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Overview
When her parents passed away and her older brother went missing in America, Lady Meriel Traherne had to leave her beloved estate in Wales to escort her rebellious younger sister to a school in France. She had no idea of the dangers she would encounter in this foreign land, and she certainly never expected the help of Sir Anthony Davies, the kind of fashionable gentleman she had always despised. Yet, as the fragile peace between France and England threatens to collapse, elegant Sir Anthony will surprise her by saving her life and threatening to steal her heart.
Six years later, Meriel’s sister, Lady Gwyneth, is in her family’s London townhouse when her friend Miss Pamela Beckley arrives, begging for help. Her cousin and guardian, the Earl of Lyford, refuses to allow Pamela to celebrate her Season in London, and Pamela fears that the apparently impoverished Earl intends to marry her himself to secure her considerable fortune. Gwyneth vows to do all she can to prevent the arrogant Earl from attaining his desires. But when he turns his dazzling charm on her, Gwyneth is thrown by her own startling desires—and the shocking realization that it’s she, not Pamela, whom the Earl intends to marry.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781480415218 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Open Road Media |
| Publication date: | 05/07/2013 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 462 |
| Sales rank: | 118,645 |
| File size: | 5 MB |
About the Author
A fourth-generation Californian of Scottish descent, Amanda Scott is the author of more than fifty romantic novels, many of which appeared on the USA Today bestseller list. Her Scottish heritage and love of history (she received undergraduate and graduate degrees in history at Mills College and California State University, San Jose, respectively) inspired her to write historical fiction. Credited by Library Journal with starting the Scottish romance subgenre, Scott has also won acclaim for her sparkling Regency romances. She is the recipient of the Romance Writers of America’s RITA Award (for Lord Abberley’s Nemesis, 1986) and the RT Book Reviews Career Achievement Award. She lives in central California with her husband.
Read an Excerpt
The Sisters Traherne
By Amanda Scott
OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA
Copyright © 1987 Lynne Scott-DrennanAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4804-1521-8
CHAPTER 1
"Will we go all the way to the top, Meri?"
The boy's high-pitched voice drifted back to Lady Meriel Traherne as she paused for a moment on the precipitous rock-strewn path halfway up the northern slope of that mighty Welsh mountain known as Cader Idris, or Arthur's Chair. Looking up at him with a grin, Meriel pushed wisps of light brown hair away from her face and called back laughingly, "Ask me that question when we reach Llyn-ycau, Davy. Once you see how steep the Fox's Path is at that point, you may decide you have no wish to climb higher."
Davy's chuckle floated back on the light westerly breeze wafting across the slope from Cardigan Bay. From where Meriel stood, the village of Dolgellau below looked like a collection of dolls' houses along a blue-and-white ribbon that was the Wnion River, and she could see the boats in Barmouth harbor ten miles to the west. Ravens soared overhead in the clear blue sky, and the sound of water tumbling over rocks came from a rill a short distance away.
Three-quarters of an hour later, when they reached the shore of the dark lake known as Llyn-y-cau, the view was even more impressive, for they could now see over the ridges in the middle distance to the north as far as the majestic snow-covered peak of Mount Snowdon, thirty-five miles away. The boy dropped to his stomach beside the small tarn, leaning down to splash water on his thin freckled face. "Climbing is hard work," he said over his shoulder.
"Aye," she responded, sitting down beside him and wishing, not for the first time, that a lady could wear nankeen breeches and a simple open-necked cotton shirt when she took her exercise in such a strenuous form as this. Her moss-green frock was lightweight, but its full gathered skirts encumbered her legs, and her shawl tended to slip off her shoulders at inconvenient moments. Still, her footwear was good enough, a pair of stout boots long since outgrown by her elder brother, Jocelyn, yet still too large for Davy.
The boy made a cup with his hands, slurping noisily from the lake. When he straightened at last, water streamed down his pointed chin, making water spots on his shirt front. He turned to gaze at the twin-peaked summit rising nine hundred feet above them, its perpendicular golden rock face making a shadowy, pointed backdrop for the dark lake. Meriel had often thought it looked much like a piece of broken crockery with sharp, jagged edges rounding inward to contain the lake.
