Lady with a Black Umbrella Read online

  Dear Reader,

  Between 1985 and 1998, I wrote more than thirty Signet Regency romances, most of which have long been out of print. Many of you have been asking me about them and hunting for them, and, in some cases, paying high prices for second-hand copies to complete your collections of my books. I have been touched by your interest. I am delighted that these books are going to be available as e-books with lovely new covers and very affordable prices.

  If you have read any of my more recent books, The Bedwyn saga, the SIMPLY quartet, the Huxtable series, the Survivors’ Club series, for example, you may wish to discover if my writing has changed in the course of the past 30 years or if my view of life and love and romance remains essentially the same. Whatever you decide, I do hope you will enjoy being able to read these books at last.

  Mary Balogh

  www.marybalogh.com

  “Lady with a Black Umbrella” Copyright © 1989 by Mary Balogh

  LADY WITH A BLACK UMBRELLA First Ebook edition February 2016 ISBN: 978-0-9967560-9-9

  All rights reserved. No part of the Ebook may be reproduced, stored in, or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both copyright owner and Class Ebook Editions, Ltd., the publisher of the Ebook. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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  Praise for Mary Balogh

  “Balogh is today’s superstar heir to the marvelous legacy of Georgette Heyer (except a lot steamier)!” – New York Times Bestselling author Susan Elizabeth Phillips

  “With her brilliant, beautiful and emotionally intense writing Mary Balogh sets the gold standard in historical romance.” – New York Times Bestselling author Jayne Ann Krentz

  “When it comes to historical romance, Mary Balogh is one of my favorites!” — New York Times Bestselling author Eloisa James

  “One of the best!” – New York Times Bestselling author Julia Quinn

  “Mary Balogh has the gift of making a relationship seem utterly real and utterly compelling.”– New York Times Bestselling author Mary Jo Putney

  “Winning, witty, and engaging…fulfilled all of my romantic fantasies.” – New York Times Bestselling author Teresa Medeiros

  Lady With

  A

  Black Umbrella

  Mary Balogh

  Class Ebook Editions, Ltd.

  New York, NY

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Dear Reader Letter

  Copyright Page

  Praise for Mary Balogh

  Title Page

  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

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Sign up Page

  Author Biography

  Also by Mary Balogh

  Chapter 1

  THE cobbled stable yard of the Golden Eagle Inn, thirty miles from London on the main road to Bath, was alive with activity despite the early hour. A stagecoach proceeding west had just resumed its journey, having disgorged its passengers half an hour earlier for breakfast and swallowed them up again a mere twenty-five minutes later. Stable lads were forking manure and old straw from the stalls. Two ostlers, one whistling cheerfully, were grooming horses. A third was harnessing the Viscount Kincade’s team to his sporting curricle.

  The viscount himself stood silently close to the door from which he had just emerged, watching the activity. He appeared to be the typical fashionable man-about-town from the crown of his beaver hat, past the ten capes of his heavy greatcoat, to the tips of his shining Hessian boots. The expression of studied indolence on his handsome face confirmed the impression. His eyes were heavy-lidded, his face impassive, and his lips curled into what might have been a sneer. It was true that his tall figure and perfect posture might indicate that the indolence was a pose. But it was impossible to know for sure what was the general condition of his physique beneath the long, heavy coat.

  Lord Kincade was tapping a riding whip absentmindedly against his boots, the only outward sign of his impatience to be gone. He ran keen eyes over his team, noting that they had indeed been well-cared-for. The ostler who was hitching them to his curricle cast him a nervous glance and bent to his task again. He was certainly taking his time, the viscount thought, hiding a yawn behind one tan leather glove.

  It was a quite unholy hour to be beginning a journey. It must be barely six o’clock. His intention of making an early start had originally focused on the hour of nine. Certainly not six. And he had definitely not intended to head back in the direction of London, from which he had come just the afternoon before. But embarrassment and disaster can do strange things to both a man’s intentions and his destination. Bath, and his reason for going there, would have to wait for another day.

  He did not look embarrassed, of course, or the victim of disaster—at least, he hoped he did not. He was well aware that to appear either would only lower him in the esteem of the innkeeper and his servants to a point at which he would be treated with open contempt rather than with the icy, suspicious courtesy he had been favored with in the last hour.

  He would not have made his nasty, embarrassing discovery until a far more civilized hour if it had not been for the barmaid demanding her pay before she went about her day’s work. He had not known her like before. Barmaids in his experience did not awaken one rudely before the crack of dawn in order to demand payment for the night’s sport. They trusted one to pay, and handsomely too, when one was settling the rest of one’s reckoning after breakfast.

  And it would be as well not to think of breakfast, Lord Kincade thought, shutting his mind resolutely to the image of bacon and kidneys and eggs that had flashed into it unbidden and unwelcome. Breakfast—and luncheon—would have to wait until he arrived back home in London.

