Frosted
A Regency Retold novel
M.C. Frank
{persuasion}
Prologue
Wedding day
The bride was an orphan, which in itself was shocking.
But this fact, well known to the ton, was the least bit
of scandal that surrounded the impending nuptials. There were greater and worse
rumors to be passed around among the congregation:
Firstly, the bride was the ward of his grace, the duke
of Ashton, and thus one of the most popular young ladies in town. Or at least
her wedding was a popular event of the season—she had arranged it so, after
all.
The bridegroom, standing at the altar in full uniform,
wondered if she had snared him into marriage for that specific reason: she had
wanted her wedding to be not simply an event of the season, but the event of the season. He had once
overheard her say to the gaggle of screeching geese she called ‘her entourage’
that she wanted her wedding to eclipse the Frosted Ball. Incidentally, he had
happened to overhear that before there was any wedding on the horizon. Days
before his engagement.
Unbeknownst to the bridegroom, the bride had picked
him out as her target long before his arrival to town. And he, fool that he
was, had fallen into her trap.
And thus we arrive at the second reason why this
wedding had a real, juicy scandal at its center: The bridegroom, even though he
was a captain, was actually a pirate.
Captain Timothée Vaugh was what was called ‘a privateer’,
which was nothing less and nothing more than a pirate with none of the glamour
and all of the danger. And yet, Captain Vaughn, otherwise known as L’ Ange Noir, notorious pirate, well
known Corinthian, rumored croesus and desired bachelor by every mama in
society’s ballrooms, had finally been ensnared into marriage.
The ton had flocked to the church to see him finally
wed to a lady wearing the hugest smile and an even bigger gown—a gown that
could only be surmised had been stolen from the window of a confectionary shop
at Rotten Row. Heaven only knew how many members of the ton would await the
unhappy couple afterwards, at the morning breakfast and subsequent ball.
Ashton’s townhouse in Mayfair, even though it was one
of the largest buildings in town, would burst at the seams from all the
illustrious guests.
But Captain Vaughn, the bridegroom, gazed at his
overly decorated bride, and thought that the crowds were the least of his
worries. The bride had trapped him into a compromising situation, and had made
sure they were discovered, thus forcing him to propose marriage.
Cruel and vulgar as it may sound, this was the truth
of it.
And now, mere months later, here he was, waiting for
her in a church filled with peers and guests and what few friends he had left
in the world, waiting for her at the end of a long carpeted aisle.
Wanting his freedom.
Wanting to die.
He could no longer stop the memories from piercing
him. He had resisted them for so long, but it was useless to try to do so now.
Thoughts of her consumed him. No, not of the bride.
The bride was nothing more than a spoilt, ruthless girl, with no morals or
character and of little birth. But she…
How different it would all be if it were she,
the woman of his heart, the love of his life, the one who was standing now by
his side.
Cold sweat drenched him at the thought.
He had once planned a wedding, much different to this
one, with her. God, he couldn’t even
think of her name; it was too painful. The planning had given him joy back
then, years and years ago, a veritable lifetime. He had shared it with her,
every single detail. He hadn’t planned to attend that wedding almost drunk, in
order to be able to bear it.
He had counted the minutes until she could be his. The days ahead had seemed like a desert before he
could enter a church and wait for her at the end of a long aisle, and then take
her hand and lead her to their home. The only true home he had ever dared to
dream of having.
He had wanted nothing more.
He had…
He had been left at the altar. Or very near it—just a
few weeks before his supposed wedding, actually. And that had been a wedding he
had been looking forward to with every fiber of his being. Unlike this one.
“Are you sweating, Vaughn?” a voice whispered in his
ear.
One of his closest Eton friends, lord Paxton, was
beside him, acting as his best man, damn him. Vaughn was not sweating. But he
was close to tears.
“No,” Vaughn answered in a sharp, annoyed whisper.
“Now kindly shut up.”
