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Untreed Reads - Joan Wolf

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81 pages

English

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A LADY IN DISGUISEValentine Ardsley disguised herself as a teenaged boy to take a job as a groom on the magnificent Yorkshire estate of the arrogantly self-assured, imperiously handsome, Lord Diccon Leyburn. But her daring escape from the narrow confines of young ladyhood did not last long.Valentine was unmasked by Lord Leyburn with shameful ease. Even worse, when Leyburn made her an offer of marriage, he made it insultingly clear that this was a matter of duty on his part, and certainly not desire.Never would Valentine accept such an odious offer. Instead she would go to London to find a gentleman who would really love her-even if this meant pretending she could love any man but the infuriatingly irresistible Lord Leyburn in return...

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Historical romance

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Publié par	Untreed Reads
Date de parution	11 mai 2021
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781949135596
Langue	English

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Table of Contents
Copyright
Also by Joan Wolf and Untreed Reads Publishing
The Devilishly Dashing Lord Comes to London
PART I
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
PART II
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
About the Author
Fool’s Masquerade
By Joan Wolf
Copyright 2021 by Joan Wolf
Cover Copyright 2021 by Ginny Glass and Untreed Reads Publishing
Cover Design by Ginny Glass
The author is hereby established as the sole holder of the copyright. Either the publisher (Untreed Reads) or author may enforce copyrights to the fullest extent.
Previously published in 1984, 2014.
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher or author, except in the case of a reviewer, who may quote brief passages embodied in critical articles or in a review. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This is a work of fiction. The characters, dialogue and events in this book are wholly fictional, and any resemblance to companies and actual persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Also by Joan Wolf and Untreed Reads Publishing
A Difficult Truce
A Double Deception
A Fashionable Affair
A Kind of Honor
A London Season
Beloved Stranger
Born of the Sun
Change of Heart
Daughter of the Red Deer
Golden Girl
Highland Sunset
His Lordship's Mistress
Lord Richard's Daughter
Margarita and the Earl
Portrait of a Love
Someday Soon
Summer Storm
The American Duchess
The American Earl
The Arrangement
The Counterfeit Marriage
The Deception
The Edge of Light
The English Bride
The Gamble
The Guardian
The Heiress
The Horsemasters
The Master of Grex
The Portrait
The Pretenders
The Rebel and the Rose
The Rebellious Ward
The Reindeer Hunters
The Reluctant Earl
The Road to Avalon
The Scottish Lord
Wild Irish Rose
www.untreedreads.com
The Devilishly Dashing Lord Comes to London
Valentine heard the news with trepidation. Diccon Leyburn had arrived in London from the north of England, and meant to take her back home with him as his wife, whether or not he wanted her as a woman.
Valentine told herself it was foolish to fear that Diccon could have his way. There were far too many gentlemen in town who would do anything to stop Diccon from carrying her off.
There was Martin Wakefield, for one, her handsome radically minded cousin. And Lord Stowe, with his fabulous fortune and golden charm, And Lord Henry Sandcroft, a gallant fearless soldier.
Surely any one of them was a match for Leyburn-and together they would be overwhelming, Valentine assured herself.
But Valentine had much to learn about the lord who would not take no for an answer…and still more to learn about herself.
PART I
Spring, 1809
My father had a daughter loved a man
As it might be perhaps, were I a woman
I should your lordship.
Twelfth Night I, iv, 121-123
Chapter 1
The gray stallion snorted vigorously, and I patted his powerful, arched neck. “I perfectly agree, Saladin,” I said, looking around me. “This does not look like a main coaching road.”
It was, in fact, the main coaching road from London to Richmond and it was quite clear to me why Mr. Speight, whose book of maps I carried, had described it as a “bonecruncher.” All around there stretched grass-covered hills and wild open moors. Before me was a narrow, steep, precipitous track that led down into the pass of Coverdale. Offering up a silent prayer of gratitude that I was on the back of a horse and not riding in a coach behind one, I touched my heels to Saladin’s sides, and we started forward again.
In spite of the empty bleakness of the landscape I was actually quite close to my destination. “Carlton Castle,” I said out loud, and Saladin’s ears pricked forward at the sound of my voice. I felt a little shiver run down my backbone and grinned at my own susceptibility. Still, there isn’t a schoolchild in England who wouldn’t have had the same reaction. Carlton Castle was a legend, the seat of the Fitzallans, the lords of Yorkshire and for seven hundred years the greatest uncrowned family in England. Fitzallan exploits filled the history books and ran throughout chronicle, story, and ballad. The present lord was Richard Fitzallan, Earl of Leyburn, and it was toward his home of Carlton that I was journeying.
