My Lady's Choosing Read online

  “Everything, Mrs. Butts. Tell me everything!” You beg her as a coworker and, you hope, as a friend. “Please tell me everything about Helena, and Blanche, and—”

  “What is all this urgency about, my dear? It’s such a sad matter, my heart breaks each time I think on it. Helena were Alexander’s twin. She and her mama died tragically in an accident with a fireplace.”

  Betsy shakes her head, her eyes wide with horror.

  “Lord Craven has never spoken of this,” you say, the worry saturating your voice.

  “Master Craven tried to save them, love. But it were too late. It broke his heart…what were left of it.”

  Betsy turns her wide eyes at Mrs. Butts, who claps a hand over her mouth.

  “I’ve…I’ve said too much,” Mrs. Butts stammers.

  “No, no, my good woman!” You are desperate. “You have not said enough! For all I know, Blanche von Badwolff was a beautiful young bride who died suddenly! You know more, you know what I need to!”

  “That woman were beautiful in face and body alone, love. Not in soul. Her soul were twisted and vile. She despised those little children, the way she despised anyone she thought beneath her. But now that is me speaking ill of the dead, and I shouldn’t, love.” As she speaks, you watch Mrs. Butts’s eyes flash with dark, unknown memories.

  The situation is getting increasingly messy. You can’t separate fact from feeling, and feeling from fiction. You sense all logic slipping through your grasping fingers and are wondering what to do next when the clock strikes, a crow cries, and the house’s front door is flung open, all at the same time.

  The handsome vicar stands in the doorway.

  “Hello, Reverend,” Mrs. Butts says, sliding into full-on welcome mode. “Lord Craven is occupied at the moment—”

  “I did not come to call on Lord Craven, my dear Mrs. Butts. I came on urgent business…” He turns to face you. “With you.”

  Your heart drops as your temperature rises.

  “Forgive my intrusion, but I will be only a moment,” the vicar says in a loud, amiable way, before lowering his tone to a whisper for you, and you alone. “I need to meet with you. Tonight, in the eldritch garden.”

  He takes your hand and kisses it. The motion is quick but sears you to the core. He searches your eyes for a haunted moment; then, confident at what he finds there, he turns away to address Mrs. Butts and Betsy once more. “See you all at church on Sunday!”

  And then he is gone.

  Holy hell. Turn to this page.

  With the traitor locked up in Glenblair’s dungeon, Ollie heads straight to the nearest militia, and word is sent to London. A few days later, a smartly dressed man arrives: Lord Fleming, the top spymaster in Britain. What he recounts nearly causes you to swoon.

  “I don’t believe it,” you say, dazed. “Could this be true?”

  “Believe it,” Lord Fleming replies in the crisp, efficient tones of a professional turncoat. “We’ve ensured that Glenblair Castle belongs to the Society for the Protection of Widows and Orphans of the War. And that Ruston here has received a fair share of reward money for capturing the traitor Abercrombie, and—”

  “And I want you to have it,” Ollie speaks in a rush. Lord Fleming does not seem to appreciate being interrupted.

  “Oh, Ollie,” you say. “Thank you.”

  Lord Fleming takes your arm. “I hear from young Ruston that you spotted the trap laid by the blackguard Abercrombie. How the devil did you manage it?”

  “Simply, my lord,” you say. “After I ruled out Mac as the mole and considered what both he and Ollie told me about Constantina and the regiment, the only possible person it could be was Abercrombie. Besides the man’s predilection for burning papers and the evidence hidden in his blasted wooden chest, the note he sent, which he intended to look like Ollie—Ruston—had written it, was a hopeless forgery. I have known Mr. Ruston since childhood, and he has written me many terrible poems”—Ollie’s face reddens—“so I would know his handwriting anywhere. That is how I knew to bring reinforcements.”

  “Remarkable,” Lord Fleming says. “You know, we could use a resourceful, canny, and beautiful young lady such as yourself in the secret service.”

  Well, there’s a tantalizing offer!

