Always a Lady Read online

  Always a Lady

  Rebecca Hagan Lee

  Contents

  Dedication

  Prologue

  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

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Epilogue

  Excerpt: Barely a Bride

  Copyright

  This book is dedicated to my sister, Lisa Teal, who has

  been a bright and shining light for me

  from the day she was born and the best sister

  anyone could ever have.

  Thank you for being you

  and for allowing me to share your shining lights:

  My niece and nephew,

  Jessica and Jacob Teal.

  With love,

  Sister

  Codicil to the Last Will and Testament

  of George Ramsey,

  fifteenth Marquess of Templeston

  My fondest wish is that I shall die a very old man beloved of my family and surrounded by children and grandchildren, but because one cannot always choose the time of one’s Departure from the Living, I charge my legitimate son and heir, Andrew Ramsey, twenty-eighth earl of Ramsey, Viscount Birmingham, and Baron Selby on this the 3rd day of August in the Year of Our Lord 1818 with the support and responsibility for my beloved mistresses and any living children born of their bodies in the nine months immediately following my death.

  As discretion is the mark of a true gentleman, I shall not give name to the extraordinary ladies who have provided me with abiding care and comfort since the death of my beloved wife, but shall charge my legitimate son and heir with the duty of awarding to any lady who should present to him, his legitimate heir, or representative, a gold and diamond locket engraved with my seal, containing my likeness, stamped by my jeweler, and matching in every way the locket enclosed with this document, an annual sum not to exceed twenty thousand pounds to ensure the bed and board of the lady and any living children born of her body in the nine months immediately following my Departure from the Living.

  The ladies who present such a locket have received it as a promise from me that they shall not suffer ill for having offered me abiding care and comfort. Any offspring who presents such a locket shall have done so at their mother’s bequest and shall be recognized as children of the fifteenth Marquess of Templeston and shall be entitled to his or her mother’s portion of my estate for themselves and their legitimate heirs in perpetuity according to my wishes as set forth in this, my Last Will and Testament.

  George Ramsey,

  Fifteenth Marquess of Templeston

  Prologue

  Continuous as the stars that shine

  And twinkle on the Milky Way.

  —WILLIAM WORDSWORTH, 1770–1850

  INISMORN, IRELAND

  Summer 1824

  The stars sparkled like finely cut diamonds spread out on a background of black velvet. A solitary figure huddled against the wall of the crumbling tower of Telamor Castle. She sat with her back pressed to the rough, moss-covered stone and her neck tilted at the optimum angle for stargazing through the battered crenellations. Below the tower lay the beach. She could hear the low roar of the ocean and the occasional sounds of voices, but she ignored them. Her attention was focused on the heavens as she studied the array of constellations visible in the northern sky, reciting the fanciful names her mother had taught her. She stared at the brightest star, then breathed a reverent sigh as one of its lesser companions streaked across the heavens.

  “I wish that when I grow up I can marry a rich, handsome prince and live in this fine castle,” Mariah Shaughnessy prayed with all the fire and fervor a six-year-old could muster. “That I can have dogs and cats to love and ponies to ride, and that I can sit in the tower and eat cakes and biscuits and look up at the stars every night until I die.” She took a deep breath before continuing her litany of wishes. Falling stars were rare. They didn’t happen every night, and Mariah had learned to make the most of their magical powers. “And …”

  “You’ll get fat if you eat cake every night.”

  Mariah sat up straight and stared into the night. A boy stood holding a lantern on the top step of the spiral stairs that led to the tower.

  “No, I won’t.” Mariah stuck out her bottom lip and dared the intruder to contradict her.

  “Of course you will.” He left the top step and walked over to her. He leaned his back against the stone wall and slowly slid down it until he was sitting beside her. He trimmed the wick on the lantern so the light wouldn’t interfere with her stargazing, but he kept the light burning low. “And if you get fat eating cake, no prince will marry you.”

  Tears welled up in her eyes. “But I like cake,” she replied.

  He gave her a disgusted look. “Everyone likes cake.”

  She sighed again. “It was good.”

  “That’s why they call it cake,” he told her. “If it tasted awful, they would have called it turnips.”

  “Will I get fat if I just wish for cake and biscuits every night?”

  He shook his head. “No,” he promised. “Wishing for cake won’t make you fat. Only eating it.”

  She shrugged her shoulders. “Can you get fat from eating it once?”

  “No.”

  “Then I guess I’ll never get fat.”

  “You’ve only had cake one time?” He was genuinely surprised. “In your whole life?”

  “I think I had it when I was little,” she said. “But only once since I came here.”

  “How come?” he asked.

  “The sisters don’t believe in spoiling us.”

  “How many sisters have you?” he asked.

  She giggled. “I don’t have any sisters.”

  “But you said—”

  “The sisters in Christ. The ones at St. Agnes’s Sacred Heart Convent where I live.”

  The boy shuddered, recalling the rambling old stone building a mile or so down the cart path from the castle. He didn’t have to be Catholic to know what convents were. But he had always thought they were reserved for nuns and older ladies. He had never heard of little girls living in them. “You live in a convent?”