"Do you know what the other side looks like, Davy?"
"Well, I've not come up here with you before, have I?"
"I ought to have brought you long ago," she said, bending to splash water over her hot cheeks, and thinking how different he was from what she had been at his age. She had not waited for someone else to bring her onto the mountain, but had been drawn to it irresistibly from her earliest years, despite all attempts on the part of those in authority over her to discourage such expeditions. Smiling apologetically, she explained, "'Tis merely that when I come here myself, I am searching for peace and solitude—two things one does not find in the company of one's sisters and small brother."
"Is that what you sought today?" the boy asked, his tone one of simple curiosity.
She grinned at him. "Much you would care. I could scarcely send you home again when you ran after and pleaded so eloquently to accompany me. However, I did wish to come for a last bit of real peace before we all leave Plas Tallyn."
"Will I like London, Meri?"
"I daresay you will," she replied. "There are any number of things to do and places to see, you know. And then, too, you will be going to school soon. You will like that."
"Will we be taking Mr. Glendower?"
"Only as Auntie Wynne's chaplain and as a sort of courier to arrange things for you along the way. In London you will need a tutor who is younger and more willing to enter into those activities that you enjoy, Davy." She paused, crinkling her eyes as she gazed at him more searchingly. "I thought we had been over this point before."
The boy looked up at her from under eyebrows so blond as to appear white, making his thick dark lashes startling by contrast. His light blue eyes twinkled. "I wanted to be certain," he said. "I've had my fill of Mr. Glower Glendower."
Meriel didn't reply. There was nothing she could say that would be appropriate. Davy was, after all, only twelve. One simply could not agree with his sentiments outright, however much one might wish to do so.
The silence lengthened. Anyone seeing the two of them at that moment would have had no trouble recognizing their relationship. Although Meriel was more than twice Davy's age and a head taller, they each had the same determined chin and the same finely chiseled features. Both had fair hair, though hers was several shades darker than his, with deep golden highlights, and like his, her eyebrows were lighter than her hair, and her lashes darker. Instead of light blue eyes, however, hers were the gray-green of soft, velvety heather leaves.
One other trait that Meriel would as soon not have shared with her brother was a pair of shoulders broader than her hips. With wide skirts, no one noticed her slim, boyish figure, but according to her aunt, newer fashions boasted more revealing, pencil-slim skirts instead. Fatal, she thought. Not that such things mattered to her any longer. At twenty-six she was long past the age of being on the lookout for a husband. Her primary interest now was her family. Still, she thought, it might be amusing to cut a dash when she reached Paris. Her sister Nest, by all accounts, had not found slim hips a disadvantage in that great city.
"What is on the other side?" Davy asked suddenly, breaking into her thoughts.
Meriel stared at him blankly for several seconds, then chuckled. "Grassy slopes and no cliffs," she said. "The land descends abruptly, to be sure, but it looks as if one could slide all the way into the Dysynni Valley on one's backside without hitting a single rock."
Davy's eyes widened as he looked back the way they had come, and she knew what he was thinking as though he had expressed himself aloud. In many places the walls of rock along the northern face of Cader Idris were perpendicular.
"I want to see," the boy said, getting to his feet.
"Oh, Davy, it will take us nearly two hours to get back as it is," she protested.
"How long to get to the top?"
"Forty minutes, maybe."
"And down to the lake again?"
"Less than half that time."
"An hour, then. Please, Meri?"
She shook her head, but it was a token gesture, and he knew it. Lady Meriel had been mother and father to her younger sisters and brother for nearly two years now, and while she could be strict with them when necessary, she always found it difficult to deny them pleasure. Particularly Davy. He had been her special child practically from the cradle, for her mother had been ill after his birth and had never truly recovered her strength. Then, when the typhus had struck northern Wales two years previously, her mother had succumbed within a week, and her father, stout though he had been, had followed her to the grave within the month, leaving the four of his six children who remained at Plas Tallyn to fend for themselves.
