A Spinster by the Sea

  A Spinster by the Sea

  The Siren’s Retreat Quartet—Book Three

  Grace Burrowes

  Grace Burrowes Publishing

  A Spinster by the Sea

  Copyright © 2022 by Grace Burrowes

  All rights reserved.

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  Contents

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  To My Dear Readers

  Love Letters by the Sea—Excerpt

  Never a Duke—Excerpt

  Dedication

  To those who have given up hoping

  Chapter One

  “Can’t fault Miss Baxter’s bloodlines.” Lord Corbett Hobbs held up an amethyst-encrusted hand mirror and ran his tongue over his teeth. “Related to two earls, one on each side. Mama says she has good hips. The fellows admit she has a delectable arse.”

  Augustus, Duke of Tindale, glanced at the clock. “If you are mentioning your bride’s fundament to me less than an hour before the wedding, you are at least half foxed.” Were Hobbs sober, Augustus might have bothered to remonstrate with him further.

  Hobbs passed the hand mirror to a silent valet. “Last night’s celebration became this morning’s fortification. You must agree that my bride is not the stuff of love’s young dreams. Five-and-twenty if she’s a day, and appallingly well-read.”

  Augustus took the blue delphinium boutonniere from the valet. “Your bride is intelligent, which gives me some hope for your progeny. Hold still.” Miss Anne Baxter was not only intelligent, she also had a good sense of humor, plenty of patience—she’d need a generous supply married to Hobbs—and a dowry that had earned her the hand of no less than a ducal spare.

  “Mama said the same thing.” Hobbs tipped up his chin as Augustus affixed the flower to the groom’s lapel. “That my children will need to inherit their wits from their mama, to which Papa replied that I would supply the looks. I do cut quite a fine figure, don’t I?”

  Physically, Lord Corbett Hobbs was masculine perfection. Just over six feet, blond, broad-shouldered, and blessed with exquisite features right down to a nose that knew to keep to the noble side of aquiline. Compared to his lordship, Augustus felt like a plow horse trudging beside a prancing thoroughbred colt.

  Miss Baxter had earned the enmity of every matchmaker in Mayfair, Paris, and Berlin by snapping up that ducal colt. How did the young lady feel about her supposed good fortune?

  “You are all that is manly perfection,” Augustus said. “Where’s your hat?”

  Hobbs looked to his valet, who bowed. “A moment, Your Grace. His lordship has yet to decide between the cooing dove and the Spanish moonbeams.”

  “I’m not manly perfection,” Hobbs said when the valet had closed the door. “I’m nervous as hell, Tindale. I esteem Miss Baxter greatly and all that, but Marie is threatening to toss me over, and Papa has said he won’t pay my gambling debts until I produce a son. Do you know how long it takes for a baby to show up? And the first three will likely be girls, and that means Miss Baxter and I cannot live entirely apart, and this whole marriage business rather overwhelms one.”

  Hobbs’s mistress was said to keep her jewelry not in a pretty little box, but rather, in a sizable sea chest, so skillfully did she play upon her current protector’s insecurities. She threatened twice a week to toss Hobbs over, and the betting books were full of wagers on the topic of her next protector.

  “You could be a father by this time next year,” Augustus said, “and prenuptial jitters are to be expected. Besides, once you’re married, you can pay off your own gambling debts.”

  Miss Baxter’s settlements were yet one more reason the matchmakers resented her, though a fortune that size ought to have inspired Corbett to attempt a period of fidelity.

  Augustus, having come into his title unexpectedly, knew all about polite society’s cruelty to those they deemed outsiders. Miss Baxter bore up with good grace, and Augustus had often wanted to ask her how she remained so civil in the face of such meanness.

  “Besides,” Augustus added, “marriage should be overwhelming.”

  “But in a good way.” Hobbs surveyed himself in the cheval mirror. “In a wonderful way. One ought to be at least friends with one’s spouse. I realize I’m being romantic—Mama says I’m being ridiculous—except that Miss Baxter is always reading, and she doesn’t let a fellow win any verbal horse races just because he’s the fellow. I have this dreadful sense that I amuse her.” Hobbs shifted his stance, presenting his left side to the mirror. “You wouldn’t understand.”

  Augustus understood all too well. Hobbs was no scholar, nor was he cruel by nature, but from boyhood on, he’d expected the privileges of his station to precede him.

  And they had, until he’d been matched with Miss Baxter. She was kind, but she did not suffer fools, did not dissemble for the sake of currying favor, and did not simper and blush the better to impersonate a harmless nitwit.

  “I understand that you and Miss Baxter are to wed, and I have less than one hour to get you to the altar.”

  Hobbs took out a silver flask embossed with the ducal crest and tipped it to his lips. “Damned thing is empty. Spare a fellow a nip, Tindale. Gin would be best—doesn’t linger on the breath.”

  “I have no spirits with me. You’ll find plenty to drink at the wedding breakfast.”

  The valet returned, carrying a pair of identical gray hats. “Spanish moonbeams,” he said, holding up one on the right. “Cooing dove.”

  “The cooing dove has a bit of pink to it.” Hobbs said, fingering the brim. “Does that clash with my boutonniere?”

