“I should like him to be my duke,” she said softly.
“Then he shall be.” Sophie turned the page of the music even though Sera did not need it as she let the music take over.
She sang. “’Tis the last rose of summer, left blooming alone; all her lovely companions are faded and gone . . .” The song always made her ache. “No flower of her kindred, no rosebud is nigh, to reflect back her blushes, or give sigh for sigh.”
“Lady Seraphina Eleanor Talbot!”
She stopped playing.
Sophie looked to her. “It sounds as though you are in trouble.”
And the door to the conservatory burst open, flying back to connect with the wall beyond, revealing the Countess of Wight, formerly Mrs. Talbot. Their mother.
The countess brandished a newspaper in one hand, holding it high above her head like a heraldic banner, though the panic in her eyes indicated that the banner in question was in no way triumphant.
Sera’s remaining three sisters followed close on the countess’s heels, the warning in their respective wide-eyed gazes a clear indication that something had happened, and it was not a good something. Sesily, the sister closest in age to Seraphina, was shaking her head dramatically over their mother’s right shoulder, while Seleste and Seline, numbers three and four of the quintet, appeared to be aiming for meaningful stares.
Though Sera could not for the life of her divine what meaning those stares were meant to have.
And then the countess spoke, outrage shaking the words from her. “Has he had you?”
Sera’s jaw dropped at the crass question. “What?”
Seline and Seleste gasped their shock as Sesily’s eyes went wide. For her part, Sophie went stick straight, immediately reaching to take Sera’s hand. “Mother!”
The countess did not look at her youngest daughter, focused entirely on her eldest. “Now is no time for propriety. Answer the question.”
Sera was speechless.
Sesily—darling, loyal Sesily—leapt into the fray. “Have you gone mad, Mother? Who are you even referring to?”
The countess did not hesitate. “The Duke of Haven. And now that is clear, let me ask again, and you would do well to answer me, Seraphina. Has he had you?”
Sera closed her mouth. “No.”
The countess watched her for an interminably long silence before Sophie stood. “They are in love.”
The countess laughed, high and shrill and unpleasant. “Has he said so?” The question landed like a blow. Sera pressed her lips together, and her mother read the answer without it having to be spoken. “Of course he hasn’t.”
The countess turned away with a violent twist. “Dammit, Sera. What have you done?”
She shook her head. “Nothing!”
Her mother looked over her shoulder, morning sunshine cascading through the window highlighting her disappointment. “You think I was not young once? You think I cannot see that lie?”
Sera stood, fists at her sides. “He cares for me.”
“He cares for what you’re giving him.”
“Mother.” This, from Seline. “You needn’t be cruel.”
“It seems I do, though,” said the countess. “Because it’s never occurred to any of you that you might be taken advantage of.” She swung back toward Sera, already crossing the room, fast and furious. “Half the season is gone, and he’s not courting you.”
He was though, wasn’t he?
Before she could argue the point, her mother pressed on. “He hasn’t spoken to your father.”
She opened her mouth. “He will.”
“No, Sera. He won’t. He’s had six weeks to do so. He’s had six years to. You expect me to believe that after six years of seasons, of being disdained by pompous aristocrats with more money than heaven itself, of scraping for invitations and pleading for attention, the Duke of Haven has taken a liking to a Soiled S?”
Yes.
It didn’t matter that they’d all struggled to find suitors who weren’t impoverished or untitled. It didn’t matter that she and Malcolm had never discussed their future. He’d promised her he wouldn’t ruin her on that first night, on that balcony.
He wanted her. She knew it.
She wanted him.
“It’s true.”
The countess shook her head, and for a moment, Sera saw sadness in her mother’s gaze. Sadness, and something like pity. “No, Sera. No one has such luck.” A pause. Then, “The papers say you’ve been indiscreet.”
“I haven’t. We haven’t.”
Except, they had. There had been the time in the carriage. And the stolen moments at the Beaufetheringstone Ball. And the time when she’d snuck into his offices at Parliament—but nothing had happened.
Well, nothing serious. Nothing irreversible.
Her mother did not believe it. “Let me be plain. Are you still a virgin?”
Her sisters gasped as she said, “Mama!”
“Save your shock for another, Seraphina. Are you?”
“Yes.”
“But he’s come close.” Sera hesitated, until the countess barked, “Seraphina.”
“Yes!” she snapped, turning on her mother. “Yes. And I wish he had. I wish I weren’t.”
Lady Wight’s eyes went wide as Sera’s sisters gasped. “He’s not going to marry you.”
“Why not?”
“Because all five of you have been out for years, and not one of you has come near a duke. They think us cheap. They think us unworthy of their names and their titles.” She waved a hand at her sisters. “Seleste might become Countess of Clare, but only because the earl is virtually a pauper and your father’s money is worth more than the shame we bring upon a title. But mark my words, not one of them will find marriage if you let yourself be ruined by this duke.”
Seleste’s face fell at the words, and Sera hated her mother in that moment. Even more so when she continued. “Haven might as well be a star in the sky for all you shall reach him and not get him. The season is six weeks old and you’ve seen him, what, a dozen times?”
