The Last Straw

Prologue “That. Is. It! Goodbye, sir! This is the last straw! The last straw I say!” Voices shouting up the stairwell brought several servants and one young woman with a robe hastily thrown over her nightgown running to the edge of the railing in time to see an angry man directing two burly menservants to put out a man who was stuttering his protests and holding a pile of books in his arms. His clothes were askew on his skinny frame, his graying brown hair tousled. Recognizing the poor man being manhandled out the door as her private tutor, Arielle Bridgerton, Daughter of the Duke of Ashbourne, scrambled down the marble staircase, nearly tripping on the train of her robe. “Father, what is going on?” she asked, though she already knew. Her fifth tutor was about to be dismissed. “Young woman! You know very well what is going on! How dare you even have the nerve to show your face to me this morning?” Arielle slid to a stop in her slippers as the brunt of her father’s anger was turned on her. The Duke of Ashbourne was usually a very calm and collected man but this morning, he was far from it. “Your tutor could not maintain any sense of control over you and it is by your doing that forces my hand!” Arielle could only gape at him. “Honorable Lady, please tell him I did nothing wrong!” the tutor, a Sebastian Pinkerton, begged her desperately with pleading eyes. Arielle swallowed and then turned to her father. His blazing green eyes bore down into her brown ones. Barely refraining from flinching under his fiery glare, she squeaked out a, “If anything, Father, you should punish me for what I have done instead of turning out Mr. Pinkerton who has done an excellent job in –” “OUT!” All those present seemed to flinch under the angry roar. Arielle could not take her eyes from her father’s as there was a murmur of protest and then the door shut, swallowing them up in what dim light was left in the corridor. The show was over – servants went back to their work and Arielle turned to face the wrath of her angry father. “You,” he intoned in a quiet voice. She flinched as if he had been shouting the words into her ears. “Will go to your rooms. You will sit at your desk and read from cover to cover from the tome on the history of this fief. You will not sneak out to play with those street rats in the city. I do not know how you do it but if you do it again, which I must remind you, was what cost your tutor his job, you will find yourself locked in your rooms until a match can be made to hopefully keep you under control.” “My friends are not ‘street rats’! They are –” she began to protest. “ENOUGH!” The Duke loomed over his daughter, seething with fury. “Just. Go. To. Your. Rooms. Antonio will make sure you get there and stay there. Another tutor will be found as soon as one is willing to apply for the new post we now have opened.” He beckoned to his personal bodyguard who stepped up next to him and took one of Arielle’s elbows in one of his large tanned hands. “This way, my lady,” Antonio murmured in his quiet voice, guiding her up the stairs. Arielle stared dumbly at her feet as she made her way back up to her rooms, keeping pace with the man’s large strides.

Chapter One As soon as the door closed, she pulled out the tome that her father had instructed for her to read. Sneaking a glance at the door to make sure Antonio wasn’t coming back in any moment, she opened a hidden drawer at the base of her desk and withdrew a thick leather-bound notebook and turned to an empty page and began to write with a piece of fine thin charcoal that she had kept for this very purpose. This morning Sebastian Pinkerton was put out by Antonio and another guard of the house. He was my fifth tutor. The sixth is on the way. I am sure that Father will find one that is able to “handle” me and keep me under tight rein but I definitely doubt that he will find any man – or woman, for that matter – who thinks he or she can control my actions. Nevertheless, I cannot wait to see Becka tomorrow afternoon by the Gully Inn. She told me the last time I had met with her that she had found a place where we could establish our own secret hideout and it would be safe from the Jackals. Those brutes have driven our gang out from almost every single place we can get to. Becka told me that she and Jack had made sure that the Jackals did not know about this new place. I absolutely cannot wait to see it and get started on “acquiring” decorations and furniture to furnish our new holdings. Arielle gently blew off the excess charcoal that crumbled off of her words and examining it one more time with satisfaction, she closed the book, wound the string she used to secure it around its edges to keep the book closed, and returned the journal to its hiding place. Just in time – Antonio opened the door as she sat up and he regarded her for a moment before he closed the door behind him again. Breathing a sigh of relief, she went back to reading the dull tome. She smiled to herself as she planned her escape to meet with Becka and the rest of the gang for the next day. Her eyes scanned the old pages of the tome and her fingers turned the pages but her thoughts were elsewhere. Arielle longed to be out in the sun, to feel its warmth caressing her golden skin. She wanted to change into one of Jack’s trousers that she had borrowed and run with her friends through the streets of the city, laughing as they ducked under the arms of angry storeowners and agitated merchants that came every day to sell their products. Or have them stolen, she thought with a grin. Her fingers turned another page with a crackle. Just the other day, she and Jack had crept up behind a stall in the marketplace and made off with a large jar of candies before anyone had taken notice of them. The gang had spent the rest of the day eating as much candy out of the jar before they were full. “If I recall, there were still some left in the jar

