Dedication
This is for all the women who’ve been shamed for being too smart.
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
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
Epilogue
An Excerpt from Never a Bride Chapter 1
About the Author
By Megan Frampton
Copyright
About the Publisher
Chapter 1
A dream is just an adventure not yet taken.
Lady Ida’s Tips for the Adventurous Lady Traveler
1846, the Marquis of Wheatley’s office
If given the choice between enduring twenty-four hours of amateur Shakespearean theatrics or speaking with his father for five minutes, Bennett, Lord Carson, would have only one thing to say.
Now is the winter of our discontent.
But Bennett hadn’t been given the choice, so there would be no winter. Certainly not any glorious summer. Or any kind of escape at all.
“It was my understanding you were to be married to an heiress as soon as possible,” the Marquis of Wheatley said, tapping the top of the desk. Bennett’s desk.
The marquis had made a rare appearance at his own home that afternoon, calling Bennett in to his office—the marquis’s office only in name, since Bennett was the one who did all the work there—for what was certain to be an unpleasant encounter.
Most of Bennett’s meetings with his father were unpleasant; the only topic on which it seemed they could agree was the weather. Yes, sun is preferable to rain. Glad to have that settled.
The office was normally a place of refuge for Bennett—after all, nobody else wanted to put in the work he did here—and the chair was adjusted to his height, not his father’s. Likewise, the books closest at hand were mostly ones dealing with business and agriculture, although Bennett sometimes found time to dive into the latest works of Charles Dickens, although that author wrote faster than Bennett could read.
Which said more about Bennett’s spare time than Mr. Dickens’s output.
“And yet your younger brother Alexander snatched away the duke’s daughter—”
“Lady Eleanor,” Bennett supplied. “Your daughter-in-law,” he said pointedly.
“And then that other one . . .”
“Lady Olivia.”
“Was stolen by that bastard.”
That bastard was also Bennett’s best friend. “Edward. His name is Edward.”
Bennett had long ago given up being resentful of having to bear the weight of the family’s responsibilities; it didn’t do any good, and it wouldn’t help the many families and small businesses that depended on the Marquis’s various holdings. Or provide funds for the care Bennett’s invalid mother, the marquis’s neglected wife, required.
The marquis waved his hand in dismissal. Because remembering people’s names was far less important than maintaining the marquis’s quality of life. “I’ve been to the bank, and even though Alexander’s bride brought a dowry, it appears we are still in straitened circumstances.”
Bennett clamped his jaw to prevent him saying what was on his mind—that his father was draining the funds to support his second family consisting of his mistress and her two children, that he was profligate in general, and that he hadn’t shown an iota of interest in helping the family beyond marrying his heir off to a wealthy woman.
Had he thought he wasn’t resentful? Never mind. He’d lied.
“It takes time to recover from the kinds of setbacks we’ve had.” He was proud of his reasonable tone of voice. And for not pointing out that if his father didn’t spend every penny that came in, the family finances would be much better.
Reinvestment, not constant spending, was the key to a solid future. Something everybody but his father agreed on.
His father twisted on the chair, raising his feet to place them on the desk, disturbing the papers Bennett had been working on. “We don’t have time. You’ll need to sort this situation out as soon as possible.”
As though finding the female with whom you’d spend the rest of your life was a situation to be sorted. Like choosing which coat to wear that day, or selecting one piece of horseflesh over another.
He’d seen firsthand the kind of marriages those types of business transactions resulted in, and he wanted no parts of that.
When Bennett allowed himself to think about what he did want—which wasn’t often—he knew he wanted to fall in love. To marry a quiet, gentle lady, someone who would be a soft respite to come home to at the end of a long day.
But he didn’t have the luxury of indulging his wants, since he spent his days working on business, and his nights at Society events drumming up support for more business ventures.
Business. Responsibility. Hard work. His life sounded as though it were the final directives of an instructive moral tale for children. And just as dull.
“You seem to be charming to the ladies,” the marquis continued in a skeptical tone, as though he couldn’t possibly see it himself, “so it shouldn’t be too difficult for you to find someone to actually say yes. Unlike those other two,” the marquis said with a harrumph.
If his father were less of a selfish solipsist—a redundant description, to be sure—Bennett would point out that the two Howlett sisters had fallen in love, and he was not going to stand in the way of true love. Especially when it happened to his brother and best friend, respectively.
But the marquis was a selfish solipsist, redundancy and all. Bennett would not let others suffer because of his father’s blatant disregard for anything that didn’t personally benefit him.
“So it’s settled. You’ll marry the wealthiest young lady you can persuade to have you. Perhaps you could try one of the other Howlett sisters. There’s that other one’s twin and that youngest one.”
