Mr eastwoods match, p.1
Mr. Eastwood's Match, page 1
Mr. Eastwood’s Match
Gentlemen of York
Book 1
Sally Britton
Copyright © 2025 by Sally Britton
Cover by Blue Water Books
Edited by Emily K. Murdoch
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. This book may not be used to train Artificial Intelligence.
Contact the Author: sally@authorsallybritton.com
Electronic Book ISBN: 978-1-68527-066-7
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-68527-068-1
Formatted with Vellum
For the Recovering People Pleasers
...the consensus has been reached: your needs matter.
Contents
A Letter
Chapter 1
August 1st, 1822
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
August 14, 1822
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
August 19th, 1822 - Race Week
Chapter 13
August 20th, 1822
Chapter 14
Four Months Previous, London
Chapter 15
August 21st, 1822
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
August 22nd, 1822
Chapter 19
A Letter
Chapter 20
September 3rd, 1822
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
September 5, 1822
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Also by Sally Britton
About the Author
A Letter
July 26th, 1822
Benwaith House, London
My Dearest Emily,
Your last letter gave your father and me such comfort. York sounds a far gentler place than London, and I am relieved to know Juniper is such a patient and thoughtful guide. I hope you will not fret over the little missteps that naturally occur while we are all adjusting to new expectations. They cannot be of lasting consequence, provided you continue with your usual kindness and good sense. The people who matter most will see you for who and what you truly are.
Your father bids me say that he hopes you will take care to form acquaintances which will steady your new position. Not for ambition’s sake, my darling, but because we wish you to have good friends, a home of your own one day, and a husband who will appreciate your gentle nature. You have always been our peacemaker, our most thoughtful child. Anyone who knows you would surely agree.
Do write soon and tell me how you pass your days, and whether there is anyone of particular interest to you. Not that we press you, of course. But we hope to see you content and settled in a happy situation.
Your father sends his affection, as do your brothers and sisters-in-law. I send all my love.
Your Mother,
Margaret, Countess Benwaith
Chapter One
August 1st, 1822
“Ihave not always been a lady, as some of you know,” Emily Sterling said with the utmost ease, sipping from a teacup with a spray of pink roses painted on the side. “It has only come about very recently, and I am still learning all that it entails.”
The four other unmarried young women sitting in Mrs. Frederickson’s sitting room all stared at her, two with their own cups stopped midway to their mouths and one with a sandwich pressed to her lips. For a long moment, the patter of raindrops against the window was the only sound heard.
Of course, Emily meant that her status had undergone a recent elevation as she changed from a humble gentleman’s daughter to an earl’s. Because of her father’s unexpected inheritance of a title. Yet something about how she said it had gone amiss, if the wide eyes of the women around her were indicative of how they received her words.
Botheration. Growing up on her family’s farm, without any expectation that she would be more than a squire’s wife if luck favored her, had not eased Emily’s entry into Society at all.
“Not that it is all that different from before,” she hastened to add, lowering her cup to its saucer with a soft clash that made her wince. She had to restrain herself from looking for a possible chip in the fragile dish. “It is only that there is so much a lady does not do, you see, that I am accustomed to doing.”
Two of the other women, nineteen in age and barely out in Society, exchanged a glance and smiles that conveyed more smugness than amusement. At five-and-twenty, Emily ought to have had more experience than the two of them.
“What sort of things do you find give you the most trouble, Lady Emily?” The hostess’s daughter, Miss Hannah Frederickson, asked with a cheeriness the question itself did not merit. “Perhaps we could offer some advice. Or commiseration. I know that I have found myself frustrated by more than one instance of behaving helpless in a circumstance that I should rather see to myself.”
Emily wanted to give Miss Frederickson an enormous smile but had been told quite recently that showing too much enthusiasm was crass, she settled for keeping her lips tightly pressed together and widening her eyes. Which made her feel silly, but it seemed a good alternative.
“Yesterday, I saw a fine tabby cat walking through an alleyway, with four little kittens trailing behind her. They were right next to a bakery, so I went inside to get a sausage roll. Then went out to feed them. You see, I needed to pass the time waiting for my sister-in-law, Lady Juniper Sterling, to come out of the bookshop across the road. But a woman named Mrs. Henry Rothingham saw me, and she gave me a stern correction.”
One of the nineteen-year-olds covered her mouth, but not before Emily heard the younger lady giggle.
At five and twenty, Emily had thought herself well versed in navigating the world. Certainly, she had never struggled in social situations before her father’s rise in rank. Country manners were different, the society she had moved in before humbler. She hadn’t ever interacted with nobility before that letter arrived that changed their whole fortune. Since then, however, she questioned every step she took. Every ribbon she admired. Every curl in her hair. Examining each of her actions and being to determine whether others would find her socially adequate.
