A Night in Grosvenor Square
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Table of Contents
Title Page
Timeless Regency Collection: | A Night in Grosvenor Square
Other Timeless Regency Collections
Table of Contents
A Match for Princess Pompous
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
About Sarah M. Eden
Confections and Pretense
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
About Annette Lyon
Little London
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
Epilogue
About Heather B. Moore
Timeless Regency Collection:
A Night in Grosvenor Square
Sarah M. Eden
Annette Lyon
Heather B. Moore
Copyright © 2018 Mirror Press
E-book edition
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form whatsoever without prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief passages embodied in critical reviews and articles. These novels are works of fiction. The characters, names, incidents, places, and dialog are products of the authors’ imaginations and are not to be construed as real.
Interior Design by Heather Justesen
Edited by Haley Swan and Lisa Shepherd
Cover design by Rachael Anderson
Cover Photo Credit: Period Images
Published by Mirror Press, LLC
eISBN-13: 978-1-947152-17-5
eISBN-10: 1-947152-17-3
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Table of Contents
A Match for Princess Pompous by Sarah M. Eden
Other Works by Sarah M. Eden
About Sarah M. Eden
Confections and Pretense by Annette Lyon
Other Works by Annette Lyon
About Annette Lyon
Little London by Heather B. Moore
Other Works by Heather B. Moore
About Heather B. Moore
A Match for Princess Pompous
By Sarah M. Eden
Chapter One
Bath, 1810
If Adelaide Northrop had to listen to one more ode praising Charity Goddard’s eyes, she was absolutely going to strangle the offending amateur poet with his own overlarge cravat. But when one earned one’s living aiding and abetting the marrying off of the daughters of the ton, one endured a great many painful things, saccharinely sentimental poetry being chief among them.
Thomas Toppits was not nearly so unbearable as most of the young pups who had followed the young Miss Goddard around Bath the last month, and, all things considered, Adelaide was not displeased with Charity’s choice. But neither would she mourn the “opportunity” to hear Mr. Toppits’s self-penned verses now that her latest assignment had come to an end.
The arrival of Mrs. Goddard in the sitting room allowed Adelaide to abandon her post as chaperone and slip into the blessed silence of the corridor. Why was it young suitors always resorted to poetry? She had been instrumental in dozens of matches over the past four years, and nearly every one had, in the end, devolved into poetic nonsense.
This seemed a newer development. Her own courtship nineteen years earlier hadn’t involved a single line of poetry. Then again, she’d not had a suitor to speak of during the decade and a half of her widowhood. It was entirely possible that the gentlemen in her age group employed verse as often as the younger set. Fortunately for her intellectual endurance, she didn’t intend to find out.
She rapped lightly on the door to Mr. Goddard’s study. Upon hearing his instruction to enter, she did precisely that.
“Ah, Mrs. Northrop.” He rose and offered a respectful bow. “You are leaving us today, aren’t you?”
“Your daughter is soon to be married. My services are no longer needed.” She was an expert at these farewell meetings.
“Are you certain you won’t stay for the wedding?” Mr. Goddard’s long jowls flapped with the force of his frown. “It doesn’t seem right that you should miss it.”
But she held firm. If she meant to attend every wedding she brought about, she would spend so much time in churches that she might as well don clerical robes and become a vicar. “I am due in London. I dare not be late for my next undertaking.”
He nodded slowly. “Ah yes. Barrington’s daughter. You’ll need a miracle with that one.”
Adelaide was to finish out the London Season in the company of Lord Barrington’s family and in the course of those six weeks do her utmost to bring about a spectacular match for the baron’s youngest. The spoiled miss had in the course of the Season thus far earned herself the title of “Princess Pompous.”
Six weeks. Princess Pompous. And all of London knew precisely how terrible the girl was.
The prospect set Adelaide’s mind humming with anticipation. She enjoyed nothing so much as undertaking the utterly impossible.
“I will see to it, Mr. Goddard, that you receive a copy of the Times in which the wedding announcement is printed.”
He smiled, the same almost boyish grin she’d seen from him time and again during her stay in Bath. “You are very confident.”
She nodded. “I’ve not failed yet.”
“I look forward to reading all about it.”
She rose, and he did as well. “The very best to you and your family, sir. I am pleased to have been of help.”
He offered a brief bow and she a curtsy.
“A token of our appreciation will be deposited in the appropriate account,” he said. “And a bit extra.”
She dipped her head in understanding. A lady did not earn a salary; such a thing was far too crass, no matter that money was a necessity. Payment for her efforts was always explained in terms like that: “token of appreciation” or “a gratuity” paid her through a third party. She understood the necessity—her standing as a lady depended on it. Still, she found the charade a bit tiring.
She returned to the room that had been hers for four weeks. Her portmanteau and traveling trunk were ready and waiting. A footman appeared shortly after her arrival to carry the trunk to the waiting Barrington carriage.
Adelaide took her portmanteau in hand and gave the room one final glance. Another departure. Another challenge. Though she always experienced a twinge of regret, the surge of excitement far outweighed it.
“I hope you are ready, Princess Pompous,” she whispered. “I am about to overthrow your little kingdom.”
* * *
London
Odette Armistead knew the name Society had fashioned for her. She had been aiming for the Contemptuous Countess or the Disdainful Duchess, so to have been granted a title as high as Princess Pompous was really quite an achievement. Her parents were far less proud of her moniker than she was, which was a shame. Young ladies were meant to be accomplished, and earning the simultaneous disapproval and rapt interest of the easily distracted ton was an accomplishment. She would far rather have gained some friends and fond memories, but, alas, it was not to be.
