Olive was in the kitchen, kneading bread into what she hoped would be an edible loaf, when her father emerged the next morning. His presence filled the room with the stale scent of cheroot smoke and the distinct odour of brandy. Olive sniffed; copious amounts of brandy, it would seem.
"What did you lose last night?" she asked bitterly, taking the misshapen lump of dough, and placing it on a tray. "The tapestries? The candlesticks? You're still wearing your shirt, so you didn't lose that at least."
"Liv," her father's voice was raspy, and she could hear the phlegm on his chest from the heavy smoking the night before. "A cup of tea would be nice, before you begin your inquisition."
"There's a pot on the table."
Liv watched from the corner of her eye as her father made his way to the wooden table, which dominated the other side of the dark, spotlessly clean kitchen. Only three years ago, before her mother's untimely demise, there would have been servants to make her father his morning brew, and it would have been served to him in the dining room. But now there were no servants, there wasn't even a table in the echoing dining room – it had been sold, along with the paintings and a heap of other furniture, to pay her father's ever accruing debts.
Irritated, Liv placed the baking tray in the wood burning oven, and slammed the door. She did not mind hard work, in fact she preferred it to the more tedious feminine arts like needle point and flower pressing. What she minded, as anyone would, was the uncertainty that all her hard work would be for nothing.
Her father had been a profligate gambler before her mother's death, but since then had become wild and reckless with his gaming. Some mornings Liv woke not knowing if the bed she had slept in would still be there that night, or if the roof above her head would have to be sold.
"Here," she snapped, ladling out two soft boiled eggs into egg cups and placing them before her father. A slice of dry, two-day old bread accompanied them, which her father looked at askance.
"I had to walk to the far field this morning, to collect the eggs, for that's where the stupid hen decided to nest," she said by way of explanation, "I had no time to make you fresh bread."
"Never mind," her father sighed, picking up a knife and generously coating the offending bread with a thick coating of butter. "I have news for you Liv, great news."
Liv stilled; the last time her father had given her great news, was after he had won thousands of pounds at the tables. Enough to send her to London, for her first season and look at what a disaster that had turned out to be. In hind-sight, Liv now wished that she had just hidden the money as a nest egg for herself, instead of allowing him to convince her to fritter it away on dresses and baubles. She had returned to Frome deflated, and just as penniless and trapped as she had left it.
"What kind of great news, Papa?" she asked cautiously, taking a seat across from her father, who looked rather green around the gills. A big win, if she could manage to wrestle some money from him, might mean they could hire a girl to help around the house. She might even be able to refurnish some of the main rooms, so that she could invite some of the few friends she had made in London to stay.
"A husband," her father said, gravely setting his cup upon the table. "I have found you a husband, my dear."
Olive, for the first time in her life, felt as though she was going to faint. A feeling she quickly dismissed; only consumptives and elderly matrons fainted, and she was neither.
"And who is this man you've gambled me away to?" she asked, her voice laden with ice, for she intuitively knew just how her father had found her a husband. "A farmer? A criminal? The captain of a pirate ship?"
Each was a distinct possibility, for her father's sense of reason and decency left him completely when he gambled.
"None of those," Lord Greene said, waving a dismissive hand, as though Liv's concerns were irrelevant. "I have promised you to England's most eligible bachelor: The Duke of Everleigh."
Oh goodness, no.
Liv felt the acrid taste of bile, rising in her throat; anyone but him. The Duke of Everleigh had haunted her dreams since their meeting at Lady Jersey's. Olive, under the guise of paying a social call, had extracted from her neighbour, the elderly Lady Engleman, who lived in nearby Blatchbridge, exactly what had happened with the Duke's previous wife.
Her name had been Catherine Keyford, the daughter of the Cornish Lord Keyford and she had been two and twenty years of age when Everleigh had married her and made her a Duchess.
"She'd never even had a season," Lady Engleman had whispered, sharing the scandal as she poured Liv a cup of tea. "Is it any wonder the girl behaved as she did?"
"Oh?" Liv had sipped her tea innocently, hoping that Lady Engleman would continue with her tale.