War in France had made it impossible for them to seek refuge with their sister Nest, who had accompanied her husband, the Comte de Prévenu, to Paris several months before her mama's death, when the comte and his family had been granted amnesty by Napoleon Bonaparte. And Jocelyn, their elder brother, now the twelfth Earl of Tallyn, was somewhere in the wilds of America, unreachable seemingly, for Meriel had written to tell him of their predicament—and incidentally, to inform him of his own inheritance—immediately after her father's demise.
She got to her feet now, smiling at her small brother. "Be careful now, Davy, for the upper path is difficult. Auntie Wynne is distracted enough, what with all the travel arrangements and worrying about what mischief you and Gwen will get into, as well as Eliza's come-out. I don't want to have to tell her you fell off a mountain."
"Pooh," said the boy scornfully. "As if I should do anything so daft as to fall. And come-outs are paltry things, by what I hear. Eliza don't want to leave Bugg Dewsall, so I don't see why she should have to go to London to catch a husband anyhow. You didn't find one there."
"Mr. Dewsall's name is Gwilym," Meriel corrected automatically, "and we have all been over and over why Eliza mustn't marry him. She is too young."
"Too young for Bugg but not for some London beau," Davy said in the same scornful tone. "I know."
"You know a deal too much, young man," Meriel said sternly. "If you mean to reach the summit, you'd best get moving before I change my mind."
He threw her a saucy grin and scrambled away, moving upward over the narrow, rocky, scarcely discernible path as though he were part goat. Meriel followed at a more leisurely pace, cursing her skirts again each time they caught on a bit of scrub or got in the way of her feet as she clambered over the rocks, but savoring the sweet, clear air and the familiar sense of freedom the mountain always gave her.
At the summit they paused to scan the magnificent view. To the south lay the green-and-golden Dysynni Valley, and to the west, the olive-green Mawddach estuary, stretching to Barmouth and the broad inward sweep of Cardigan Bay. Beyond the rippling ridges to the north they could see the glorious snow-covered summit of Mount Snowdon. And to the east the sharp depths of the Dovey river valley wound north and south with ridges on either side thick with hazel, beech, and elm trees. Nearer, practically at the northeast foot of the mountain, lay the great sprawling stone house at Plas Tallyn, home of the Traherne family for centuries, looking now like a child's toy. Meriel drank in the view and knew from the deep sigh of appreciation that her small brother was as awestruck as she was.
The sensation was a familiar one, but in a way it seemed brand new each time. She had been climbing this mountain ever since she was a tiny lass, sometimes tagging after her brother Jocelyn and his friends, but more often alone. Over the years the mountain had continued to call to her, to offer strength when she needed strength, comfort when there was none to be had elsewhere. In many ways, the mountain was home in a way that even Plas Tallyn was not.
"We've got to go, Davy," she said abruptly. "The others will wonder where we are, you know, and it does not do to worry Auntie Wynne."
"I don't believe she really worries all that much," said the boy, regarding her placidly. "Not, in any event, when she has her books to read and her yarns for stitching. Still, 'tis a pity you do not mean to travel with us to London. We will miss you, Meri."
"I know, love," she said, giving him a quick hug, "but I'll be back before you know it. I must go to France to look into that school Auntie Wynne is so set on for Gwenyth now that we've got peace, but I'll be back in the twinkling of a bedpost."
"After you go to Paris to see Nest," he pointed out with a grimace.
"Yes, well, we must be certain that all is well with her, you know."
"She says all is well, and she ought to know. She is there and you are not."
"Don't be impertinent, Davy."
The boy fell silent, and they soon turned their footsteps toward home.
Upon their return to the great graystone house, they discovered the rest of the family in the vast draft-ridden ground-floor with drawing room, the ladies occupied in various ways while willowy Mr. Glendower read aloud to them in his carrying voice from a book of sermons. Auburn-haired Wynnefreda, Lady Cadogan, sat with her tambour frame near the roaring fire, setting neat stitches, her needle and frame held firmly in long, slender fingers.
