monde, with the drawling, languid intonation of a gentleman of leisure who had no intention of stirring himself unduly.

  “It is I who seek him,” he said. “Will he be in this morning?”

  Her father was so busy with the final arrangements for the West India docks that no one could say with any certainty when he would appear.

  “Perhaps you would prefer to make an appointment,” Mr George suggested. “Then Mr Hargrove will be sure to be present to meet with you.”

  “If you are quite sure that I will not be able to meet with him this morning, then perhaps that would be the better option—”

  The door opened and Hargrave himself entered, bringing with him the compact sense of vigour that accompanied all his actions. He was as animated as Mr George was stoic and the two were an effective pairing.

  “Mr Hargrave, the Earl of Strathmore is here to see you.”

  “So I see,” Hargrave responded, with a bow in Strathmore’s direction. “Your Lordship, my pleasure.”

  “Strathmore, please,” the Earl said lazily. “It’s much more succinct and I admire efficiency, particularly in forms of address. Might I meet with you privately? The news of the West India docks has naturally been a most intriguing topic of conversation among several of my relatives; as you know, my family has significant shipping interests all over the world and the current unrest in France has occasioned some concern.”

  Hargrave looked puzzled. “Of course, Your—Strathmore, but I cannot conceive how I can be of service to you.”

  Strathmore smiled. “I trust I shall be able to elucidate the matter.”

  “Certainly.” Hargrave held out his hand to direct the Earl to his office.

  After the two men disappeared behind the heavy wooden door, Mr George and Elizabeth exchanged glances, Mr George’s demeanour revealing nothing, Elizabeth’s features alive with curiosity.

  “Mr George,” Elizabeth began, “do the Strathmores have significant holdings in the East India Company?”

  “I believe they do, but so do many others.”

  “Of the nobility?” she asked with a frown, knowing that the British aristocracy looked down upon trade, relying on its revenues from land as the foundation of inherited wealth.

  “I believe the Strathmore family is said to have broadened its financial base over the last generation to include a substantial interest in trade.”

  “Are they in debt?” she asked bluntly.

  “I believe they are regarded as one of the most financially-stable of all the titled families in the Empire. The Earl is said to have a particular gift for business and I believe he has sailed on the Strathmore line to investigate the family holdings abroad. I’ve heard it said that he was actually in France during the height of Robespierre’s Reign of Terror.”

  “Indeed! I’m surprised he left with his head intact.”

  Mr George coughed. “I believe that he did not travel under his own identity.”

  “Really? Mr George, you know everything.”

  “One hears things,” he replied with no change of expression.

  Elizabeth knew the things that Mr George heard were often of great value to her father, who relied on his assistant’s insights to provide background information that he would not otherwise have been privy to, including details which could change the decisions of the men of influence who were involved in the future of the West India docks. To be a man of business in an era in which ordinary men were only beginning to establish their own rank, based on merit and hard work rather than family name, required many different abilities.

  Knowledge was one such ability.

  Elizabeth had sought Mr George’s input not only on what a potential business partner or a competitor wanted as a customer, but how he conducted himself, good or ill, in his personal life. Scandal affected profit, her father had explained. To rely on a man who was too deeply dipped, who lost too much at cards or squandered excessive
ly on loose-living, was to jeopardise the project. A man did not have to be a saint to do business with Hargrave and Daughter, but his funding had to be secure. Her father did not gamble with his profits.

  Mr George returned to his inventory lists and Elizabeth tried to concentrate on the figures in the ledger. But she found herself wishing that she’d dressed with more care that morning, and that she’d chosen a gown with cuffs that were not ink-stained; her hair, too, would have benefitted from more attentive styling. She knew that she was being absurd; a man of the Earl’s rank would not lower himself to notice a humble merchant’s daughter, even if Henry Hargrave was regarded as the seer of the docks for his knowledge of the merchant endeavours that kept Great Britain’s trade booming. Besides, she was past the prime marriageable age and on the shelf, particularly for a Corinthian like Strathmore who travelled in the most exclusive social circles. It was to be expected that the ambitious mamas of Mayfair and Belgravia had their sights set on the handsome Earl who had all the attributes of the greatest matrimonial prize.

  An hour later the office door opened and the Earl emerged, followed by Hargrave. The two men were laughing companionably: whatever business had been transacted within, it had apparently been successful. Hargrave was by nature a genial man, even in business, although his amiable personality had never left him less firm with regards to hammering out the details before a contract could be signed.

  “Mr George, please take His Lordship on a tour of the docks,” Hargrave requested. “He has expressed an interest in our venture.”

  “Certainly, sir. If Your Lordship will follow me...”

  “Thank you,” Strathmore said as politely as if he were speaking to a member of his own class and not a dark-skinned former slave from the Jamaican sugar plantations. Elizabeth was surprised by Strathmore’s courtesy, especially considering his position in society. He had been, throughout the conversation, as polite as if he were a client of ordinary means and not a man whose family had been known in England since the Tudors. His manners were ingrained in him, not merely a presentable overlay to varnish a moral deficiency within, but as an active component of who he was as a man. Excepting her father, Elizabeth had met men from all classes of society but she had never met anyone who exhibited such ease in the company of a man who, years before, had known the misery of servitude and the lash of the whip at the hands of the men who claimed to own him.