by Eloisa James
“Papa did wish us to be ladies!” Josie protested. “He taught us to speak just like English ladies, didn’t he?”
“Poppycock,” Annabel said, but there wasn’t any real spite in her voice, just an amused acceptance. “Josie, if Papa had given a fig for his daughters’ futures as ladies, our lives would have been quite different. For one thing, he wouldn’t have pissed in the chamber pot right there in the dining room.”
“Annabel!” Tess said. “Keep your voice down.”
But Annabel just grinned at her. “Don’t worry,” she said. “I fully intend to counterfeit every ladylike quality that exists, until at least a week after I convince some bacon-brained peer to marry me and hand over his pocketbook.”
Tess sighed. It wasn’t easy to be an elder sister to Annabel, with her startling tawny hair and brazen belief in her own magnificence. The problem was that she and Imogen truly did look like the princesses in the fairy tale “Snow White and Rose Red.”
“Well, you needn’t set your cap at Holbrook,” she said. “I don’t think he’d make the best husband in the world.”
“If he’s rich enough, he’s good enough. Frankly, I can’t marry just anyone,” Annabel said. “I’ve very expensive tastes.” She hopped off the bed and examined herself in the glass. “I may never have had a chance to indulge those tastes, but I’m certain they’ll be expensive when I do indulge them. I have no objection to considering the Earl of Mayne if he shows as much depth in the pocket as our guardian.”
“You’re being shocking for the mere sake of it,” Tess said.
Annabel ignored her, as she had ignored every piece of advice that directed itself toward proper ladylike behavior. “The duke is a better bet. Higher title, and all that. I shall reel him in,” she announced, “then I shall go directly to London. From the day I am married, I shall wear nothing but silk next to my skin.”
“There’s a word for women like you,” Josie observed.
“And that word is happy,” Annabel said. It was hard to offend Annabel, even though her smallest sister devoted herself to the task. Annabel was too—Annabel. Too sure of herself, too glowing, too sensuous, too loving. Too desired. “I can hardly believe that we have finally found our way out of that backwater and almost to London. I don’t mind admitting that there were times that I despaired. Papa’s schemes, after all, never came to anything, for all he kept promising that he’d take us to London for the season.”
As far as Tess could ascertain by staring in the mirror, she and Annabel certainly looked like enough to be sisters, but their effect on men was utterly different. Something about Imogen and Annabel drove men into imbecilic paralysis in their presence, and whatever it was, she, Tess, didn’t seem to have it. They were all beautiful, thanks to their mama, who had been the most lovely debu-tante in London until she threw herself away on a horse-mad, bankrupt Scottish viscount. But Tess never reduced anyone into stammering silence the way Annabel and Imogen did.
Tess sometimes thought the problem was that she not only looked like their mother but that she remembered her. Annabel would never speak of their mother, and Imogen and Josie had been too small to have clear memories. But Tess remembered. And remembered. And somehow since Papa died, it was all wound up together in her chest…missing her mama so much that her chest hurt, then missing her father with the same pulse of pain.
“Now, if I marry the duke,” Annabel said briskly, “one of us ought to marry that earl our guardian has so kindly provided.”
“Better the earl than the duke,” Imogen said. “I don’t think Holbrook has combed his hair since last Tuesday. Not that I’m marrying either of them.”
“I’m too young to marry anyone,” Josie said with satisfaction. “And even if I weren’t, the Earl of Mayne would never want to marry someone like me. There’s something rather arrogant about him, don’t you think?”
“What do you mean by ‘someone like me’?” Tess asked. “Because you are beautiful, Josie. He would be lucky to marry you.”
“A plumpy partridge?” Josie said, and there was a hint of shame in her voice.
“Papa meant it as an endearment, not as a description,” Tess said, cursing her father silently, then instantly following the impulse with a silent prayer for forgiveness.
“Did you hear His Grace mention that he would ask Lady Clarice to be our chaperone?” Imogen said, abruptly changing the subject back to her favorite topic of conversation. “Lady Clarice is Draven’s mother. His mother! We are bound to see him often. And if she likes me…”
“The fact Maitland’s mother exists does not alter the fact that his fiancée exists as well,” Josie noted.