“Feeding poor waifs that are not brushed and bathed, sitting on velvet cushions at home, is simply not done.” Miss Frederickson sounded sympathetic, and that was the best Emily could hope for of late. She could do without admiration and praise, but what she longed for in that moment was a single day, just one, in which no one corrected her at all.
Making friends in York was proving difficult, as it had been in London.
The conversation moved along to other things, such as gowns for upcoming assemblies and musicales. Some of the young ladies had ordered several new things for the upcoming Race Week, a staple in York’s social world. They talked of bangles, hairpins, ribbons, and slippers with great enthusiasm.
Emily quietly listened, inwardly keeping notes of what the other ladies said sounded lovely versus what they scoffed at as trite or unsophisticated. Frankly, she found the whole of it exhausting. But it wasn’t as overwhelming as trying to keep abreast of London fashion, appetites, and gossip.
She had spent most of her spring and early summer in London, in what had felt like a trial by fire, thrown into the world of wealth and nobility because her father had not wanted to wait even a moment before seizing his place as an earl.
Not because he wanted wealth or grandeur, of course. He was likely seated in his London library at that very moment, stubbornly insisting on wearing his favorite suit of clothes from before his elevation, and letting her two eldest brothers handle everything of importance.
Father wanted the best life offered for his children’s sake, and for their mother, not for himself. But that had meant a distinct lack of interest in making certain they were all properly educated about the world their titles pulled them into. Without his youngest son, John Sterling, whose experience serving a duke’s family gave him insight into that world, they would have made a great mess of things. Or an even greater one than they already had.
“York will be better for Emily,” her brother had told the family. “It is far more forgiving than London, in terms of missteps. Juniper and I will host her for a few months. My wife can chaperone and instruct Emily on proper behavior.”
Thus, Emily had been bundled up in a carriage and sent to live with her brother and sister-in-law not long after their wedding. And seated, at that moment, with young ladies who knew far more about proper etiquette than Emily could guess at when left to her own devices.
As the gathering dispersed, and Emily waited in the foyer of the large house for her brother’s carriage to arrive, she found herself rehearsing some of the things she had learned.
Chartreuse was a lively color that was worn by the garish. Tiny dogs in laps were adorable but not socially acceptable outside of one’s own home. Gentlemen who wore brown jackets at dinner were suspect of being careless with the importance of fashion. Beadwork would likely lead to poor eyesight and the horror of spectacles—someone’s mother’s brother’s apothecary had said so. Unless, of course, such a pastime was enjoyed by a duke’
s daughter, in which case it was something to be praised rather than cautioned against.
On and on the list went.
Feeding hungry kittens felt more in keeping with what Emily wished to do with her time than worrying about everything else. Yet she had learned, painfully, how little it took for a harmless misstep to become a character-damaging story eagerly passed from person to person.
By the time Emily’s brother, called Jack by the family, handed her into the carriage, her head swirled with all the details of the seemingly innocuous afternoon gathering.
“You look as though you wish to spend the rest of the afternoon abusing the gardens,” Jack said, voice mild and expression as calm as ever.
His years in service to the Duke of Montfort had rendered him the ability to always appear stoic, whether he was met with little discomforts or enormous misfortune. It almost wasn’t fair.
“Pulling weeds when one has a great deal on one’s mind is not abusive to flowerbeds.” Emily folded her hands delicately in her lap. “Although I have had it confirmed today that the removal of unwanted growth is best left to the gardener.” She sighed. “Lest a lady damage her skin by unwittingly touching a bramble.”
Jack’s eyebrows raised. That was the only thing in his expression that betrayed any of his thoughts on the matter. “How did you receive this piece of advice?”
“Poorly,” she muttered, looking out the window at the passing countryside. “How do they expect a woman to modulate her feelings at all times, everywhere she goes, if she is never allowed to express them anywhere?” She tugged at the strings of her reticule. “What am I to do, Jack? I cannot even sit on my hands to keep them still. It is uncouth. I have to keep them politely folded in my lap. No fidgeting at all.”
At this moment, she saw him bite the inside of one cheek. If he had been sitting next to her rather than across, she would have missed it completely.
“Are you amused by this?” she asked, accusatory tone slipping out. “You must understand how patently unfair it is to throw a thousand rules at a woman at one time.”
“You never complained about it in London,” he pointed out, but his eyes glimmered with humor rather than annoyance. “It is almost refreshing to see you finally expressing your concerns.”
“You were managing our entire family in London,” she said, looking out the window again. “I had no wish to add to the weight you carried with my own minor concerns. And I had the companion you hired for us. Or social tutor. Or whatever you want to call Mrs. Regan.”
