Taming Temperance Read online

  TAMING

  TEMPERANCE

  Swan Sisters, Book Three

  JILLIAN EATON

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  © 2015 by Jillian Eaton

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  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form is forbidden without the written permission of the author.

  THE SWAN SISTERS

  For the Love of Lynette

  Annabel’s Christmas Rake (novella)

  Taming Temperance

  A Duke for Delilah (Spring 2018)

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  A Dangerous Seduction

  Exclusive Excerpt

  PROLOGUE

  Boston, Massachusetts

  1829

  There was only so far a man could go before he reached his breaking point…and Hugh Jacobson had finally reached his.

  Truth be told, his patience for his fickle wife ended nigh on six months ago when he had returned home to find her in bed with another man…again. But he had taken vows before God, and she had begged him for another chance with tears glittering on her cheeks, and being a weak husband with a soft heart, he had granted her one last opportunity to show him she was still the sweet, adoring girl he had married when they’d both been too young and naïve to know any better.

  When she loved me, Hugh thought bitterly as he stared at the evidence of his wife’s betrayal. Sheets and blankets that should have been neatly made were twisted haphazardly across the bed. Across their bed. A bed that now stank of sex and another man’s sweat.

  How had it come to this? Picking up a pillow, Hugh crumpled it between his hands before he threw it across the room. Anger pulsated inside of him, its heat timed with his breaths so every time he exhaled it felt as though he were breathing fire. Craving fresh air, he opened the nearest window, pushing it up with so much force one of the panes shattered. Ignoring the tiny slivers of glass littering the wide sill, he stared bleakly at the busy street below. At the people in their carriages. At the couples walking side by side, their heads bent together. At the shop owners sweeping the tiny stretch of sidewalk in front of their shops. And again he wondered how his marriage had come to this when it had all started so perfectly.

  He and Aileen had met, as husbands and wives often do, at a ball.

  He had been an arrogant whelp teetering on the cusp of manhood. She a flirtatious socialite with the entire world at her feet. When their gazes met across the crowded room their chemistry had been palpable, and he’d sought out her father the very next day to ask for permission to court the beautiful Aileen Brownstone.

  Her family was far wealthier than his and he’d been expecting to be turned away, but to his surprise her father said yes, and when he asked for Aileen’s hand in marriage one year later to the day he said yes again.

  They were wed in a tiny chapel in the middle of Boston. Aileen had cried. He remembered her tears vividly. The way they’d caught the sunlight shining in through the stained glass windows. How bright they’d made her blue eyes sparkle. The knot they’d caused in his stomach, and the vow he had made, then and there, never to make her cry again, no matter the reason.

  Suffice it to say, Aileen was not the only one who had broken vows.

  She had been happy at first. They both had. But some things, as Hugh was coming to discover, were not meant to last…no matter how hard you fought.

  The signs had been so small at first. A quick glance at another man when they stepped out with friends. A murmured excuse when he reached for her in the night. A coldness in her smile when before there had been only warmth. From there her displeasure seemed to grow with every passing day until she came to regard him with all the attention one did a servant.

  And then the affairs had started.

  Hugh knew he had not been a perfect husband, but he had always been a loyal one which was more than he could say for his little whore of a wife.

  How many men had nestled between her creamy white thighs? How many had tasted the sweet nectar of her lips? How many had tangled their hands in her silky blonde hair?

  A sudden, searing pain in his right hand drew his attention. He looked blankly at his palm and the large sliver of glass sticking out of it. In his rage he’d forgotten about the broken glass on the sill. Yet another stupid mistake.

  How many more would he make before he learned his lesson?

  Without so much as a hiss of breath Hugh grasped the bloody shard and yanked it free. It landed on the floor and slid under the bed, leaving a trail of red wet in its wake. Indifferent to the pain of having his flesh sliced open, he used his handkerchief to bind the wound and stem the bleeding. What was a bit of physical pain when compared to the pain he felt in his heart?

  He turned from the window and a flutter of white fabric caught his eye. It was a linen shirt someone had tried to hastily hide behind his wife’s writing desk. A linen shirt, Hugh realized with renewed fury as he yanked it from the floor and held it out, which would have stretched to the seams if he attempted to put it on.

  Rumpled sheets were one thing. But to be so careless as to leave her lover’s shirt behind for him to find? That was pure and utter vindictiveness.

  “AILEEN.” His roar whipped down the hallway of their brick colonial townhouse. It startled a passing maid, who stopped in her tracks and peered into the bedroom with wide eyes and pale cheeks.

  “Mr. Jacobson?” she said hesitantly. “Do you – do you need anything, sir?”

  “My wife,” he growled between clenched teeth. “Where the hell is she?”

  “M-Mrs. Jacobson? I believe she is downstairs in the parlor.”

  It was all he needed to hear.

