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The Lady Sparks a Flame (Damsels of Discovery, 2, Band 2) - Softcover

Buch 2 von 2: The Damsels of Discovery

Everett, Elizabeth

 
9780593550489: The Lady Sparks a Flame (Damsels of Discovery, 2, Band 2)
Softcover
ISBN 10: 059355048X ISBN 13: 9780593550489
Verlag: Penguin Publishing Group, 2025

Inhaltsangabe

A Lady with a past. A man with ambition. A romance far from London society that might bridge their divides.

Lady Phoebe Hunt never anticipated returning from exile. A fatal choice drove her from England, but the death of her father—and the revelation of his debts—has brought her home. Once she settles her father’s estate, she will return to America, where she has reinvented herself. There’s no reason to remain, not even for one gravitationally challenged but deliciously tempting entrepreneur: Sam Fenley.

Samuel Fenley is all ambition. Rising from shop boy to wealthy investor, he’s left knocking on doors that open only for those with a title. Unless he buys the damned door itself—and the estate that goes with it. Sam offers to relieve Phoebe of her burdens, but is her crumbling mansion all Sam wants? Or is it the Lady herself?

When threats from Phoebe’s past spark new dangers, Sam and Phoebe discover that neither is what the other expected. Standing on the edge of disaster, the disgraced Ice Queen will have to decide if she wants to forge through life alone, or let an unlikely hero melt her heart.

Die Inhaltsangabe kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

USA Today bestselling author Elizabeth Everett lives in upstate New York with her family. She likes going for long walks or (very) short runs to nearby sites that figure prominently in the history of civil rights and women's suffrage. Her series is inspired by her admiration for rule breakers and her belief in the power of love to change the world.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

1

I am no poet, but if you think for yourselves, as I proceed, the facts will form a poem in your minds.

-Michael Faraday

London

1845

"How do you manage to make the words 'You know best' sound like 'I know best'?"

"Because . . . I know best?"

Oh, for feck's sake.

A large man sat opposite Sam Fenley at a cheap but polished wood desk. Sam considered him a friend.

He also considered punching him.

That's how it was sometimes with men. Clap them on the shoulder one day, punch them the next-no hard feelings.

When Sam was younger, that was how it was with his sisters until they learned Sam couldn't stand it when they cried. They would simply wobble their lower lip and he'd wind up punching himself to keep them from sobbing.

"Listen to me, Fenley. I understand your crusade against the Corn Laws." The Earl Grantham rubbed his face with a gloved hand. Dark smudges beneath his blue eyes made him seem older than his two and thirty years.

Sam had bought a newspaper from the earl last year and within six months made enough of a profit to buy a second. It said a good deal about Sam's generosity of spirit that he let the earl sit in his office and tell him what to print after Grantham had gone and sold him The Capital's Chronicle. Then again, Grantham was a giant of a man and ridiculously stubborn.

"However," the earl continued. "The last article The Chronicle printed has overestimated the scarcity of Britain's wheat crop. Yours and other anti-Corn Law broadsheets will panic the population. More trouble will come from your reporting than progress."

Sam knew Grantham meant well, but this wasn't about the earl's fears. It was about money and power. Or the lack thereof. Pleasure from watching his sales grow leaps and bounds was undeniable, but Sam also gained satisfaction from publishing articles informing regular folk about what their government was doing and why it mattered.

"If I back down now," Sam said, "it gives more fuel to the pro-Corn Law fires. The Corn Laws pour money into landowners' coffers and take it away from the majority of England's working folk."

Sam wasn't telling Grantham anything he didn't know, but he continued anyway, blood boiling as it often did when speaking of the advantages the titled classes held over the rest of the population.

The Corn Laws taxed corn-wheat, barley, and all other cereal grains-from outside Britain. On paper, this appeared to help domestic agriculture, but the taxes made food more expensive for everyone, while political power stayed in the hands of wealthy landowners who profited from the rising price of domestic corn.

"In this great country of ours, if you don't own land, you don't get to vote. How is that acceptable in our day and age?" Simply saying the words out loud angered Sam. The landowners didn't benefit only from the artificial pricing, they also handpicked their Members of Parliament and told them how to vote. "Universal suffrage is the goal, and I'm not above embellishing when it comes to a worthy goal."

Grantham opened his mouth to speak, but Sam beat him to it.