"She took a lover," the old matron whispered, though because of her hearing the whisper was delivered at the same level as a shout. The young maid who hovered by the door, began to giggle, but quickly stopped at Liv's glare. Not that she blamed the girl from laughing, but she did not want Lady Engleman's attention diverted by scolding a servant.
"She told Everleigh that she was leaving him for this chap, and the Duke called the young man out," Lady Engleman had continued, oblivious to the fact that both Olive and the maid were hanging on her every word. "He shot him dead, with one bullet between the eyes, or so the story goes. And then he returned to his estate in Cornwall, and the next thing we heard the poor Duchess was dead."
"How?" Liv gasped, wondering how the callow Everleigh had disposed of his wife. Was it in a fit of passionate rage? Or did he plan it coolly and meticulously?
"The official word was that she fell down the stairs," the older woman coughed discreetly, to indicate that she hadn't bought into that story. "But everyone knew it was him. His own mother ran off on her marriage to his father, when he was but a boy. To have his wife attempt to do the same must have driven him insane with rage."
Liv sipped her tea again, as she digested this tit-bit of gossip. She couldn't picture the Duke as a young boy, and felt no sympathy for him whatsoever. Plenty of people's mothers abandoned them, it didn't give them carte blanche to murder their wives! She had left Lady Engleman's feeling faintly perturbed that she had exchanged any words with the villainous Duke, and now,this very morning she found she was betrothed to him!
"Oh goodness, Papa," she groaned, allowing her head to fall into her hands in despair. "What have you done? Do you not know what they said he did to his last wife?"
"All balderdash," Lord Greene waved her concerns away with his hand, as though brushing away a bothersome fly, though he did look rather uncomfortable that she had brought up the alleged murder. "He seemed most keen to make you his wife – he even had a special license written up in anticipation that I would consent."
"Consent?"
A laugh so bitter it shocked the pair of them, ripped from Liv's throat.
"You consented to nothing," she whispered, her hands gripping the edge of the table so hard that her knuckles turned white. "You gambled me away as surely as you gambled away the paintings, the horses, and the furniture-- and I can never forgive you for that."
She pushed her chair away from the table, and stood up, running an agitated hand through her thick red curls.
"W-where are you going?" her father stuttered nervously, "He'll be here before noon."
"I am going to pay my last respects to my Mother," Liv replied, not looking him in the eye. "For when I leave this house today, you may rest assured that I will never return."
With that, Liv left the room, slamming the door behind her, so hard that it nearly came off its hinges.
A dirt path, surrounded on either side by wild hedgerows laden with summer blooms led to the small, squat church where her mother lay buried, not five minutes away. Liv passed by the headstones of many more deceased Greenes as she picked her way through the cemetery, for her father's family had been seated in Frome for centuries and her ancestors had all lived and died here.
"Oh mother," Liv sighed, as she reached the small, granite headstone which bore her mother's name. "I wish you were here."
Every day Liv wished that her mother was still alive, for Lila Greene had been a formidable woman and only person who had been able to rein in her father's wild impulses. If she was still here, Liv had no doubt, that this marriage to Everleigh would not be happening. She would be safe, perhaps married to a staid country solicitor, and not panicking at the thought that she had been sold to a Duke with a predication for murder.
"It seems I am between a rock and a hard place Mama," she whispered aloud, as she hunkered down to clear the few dandelions that had boldly grown since her last visit.
The very idea of marrying the Duke of Everleigh sent shivers down her spine; but the thought of remaining at the mercy of her father's gambling addiction was even worse.
What Liv longed for, more than anything, was freedom. She wanted to be the master of her own destiny, not some small, insignificant woman, at the mercy of men's whims and desires. With a final, fond pat of the grass, which was now free of weeds, she stood and squared her shoulders.
Life had seemed intent of late, of throwing chaos and destruction her way, and Liv had quickly come to realise that the only way to survive, was to face that chaos head on.
She would master the disreputable Duke, she thought grimly, she would tame this man who appeared to think her life an amusing plaything, and she would make him rue the day he decided he wanted to marry her.