The Spinster Strikes Back

THE SPINSTER STRIKES BACK A SLOW BURN REGENCY ROMANCE LADIES’ REVENGE CLUB BOOK ONE AVA DEVLIN The Spinster Strikes Back Ladies’ Revenge Club - Book 1 Ava Devlin Copyright © 2023 by Ava Devlin All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. Printed in the United States of America First Printing, 2023 http://avadevlin.com Contact the author at [email protected] Cover art by BZN Studio Designs http://covers.bzndesignstudios.com Copyediting by Claudette Cruz https://www.theeditingsweetheart.com/ Created with Vellum CONTENTS Prologue Rule I Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Rule II Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Rule III Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Rule IV Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Rule V Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 Chapter 29 Chapter 30 Chapter 31 Author’s Note For Estela, who casually suggested the title of this novel, and sparked an entire series in my imagination. PROLOGUE Dorothy Fletcher had never thought her wedding would be a grand affair. Truth be told, she had never expected to be married at all. The thought had simply never crossed her mind. After all, when should it have become a priority? Ought she have woken up one morning, marched into Papa’s study, and announced to him that it was time she was wed? No. The very thought of it was laughable. There had always been more important things for a girl like Dorothy than soirees and balls and tea rooms. Her father had made that known to her from a very young age. Percival Fletcher, Esquire would not have a tittering, empty-headed debutante miss for his sole progeny, and he had made damned sure she had known it. At an age where other girls may have kept diaries of their dreams of grand romance and future families, Dot had been encouraged to sit in the corner of her father’s office, listening to litigations and summary judgements and all manner of British law. She had flowered into womanhood with her nose in a legal treatise and her ear turned to the scandalous gossip of courtroom verdicts. And she’d done so happily. She had always believed herself among the luckiest girls in the empire, with the very best papa of them all. Her fellow Londoners might have called her a bluestocking, had they ever taken notice of her. She would have taken a certain pride in that title, she thought, had anyone ever thought to give it to her. But without a mother to shepherd her about between steely-eyed matrons and tittering rivals, no such judgements ever needed to be passed, and though she was blissfully unaware of it, Dorothy enjoyed a freedom that most young English girls of her stature and education could never imagine. When her father was not present to chaperone her, which was often, she had blended quietly into corners and observed. She had always been a thin little thing, shrinking into her clothing and finding the cool darkness of the shadows, as inconspicuous as a fleck of dust. Perhaps that was why everyone called her Dot. And yet, unlikely as it was, she had awakened on the day of her wedding to find herself not only a bride, but the very toast of London. She was to be, by day’s end, the wife of one of the most eligible, most desired bachelors in all of England. And she would be a countess to boot. If she weren’t such a sensible sort, she might have pinched herself. When she opened her eyes and sat up in her sheets, greeting the birdsong and brightness of the day, she marveled that this was the last morning she’d spend as simply Miss Dorothy Fletcher. She had taken a moment to appreciate that when the sun rose again tomorrow, she would be someone else entirely. She would be a woman wed. Tomorrow, she would be Dot Hightower. The Lady Bentley. Tomorrow, she would be Freddy’s wife. She gave a breathy laugh, indulging in a moment of dizzy happiness as she pushed her curtains apart and gazed out the window, where the mysteries of the future lay in wait for her. Where the sky shone blue and wedding bells would soon sound, heralding the beginning of the glorious unknown. From the very first, her acquaintance with Freddy Hightower, Earl of Bentley, had been more than a little surreal. Six weeks ago, she had been preparing for the end of everything familiar and the loss of all the comforts her life afforded her. She had been desperate, her father barely clinging to his life after a terrifying medical episode. He had seemed so fragile, so close to death, and without him, existence itself was doomed to become a terrifying and inhospitable place. All her father could hope to leave her was a very old house and a legacy unfit for a daughter. And neither of those things could be guaranteed anyhow, for despite the merits of her upbringing, Dot was only a woman. When she'd met Freddy that auspicious spring day in Hyde Park, she hadn't trusted herself to believe that such a beautiful, fashionable, desired man would even see her in his path, much less deign to speak to her. Being courted by him had been beyond dreams. After all, no one knew as well as Dot that she would have been lucky to catch the eye of any man, someone countless tiers below an earl, someone much less handsome and wealthy and well known. If befriending Freddy had been the most unexpected thing in Dot's life up to that point, then being courted by him was beyond anything she could have imagined. He had been the solution to all of her woes and worries.