"As you are not above embellishing when it comes to stealing women away from other men."

Grantham's jaw clicked softly when he clamped his lips together, and the tips of his ears went red. It said much about the earl's good nature that he didn't fall for the bait.

Sam had tried his hardest to charm the engineer Margaret Gault, but she'd gone and married Grantham, her childhood sweetheart. Why she didn't prefer Sam, a man who had made a fortune of his family's business, turned around a failing newspaper, and set his sights on expanding his holdings even further, was a mystery.

Sam had fallen at Margaret's feet. In the most literal sense, unfortunately. Fallen, tripped, tumbled-a product of Sam's adversarial relationship with immovable objects. Not exactly the stuff of fevered dreams when a man reaches for your hand, loses his balance, and hits the floor with his face.

Huh. Perhaps Margaret's decision was not mysterious after all?

"You are in a terrible mood. What ails you, Fenley?" Grantham asked, stretching out his legs and placing his hands behind his head, the picture of aristocratic indolence.

Sam knew well that Grantham was far from indolent, but the reclined pose annoyed him, nonetheless.

Everything annoyed him these days.

"Nothing ails me, my lord."

Sam had meant the honorific as a tease, but the words came out hard and clipped. One long earlish eyebrow lifted on Grantham's face at the tone.

"If I were to guess, I'd say you were in want of one of life's great necessities," Grantham opined.

Jealousy sprang to life deep in Sam's belly, kindled with myriad thwarted ambitions; obstacles a man without title nor a single drop of blue blood in his veins faced every day in this country.

Sam growled. "Simply because women used to fawn over you for the chance at being a countess-"

The pink spread from Grantham's ears to his cheeks as he dropped his arms and sat straight up in his chair. "I'm not talking about sex, Fenley."

What else might constitute one of life's necessities if not sex?

Food?

Wealth?

"I'm not hungry," Sam said. "I've enough money to buy the crown right off Queen Victoria's head, I own two broadsheets now, investments in property, plus half the family business. I'm seldom bored thanks to my four sisters and the never-ending catastrophes those scientists over at Athena's Retreat drag us into. There's not a single thing missing from my life."

With a patronizing sigh, Grantham ran his fingers through his hair, eyes rolling up to the heavens as though he communicated with God on a peer-to-peer level.

"I'm talking about love, Fenley."

What?

Sam nearly fell back out of his chair again.

"What? You're talking about . . . You're talking about sex, you mean," Sam said.

Grantham shook his head slowly, an obnoxious half smile pasted across his face.

"I'm talking about marriage."

Oh, for feck's sake. Sam jumped up from his chair and paced around the desk separating him and Grantham, then to the window overlooking a small courtyard shared by the building next door.

Love.

What nonsense was this?

"You've inhaled too many fumes over at Athena's Retreat," Sam said.

Yes.

Fumes.

That must be the reason those beautiful geniuses at the Retreat fell for Grantham's clumsy charms.

Athena's Retreat, a secret haven for women scientists, was the creation of three brilliant women. One of them was his older sister, Letty, a mathematician who'd also married a man with a title. She'd collaborated with her friend Violet Kneland, as well as a woman named Lady Phoebe Hunt.

While Sam knew Violet well enough to use first names, he'd met Lady Phoebe only a handful of times, and she'd provoked an intriguing mix of lust and intimidation. She was as much a genius as Letty and the daughter of a marquess, no less. She and Grantham were almost engaged before Margaret Gault returned to England.

Only a massive inhalation of fumes could delude a group of women with such impressive brains into finding Grantham appealing.

The scientists of the Retreat were a lively bunch, and Sam secretly enjoyed lending a hand when they got into various scrapes and tight corners. Although Letty and Violet were mothers now, they still put time into their scientific studies. Their third compatriot, Lady Phoebe, was no longer a member of the Retreat.

She'd gone and shot Violet's husband, then gotten mixed up with some sinister plots. Did she go to jail for this? No. She was shipped off to America and given a job because of her father's title.

Fecking titles.

What ailed Sam specifically was that...

„Über diesen Titel“ kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.

Verlag
Penguin Publishing Group
Erscheinungsdatum
2025
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
059355048X
ISBN 13 
9780593550489
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
385
Kontakt zum Hersteller
BERKLEY
https://www.penguin.com/?s=BERKLEY

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