  Gray did not clash with blue. Even Augustus knew that much. “You won’t be wearing the hat during the ceremony, Hobbs.”

  “Give me the Spanish moonbeams,” Hobbs said, holding still so the valet could place the hat just so upon his head. “That will do. You may be excused, Benner.”

  “Congratulations on the happy occasion, my lord.” Benner bowed and withdrew.

  “Let’s be off, shall we?” Augustus said, resisting the urge to toss Hobbs over his shoulder and convey him bodily into the coach that had been waiting out front for nearly twenty minutes.

  “I don’t have a good feeling about this,” Hobbs said, pulling on a pair of gloves from the half dozen laid out on his vanity. “Truly, I do not, Tindale. I’m only the spare. Why should I have to marry so soon?”

  Augustus suspected that Hobbs’s nuptials were intended to save his parents the bother of managing an easily bored spare-about-Town. Miss Baxter could be trusted to take on that thankless task, though it would be a waste of her talents.

  “You are nearly thirty years of age. Time to settle down,” Augustus replied. “Besides, your brother has no sons yet. Do your bit, and your parents will spoil your offspring rotten.”

  “They no longer spoil me rotten,” Hobbs said, stalking along beside Augustus. “My quarterly allowance wouldn’t keep a Quaker in cravats. It’s humiliating.”

  “Miss Baxter’s settlements will buy you all the cravats you could ever wear.” Augustus offered that placatory observation when he instead wanted to knock some sense into his friend. Hobbs, though, had been the sole hand extended to Augustus in welcome at public school.

  Augustus knew now that Hobbs had been indulging in a whim. The expected thing would have been for Hobbs to sneer at Augustus, as all the other lordlings had. But Hobbs was a ducal lordling, and thus when he decided to take a benevolent interest in the hulking new boy, the rest of the pecking order had moderated their insults.

  “Do you ever wish you were still just a solicitor?” Hobbs asked as he accepted a walking stick from the butler at the door. “Ever wish you were still a plain mister?”

  “If I were a plain mister, then two of my cousins would still be extant, so yes, I often wish I’d been spared the title.”

  Both of those cousins had been healthy young men, but only the elder, Charles, had taken a wife. She’d not provided him with an heir in the short years of their marriage, and thus Augustus, a lowly if ambitious solicitor, had been elevated to the peerage.

  “I wish I could be spared matrimony,” Hobbs said, glancing around the soaring white marble foyer of his parents’ home. “Wish I could take Marie by the hand and spirit her across the border. We’d live in a cottage, and everybody would secretly envy me for my boldness.”

  What sort of society allowed a ducal spare nearing thirty to remain as self-centered and ignorant as an eight-year-old?

  “You can spirit Miss Baxter across the border on your wedding journey,” Augustus said as the clocks in the house all started bonging the half hour. “Right now, let’s get you as far as the church.”

  The butler held the door open, his expression beaming genial respect.

  “Let me refill my flask,” Hobbs said. “The decanters in the library will do. Won’t be a moment.” He spun away
and jogged down the carpeted corridor.

  Augustus waited five interminable minutes, while the butler held the door open, and the horses at the foot of the steps stomped the occasional hoof. Three streets away, Miss Anne Baxter was doubtless expressing her own impatience in a far more genteel manner.

  “Best fetch him, Your Grace,” the butler said. “Lord Corbett was never quite as stalwart as his brother. Always wanted a bit of encouragement.”

  “He wants a good hiding,” Augustus muttered. He made his way to the library, all manner of threats piling up in his head, I’ll marry her myself at the top of the list, not that Anne Baxter deserved such a fate.

  Augustus yanked open the library door and was greeted with the utter silence of thick carpets, venerable portraiture, and thousands of books that hadn’t been read in the past fifty years. The sole movement in the cavernous room was a white lace curtain wafting gently before the open French doors.

  The incoming tide created an undulating line of white against the sand, while gulls wheeling overhead flashed white in the brilliant blue sky. Anne’s wedding dress had been white, an unusual color and the very worst choice Aunt Daphne could have made.

  White for innocence. Anne had vowed never to wear white again, not that she’d be donning any more wedding dresses.

  “You will ruin your complexion.” Cousin Helen plunked a wide-brimmed hat on Anne’s head. “I understand the need to blow retreat, and I grasp why you chose the seaside to regroup, but if you neglect your appearance, Lord Corbett’s defection will become an insurmountable setback.”

  Helen had not neglected her appearance. She was widowed and past thirty, but had the complexion of a renaissance maiden and a willowy figure any debutante would envy. Helen was a benevolent golden goddess, while Anne’s hair could aspire to being blondish only in strong sunlight. Anne was also too curvy and incapable of simpering.

  A maid emerged from the cottage and set a tea tray on the terrace’s wrought-iron table. She bobbed a curtsey and withdrew without tarrying. Rejected brides did not exactly trail streams of glory compared to some of the dashing blades and merry widows staying at the Siren’s Retreat inn itself.

  “I tell you these things,” Helen went on, taking the other seat at the table, “because I love you, and I hate Lord Corbett Hobbs. I am your most loyal cousin. We must make a list of eligibles who also hate him.”