  The maid screamed when he shoved past her. Boot heels echoing on the hardwood he took the stairs two at a time and stormed into the parlor, slamming the door open with so much force the brass knob fell to the floor with a clatter.

  “Well done.” Her tone coolly disapproving, Aileen slowly turned to face him and lifted her chin. Flawlessly beautiful in a spring green muslin dress with a matching hat set low over her coiled hair, she regarded him with a faint smirk. “Gone and broken another one, have we? I will have Lucy add it to the box.”

  Packages and parcels of various size covered the floor, indicating she’d been on yet another shopping expedition. The evidence of her blatant disregard of the allowance he had set for her only served to further enhance his anger. Once he would have given Aileen all the jewels in the world if he could have afforded it, but he was a self-made man, not a wealthy heir, and in their three years of marriage she had all but beggared him with her frivolous expenses.

  Deep down, Hugh knew that his income – or lack thereof – was the main reason Aileen had drifted away from him. Oh, she had been entranced for a time, but when
the romance of marrying a man beneath her station wore off and she realized love in and of itself could not buy mink stoles her interest in being a wife to a husband who could not afford her every want and wish had rapidly waned.

  He had tried everything he could think of to make her happy, but all of his efforts had been for naught and now there was nothing left to do but pick up the pieces and try to salvage what little pride he had left.

  “You have been shopping again.” It was not a question, but a statement. One Aileen acknowledged with a short nod of her head and a faint curl of her lips.

  “But of course, husband dearest. The Renwick Ball is only two weeks away–”

  “And whoring.”

  Her eyes narrowed to thin slits of blue, the only indication his words had struck a nerve. “Wake up on the wrong side of the bed this morning, darling?” she said sweetly.

  “I believe I could ask you the same question.” Slowly, purposefully, Hugh closed the door, sealing them inside the parlor. There would be no escaping this time. They would have this out, once and for all. And when it was done – when the whole sad, sorry mess was finally over – he was leaving. To where, he wasn’t yet certain. He only knew he had to get away. From Aileen. From Boston. From the sympathetic stares he felt burning the nape of his neck whenever he went out in company. “Who was it this time, Aileen? The earl from Sussex?”

  “Do not be ridiculous,” she scoffed. “He returned to London weeks ago. Honestly, Hugh, I haven’t any idea what you are talking about.”

  Did she truly think him so daft, he wondered, or was it all a game to her? And why had it taken him so long to see her as she really was? A cruel, malicious woman who gained perverse pleasure from other people’s pain. To think he had willingly married such a hateful creature…it chilled his blood. “No more lies, Aileen.” He wanted to close the distance between them, but he feared what would happen if he lost his temper while his hands were within throttling distance of her slender throat. “I know you have lain with another man.”

  “What concern is it of yours?” Her eyes flashed. “You should not have gone into my private chambers to begin with. What is the point of keeping separate bedrooms if you constantly invade my privacy? If you do not like what you find, then stop looking. It is as simple as that.”

  Him? She was blaming him? His shoulders tensed, the muscles rippling and twitching as his large hands curled into fists of thinly suppressed anger. “You seem to have forgotten one important fact, dear wife. This is my house and I can go into any room I damn well please!”

  “Fine.” Her pale breasts swelled up beneath the low-cut bodice of her dress when she crossed her arms. “But then do not come crying to me every time you do so. I have better things to do than entertain your tantrums, Hugh. Can we not skip to the part where I apologize and you forgive me?”

  He set his jaw. “Not this time, Aileen.”

  “Do not be difficult. I have had a very trying day. I am sorry, Hugh. There. Is that what you want to hear? I am sorry. I had another slipup, that is all. He meant nothing to me.” One gloved hand fluttered in the air. “A passing dalliance, nothing more. It will not happen again. I promise.”

  “Your promises are as empty as your heart, Aileen.”

  Her lips parted. “What a hurtful thing to say.”

  She really was a magnificent actress, Hugh noted with a sense of detached indifference as he studied the tiny nuances of emotions passing over her heart-shaped countenance.

  Shock. Hurt. Pain. Betrayal. How expertly she mimicked his own feelings back at him. It was almost like staring into a mirror…if his reflection was a cold-hearted bitch with no conscience. When her eyes filled with glittering tears he looked away, not because he believed her distress was genuine, but because the urge to do physical violence – to hurt her as much as she had hurt him – was so strong it took every ounce of self-restraint he possessed not to strike her.

  Hugh had never hit a woman. It was not in his nature to bring harm to those weaker than himself. But Aileen, with her faux tears and trembling bottom lip, was sorely tempting him to do just that. How could she stand before him with self-righteousness glinting in her gaze as though she were the wounded party? How could she even stand to look him in the eye after everything she had done?