  His purse had been stolen. That was the conclusion he had been forced to after a search of his room—languidly made for the benefit of the maid who stood, hands on hips, waiting for payment, but frantically felt. He had searched her too, heavy-lidded eyes holding her indignant ones as his hands knowingly searched all possible hiding places. But as she had been not backward to point out, why would she have asked for payment if she had known his purse was missing and if she had been carrying it on her person? Was he daft?

  And a young woman, he had discovered to his mortification, who could be all bright eyes and enticing dimples and swaying hips and thrusting bodice during an evening of waiting on his needs, and all naked and giggling and experienced abandon during a night of energetic bed sport, could become a shrill and foulmouthed shrew when it seemed apparent that she would not be paid immediately for all her hours of hard work and might not be paid at all.

  He had taken the offensive with the innkeeper, going downstairs immediately to demand in the languid, keen-eyed way that usually had all servants bowing and scurrying to perform his every wish what sort of a house this was in which a man's purse was not safe from thieves and pickpockets.

  But the innkeeper
had refused to be cowed, declaring that the like had never happened in his house before, that his servants were to be trusted, but that he would, if the gentleman insisted, line them all up in front of him that very moment, every last one of them, the arriving stage passengers notwithstanding, and strip them all naked to find if the purse the gentleman “claimed” to have brought with him were on any of their persons.

  Lord Kincade had looked his host keenly in the eye and declined the offer. The purse was probably safe at the bottom of the nearest deep well by that time, and there was no way of identifying the money apart from it. Better to bow to the inevitable and at least retain some of his dignity.

  “My bill,” he had demanded, stretching out a hand as authoritatively as it was possible for one in his position to do, and regretting more than he could say his valet, preparing at the very hour no doubt to leave his town house with his trunks and rumble along behind him on the journey to Bath. “I shall have your money and more besides sent you by tomorrow. And yours too, Bessie,” he had added to his recent bedfellow, who stood defiantly in the doorway behind mine host, hands still on hips.

  Who were the other guests at the inn? he had asked the innkeeper before returning upstairs for his valise and repairing to the stableyard, where he fully expected to have to see to the harnessing of his own horses. But there was no satisfactory answer to his question, no potential thief there. It had been a slack night, he had been told. Only the gentleman with whom he had played cards the night before and his fancy lady and their servants. And only the two ladies—with an emphasis and a sneer on the last word—who had arrived without any servant save their lone coachman and who had kept to their rooms since their arrival.

  And Lord Kincade had suddenly realized that his humiliation was not yet quite complete. He had lost a tidy sum to Mr. Martin the evening before and had agreed to that jovial gentleman’s suggestion that, as the hour was late and the company congenial and honorable, the debt could be settled in the morning. Now he would be forced to awaken that gentleman, who was doubtless asleep in the arms of the female who accompanied him, and beg the indulgence of an extra day or two in which to settle his debt.

  Mr. Martin had proved thoroughly decent about the whole business, even offering to lend the destitute viscount the money with which to continue his journey. And at Lord Kincade's embarrassed refusal, he had smilingly reminded him that at the very least he needed the price of the turnpikes between where they were and London. The viscount had reluctantly accepted that exact sum, not a penny more.

  And so here he was, he thought, tapping his whip against his boot and beginning to feel annoyance at the slowness of the ostler, yet considering it prudent to maintain his indolent stance, since he did not have a spare penny with which to tip the man as he left.

  He turned as the inn door opened behind him, and stepped aside to allow the two burly individuals who emerged to pass.

  Viscount Kincade, however, had not lived for twenty-eight years—most of the last seven of those in London—for nothing. Indeed, it did not take a good deal of intelligence or experience to recognize thugs and bullies and to know when they were about their business.

  The two new arrivals were about their business now, and clearly he was their object. His expression scarcely changed and his heavy eyelids scarcely lifted as he measured the situation during the second or perhaps two of grace that he was given. One of his would-be assailants was a great deal taller than he, the other shorter; both were considerably broader; both were unencumbered with long coat or cloak; both wore boots far heavier than his; both had bare knuckles while his were gloved. They were far too close for his whip to be of any advantage to him. He let it fall to the cobbles.

  Lord Kincade deflected with his forearm the fist of one as it attempted to smash into his face, and at the same moment he turned and lashed out with his foot into the stomach of the second, who had lunged forward at him. He was given a moment’s respite in which to turn away from the building into the open yard and prepare himself for the next double attack. They had chosen their time wrong. He was not feeling in a particularly good mood. In fact, he was feeling decidedly mean.

  “All right,” he said between his teeth, “who is for it first?”

