Gentleman Jim Read online

  Gentleman Jim

  “A vigorous, sparkling, and entertaining love story with plenty of Austen-ite wit.”

  -Kirkus Reviews, starred review

  “Equally passionate and powerful...Mimi Matthews proves once again that she is a master of historical fiction…”

  -Readers’ Favorite

  Fair as a Star

  “A kindhearted love story that will delight anyone who longs to be loved without limits. Highly recommended.”

  -Library Journal, starred review

  “A moving friends-to-lovers Victorian romance… Historical romance fans won’t want to miss this.”

  -Publishers Weekly, starred review

  “Gentle, tender, poignant and deeply romantic, it’s the best romance I’ve read this year.”

  -All About Romance (Desert Isle Keeper)

  The Winter Companion

  “Fans of the ‘Parish Orphans of Devon’ series will adore this final installment, reuniting the orphans and their loves.”

  -Library Journal, starred review

  “Matthews once again delivers in her latest Victorian novel. Her love story is sweet and chaste, the characters well developed, and their relationship beautifully rendered.”

  -Kirkus Reviews

  The Work of Art

  “Matthews weaves suspense and mystery within an absorbing love story. Readers will be hard put to set this one down before the end.”

  -Library Journal, starred review

  “The author seamlessly combines a suspenseful tale and a soaring romance, the plot by turns sweetly moving and dramatically stirring.”

  -Kirkus Reviews

  “If all Regency Romances were written as well as ‘The Work of Art,’ I would read them all...[Matthews] has a true gift for storytelling.”

  -The Herald-Dispatch

  The Matrimonial Advertisement

  “For this impressive Victorian romance, Matthews crafts a tale that sparkles with chemistry and impresses with strong character development...an excellent series launch…”

  -Publishers Weekly

  “Matthews has a knack for creating slow-building chemistry and an intriguing plot with a social history twist.”

  -Library Journal

  “Matthews’ series opener is a guilty pleasure, brimming with beautiful people, damsels in distress, and an abundance of testosterone…A well-written and engaging story that’s more than just a romance.”

  -Kirkus Reviews

  A Holiday By Gaslight

  “Matthews pays homage to Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South with her admirable portrayal of the Victorian era’s historic advancements…Readers will easily fall for Sophie and Ned in their gaslit surroundings.”

  -Library Journal, starred review

  “Matthews’ novella is full of comfort and joy—a sweet treat for romance readers that’s just in time for Christmas.”

  -Kirkus Reviews

  “A graceful love story...and an authentic presentation of the 1860s that reads with the simplicity and visual gusto of a period movie.”

  -Readers’ Favorite, 2019 Gold Medal for Holiday Fiction

  The Lost Letter

  “Lost love letters, lies, and betrayals separate a soldier from the woman he loves in this gripping, emotional Victorian romance…Historical romance fans should snap this one up.”

  -Publishers Weekly, starred review

  “A fast and emotionally satisfying read, with two characters finding the happily-ever-after they had understandably given up on. A promising debut.”

  -Library Journal

  GENTLEMAN JIM

  A Tale of Romance and Revenge

  Copyright © 2020 by Mimi Matthews

  Edited by Deborah Nemeth

  Cover Design by James T. Egan of Bookfly Design

  Formatting by Ampersand Book Interiors

  E-Book: 978-1-7330569-6-0

  Paperback: 978-1-7330569-9-1

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

  Except for use in review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part, by any means, is forbidden without written permission from the author/publisher.

  www.PerfectlyProperPress.com

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Epilogue

  Excerpt of A Holiday by Gaslight

  Author's Note

  Acknowledgments

  About The Author

  Other Titles by Mimi Matthews

  For news, sneak peeks, and exclusive monthly giveaways, join Mimi’s newsletter

  The Penny Not So Dreadful

  For my mom, who instilled me with a sense of justice.

  All human wisdom is summed up in these two words,

  —‘Wait and hope.’

  Alexandre Dumas

  The Count of Monte Cristo

  Beasley Park

  Somerset, England

  Spring 1807

  Beaten and bloody, Nicholas Seaton sat on the straw-covered floor of the loose box, his legs drawn up against his chest and his forehead resting on his knees. There was no possibility of escape. The doors of the loose box had been bolted shut and the wooden walls were made strong and thick, built to hold the most powerful of Squire Honeywell’s blooded stallions. Even so, Nicholas had wasted the first fifteen minutes of his imprisonment trying to force his way out, slamming his shoulders against the doors and striking out at the walls with all of his remaining strength, earning nothing for his exertions but a fresh set of cuts and bruises.

  He’d spent the next fifteen minutes pacing the confines of the loose box like a caged lion, clenching and unclenching his fists, grinding his teeth, and mentally cursing every member of the landed gentry and aristocracy.

  “I’ll see you hang for this, Seaton,” Frederick Burton-Smythe had said after driving Nicholas into the loose box at the end of his whip.