  “Be that as it may, I mean every word.” His voice was steady. His words coldly calculated. “You may be beautiful on the outside, Aileen. God knows you’re the most gorgeous woman I have ever seen. But on the inside you’re nothing more than an empty, hollow vessel.” He eyed her dispassionately. “I do not know if you were always like this. I like to think that you weren’t. I like to think that the few months we had together before you turned into an adulterous bitch were genuine. Not that it matters now. I do not want your apology, wife.

  “Then w-what do you want?” she asked in a tiny, pitiful voice that made him want to punch his fist through the closest wall. “What can I do to make it up to you, Hugh?”

  “You can leave,” he said flatly. “You can take your belongings and leave Boston and never return.”

  Like magic, her tears vanished in the blink of an eye. “You cannot be serious.”

  “Oh, but I am.” A smile captured his mouth, pulling up the corners of his lips as though they were attached to strings. “This farce had finally reached its end. If you have no intention of being a wife to me, then I will no longer be a husband to you. If you do not leave, then I will. But make no mistake. Either way, you will not get a single penny from me.”

  Loyalty may have been above Aileen’s grasp, but money she understood. “Don’t be ridiculous, Hugh. You cannot simply cut me off. I am your wife.”

  “No, you’re not.” As a wave of calmness descended upon him, Hugh felt as though he had finally reached a safe port in a storm that had been ravaging him for months. “Not anymore. I will give you tonight to gather your things. You may take with you whatever you wish, but know that once you step out the door you will never be welcomed back through it.”

  For once, Aileen allowed a flicker of genuine emotion to grace her countenance.

  Fear.

  “You cannot do this.” The tiny muscles in her throat quivered and jerked as she swallowed. “You cannot cast me aside as I were some unwanted dog. I am your wife, Hugh, which makes me your responsibility. You may not like it, but there is nothing you can do to change it. Do you hear me? Where are you going?” Anger flooded her voice, making every word burn with indignation. “Don’t you dare walk away from me!”

  He stopped when he felt the sting of her open palm across his back, but he did not turn to face her. “You made your choices, Aileen. Now you will suffer the consequences.” Ignoring Aileen’s shrill cries for him to stop, he pushed open the door and walked out of the parlor without once looking back.

  Knowing he would be unable to remain in his wife’s presence for much longer without losing control of his temper, Hugh left the house and went to the nearest tavern where he steadily drank himself into a quiet oblivion. He fell asleep at the bar, and when he woke it was to the cheerful chirp of sparrows and the bright light of day.

  Picking himself up with a grunt and a painful groan, he paid his tab and returned home, his steps a bit unsteady and his mind more than a bit foggy. It wasn’t until after he’d stumbled into the foyer that he remembered his words from the day before, and with a deep scowl he passed his coat to a drowsy-eyed servant and began a slow, weary ascent up the winding staircase to see if his wife had heeded his orders and left.

  He hoped that she had, even as a part of him hoped that she hadn’t.

  Hell.

  Leaning against the railing, Hugh closed his eyes. Pain radiated inside of his skull, making it difficult to concentrate on walking a straight line let alone form a coherent thought. Maybe if Aileen was still here they could make it work. Maybe somehow, someway, they could manage to go back to the way things had been before.

  But as soon as Hugh opened the door to his wife’s private chambers
and saw her lying on the floor in a pool of her own blood, he knew there would be no going back.

  There would be no going back ever again.

  Aileen was dead.

  CHAPTER ONE

  English Village of Farmingdale

  Eight Months Later

  “Where did you get that?” Staring at the rectangular piece of glass dangling from her friend’s hand, Temperance Swan felt her entire body go cold all the way from the tips of her toes to the tip of her nose. She shivered, drawing her cloak more firmly around her shoulders despite the warm autumn sun beating down on the nape of her neck. “And who sold it to you?” she added, even though she was fairly certain she already knew the answer.

  Surrounded by men, women, and children all celebrating the end of harvest season with a village festival, Temperance should have been thinking about hair ribbons and hand carved ornaments and bread pudding. But instead of meaningless trinkets she could now afford to purchase courtesy of her sister Lynette’s recent marriage to a wealthy viscount, her thoughts were fixated on a man she had met in London. A man who had possessed a rectangular piece of glass exactly like the one Lady Annabel Blackbourne was now holding.

  He had called it a look-behind, she recalled with the faintest of frowns. And she’d mocked him for it, even though it really was an ingenious invention.

  When attached to the front of a carriage or other wheeled conveyance, the mirror allowed the driver to see behind them. It was a simple contraption. Unique as well, which was why she needed to know precisely where Annabel had gotten her hands on one.

  Tall and lovely with hair the color of finely spun gold and eyes that matched the rolling countryside, Annabel’s pale beauty was a stark contrast to Temperance’s dark allure. Like her sisters Lynette and Delilah, Temperance had been blessed with porcelain skin, a thick tumble of tawny hair, and vivid brown eyes that were currently flashing with annoyance as she awaited Annabel’s reply.