  Do you accept? Spies are fantastically intriguing…Turn to this page.

  Or do you turn down his kind offer? Turn to this page.

  You and Craven watch young Alexander as he sleeps, his sweet face now placid and smiling gently.

  It is not just the boy who has been transformed. As the dawn breaks, a peace descends over the house, the likes of which you have never felt before. The rooms appear lighter, the air cleaner, and even the remaining paintings bear a more benign expression. It is as if the deadly fever that had consumed Hopesend has finally broken, and there is hope for life…and perhaps love.

  Craven turns to you and strokes your hair.

  “You have saved us all,” he says. “But I know that it would be cruel to keep you here. Not when you could be free—free to love a worthy man. Free to go about your business without a care in the world.” He speaks with a tremor in his voice and a mixture of sadness and hope in his eyes.

  “I can find a place for you, far from here. In America, with an honorable man of my acquaintance. One who I know will be a good employer.”

  Do you want to get out of here? Turn to this page.

  Or do you know that Craven is just frightened and pushing you away? He loves you! And needs you! Then turn to this page.

  You nod at Mac and lock your gaze onto his hazel eyes, sharing a moment of connection and understanding so profound that it needs no words. Which is fortunate, under the circumstances, since you hardly have time for sweet nothings.

  “Death is no matter to me. It will come as a relief!” cries Ollie to his traitorous ex-lover. Constantina smirks.

  “Then you are a fool. A fool who is about to learn what happens to those who cross me!”

  Now is your chance. When she is busy cackling villainously and not paying a great deal of attention to her surroundings, you nod, silent as ever, and Mac takes your lead. Moving as one, you creep toward her stealthily. Mac readies his dirk, and you remove your shoes and one stocking, feeling about for a heavy rock or something similar to create a makeshift bludgeon.

  “Perhaps it will be a relief,” Constantina says. “But first, dear Ollie, for your foolish decision to be more loyal to your country than to me, you shall watch your friends die before you!”

  She aims her pistol where you and Mac once stood…and gasps as she realizes that you are no longer there. Seizing the opening, you swing your stocking-rock and clock her squarely in the head. She collapses, the gun slipping from her fingers, and falls into Mac, who places his dirk at her throat.

  As Ollie stares in cold rage at his former amour, you use your other stocking to bind Constantina’s wrists.

  “Let’s go,” you command. “To the castle.”

  Nicely rigged, you! March on to this page.

  “I choose you. I choose pleasure. I choose now,” you whisper, releasing yourself from the trappings of the person you thought you were and the one you might become. Delphine and Evangeline are lost in each other, and for all you know you all are lost in the desert. You might as well lose yourself in the vast expanse of Fabien’s pectorals and your shared desire.

  “Worship me. Revel in me. Anoint me,” you murmur into the soft hardness of his body, your tongue lapping his skin as if it were life-giving water.

  “Yes, my queen,” Fabien moans, as you slide the sword of his body first into your mouth, then into the hidden temple of your sex.

  You devour each other with senseless passion as desert winds whip torrents of sand around you like so much confetti. You would be concerned about it getting in places it shouldn’t, but you are too busy being overcome with a feeling of divine blessedness and c
rying out with ecstasy to care. You are wetter than the Nile for this man, and he navigates your depths with the skill and magic of a sailor who knows his way to and from worlds beyond the earthly plane.

  Suddenly, the earthly plane beneath you shudders and bucks. At first, you think it is Fabien trying something new and a little rough, but then you realize he has been flung a small distance from you by the shifting sands. Farther away, you see that no such disruption has pulled Delphine and Evangeline from their embrace.

  Fabien crawls toward you over the violently trembling sands, as what can only be the lost Temple of Hathor breaks through the desert floor like a giant hand reaching out to steal the sun.

  As the temple rises impossibly high, almost blocking out the sun with its beauty and size, Fabien leans over to you.

  “Do you think it is for us?” he asks incredulously.

  “Perhaps,” you say. “But I think not.”