Twenty-six times. But Sera remained quiet. She didn’t have to speak. “More than that, likely, what with all the sneaking about you girls have been doing while I was looking the other way.” The countess brandished the newspaper high. “The gossip rags were not looking the other way, Seraphina. Do you know what they say about you?”
Sera’s heart was pounding. “They have nothing to say. I’ve been careful.”
The countess laughed, the sound humorless. “Not careful enough, Tick Tock Talbot.”
She set the paper onto the music rack, covering the song there.
Dreams of duchessdom doomed to disappointment . . . Time trips timidly despite dozens of aristocratic assignations . . . Tick Tock Talbot hopeless to hook Haven . . . though a tempting taste (tart-like, even)!
Sera’s cheeks were blazing.
They hadn’t been careful. There had been the hundreds of glances across crowded events, his wicked winks and her soft smiles and all the secrets they’d told without even speaking. And there had been the dozens of little touches, grazes at her elbow, fingers down her arm, the way his hand lingered in hers when they were allowed to greet each other in public. The warm day the previous week, when they’d walked in Hyde Park and he’d helped her over every tiny rock and stick, his touch a slow sinful slide.
They hadn’t been careful.
“A tart,” her mother explained, as though Sera could not read the insult herself. “They call you a tart. And that’s not the worst.”
It was absolutely the worst, Sera should have said. But she could not find her voice.
Not so, her mother. “The worst is the horrible moniker.”
“Soiled sister?” Sesily interjected from her place in the corner. “That comes from Papa. From coal. It has nothing to do with Sera.”
“It has everything to do with her now, but that’s not the one I’m referring to.” Her mother’s words came from a distance, through the rushin
g sound in Sera’s ears. Through shock and anger and embarrassment. “Sera knows which one I mean.”
Sera nodded, then whispered, “Tick Tock.”
“They’re mocking you. The way you wait for him, time passing you by, another season half-over, and not even looking to eligible men. Men who might have you. Tick Tock Talbot.” The countess threw up her arms. “And they know you’ve given him everything.”
Sera looked to her mother. “Not everything.”
“Oh, Seraphina,” the countess said, her exasperation clear. “It doesn’t matter if you’ve done it. They think you have. You’re ruined, girl. And he’s one of the richest dukes in Britain.”
“We—” She swallowed. “He wants me.”
“I’ve no doubt of that.” Her mother shook her head, the words gentling. “But if he had plans to marry you, darling, he would have come and seen your father. Instead, he’s taken advantage of you. He’s saddled you with a horrid name and he’s saddled your sisters with ruin by association.” She paused and drove the point home. “You’ve saddled them with it.”
Sera looked to her sisters . . . the Soiled S’s, never welcome in society, always the subject of scorn and speculation. Seleste and her impoverished earl. Seline, too smart for her own good. Sesily, too brash to ever be a proper aristocratic lady. And Sophie, poor, quiet Sophie, whom the whole world thought plain. Who would care for them?
The countess broke into her thoughts. “There’s another man. One who’s willing to marry you. To get you out from under this horrible gossip. Perhaps, if you marry him quickly, Tick Tock Talbot will be forgotten. The Soiled S’s will be forgotten. Perhaps, if you marry him, you can save your sisters their embarrassment.”
“That can’t be the only way,” Sesily blurted out.
“No!” Seline said.
“Mother—” Sophie spoke. “Sera shouldn’t have to marry for us.”
The only one who remained silent was Seleste. Seleste, who was being courted by an impoverished earl. The best title the Talbot sisters could hope for. Far below that of a rich, perfect duke.
A rich duke who had never said a word about marriage.
Her mother spoke again, cold and serious, for Sera alone. “You will stop this embarrassing chase. You will find a man who will marry you. And you will marry to secure your sisters’ futures and your own. This season, before the gossip mill ruins you forever. Because marriage is how women win.” She turned to the rest of her daughters. “It’s time you girls see that. Your father’s title will never garner you the respect you deserve. And you haven’t a brother to protect you. Someday, Papa shall be gone, and you shall have to fend for yourselves and to do that, you shall have to marry. And the only way you’ll do that well is for your sister to tidy up the mess she’s made.”
Had she made a mess? Was it true?
She looked from one sister to the next, each wide-eyed with sorrow and something else. Something startlingly like fear.
How she loathed this world and the way it preyed upon women.
Tears came, hot and angry, and she loathed them as well, for their weakness. Why was it that men’s rage came in a flurry of fists, while women’s came on a flood of tears?
The countess watched her for a long moment, not looking to her other daughters when she said, “Now out, all of you. Leave us.”
Her sisters hesitated, bless them, each one looking to her, waiting for her to agree to their departure. She nodded, loving them, knowing what she would do. Prepared to walk away from the man she loved for them. Prepared to, as her mother had said, clean up her mess.
Sophie pulled the door closed behind her, leaving Sera and the countess together. After a long stretch of silence, Sera dashed away her tears and set a hand on the pianoforte, as though she could draw strength from the instrument. She took a deep breath. “Who is the man you wish me to marry?”