“I can tell that Draven’s heart is not engaged in the match,” Imogen said with an edge to her voice. “Just consider, he’s been betrothed for over two years without progressing to the altar.”
“I hate to be dour,” Annabel said, “but there’s likely a great deal of money involved in a breach-of-promise suit. Maitland has never been one to consider money as other than fodder for his stables. Do you really think he would choose you over his stables?”
Imogen opened her mouth, and then lapsed into silence.
“Enough,” Tess said, sitting up and pushing back the counterpane. “We must dress for supper.”
“I’m merely going to the drawing room briefly to meet our chaperone,” Josie said. “Then Mrs. Beeswick is going to serve me a comfortable meal in the schoolroom. I’ve been there while you were sleeping, and it’s all books. Lovely books!”
Tess gave her a hug. “That’s splendid, darling. And the duke told me that he’d find you a governess directly, so perhaps you could even start lessons in the near future. It would be nice if one of us were learned. Imogen, you mustn’t let Lady Clarice have even a hint of your tendresse for her son.”
“I’m not stupid!” Imogen clambered off the bed. She’d left her hair down, and it swept behind her in a great swirling gleam of black silk. “Just don’t ask me to marry anyone except for Draven. Not the duke nor the earl. I’m quite certain that—”
“Oh, no,” Josie moaned. “Can’t you just accept the fact that Maitland is unavailable, Imogen?”
“I don’t agree,” Imogen said stubbornly. “Don’t you remember the time that I managed to fall out of the apple tree at Draven’s feet, and he picked me up?” She shivered. “It was lovely. He’s so strong.”
“Yes, but—” Josie said, but Imogen overran her.
“I thought I might not see Draven until we traveled to London, but here he is living down the road, and his mother is to be our chaperone.” Imogen’s eyes were glowing with fervor. “Obviously, it’s fate! We belong together.”
“I think we’ve neglected the possibility that she injured her head in that fall,” Josie said to Annabel and Tess.
Tess sighed. It was obvious to everyone that Draven Maitland didn’t really give a pin for Imogen, and it was equally obvious that Imogen wouldn’t countenance marrying anyone other than Maitland. Either she or Annabel would have to give Imogen a home until their little sister finally gave up her fruitless adoration.
“Our marriage was fated in the stars!” Imogen announced, looking dramatic as any heroine in a melodrama.
Annabel was standing before the glass, pulling her honey hair in a great mass over her shoulder. “Darling,” she said, giving Imogen an amused glance, “you keep your idea of how marriages are made, and I shall keep mine. From everything I’ve seen, the best marriages are those between practical persons, entered into for practical reasons, and with a reasonable degree of confidence in compatibility.”
“You sound like a solicitor,” Imogen said.
“An accountant,” Annabel responded. “Papa made me into an accountant, which means that I can’t help looking at life as a series of negotiations, of which marriage is the most important.”
She smiled at herself in the glass and twisted her hair into a great shining pile on her head. “Do I not look like a duchess?” She struck a pose.
“Make way for Her Grace!”
“Make way for a goose!” Josie said, and then shrieked and ran for the door as Annabel made a swipe at her bottom with the brush.
Chapter
4
Imogen’s hands weren’t shaking. She was quite proud of that. Any other girl would be trembling like a leaf under the circumstances: she was about to meet her future mother-in-law for the first time, and perhaps see Draven too…
She brushed her hair until it crackled, and pinched her cheeks until she looked feverish, and then practiced demure smiles in the mirror. There was no reason to be nervous, given that fate had obviously brought them together. She practiced her smile again. She must use just the right smile when meeting Draven’s mother: a smile that was not grasping, socially aggressive, or any of those undesirable qualities. She had decided to aim at adorably shy and very young.
It took a while (adorably shy not being one of Imogen’s natural characteristics), but finally she was fairly certain of success. If she merely curled up the very edges of her mouth and let the smile tremble on her lips, she looked positively Juliet-like. Thirteen at the most.
Josie stuck her head in the door just as Imogen was practicing a deep, yet bashful, curtsy before the mirror. “One can be certain,” Josie said in her customary acerbic tone, “that your darling Maitland will be out at the racetrack. So you might as well save your adoring glances.”
