The Ugliest Man in London: Regency Romance Read online

  The Ugliest Man in London

  Charity McColl

  Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

  © 2019 PureRead Ltd

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  Contents

  1. Anyone but The Detestable!

  2. Ladies to the Rescue

  3. Help From Aunt Gretchen

  4. Gretna Green

  5. Recovering in London

  6. A Complicated Marriage

  7. Improving Under Matilda’s Care

  8. Hubert Discovers a Friend

  9. Unraveling the Mystery

  10. Restoring Lord Marcus

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  1

  Anyone but The Detestable!

  “It is,” Matilda Weldon said in the matter-of-fact tones which her friends recognized as the introduction to a master plan, “a great bother to be rich.” She stared disconsolately out the window, feeling as if the glass might as well be prison bars locking her inside. That it would have been a luxurious prison, with fashionable furnishings, exquisite meals, and opulent indulgences was of no importance to twenty-one year old Matilda, an heiress several times over who had just learned that with an inheritance came constraints.

  “You would not say that,” reproved Abigail Wenthouse, “if your papa was a minor government official and your mama was forever bemoaning the fact that we cannot entertain properly.”

  “Yes, she would,” replied Sophia Gilland with a fond smile. “Matilda will always say what she thinks, and she will say it most emphatically.”

  Nell Carstairs looked up from the sketch she was drawing. “You are quite correct, Sophia. Our Matilda will ever know her own mind and will speak it in a forthright manner. But what’s amiss, Matilada? You have been quite blue since we arrived and I suspect that it’s more than the dismal weather making you so.”

  Sighing, Matilda turned away from the window. “Two nights ago, Papa and Mama summoned me into Papa’s study to discuss my ‘prospects’,” she told them, twisting the word so that they would know how unwelcome a topic it was. “Now that I am twenty-one, I inherit from my grandparents.”

  “I have always thought it most irregular that your grandparents chose to bequeath their wealth to you rather than to your father and your mother. Such would, after all, be the usual way of things.”

  “I’m afraid that Mama and Papa have a knack for making themselves disagreeable and my grandparents, on both sides, simply chose to bypass them in the will. It has not improved my parents’ temper, but there’s plenty of money for them. However,” she said meaningfully, settling onto the couch in a sprawl that cast her printed muslin dress, with its delicate floral adornments, into a cloth garden cascade of color. “They informed me last night that so much wealth is too great a burden for one as young and inexperienced as I.” Here, Matilda batted her eyelashes and mimed the handling of a fan as she imitated the pose of a young lady of the ton. “They would chose my husband and, as I am now in possession of so much family wealth, I must needs marry someone in the family so that the legacy of my grandparents remains within our own blood.”

  Her friends greeted this disclosure with shocked expressions. They were accustomed to Matilda’s independent ways. “What will you do?” asked Abigail, who could not conceive of defying her own parents but could not envision her strong-willed friend capitulating.

  “More to the point,” said Sophia shrewdly, “whom have they chosen for you to marry?”

  Matilda signed again. “The Detestable,” she answered.

  “Not your cousin Everard!” Nell deduced.

  “The very same. Third cousin, I believe, or so Mama assured me when I pointed out that inbreeding would produce idiot children and soil the bloodlines of which she is so protective.”

  “He is very handsome,” Abigail said after a pause, striving to find a positive aspect of this news.

  “He is ugly of soul,” Matilda returned. “He dined with us last night. Afterwards, when we were at the piano, he admitted that he is only marrying me out of pity. He said that, because I am such an antidote, and plain as well, no one else is likely to seek me. Therefore, he will do me the great honor of marrying me and of course, overseeing my wealth so that I do not fritter it away on trifles.”

  “He never said such a thing!” Nell declared in outrage. “What manner of boor would say such a thing as that?”

  “Oh, I’ve no fault to find with his candor,” Matilda answered tranquilly. “I am very plain. I have not the allures of other young ladies. My hair, confess it, is neither brown nor blonde but a rather dull color in the middle, nothing of which a poet would write. My eyes are for seeing and not for sonnets, I admit; they are simply brown, neither lustrous nor brilliant. My nose . . . ‘tis a nose. My lips are not ruby-red and I have not roses in my complexion. I am, in short, plain. It has been the great trial to Mama, who was quite a beauty in her day, and to Papa, who, lacking a son, would have relished a daughter who was a belle. Instead, they have me.”

  “Darling Matilda, no one who loves you as we do would ever agree to that description. You are altogether captivating!”

  “Oh, Nell, you are such an advocate for me. And you are sincere, which makes it all the more meaningful.”

  “Nell is absolutely correct, Matilda, you have such a lively spirit and so energetic a character that no one who knows you could fail to fall under your spell,” Sophia insisted.

  “My Mama, who is, as you know, forever woeful at my lack of enticements for suitors, is always saying that she wishes I had more of your spirit,” Abigail said.

