CHAPTER ONE
From the sparkling coasts of India's shores to the rough frontier of Canada; along the steamy coasts of British Africa and the harsh Australian climes, Lady Nadia Havenshire had ventured across and beyond the scope of the empire her father considered himself a proud part of. She'd shared dinner with company men in the islands near Siam and she'd fanned herself in the steaming sands of the Near East.
Now life back in dreary northern England seemed positively dull - though not simply for the change of weather, but that figured quite a bit into her frame of mind no doubt. Her father, the Duke of Emerys, had sent for Lady Havenshire - and though she had enjoyed life outside the prison of waistcoats and dresses and dinner parties and 'courting' and old Lady Henrietta's gossip, Nadia's father had always treated her well and had loved her dearly; or, at least, he'd treated her as well as a father could treat a daughter when straitjacketed by the expectations of society built against daughters. She loved her father, but that silent resentment could never be undone - even, or perhaps especially considering, all she'd learned while traveling the world.
Lady Nadia had seen women across, and even outside, her father's beloved British Empire - of course, the social constants remained the same; women were mothers, women were daughters; women fed the family and women kept the home, and this was no different from the expectations of many women in the world from which Nadia had come. Things were not always the same, though, much to her surprise. In the ports along the coasts of the fledgling America, Nadia had even seen women drinking and dancing with sailors! In Africa, she'd seen local women hunting; fighting, protecting their kin, with status the same as their beloved brothers and husbands. The thought fascinated her, and she'd even indulged in the thought of abandoning the craggy, rain-spattered forests of northern England for a life free of expectations, as a woman indulging in the freedom so often afforded English men.
Instead, she sat in a carriage rolling across cobblestones, the clop-clop of horse hooves her only comfort, the whistle of her driver faint and dull, like a cudgel banging against the base of her skull. She rubbed her temples; the trip across the sea hadn't been comfortable, as she'd been forced to book passage at the last minute on any ship that would take her, and wound up amid rowdy sailors amid a creaking wooden frame tossed by rough waves, water creeping and seeping through every hole and loose crease and every rotted beam on the timber-woven frame. The to-and-fro left her back sore and her head pounding in faint ache, and on the long trip from the ports along the roads to northern England she'd spent two days bouncing and bobbing gently, until the rhythm had made her back numb.
She expected about the same level of comfort when she attempted to ease back in to her 'old' way of life. She didn't know that she'd be able to go back to that ever again - not with the knowledge she'd gained abroad. She'd met teachers, strong women and strong men who saw her and wanted to see her actualized, as they termed it. One of women who'd accompanied her on her trip to Africa had taught her a woman's place is wherever she wishes; the headmaster of a boarding school had taught her arithmetic, language, and literature, and had commented that Lady Nadia took to education as a fish to the English Channel. More than anything, Lady Havenshire had learned her worth while sailing the seas and venturing into lands few had ever seen. And when a woman with heart and spirit like Lady Nadia Havenshire learns she has worth to the world, the idea of subjugating that worth in a society controlled by men feels less and less appealing with each clopping hoof-step taken along the rural roads towards towering manses and cloaking forests.
When the carriage carried Nadia past the crumbled stone wall along the roadside, and she began to recognize the old weathered posts holding dead lanterns that swayed with passing breezes, she knew she'd arrived at the fringed edges of the Duchy of Emerys, the leaf-choked land of green and plenty she'd left behind years ago. Now turning twenty, Nadia's gut sank as she thought on precisely what she'd be expected to do with her waning youth. To the world in northern England, many women her age had already found men to marry; dukes to court them and to control their lives, making decisions for the young women so that they'd never need to make any themselves. The very idea of a man with a title crossing the threshold of Havenshire Manor to seek her life as his to control made her wretch, and not simply because she'd seen that women could do as they wish in other parts of the world. The whole idea had always felt... wrong, to her, even as a child; perhaps that had been the reason that, upon reaching her seventeenth birthday, Lady Nadia had chosen to venture past the gates of her family's manse in the first place. She'd seen the way her friends' lives had unfolded - a childhood playmate, the Lady Emily of Staffords, had been betrothed to a man since the day she'd turned sixteen. She had not been the only one - and in spite of her father's insistences, Nadia refused to go to the debutante balls and lavish parties that her friends had wrapped themselves up so readily in. The very thought of marrying a man she'd scarcely even met, so that he could take her land and her name and title and demand of her how she would dress and talk and walk, and even what thoughts she could think... none of that lifestyle had appealed to her, even in her youth. Her father had always called her a 'willful, blythe young spirit.' She'd never known what it meant, but after her time among beggars and teachers and kings in foreign lands, perhaps she'd begun to see just what he had seen in her.