  And they would hang him. Nicholas was as certain of that fact as he’d ever been of anything in his whole life. Only two years ago a young man no older than himself had been hanged for the paltry crime of stealing chickens from Fred’s father, Sir Roderick Burton-Smythe. To have stolen three priceless pieces of heirloom jewelry from Squire Honeywell’s only daughter, Miss Margaret, was surely grounds for drawing and quartering.

  It made no difference that Nicholas hadn’t stolen anything. What good were his protesta
tions of innocence? He was nothing but a lowly groom in Squire Honeywell’s stables. A servant. Even worse than a servant, in fact, for he was the bastard son of Squire Honeywell’s scullery maid, Jenny Seaton.

  Jolly Jenny, as she was known, who—before arriving at the kitchen door of Beasley Park eighteen years ago, big with child and begging for scraps of food—had plied her trade at a hedge tavern in Market Barrow. A hedge tavern that had once been a favored haunt of the notorious highwayman Gentleman Jim.

  “The mother a whore and the father a villain,” the vicar’s wife, Mrs. Applewhite, was fond of telling anyone who would listen. “Nicholas Seaton will come to no good, you mark my words.”

  No. No one would believe he was innocent. Especially when his accuser was Frederick Burton-Smythe himself.

  Nicholas and Fred had been enemies for as long as he could remember, but in the past year their dislike of each other had escalated to raw hatred. As usual, Maggie Honeywell was at the heart of the matter.

  The thought of her caused Nicholas’s heart to wrench painfully. She was his best friend in the whole world. The one person he trusted. The only person he loved. A blood oath taken years ago had bound them together forever, when at Maggie’s request Nicholas had gamely cut his hand and pressed it firmly against the matching cut in hers. But he needed no ritual to bind himself to Maggie Honeywell. She was everything to him.

  Unfortunately, she was also everything to her widowed father, and as the years went by and she began to bloom into a strikingly beautiful woman, she became everything to Fred Burton-Smythe as well.

  Sir Roderick and Squire Honeywell had long ago agreed that one day their offspring would wed, thereby joining the two greatest estates in the district—Beasley Park and Letchford Hall. Nothing had ever been formalized, as far as Nicholas was aware, but that didn’t prevent Fred from behaving as if Maggie were already his own personal property. So when he’d come upon her and Nicholas in Burton Wood earlier that day, laughing gaily as they whirled about the clearing in each other’s arms, Fred had seen red.

  Maggie hadn’t helped matters. At the best of times she was an impudent minx, and at the worst, a veritable hellion. Raised by Squire Honeywell as if she were his son and heir instead of his gently bred only daughter, she could outride, outhunt, and outshoot most of the young men in the county. Her temper was legendary and she’d learned at her volatile sire’s knee that a profusion of oaths and various threats of violence were the means of solving most any problem.

  “Nicholas is helping me practice my dancing,” she’d said in that imperious, toplofty way of hers. “So you can bloody well piss off, Fred!”

  And then Nicholas sealed his fate.

  He burst out laughing.

  On any other occasion, Fred would have charged him, intent on thrashing him within an inch of his life. Maggie would have leapt between them as she always did, verbally eviscerating Fred for attacking someone that he knew very well wasn’t permitted to fight back.

  Not that that had ever stopped Fred before.

  In Maggie’s absence, Fred had no qualms about cuffing Nicholas on the head and ears, brutally shoving him to the ground, or striking him on the back with his riding crop.

  Nicholas was taller than Fred and broader of shoulder, but he was lanky and thin whereas Fred was as stocky and muscular as a bulldog. Nicholas liked to think that in a fair fight he could best his lifelong rival; however, the fights between him and Fred had never been fair, and as Fred was the heir to a baronetcy and Nicholas was a servant, he knew that they never would be.

  “Master Fred’s your better, Nick,” Jenny said whenever he appeared with a bloody lip or a newly blackened eye. “You’d best stop provoking him.”

  But this time, Fred hadn’t been provoked.

  He simply pokered up, and in a fair imitation of his father, Sir Roderick, scolded Maggie for consorting with servants and conducting herself in a manner unbecoming to a young lady. “I shall inform your Aunt Daphne of your behavior,” he told her sternly. “And when your father returns from London, I’ve a mind to speak to him as well.”

  And then he turned on his booted heel and strode away, pausing at the edge of the clearing only long enough to lock eyes with Nicholas.

  There was murder in his gaze.

  “How dared he threaten me?” Maggie seethed an hour later as the two of them lay stretched out on the grassy banks of the stream that ran through Beasley Park. “The jealous arse. Tell my father, indeed. As if Papa would ever hear a word against me.”

  “Your aunt would,” Nicholas replied grimly.

  Daphne Honeywell, the squire’s widowed sister-in-law, had come to live at Beasley Park only two years before for the sole purpose of turning Maggie into a lady. Nicholas despised the woman. Because of her, Maggie’s days were taken up with needlework and dancing lessons, and her head had been filled with thoughts of balls, routs, and assemblies. Because of her, Maggie no longer wore breeches and rode astride or stripped down to her underclothes to go swimming with him in the lake.