  “We must do something,” Nell said. “We cannot simply allow you to marry The Detestable without making an effort on your behalf.”

  Matilda gave her loyal friends an affectionate smile. No one had truer allies and she knew that they would countenance her in her scheme.

  “I shall need your help,” she said in a conspiratorial tone. “If I am so plain and uninviting as a bride, I must find my own husband. I shall search for the ugliest man in London and I shall marry him! I am twenty-one and of age and I shall use my years to my advantage.”

  “Capital idea!” breathed Abigail, marveling at her friend’s vigorous plan.

  “It certainly solves one problem,” said Sophia, who could think of several others but did not want to douse her friend’s resolve.

  “How shall we find the ugliest man in London?” Nell asked. “One can hardly put an advertisement in the newspaper.”

  The girls giggled at this notion and entertained themselves with the vision of a queue of applicants lining up at the elegant Weldon drawing room to be pronounced sufficiently ugly of mien to qualify for the title.

  “But your parents, Matilda,” Abigail brought this up after the laughter had subsided. “They will be quite horrified.”

  “Oh, but I have already told them of my intentions,” Matilda assured her.

  Abigail gasped. “You never did! What did they say?”

  Matilda played with one of the delicate embroidered peonies upon the sash of her dress. “They did not believe me,” she said, adopting a sorrowful expression which did not match the mischief in her eyes. “They said that I am a silly chit who does not understand the gravity of marriage. I answered that I understand very well the gravity of an inheritance which gives me considerable freedom. It was not, I fear
, a harmonious conversation.”

  “I do not know where you find the courage to say such things, Matilda,” Abigail told her. “I am sure that if I even thought such a thing, Mama would box my ears.”

  “I warrant they would very much prefer to box my ears,” Matilda agreed, “but instead, they consoled themselves by saying that I am a most ungrateful daughter. They sent me to my room after warning me that I am to do nothing which will, in any way, displease The Detestable and make him reconsider marrying me.”

  “You did not call him The Detestable in front of your parents, surely!”

  “Oh, but I did,” Matilda said emphatically. “I said that he is arrogant with an entirely unmerited high opinion of himself and that I would rather marry a circus dwarf than a man with such an elevated sense of self-worth. Then I went to my room, to which, if truth be told, I would have done anyway. They are engaged upon orchestrating the wedding of the season but I shall, with your assistance, procure my own husband on my own terms.”

  “Of course we shall help you,” Nell replied and the other girls immediately voiced their assent. How they were to proceed with this radical plan, no one was sure, but such was their confidence in Matilda’s determination that they had no doubt that success would be theirs. Only Sophia, who knew a bit more of love than her friends, understood that matrimony was not merely a matter of obtaining a husband.

  2

  Ladies to the Rescue

  The weather was perfect for a ride. Or for flight. The autumn foliage provided concealment behind an arboreal wall of trees which vied with one another for plumage. Since his hasty departure from Winchester, Lord Marcus Cromwell had taken care to spend the night in obscure inns where the patronage was, to be sure, rough and not overly concerned with cleanliness. He had spoken little and kept the brim of his hat low, the better to avoid notice should anyone ask for him. He could not be sure that such measures would bring him safely to Scotland, where he hoped to disappear for a measure of time until he had devised a way out of this perilous trap. But traveling openly as the Duke of Winchester would only bring him more quickly to his death, of that he was sure.

  It was dark by the time he found an inn which was sufficiently rustic. Business was light and he had no trouble in obtaining a room to himself. After his supper was brought to him, Lord Marcus sat down to a plate of boiled potatoes and seasoned mutton and a glass of brandy and considered his options.

  He could not, with any hope of credibility, go to the authorities and accuse his stepmother and half-brother of plotting to kill him so that Henry would inherit the dukedom. That he knew this to be true was irrelevant. Lord Marcus was aware that he had spent too much of his life in licentious living, using his title and the inheritance that his father had left him to pursue past times which, however acceptable for the beau monde, were ill-suited for prosperity.

  “The arrogance of a title,” Lord Marcus said to his brandy, “has cost you dearly. You squandered wealth, you neglected the Winchester estate and its tenants, you shunned your friend Hubert in favor of more glamorous and more rapacious comrades. Now you are on your own, with no one to trust and nowhere to turn.”

  Scotland seemed the best choice. In Scotland, he could disappear from the London set. There were relatives on his late mother’s side of the family that would, he hoped, give him shelter. He had not been a very good kinsman during the years since his mother’s death. But perhaps they would show charity toward him for the sake of his mother’s memory.

  Lord Marcus grimaced as he thought of his gentle mother. He still remembered her, although he had been ten years old when she died. His father had been bereft at her passing, a state which made him vulnerable to the wiles of the artful Lady Grace Dubonnet, an attractive widow who had ensnared the Duke of Winchester with her sympathy at his loss. Lord Marcus had been at school when his father wrote to tell him that when he returned home for the Christmas holidays, he would find a new member of the family there to welcome him.

