Fortune Favours Miss Gold (Fortunes of Fate Book 2) Read online




  Fortune Favours Miss Gold

  Fortune of Fates Series

  Nadine Millard

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

  Copyright © 2019 by Nadine Millard

  Kindle Edition

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the copyright owner of this book.

  To my daughter Kacy, my own golden girl!

  Thank you for the inspiration and for being you.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  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

  Epilogue

  Excerpt from Fortune’s Gamble

  About Nadine Millard

  More Books by Nadine

  Prologue

  “Hush, Pippa. Papa will hear.”

  Eleanor Gold stood at the top of the sweeping staircase of her father’s Grosvenor Square home.

  As was his wont, their father had stumbled in the door at close to four o’ clock in the morning.

  Eleanor could practically smell the stench of stale alcohol and sweat even from the distance.

  Beside her, her younger siblings Phillipa and Trevor trembled with fright.

  It was at times like these Eleanor truly felt as though she hated her father.

  She was more than used to his escapades by now, having witnessed them since she was in short skirts. But now? Now that she was the grand old age of fifteen and felt solely responsible for ten-year-old Pippa and six-year-old Trevor, her anger burnt hotter than ever before.

  Why had they been saddled with such a man for their sire? Why was their mother so useless when it came to dealing with her husband, or protecting her children from his rages, his drinking, his gambling?

  It was the outside of enough.

  “Lost the damned thing, didn’t I?”

  Eleanor’s ears pricked up, and a snake of dread slithered down her spine.

  “Lost it?” That was her mother. Her quiet, biddable, church-mouse mother. “What do you mean you’ve lost it?”

  “This. The house. We need to pack up and remove to Somerset.”

  “For heaven’s sake, Augustus. What are you talking about?”

  “Dammit, woman. Do not question me.”

  Eleanor winced as her father’s bellows shook the rafters. Beside her, Pippa and Trevor clamped hands over their ears. She pulled them both closer, as though she could shield them from the ugliness that surrounded them every time their father had a drink.

  “But, Augustus, we need a house in London if the girls are to have a proper Come Out. And what of Trevor?”

  “I can win it back,” the drunken lout slurred. “I just need to figure out a way. That – that young pup thinks he can ruin me?”

  “Who?” her mother demanded.

  This was the most Mrs. Gold had ever stood up to her husband. And it should have made Eleanor proud, but all it did was increase her fear. If things were bad enough that her mother would actually argue with her husband, then they certainly were in a world of trouble.

  “Tristan Bloody Grayson,” her father spat the name as though it were the blackest of curses.

  “Lady Devon’s boy?” Mrs. Gold gasped. “Augustus, he is but a child. How could you have lost our house to him?”

  “I’ll win it back, I said,” her father sneered. “Didn’t I tell you I would win it back? I just need some more funds.”

  As soon as I’m old enough, Eleanor vowed as they listened to Augustus Gold staggering around downstairs, her mother following and barking questions at him, I’m finding a husband and getting away from him. I’ll take Pippa and Trevor and make sure they never have to witness this again.

  There was a series of crashes, followed by a curse or two, and then – silence.

  “He’s fallen asleep,” Pippa whispered.

  “No doubt,” Eleanor answered, unable to keep the bitterness from her young voice. “Right, the both of you to bed.”

  “But I don’t want –”

  “I don’t like to sleep alone –”

  “I’m scared to be by myself –”

  Eleanor sighed as her siblings begged and pleaded to sleep with her as they always did when their father awoke them in the night.

  “Fine, come along then,” she said, sounding for all the world like a woman thrice her age.

  Before long she had them settled, one on either side of her.

  “Ellie?”

  “Hmm?”

  The night was finally still, and already Eleanor could hear the steady breathing of Trevor beside her.

  “Thank you for taking care of us,” Pippa whispered into the night.

  Eleanor blinked back the sudden tears that formed in her green eyes.

  “I’ll always take care of you, Pip,” she whispered back, ruffling the golden blonde curls so like her own.

  “Promise?”

  Eleanor gazed unseeingly into the gloom, thinking of how she could happily throttle both her father and mother when she heard such fear and uncertainty in her younger sister’s tone.

  “I promise.”

  Chapter One

  Ten Years Later

  “It can’t all be gone, Mr. Smith.”

  Eleanor Gold sat with her hands clasped primly in her lap, her back straight against the rickety wooden chair, her face the picture of ladylike calm and decorum.

  Inside she was screaming.

  “I’m afraid it is, Miss Gold.” The gentleman peered over his spectacles to fix her with a sympathetic yet stern stare. “Quite gone.”