  Helen was Anne’s only cousin. “Nobody hates Lord Corbett.” Anne certainly didn’t. His lordship had shown some spine for once and run off with his mistress. For him, that would become an amusing peccadillo, while Anne’s future lay in tatters.

  Three days after having abandoned London, Anne was trying to care about that future and not having much luck. The sea was better company than polite society could ever be—the sea and some good books—and the whole match with Lord Corbett had been Aunt Daphne’s plan.

  Her best plan yet, as if the disaster with Lord Hume Billingsley hadn’t been fiasco enough.

  “Eat something,” Helen said. “You must keep up your strength. You think this is the end of the world, and I grant you the situation is dire, but you are nothing if not resilient.”

  Anne took a bite of some sort of fruit tart, mostly to placate Helen. “Resilience has lost its appeal, my dear. Maybe next year, maybe in five years, I will venture forth again, but for now, all I want is to be left in peace.”

  Helen poured out, chose a tart for herself, and sat back with the sort of measuring expression that boded ill for any cousin craving solitude.

  “You will not be left in peace,” she said. “You will be left in disgrace. Twice jilted, despite your fortune. This is not a matter to be shrugged aside like a misplaced hatpin.”

  The tide was coming in, the waves crashing onshore growing louder, and how Anne loved to watch the relentless, restless power of the sea. Perhaps she’d take an ocean voyage or go exploring as Lady Hester Stanhope had.

  “It has been three days,” Anne said, as patiently as she could. “Less than seventy-two hours since I was left literally at the altar. Will you not give me a week, a fortnight, any time at all to regain my bearings?”

  Helen, though a cousin, had graciously taken on the role of older sister when Anne had been orphaned. That Helen was now also widowed and a mother twice over had at some point made her a universal authority on Anne’s best interests, even eclipsing Aunt Daphne’s expertise on the same difficult subject.

  A woman of five-and-twenty did not need a big sister as a child of thirteen had. Anne was also growing skeptical of universal authorities in general, particularly when their solution to every problem was an advantageous match.

  Helen stirred her tea. “But you must get back on the horse, Anne. Surely you see that. The longer you hide here at the seashore, the worse the talk will grow. Brighton is nothing if not rife with gossips.”

  “Precisely. While I am enjoying my seaside respite, some other unfortunate lady will be jilted, or a lordling will be hounded from England by his duns, and I will be forgotten.”

  Helen set down her tea cup and rose. “You will be forgotten, but never forgiven. You know what they’ll say, Anne. A woman with that much money couldn’t bring even a dunderheaded spare up to scratch. Jilted twice. You aren’t hideous to look upon or given to tippling, and you haven’t any vices, other than your books. Society will conclude you are used goods or worse.”

  “Worse? Does that imply that I perhaps occasionally think for myself? That my fortune has thrived quite well in my own hands? That the dangers and suffering of repeated confinements—the mortal dangers—have not enticed me into becoming a husband’s convenience-in-residence?”

  In the midst of that tirade, Anne had snatched off her hat and pushed to her feet, though she was tired to her bones and had been forever.

  “You are bitter,” Helen said, a hint of relenting in her tone. “I was bitter, too, when Horace died. The nerve of the man, falling from his horse and breaking his neck, leaving me alone with two babies. The anger carried me through much, but then the sorrow and the solicitors had to be dealt with. I know you are disappointed, Anne, but this, too, shall pass.”

  No, it would not. As Helen had said, if Anne walked into a ballroom five years hence and was as yet unmarried, she would still be the subject of whispers and speculation. Why had two men, both in need of her fortune, spectacularly rejected a wellborn, reasonably comely heiress?

  The fault surely had to be with the heiress. Of course it must. It had to be.

  “This, too, shall not pass in three days,” Anne said, “and I deserve at least a fortnight to decide upon my next steps. The Season will still be in progress, and God knows I will still be an object of talk two weeks hence.”

  Helen considered her, a humor-the-difficult-cousin sort of inspection. “Very well, a fortnight here at Rose Cottage, and then once more unto the breach. Do put on your hat, dearest. You will never successfully storm Mayfair sporting a crop of freckles. I’m off to make up a foursome with some other ladies in the inn’s cardroom. I will see you in time to change for supper.”

  “Enjoy the whist,” Anne said, setting the hat on the table. Helen let that petty display go unremarked and took herself off to gossip and gamble away the afternoon.

  “I am an ungrateful wretch,” Anne muttered, wrapping four small tarts in a linen napkin and tucking them into her pocket. “Helen will try to limit the damage the best she can, while I…”

  Anne’s gaze went to the surf pounding the beach below the cottage. How lucky men were that they could take ship, sail away, and see the wonders of the world. Anne could not go to sea, but she could go for a walk. She wasn’t quite foolish enough to venture down to the beach without a hat, though she did leave her ribbons trailing and eschewed a parasol.

  Once on the sand, she took off her shoes and stockings and was lost in the sensation of the water lapping at her ankles when a vigorous gust of wind tore the straw hat from her head. In a stroke of divine benevolence, her millinery came to rest on dry sand.