Of course, because it made sense to try to marry all of the sisters of one family. Not to mention all he knew about Olivia’s twin, Pearl, was that she was continually active, unable to sit still for more than a few minutes, and would be ill-suited to be a Society wife, and that the youngest lady, Ida, had spent over half an hour at a Society party lecturing on recent innovations in gas lighting. Despite a clear indication from the people in attendance that they were totally and entirely bored.
A remarkable feat, to be sure, but he would not put “unable to stop spewing knowledge when most people wanted them to” on the list of his requirements for a wife.
“So you know what needs to be done,” the marquis finished, getting up from the chair. Bennett’s chair, damn him.
“Wonderful talk as always, Father,” Bennett replied in as mild a tone as he could manage. “I’ll consider your advice,” he said, gesturing to the door of the room in obvious dismissal.
“You do that,” the marquis said, stomping out of Bennett’s office.
Bennett forced himself to breathe deeply, straightening the papers his father’s boots had disarranged. It wouldn’t be the first time—nor the last, unfortunately—that his father’s discontent spoiled Bennett’s summer, so to speak.
The only course to take was to roll up his sleeves—figuratively, since it wouldn’t be proper to appear in public with his forearms showing—and find a way to sort the situation that didn’t resu
lt in Bennett selling himself to the highest bidder.
Or to another lady in the Howlett family who absolutely did not want him as a husband.
“And then I spent the rest of the night hiding behind a pillar.” Ida leaned back in her chair and regarded her sisters Pearl and Eleanor, both of whom were smothering laughter. She gestured in their direction. “It’s fine to find it humorous, I have to admit to doing so myself,” she continued.
Both sisters burst out into peals of laughter, Ida joining them after a few moments. It felt good to laugh, to share a moment with her beloved sisters, even if they often did not understand one another.
“The pillar was not a good conversationalist. It looked at me stone-faced as I asked it questions,” Ida continued, a wry grin on her face. Eleanor doubled over in laughter, Pearl holding her stomach. “It was a marble-ous evening,” she finished, emphasizing the pun.
She took a sip of tea, smiling down into her cup as her sisters’ laughter slowed. The praise washed over Ida, making her feel warm and nearly happy. “I do wish you’d let people see this side of you,” Pearl continued in a soft voice. “Instead of seeing—”
Ida put her teacup down. “Ida the Sophist? Ida of the All-Consuming Knowledge? The lady with no sense of humor and an outsized sense of her own intelligence?” Ida sighed ruefully. “I know, I do try, but then I freeze up in public, and I end up blurting something out that sounds like I’m condescending to someone, or I get so excited to share the information I have that I just start talking, even if the other person is clearly bored by what I’m saying.” Which was why she found it safer to hide during parties. Pillars did not judge.
“You do look rather ominous on occasion,” Pearl admitted.
That shouldn’t please her, but it did. “Even when I’m wearing debutante white?” Ida said, glancing down at her deplorably white gown. “Imagine what it would be like if I got to wear red or something equally striking.”
“You would look spectacular in red,” Eleanor said in an appreciative tone of voice, taking a sip of her tea. “Black hair, white skin, red gown, red lips.”
Ida felt her cheeks heat at the compliment. Another one, in such a short period of time. Had that ever happened before?
Her sisters were all pretty in various ways, but she always felt as though, once again, she was the outlier—too pale, too dark-haired, too dramatic in her coloring.
They were all agreed in hating wearing white, however. If Ida hadn’t seen Eleanor and her husband, Alexander, being all spoony over each other firsthand, she’d wonder if Eleanor wanted to get married just so she could wear actual colors.
The three sisters sat in Eleanor’s parlor, Ida and Pearl having walked over with a maid from their parents’ house. Unlike their mother the Duchess of Marymount’s parlor, Eleanor’s decorations were spare, chosen for their quality more than their quantity.
Apparently their mother had never seen a porcelain shepherdess she didn’t like. And then purchased for her cluttered sitting room.
Their father, the duke, contrarily, seemed yet to find a daughter he did like, which meant the sisters had to rely entirely on each other for familial love.
Thankfully, that was in abundance.
The room suited Ida’s aesthetic much more than her mother’s parlor did. It felt like a place to exchange pleasantries or poke fun at oneself for trying to blend in with large marble columns.
“But you didn’t want to dance at all?” Eleanor asked, peering at Ida from behind her spectacles. She had on a lovely blue gown with velvet trim. A matching piece of blue velvet was woven through her hair.
Not a speck of white in sight. Not a reason to get married, but definitely a bonus to entering into the institution. “I know Lord Bradford is a bit of a—” Eleanor paused as she pondered the word, waving her hands in the air.
“Numbskull?” Ida supplied with a grin. “He is, but he is so good-hearted I can’t blame him for his lack of intelligence. It’s his dancing I object to.” She leaned forward to rub her foot. “Sometimes I think he has sworn not to actually touch the floor, only his partner’s toes.”
“And there was no one else who took your interest?” Eleanor asked. Since her older sister had gotten married, it seemed as though her sole goal in life was to ensure her other sisters did the same.
