A Baron’s Scandalous Quill (Preview)

Chapter One

London, England, 1811

“Oh, my apologies!” Becca called as she ran through the backstreets of London. The poor grocer boy she had darted past yelped in surprise, throwing one of the apples out of his tray. Becca managed to catch it in time, pushing it back into the wooden tray before she was off again.

“Watch where you’re going, miss!” the boy shouted after her, but she didn’t have time to slow down.

She only had a matter of time to get the papers to the publisher. She glanced down at the rather large reticule in her grasp. Old and tattered, the metal clasp struggled to shut fast these days, but it served its purpose. Large enough to stuff the papers inside for her latest article, it would do for now.

Hitching the skirt of her poor gown up around her ankles, she sprinted down the next street, cutting through the market of Covent Garden. Already, at this early hour of the morning, the roads were full of sellers. Ladies carrying fresh milk pails on their shoulders angled their heads to look her way as she hurried past them, probably just a blur of dark blonde hair that was falling out of her updo. Men gathered at stalls bearing salted beef and fresh oysters that had reached London that morning on the Thames also looked her way. 

She ignored them all. Usually entranced by the excitement in the streets and how the people ran their days, she would often sit in this street and watch people go about their business. 

She darted down another street, one she hoped would be quieter, and ended up in a part of London she usually liked to avoid. This was the road occupied by the ladies of the night, those who offered their bodies up for a price.

Two people pressed against a wall made Becca stop sharply. The lady had her skirt up around her hips as the man pressed up against her made such a guttural sound; it left little to the imagination. 

Becca backed up as hurriedly as she could, leaving the road quickly and glancing back only once. Her face blushed red, and she laughed, trying to hide the sound behind her gloved hand as she moved on again. 

Growing up in the streets of London, Becca had seen many such things quite by accident. What men and women could do together was something she was well aware of, though as she left this road, strangely, she felt a curiosity making her glance back again. It was a curious sensation she had never had before, but for the first time, she wondered what it could be like to share in such a thing.

Shaking her head, she shed such thoughts from her mind and returned to the busy streets of Covent Garden. These were the roads she preferred to occupy. Sometimes, she would sit for hours to watch people go about their business. Most of all, she was interested in the members of the ton who would wander into the market later in the day.

The ladies walked with their noses high, their lady’s maids following behind them carrying boxes from the modiste shops. The teahouses also fascinated her, filled with ladies and gentlemen, either sharing the most fashionable tea leaves brought in from India and China, or hot chocolate to warm their bones in these winter months.

“Watch out!” another man called to Becca as she rounded a corner, narrowly missing colliding with the man’s nose as he waved in the air with the early-morning paper. The sight of the ready-printed papers made her stomach knot all the more.

“My apologies,” she called, skirting around him and avoiding the papers and the boys who stood behind him, demanding money with their open palms dirtied with mud. 

At the end of the road, she could see her destination, at last. People wandered back and forth in front of it, all too busy with their own business to notice the tiny red-brick building, pressed between others, with the chimneys smoking from the rooftops. Those fires not only kept the workers inside the print house warm but kept the machinery and printing presses going, too.

Becca reached for the door, but found it locked, the old cold handle pressing through her thin glove. A particular hole in her glove, frayed and torn from years of use, made the cold more noticeable on the palm of her hand. 

“Oh, no,” she mumbled, knocking relentlessly on the door. She didn’t desist, but just kept knocking, fearful that her frantic tap would not be heard above the clacking of the machinery beyond the door.

“That you, Becca?” a voice called from inside, heavily accented with the notes of East London that were all so familiar to Becca these days.

“Charlotte? I’m here, I’m here at last.”

“You do like to leave it close to the wire these days, eh?” The door opened and the face of Charlotte Sanders appeared on the other side of the door. Her dark auburn hair, swept up behind her head, had a loosely curling fringe across her forehead, which only went a little way to masking the ink stains that dappled her forehead and cheeks. She wiped such ink stains from her fingers on her printing apron as she humorously looked Becca up and down. “Well, Miss Rebecca Thornton, what time do you call this?”

