Page 38 of A Spinster for the Rakish Duke (Notorious Sisters of London #3)

Chapter One

“ I will not be your servant, Regina, get it yourself!” Samantha Crawford cried, slamming the door behind her as she rushed out into the hallway.

“You are behaving like a spoiled little wretch. I am with child. The least you can do is go out to Bond Street and pick up my list,” her stepmother shouted back.

The two women had been arguing for the past half an hour, while Samantha’s friend, Catherine Ferguson, looked helplessly on.

They always argued, for they had never seen eye to eye.

As far as Samantha was concerned, her stepmother, Regina, was an interloper who had stolen her father’s affections and left Samantha out in the cold.

That they were both the same age and possessed of similar pretty looks and fiery temperament only added to the divisiveness of their positions.

“I am the spoiled little wretch? And who was it that threw a tantrum when her dress was not trimmed with the precise lace she had demanded? Or who kicked the poor maid who combed her hair with too much vigor? You think that because you are with child, you can have anything you want, Regina. Well, you cannot have me. I will not play your servant all day, nor be toyed with by your swings of mood,” Samantha declared.

She was the only daughter of the Duke of Hampton, a slender woman of twenty-five years old, with long curly black hair and deep blue eyes.

But in her sex, she was already at a disadvantage, for her father had always made it clear he wanted a son and not a daughter.

Samantha had grown up with this knowledge, and when her mother had died of a terrible fever, he had been swift to move his mistress into the house, claiming that now the time would come for a son and heir to be produced.

“I am your stepmother,” Regina snarled, though in truth she possessed no proper authority.

Samantha thought that Regina, with her silly, girlish ways and coquettish nature, her long blonde hair and fluttering eyelids, was the most ridiculous creature in all the ton.

Now, she stood in the hallway with her hands upon her hips, her stomach bulging with the weight of the child, red faced and angry.

“And I do not require a stepmother, for I have a mother, albeit one in memory alone. You are not my stepmother, you are nothing to me,” Samantha retorted, and had it not been for Regina’s current condition, she would gladly have showed her anger with the back of her palm.

“Perhaps a walk, Samantha,” Catherine suggested, standing nervously between them.

She and Samantha had been the closest of friends since finishing school.

Catherine was a pretty woman, with long red hair and hazel-brown eyes, always impeccably dressed, and with the slenderest of figures.

If it were not for Catherine’s company, Samantha would have gone quite mad cooped up at Hampton Manor with her father and his china-doll wife who only loved him for his money and her title of Duchess.

“Why should I be driven out of the house, because she is in one of her moods?” Samantha demanded, and Catherine faltered.

“Well… can there be any agreement between you?” Catherine replied, though she too held Regina in thinly veiled contempt.

“There can when she does as she is told and shows me the proper respect I am due,” Regina shouted, stamping her foot angrily.

“You are nothing to me, and certainly you have never displayed one shred of maternal instinct, not that I would welcome it if you did,” Samantha retorted

She had had enough of Regina ordering her around, playing the long-suffering matriarch, bossing her as though she possessed the same authority as Samantha’s father.

Regina was nothing to Samantha, and had it not been for Regina’s liking for the pleasures which her status afforded her, she may well have driven her from the house without a second thought.

But Regina was there to stay, and Samantha knew that in all things her father would take her stepmother’s side against her.

She hated Regina’s perceived authority, for she would never refer to her as mother, nor even as an acquaintance.

Regina was an inconvenience, and Samantha had no qualms in telling her so.

“Then perhaps you should leave, Samantha. Your father and I are having a child, and there is nothing you can do about it. It will be the son he has always wanted, and you will find yourself even more unwanted than you already are,” Regina replied, drawing herself up and looking down her nose at Samantha, who scoffed and shook her head.

“And how do you know it will be a boy? Perhaps it will be a girl, and you will become just as much of a disappointment as I am, Regina. Be careful, for if my father can choose you as his mistress, then he can just as easily choose another poor creature, too,” Samantha replied, and Regina’s lip trembled at this inconvenient truth.