  “But – but the house—” She struggled to keep her tone even. “There was no mortgage on the house. You said so yourself.”

  “So I did,” the man answered calmly. He studied her for a moment or two before suddenly removing his spectacles and pinching the bridge of his nose.

  “If I may speak plainly?” he asked.

  Eleanor nodded and waited.

  “Your father’s gambling was profligate, to say the least.”

  Didn’t she know it? Their father had gambled away the house in Grosvenor Square, along with a hunting lodge in Scotland. It was only by the grace of God that they’d managed to hang on to the manor house in Somerset.

  It had cost what little money they had left to get Eleanor and her siblings to Bath to meet with Mr. Smith.

  When a missive had arrived at the house to say they had only weeks to vacate before the new owner took possession, Eleanor had felt a fear unlike anything she’d ever experienced course through her veins.

  It had been near impossible to keep her worries fr
om Pippa and Trevor, but she’d done her best.

  “It must be a mistake,” she had assured them. “We shall go to see the solicitor and have the whole thing straightened out right away.”

  But as she gazed across the disorderly desk of her father’s solicitor, the last of Eleanor’s hope died in her chest.

  “Your father’s debts were significant. He –” The older man paused and cleared his throat, clearly uncomfortable with the news he was about to impart. “He gambled away the Somerset house before his passing.”

  “No!” The gasp escaped Eleanor before she could rein it in, and a memory flashed before her eyes. She and her siblings huddled on the stairs as her father confessed he’d gambled away their townhouse.

  “But – but he died five years ago, Mr. Smith. Why is this coming to light now?”

  “The – ah – gentleman to whom he lost the property has been on the continent these five years past,” Mr. Smith explained. “Now he is returned and, well, he wants it.”

  Eleanor felt a bout of tears spring to her eyes, but she would be damned if she let them fall.

  Her cheeks heated with shame as she leaned forward in her chair, her hands gripping the green velvet of her travelling cloak.

  “I, we, that is – my siblings and I –” she began to explain haltingly, spitting the words passed the lump of embarrassment lodged in her throat. “We have nothing else, Mr. Smith. We shall be quite ruined. We – we have nowhere to go.”

  Already, they were ruined.

  At five and twenty, Eleanor was a confirmed spinster. By the time she had been old enough for a Come Out and a Season, her father’s pockets had been to let.

  There simply hadn’t been the money to spend on a full household of servants, let alone letting a house in London and incurring the costs of a Season. And if there was no money for Eleanor, there was certainly none for Phillipa.

  Trevor hadn’t even been able to go to school as he should have. He was the first Gold in generations who hadn’t attended Eton.

  No, the children’s education, after they’d lost their governess, had fallen to Eleanor.

  Five years ago, upon her father’s death, Eleanor had finally gotten her hands on the family ledgers to see the extent of the damage her father had done. She had always had a head for numbers.

  It had made for stark reading, to be sure. But, and of this she was quite certain, there had been no mention of the house in Somerset being gambled away.

  Oh, but the deeds. She remembered thinking it odd they weren’t with the other papers.

  Dread formed like a rock and settled in her stomach, for she knew it was true.

  The deeds weren’t there because they’d been tossed on a table and handed over to another debauched, gambling drunkard. Just as easily as her father had tossed away any and all hope of a future for his children.

  “That’s not necessarily true,” Mr. Smith interrupted her ever-morose thoughts.

  Eleanor’s head snapped up and she watched as Mr. Smith dug out a folded sheaf of papers, aging and curling at the sides, and handed them over.

  She opened them with shaking fingers, running her eyes quickly over the contents.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Before your mother passed away, she came to see me.”

  Mr. Gold had followed his wife to the grave not two years after her demise. Eleanor and her siblings had mourned their mother a lot more than their father.

  “She was never strong enough to stand up to him, I know. But she was clever.”

  Eleanor felt a surge of grief at the lawyer’s words. Yes, her mother had been clever and loving. And wasted on a man such as her father.

  “As I was saying, she came to see me only months before she died.”

  Eleanor could only gape in shock. Her mother had been sickening for years before she finally passed away, frail and wasting. It had been horrific feeling so helpless, just watching it happen.

  Surely she could not have made a trip to visit a lawyer in that state?

  And then Eleanor remembered. Mrs. Gold had announced that the family surgeon had recommended a fortnight in Bath, taking the healing waters.

  Eleanor had offered to accompany her, but she’d been quite adamant that she would go alone, with only her devoted servant Mary for company.

  When Mrs. Gold had returned, she hadn’t looked any better. In fact, she’d looked worse, though it did seem as though she had found some measure of peace on her visit. She died not long after.