“You turning into your mother?” Becca asked, clutching her chest as she tried to catch her breath.

“Slowly, I am.” Charlotte chuckled. “This way. As always, my mother has been mitherin’ to read your writin’.” 

Becca smiled at her good friend’s warm accent as she stepped into the print house, allowing the door to close behind her.

“Did I miss it?” Becca asked in a panic, reaching into her reticule and pulling out her papers. 

“No, but you didn’t leave it far off, mind you.” Charlotte eyed her warily, her dark green eyes narrowing to slits as she led the way through the front office.

Becca barely glanced at the office, for it was something of a front for if they ever had a member of the ton come to their establishment. Most work was conducted in the back rooms and in the print house itself, for Charlotte’s parents had no qualms and false airs about their business. They preferred to be hands-on, and as Charlotte’s mother said, ‘No one will see the work through but ourselves.’ It was such a lesson that Becca had taken it to heart years ago.

If I had not pushed my own writing, I still wouldn’t have been published.

“Come on, let’s see it then.” Charlotte halted at the far end of the print house. Across the room, the metal letters were clacking out early drafts of the Sanders’ Periodical, which had been running nearly twenty years now, ever since Charlotte was born, and her father knew he had to do something to bring in more money for the family. 

“Here it is.” Becca reached for the papers in her reticule and handed them over.

“You been runnin’ again?” Charlotte asked, taking the papers but keeping her eyes on Becca. 

“Perhaps.” Becca smiled, prompting Charlotte to laugh before she finally looked at the papers.

“What’s this article about? Ah, Covent Garden! Your favorite subject.” She giggled as she read the caricature-like descriptions of the ladies in the teahouse, talking loudly and flitting their heads back and forth like birds twittering, an illusion only helped by stuffing their updos with feathers. 

“Yes, my favorite subject,” Becca whispered, chewing her lip. As she waited for Charlotte to read the article, she turned this thought over in her mind. She longed to know more about the ton, to see what the world was truly like from within it. “I just feel as if when I am looking at the members of the ton, I am like a child with their nose pressed against the window of a confectioner’s. I’m always looking in.”

“You want to be a part of the ton? Pah!” Charlotte laughed and sat down on some of the machinery, hopping up onto a level so that she was at Becca’s height. Becca, unusually tall, often towered over Charlotte unless she found some sort of platform to stand or sit on. 

“No, no. Who would want to be a part of that?” Becca wrinkled her nose. “No, thank you. I hardly wish to be that proud.”

“Not all of them can be proud.”

Becca raised her eyebrows. She was not so convinced. As much as she was fascinated by their world, she had not had much experience with the ton. What experience she did have persuaded her that there was quite a lot to be desired in some of their company.

Her own father, a lawyer and businessman, had talked frequently of how his business affairs had been affected by the pride of gentlemen in the ton. More than once had he been cheated out of payment, for some gentlemen knew that to get ahead in life, they had to avoid paying their bills. These days, her father preferred to work with the lower classes. He didn’t earn a lot of money, but he got satisfaction in working for men who deserved a lawyer defending their causes.

“Well, it’s brilliant,” Charlotte declared, “as it usually is.” She rang a bell nearby, and a young boy came running in. He could be no more than thirteen years old, yet he was already hard at work in the print house, with as much ink across his face and hands as Charlotte bore. “Take this to my mother and father, would you, Skip?”

“Yes, Miss Charlotte.” Skip nodded and took the papers, running off again. His small height meant he could squeeze through the tall machinery with ease, disappearing fast through the smoke that grew out of the fires across the room.

“Why are you so fascinated with the ton anyway?” Charlotte asked as she hopped off the machinery and beckoned Becca to follow her. They rounded some of the printers with difficulty, squeezing themselves into the small gaps which Skip had darted through with ease. “They’re probably just like us, aren’t they?”

“Are they?” Becca wasn’t so sure. “You’ve read the scandal sheets that get printed about the ton. They seem to find mischief and gossip in the smallest number of indiscretions. We don’t seem to bother with such things.”

“No?” Charlotte stopped walking, turning to look back at her with raised eyebrows. “Do I need to remind you of what happened when you first started writin’?”