"Merciful heavens, Meriel," she said, her strident but carefully cultivated tones cutting without ceremony through the chaplain's well-modulated ones when she saw her niece and nephew on the threshold, "what an example to set for your sisters, coming into this room looking like a shag rag. And you, Dafydd, in all your dirt. Wherever have the pair of you been all the afternoon?"
"I wonder, ma'am," said Meriel, smiling fondly at that upright dame, "if you know what a shag rag is."
"Why, I haven't the least notion," said her ladyship, diverted and somewhat surprised, since she knew herself to be well-educated for a female, and was particularly proud of her extensive vocabulary. "I do know, however, that it is something one does not wish to discover in one's drawing room."
"No, indeed," Meriel agreed, her smile widening. "'Tis a rag kept in a fighting cock's bag and used to polish his spurs and beak before he is brought up to scratch."
"My lady!"
"Meriel!"
Both the chaplain and Lady Cadogan looked properly scandalized, but Meriel, her gray-green eyes atwinkle, merely turned away from them toward the two other female inhabitants of the room.
"Are you both prepared to depart in the morning?" she inquired.
Flaxen-haired Lady Gwenyth, who at the age of fourteen was looking forward to her first trip to London with much the same air of excitement as her younger brother, fairly bounced up and down upon her brocade pouffe, the mending she had been pretending to attend to sliding unnoticed to her feet. "Shall we truly ride on a great boat?" she demanded.
"Indeed, love, all the way from Barmouth to Bristol, where Mr. Glendower will hire a post chaise for the rest of your journey to London. It will be very exciting, will it not, Eliza?" She turned to the elder of the two girls, a young lady of seventeen summers, who had closed the book in her lap that she had been reading in defiance of Mr. Glendower's choice, and who was attempting to behave as if trips to London were quite commonplace occurrences in her experience.
Lady Eliza pushed a strand of honey-colored hair away from her gray eyes and regarded her eldest sister with a long-suffering air. "I suppose it will be pleasant," she said, "though I shall quite naturally miss Gwilym dreadfully."
"Dear me, why ever should you?" inquired Lady Cadogan, wide-eyed. "I am certain I never missed Cadogan, and I was married to him, after all, which will never be the case with you and young Dewlap."
"Dewsall, Auntie Wynne," corrected Gwenyth, chuckling. "His name is Dewsall, and I am persuaded he's ever so much more handsome than Viscount Cadogan, for though I never saw him, you have always said he squinted like a bag of nails and had teeth which stuck out, which Bugg does not."
"Gwenyth," said Eliza awfully, "if you cannot keep a still tongue in your head, you will be sent to your bedchamber without your supper."
"By whom, Miss Prim and Proper?" demanded Gwenyth. "You are not my guardian, and Meri has said nothing at all."
"Well, I'm sure I am as much your guardian as she is," said Eliza, "for she is nothing of the sort. Jocelyn is our guardian."
"Fiddle. A fine one he is, I must say, off in America these seven years past, maybe even dead for all we know, and leaving Meri to manage his estates and us as well."
"That will do, Gwen," said Meriel evenly. "Please pick up your mending off the floor and do not speak so of our brother. 'Tis most unbecoming."
"Well, I honor his principles, of course, though I do think he might have done better to have fought for the equality of men right here in Wales instead of running off to America to spite Papa," Gwenyth said unrepentantly. "In any event, I do think he might have written at least once in all these years, if not before Papa died, then certainly afterward. One would think he might care something about being an earl, for pity's sake."
"Yes, one might," agreed Lady Cadogan. "After all, many men go to their reward without ever having enjoyed that privilege."
"Well, I should think they do," said Eliza, losing her die-away air completely as she sat up straight and looked with amazement at her aunt.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Sisters Traherne by Amanda Scott. Copyright © 1987 Lynne Scott-Drennan. Excerpted by permission of OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA.
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