Neither Lady nor Pirate (Complete)

Chapter One

[Part One: Lady]

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ONE

The large church sanctuary was packed to the brim with nobility. Dukes and duchesses, lords and ladies all dressed in their finest formal garb sat waiting to greet the future wife of His Excellency Lord Eric Haughtington.

Haughtington had insisted that all sit together, rather than divided half friends of the groom and half friends of the bride. "We shall all be family soon enough," he'd said with a devilish wink.

The Lord had such a way with his charm and charisma that even Queen Anne herself would not have opposed his suggestion.

Indeed, coupled with his prestige and wealth, the charm and charisma of Lord Eric Haughtington made him one of the most sought after bachelors in all of England.

Women, from scullery maids to married nobility, swooned for him. They sighed when he kissed their glove-clad hands and wailed when he gave his signature pretty-boy smile. They stalked his palace grounds waiting to catch him sweating profusely after a fencing match or fixing his wind-blown chestnut hair after a good hunt in the forest.

There could be no doubt—Haughtington was indeed a very attractive man. His finely chiseled physique alone was enough to make a woman weak in the knees. Not to mention, his slender jawline and shoulder-length hair that framed his impeccably handsome face.

His eyes were a shade of green not unlike a finely carved emerald; his nose, slender, but everything a nose ought to be. His lips were perfectly plump, the lower protruding ever so slightly more than its upper companion. Their color was often described as being a shade of red sweeter than the apple in the Garden of Eden.

Never had the land of England heralded such a perfect gentleman in every aspect of the word—he was rich, well educated, and respectable.

His father had earned his affluence from the slave trade in the Americas, running one of the largest networks of travel in the world. Because of this, the Lord owned three houses spanning the globe—a mansion in the city of London, a summer home on the coast of France, and a still-developing vacation home in the colonies of America. His ships were so numerous that he rented them out to other nobility to take on voyages just to open space on the harbor for another.

The mansion in London was three stories high and contained over fifty rooms of every size. He had innumerable guest bedrooms, two large dining areas, an enormous kitchen, and more than enough room in his dance hall to host hundreds of people at a time.

Over one hundred acres were covered in only the most exquisite flora. Weeping willows dipped their branches in the cool waters of his two-acre pond and hedges of every size and shape lined the pristine grey stones of the spacious pathways winding in and out of his flower garden. Roses, lilacs, daisies, and more bloomed brilliantly under the care of his twenty-three gardeners and grounds keepers.

On staff in the Haughtington mansion were five of the world's finest cooks, all from different areas of the globe. It "gave him a taste of every country," he often stated at his numerous dinner parties.

Twenty-one maidservants took care of the housekeeping, doing his dishes, waxing the enormous floors of his ballroom and grand room, folding laundry, and dusting furniture and the portraits hanging on his walls.

Ten stable hands worked tirelessly to feed, water, break, and groom his four finest stallions; thirteen more were to care for his other lesser mares and colts, whose numbers were too great to count. Most incredible of all was his private horseracing track, which hosted monthly competitions that not only attracted throngs of crowds but also overwhelmingly large sums of money.