Table of Contents
Dedication
Content Warning
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
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-One
Chapter Fifty-Two
Chapter Fifty-Three
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Discover more Amara titles…
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2021 by Maddison Fitzsimmons. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the Publisher.
Entangled Publishing, LLC
10940 S Parker Rd
Suite 327
Parker, CO 80134
Amara is an imprint of Entangled Publishing, LLC.
Edited by Stacy Abrams and Alethea Spiridon
Cover design by LJ Anderson/Mayhem Cover Creations
Cover photography by Chris Cocozza
Period Images
bonetta/Getty Images
ISBN 978-1-68281-479-6
Manufactured in the United States of America
First Edition May 2021
I dedicate this book to my mum, who is my greatest supporter and biggest fan!
I love you, Mama.
You really are the best mum a girl could ever have.
Content Warning
The Bachelor Bargain features themes, imagery, and content that may be triggering for some readers. Discussion of physical abuse, rape, suicide, and death appear within the novel. Scenes depicting graphic violence/death also appear. It is my hope that these elements have been handled sensitively, but if they could be considered triggering to you, please take note.
Chapter One
London, April 1885
The pelting rain lashed across Lady Olivia Haliford’s cheeks like the icy hands of death, battering the silent tears already coursing down her face without mercy. She stood there, soaked to the bone, her cloak and bonnet sagging after her parasol had long ago conceded defeat against the deluge, to now hang limply beside her cane.
But Livie was numb to it all. Numb to the cold. Numb to the pain. Numb to everything but the gleaming walnut wood of her friend’s casket as it was slowly lowered into the dark, yawning hole that had been freshly dug into the earth beneath.
Alice was dead. And Livie hadn’t been able to stop it.
She clenched her teeth tightly with the bitter thought. A thought that had been repeating itself over and over in her head since she’d heard the news.
The reverend snapped his bible closed, finishing his eulogy and jolting Livie from her grim musings. She watched, feeling frozen as the reverend nodded to one of the caretakers, who stepped forward and began shoveling some muddy dirt down upon her friend’s coffin.
The sound of the mud hitting the wood beneath was jarring in its finality. This was not a nightmare Livie was going to wake up from, as much as she’d been desperately hoping it was.
A sense of despair began to penetrate her numbness, and for a minute she couldn’t breathe as a tightness gripped her chest, her heart feeling as if it were being squeezed dry.
Instinctively, her fingers clenched even more firmly around the silver handle of her cane. Breathe, Livie, breathe. She inhaled a deep lungful of air, and then another, willing herself to maintain her composure as an overwhelming urge to rage at the heavens threatened to consume her. She mustn’t give in to the compulsion. Not here. Not now. She owed it to Alice to refrain from causing any embarrassment.
Alice, who had already suffered enough and was now lying cold and lifeless in that horrid box. Forever alone… Was this really her friend’s fate? Alice’s penance for being seduced and then discarded by an unknown scoundrel? A predator who had surely already moved on to some other unsuspecting young lady, having suffered no consequences for ruining Alice.
The injustice of it all was overwhelming, and Livie had to force down the fury trying to bubble to the surface. It was completely unacceptable. Someone had to do something, to stop such a thing from occurring again.
The fiend, whoever he was, had to be exposed and justice served.
Livie glanced first to her right and then her left. Her two best friends, Lady Kaitlyn Montrose and Miss Henrietta Merriweather, stood silently beside her. The expressions on their rain-streaked faces surely mirrored Livie’s own; equal masks of rage and despair.
“This situation is completely intolerable,” Livie whispered, loud enough for only her two friends to hear. “We must seek justice for Alice.”
“I agree.” It was Kat who spoke, her jade-green eyes flashing dangerously in the fading afternoon light, almost as wild as the wet strands of the flaming red of her hair peeking out from her bonnet, plastered against the sides of her face. “We cannot let this go unanswered. Alice must be avenged and the man responsible made to pay.”
Kat was the fiercest lady Livie had ever met, without exception, caused no doubt by her friend’s rather unusual upbringing. She had been raised by an uncle who had extremely liberal views when it came to women and what they should or should not be taught. As
