A Rake by Reputation (Westham Chronicles Book 1) Read online

  A Rake by Reputation

  Westham Chronicles, Volume 1

  Rachel Osborne

  Published by Rachel Osborne, 2019.

  This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

  A RAKE BY REPUTATION

  First edition. March 2, 2019.

  Copyright © 2019 Rachel Osborne.

  Written by Rachel Osborne.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgements

  Also by Rachel Osborne | Regency Historical Fiction

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  Sir Benjamin Devereaux discovered he was a sir on a Tuesday. Up until then, he had been plain old Benjamin or Mr Devereaux from those trying to promote an acquaintance, and there were not a great many of those, for, along with his good looks and charm, Benjamin Devereaux was in possession of one thing most young men of eight-and-twenty sought to avoid: a reputation.

  “Come on, Devereaux!” George Lennox moaned, folding his tall, well-built figure into a chair clearly not designed for such wanton lounging. “Put your papers down for the day and come out with me. Surely you must be finished by now!”

  “Almost.” Ben’s voice was little more than a whisper and he cleared his throat, scanning the letter he held once more before laying it down with a short, bitter laugh. This caught his friend’s ear and at once Lennox sat up straighter.

  “Do share the joke, Dev,” he urged, folding his arms politely and turning what he evidently thought was a curious gaze upon his friend. “Enquiring minds would like to know what it is that can make the perpetually ill-tempered Benjamin Devereaux laugh.”

  “That’s Sir Benjamin to you, Lennox,” Ben said, tapping one finger on the letter. “As of a few days ago.”

  Lennox frowned as if he were not quite sure whether his friend spoke the truth or was laying a linguistic trap.

  “It’s very simple, old man.” Ben leaned back in his seat, regarding his friend across the wide expanse of his heavy oak desk. “Sadly, it appears my father has met with an illness he could not bellow into submission. As his eldest and only son, his title passes directly to me.” His smile grew cynical and sly. “Along with the estate in the country, and this fine establishment. Within which, you have been making yourself quite at home this past year.”

  “Heavens, Dev.” George’s face had paled. He had the grace to look a little sober for the first time in their acquaintance. Devereaux knew he ought to explain quite quickly that there was very little love lost between the young Ben and his lately departed father but he rather liked seeing the usually light-hearted George Lennox rendered serious for once.

  “I’m sorry for -”

  “Do not mention my loss,” Ben muttered, his voice dangerously low. “That man may have been my father, but his departure from this earth is no loss to me. We last spoke a decade ago, and I have managed perfectly well for the past ten years without him. I dare say I shall continue to survive in his absence.” He tried to smile, but the expression felt strange and forced. Clearing his throat, he tried again. “I wonder if I can avail myself of a visit to the country as soon as this week. I should like to see the old place again...”

  His eyes closed as he conjured the dappled sunlight and greenery of his childhood. He was just reconstructing the walled garden that had been his mother’s domain when the memory shifted. It was not his mother’s light, musical voice he recalled but another woman’s harsh cry. His eyes flew open and he saw his hands tightening around the edge of the desk with such force his knuckles had turned white.

  “Well, now you must come and have a drink with me,” Lennox declared, watching his friend carefully. “To celebrate your father’s life and mourn his passing.” His expression shifted into a dark smile. “Or to mourn his life and celebrate his passing, I leave the choice to you. Either way, there ought to be brandy. As but one of us is now endowed with a title, I shall allow your purse-strings to stretch on this occasion. Let’s go to the club and see if any of the others are about.”

  Devereaux cracked a smile, feeling the tension ebb from his limbs. George Lennox was able to wring an excuse for drinking out of anything but in this case, perhaps he was right. Ben didn’t need to make any decisions right away. His eyes narrowed dangerously. Silence would be a weapon in its own right. No doubt his stepmother would be worried enough about what the new Sir Benjamin’s first actions might be. Why not let her stew a little longer?

  “Very well, Lennox. You have been a very patient companion while I attended to my papers. Come along. I suppose I ought to make the most of being here while I still can before my new responsibilities call me away.”

  “Indeed!” Lennox beamed and launched himself towards the door.

  Ben folded his letter neatly, with care that bordered on reverence. He slid it into a pocket, feeling the absurd notion that he needed to keep it close, a talisman against too much merriment - or too much melancholy, he was not quite sure to which he was most inclined at present. A reminder of where he had come from and, now, who he had become...

  Sir Benjamin Devereaux. He turned the name over in his mind, wondering how long it would be before it lost all association with his distant, difficult father and became entirely his own.

  ROLAND PARK WAS SO familiar to Amelia Sudbury that she had tripped quite comfortably over the threshold that morning with a basket for her friend and been a little surprised to find the great house still shrouded in silence. A servant with drawn features, perpetually shooting a glance overhead, ushered her into the spacious parlour, where, to Amelia’s relief, she could see her friend, Joanna Devereaux, already waiting for her.