  “You are holding the deeds to a cottage by the sea on the edge of Torrell. Your mother purchased the property with funds that she had been saving for some years,” Mr. Smith explained gently. “It was not part of your father’s holdings.”

  Eleanor could only stare. The edge of their village? And she’d never known of it!

  “She gave very strict instructions that it was to be kept secret from her husband, even from her children. Her wishes were that it be passed on to you, Miss Gold, should the need arise. If and when all of her children were settled and comfortable with homes of their own, or indeed if they were to remain at the manor house, however, I was to donate it to a foundling hospital at which she volunteered.”

  Those dratted tears threatened again, and Eleanor blinked furiously to hold them back.

  Her mother. Her poor, darling, weak mother had been incredibly strong after all.

  She had saved her children in ways their father never would or could.

  “I do not know the condition of the property, Miss Gold. It has been some years, as you know, since it was purchased.”

  “I understand.” Eleanor nodded. But something was better than nothing.

  “The new owner of – of the manor house,” Mr. Smith continued, his tone tinged with regret. “He will be arriving in Bath within the week and, I am informed, straight on to Torrell after that. The property must be vacant for his arrival.”

  Eleanor could see how it pained Mr. Smith to inform her of such things.

  But her heart was lighter than it had been before.

  Though she still loathed the cad who had stolen her family home from her, who had left her siblings without their childhood house, at least now they had somewhere to go.

  Eleanor stood and held out a hand to the aging solicitor.

  He stood and clasped her hand.

  “Thank you, Mr. Smith,” she said, proud that her voice remained steady. “I shall ensure that the house is emptied for the gentleman’s arrival.”

  At least whoever it was planned to retain the skeletal staff Eleanor had managed to hang on to. She would have felt a hundred times worse had her servants lost their home and livelihoods, too.

  “If I may say, Miss Gold, you are a young woman of great strength and courage. You would have done very well in London.”

  Eleanor blinked in surprise at the unexpected compliment.

  London.

  She supposed that he meant she would have gone up there and batted her lashes at some wealthy gentleman or other and secured a future for herself and her siblings.

  But she had been needed here. Even if they’d had the funds to allow Eleanor to be presented, she couldn’t have left her siblings.

  She turned to leave the small office, determined to make sure her family was nowhere near the manor house when the great big lout came to claim it.

  “Mr. Smith—” A thought struck Eleanor, and she turned her head to address the solicitor.

  “Miss?”

  “Might I have the name of the new owner?”

  Mr. Smith hesitated only a moment.

  “I suppose it makes little difference now,” he mumbled before nodding slightly. “A Mr. Grayson, Miss Gold. Tristan Grayson. Son of Viscount Devon.”

  Eleanor’s blood ran ice-cold at the name.

  Tristan Bloody Grayson. Her father’s voice echoed in her reeling mind. The night he had been railing against the young pup to whom he’d lost their London house.

  The stone of dread that had been a
fixture in her stomach since the start of this meeting turned to ice as her cold anger poured into her very bones.

  Tristan Grayson. She’d never met the man, yet he had been the ruination of her life since she’d been but a girl.

  And still now, all these years later, he was nothing but a torment.

  Chapter Two

  “You see? It is not as bad as all that,” Eleanor said to Pippa, hearing the brittleness in her tone as she surveyed the cottage through the dusty carriage window.

  She and Trevor had done their best over the last few days to make the cottage inhabitable, but Pippa hadn’t come with them. She was afraid of spiders and mice, and Eleanor thought that would make her more a hindrance than a help.

  When she had told her siblings of the change in their circumstances, their reactions had been just as she anticipated they would be.

  Trevor’s face had grown red, and he’d ranted and raved almost all the way back to Torrell. Even their stop at an inn along the way had been peppered with his black oaths against their mystery tormentor and all the ways he’d like to exact his revenge.

  Trevor was young and hot-headed. He would learn, as Eleanor had, that there was little point in railing against Mr. Grayson. It was done. And whereas Trevor’s anger was white hot and burning, Eleanor’s was icy and quiet.

  Trevor wished for revenge, while Eleanor merely wished the man to perdition.

  Pippa, on the other hand, had wept. And wept. And wept.

  She loved her sister dearly, but Pippa had a lot of their mother’s docility and fragility in her. That made her sweet and loving but also little use in a crisis, unfortunately.

  Still, Eleanor had rallied their spirits as best as she could and had set them to work as soon as they arrived back at the manor.

  After sitting down with the staff and explaining that they would be leaving, but the house was to be kept open and running for the arrival of the new owner, Eleanor had thrown herself into packing, lest she have a moment to reflect on their circumstances and therefore fall apart.

  There simply wasn’t the time.