Silence stretched between them before her mother approached, reaching for her daughter and placing a hand to her cheek, the soft kidskin like a firm promise. “I wish you to marry the man you wish, Sera. But a duke—”
Tears came again, and Sera could not hold them back. “I don’t care that he’s a duke. That was never of interest.”
“I know.”
“He is Malcolm. I wish for Malcolm.”
The countess shook her head. “But Malcolm is Haven before all, my dear.”
Sera closed her eyes, everything suddenly, startlingly, painfully clear. “He won’t marry me, will he?”
“No,” said her mother, and Sera opened her eyes at that, meeting her mother’s dark brown gaze. “No, he won’t.”
The longer she resisted the truth, the longer she put her sisters in danger. Without marriage, they were all lost. It was her duty as eldest daughter to ensure that never happen.
And then her mother said, quietly, “Unless . . .”
Sera’s heart leapt. She’d do it. Whatever it was.
If it ended with her sisters safe and Malcolm hers, she’d do anything.
Chapter 9
Soiled Sisters’ Summer Siege!
“Thank goodness. She’s brought food.”
Seraphina turned away from the window of the coach when her youngest sister, Sophie, Marchioness of Eversley, announced their arrival at their childhood home. She smiled at the pronouncement—Sophie had always been fond of food—and it was nice to know that some things did not change.
“It’s only two hours to Highley, Sophie.”
“One cannot be too careful,” her sister replied as the door opened, revealing their middle sister, Sesily, armed with a wicker basket. “Do you have pasties?”
“I don’t, as a matter of fact,” Sesily said, setting the basket on the floor and pushing it into the carriage before she lifted her skirts and set foot to the step. “Move in, girlies.”
Sera pressed closer to the far side of Caleb’s largest carriage, which he’d happily relinquished to ferry her and her sisters to the country. To Haven.
She’d put off the travel for several days, imagining, she supposed, that he might forget their agreement. She would have put it off longer if she could have, but Haven had sent word to The Singing Sparrow that if she did not arrive today—ten days since her parliamentary performance, as he referred to it—then he was going to return and fetch her himself.
There were many things Seraphina Bevingstoke had vowed never to do again, but certainly being publicly called to heel by a man was chief among them. And so she’d gone to Caleb and made arrangements to be absent from the Sparrow for several weeks. And then she’d packed her bags. But not before summoning reinforcements.
“Ow!” Her middle sister, Seleste, threw an elbow. “There’s no room, Sesily!”
It seemed that even the largest carriage they could find no longer made for comfortable passage. Even with the windows cracked open to relieve the heat.
Sera sighed. “We’re going to have to make room. Sesily has to fit.”
“Make her sit on the floor,” Seline, the fourth of the fivesome, suggested from the opposite bench of the carriage, waving a fan wildly. “Late to coach, snug as a roach, no?”
Sera laughed at the echo of their father’s rule for their childhood travel. It was improbable that five children and two parents ever made for comfortable passage, but they’d done it. “There are two problems with that line of thinking. First, we are considerably larger than we once were when someone could reasonably fit on the floor. And—”
“And Sesily’s bottom is considerably larger than it once was?” Seleste chimed in.
Everyone laughed as Sesily winked and said, “I rarely hear complaints about the size of my bottom.”
That much, Sera believed. Sesily was far and away the most voluptuous of the five Talbot sisters, and far and away the most coveted. But Sesily embraced scandal even more than the rest of the sisters, did and said whatever she liked and remained unmatched because of it—despite routinely having men slavering after her.
“No doubt the male half of
London is afraid of being sat upon. Sit over there,” Seleste replied, pointing to Sophie and Seline.
“No. Sophie needs space. She’s increasing.”
“I knew I chose well,” Seline bragged from her seat.
“She’s not increasing in the next two hours!” Seleste protested, even as she pushed in, pressing Sera closer to the door.
“We don’t know that!”
Sera inhaled deeply, attempting to make herself smaller, but even as she did, she could not find discomfort in the moment. If there were anything in the wide world that could keep her from thinking of the next six weeks of her life, it was the whirling dervish of her four slightly mad, entirely maddening, utterly wonderful sisters.
With a final push, eliciting a frustrated groan from Seleste, “Close the door, William!” Sesily called out to the footman beyond. “Quickly, before we explode from here and cause a scene!”
“Oh, yes,” Seline said, dry as sand. “No one would expect that of us.”
Once that was done, everyone in the carriage released a long breath and Seleste said, “Is it possible to be crushed to death in two hours?”
“Oh, please. You’re about as wide as a twig,” Sesily said. “It’s impossible to squash you. Push over.”
“There. Is. No. Room!” Seleste protested.
Sesily sighed. “Need I remind you what happens when I am not comfortable in a carriage?”
A collective groan rose from the rest of the occupants, and Sera laughed. “That was the second reason why she couldn’t sit on the floor.”
“If you vomit upon me . . .” Seleste warned.
“I’m simply saying that you would do well to remember that your kindness could mean the difference in trajectory. And with Sophie with child . . . one never knows what might sympathetically follow my own unfortunate projection.”
Seline wrinkled her nose and looked to Sophie. “Don’t you dare.”
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