  “I came to see you,” Amelia said, shedding her cloak and hurrying close enough to embrace her friend. “I ought not to have left it so long, but Papa -” She went white, and swallowed the rest of her words. How cruel! To mention one’s own father in the presence of the friend who had recently lost hers.

  “I am sorry, Joanna,” she blurted, wishing that she was better able to control her wretched tongue, which was forever getting her into one scrape or another.

  “Sorry?” Joanna smiled, sadly. “Why should you be sorry? None of this is your fault, and I am very glad you have come to see us.” Her expression was pained. “Or, come to see me, at least. I am afraid Mama is not able to take visitors at present, nor will she be for some time yet, I fear.”

  Amelia nodded. What grief the poor Lady Devereaux must still be feeling at the loss of her husband!

  “You mustn’t mind Mama,” Joanna continued, urging her friend closer to the fire. “It’s just that it all came as such a shock.”

  This was enough to make Amelia’s eyebrows lift, despite her best attempts at remaining composed. A shock? Sir Benjamin had been unwell for almost as long as Amelia had known him. The old man was an invalid and Amelia recalled only too well being told off for her high spirits as she and
her young friend had frolicked around the grand estate of Roland Park.

  “I am very sorry for her,” Amelia said, reaching across and taking hold of Joanna’s hand warmly. “But it is you that I am most concerned for. My dear friend, I wish there was something I could do to help you bear your loss.”

  “You do help me, by being here!” Joanna exclaimed, smiling at Amelia and looking, for a moment, almost like her old, mischievous self. “I do not know how I should bear Mama’s grief, let alone my own, without company.”

  As if on cue, there was a loud wail from overhead, and Joanna shuddered.

  “How long - how long has she been confined to her room?” Amelia asked, wanting, and yet not wanting, to enquire after her friend’s mother. She had never been particularly fond of Lady Devereaux, who had always acted as if she were a little above Amelia’s own family and tolerated her presence at the house only as a friend for Joanna when there was nobody better. There had been talk of London, and Amelia had braced herself for the loss of her closest friend, but before Lady Devereaux could have her way, her husband had died and the household had been thrown into chaos.

  “Oh, a week at least!” Joanna said.

  Amelia nodded, slowly, her mind turning this detail over. A week? Why, Sir Benjamin had been dead a fortnight! How was it that Lady Devereaux had not been overtaken immediately with her grief?

  “It is not for Papa she cries,” Joanna murmured as if reading her friend’s mind. She kept her eyes fixed on the fire as if, by not looking at Amelia as she spoke, she could not be accused of betraying her mother’s confidence. “She would like us to think that it is, that she grieves and mourns the loss of her husband, but in truth, all this weeping and wailing began upon the receipt of a certain letter.”

  A letter! This was intriguing indeed. Amelia slid her chair closer to her friend, leaning her elbows on her knees and watching Joanna carefully. She was piecing together her response but it seemed as if merely being there and allowing Joanna to speak as she chose, without clarification or interruption, was service enough. Joanna’s eyes, bright with excitement, met Amelia’s. Her cheeks were pink, either from nerves or their proximity to the fire, Amelia could not tell.

  “She does not know that I saw it, of course, for almost as soon as it had been read she tore it into strips and cast it into the fire.”

  Joanna reached for the poker and jabbed at the embers as if recalling the action she had taken on this particular afternoon.

  “Mama did not notice that a large fragment fell down into the grate, singed, but not destroyed.” Biting her lip, she reached beneath a cushion and retrieved the offending fragment. “Here, Amelia. Read it, do, and tell me your thoughts.”

  Amelia’s heart beat fast but she did as her friend instructed, unfolding a scrap of paper carefully, for fear of doing still more damage to it, and smoothing it carefully on her skirt.

  “...my dear lady, no, I will not call you...

  ...return soon to claim my inheritance, but...

  ...will endeavour to show you the same grace...

  ...expect me then. I shall remain...

  “Why, this could mean anything!” Amelia laughed or tried to, but the sound was strangled, and, rather than having the effect she had intended, which had been to soothe her friend’s worries, this served only to inflame them.

  “Oh, but it does not! Amelia, I know precisely what it means. Do you not recognise his hand?”

  Amelia applied her eyes once more to the fragment, but she could not see whatever it was that seemed so apparent to her friend. The handwriting was elegant, suggesting that whoever had penned the letter was educated and erudite, but that could account for almost anybody in the departed Sir Benjamin’s acquaintance. Surely nobody of that class would be cause enough for his widow to take to her bed in hysterics for seven days straight?

  With a patient sigh, Joanna reached for the note, folding it carefully and slipping it back out of sight. She smiled, grimly.

  “It is my brother, Amelia. Ben - well, now, I suppose we must call him Sir Benjamin, for the title has passed to him.” She looked around her. A fat tear rolled down one thin cheek. “As does this house. Oh, Amelia! He means to come here and evict us. That is why Mama wails so. Not because of Papa, but because - because - we are about to be left destitute and homeless!”