Becca didn’t answer but stood there fidgeting with her reticule, fiddling with the broken metal clasp. She remembered well enough the furor that had ensued when she had written a piece in her own name. Even her father was targeted by people in the streets who thought it an ill thing for the daughter of a lawyer and a woman who had been practically a beggar to start writing as if she were an educated gentleman. 

“Well, I sorted that, didn’t I?” Becca reminded her friend. “Only you and your family know who I am now.”

“Oh yes,” a voice called from across the print house, his deep voice competing with the machinery. “I see we have Mr. Reginald Baxter in our midst.” One of Charlotte’s elder brothers, Jarvis, walked toward them, struggling even more than they had done to move around the machinery. He used the pseudonym with which she wrote all her articles in their periodical. “You told her yet?” he asked, nudging his sister with his elbow.

“Not yet,” Charlotte mumbled, looking at him with narrowed eyes. “I was buildin’ up to it.”

“Tell her. It means lots of money.”

“I will.” Charlotte snatched the envelope from him and waved him away with a flick of her hand. He chuckled and left, following the path Skip had taken through the room, though he clambered over the machinery in order to do so.

“What’s going on?” Becca asked, eying the envelope that Charlotte now turned back and forth in her grasp. 

“It’s hard to explain. Even harder to shout over all this noise.” She looked angrily at the other end of the room as Skip and Jarvis started to line up the letters to print Becca’s article. “Follow me.”

Charlotte backed up and headed for a door in the side of the room. She burst through it quickly, with Becca following behind her. In this room sat another of Charlotte’s brothers. The youngest of the lot, and not much older than Skip; he was cleaning out old print letters by the fireplace, sitting on the stone hearth as they had no rug. He looked up tiredly at their entrance, yawning widely.

“Make yourself scarce, Bernie,” Charlotte said to him, flicking her fingers back to the door. 

“You think we don’t know what you’re goin’ to be talkin’ about?” Bernie laughed, standing and collecting the metal letters together. “It’s about that fine man, isn’t it? The one wearing the nice suit and carrying the stick. Looked like an illusionist.”

“He was not an illusionist.” Charlotte waved him away again.

“Hmm. There’ll be an argument about this.” He left, casting a clearly wary glance back in Becca’s direction.

Her stomach knotted at that look. As the door closed, Becca shifted her focus back to Charlotte.

“What is going on?”

Charlotte sighed, not hurrying to answer as she sat on a small desk that was pressed into the corner of the room. She laid the envelope down beside her on the desk, then lifted her head and sighed as she looked at Becca.

“This could either be a great opportunity, or somethin’ ill.”

“Is there a point any time soon where you will stop talking in riddles?” Becca asked, placing her hands on her hips as she walked toward her friend.

“A man came to the print house yesterday.”

“Who?”

“He didn’t give his name.” Charlotte shook her head. “But he was lookin’ for Mr. Reginald Baxter. He wanted to speak with the great writer who had taken London by storm with his characterful, yet truthful, portrayal of people in the streets.” She thrust a finger toward Becca. 

“He wanted to speak to me?” 

“Yes.”

“But…”

“I know, I know.” Charlotte held her hands up in the air in innocence. “He had no idea the name was an alias. That you were, in fact, a woman. Believe me, when Jarvis first explained someone was lookin’ for you, I panicked.”

“Why?”

“A man skulkin’ about Covent Garden lookin’ for a lady?” Charlotte rolled her eyes. “Only one reason jumps to mind, and that’s usually left to the ladies in that back street of Covent Garden—”

“Yes, thank you, Charlotte.” Becca dismissed the words. Her mind cast back to the lady and man she had seen together in the street before she thrust the thought away. “Regardless, you said this man was looking for Mr. Baxter.”

“He was. I just told him that a meeting between you two would be impossible. He kept pushin’ the point, and in the end, Jarvis asked why he wanted to meet Mr. Baxter so much?”

“And?” Becca moved to stand beside the desk, now hanging on her friend’s every word. 

“And he wanted to commission Mr. Baxter for a project. From what he was wearin’, fine suit, carrying this posh lookin’ stick, too, I’d say it was a commission to write about the ton, Becca.”

