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Kristan Higgins is the New York Times, USA TODAY, Wall Street Journal and Publishers Weekly bestselling author of more than twenty novels. Her books have been translated into more than 20 languages and have sold millions of copies around the world. Kristan has been praised for her mix of “laugh-out-loud humor and tear-jerking pathos,” which the author attributes to a diet high in desserts and sugar-based mood swings.
Kristan’s books have received dozens of awards and accolades, including starred reviews from People Magazine, Entertainment Weekly, Good Morning America, Kirkus, the New York Journal of Books, Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, National Public Radio and Booklist. She personally responds to every reader letter she receives, even the mean ones.
Kristan is the mother of two ridiculously good-looking children and the grandmother of the world’s cutest baby. She lives in Connecticut and Cape Cod with her heroic firefighter husband, a rescue mutt and indifferent cat. In her spare time, Kristan enjoys gardening, easy yoga classes, mixology and pasta.
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Lady Waverly’s Lover
AMALIE HOWARD
Chapter One
The Marchioness of Waverly was, without a doubt, the reigning jewel of London.
Ask anyone. They all said so. Not many of the illustrious ton knew that that carefully cultivated persona was a lie. A pretense. A mask she wore to the world while the real version of her was withering inside its flawless, gilded prison. She was reserved, accomplished, impeccable. Never a hair out of place, always unfailingly perfect.
Sumptuous clothing, exquisite manners, and unfailing poise were her hallmarks. Even her smile was curated to precision: not too big, no showing of teeth, just touching the eyes.
And the right kind of smile could decimate.
Needless to say, Margot Foxglove’s legendary cool hauteur was both envied and hated. Debutantes coveted and dreaded her notice. Ladies resentfully catalogued and copied her every move. Gentlemen begrudged the marquess’s deuced luck at winning such a prize.
Though now that he was dead, Margot was finally free of him.
Freedom in the ton, however, came with caveats. A widow still had to perform for the masses and the ever-judgmental peerage, lest she be relegated to persona non grata. Certainly, she had more leeway than most in her position, but she was still expected to play the part society demanded of her. There were rules that had to be obeyed, and Margot did not care to eschew the lofty throne she had fashioned for herself.
She let out a small scoff. She supposed she was being overly histrionic. And besides, England already had its queen.
“A toast, my darling,” Lady Honoria Englewood, the Countess of Rawdon, said as she lifted an obscenely full glass of French brandy. “May that cowardly bastard rot and get what he deserves.”
“Hear, hear,” Margot said, gulping down her late husband’s prized Maison Gautier cognac that was over a century old, and relished the delicious burn down her throat. He’d have no need of it wherever he was, and it gave her perverse pleasure to finish every last precious drop.
She glanced up at her best friend, who let out an unladylike belch, her green eyes bright and blond hair tumbling out of its hold. A drunken flush lit her cheekbones, and Margot knew hers suffered the same, as evidenced by the half-empty bottle between them. Feeling audacious, undoubtedly from the absurd amount of liquor she had consumed, she yanked the last of the pins from her own hair, letting the deep brown waves spill over her shoulders. She kicked off her slippers and unrolled her stockings for good measure.
“Look at you letting loose,” Honoria crowed and promptly imitated her before going one step further to loosen the laces of her bodice and corset.
Margot wouldn’t go that far, and besides, hers were fastened in the back. There was no one here to judge them. The staff had been dismissed, and they were in the privacy of her own home. And Honoria had seen her through the worst of everything, through the bruises and the tears, through the callous words that landed harder than hands ever could. She shook her head to clear it of the memories and wrinkled her nose.
“So how does it feel?” Honoria asked. “To finally breathe?”
Margot considered the question. “Strange but exhilarating.”
Twenty-four months was a long time to mourn someone, especially a man who had been half-dead and on his death bed for the last few years of their marriage and still controlled her until the very wheezing end. Margot intended to burn every black bombazine dress she had been forced to wear out of some skewed idea of respect, when the truth was, she would have danced on the bastard of a marquess’s grave in every color of the rainbow if it wouldn’t have scandalized the ton.
Lord Waverly had been a rotten man, a rotten husband, and a rotten lover.
Lord Rotten. That should have been his name.
“Suffer in purgatory, you piece of shit,” she swore through gritted teeth.
Honoria cheered. “More bad words, Margot, you can do it!”
“Fuck that soulless prick!” Her cheeks burned at the crass oath, but it felt extraordinarily good. One shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, but Waverly was truly the exception.
Some arranged marriages turned out well. A couple might get to know one another, and sometimes, a man and wife could find companionship, passion, or even love. Not her, however. Behind closed doors, Margot had found nothing but degradation and pain. Her husband had bedded her without fail every week during the first few months of their marriage until she became pregnant with their son, before warming his bed with a mistress.
Margot treasured sixteen-year-old Percy. He was the light of her life and the only thing she did not regret from her marriage. She’d been betrothed to a man thrice her age at barely a year older than Percy was now, enduring his constant criticism and abuse.