  Chapter Two

  “Destitute and homeless! Those are the very words she used, Papa. Can you imagine such a tyrant as the new Sir Benjamin, to eject his own mother and sister out onto the street?”

  Admiral Sudbury harrumphed, muttering something unintelligible from behind his newspaper.

  Amelia ceased her pacing and settled into her own chair at her father’s right-hand-side, peering over the top of his newspaper to meet a pair of misty grey eyes that looked very much like her own, albeit surrounded by a few more wrinkles and far bushier grey eyebrows.

  “Stepmother,” Admiral Sudbury remarked, for the second time. With a flourish, he folded

  his newspaper and set it down on the side-table, before regarding his daughter carefully. “She is Devereaux’s stepmother. And Joanna is his half-sister.”

  “What difference does that make?” Amelia exclaimed, throwing her hands up in despair and leaping to her feet once more. “They are family nonetheless, and he could not be so wicked as to banish them from their own home.”

  Admiral Sudbury’s eyes twinkled.

  “I would imagine a young lady who reads as many novels as you do has rather more grasp than that on the ability of villains to be wicked.” He chuckled. “Assuming, of course, your Sir Benjamin Devereaux is a villain.”

  “I fail to see how he could not be considered so!” Amelia cried. “And do not refer to him as my anybody, Papa, for you know I have never so much as laid eyes on the man.”

  “And yet you profess to anticipate his every move before he has even set foot in Westham. Have you taken to divination in your spare time? Ought I to summon the curate?”

  “Papa!” Amelia huffed. “I do not know why I attempt to converse with you about such things. You are wilfully obtuse and exist only to plague me.”

  “Whereas you exist only to please me, little daughter, which you do.” He patted the seat next to him. “Even when you refuse to sit still for more than minute. Come, Milly, and rest, for your constant toing and froing is enough to drive a man to distraction.” He grimaced. “Or sea-sickness.”

  “Ha!” Amelia barked but sank obediently into her chair nonetheless. “If you intend to convince me that you, an admiral, might be driven to sea-sickness by a little pacing when you survived circumnavigating the globe twice and more than one infamous battle, I shall assure you, you will not succeed.”

  “And yet, you are still, so perhaps the victory is mine in the end.” Her father elbowed her gently in the ribs. “Now, tell me the rest of your story. What makes poor Miss Devereaux so convinced that she and her mother are about to be displaced?”

  “Well -” Amelia faltered. Surely her father would not approve of Joanna’s discovering the truth by deceit and sleight of hand. He was a stickler for privacy and word that Lady Devereaux’s correspondence had fallen into the wrong hands might be just the motivation he needed to march Amelia back over to Roland Park immediately and admit everything to the bedridden Lady. Amelia swallowed, busily conjuring some manner by which the girls might have made their discovery without betraying her friend’s actions.

  “He - he wrote to tell them of his imminent arrival,” she said, at last, trusting that this would not demand any further explanation. “Although Joanna was given little information beyond that. She is fearful that he returns to claim the estate, along with his title, and force them out.”

  “And why do you think him capable of such -” He assumed a tremulous voice. “Villainy?”

  Amelia frowned sternly at him.

  “Why, Father. Surely you have heard even more than I have about Benjamin Devereaux’s misdeeds?”

  Admiral Sudbury’s eyebr
ows lifted, but he said nothing and Amelia was forced to share the little she knew.

  “Well, he is a dreadful r-reprobate.” Amelia flinched, stopping herself at the last minute from uttering the dreaded “rake”. It might be the sort of word she used with her friends, that Joanna herself had applied to her half-brother whenever his name was mentioned, with a silent shock at the recollection of his being sent away.

  “A reprobate?” The admiral’s eyes twinkled. “And how came you to know this, if you haven’t actually met the man?”

  “Well, people say -”

  “What people?”

  Her father’s voice had taken on the barking, belligerent tone he normally reserved for the ladies of Westham whenever they had begun to annoy him with their speculation and conjecture. Admiral Sudbury disliked gossip more than any other sin, and at that moment Amelia felt as if her father’s ire was only moments away from being turned towards her.

  “I only know what Joanna told me, Father, and surely she must know if she is Devereaux’s sister.”

  “Half-sister,” the admiral reminded her. “And were you not the first to remind me that they had not laid eyes on one another in over a decade?” He cleared his throat, noisily, and retrieved the cast-off newspaper. “I dare say she had a great many terrifying tales to tell of her absent half-brother.” He harrumphed. “I dare say one or two of them might even be true or have their roots in truth. But I do not think that means we ought to construct a fully-formed opinion of a man we have yet to meet. Would you like the same to be done of you?”

  Amelia flinched, knowing that this was uttered without malice, but with concern. Admiral Sudbury, himself, had been on the receiving end of cruel tongues wagging. Indeed, there had been enough gossip about his past, enough complaint about the ability of penniless sailors to raise themselves to esteem that it had cost him more than one romance in his youth.