She nearly dropped her reticule in surprise. She fumbled to catch it.

“Well, you look like an excited pup.” Charlotte laughed a little, though the sound died quickly. “When I refused to introduce you, he offered something else instead.” She passed the envelope into Becca’s hand and said nothing more. She just waved at Becca to open the envelope.

Tearing through the red wax seal, Becca found inside there was a small card, written with heavy calligraphy, the sort of beautiful writing she had only seen in certain papers in her father’s office.

“An invitation?” she read aloud. “An invitation to an assembly at the Almack’s Assembly Rooms. God’s blood, what on earth is this?”

“Well, if you’re goin’ to circle with the ton, you might want to curb your street curses, Becca.”

“But…” Becca trailed off, seeing the invitation was not the only thing in the envelope. There was also a small brooch made of solid silver, engraved to look like two crumpled autumnal leaves entwining together. “What is this?” she whispered.

“They call it silver.”

“Charlotte! That’s not what I meant.”

“I know.” Charlotte’s lips flattened together once more. “The gentleman asked that you go to the assembly if you wish to meet him. He has a commission for you, and he’ll pay handsomely to have you work for him. If you’re interested, he asks that you go and wear that brooch so that he might recognize you.”

Becca lowered her hands, the invitation and the brooch clutched at her sides as she stared forward into nothing. 

This was everything she had been hoping for. It was a chance to peer past that window which was between her and the world of the ton, and an opportunity to see what the real people of the ton were like beyond their stiff collars and cravats. Could she do it? Could she really meet this gentleman and go through with his offer to write for him?

“I’ve never written for a commission before. Only ever for your periodical.”

“There is another problem!” Charlotte suddenly said loudly, making Becca jump in surprise.

“What do you mean?”

“You’re daft!” Charlotte exclaimed. “Don’t you think this gentleman will be surprised when you turn up? You’re not quite the Mr. Reginald Baxter he’ll be expecting, are you?”

Becca fidgeted and glanced down her body. She looked at the gown cinched at the waist on her tall figure, the bonnet that she had flung over her wrist with tattered ribbons, and her boots that were dirtied from running through the streets. She thought she saw a bit of oyster shell stuck to the toe of her boot and grimaced.

“Perhaps I’m not,” Becca murmured. “He’ll be expecting something finer.”

“Becca…he’ll be expecting a man,” Charlotte pointed out, jumping off the desk. 

“I know.” Becca sighed heavily. Even if she went to meet this man, once he realized that she was not Mr. Baxter, but Miss Thornton, he might retract his offer at once. Worse yet, he could reveal her secret. He could tell others in the ton that the now famous Mr. Baxter was a woman, after all.

“So, are you going to do it?” Charlotte asked, nudging her for an answer. “Are you going to meet him?”

Everything in Becca’s gut told her not to go. It was ominous indeed, a well-dressed gentleman searching for a writer from the backstreets of London. Surely, any commission he had to offer her could be for nothing good, or he would have chosen one of the well-reputed gentlemen writers of the ton.

It bodes ill.

“Well?” Charlotte asked, nudging her again when she didn’t get an answer.

Yet Becca felt like that child pressed against the window once again, her nose flattened to the glass. Even if it could spell misfortune, the chance to see the world of the ton, to go to a ball and pretend to be one of them, just for a night, piqued her curiosity too much. She raised the invitation, reading it once again, her mind made up even before the smile grew on her face.

“You’ll need something to wear then,” Charlotte murmured, clearly reading the answer on her face before she needed to say it.

 

Chapter Two

“What do you think?” William asked. He tried to flatten his hair again, but it stood up on end as it was wont to do, the dark brown strands curling crazily.

My father would have hated that.

He tried frantically to flatten it again as his butler approached from behind him, carrying his tailcoat.

“It is a fine suit, my friend,” Henry said warmly.

William met his eyes in the reflection of the mirror. Henry was only about five years his senior. He first came to the house as his valet, when William was just fifteen years old. Fifteen years later, and things had changed between them. Henry was now his skilled butler, and the dearest friend that William had ever had.