"We'll be coming up on the gates soon, m'lady," Egan commented. Her father had had the courtesy of sending a man Nadia knew and could trust; Egan, an aging, rotund laugh of a man with stringy, graying hair and a bushy beard, had gained quite a bit of weight since Nadia had last seen him, though it only added to the boisterous, loud and jolly chauffeur she had known since her youth. He hummed away, which while it would normally give her a sense of peace of mind, instead only created an unnerving reminder of what she was returning to.
"You've hummed the same tunes for twenty years, Egan," she commented wryly, her head pulsing and her heart pumping; the sound reminded her of home, and being reminded of home didn't quite have the comforting cheeriness it held for many others. To her home was a doomed existence she had no interest in. "Haven't you learned any new tunes since I've been out of England?"
"Your father was always right about you, since you were a little thing, Lady Nadia," Egan chortled, glancing through the window in the wall separating the damp, cool air of England from the cramped confines of the rather spartan carriage Nadia's father had sent to fetch her. "A willful firebrand of a daughter, he said you'd grow up to be."
"And I'm presuming your implication is that I grew up to be willful? Is a woman willful for wanting to hear a different tune, Egan?" Nadia responded with a grin. She had no shame in that title, though she knew it would be spoken scathingly in the whispers of crass bachelors discussing available brides with prestigious titles.
"I only know that when your father hired me he admonished me, asking me to hum a few tunes for him to break the silence. And now, with as much conviction as he had, you want me to stop. You're certainly his daughter," Egan said with a nod.
"I didn't say stop. Just a different tune, is all," Nadia protested.
"The classics never change," Egan joked. Concern crossed Lady Nadia's face; she reasoned that perhaps she could divine some of the details of this rather sudden visit of hers from Egan, who had always been one of her father's loyal and trusted servants. Before he began to hum again, she interjected quietly.
"Egan, have you any idea why my father's sent for me? I had not forgotten about him, or about the family estate, but I simply had been enjoying my time abroad, learning of the way of things. Certainly not something he could fault me for, yes?" she asked, guarded, fearing that perhaps something had angered her father and that on her return she would be subject to his wrath.
"Oh, no, I don't think your father considered you estranged or anysuch, m'lady, at least not by the manner in which he spoke of you. Not a fiber in him has lost love for his only child, I assure you, Nadia," Egan laughed. That did little to assuage her fears, though. Lady Nadia could handle an argument with her father - and if nothing so simple faced her when the carriage climbed the hill upon which Havenshire Manor sat, fear of the unknown struck her instead.
"Then... what could have troubled him, do you think?" Lady Nadia asked innocently. Egan hesitated; she could feel a tension in him, as his eyes kept to the broad and empty road; the silence mired her in dread.
"Begging your pardon, m'lady, but I think it... best, for Lord Havenshire to explain the situation to you himself. I'm but a simple driver, after all," Egan commented, and she knew what that particular choice of words meant; he was playing ignorant, perhaps at the direct request of her father. Frustrated and quietly frightened, Nadia's breath rattled as she exhaled deeply.
"Certainly, he wouldn't be cross with you for giving a single hint of a detail, Egan?" Nadia whispered, closing conspiratorially towards the window near Egan's ear. She could see his features - vexed, perhaps by his loyalty to her father, but most certainly vexed just the same with a deep-seated worry of his own.
"You're a woman who's come of age, m'lady, and your father has... concerns, quite reasonable concerns, as to the disposition of the family estate. These are, of course, concerns common to every man and woman of station, m'lady, and so you... need not worry too greatly, yes?" Egan tempered rather grave matters of speech with a comforting tone and a toothy grin, but Nadia could tell that whatever had happened troubled trusty Egan just as deeply as it troubled her father. Nadia saw no need to press; she knew Egan would reveal little else. With worry on her brow Lady Nadia reclined across the carriage's padded bench, watching the countryside roll by. She recognized the landmarks; the crumbled statue, an old guardhouse situated along a long-rotted wooden wall. Much of the manse appeared frozen in time; her father had little interest in the stodgy cobbled-together structures that had once littered the grounds, preferring the bright and dominant architecture of the new designers from London, with windows and white paints and swirling facades lit by the glow of the sun. Still, something cast a long shadow over the rest of the trip - and not just her own pained memories of men slighting her or the controlled society she had now chained herself to once more, the manacles tightening further and further with each step taken closer to the manse.
"We'll be scaling the hill soon, m'lady," Egan said, rather dour; the remainder of the trip came in silence. No more humming, no more curious questions; no laughs or boasts of joy. Whatever had driven this reunion weighed heavily on the both of them.