The Duke had always been a womanizer, consumed by his desire for a son. Regina was nothing special, though in certain circles they considered her pretty. What mattered was her fertility, and having come from a large family, the Duke had thought her ripe to bear the son he had always longed for.

“It will be a boy, I know it,” she declared, but Samantha only smirked.

“I hope for your sake that it is, otherwise we shall soon bid one another farewell,” she said.

Regina pursed her lips, her fists clenched, just as the door of the Duke’s study flew open and the man himself appeared before them.

Randolf Crawford was an angry man, possessed of a temper which was not helped by his penchant for the brandy bottle.

He was usually drunk, and if he was not drunk, then he was on the way to becoming so.

Now, he looked around the hallway, his face red and puffed, his beady eyes fixing Samantha with an angry stare.

“How is a man supposed to concentrate on his work with this noise going on out here? Samantha, be quiet. All I can hear is your voice,” he cried.

“Oh, Randolf, thank goodness,” Regina said, adopting a faux meekness, ever playing the wounded party.

Samantha rolled her eyes.

“Here come the theatrics,” she whispered to Catherine.

“What is it, my darling? Has something upset you? Or someone?” the Duke asked, as Regina fell into his arms, in a pitiful mocking faint.

“I try to be a friend to her. I try my very best. It is all so wearing, Randolf, she will not listen to me, she constantly berates me. I feel as though I am living on the edge of a precipice, about to fall into the abyss. Why will she not accept me? I have done nothing wrong,” she said, her voice exaggeratingly faint.

“Oh, my dear Regina, you poor thing,” the Duke exclaimed, helping her to a chair next to a table in the hallway, before turning angrily to Samantha.

“I feel quite faint,” Regina said, bringing the back of her hand pathetically to her forehead.

“Samantha, if I have told you once, I have told you a thousand times, do not upset Regina. I will not have it!” the Duke snarled.

“What nonsense, Father. Surely you can see she is lying. She always lies. It is she who causes the trouble in this house, with her lies and deceits. She is forever making up stories and treating me like a lapdog. I am not her servant,” Samantha declared, staring defiantly back at her father.

Samantha was used to standing up to her father, for she had been doing it her whole life. But father and daughter were too alike to ever back down one or the other. The more they argued, the greater the stalemate became. The Duke always took the side of Regina, and today would be no different.

“She is carrying the heir to this family. I will not have you upsetting her. Apologize immediately, Samantha. I do not know why I put up with you,” he said, but Samantha only laughed.

“I will apologize when she apologizes. She would have me driven out of my home and sent away. Would you allow that?” she demanded, and her father scowled.

Samantha could always manipulate her father like this.

Despite his gruffness and his womanizing ways, he still possessed the love of a father for his daughter.

But the tragedy of his own life had hardened his heart and made him bitter, for he had been forced to marry her mother under circumstances of politics, a fact which had caused him great misery.

“I am sure the two of you can get along without resorting to that,” he replied, but Regina now let out a pitiful wail.

“Are we to endure these taunts, Randolf? How am I to bring a child into the world under such a strain?” she said, and the Duke took her hand and patted it sympathetically.

“You must not worry, my darling, I have made arrangements which will satisfy us all,” he replied, glancing at Samantha who looked back at him in surprise.

“What arrangements?” she demanded, and her father cleared his throat.

“You are to be married, Samantha. It is high time, and there is a willing gentleman, a suitor of some importance. I was going to make the announcement on Friday, but since the matter has arisen now… well, that is that,” he replied, failing to meet her eye.

He made it sound as though he had just announced the hiring of a new servant, or the purchase of a piece of furniture. Samantha looked wide eyed at him, before turning to Catherine, who appeared equally shocked.

“But… who is this man? I am not ready to marry, I have no wish to, I will not–” she began, but her father shook his head.

“A man named Reginald Spencer, a Marquess with a good estate in his inherit. You are twenty-five years old, Samantha, and I will not have you languishing without a husband at my expense any longer,” he said, helping Regina to her feet and putting his arms around her.