“Now, my lord, it’s time to put your jacket on.”

“Henry…” William turned around, leaving the sight of the curling hair behind to meet the sharp features of his butler. At first glance, some people found Henry a bit frightening, for his jawline and nose were so sharp and aquiline, but not William. He saw the kindness in Henry’s light grey eyes, and he knew the man’s soft manner. “How many times have I told you not to call me that? Call me William.”

“You are the baron now,” Henry reminded him with a gentle smile. “It’s what must be done. Now—” He held up the tailcoat again.

Sensing he was fighting a losing battle, William nodded his thanks and put on the black tailcoat, turning to face his reflection once more. In the glass, he saw the tired lines on his face. They seemed to be ingrained into his skin this last month, ever since his father died, born there from the things he heard said in the street when people thought his hearing to be poor. 

They think I am a monster, just like him.

“Now, you’re ready, my lord.”

“Am I?” William didn’t move. He just continued to stare at the glass. He half wished he could swap places with Henry. His butler always seemed calm and collected, at ease in any room, whereas William was not. 

He’d grown accustomed to the prisoner his father had made him into. Scarcely going beyond the walls of their estate, he’d mixed with few people in his life. Now, he had to go to an assembly and pretend to be perfectly comfortable, even though he knew there would be many there tonight who would be pointing and whispering at him.

“I could put it off for another month?” William suggested, catching Henry’s eye once more. “I could claim I’m still in mourning.” Henry quirked an eyebrow, and William laughed. “I know, hardly convincing, is it?”

“No one mourns him,” Henry said in a low tone. “I should not say such things—” 

“Good God, Henry, you’re much more tongue-tied since I became a baron. Please, just be as we have always been.” 

Henry nodded slowly, then gestured behind him.

“Now, are we ready?” He pointed at the door.

Slowly, William turned around, looking at the fine entrance hall of his house. He had been making changes since his father had passed, and he had inherited the money. Though the title of baron had been his ever since his mother had passed a few years ago, for the barony came through her bloodline and not his father’s, the money had gone to his father first. Now that the money was his, he was redecorating the house, making it into something other than the prison he had known for so long.

The heavy mahogany boards which once made up the floor had been lifted and replaced with white marble. The paintings that were dark and ominous, with one that had even been titled The Nightmare, had been replaced with finer and lighter paintings, too. He had not chosen expensive paintings, but pictures that he liked, pastoral scenes of bright sunshine. There was just one painting in the room that was a portrait and that picture sat near the bottom of the stairs.

His mother smiled out at him from a sunny scene in the garden of their country estate. Dressed in a light blue gown, her shining brown eyes, much the same color as his own, stared back at him. There was a small smile on her lips, curving gently. The image was as he wished to remember her: alive, healthy, and above all, happy. 

“My lord?” Henry said, trying to urge him to the door.

William sighed once again, shaking his head at Henry.

“One of these days, you will call me by my name again.”

Henry chuckled softly.

“Trust me. This assembly will not be as bad as you fear. It is a chance to enjoy the world. To show your face and…” He trailed off.

“To come out of my father’s shadow?” William finished for him. “Yes, a dark shadow it has been indeed.” He turned back to glance in the mirror once more again, brushing back the hair that was curling. 

It’s as good as I’m going to make it.

“Very well, let us go.” William walked toward the door and stepped out. On the track road leading to his house, his carriage awaited him.

“I do not have to come,” Henry said slowly, following him. “It is hardly customary for a butler to accompany their lord—”

“For tonight, please, come,” William said again. “I’ll be more comfortable with you there.” 

William had made up his mind. He knew plenty of gentlemen attended assemblies and balls with some sort of manservant in tow, even if it wasn’t their butler, and out of all of his staff, Henry was the one he wanted there the most. If nothing else, William could speak to him when he grew bored and frustrated with everyone gossiping about him.

As they climbed into the carriage, Henry lit a lantern overhead, lighting the way in the darkness with an orange glow. The carriage set off, and William watched the lantern swing back and forth for a minute.