too,” she thought out loud wistfully. With a sigh, she pushed her chair away from her desk and strode to the glass balcony doors, and threw them open, breathing with a sigh of relief at the fresh scents the night wind brought to her – the freshly cut grass, the flowers in full bloom, the smell of the evergreen trees. Striding onto the balcony, she leaned against the railing and looked out at the view. Her family’s castle, the center of their fiefdom, was situated on a large hill that overlooked the city below, despite being rather small in size as compared to most castles that other families in the realm controlled. Below her, the city’s lights drew her sight as honey drew bears. Even from this distance, she could smell the wood smoke of fires that were springing up over the town to cook the inhabitants’ dinners. Wistfully, she gazed out over the lawn towards the distant light of the city.

Chapter Two “Miss, it is time to get up,” a knock at the door drew the girl’s attention from her recent dream – a rather strange one involving dancing bears and fire breathers. “Ugh…” a grunt escaped her throat as she attempted, without success, to get up. The door was thrown open and someone came in and began to throw the curtains in her rooms open, sending the morning light exploding into the room. “Get up, your new tutor is here,” the maid pleaded with her as she bustled around the room putting out clothes for the girl who was still just a pile of cloth in the large bed. “Miss, please get up. It will be the worse for me if you do not appear at breakfast this morning with your parents and your new instructor.” The covers were thrown aside and a sleep-tousled Arielle flew out of the bed. “All right, all right, I’m up,” she mumbled as she stumbled towards the wash closet where the maid had just emptied a pitcher of warm water into the wash basin. Splashing some water onto her face, she took the facecloth that the maid handed her and wiped the water away from her eyes. “Who is it?” her voice, husky with sleep, held bored interest. “Oooh, you will like him, you will, milady. Handsome as a button, that one,” the girl cooed as she bustled around the room. She helped Arielle out of her nightgown and slid a chemise over her head. Opening the bodice like a clam shell, she clamped it around Arielle’s slim form and strapped her into it. “Hmm,” was her reply. Arielle reached for a brush and tackled her silky locks. “That was a fast application for the job.” “Aye,” the maid agreed, taking over. She took the brush from her hands and straightened her hair with quick accurate strokes. The maid deftly pinned it up into a neat, but simple, bun at the back of her head and helped Arielle don her overskirt, sliding it over the girl’s shoulders and easing it down to her narrow hips. Arielle smoothed the skirt over her legs, making sure it hung properly, as the maid tied the strings on the back. After she finished, she patted the laces under a layer of fabric to hide them. “There. Off you go, miss.” Arielle toed on her slippers and was out the door. Grabbing a handful of skirts, she made her way down the stairs and into the dining hall, just in time as three people seated at the table turned to look at her and her loud and not-so-elegantly-executed entrance. Flushing under the attention she drew, she gave a quick curtsy to her father and the man who sat at his right and sat down next to her mother at his father’s left side. “Mr. Benedict, this is my daughter, the Honorable Lady Arielle. Arielle, this is James Benedict Hastings. He will be your new tutor,” the duke informed his daughter as she sat down, this time with more grace than her entrance had shown. Arielle bowed her head once and looked up at the man sitting across from her. “How do you –” her words caught in her throat as she caught the gaze of the intense green eyes of the young man. They stared back at her brown ones. Tousled brown hair swept across his brow in an unruly fashion that she thought was quite attractive. “– do?” she managed to finish. He smiled and that was when her world seemed to explode