Regency High Society Vol 2: Sparhawk's Lady / The Earl's Intended Wife / Lord Calthorpe's Promise / The Society Catch

Regency HIGH-SOCIETY AFFAIRS

Sparhawk’s Lady Miranda Jarrett

The Earl’s Intended Wife Louise Allen

Lord Calthorpe’s Promise’ Sylvia Andrew

The Society Catch Louise Allen

Sparhawk’s Lady

Miranda Jarrett

MIRANDA JARRETT considers herself sublimely fortunate to have a career that combines history and happy endings – even if it’s one that’s also made her family far-too-regular patrons of the local pizzeria. Miranda is the author of over thirty historical romances, and her books are enjoyed by readers the world over. She has won numerous awards for her writing, including two Golden Leaf Awards and two Romantic Times Reviewers’ Choice Awards, and has three times been a Romance Writers of America RITA® Award finalist for best short historical romance. Miranda is a graduate of Brown University, with a degree in art history. She loves to hear from readers at PO Box 1102, Paoli, PA 19301-1145, USA, or at [email protected].

For the unholy Trinity – Teri, Raine, and Theresa

You make me laugh, you make me cry, you give

me the joy of your friendship (and don’t forget

the kitten handouts!)

Portsmouth, England May 1787

With growing panic, Caroline Harris stared at her reflection in the mirror as her mother’s maid tied the sash at her waist. Soon it would be time to leave the ladies’ retiring room and join the gentlemen in the salon, and then it would be too late.

Why, why was there never enough money?

“I can’t do this, Mama,” she whispered hoarsely. “I know you say we’ve no choice, but I can’t. I can’t.”

“You can, and you will,” snapped her mother with the angry irritation that Caroline had come to know too well these past two weeks. “You’re all I have left to me, girl, and I won’t die a pauper.”

Caroline nodded, not trusting her voice to speak. If she cried, she would be cuffed. She’d learned that lesson quickly enough. Tears would make her eyes red and puffy, and then no gentleman would want her.

But what gentleman would want her anyway, dressed like this? Her flowered silk gown had been remade from an old one of her mother’s, cut down so far that her nearly all of her high, small breasts showed above the neckline, the darker rose of her nipples peeking shamelessly through the gauzy neckerchief. Her stays were laced so tightly she could scarcely breathe, and her feet were squeezed painfully into pointed, high-heeled shoes meant to give her a dainty, swaying walk.

Her hair, usually as straight and fine as corn silk, had been crimped and set with sugar water into high, stiff, fashionable curls she’d been forbidden to touch. The jewels that glittered against her pale skin were paste as false as the rest of her, and when she looked at the masklike way they’d painted her face—black kohl around her eyes and rouged circles on her cheeks—she wanted to weep all over again. She looked like a cheap wax doll that no one would ever value, let alone love or cherish.

And not even her mother had remembered that today was her fourteenth birthday.…

Miriam Harris clutched possessively at her daughter’s arm as she, too, stared at the reflection, the resemblance between them obvious in the high cheekbones and the wide-set blue eyes. But that was all; the consumption that would soon claim Caroline’s mother had left her face tight and gaunt beneath the dyed black hair, her body bent and wasted, and the life she’d led, a Cypriot always dependent on the favors of gentlemen, had long ago destroyed the innocent charm that lit her daughter’s face.

“You’re too weedy by half, Caroline,” she declared with a broken gasp, and coughed into the lace-trimmed handkerchief she was never without. Swiftly she wadded it into her reticule, but not before Caroline had seen the bright red blood on the white linen. “Look at you, half a head taller than me! I shouldn’t have wasted my money for all those years to see you raised in the country if this is how you turned out.”

With a sharp pang of homesickness, Caroline thought of the thatch-roofed house in Hampshire where she’d lived until last month, of ruddy-faced Mrs. Thompson who’d treated her like one of her own children, of sunlight and fresh milk and apples and fields to run through and kittens in the barn to play with. She remembered, too, the careful dreams she’d nursed of her parents: her father a handsome officer in a fashionable regiment tragically killed defending his king and country before he could wed her mother, the kind, beautiful lady in London who sent money each month for her care and would, as soon as her circumstances permitted, come herself to fetch Caroline away.

A lovely dream it was, a fantasy Caroline had played over each night before she fell asleep, and years and miles away from the reality of the ravaged, dying woman clinging to her arm. True enough, Miriam had finally come for her daughter, but not for the genteel family life that Caroline had always imagined. No, nothing like that, not in the mean lodgings that were her mother’s home now, with nearly everything of value stripped away and sold for food and medicine, and once again Caroline felt the tears smarting behind her eyes.