Imogen didn’t bother telling Josie that she had already figured that out herself. If a race were being held within fifty miles, Draven wouldn’t be at home. He wasn’t the sort of man to hang around his mother’s apron strings, not an out-and-outer like himself.
“I truly don’t see what appeals to you about Maitland,” Josie continued disagreeably.
Imogen turned back to her mirror and dropped another curtsy. It was no concern of hers that her sisters were unable to see Draven’s manifest virtues. Why, he had so many that it was hard to catalog them; they were jumbled in her mind. Of course, he was handsome, with a rakish air of danger. He drove his horses to an inch, and he always looked as if he should have a whip in his hand, even when he was in church. Just thinking of him made her feel giddy with pleasure.
“It will do you no good to snip at me,” she told her little sister, sweeping past her out the door. “Someday you’ll understand love, and until then, we need not discuss the subject.”
It felt as if they had been sitting in the drawing room for hours before the door finally swung open, and Brinkley announced, “The Lady Clarice Maitland.”
In the doorway was a lady dressed in the very first stare of elegance, her head cocked to the side and her hands making all sorts of elegant circles before she even said a word. Her nose had a narrow, chiseled look that was echoed by her high cheekbones. She looked coiffed, sharp-tongued, and inexpressibly expensive.
“Holbrook, darling!” she trilled, sweeping in the door before the butler. “You needn’t announce my son, Brinkley, we’re positively members of the family.”
The man who stood at Brinkley’s shoulder made Imogen’s heart stop in her chest for a full second before it started beating again.
He was singularly beautiful, with his wide square jaw, that little cleft in his chin, his almond eyes…She stood up, but her knees felt weak.
“Remember, the man is betrothed!” Tess whispered, as they moved forward to curtsy before Lady Clarice.
Of course, a distant acknowledgment was all that Draven deserved. He was promised to another, no matter how many four-leaf clovers and stars she’d wished upon in the past two years, since she first caught sight of him. She could feel her mouth spreading into a smile that hadn’t even a shadow of demureness about it.
“You caught me in the nick of time,” Lady Clarice was shrilling as she held out her hand to be kissed by their guardian. “I was just off to London to see my mantua-maker when I received your summons. Luckily, I judged your state more desperate than mine! And these must be your wards.”
Lady Clarice was wearing a dress more gorgeous than any garment Imogen had ever seen. It was fashioned of twilled sarsenet in a rich crimson with three rows of rib-band trimming shaped into small wreaths along the hem.
They were all wearing horrid mourning gowns, of dull bombazine with only a narrow strip of white lace lining the neck, and that the gift of the seamstress in the village, who said that she couldn’t see her way to sending them off to the wilds of England without a bit of trimming, and never mind that they couldn’t pay.
Lady Clarice had lace flying from her hair and trimming her hems and her reticule, but she had a sharp face to go with all that decoration. Imogen blinked, pushing away that thought. She was Draven’s mother.
As she and Tess sank into deep, demure curtsies, Imogen looked at Draven’s boots. Even his boots were beautiful, of a rich, brown leather that looked as shiny and perfect as himself.
“Allow me to present my ward, Miss Essex,” the duke was saying, “and one of her sisters, Miss Imogen. We are all tremendously grateful for your assistance.”
Lady Clarice peered at them as if they were curiosities in a traveling circus. “I can’t imagine what your father was thinking to send you here without—” she half shrieked, and then paused as a thought apparently strayed into her mind. “But of course, your father is no longer of this world, is he? Then he isn’t thinking about chaperones. Best leave that to the living!” She beamed at them.
Imogen opened her mouth and shut it again. She would have to meet Draven’s eyes in a moment. He was betrothed, she told herself again. He had told her in as many words that they had no future together. But then—
“Where are the other two girls? You did say four, didn’t you? Holbrook,” Lady Clarice screeched, “do you have four wards or not?”
The duke started visibly and turned back from greeting Draven. “There are indeed four of them,” he confirmed, running a hand through his hair.
Tess beckoned to Annabel, who was standing to the side of the room flirting with the Earl of Mayne, and then to Josie, who was hiding behind the piano.
