Miss Benwick Reforms a Rogue Read online

  Miss Benwick Reforms a Rogue

  By Maggie Fenton

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2019 by Margaret Cooke

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without written permission of the copyright owner except for the use of quotations in a book review. For more information, address:

  [email protected]

  First paperback edition August 2019

  Book design by Angela Haddon

  Edited by Leigh Michaels

  ISBN 9781077627192

  ASIN B07VCH4ZWK

  www.maggiefenton.com

  www.angelahaddon.com

  www.leighmichaels.com

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty One

  Chapter Twenty Two

  Chapter Twenty Three

  Chapter Twenty Four

  Other Works By Maggie Fenton

  About the Author

  Dedication

  This book is dedicated to Leigh Michaels. Miss Benwick would have been a very different story (and not in a good way) without her critical eye and patience. I would have never been able to finish without her help. Thanks Leigh!

  This book is not dedicated to my two miniature schnauzers, Emma and Pearl, who did everything in their power to distract me from my work with their devilish innocent little faces and earsplitting dulcet-toned barks.

  “Conceal me what I am, and be my aid for such disguise as haply shall become the form of my intent.”

  -William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night

  Chapter One

  A Harebrained Scheme

  As Davina Benwick sat in front of the mirror and studied the purple-black flesh around her eye, she knew that she could never marry Lord Dalrymple. Her fiancé had delivered the blow last night, but the shock of it all must have paralyzed her until this moment, as she finally let herself confront the evidence of his cruelty. An hour away from the altar was hardly a convenient time for self-revelation, but she supposed it was better now than an hour after the ceremony.

  Her mother had other plans, however, which seemed to include smearing maquillage—whore's paint, as the always delightful Dowager Lady Benwick would have called it under any other circumstances—over the evidence of Dalrymple's tantrum. Davina was surprised her mother had the cosmetic…though Lady Benwick had turned hypocrisy into a high art years ago.

  "It boggles the mind, Davina, really it does!" her mother tutted as she applied the paint to the bruising with ungentle urgency. Waves of pain radiated, but she’d not give her mother the satisfaction of seeing her wince. "We finally find a suitable husband—an earl!—and you drive him to this on the eve of your wedding. You're lucky he still wants you."

  Davina did not think herself particularly lucky. In fact, she and luck had been firmly estranged since her birth to the woman currently trying to murder her eyeball.

  "He wants me for my dowry," she retorted, which was true enough, though she suspected Dalrymple’s greed was only part of the reason for his unwed state. There had always been something a bit askew behind his affable façade, and something even more askew about the fact that he’d yet to be leg-shackled despite inheriting his title years ago. Something had to be horribly wrong to keep a man with an earldom and all of his teeth out of the marriage noose for so long.

  She’d known it was too good to be true.

  Familiar, talon-like fingers dug deep into the edge of the bruise, and she couldn’t hold back her wince this time. Lady Benwick was not pleased, though Davina was hard pressed to remember the last time her mother had ever been pleased with her. Even when Dalrymple had proposed, Lady Benwick, who’d been angling for the match for months, had berated Davina for not accepting immediately.

  Judging from the state of her eye, however, it seemed Davina’s hesitation had been warranted. She should have listened to her intuition, but she’d considered her mother…and then Dalrymple…and had chosen the lesser of two evils.

  Or so she’d thought.

  "He could have had a dozen other girls with dowries bigger than yours, yet he chose you,” Lady Benwick reminded her. Not for the first time.

  "I suppose it must be because he loves me, then," she shot back.

  Lady Benwick gave Davina that same impatient frown she always did when she thought her daughter was being particularly dimwitted. "Love has nothing to do with it. He thought you a sensible, obedient girl. It's a miracle he has decided to proceed after your display last night.”

  "He insisted that the sun circled the earth! I merely pointed out how misinformed he was." Glaringly ignorant, more like. She’d known Dalrymple was stupid, but this—this—simply boggled the mind.

  She could still see her brother’s own dumbfounded expression at Dalrymple’s claim—and the pitying glance he’d sent her across the dinner table. Sir Wesley probably wondered how his own sister could have agreed to marry such a ridiculous man.

  Then again, her brother had done very little to help Davina over the years, too caught up in his inventions—and frankly too terrified of their mother—to intervene. Davina was used to his benign negligence…and their mother was terrifying, she’d give him that.

  She did envy him, though. Had she been born a son, her prospects would not be so very bleak.

  "At the dinner table, Davina," Lady Benwick said reprovingly. "No husband wants to be corrected, especially in public. Though he should have known better than to mark your face. Lud, it’s starting to swell."

  Dalrymple should have conferred with the dowager. Her mother was quite skilled in punishments that didn't leave a mark.

  “It shall not be too noticeable at the ceremony,” Lady Benwick continued, glaring at the injury as if to cow it into submission. “Though I wonder how we shall cope at the reception.”