“I will,” Paxton whispered through tight, smiling lips.
“However, it behooves me to point out that, although I did not fully realize
what was happening to you at the time…”
“Behooves?”
“I am aware that you had some…tragic, so to speak,
experience at the altar some six years ago.”
“Five. And I was jilted,” Vaughn supplied helpfully.
“Just so,” Paxton continued, oblivious to his friend’s
acidic tone. “And on that note, I wish to point out, as I said…”
“You said it behooves you.”
“That now is not the time to remember past wrongs or
indeed…”
“Past loves,” Vaughn mused.
Next to him, Paxton was so taxed by his efforts to
console his friend as well as remain as discreet as possible, that he was
turning purple—the same color as the puce silk of Vaughn’s waistcoat. Paxton
was a good, honorable man, handsome and eligible to boot, but bless him, he was
as discreet as an ox.
“Never you worry,” Vaughn turned around to place a
hand on his friend’s shoulder. “I shall take care not to appear shattered, even
though I entirely am.”
Paxton began nodding happily, and then Vaughn’s
meaning began to sink in. Paxton stopped smiling and talking, and gaped.
It seemed as if hours had gone by, but it was mere
moments later when the bride, the Honorable miss Adelina Tallant, stood next to
Vaughn in a cloud of white. Beyond her, the priest was droning on and on about
the divine gift of love, and Vaughn still wanted to die.
Or at the very least escape.
“On a scale of Byron to Dionysus, how drunk are you?”
his accursed friend leaned over to whisper in his ear.
Behind him stood the duke of Ashton, his eyes, cold
and inscrutable, fixed on his ward, the bride. Vaughn stole a glance at the
woman standing next to him. Adelina was dressed in a white gown with a touch
more lace than was pleasing to the eye, and she had a permanent smile plastered
on her face, a bit too wide and a bit too forced. To Vaugh, she rather
resembled the cat that got the cream.
“Go to hell, Paxton,” Vaughn murmured through clenched
teeth.
“Not nearly drunk enough then,” his friend said in a
mournful tone.
“If anyone knows of a reason for which these two
persons should not be joined in…”
Vaughn closed his eyes tightly and clenched his teeth
so that not one single word would escape.
“…holy matrimony, let them speak now…”
He was going to faint. He had never felt like this in
his life, as if his entire soul was dripping blood, emptying completely.
“…or forever hold their—”
“Stop!”
A cry broke the air.
Someone in the audience gasped.
Vaughn’s eyes flew open.
Everyone turned around to look, with much whispering
and ruffling of taffeta and silk. Adelina had insisted on a big wedding, against
his wishes, and so there now were more than fifty people present to crane their
necks towards the slim figure who stood at the open doors of the church,
silhouetted by the morning light.
The silhouette swayed, but steadied itself. Then the
cry was heard once more.
“Stop!”
Vaughn had started running before he realized that he
was moving.
A few hours before the wedding
one
Stella
“Break my arm, do it.”
The words, absurd as they were, were spoken by a man,
and not just any man. He was Captain Timothée Vaughn, also known as L’ Ange Noir, the’ black angel’, because
of his famous good looks and his ruthlessness in destroying evil. All of London
had been abuzz with the news of his arrival for months, and even though she
didn’t move in any social circles, she hadn’t been able to avoid hearing all
about him.
The captain had made his fortune in the Navy, where he
had been decorated for bravery and ruined his leg. And after that, once he had
been released from his service with a title and a lapel full of medals, he had
made another, even bigger fortune as a privateer. No one cared that he was
lame, as long as he was rumored to be richer than Midas.
They also said that his one arm wasn’t as agile as it
should be, and that he was never seen to hold a drink in his right hand, or
lead a lady in a dance by it. However, it was not said that he was not seen dancing, often and with alacrity.