  In fact, the more intensely Evangeline and Delphine kiss, the higher the tower seems to rise. It shimmers for a moment, and then solidifies, a mirage no longer. The temple is risen. The temple is real.

  You shake your head in wonder. The sand storm quiets, and the desert is as calm as a distant sea.

  As disappointed as you are to leave your friend, you cannot help but feel glad for the happy couple. Nothing will please Evangeline more than to investigate the ultimate in Egyptologist fantasy—and nothing will make Delphine happier than Evangeline’s happiness. Rather than brood, you grin at Fabien and walk over to one of the camels waiting patiently on the outskirts of the camp.

  “Still, maybe love’s truest pleasure is shared adventure?” You mount the noble beast and gesture toward Fabien. “Shall we?” You smile wryly.

  He swings himself onto another camel and nods.

  You admire Fabien’s fearsome, almost feline form as he effortlessly guides his beast of burden to intrigue and adventures. Who knows what will come, but you certainly will, until your next adventure. You spur your camel to follow his…and quickly realize the fatal flaw in your current scheme.

  “Er…Fabien?” you call out. “How exactly does one direct one of these things?”

  The End

  You address None-of-Your-Business. “You there. Most ornery child.” He scowls.

  “What’s ornery?” he asks.

  “I’ll tell you once you drag that blackboard into the street. We are going to make the world our schoolroom. We are going OUTSIDE!”

  The children cheer. Together, you and the mass of miniature ruffians maneuver the blackboard out of the room with a minimum of sweat and tears. Just as you’ve passed the last bit of the board over the threshold, Abercrombie approaches.

  “Aye, lass! I reckon your moxie will take Mac for quite the surprise!” While Abercrombie congratulates you, you notice his gaze search over your shoulder and alight on a fine wooden chest shoved near the back of the messy schoolroom. “I’ve had the stroke o’ luck to round up some friends in the neighborhood. You teach your lesson, and by the time you get back, me ‘n’ my boys will have this place fixed up for you, good as new!”

  You beam. “Thank you, Colonel Abercrombie!”

  “’Tis my pleasure, miss,” Abercrombie says and beams back. He starts the cleanup by moving the fine wooden chest.

  You lead the children (and the blackboard) out to the gray street, then put your hands on your hips. “Ornery,” you say. “Is that a word any of you know?”

  The children look at their tattered shoes in shame.

  “No,” None-of-Your-Business says, and he scowls again.

  “Well,” you continue, “have you ever met a cat that creeps up close to you, but then swipes at you when you pet it?”

  “YES!” the children answer in unison.

  “Or a john who wants you to take it up the jacksie but don’t wanna pay more for it!” shouts a passing whore.

  “Or the barman who won’t…hic!…serve you no more!” yells a drunk, passed out in a nearby doorway.

  “Er, yes. Thank you.” You nod and turn to None-of-Your-Business. “Or a young friend who likes to scowl more than smile?”

  “YES!” All the children turn and stare at None-of-Your-Business, who grins.

  “So,” you say, pleased, “you all know what ornery is. And that is our first lesson: just because you don’t know the name for something doesn’t mean you don’t know what the name means.”

  The children stare at you in awe. You ride the wave. “Now, we are all going to take turns with this chalk and you will all write ‘ornery’ on the board.”

  Immediately after the last child has finished, the sky breaks and deluges you in a cleansing rain. You take it as a sign of success in your new venture, and your dress takes to clinging to your figure becomingly.

  “My name is Bert,” squeaks None-of-Your-Business. You smile. “And I like your bristols!” he says, glancing up.

  “What in the blasted devil’s glen is going on here, lass?!” Mac barrels out, eyes blazing in disapproval of your alternative teaching methods.

  “The children are learning,” you say, barely containing a most-pleased smirk. “There is no reason they can’t do so on their own street.”

  “The children will catch their bloody death in the rain on their own street, if they aren’t carried off to the workhouse or the street corner first!” Mac’s eyes flicker with anger and slowly travel down to your wet bosom before returning to your eyes. You sense that something like desire is tucked behind all his self-righteousness, but before you can take him to task for neighborhood-shaming, a smash sounds from somewhere within the home.

