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Keep reading for an excerpt from THE RAKE’S BARGAIN by Lucy Ashford.
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Chapter One
June 1803
Miss Deborah O’Hara pressed herself close to the ivy-covered mansion and tried not to flinch as the rain trickled off the brim of her cap and dripped steadily—coldly—down inside her jacket collar. She’d scrambled over the boundary wall and run here through the shrubbery, keeping her head low; but now she was able to look around. Now she was able to see that the acres of formal gardens stretching away on all sides were quite deserted—and as waterlogged as the overcast sky.
Hardgate Hall. The very name was enough to send shivers down her spine. Swiping fresh rain from her cheeks, she glanced up once more at the small window on the second floor that some servant must have carelessly left open. It was almost sixteen years since she’d last entered this house, a bewildered six-year-old clutching her mother’s hand; though a few minutes later they were being hustled out again and Deb’s mother was weeping.
‘You made your choices!’ Deb remembered Hugh Palfreyman declaring harshly. ‘You made your own bed, sister mine. And you can lie on it.’
Deb was twenty-two now and her mother had died long ago. But she’d never ever forgotten this place, and she always imagined it under grey skies, just as it was now.
She scanned the garden once more, trying to suppress her growing anxiety, and relaxed just a little when she saw two familiar figures hurrying towards her through the rain. ‘Luke. Francis. There you are. I was beginning to think…’
‘Think what, Miss Deb?’ Young Luke’s straggly blond hair was plastered to his face.
She was beginning to fear they might have been caught by Palfreyman’s men. Deb said instead, ‘You took your time. What news?’
‘We looked to see if there was anyone around. Just as you told us to, Deborah.’ This time it was the older one, Francis, who spoke. ‘Though we were careful to keep under cover, always. And we’ve good news—it looks as if all the groundsmen have been ordered to spend the afternoon tidying up Palfreyman’s glasshouses, on the far side of the south lawn.’
Deb nodded. ‘So they’ll not catch sight of us here. What about the guard dogs?’
Young Luke spoke up next. ‘We heard them barking in the distance and they sound big.’ He shivered. ‘But they’re kept in a yard close by the stables—though I’ve heard they’re let loose after nightfall, when they prowl around the grounds with teeth so sharp they’d take a great lump out of your thigh, and—’
‘Thank you, Luke,’ Deb interrupted. ‘That’s enough.’ More than e
nough, in fact. ‘So we’re safe for now?’
Francis tipped his black hat with the feather in it to gaze up at the vast house that loomed before them. ‘It depends,’ he said narrowly, ‘on what you mean by “safe”, Deborah.’
Deb sighed inwardly. Francis Calladine, almost twice Luke’s age, was a stalwart friend, but he’d been dubious about Deb’s plan from the start. Although it was Francis who’d spotted earlier, as they’d examined the house from the far side—the safe side—of the boundary wall, that the rooms to the north of the building looked dark and little used.
‘And if you’re really intent on breaking in,’ he’d added, ‘all that ivy growing up there is a burglar’s delight.’
Deb’s response had been instant. ‘I’m no burglar!’
‘You’re planning on getting inside,’ Francis had said quietly. ‘Though why you’re so intent on taking such a risk when the owner’s a Justice of the Peace and has already threatened us all with prison remains a mystery to me.’
If Francis had known that Hugh Palfreyman was her uncle, he’d have been quite speechless. But by Deb’s reckoning, desperate times called for desperate measures.