True Story (The Deverells, Book One)

Olivia Monday, an impoverished
widow, has taken a position as "secretary" to an eccentric,
scandalous rake - a divorced man with a brood of eight children and
at least two gun-shot wounds. For one year, against the advice of
her remaining family members, she agrees to live in his remote
Cornish castle and put pen to paper on his behalf.

Despite everything she's heard about
him, she's unafraid. Olivia welcomes the distraction this unusual
post will provide— as well as the large fee— because the
alternative of relying on relatives to put a roof over her head is
intolerable.

True Deverell has decided it's time
to set the record straight. He means to dictate his memoirs to this
little widow who, according to the instructions he sent to his
solicitor, should merely be plain and have a neat hand. Those are
his only requirements. He doesn't want any distractions, has
endured his fill of scandal and intends now to leave the "True
Story" on paper so that perhaps, one day, people will forgive his
mistakes.

But when Mrs. Olivia Monday arrives
on his doorstep in her leaky boots and crumpled bonnet, True
realizes that perhaps his story isn't over yet.

True Story

The Deverells, Book
One

by

Jayne Fresina

Twisted E Publishing,
LLC

www.twistedepublishing.com

A TWISTED E- PUBLISHING
BOOK

True Story

The Deverells, Book One

Copyright © 2015 by Jayne Fresina

Edited by Marie Medina

First E-book Publication: April 2015,
SMASHWORDS EDITION

Cover design by K Designs

All cover art and logo copyright © 2015,
Twisted Erotica Publishing.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED:
This literary work may not be reproduced or
transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or
photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express
written permission.

All characters and events in this book
are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is
strictly coincidental.

True Story

Chapter One

The Offices of Chalke,
Westcott & Chalke.

Three O'clock in the
afternoon, Tuesday, March 12, 1832

"Get out of my blasted
way," the menacing, deeply disgruntled voice rumbled above her.
"What
are
you
doing, woman?"

On her knees before him, head down,
Olivia Westcott scrambled for the spilled papers that cascaded
around his boots when the man bumped into her.

"Some ruse to pick my pockets, eh?" he
growled. "Where's your slick-fingered accomplice, or did you think
to fleece me by yourself?"

"Sir, I—"

"Good God, must you wretched creatures
lie in wait everywhere I turn?"

It was fortunate for this stranger
that while assisting in her father's office, Olivia had promised to
be on her best behavior. She didn't want to be sent home to
embroider yet another ugly fire screen or paint watery, depressing
landscapes. So, rather than answer as she would in a Utopia of
justice and equality, she bit her tongue, held her temper and said,
"Sir, pardon me, but you're standing on the papers."

Great Aunt Jane, always her most
indomitable critic, would have been impressed.

Still the towering monolith did not
move. His contempt bore down upon her. "Bloody women! Always
underfoot."

With one knuckle she nudged her
spectacles back up her nose and raised her improved gaze only as
far as his knees, where the tip of a riding crop tapped smartly
against his mud-splattered breeches. "I wouldn't be underfoot sir,
if you hadn't bowled into me."

"You shot out of nowhere. If I didn't
have my wits about me, I could have trampled you into the
floorboards."

The last sheet was stuck
under his heel. "Please move your foot, sir. No!
The other one
.""I
suppose you were wandering with your head in the clouds,
daydreaming. Relying upon other folk to pay attention."

"I can assure you I was
not.
Sir! Your foot
!" Anyone would think he deliberately delayed getting off her
paper.

"Butter-fingers, is that not the
expression?"

"Better that than Butter-brained." It
slipped out on a sly breath before she could restrain
herself.

"Tsk, tsk, you know what they say
about women with sharp tongues."

"No. Do tell. I am all agog to hear
it." Oh dear, now more words came out that shouldn't, linked like
scarves pulled from a conjurer's mouth. "And clearly you want to
enlighten me."

He replied coolly, "One day they find
themselves surrounded by castrated men."

"A tragedy, to be sure. For the
men."

At last she pulled the trampled paper
free, although it was now decorated with a large, dirty shoe print.
Before she could get up off her knees, the man lost his patience
and, as if she was nothing more than a puddle in the street, he
stepped over her.

"Look where you're going in future,
young woman."