“Just look at these four young ladies!” Lady Clarice cried, once they were all standing in a line. “Exquisite! You shall have no problem whatsoever firing them off on the market, Holbrook. I would say that we can achieve at least a lord. Perhaps even higher, dears, perhaps even higher! One must think of these things in a positive light. Of course, there is some work to be done,” Lady Clarice continued, without seeming to draw a breath. “Their gowns are abhorrent, naturally. There is mourning, my dears, and then there is mourning, if you understand what I mean. But the Scottish have no concept of dress and never have. These days I won’t even approach the border. Why, my hair quite stands on end at the thought!” She patted her gingery ringlets happily.
Josie curtsied and slipped back behind the piano, where she was pretending to shuffle through sheet music. But given that Papa had never had the blunt to hire a musical tutor of any kind, Imogen—if no one else—knew that was a mere pretense. She only hoped that the duke wouldn’t think to ask Josie to play them something.
“A diet of hard-boiled eggs and stewed cabbage should trim your little sister’s figure,” Lady Clarice whispered loudly to Tess. “I was just the same when I was her age, if you can believe it! But look at me, I managed to catch a baron! You may not be able to look quite as high as that, but I think a lord is not out of possibility! Even the chubby little one should be able to make a good match, with the help of a modiste.”
Tess’s eyes narrowed and her mouth opened, but Holbrook was there before her, suddenly sounding quite ducal. “Josephine has a figure that many a young lady will envy.”
Lady Clarice gave him a liquorish smile and giggled. “Quite right, Your Grace. You mustn’t lose hope of firing off all four of them. There are men who prefer a poke pudding, as they say!”
Imogen could feel her spirits lowering. The hope that perhaps Lady Clarice would allow her son to marry for true love withered. Lady Clarice looked as if
she hadn’t yet learned the meaning of the word love, and she certainly wouldn’t encourage the emotion if she had.
“But I must introduce my son!” Lady Clarice said, dragging him forward. “Although, darling girls, I must warn you that my darling is promised to another.” She giggled shrilly. “We’ll do our best to find you someone just as suitable, however. Miss Essex, Miss Imogen, may I present my son, Lord Maitland.”
Imogen curtsied, as did Tess beside her. She felt a delicate wash of color rise up her neck.
“We are acquainted with Lord Maitland, Lady Clarice,” Tess was saying rather coldly. “He is—was—a friend of our father, Viscount Brydone.”
Imogen knew her sister thought Draven was dissolute, and all because he was dashing and funny and too handsome for his own good, as their nanny would have said, back when they had a nanny.
Draven bowed, quite as if he had never shared a bread-and-cheese supper with them—and he had, time out of mind, because he was as horse-mad as her papa.
“I have known the Essexes for some two years, mother,” he said, but his eyes were holding Imogen’s. Her heart fluttered as if it were a bird caught in a cage.
“What? Oh!” Lady Clarice laughed. “You must have met each other when darling Draven hunts in Scotland, is that it?” Something guarded entered her tone. Lady Clarice was no fool, and the Essex girls were astonishingly lovely.
Tess caught Lady Clarice’s inflection and felt a wave of panic. If Lady Clarice even caught wind of Imogen’s abject devotion to her son, she might refuse to chaperone them, and then what would they do?
“I race in Scotland, not hunt,” Draven told his mother. He was bowing over Imogen’s hand now, and Tess noticed with a sinking heart that he was looking at her sister with some semblance of the passion with which she looked at him.
“I do believe that my son has a remarkable seat on a saddle,” Lady Clarice said, not seeming to notice (to Tess’s relief) that Annabel had rudely wandered off without bothering to curtsy and was now standing far too close to the Earl of Mayne and giggling so hard that her curls bobbed around her shoulders like corks caught in a back-wash. “Not that I can swear to this, because I abhor the out-of-doors.” And, when Tess looked confused, “Fresh air, Miss Essex! It’s ruinous for the complexion to attend those races, I assure you. I only do so under the strongest duress. Of course, my son loves my company so much that it means the earth to him if I do watch one of his horses sail to victory. So I sacrifice…I sacrifice…”