“You seem much more assured about tonight than I am,” William observed as Henry lowered the stick he often carried at his side onto the bench beside him. It wasn’t a walking stick but a swagger stick, something he had inherited from his father, who had served as a soldier in the war. “You seem even…excited.” 

Henry flattened his smile, as if in an effort to be rid of such anticipation.

“It is for you that I am excited,” Henry replied with great passion. “It’s high time you came out from that house and lived life fully.”

“You know why it has not been easy.” William scratched his chin uncomfortably. “All my father’s debtors, all the men he offended and cheated—”

“You are not him. You are just his son.”

“And they see me as being of his blood. They see me as a man built in his image,” William muttered with scorn. “How am I ever supposed to marry and have a family of my own if people in the ton look at me with this one image in mind?”

It was a thought he had confessed the day after his father had died. William longed to start a family of his own, to be happy as his mother had been. Yet surely such a dream was out of reach, no matter how hard he stretched to take it, when all ladies would be warned off from him, thanks to his father’s reputation.

“Maybe it’s time to rewrite your reputation,” Henry murmured, more to himself than to William at all; then he looked out of the window, his eyes not blinking in thought.

“What do you mean by that?” William tilted his head to the side, watching his butler carefully.

“Nothing.” Henry looked back at him again. “Just go tonight with an open mind, my lord. You might be surprised by what you find there tonight.”

“Hmm. Well, you have more confidence than I do.” William sat back, rubbing his hands together nervously. What he did not speak his mind about was also the nervousness he felt about talking to ladies there tonight. Having been kept locked in the house for so long, he had circulated among very few women.

Maybe this is a disaster just waiting to happen.

***

“Good evening.” Becca tried to keep the tremble out of her voice as she slipped the spencer jacket off her shoulders. She couldn’t help glancing down at the fine gown she had borrowed from one of the modistes in Covent Garden, feeling as if she was a fish out of water. The gown had been secured by Charlotte, whose cousin worked as a seamstress at the modiste’s shop. The elegant sage green gown was gathered under Becca’s bust and fell to the floor in gentle waves of silk. The hem finished just above the floor, hiding perfectly that her shoes were nowhere near as fine as the gown. The short sleeves finished just beneath her shoulders, and the surprisingly deep neckline made her repeatedly pull at the gown, fearing she was revealing too much.

“Your invitation, ma’am?” the man stood at the entrance to Almack’s Assembly Rooms asked, extending a white-gloved hand toward her. 

She passed the invitation over, praying that he did not see the fact her hand shook. He looked over the invitation, and for one horrid minute, she held her breath, fearing that this was some awful trick, that perhaps it was a false invitation, and she hadn’t been invited after all.

“This invitation is to a Mr. Reginal Baxter?” the man said coolly, looking at her with a clear question in his gaze.

“Yes, he is…my father,” she said hurriedly. “He was unable to make it, so he has allowed me to use the invitation instead.”

A beat of silence followed these words as the man continued to stare at her. 

Behind her in the road, more people were gathering from their carriages, all impatiently calling forward as to what the hold-up was.

“Very well.” The man sighed and waved her in. 

She released the breath she had been holding and walked into the corridor of the assembly rooms, following others as they discarded their jackets and cloaks with servants standing on one side of the corridor. She avoided meeting their gazes, fearing that one of the servants might recognize her from the streets of London, then scurried in behind a particularly large group of ladies who gossiped wildly, their chatter like the buzz of a beehive.

She was so busy being careful not to be seen alone that she did not pay attention to where she was going, not until she stumbled into the main ballroom and the dazzling light of the candles took her breath away. She halted, her chin turning back and forth as she took in the room.

The great candelabras hanging from the ceiling basked the room in lemon-tinged light, making the ladies’ faces glow, along with their jewelry. As if their skin had been studded with stones, they turned their heads back and forth, making sure the light caught all their fine jewels. Gentlemen wandered back and forth, some standing tall and adjusting cravats as a budgerigar might preen his feathers, while others stared coolly between the ladies, judging them as if it were a competition. 

“I am in over my head,” she murmured, raising her hands over her arms and practically cuddling herself as she stood in the corner of the room. The one piece of jewelry she wore was the brooch that had been gifted to her by the mysterious visitor to the print house. It glittered like a candle flame all of its own. 