Except for Della. All four of the remaining duke’s daughters were relieved that Della hadn’t actually married the man she’d run away with; Mr. Baxter was a scoundrel, and—Ida often indignantly commented—he wasn’t even that good a dancing instructor.
Ida shook her head. Trying to ignore the name—Lord Carson—that sprang to mind at Eleanor’s words.
Lord Carson intrigued her, for some reason, and not just because of his handsomeness. Although his handsomeness helped, she had to admit.
It just seemed as though he was so kind, so thoughtful. Dancing with other young ladies who had made pillars their best friends too. Making certain everyone was as comfortable as they could be. Taking his responsibilities as a gentleman as seriously as it appeared he took his business. But she couldn’t admit that, not to her sisters and barely to herself. Besides which, he’d already not married Eleanor and Olivia. Why would he ever pay attention to her?
“I don’t want to find anyone who will take my interest,” she said, surprising herself with her answer. And how she felt suddenly fierce and determined. Although that wasn’t surprising; she often felt that way. Usually when sharing information nobody truly wanted to hear.
“I want to do something else,” she announced.
“What else?” Pearl asked.
Ida rose to look out the window, putting her fingers on the glass. The people walking outside all seemed to have a purpose. Earning a living, running an errand, teaching a child. Helping somebody else.
She wanted to have a purpose too. Something beyond keeping pillars company. Wearing an endless succession of white gowns.
Or regarding her sisters’ happiness wistfully, aware it would take a special gentleman to win her heart, and want her to win his in return.
She turned to face them. “I want to find Della.”
Her sisters both drew in their breath. “But we don’t know where she is,” Pearl pointed out. “She’s been very strategic in never including a return address whenever she writes.”
“There has to be a way,” Ida said, that welcome determination building inside her. “How can we just let her go? She’s a part of us. And now she’s had a daughter. How can we just give up?”
“If anyone could find her, you could,” Pearl replied in a confident tone. She held her hands out, palms up, in a helpless gesture. “But even if you could figure out where she is, there’s no possibility of you being able to go after her.”
Why not? Ida wished she could ask.
But she knew the answer. She could probably recite it backward, were she to be challenged to: She was a young, unmarried lady. Lady unmarried young a was she.
It wasn’t proper for her to walk two feet outside of her own door without some sort of chaperone, so the thought of her being able to go haring about the country in search of her sister was ludicrous. And scandalous. And befitting of the duke’s disgraceful daughters.
So that meant she should consider it.
If only she had the slightest clue of how to begin.
Chapter 2
Adventure comes to those who search for it. A gentle hint: Searching for it means you have to venture out from behind large marble columns.
Lady Ida’s Tips for the Adventurous Lady Traveler
“I’m sorry I, uh,” Alexander said, a rueful smile on his face as he looked at Bennett, the breeze ruffling his hair.
“Sorry you went and fell in love with Eleanor?” Bennett punched Alex on the arm. “You’re an idiot. You love her, she loves you, and that is all that matters.”
“But if I hadn’t—” Alex began.
“Then I still wouldn’t have married Eleanor. I want what you and Edward have. I will no
t be bartered just to provide our father with funds.” Bennett grimaced. “I think I know what it must feel like to be a young lady, having to entertain the possibility of marriage with every gentleman she meets.”
The two brothers were walking in the park across from Alex’s house, Bennett having gone there to consult with his brother about how to address their father’s latest demand. Bennett had dragged Alex outside before his younger brother could protest. Bennett needed to walk, to burn off the agitation he felt after his father’s visit.
He had the distinct worry that he could walk to China and he still wouldn’t feel settled. Although then he would be half a world away, so that might be useful.
“At least you are the one making the offer,” Alex pointed out. “Even if you don’t want to.”
“Except when Lady Olivia insisted that it was time we marry.” Bennett grinned at the memory as he kicked a stone on their path. Eleanor’s sister Olivia had believed herself to be madly in love with Bennett, and had made it clear on at least one memorable occasion. He’d narrowly missed being brained with some sort of objet d’art.
Thankfully, Bennett’s best friend, Edward, had wound up being the true object of her love. The two were ridiculously happy, and Bennett and the world’s collection of objets d’art were both relieved at the outcome.
“You do seem to be quite popular with ladies. If not the Howlett ladies specifically,” Alex said with a grin. “If you were to even consider Father’s demand.”
Bennett grimaced. “Yes, it seems that having avoided being married to two ladies somehow makes me more appealing to the others.”
“Woe is you,” Alex said in a dry tone. Bennett punched his brother’s arm again.
“My marital evasion is seen as a deliberate escape rather than a happy romantic accident,” Bennett continued as Alex rubbed his arm pointedly. “Now all the eligible ladies behave as though I have a bull’s-eye on my heart.” He paused, considering. “Or on my title since how my heart feels doesn’t seem to matter.”
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