  The welcome had been lacking in warmth. Although only twelve, Lord Marcus had sensed his stepmother’s coldness and when, a year later, his half-brother Henry was born, the boy perceived an even more marked difference in Lady Grace’s manner. Lord Marcus was a rival. She wanted the title and the wealth for her son.

  After Oxford, and the Grand Tour, Lord Marcus had settled in London, visiting Winchester only on holidays. But those times with his father had been precious. They never spoke of the strained relationship between Marcus and his stepmother, nor did they explore the reasons why Henry was so hostile to his half-brother. Marcus was grateful, though, that he had responded when his father’s solicitor wrote to tell him that the Duke was ailing and, as the heir, Lord Marcus needed to return home without delay.

  The Duchess had not been pleased at his return, but she could not deny him entrance to the manor which would soon be his. He was with his father when the Duke breathed his last. He had remained for the reading of the will, which left the estate, the Winchester jewels and assets to him. Generous providence was made for his stepmother’s care and for Henry’s education and entrance into society, but control of the inheritance was clearly in the hands of the new duke, Lord Marcus.

  He had returned to London after the funeral and it was then that the accidents began. Insignificant, at first, and seemingly anonymous: a riding accident; a carriage race where a wheel broke; a jostling in the street that left a knife wound . . . it had taken him time to accept the preposterous notion that someone was trying to take his life. But once he acknowledged that harrowing fact, he did not have to tarry long to consider who it was who wanted him dead.

  To Scotland. All he had to do was arrive there alive.

  The next morning, Lord Marcus settled his bill and left the inn before the sun was fully up. Better to get an early start on his journey. It was a beautiful day in October, with a landscape that proclaimed the luster of the season. Someday soon, Lord Marcus prayed, he would be safe to enjoy such a day. But for now, he could not dally.

  He heard the hooves pounding behind him and, at first, he thought nothing of it. It was a public road and daylight; why would there not be travelers? But the horses seemed to be in haste, as if they were after quarry.

  He was about to turn off into the woods alongside the road when the horses pulled up to him.

  “Hello, brother,” said Henry, his tone mocking.

  “Shouldn’t you be in school?” Lord Marcus said evenly, keeping a firm grip on the reins of his horse, wishing that he had his revolver handy.

  Lord Henry’s eyebrows rose. “School? I am grieving at the death of my dearest Papa, and you would have me with books and tutors? How heartless you are, brother Marcus.”

  The horsemen were encircling Marcus. He saw Henry give a nod and suddenly, they were on him, pulling him from his horse to the ground, pummeling him with their fists and, after they had covered his face with bruises, kicking him in his stomach and legs. Marcus resisted as much as he was able, but there were too many assailants for him to be able to defend himself and retaliate as well. His body fell limp against the hard-packed soil of the path and he thought, wonderingly, that surely someone would find his body before nightfall. He would not wish to make a supper for the creatures who dined nocturnally.

  “All right, lads,” Henry said. “The coup de grace is on me.”

  He dismounted from his horse, knife held high in his hands as he surveyed his half-brother’s recumbent form. “So, brother, I hope that you enjoyed your brief time as the Duke of Winchester,” Henry cackled. “I am certain that I shall do much better---what the devil is that? Demme, someone is shooting at us! To horse, lads, and quickly, before the watch is summoned!”

  The men rode off to the accompaniment of bullets. Marcus was dimly aware of the sound of galloping, and then a brief respite, until more galloping of horses came nearer. Were they back? He hoped that they would simply kill him quickly. His body ached and he could not open his eyes. His tongue, probing the wall of his swollen li
ps, revealed that he was minus his two front teeth. His throat felt strangely stricken, as if he could not make words to come forth.

  He thought that his hearing must be impaired as well, because when the galloping ceased and the horses drew near, he smelled fragrances and he heard female voices.

  “Well done, Matilda, I do believe you shot off the blackguard’s hat!”

  “I’ve been practicing, but shooting at a moving target is much more entertaining than aiming at leaves on tree branches. Whatever they were up to, it was not to anyone’s welfare.”

  “This man was what they were up to,” another voice said grimly. “We may have reached him just in time. He looks near-death.”

  “In truth,” said another voice. “He looks very much as if he might be the ugliest man alive. You have found your bridegroom, Matilda.”

  Marcus tried to protest, but the thoughts in his head did not translate into words. It made no sense. Ugly? He was, or had been, accounted something of a beau in London. Bridegroom? He was in no condition for nuptials, and what sort of female would . . .

  Before he could finish the thought, he drifted into unconsciousness. He knew that he was not dead yet, but he was not at all sure that he would be alive for long, regardless of what preposterous plans his rescuers seemed to have for him.

  3

  Help From Aunt Gretchen

  Matilda was confident that Aunt Gretchen would come to their aid. The others were less confident.

  “She is your favorite aunt, and you her only niece, Matilda, but will she not be obliged to tell your parents of what you plan to do?”