  “Bloody hell!” Abercrombie flees out the front door, carrying the wooden chest. “The orphanage is on fire!”

  “Oi, Dodger! Stop that! No!” Timmy cries as his hound bounds into the burning building. He races in after his foolish dog while the children scream at him to stop being ornery.

  Turn to this page.

  The next day, you and Craven pick through the rubble. Though it is a shame that an obsessive madman has burned Hopesend Manor to cinders, it presents you and Lord Craven with a wonderful real estate opportunity.

  With Manvers and the past gone with the original structure, and little Master Alexander finally sent off to school, you and your man are free to make furious love and rebuild your home to your heart’s content.

  Before you do, of course you poke around the rubble of the Forbidden Wing and find, miraculously untouched by flame, the damning small volume written in the lady’s own true hand. There, in Blanche’s secret tome, you learn her desire to “kill Craven, the child, and Manvers, and use Craven’s moodiness to frame it all on him.” You are justified in despising this wretch of a woman.

  You feel happier and lighter than you ever have. You go to meet Craven in the eldritch garden for the first time since the main house burned down. You find him there, lying in handsome repose about some ruined graves, hungry for your conversation and touch.

  “Do you think us wicked?” he asks, after having succumbed to climax in your mouth, sex, and crook of elbow.

  “I think us lucky.”

  You watch his member rise as a gentleman does when a lady enters a room.

  “We are lucky, indeed,” he says, before filling your mouth with his tongue.

  Luck, you think, as you enter into your umpteenth round of ecstasy in the eldritch garden in three or so hours, is your favorite promise kept by love.

  The End

  You ride as hard as you can on your camel across the desert, racing the rising sun. Unfortunately, you have already ridden Fabien as hard as you could, and the combination of hardnesses is showing your softness no mercy. Even more unfortunately, you hear a roar of outrage behind you as you gallop ineptly over the dunes. It seems you did not ply Fabien with quite enough wine.

  “Er…faster, camel! Cha! Cha!” You urge the beast to move with the fire of a thou
sand suns, using your heels, your knees, and, eventually, in desperation, your elbows. It is all for naught. With a mad cry, Fabien catches up to you and grabs your waist with his powerful hands.

  “You tricked me!” he snarls. His misty-green eyes narrow like an asp’s when about to bite. “Love is but a trick to all women. But it is one you will never play on me again!”

  Before you know it, you are bound, blindfolded, and unceremoniously thrown over the back of your camel. A cold trickle of dread runs down your spine. Despite your best efforts, you are on your way to meet the traitorous Delphine. What exactly does she have planned for you?

  You have no choice but to find out. Turn to this page.

  Not long after, Lady Evangeline is shooting you the worried look friends exchange when they are stuck on late-night carriage rides to London from Derbyshire to save a family member from losing his inheritance.

  “Where do you propose to go in London?” The gentle tone of her voice snaps you to attention. You have spent the better part of the long ride staring into the middle distance, reviewing your hunches.

  “To Drury Lane, of course,” you reply crisply. Lady Evangeline’s eyes widen. You continue: “Mrs. Caddington was an actress, correct?” Lady Evangeline nods. “Who worked often at Drury Lane. In my experience, theaters are full of those who enjoy hearing themselves speak. What time will we reach London?”

  “Very late, I’m afraid.”

  “Good. Mrs. Caddington’s old place of employ will be quiet by the time we arrive, and we can hunt down someone and get them to talk while they are taking a break from treading the boards.”

  “You truly believe we will find answers to the question of Benedict and Cad’s legitimacy at the theater?”

  “I think we will find answers at the theater where Mrs. Caddington was once a star, yes.” You readjust yourself on the carriage seat. “Theaters are always full of foolish lovers and jealous friends. I propose we head straight to the theater in which Mrs. Caddington used to perform and find the right person who would speak to us about her.”