  “Perhaps everyone will think I am diseased,” she muttered.

  “I do hope so,” Lady Benwick answered fervently.

  Davina just sighed…and endured. As she’d always done.

  After what seemed a thousand years, Lady Benwick took a step back to study her work. She huffed out a breath and raised her eyes toward the heavens in entreaty.

  Davina was tempted to tell Lady Benwick not to bother. If that had worked, she would have been rescued from her dragon of a mother years ago.

  “There’s nothing else to be done, I suppose,” Lady Benwick said resignedly. “Though, really, Davina, what are you wearing? I thought we had decided upon the violet frock.”

  Davina glanced down at her sprigged muslin gown. It was admittedly not quite fine enough for a wedding, but it was the only one in her wardrobe free of her mother’s appetite for bows, flounces, and the deeply saturated colors that made Davina’s already pale skin look perpetually sallow.

  She took a stab at resistance. “You decided upon the violet froc
k. I’d rather wear this today, mama.”

  Lady Benwick’s hand twitched at her side, as if she wanted to blacken Davina’s other eye. “Are you questioning my taste?”

  If they were living in the eighteenth century, in a bow factory, Davina was sure she would have been considered an Incomparable.

  But they weren’t.

  “Of course not,” she lied.

  Lady Benwick drew out the dreaded violet gown from the wardrobe, and thrust the purple mass of silk bows and flounces in her direction. “Do hurry and change, Davina!” she snapped. “We are due at the chapel in an hour!”

  Her mother’s words struck her like a death knell, but she obediently rose and began to strip out of the sprig muslin. Davina had stopped fighting her mother years ago over her wardrobe. It simply wasn’t worth the battle—and she’d discovered that compliance lulled her mother into a false sense of complacency, allowing Davina to get away with the things that made her life half-bearable. Like novel reading. Or sleeping through Cousin Edmund’s stuttering sermons on Sundays without fear of reprisal (though everyone did that).

  Or perhaps occasionally raiding the household wine collection at the end of a bad day (though lately every day was a bad day at Benwick Grange).

  Lady Benwick jerked the gown over her daughter’s head and laced her up in the back so violently Davina wondered if her mother wanted her to faint. It wouldn’t be the first time in Lady Benwick’s quest to make her gangly, flat-chested daughter appear more fashionably feminine.

  Her mother was quite possibly the worst human being in the world.

  Lady Benwick smoothed down the flounces and bows, which popped right back into place, stuck one more pin in Davina’s scalp to annihilate a curl that had the effrontery to escape its prison, and stepped back to admire her work.

  Lady Benwick’s lips tightened into a grim line at what she beheld. She’d never been able to grasp why the same rich colors that would have set off her complexion so well looked so horrible on her daughter. Davina could have explained this to her, had she ever truly listened to anything Davina said.

  But she didn’t.

  “Well, you shall have to do,” she sighed.

  High praise indeed.

  With one last threat to collect Davina at the top of the hour, Lady Benwick left the room in a crinkle of bombazine and a suffocating haze of rosewater. Davina slumped in relief. She could finally breathe. Sort of. She tugged at the bodice of the gown so hard she heard something rip in the back and took in a satisfyingly deep breath.

  She looked once more in the mirror, beholding a tall, weedy woman in a lumpy violet gown with unremarkable features and no bosom to speak of, her blond curls crushed into submission in a tight chignon at the nape of her neck.

  She looked like a barkless twig being eaten by a giant purple flower.

  The most interesting thing about her had been the black eye, but the maquillage had done its job. Aside from some slight, incipient swelling that would only get worse as the day progressed, it was as if the abuse had never happened. But it had, and it would happen again and again until the day she died.

  No, she could not go through with the marriage. She could not tie herself to a man who would knock her off her feet simply because she'd had the nerve to disagree with him.

  She’d thought anything would be better than living another moment under Lady Benwick’s tyranny. And indeed Davina could have endured Dalrymple's small mind, his casual disregard and meaty hands—even his unattractively loud breathing. She could have endured a lot of things to be free of her mother. But not this.

  What could she do, though? How could she escape her doom when she didn’t even have the courage to choose her own wedding frock?

  If only she'd listened to Cousin Leon. He'd warned her from the beginning to steer clear of the earl, but she'd refused to listen. He’d even argued with her yesterday about it, had begged her to call off the marriage.

  But Davina had been more concerned with Leon’s own rather foolhardy plans to elope with Miss Dalrymple. That woman had pulled the wool over her cousin’s eyes so thoroughly that he couldn’t see she was little better than her brother. And Miss Dalrymple was certainly just as stupid, to have agreed to elope with Leon, of all people.

  Leon may have been Davina’s favorite person in the world, but even she could admit he was poor marriage material—though now that Davina had been on the receiving end of Dalrymple’s fist, she could better understand Miss Dalrymple’s haste to marry a penniless bon vivant. She’d probably do something just as desperate if she were in Miss Dalrymple’s shoes.