  Now she dressed in pretty gowns, made of fabric so fragile and fine that Nicholas feared to touch it, and her thick mink-colored hair, which had once cascaded in a luxurious tumble down her back, was bound up in soft curls and silken ribbons. Even her complexion had changed. Carefully shielded from the sun with parasols and hats, it no longer glowed with a golden tan but had reverted to its natural hue: a flawless, creamy porcelain.

  Two years was hardly any time at all, and yet the difference between a fourteen-year-old Margaret Honeywell and a sixteen-year-old Margaret Honeywell was as vast as the ocean.

  More and more often, Nicholas found himself staring at his lifelong friend with a peculiar ache of longing in his chest. He’d never liked to be away from her, but now, whenever they were apart, he brooded over her to the point of melancholy.

  And that wasn’t the worst of it.

  He’d been dreaming about her, too. Vivid dreams that surely no gentleman ever dared dream of a lady.

  “Miss Margaret’s not for the likes of you,” Jenny had taken to warning him whenever she caught him sulking. “She’s for Master Fred or some other fine gentleman. Ain’t nothing going to change that.”

  Nicholas had never believed it. He and Maggie were soul mates. And yet, as he watched her slow transformation, there were times when he was stricken with an awful pang of sadness, a nagging worry that the day was fast approaching when Margaret Honeywell would take her rightful place in society and be lost to him forever.

  “I shan’t stop teaching you to dance merely because Fred and Aunt Daphne object,” Maggie said as they lay by the stream. “I’ve always shared my lessons with you, haven’t I? And dancing is really no different from reading or writing, I feel.”

  Nicholas levered up on his elbow and looked down at her. “When you taught me to read, you were seven years old. And we weren’t required to touch each other.”

  “Why shouldn’t we touch each other?”

  He arched a brow at her.

  She only laughed. “What hypocrisy. I’ll wager no one would think it unladylike if I had been dancing with Fred. And he wouldn’t have behaved half as gentlemanly as you do.”

  “Wouldn’t he?” he asked, all of his senses instantly alert.

  “You know he wouldn’t. He always holds me far too close, and he’s forever staring down at my bosom.”

  Nicholas suppressed the now familiar swell of jealousy and rage. The primitive urge to find Fred, and any other gentlemen who dared to look at Maggie, and beat them to a bloody pulp. “If anyone ever so much as lays a finger on you, I’ll—”

  “You never do,” she interrupted, a hint of accusation in her eyes. “When we’re dancing, I mean.”

  He was briefly diverted from his anger. “I never do what?”

  “Stare at my bosom.”

  Heat rose in his cheeks. He looked at her
a moment, dumbstruck, before giving her a crooked smile. “What bosom?”

  Maggie responded to his teasing with a rare blush of her own. At sixteen, she had the beginnings of a figure that promised to one day be as glorious as that of her late mother, a lady who had often been referred to as the Somerset Aphrodite. “Naturally you wouldn’t notice any of my endowments. You’re too busy paying court to Cornelia Peabody.”

  “What?”

  “Jenny told me so.”

  Nicholas scowled. “She wishes I would court one of the baker’s daughters. I daresay old Peabody’s offered to give her a discount on hot cross buns if I take one of them off his hands. Though how the devil either of them think I could keep a wife on less than five pounds a year is a mystery to me.”

  “It’s not impossible,” Maggie said.

  “No, not impossible.” He affected to give the matter a great deal of thought. “I suppose Miss Peabody could always find employment. Perhaps your father might even give her a job scrubbing out chamber pots up at the main house?” His smile reemerged. “Then there’s the issue of lodging her, of course, but I’m sure she wouldn’t mind living with me in that godforsaken little room of mine above the stable. Cornelia Peabody has always struck me as the sort of girl who longs to set up house in a small, rat-infested cupboard.”

  Maggie wasn’t diverted by his teasing. “Then it’s not true?”

  “Gad, Maggie, what in blazes would I want with Cornelia Peabody?”

  “She’s very pretty.”

  Nicholas plucked a dark blue wildflower from the grass and twisted the stem idly between his fingers. It was a forget-me-not. The hearty little flower ran rampant at Beasley Park, decorating the grounds in a wash of blue every spring. The same arresting shade of blue as Maggie Honeywell’s eyes. “So are lots of girls in the village. What does that signify?”

  “And, by all accounts, a soft-spoken, well-behaved little lady, even if she is a baker’s daughter.”

  He tickled her face with the forget-me-not, drawing its petals along the bridge of her nose, over the bow of her rosy-hued lips, and down to the delicate cleft in her stubborn little chin. “Do you mean she doesn’t go about telling people to ‘piss off’ and calling them ‘jealous arses’ and ‘confounded swine’?”