  “Yes,” she answered. “Down the hill and beyond the wall. I come here after evening vespers so I can look at the stars. See there!” She pointed through the hole in the ancient stonework. “That’s Draco, the Dragon.”

  He looked to the heavens as she pointed out the cluster of stars that formed the shape of a dragon. “You come all the way up here just to look at the stars? Why don’t you just look out your window?”

  She shook her head. “My room doesn’t have windows.”

  “Oh.” He was thoughtful once again, almost unable to comprehend the idea of a room with no windows to look out. “How do you sneak out?”

  “It has a door, silly,” she replied in a tone tinged with superiority. “It just doesn’t have windows.” She lifted her chin a notch. “I’m very good, you know. And very quiet
. When you live in a convent, no one pays much attention to you as long as you’re quiet. I sneak out after everyone else goes to bed.”

  He eyed the little girl with new respect. To sneak out of a convent and come all this way without a lantern was an enormous feat of bravery.

  “Where are your mother and father?”

  “I don’t remember my da,” she told him. “He died when I was little, and now my mummy’s gone to heaven, too. She’s a star. See that one up there? The shiniest one?”

  He nodded.

  “I think that one must be my mummy ’cause she used to wear lots of sparkly things.” Tears welled up in her eyes once again, and her voice quavered with emotion.

  He reached over and covered her small hand with his own, stunned by the magnitude of her loss. Life without his mother and father was unthinkable. “I’m sorry.”

  She sniffled, then wiped her nose with the back of her other hand.

  “Here, take this.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a clean handkerchief.

  “Thank you,” she answered politely as she accepted his handkerchief and began to blow her nose. When she finished, she crumpled the handkerchief in her hand and held it out to him.

  He shook his head and shifted uncomfortably against the wall. “You keep it.”

  Mariah gifted him with a brilliant smile and hugged the handkerchief close. “If you’re sure it’s all right.”

  “It’s just a handkerchief,” he told her. “You may need it again, and I have plenty more at home.”

  “Thank you ever so much.”

  “Did you ever come here with your mother?”

  She nodded once again. “All the time. My mummy said that if you wish on the stars, God listens to your wishes, and if you wish on a shooting star, God makes the wish come true.”

  “Do you always wish to marry a handsome prince and live in this castle eating cake and biscuits every day?”

  “No,” she answered truthfully. “Most of the time I wish for my mummy to come back down from heaven and get me. But sometimes I wish that I’ll grow up and marry a handsome prince and live in this castle and have cake to eat whenever I want it.” Her voice broke and she quickly covered her mouth with her hand.

  “A handsome prince might marry you,” he said, offering what comfort he could. “And give you cake to eat. As long as you don’t eat it every day.”

  She shrugged her shoulders. “It doesn’t matter. My wishes won’t come true now anyway.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I told you about them.”

  “So?”

  “So, wishes don’t come true if you say them out loud or share them with anybody else. They only come true if you keep them all to yourself.”

  “Kit!” A loud masculine shout echoed through the ruins from the ground below. “Your mother’s finished. Time to go.”

  The boy shot Mariah an apologetic glance. “Papa’s calling me,” he told her. “I have to leave now. My mama and papa were collecting sea creatures from the beach for my mama to draw. Papa only let me come to the ruins because the groundskeeper swore they were safe. We’re going home tomorrow, and I wanted to see the old tower.”

  “Oh.”

  She sounded so bereft that his heart went out to her. “Will an earl do?” he asked.

  “Huh?”

  “I’m not a prince,” he explained. “I’m an earl. But my mama says I’m handsome, and one day when I’m all grown up, I’ll come back and marry you if you like.”

  “Truly?” she breathed. “You would come back and marry me someday?”

  “Why not?” he answered with a nonchalant shrug of his shoulders. “I have to marry someone. It might as well be you.”

  “Will we live here at Telamor?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t own Telamor. But we have a very nice house in England. It’s not a castle, but it’s as big as one, and the attic stairs go all the way to the roof. My papa and I go up there and look over the estate, and I’ll bet it’s a grand place for looking at the stars.”

  “All right, then.” She smiled up at him. “I wanted to live at Telamor, but your house sounds very nice and I like you.”

  “Then it’s settled.” He pulled her close and planted a clumsy kiss on her lips the way he’d seen his papa do to his mama.

  “Kit!” His father’s voice sounded louder, closer. “Where are you?”

  “Coming, Papa,” Kit called down the stairs, before turning back to look at the girl. “I have to go.”

  “You won’t tell anyone about this?” She glanced around. “About my being here? If the nuns find out …”

  “I won’t tell.” He turned and started down the stairs.

  “Wait!” The urgency of her whisper halted him in his tracks. “You forgot your lantern.” She picked it up and held it out to him.

  “You keep it,” he said. “And use it to find your way to and from the tower in the dark.” He smiled at her once again. “Now that we’re betrothed, you have to take care of yourself.”

  “You won’t forget?”

  “I won’t forget,” he promised.

  He waved once more, and then he was gone.