Unsure what else to do other than make herself visible to whoever the gentleman was, Becca started to circle the room. She started near the edge, her nerves making it impossible to go anywhere near the middle of the room. No one turned to acknowledge her presence or speak to her. The feeling of invisibility grew, and rather than being perturbed by the idea, she grew increasingly comforted.

She was able to observe the ton in their finery, listening in to scraps of conversation that inspired her, making her think of new articles that she could write for the periodical.

“Oh yes, indeed,” one elderly lady said, grasping what had to be her granddaughter’s arm and clutching it tight with bony fingers. “He has eight thousand pounds a year. Is it not a wondrous thing? Imagine being married to that.”

Married to the money or the man?

Becca bit her lip to avoid laughing as she moved on through the room and hovered by a drinks table, paying particular attention to two gentlemen whose heads were bent together. One was the perfect image of a dandy with excessive lace cuffs and a painted face, the other much more reserved and demure looking with a dark suit. 

“Not a penny left. Not a bit of it!” the dandy said with a high-pitched tone. “Baron Lancaster’s father bled every man he ever met dry. If you ask me, he belonged in debtor’s prison, not that fine house he got by marrying his wife.”

“Shh, someone will hear you,” the demure man beside him hissed, but the dandy didn’t seem to care and launched into another tirade concerning money.

Becca moved on again, glancing back repeatedly as she noticed a pattern. A surprising number of conversations in that room all concerned one thing, in one way or another—money. 

She reached for another table lined with drinks and looked over the glasses spread across the table. There was champagne bubbling in tall, thin glasses, and rich dark claret in much squatter glasses. It was not the beer or gin that Becca was used to seeing in the backstreets of London, in tankards clutched and waved outside of taverns and pubs in drunkards’ hands. Unsure what she would like, she took a glass of champagne and lifted it to her lips, sniffing it cautiously at first before she dared take a sip. The bubbles tickled her tongue, and she stepped back in surprise before she felt something under her foot.

“Oh!” she yelped in surprise as she realized she was stepping not on something, but someone. She tripped on another’s foot, falling to the side before a hand came up and grasped her waist. 

The sudden firmness, the practical intimacy of the touch to her waist shocked her, and she turned her head as much as possible, her eyes flitting toward the bearer of that hand.

A face was much closer to hers than she had anticipated, a pair of dark eyes, the color of chestnuts, and dark brown hair like cinnamon that curled across his forehead. 

“Forgive me,” she muttered, the words falling from her lips as the smallest of smiles lifted the handsome face.

Who is he?

---

“A Baron’s Scandalous Quill” is an Amazon Best-Selling novel, check it out here!

The fiery Becca, a commoner and a mysterious writer, yearns to explore the scandalous lives of the ton. Writing under a pseudonym, she dreams of unveiling aristocratic secrets. When an invitation by a stranger promises an opportunity to expose a baron’s concealed truths, Becca is tempted to break all the rules of the past to experience her dream. However, as she delves into the wicked baron’s world, ambition takes a backseat to an unexpected desire that threatens to entwine her heart.

Can Becca resist the allure of the enigmatic baron?

William, finally freed from his father’s influence and deceptive past, strives to redeem the family name. When an opportunity to publish a book and unearth all of his father’s secrets arises, William is wary, until he meets the alluring Becca. As they journey to unveil hidden truths, Becca’s spirit and flame illuminate the shadows of the past, making him crave her stolen glances and sinful touch. The more secrets are revealed, the more William can not resist his passion for the seductive writer.

Can he stay focused around Becca’s scandalous quill?

As Becca and William’s moments blossom into an irresistible bond, unearthing the dark history of his father, each revelation tests the limits of their flaming romance. In a world tainted by scandal and deception, they confront the past to forge a future where passionate love triumphs over convention. Will William forsake the ton’s approval to claim Becca’s heart, or will lineage secrets tear them apart?

“A Baron’s Scandalous Quill” is a historical romance novel of approximately 80,000 words. No cheating, no cliffhangers, and a guaranteed happily ever after.

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