I was not, unfortunately, going in the capacity of a guest. I was, in fact, delivering a horse. Saladin, to be precise.
Saladin had come into my life at a very convenient moment. You might say he fitted my needs as neatly as I fitted his.
He was a splendid horse, strong and powerful and fast. He belonged to the Marquis of Rayleigh, owner of a famous racing stable at Newmarket, and he had the potential for greatness. Saladin had only one flaw: he would not let anyone ride him.
This presented a distinct problem for the Marquis, who had not bred the horse himself but had bought him as a three-year-old. He had paid quite a pretty penny for him, but Saladin, as he was at present, was useless. The marquis couldn’t even sell him-the story of the horse’s vicious temper was too well known in racing circles.
Not to put too fine a point on it, the marquis was stuck with the goods. And then one day the Earl of Leyburn had come to Newmarket for the race meeting and seen Saladin. The earl offered to buy him for a handsome price-if the marquis could deliver him to Carlton Castle. It is a long way from Newmarket to the moors of north-western Yorkshire and this is where I entered the picture.
My father had been killed in Sir John Moore’s retreat to Corunna a few months previously, and after three years in Portugal, I was home in England. Amid the confusion of the evacuated army, I had managed to escape the friends of my father whom I knew were filled with unwelcome plans for my future, and I headed, like a magnet to metal, to Newmarket.
If there was one thing I knew in this world, it was horses. My father had been in the cavalry and I had passed the greater part of my childhood in Ireland. Papa was stationed in Kildare and I had years and years of experience galloping horses over the Curragh, that great open grassy plain that all good horses go to when they die.
I needed a job and I thought I might find one in Newmarket. I have few ordinary talents, but I can do just about anything with a horse.
I rode Saladin. He had clearly been abused as a youngster, and he was terrified of people, but we understood each other. And the marquis offered me fifty guineas to deliver him safely to Carlton.
The money was certainly attractive, especially since I had only twenty pounds between myself and starvation. And, for reasons of my own, I thought it might be a good idea to bury myself in the country for a while. I accepted the job.
The ride north had been extremely pleasant. The marquis was generous with traveling money, and Saladin and I stayed only at the best inns. I ate hearty, well-cooked meals, slept in soft comfortable beds, and best of all, had a hot bath every night. I was almost sorry to see the end of my journey in sight. I was quite certain my accommodations at Carlton Castle wouldn’t be nearly as luxurious as the inns I had lately been frequenting.
I was hoping very much that I would get a position at Carlton Castle. If they hoped to do anything at all with Saladin, I thought, they would have to hire me. He would scarcely let anyone else near him.
We were deep into the pass of Coverdale by now and I looked around me with something approaching awe. On one side of me towered the enormous grassy bulk of a hillside and from all sides of me wafted the sweet smell of moorland grass and damp earth. Far in the distance I could hear the bleating of a sheep-the only sound in all that vast emptiness. I had enjoyed Portugal, its warmth, its sea; but it hadn’t smelled. Too arid, I suppose. But here… I inhaled deeply. It was marvelous. It brought back something of my childhood in Ireland-the smell of damp, of earth and grass and bog. I hadn’t realized how much I had missed it.
I followed the road toward the dale foot, through Wooddale, Bradley, and Horsehouse, where the coach horses were fed and rested. I didn’t stop, however, but pushed on through the barren ramparts of grass and rock toward Carlton.
The castle was visible from quite a distance, a huge, imposing, distinctly Norman-looking bulk built to command an excellent view of the dale from all sides. I felt once again that shiver down my back. It was exactly as it should be: enormous, forbidding, feudal. Isolated. I looked around me once again. It didn’t seem possible, I thought, that this quiet corner of distant Yorkshire had once been the scene of princely magnificence, of great occasions of state. Kings had visited Carlton, I knew, and most of the great names of medieval England had come and gone with steady regularity.
The Fitzallans had long since ceased to play an active role in the government of Great Britain, but the Earl of Leyburn had remained over the centuries an undisputed power in the north. The earl might make only a rare appearance in London, but no one had any doubt as to who controlled Yorkshire’s vote in the Commons.
I had learned quite a bit about the Fitzallans from a young lieutenant in my father’s regiment who had been stationed with us in Ireland. He