An Unlikely Alliance by Rachel van Dyken Page A

bounce off the bare walls
of the room.
    Hiding her face in her hands, she continued to weep,
knowing the situation was completely hopeless. Her aristocratic
parents wouldn't allow the scandal. She knew the only answer lay in
giving the child away to distant relatives. If the ton were to discover
why she had been sent into hiding, she would be ruined.
    The father of
the child wanted nothing to do with the baby, even if she did.
Hopefully she could convince him to marry her when she went back
into London; the season would be starting soon. She closed her
heavy eyes and prayed the feeling of loss would leave her.
    But it
didn't. There was no way to escape the choices she had made, except
to move on with life, and hope the Duke would still find her
attractive after a twenty-four hour childbirth. He hadn't even
contacted her—had he even cared for her health at all?
    Although
young, she wasn't stupid. He was probably out getting foxed with
his friends, while she went through the worst pain
imaginable.
    It was better
this way. Better the infant girl remain in the country. Better she
be raised far away from society.
    "Her name, miss?" The maid urged softly,
looking at her with expectant eyes.
    "Sara," she whispered. "Her name is
Sara."

Chapter
One
     
    The English
Countryside
    Miss Sara Ames
had no desire whatsoever to extend a greeting to her Aunt Tilda.
Greetings were natural assumptions of welcome, and Sara did not
want her aunt to get the wrong impression. She was most certainly
not welcome.
    Soon enough
she would be encouraged to extend said welcome to her aunt, but
naturally, she was in no mood to rush the first step into the
inferno, as she so delicately thought of the situation. No. She
would greet her soon, but not too soon. Not until the time was
forced upon her—much like the current situation had been thrust
upon her.
    At least
she could spend these last few hours in solitary lamentation,
mourning the life she once dreamed for herself. A life filled with
nights sitting by the fireside reading novels. After all, she
wasn't pretty enough for a debut, a fact of which she was reminded
daily by her sisters and her mother.
    Debuts were reserved for comely, dewy-skinned girls; not
ugly girls, as her father had often so delicately put it. She
hadn't even been provided with a dowry. And according to her
father, the main reason for that being, "No man in his right mind
would take you, even if I offered him the blunt of the ton ." He'd repeated such sentiments to neighbors on many
occasions as well, the first time on Sara's sixteenth birthday,
when during the middle of her party he drunkenly announced to all
her friends she was worthless.
    At least
novels provided the escape she desperately needed, a diversion into
a world where she felt loved, cherished, and desired—the most
scandalous of all the emotions, or so she thought.
    Men would
never desire her; even her own father despised her for how she
looked.
    For one
thing, she was straight where all the other women had curves. Her
skin was dark olive, but that was to be expected when one spent
hours contemplating books in the fields. Her lips were too large,
her eyes too big, and her nose—well, she didn't know much about
noses, but she figured something had to be wrong with it, too. It
always seemed too invisible next to her lush mouth, which her
father had often called sinful.
    How was it
that her sisters were both gifted with angelic faces and soft
bodies, while she was cursed with a hard-muscled body and a long
mop of black hair? She was nearly convinced her mother had taken a
lover of some sort, or at least had an affair while her father was
away on business. It was the only explanation for her looks;
certainly, her own father must have thought as much as well,
because she received the most despised spankings as a child, and
allotted the most horrid of all chores.
    Her
parents meant well, her beautifully gifted sisters often told her,
but she had her doubts. As of a few