Treacherous Temptations(71)

“You mistake my meaning,” she said.

“Then tell me what I misunderstand!”

“You asked me if I will have you, but how can you not know the answer?” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “I was wrong about you, Hadley. I accused you of falsehoods, betrayal, and greed, when you were in fact the least guilty of any of those surrounding me—including my own father!

“I summarily condemned you for your past with Barbara, without understanding the power she must have wielded. But how could I understand anything so incomprehensibly vile until I became a victim of it myself? I know now that there is nothing more between you and she, just as I know you never intended me harm.”

“But I did deceive you, Mary,” he said. “I allowed you to believe that I could be indifferent to you, that our marriage would only be as real as you wanted it to be, but I never considered it anything less than real. I was just too cowardly to confess how I really feel…to chance your rejection. Yet, it was all for naught when you spurned me anyway,” he finished on a bitter note.

“How you feel?” She searched his face with burgeoning hope. “Tell me now, Hadley. Please. I need to understand. What is this thing between us?”

“What is this? I once thought it so bloody complicated and tortured myself denying it, but truth cannot and will not be denied. And the truth, pure and simple is that I love you, Mary. You are the palliative for my restless ache. You sate my inner craving for something good and honest, a craving I didn’t even know I had…until I met you.”

She gazed up at him, her heart surfeit with emotion. “But we are so different you and I. How could you ever be happy with the dull domesticity that I love? That is me.”

“I am finally free from my bondage to lies, treachery, and deceit, free to live as I please and you worry that I could not be content with mundane rusticity? Believe me, my dearest heart when I say a life of dull domesticity is what I long for above all things and I want to live it with you. So I ask you once more, will you be mine, Mary?”

Her eyes blurred with tears. “There is a certain irony, don’t you think, in asking the mother of your unborn child if she will be your wife?”

Hadley shook his head in a double take. “Wh-what did you say?”

“I believe I am carrying your child, Hadley.” She watched incredulity wash over him with bated breath.

“We will be wed at once! Here. Now. In Barnesley’s chapel.”

“No,” she said. “I refuse to begin our life together in this wicked and corrupt place. Take me away from here, Hadley. Please, take me home.”

“But I have yet to receive my answer.”

“Yes, Hadley. I will be your wife. Unequivocally. Irrevocably.”

His brows furrowed. “I’ve heard that before. How can I know you really mean it this time?”

She entwined her arms about his neck, murmuring into her kiss. “I guess you will just have to trust me.”





Epilogue


A fortnight later, all of London was abuzz with the astounding news of the posthumous pardon of Henry, Fourth Earl of Blanchard, and that the restored earldom had been conferred upon his long-exiled heir.

Almost immediately thereafter, the London broadsheets published wishes of felicitations to the newly wed Lord and Lady Blanchard, who had exchanged their vows at the small estate of Welham Grove, reportedly amidst thousands of late blooming primroses.



Victoria’s Titillating Tidbits The inspiration for the story: Treacherous Temptations was very much inspired by the literary works of the 18th century, such as Samuel Richardson’s two novels Pamela and Clarissa Harlowe, and Les Liaisons Dangereuses by Choderlos de Laclos. In all of these works, virtue versus vice, and evil versus innocent were predominant themes, with the seduction of a virgin as the primary trope.

The South Sea scandal: The South Sea Company of the 18th century began as a legitimate means of paying off national debt, became little more than a great government-sponsored Ponzi scheme, rife with bribery and fraudulent stock trading, much as it is described in this novel. The company directors artificially inflated the stocks by spreading rumors of the riches to be gained, which caused a wild speculation frenzy. When the bubble burst in 1720, the effect was much like the Wall Street crash of 1929—rruining thousands of people who had lost their heads. A number of prominent people committed suicide or left to live abroad due to ruined finances and reputations.

The real heiress:

While Hadley and Mary are both fictional characters, I did model Mary very closely after a woman of the same name who, like my Mary, was a commoner and one of the wealthiest women in England. In her middle twenties, she wed a Lord Anne Hamilton (Yes, he was named Anne, after his godmother the queen!) a younger son of the Duke of Hamilton. When Lord Anne proved a profligate, Mary took extreme measures by choosing the stigma of illegitimacy in order to protect the inheritance of their infant son. Because the couple had been wed in an “irregular” Fleet wedding, it was no great difficulty for her to have their marriage records destroyed. She then baptized her son under her maiden name, claiming that she was only the mistress and not the wife of her noble husband. Her scheme worked and Mary never re-wed.

The Cornbury Jacobite Plot: From the abdication of James II in 1688 to the death of his grandson, Bonnie Prince Charlie, the last direct Stuart heir in 1788, there were numerous attempts by various Jacobite groups and foreign sympathizers to restore the Stuarts to the throne. In my story, while working as a Hanoverian spy, Hadley had assisted to quash a plot by Bishop Atterbury, but then out of remorse, later assisted the young Henry Hyde, Viscount Cornbury, in his plot to gain French backing for a Stuart restoration. The attempt by Cornbury was real, although I took some license with the dates for the purpose of my story. The French backed down and Cornbury gave up political intrigues and no other significant attempt was made again until Bonnie Prince Charlie landed in Scotland in 1745.