The formidable woman had saved the ladies of the household many times. Mother, both of Emily’s sisters-in-law, and herself, had relied upon the woman’s guidance. Mrs. Regan was still in London helping the others.
“A former governess turned etiquette instructor is how she styles herself at present.” Jack’s demeanor changed somewhat, his eyebrows drawing together as he leaned toward her. “Emily. I thought you were gliding through all this as serenely as a Hyde Park swan.”
“Even after the trouble with that odious gentleman—who does not warrant that title in the least—during the Season?” Her gaze went from her brother’s concerned expression to her lap. “The gossip he stirred up to make all of us appear like backwards country bumpkins distressed you.”
For Emily, the whole thing had been a nightmare. Being gossiped about at a ball for turning down a boorish snob, a man who had stalked her from one place to the next and insisted his offer of marriage was the best she could hope to receive, had frayed her nerves to say the least. It had been Juniper’s intervention, along with the kindness of Jack’s other connected friends, that had saved Emily and their whole family from social ridicule.
“I never once blamed you for any of that,” Jack said, his voice soft in the carriage as it left the city roads for the countryside. “Never, Emily. You have always been a kind, graceful, mannerly young lady from all that I have seen. And remember, if you will, I worked in a duke’s household for several years.”
As sweet as it was for him to say such a thing, Emily doubted him. Jack looked at her as a protective, kindly older brother would. He could not see her defects as clearly as she did. Nor did he understand the lengths she went to in order to maintain a calm, pleasant facade. When he called her a “young lady,” she had to bite her tongue to keep from correcting him.
Of all the unmarried ladies gathered in the Fredericksons’ house that day, and in every gathering, she had taken part in since coming to York society, she was nearly always the eldest. If others present were older, they often appeared rather sad and resigned to remaining without matrimonial prospects.
Five-and-twenty was not ancient. Indeed, her own sisters-in-law were near that age when they married her eldest brothers. But here, in a world obsessed with the size of a woman’s marriage portion and her ability to rise higher in rank, she often felt more on the shelf than off.
Of course, her flesh-and-blood sisters, Mary and Anne, had both married at twenty. A double wedding for twin sisters, seven years ago now. The two of them were happy as larks, running households and tending their children. Emily missed them sorely.
She hadn’t exactly thought herself desperate for matrimonial happiness. Many a youngest daughter stayed at home as her parents aged, seeing to their needs, and might one day marry a widower or become the favorite aunt. She had never been in a hurry to leave the safety of her father’s home, and her parents hadn’t encouraged her to do so.
But that had changed, too.
“These are only a few habits you speak of,” Jack said when she remained silent. “Small adjustments in behavior. And if you wear gloves to pull a few weeds in our gardens, no brambles will harm you, and no one need ever know about your strategic campaign to eliminate your frustration through aggressive agricultural maneuvers.”
“Aggressive agricultural…” She narrowed her eyes at him. “You have been reading aloud with Juniper again in the evening. Without me. Haven’t you?”
He chuckled and did not look that least bit repentant. “I have. She enjoys holding the blankets up to her chin and shivering in horror while I read her gothic tales.”
“The vocabulary in gothic novels is so much more interesting than what I find in my books. Except for words like ‘elocution,’ which sounds rather awful come to think of it, there is never creative phrasing. It is all ‘propriety this’ and ‘mannerly that.’”
“I thought the gothic novels gave you unpleasant dreams?”
“They do. I think the etiquette books make for true nightmares, though.” She smirked a little. “Horrible dreams of arriving at important events dressed in the wrong gown, for example.” Jack chuckled. “But I can still feel as though I am missing out on excellent words.”
“You could try Keats.”
“Keats? Oh dear. Then I might start sighing over moonlight and dying of love before supper. That would hardly improve my reputation.”
Her brother laughed, though it was a brief sound that he swiftly smothered by putting his fist to his lips and clearing his throat. He laughed more of late. Which was good to see. He had spent most of the last several months utterly frustrated as he tried to help their whole family adjust to their new status.
Having their father unexpectedly inherit an earldom, elevating everyone’s status to the peerage, had proved the most challenging thing their family had yet faced. As the humblest of gentry, they had been comfortable. Survived well with good manners, polite behavior, and laughter with each other and their friends.
But now? Lady Emily, daughter of an earl, had to behave far differently than she had as Miss Sterling, daughter to a gentleman with a meager farm and no interest in Society.
It took a great deal of self-control to keep in her sigh as the carriage turned into the drive of her brother and sister-in-law’s cottage. A home she had heard others call “quaint” even though it was larger than the house where she had spent her childhood with six other siblings.
“Take heart, Emily,” her brother said softly as the vehicle rolled to a stop at the front door. “I know you have the intelligence and ability to conquer York society, and then we will meet London’s next Season with a new plan of attack.”