She recovered from the indignity just
in time to witness his head contact briskly— and most satisfyingly—
with the low lintel of the doorway.

"Did the doorframe come out of nowhere
too?" she inquired politely.

He stopped with his back to her. "You
think that was amusing."

"Well, it does have a certain
piquancy, sir." Mimicking his previous tone of condescension, she
added, "You know what they say about men who live in
glasshouses."

"Yes. They pay a very high window
tax." He half turned his head, but not far enough to reveal more
than a little cheek and some dark side-whiskers above the tall
collar of his greatcoat. No longer quite so terse and angry, his
voice warmed with a hint of self-deprecating humor. "And, as I have
found, they ought to keep their clothes on unless they have a fancy
to exhibit for their neighbors."

He didn't turn to see her blush. In
the next moment he was gone and the walls around her seemed to
exhale a collective sigh of wanton languor.

"Are you alright, my dear?" Her father
had come to find his papers.

"Was that a client of yours?" she
asked with as much nonchalance as she could muster.

"That was... a gentleman currently
embroiled in a divorce being handled by Mr. Chalke," he replied
gravely, taking the documents from her. "Best stay out of his path,
Olivia."

"Why?" Her heart was beating too fast,
too hard.

"Must you always question, my dear?
Now where is the tea?"

She had forgotten it. Vowing to remedy
the oversight at once, Olivia waited with her hands meekly behind
her back, until her father had retreated inside his office. Then
she hurried to the window.

There he was— Mr. Incivility—already
down the stairs and emerging into the street. He put on his hat,
nodded briskly to the boy who held his horse and tossed the lad
some coins. Olivia willed him to look up, so she might see his
face, but he didn't.

Glancing at the clock on the mantle,
she noted it was just after three. It was a habit of hers to mark
the exact time at certain important moments in her life. She stored
them all in her brain like ledgers on a dusty shelf. Her
stepbrother thought that very odd and mocked her for it, as he did
about most things.

But what made this moment so important
that it deserved commemoration?

As soon as her father
mentioned the man's purpose there she realized who he was. Divorce
was rare, almost unheard of, and those few who attempted it became
infamous. Anyone who read a newspaper knew
his
name. Consequently, Olivia also
knew why her father advised her to stay out of his path. A properly
raised young woman of good family should avoid the company of that
gentleman. In fact, many people refused to call him a gentleman at
all. No one seemed to know where he came from, although there was a
general consensus as to where he'd end up.

"Self-made, indeed," she'd
once heard Great Aunt Jane exclaim in a huff. "Gentlemen are
not
made.
They
are born."

Olivia considered that a rather
snobbish view, especially coming from a lady who was only a few
steps away from debtor's prison for most of her adult life and
relied upon the charity of relatives to keep a roof over her
head.

She thought back to a conversation
several years ago when that same lady, having remarked upon
Olivia's misfortune in losing her mother at such a young age— as if
it was a tragedy somehow due to the little girl's own
carelessness—went on to criticize her complexion, her lack of
social graces and her posture.

"Straighten your spine, girl! You will
develop a most unbecoming slouch if my nephew doesn't put you in a
backboard immediately. Who will you ever find to marry, child, if
you don't improve your posture, take up some feminine pursuits and
learn to hold a sensible conversation? What gentleman of any worth
would look at such a sulky, sullen, willful creature with a
fascination for wicked pranks? You won't be fit for polite
society."

This lecture came about because Olivia
had sculpted a piece of parsnip to look like a finger, coated the
end of it in raspberry jam, and then placed it on the pianoforte
keys, to be discovered when the instrument was opened.

"You are a horrid, unseemly child with
a dark and devious imagination, Olivia Westcott. I cannot think
what will become of you."

To which she replied, "I shall marry
Mr. True Deverell, shan't I? People say he's not fit for polite
society either. But he's rich as Croesus and I hear he knows his
way under a woman's petticoats."

This bold declaration had
shocked everyone present into silence. These things — and
men—weren't meant for drawing room conversation in mixed company,
and the adults were probably wondering where she'd even heard his
name. But Olivia was not the sort of girl who listened quietly and
contentedly to sweet fairy tales. "Once upon a time" made her want
to spit nails. Once upon
what
time?
When
? What on earth did that even
mean, for pity's sake? How could anyone take such a feeble, flimsy
narrative seriously?