  Leon hadn’t wanted to hear a word against his goddess, of course, and Davina hadn’t wanted to hear a word against her marriage, still foolishly believing she’d be able to manage Dalrymple.

  If only Leon were here now…but she’d not seen him at all that morning. Perhaps he had indeed absconded with Miss Dalrymple, though Davina had never thought he’d actually go through with it. Leon tended to change his plans—and his affections—as often as he changed his cravat.

  She hoped that was the case this time, for he was the only one who could help her now. Sir Wesley was less than useless, preoccupied with making his current project, a French hydrogen balloon, flightworthy, and with little time left over for the petty affairs of his family. His wife, Alice, the current Lady Benwick, remained aloof, no matter how often Davina had tried to befriend her over the years. She’d get no help there.

  As for Robert, her younger brother, he’d cut ties with the family as soon as he’d come into his inheritance and had immigrated to the colonies. The dowager still hadn’t recovered from that mutiny—and neither had Davina, who had begged him to take her with him, to no avail.

  She didn’t bother asking the staff for help. The only ally among the servants she’d ever had was Mr. Pilby, the grange’s former butler, but her mother had run him off months ago. And poor Cousin Edmund was so terrified of offending his aunt that he’d probably stutter himself into an early grave if Davina were to tell him she didn’t want to marry the earl.

  Not for the first time, she thought about traveling to London and throwing herself upon the mercy of her cousin, Astrid, Duchess of Montford, but she didn’t have the coin to make it to London. Her mother was as stingy with her pin money as she was with her affection. Besides, Davina deemed that option only slightly less palatable than actual homelessness.

  Astrid was Alice’s sister, and just like Alice, Astrid had never cared for Davina. The feeling had always been mutual. She couldn’t remember precisely when in her childhood the schism had happened, only that she had realized that Astrid and Alice would never—could never—separate Davina from Lady Benwick. Her mother’s sins in their eyes had been her own, and the rejection had hurt her deeply.

  Over the years, Davina had perversely done everything in her power to prove her cousins right. If Alice and Astrid thought her a simpering, preening snob, then that was precisely what she would be, to them and to the world. Besides, being so unpleasant was as effective a defense against other people as she had ever found. It protected her as nothing and no one else had ever done.

  No, the only person she could count on in the world to get her out of this fix was Leon—feckless, impulsive Leon. And that was a truly depressing thought.

  She grabbed the hem of her gown and wiped away the maquillage, unable to stand the lie in the mirror another moment. The paint left a white smear on the fabric, which filled her with grim satisfaction…and even more determination to run as far away as possible. Her mother would murder her if she came to the chapel with her precious gown ruined.

  Escaping the grange was easy enough. Though it was her wedding day, everyone ignored her as they usually did, despite her loud frock and black eye. They were too caught up in the war between the two Lady Benwicks to pay her any notice. Davina’s mother had never willingly relinquished the household reins to her new daughter-in-law, while Alice never let her forget who was in charge. They were in rare form
today, with Davina’s wedding an ideal battlefield. For once Davina was thankful for the distraction.

  Davina slipped out the back of the Grange and hurried down the well-worn path toward the vicarage, where Leon lived with his brother. The cottage was at the edge of the village, just across the lane from the chapel where her fate was to be sealed in less than an hour. She’d made the trip hundreds of times before, but never had she done so with the few valuables she owned stuffed down her bodice…and with every intention of leaving Benwick Grange behind forever.

  If all else failed, there was always the mail coach, which passed through the village at nine—the same hour as her wedding—every morning on its way toward the Scottish border. She’d be lucky if she made it to the next village, however, since a young, unaccompanied woman in a fine (if hideous) silk gown was about the furthest thing from inconspicuous. But surely it wouldn’t come to that. Leon would know what to do.

  The footpath came out at the back garden of the vicarage, shielding her from the view of the chapel. She picked her way along the hedge line and peered across the lane, her heart sinking at the sight of the small crowd already beginning to form. She may have had few friends, and her mother even fewer, but the gentry from the surrounding counties wasn’t about to miss the wedding of an earl, no matter how little they cared for the bride.

  She ducked down and hurried toward the rear entrance. Peeking through the windowpane, she didn’t see any sign of Mrs. Jenkins, the occasional housekeeper for the vicarage, so she screwed up her courage and pounded on the door.

  She wasn’t expecting the vicar himself to nearly fall out of the door seconds later. Her oldest cousin looked completely poleaxed…well, more poleaxed than usual. Half his clerical collar was sprung toward the heavens, alongside his unkempt, faded blond hair. He'd buttoned up his cassock crookedly, and his gold-framed reading spectacles were sitting cock-eyed on his nose, as if he’d forgotten he was wearing them. This did not bode well, considering he was officiating her wedding in half an hour.