  Chapter One

  A mother’s pride; a father’s joy.

  —SIR WALTER SCOTT, 1771–1821

  SWANSLEA PARK

  Northamptonshire, England 1838

  “Talk him out of it, Drew. He’s too young.”

  Andrew Ramsey, the sixteenth marquess of Templeston, stared down at his wife. Tears shimmered in her beautiful eyes, and her voice held a barely discernible note of panic. Kathryn was on the verge of bursting into tears at any moment, and Drew felt powerless to prevent it.

  He had been her husband for nineteen years, and he ached to see the pain in her eyes. There were streaks of silver in Kathryn’s hair now, but she was every bit as beautiful to him today as she had been the first time he’d seen her. And he loved her more than he had ever thought possible, but he loved Kit, too, and Drew would not—could not—forbid Kit to pursue his destiny. He didn’t have that right. Not even for Kathryn.

  “He’s old enough to know his own mind, Kathryn. Older than you were when I first proposed to you.”

  She shivered. After nineteen years of marriage, Drew still had the power to take her breath away and to reduce her to a mindless, quivering mass of anticipation without so much as a touch. All he had to do was speak her name in that special way of his. Kathryn. Only Drew called her Kathryn. The rest of the world knew her as Wren. “That’s beside the point,” she insisted.

  Drew shook his head. “It is the point, my love. Kit is two and twenty years old. He’s not a child anymore. He’s a grown man and he wants and needs a place of his own.”

  “He can have a place of his own here,” she said. “He needn’t go all the way to Ireland for that.”

  Drew laughed. “Are you suggesting I give him Swanslea Park just to keep him at home?”

  “I would if I thought it would do any good,” Kathryn admitted.

  Swanslea Park, the countryseat of the current marquess, had been handed down to Drew from his father, the fifteenth marquess of Templeston, who had gained possession of it through his marriage to Drew’s mother. The Ramsey family estate lay farther north, too far from London for convenience, so the fifteenth marquess and his wife had chosen to live and raise their son at Swanslea Park. Drew and Kathryn had continued the tradition.

  “Well, forget it.” Drew laughed again. “Because I’m not ready to turn over the keys to Swanslea just yet.” The title of marquess of Templeston and the keys to Swanslea went hand in hand, and although Drew had already given Kit his lesser titles of earl of Ramsey, Viscount Birmingham, and Baron Selby, he intended to keep Swanslea Park awhile longer.

  “But, Drew, Swanslea Park is Kit’s home, too. And it’s large enough to accommodate his desire for privacy.” Kathryn looked at her husband. “He can have the whole east wing to himself and come and go as he pleases. It has a private entrance.”
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  “Yes, it does,” Drew agreed. “And a household staff who will note his private comings and goings as they go about their daily activities, and those remarks will reach the ears of Newberry, who will report them to me even though I’ve no desire to infringe upon Kit’s privacy.” Drew reached out and enfolded his wife into his arms, hugging her close. “I’m the marquess, Kathryn. Everyone answers to me”—he pressed a tender kiss against her brow—“except you. And nothing goes on at Swanslea Park without my knowing about it. Kit wants to go to Ireland, my love. He delayed his departure for a year because he didn’t want to upset you, but he’s eager to take possession of his inheritance, and I see no reason to detain him any longer. Kit needs to be his own man and the lord of his own domain in a place where the staff answers to him instead of to me.”

  Kathryn pulled out of his arms, looked up, and sighed. “I wish Martin had never delivered that letter to Kit.”

  Drew frowned at her. “You don’t mean that.”

  “Yes, I do,” she replied. “If Martin hadn’t delivered that letter, we all would have remained in blissful ignorance, and Kit wouldn’t be moving to Ireland.”

  The letter their solicitor, Martin Bell, had delivered to Kit on his twenty-first birthday was one of two letters that George Ramsey, the fifteenth marquess of Templeston, had asked Martin to hold in trust until Kit reached the age of majority. Martin had kept the packet of letters for over twenty years, until finally delivering it on Kit’s birthday.

  When Kit opened the first letter, he’d been surprised to learn that the Irish earl of Kilgannon had died after naming Christopher George “Kit” Ramsey his heir. Father Francis O’Meara, the late earl’s representative, and Martin Bell were the only men alive who knew the two letters existed, and both men were bound to secrecy.

  Kit had inherited the title, the ownership of Telamor Castle, and the surrounding estate in the village of Inismorn in County Clare.

  And neither Drew nor Kathryn had known anything about it.

  What was even more surprising, to Drew’s way of thinking, was that Kit had accepted the news and his inheritance without asking whence it came. If he was curious as to how he had come to inherit an Irish castle and a title to go along with it, he had never asked his parents about it. In fact, Kit never asked them why he had no grandparents or aunts or uncles or cousins. Nor had it ever seemed to bother him. Kit simply accepted the fact that his family was Drew and Kathryn, his sisters, Iris and Kate, his former governess, Ally, their solicitor, Martin, and the staff of family retainers at Swanslea Park and the town house in London. And he accepted the notion that it was quite right and proper that Telamor Castle should belong to him.