  But as they both came at him simultaneously, ignoring the hint that it might be more sporting to take him on one at a time, the feeling of exhilaration that was about to be born in Lord Kincade at the challenge, even though the odds were decidedly against him, died a stillborn death. A third, unseen force launched itself at his back, and he knew even as he bent to wrestle himself free that three against one in the present circumstances were just too many. A fist under his ribs robbed him of breath and all but caused his knees to buckle.

  And then somehow, after a wordless, panting scuffle that could not have lasted longer than a minute, he found himself being held fast by two of his attackers while the third, the taller of the two thugs who had stepped through the door, stood before him.

  “I ’ope yer took a good gawk at yerself in the glass this mornin’, guv,” he said, grinning to reveal a mouth in which there were the yellowed stumps of teeth on one side and none at all on the other. “Yer mug won’t be so pretty next time yer looks.”

  At least they appeared to be without guns or knives, Lord Kincade thought with grim philosophy as a fist crunched into his jaw and felt as if it had mashed his brains. He was going to be allowed to live, then. Though apparently not in any degree of comfort for a while yet. What sort of thugs robbed a man first and then gave him a thorough drubbing? This sort, apparently. Rock-hard knuckles connected with one of his eyes as he wrestled uselessly with the two men who held him.

  He did not hear the first words spoken by a different voice. His pain and his efforts to avoid more had taken precedence over all else. It took a moment for him to realize that his arms were free and that his three attackers were themselves warding off blows.

  Thinking about it on the road back to London later, Lord Kincade was hard put to avoid breaking down entirely in helpless laughter. He might have done so, since for long stretches of the road he was alone except for his horses. But it would have pained his split lip and tender jaw and swollen eyes too much to smile, and his ribs would have protested loudly against laughter.

  The new arrival was a woman—whether young or past her youth it was impossible to say at first. She was yelling shrilly something about cowards and bullies and rogues and scoundrels. And she was flailing about her with a gentleman's large black umbrella and poking with the point of it into the ribs of the only attacker who seemed inclined to stand up against the assault.

  She was not a large female either in height or in build, a fact that made the outcome quite unbelievable and impossibly hilarious in retrospect. All three bullies, any one of whom could have picked her up with one hand and ground all her bones to powder, took to their heels, clattering out of the cobbled yard and into the street beyond without a backward glance.

  Lord Kincade had only one eye with which to see. But it was quite enough. Quite enough! The female standing before him, bosom heaving, cheeks flaming, eyes flashing, was clad from neck to wrists to bare toes in a white flannel nightgown. Her light-brown hair hung in two thick braids to her waist. Her face glistened as if it had been freshly oiled. Her only adornment was the large black umbrella.

  And she was young.

  The viscount fumbled in his pocket as he felt the blood drip from his nose onto his coat.

  “There, there,” she said kindly and somewhat breathlessly, as if she were talking to a witless toddler, “you will be all right now. They will not harm you anymore.”

  ***

  Miss Daisy Morrison was standing at the window of her room in the Golden Eagle Inn, gazing down absently at the stableyard below. It would have been more pleasant to overlook the front of the inn, she thought. And to have had a larger room and a less lumpy bed. The private parlor next door that she and her sister, Rose, had shared the evening before was not large enou
gh to swing a cat in, as Papa would have said. Not that they had a cat with them, and not that she would have approved of anyone’s swinging it even if they had. But any way one put it, the parlor was a small and shabby room.

  It was as Mama and Rose had predicted, she supposed. And the Reverend Hammon. And Mrs. Ambrose, the doctor’s wife. They had all warned her that it was not at all the thing for two young ladies to take to the road alone. Not that they were quite alone, of course. Gerry their coachman was with them, and the sight of his bulk and his shaggy black hair and jutting black eyebrows and the generally sooty took that clung to him even now, three years after he had last been down a coal mine, was enough to deter even the most dauntless highwayman, she had argued. Anyway, she was not afraid of highwaymen. Just let any one of them come close enough to their carriage to try to rob her and Rose. He would be given such a length of her tongue that he would soon go slinking away, his tail between his legs, his pistol hanging limply at his side.

  Yes but, Mama had argued anxiously, highwaymen would not know her as everyone did for miles around Primrose Park. They would not realize, perhaps, that retreat was the best battle tactic when Daisy went on the offensive.

  And besides, Mrs. Ambrose had tried to explain to her, there was more to traveling on the road to London than avoiding highwaymen. There were the proprieties to be observed. Gently bred young ladies just did not go jauntering around the countryside without their maids and their grooms and their companions or older female relations.

  “But I am five-and-twenty,” Daisy had pointed out quite reasonably. “I am an older female relation. My presence will make Rose quite respectable.”

  Mrs. Ambrose had looked to Daisy's mama somewhat helplessly, and Daisy’s mama had looked back and shrugged. How did one explain to such a determined young lady that five-and-twenty was no very advanced age for all it was rather past the fashionable age for marriage?