My Lady's Choosing: An Interactive Romance Novel(19)

Do you take her up on the offer? Turn to this page.

Or does your heart still beat for one impossible, infuriating, wonderful man—and for him alone? Turn to this page.





“You…you are mad!” you scream at Loveday. You stagger from him, desperate to find Craven and safety.

Loveday grabs you by the neck. His elegant hands steal the breath from your throat as he lets his own fill the bowl of your ear.

“Very well, you fool. I suppose I shall have to go with my original plan. Such a shame to crush so beautiful a throat. But just think how it will play out in the press! I, the good, purehearted vicar, find your lifeless body in the eldritch garden. Then, after Lord Craven snaps and kills himself, I find out I am next in line to inherit. The headlines write themselves.”





Do you fight tooth and nail to break free from the reverend’s clutches? Turn to this page.

Or do you play dead in a desperate attempt to survive? Turn to this page.





The person who liked Mrs. Caddington least in Drury Lane turns out to be none other than assistant costumer Viola Orlando. She greets you with virtually no interest in your bona fides once you drop Mrs. Caddington’s name.

“Rebecca, you mean.” Viola stabs a pin into a dress form she is draping with diaphanous fabric. You have been ushered into her workshop, as well as offered tea and biscuits, despite the late hour. “Awful woman. Mediocre actress. Lovely hair. I should have been her, you know.”

“Oh?” You note the faded but attractive looks of the elder costumer. The excellent diction. The fine, expressive hands.

“I was an actress first, of course.” Viola’s voice is flat with aged anger. “But when Rebecca came, she snapped up all the roles. She was voracious. Ambitious. Silly me, I was just good.”

Lady Evangeline opens her mouth to speak, but you surreptitiously shake your head. Viola is only too eager to continue.

“I’m good with the fabric, of course, and I love every part of the theater, so here we are. But I’ll have you know, the only good reviews her husband ever wrote about actresses here were about me. ‘Luminous,’ I was called. Rebecca, he had not much praise for. Not until he let her work him over, of course. And when his mind went, she chucked him in Bedlam so fast your head would spin, not that he had any family but her to mind. Lucky Rebecca, too, to have a nobleman waiting to ride in on his white steed to save her. Snatching up the men like she did the roles.”

Your heart skips. “The nobleman Rebecca married, do you remember his name?” you ask.

“Granville, of course.” Another pin, another stab.

“An excellent memory you have, madam,” you say. “It has been some time from those days.”

“I was always good with my lines. Picture-perfect memory. Yes, Granville was the name. The old nob got her in the family way, mind, hence the hasty marriage, an affront to the law and the Lord though it was.”

You and Lady Evangeline share a knowing glance. The older woman plows on with her tale, each word dripping in venom.

“Rich as all get-out the second husband was. Rebecca always did land on her feet. Still, I suppose it was lucky that he was wealthy enough to support the strumpet and the babe. But I shouldn’t say. I tell Mr. Caddington so, though he doesn’t know what I’m saying half the time. I like to think he likes to hear the words, though. I like to think I remind him of the good old days, when he had some.”

“Wait.” Your voice catches. “This…Mr. Caddington. Who lost his sense. You are saying he is still alive…and in Bedlam?”

“Of course he’s alive, love!” Viola laughs and gives you a queer look. “I visit the man every Sunday. Someone’s got to be good to him, it might as well be me.”

“Thank you, Viola,” you say, thrilling at your discovery. If Mr. Caddington is still alive and not divorced by Mrs. Caddington, that would mean she married the late Sir Granville bigamously, thus making Cad an illegitimate heir and Henrietta a lovechild. You turn to leave.

“Wait.” Viola stops you at the door. “What was it you wanted to ask about?”

“Whatever it was, dear lady,” you say with a smile, “you have answered us already.”





This seems to be a most damning situation for Cad! Hurry on to this page.





You desperately need a proper bath, which you take, and then indulge in a moonlit stroll near the castle. Thus refreshed, you still have much to think over. But no sooner can you begin to sort things out when you stumble upon Abercrombie at one of the castle’s half-ruined outbuildings. There, struck by moonlight and a fevered look, the old man sifts through papers he takes from one of the open drawers of the wooden chest he’s dragged all the way from London—London, which now seems a world away.

“Good evening, Abercrombie!” you cry, suddenly heartened by the entire mess of a situation you’ve found yourself in by coming to the Highlands. Whatever is happening with Mac, it is certainly a thousand times more interesting than spending your life laying out the Dowager Dragon’s clothes.

“Aye! Lassie!” Abercrombie responds in his hale and hearty way. “And where is your beau?”

You blush. “If you mean Mac, he is in the stable. Seems a foal decided today was fit to be his birthday.”