Regina smirked at Samantha from behind the Duke’s back, her triumphal stare causing Samantha’s anger to rise even further. How dare her father make such arrangements? No doubt it was Regina’s doing, and Samantha could only clench her fists, seething with anger at the injustice of it all.

“I will not,” she replied, determined to show her stubbornness.

“The arrangements have been made, Samantha, the Marquess is most eager to meet you,” the Duke said, helping Regina back toward the drawing room. “We shall have you married very soon, and then there shall be no more upsetting Regina.”

“I think it will be good for her. After all, I am the happiest of women in my marriage,” Regina said, casting a final smirking glance back toward Samantha, before the door closed behind them.

“The audacity… I am marrying no one,” Samantha declared, taking Catherine by the hand, and hurrying her upstairs.

It was the sheer unreasonableness of it all that shocked her the most. There had been no mention of a marriage, no intimation that her father intended to see her betrothed.

The two of them had always had a tempestuous relationship, but the arrival of Regina had brought a poisonous atmosphere to the house, and Samantha knew it was her stepmother who had planted this wicked idea into her father’s mind.

“You cannot marry a man you have never met,” Catherine said, as the two of them hurried along the landing.

“I shall lock myself into my chambers, I shall refuse to come out, I will never entertain the idea,” Samantha replied, her heart racing, determined to take her revenge upon Regina, whether or not she was with child.

“But they will force you. If you are promised to this gentleman, Reginald Spencer – whoever he is – then they will find a way to enact the marriage,” Catherine replied.

“Oh, Catherine, what am I to do?” Samantha lamented.

She paused on the landing, turning to Catherine, as a tear ran down her cheek.

Samantha had never considered marriage. She was happy as a spinster, unwilling to live her life at the whim of a man – any man.

There had been suitors in the past, men who had come and gone like ships in the night.

But none had captured her heart, and with her independent spirit and determined heart, Samantha was certain that no man could ever live up to her expectations.

“We must think for a moment, come and sit down. Perhaps some tea would help,” Catherine replied, ushering Samantha toward her chambers.

Hampton Manor was a large, sprawling house, which had been in the Duke’s family for many years. It was composed of two wings, north and south, one side of which was occupied by the Duke and Regina, the other by Samantha.

She had a bedroom and a sitting room, her private domain, each lined with books, for she loved to read and escape from the harsh realities of her life. This was her sanctuary, and if it had not been for such a place, she would soon have gone quite mad in the stifling atmosphere of the house below.

But as she opened the door, Samantha gave a cry of horror, looking around her in disbelief at the scene which now greeted them.

Someone had flung the books from the shelves, as though in some terrible rage.

Not only had they been thrown, but torn and trampled, too.

The sight brought fresh tears to her eyes, and she collapsed into a chair, unable to bear the devastation before her.

“Oh, Catherine, who could have done this?” she exclaimed, as Catherine stooped to pick up one of the books.

“I am sure we can tidy it up, they are not all damaged, oh my,” she said, shaking her head sadly.

But it was all too much for Samantha, and she wept, sobbing into her handkerchief, as Catherine attempted to comfort her.

“There, there, you are not at fault, you are treated abominably by that woman, for it is surely she who has done this,” Catherine said, and Samantha nodded.

There could be no one else save Regina, who possessed such vitriol toward her.

Samantha hated her, but what power did she have over her?

Regina had her father in her pocket, and the Duke would never side with Samantha against the woman carrying his son and heir – or so they presumed.

In that moment, Samantha wondered if marriage was the best way out of her miserable situation, for, in submitting to another man, she would at least be escaping the clutches of the woman who had stolen her father’s heart.

“Who else could it be? Regina is nothing but a harlot, I hate her,” Samantha replied, looking around the room at her precious books, shaking her head sadly.

“Then you have no choice but to leave,” Catherine replied, and Samantha looked up at her curiously.

“But where can I go?” she asked, and Catherine smiled.

“I think I might have an idea, one which will show your father just how serious you are. What do you know of your father’s shipping business?” she asked, and closing the door, she proceeded to explain her plan–