And why should all enjoyment stop just because he had
been wounded in battle? If he could walk, he could dance, couldn’t he? He was
an extremely wealthy man, prodigiously young, only six and twenty, and quite
unfairly good-looking. And even more important than all of that, he was somehow,
inexplicably, single. Or he had been when he had arrived in town.
All of this society knew and whispered to each other
over and over like folklore. But no one had ever said anything about him being
stark, raving mad.
Which he must be, given what she had just heard him
say.
“Your good arm?” another man’s voice, incredulous,
asked.
Stella did not know the speaker; she had only
recognized Vaughn’s voice.
“I quite literally do not care,” Vaughn’s voice
replied. “What use is either arm to me if I’m in prison?”
“That’s a bit too dramatic, Tim,” the second voice
said. “Marriage is not the exact same thing as prison.”
“Isn’t it?” Vaughn’s voice dripped bitterness.
“Oh, please,” the other voice replied. “These words
coming from the lips of a pirate are droll, to say the least. If anyone knows
what a real prison is, it’s you, Tim. And calling this a prison…is coming it
much too brown, my friend.”
“Except that it’s the truth.”
The second voice laughed.
Vaughn had called him ‘his friend’, and he did sound
like a real one. A very close one, too, seeing as L’ Ange Noir was prone to murder anyone who even attempted to use
his Christian name, let alone a shortened version of it. It was French, like
his mother, and the source of endless teasing during his childhood years. That
was why he had abandoned it growing up, and had reserved its use only for his
very close personal friends.
Stella herself had been asked, begged, ordered to call
him by it once.
‘If I cannot
be Timothée on your lips,’ he had told
her, ‘then I don’t know what I should
be.’
‘You should
be yourself, silly,’ she had
replied, but he had not been able to let it go until she called him by his
name.
That had happened a lifetime ago.
But now that she thought about it, his friend was
right. Vaughn did have a tendency for dramatics. Then again, one didn’t simply
become a millionaire pirate within five short years unless he quite an original
type of man. And if anything else, Captain Vaughn was an original type of man.
To say the least.
Not to mention the only man she had ever loved.
“It is the truth,” Vaughn’s voice insisted, becoming
more impassioned by the minute. Stella shrank further back into the shadows.
There would be no way to interrupt this very intelligent dialogue now. When Vaughn
became impassioned, there was just no turning back. “Marriage to the…to this would be pure hell and you know it,
Paxton.”
Oh, so that was his friend. The notorious Lord Paxton,
he of the heartbreaker fame and Greek-godlike beauty. That was the gossip,
anyway. He was also said to have a tongue sharper than his wit. She had once known
Lord Paxton, and he had been none of these things, but people changed. She had
changed. Vaughn had—he had become a madman, apparently. Anyway, she doubted
that he would remember her now, except as the girl who had destroyed his
friend’s life. And she had chanced upon
them together. That is going to make this
even harder. Why oh why did I ever venture out of the safety of my home?
But that building wasn’t home; it was a prison.
And she was here exactly because of that. She knew
what it meant to be a slave, with no hope of ever earning one’s freedom. If she
couldn’t find it for herself, she would fight for others to get it. She gritted
her teeth. I can do this.
“She is a pretty-looking girl, your fiancée,” Lord
Paxton was trying to convince the captain, but his voice sounded unsure of
itself. “Can’t be that bad.”
“Oh, but it can.” Vaughn’s voice cracked. “She forced
this on me, did you know that? I have no desire to spend five minutes in her
company, never mind my whole life. But I’m being held hostage. She designed it
all, and I fell into her trap like an imbecile.”
“I had guessed something suspicious was afoot,” Lord
Paxton’s voice replied. “I had no idea that you felt so strongly and yet still
went on with it.”
“I am forced to,” Vaugh sounded as if he was having
trouble breathing. “There is no way to extricate myself from this situation
without ruining her reputation as well. And she knew that I would not allow
that to happen to a lady, any lady, no matter how…distasteful her actions, and
has therefore secured her match.”
Stella inhaled sharply.
She had known that the captain was getting married soon;
she didn’t know exactly when, but that was part of the reason why she was here,
after all.
But she hadn’t known that this marriage was against
his will. It tore her heart apart to think of him being forced to marry a girl
he wouldn’t even call by name, but instead referred to as ‘that’. Something
inside her screamed that this wasn’t the Vaughn she knew, he would never have
allowed himself to be thus duped. Something inside her screamed that a man had
to have been quite broken indeed in order to find himself in such a situation,
unable to fight back. Passive. Defeated.
She would do well to stomp that something inside her
dead.
She thought she had; but she hadn’t. In her head, he
was still the slender, tall young man he had been four years ago, brown-blond head
full of dreams, full lips stretching in a dimpled smile full, and that stubborn
shining light in his green eyes.
If she were honest with herself, Stella would prefer
to keep his image this way inside her head. But then again, she hadn’t had any
choice in the matter: She hadn’t seen him after the day she had broken their
engagement, and her own heart.
Not for five years.
And now here she was, overhearing him ask his friend
to break his arm.
I should
make my presence known before this takes a turn for the even more bizarre.
Although how that would be possible, I’m sure I don’t know.
She tried to clear her throat, but it had gone dry.
“Fine,” Vaughn was saying, his voice thin,
exasperated. “I’ll challenge you to a duel then.”
“I won’t bite,” his friend’s voice replied.
“I shall hit you with my glove.”
“I shall forgive you.”
Silence for a bit.
“What if I happen to have hidden a horseshoe in the
glove with which I hit you?” Vaughn asked sweetly.
“And killing one of the few men who can tolerate you
in England would help you how exactly?”
Stella decided that she liked this Paxton fellow.
“I have excellent aim,” the captain replied, the sound
of his voice moving briefly away, as if he were pacing in agitation. “I shall
simply make you furious enough to break my nose in retaliation. Or to fight me.
Hopefully you’ll break a bone or two of mine, or at least stab me in the
stomach.”
His friend gave an unearthly cry, as if he wanted to
tear out his own hair. Stella shared the sentiment entirely.
“For God’s sake, Vaughn,” the gentleman said, “is
there no way out of this wedding that doesn’t involve broken bones or bleeding intestines?”
“Sure there is,” the captain replied. “Throw me in the
Thames.”
“That in no way guarantees that you will catch a
chill, you know,” the other gentleman replied with a touch of a sneer. “You
could always jilt the chit, Vaughn, if the idea of marriage to her is so
repugnant to you that you would maim yourself to avoid it. Be a man, don’t you
know?”
Something in the matter-of-fact way lord Paxton spoke
to the captain pierced Stella’s heart. Was Vaughn really trapped by the woman?
Or was he so hardened by life that he didn’t even want to commit to marriage to
his own fiancée?
“No,” the captain answered quickly. “It will ruin her.
It’s already gotten about that she was the one who made advances…” Just when it
was beginning to get interesting, Vaughn stopped himself abruptly.
“Well, then.” His companion’s voice sounded sad. “Any
other intelligent ideas?”
Stella couldn’t imagine what L’ Ange Noir would reply to that, but unfortunately, she never had
a chance to find out. A dead branch crunched underneath her shoe, making what
seemed like a deafening ‘crack’ in the silence of hushed voices and chilly
night.
At once, she could feel both men freeze on the other
side of the bushes. She couldn’t see them, hidden as they were from her by the
thick shrubbery of one of Vauxhall Gardens’ endless mazes and the cloak of
night, but this was the kind of silence that one could hear.
“Who’s there?” Vaughn cried out in a hard, unfamiliar
voice, and suddenly she could very well imagine him as the black angel everyone
talked about, brandishing a knife at his enemies, blood dripping from his
clothes.
Stella cowered in her corner, but she did not dare
move, because the maze was so vast and complicated, one false move and she
would get lost in it forever.
“What on earth is going on here?”
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