Papa was at that moment pacing in front of the windows of the drawing room, pausing repeatedly to look down at the street below. Mama sat on her fainting sofa, sighing as she did so often. Odette secretly referred to that particular spot in the room as the “sighing sofa.”
“Are we expecting visitors?” she asked her parents. “Today is not an at-home day.”
They exchanged looks but not words. Odette could very easily translate; she knew her parents well. They were expecting someone but did not want to tell her whom.
Hooves and wheels sounded below. Papa snapped to attention like a cadet, spinning on his heel to face the window.
Odette was fairly dying of curiosity. Who was the mysterious visitor? If Papa had invited yet another young gentleman to make a clearly coerced and half-hearted attempt at courtship, she would be hard-pressed not to simply beg the poor soul to leave them all in peace.
“She’s here,” Papa whispered.
She. Not a suitor, then. Her parents both rose and turned to face the door. An important she, apparently. Odette’s interest was fully piqued.
She, too, rose and watched the threshold, half expecting Queen Charlotte herself to step inside. The lady who entered, however, bore little resemblance to the current consort. She was far younger, likely only a decade older than Odette. Though this new arrival carried herself with confidence, hers was not the stone-stiff bearing of a monarch.
She swept over the room’s occupants with an assessing gaze. First Mama, who received a quick, generic smile. Then Papa, who was offered a nod. At last, the anonymous lady settled her eyes on Odette. This was no cursory glance or momentary burst of vague curiosity. Odette was thoroughly scrutinized, head to toe and most likely inside and out. The perusal ended with a simple, “Hmm.”
Odette didn’t know what to make of such a dismissive and dissatisfied evaluation. “Princess Pompous” was not universally liked, but people generally found her interesting at the very least.
The lady turned to face Papa once more.
“What is your impression?” he asked her.
“She does not appear shy nor easily intimidated. That will make things easier. She is pretty, which, though in a truly decent world it wouldn’t matter in the least, will also prove beneficial. She has a dowry, I assume.”
They were discussing her. That was decidedly unexpected and more than a little rattling. She had learned these past months how to give the impression of cool confidence. She would simply do so again.
“I have five thousand pounds,” Odette said. “My eyes have been described as sparkling and my smile as captivating. I do not generally want for partners at any ball, am greeted whenever I take a ride about Hyde Park, but am granted a blessed degree of solitude during the day, since most potential suitors have decided to look elsewhere. Is there anything else you’d care to know, or would you prefer clinging to what you have surmised with a single glance?”
The lady, who had not in the course of Odette’s response turned in her direction, simply said, “And she is rather pert. That could either be an asset or a liability.”
“If you can find someone willing to take all that on, we would be greatly obliged,” Papa said. “Her older sisters were far easier to marry off.”
Take all that on? Marry off? Odette looked from one of them to the other in succession.
“You don’t happen to have a miserly older relative in the country somewhere?” The lady posed the suggestion with not quite enough humor to convince Odette that she wasn’t at least partially in earnest.
“I am being sent away?” Odette carefully kept the hope from her voice.
“Nonsense,” Mama said. “We have six weeks left in this Season. That is time enough to make it a success.”
Papa’s shoulders drooped. “The gentlemen aren’t precisely clamoring to win the regard of Princess Pompous. What else can we do that we haven’t already?”
“What else?” Odette asked in frustration. “What I have been suggesting for weeks: we can consider this Season to have been all that it could be and return home. We’ll come back next year and begin again.”
Mama shook her head firmly. “You cannot leave having made the impression you have. The ton will continue whispering, the stories growing at every house party, every Yuletide gathering. By the time we return, you will not merely be an oddity, you will be a pariah. We must undo some of the damage.”
“If we can,” Papa muttered.
Odette had worked very diligently at creating that “damage.” Undoing it was not in her plans at all.
“I believe I would like to speak with Miss Armistead,” the stranger said. “Alone, if you will.”
Papa and Mama agreed readily and eagerly. Whatever scheme had been hatched clearly had both their support.
As soon as they stepped out and the door closed behind them, the stranger spoke again. “Introductions ought to have been made, but panic often subdues manners.”
“Panic?” Odette began to smile at the exaggeration, but stopped at the lady’s expression of absolute earnestness.
“It seems your parents have all but lost hope of you making a suitable match.” The lady’s assessing gaze swept over Odette once more. “I have been called upon to remedy that.”
She squared her shoulders. “To remedy what, exactly?”
“I am not certain yet. But I will discover it. I always do.”
“This is a habit of yours, interfering in families?”
A quick shake of her head. “It is a calling.”
“The heavens have sent you here? That seems a little presumptuous.”
The still-unnamed arrival was not the least put off by the criticism. “And yet, all the world has not begun calling me ‘Princess Pompous.’”
Odette shrugged, hiding both her annoyance and her amusement. “It’s a calling.”
“Hmm.”
With that cryptic response, Odette’s back was up once more. “Perhaps before we continue this very enlightening conversation, we ought to know each other’s names.”
“I am Mrs. Northrop, and I am here to salvage your Season.”
An unexpected answer, but then nothing about this encounter had been the least predictable. “You are a chaperone? Or a social tutor?”
“I am a matchmaker.” She spoke the four words as if she knew perfectly well Odette would object to them and didn’t care in the least. “Your parents wish to see you wed.”
“The law does not allow me to be forced into a marriage,” Odette said firmly. She’d made absolutely certain of that before embarking on her Season.
“I never force anyone into anything,” Mrs. Northrop said, calm and unruffled as ever.
“Coerce, then?” Odette had worried a great deal about that possibility. Papa was of a tentative nature. Yet he had been firm in pushing her older sister toward the match he and Mother had preferred. They would likely do so again if Odette wasn’t very careful.
“Coercion is for the desperate.”
“And you have never been desperate?” Odette asked.
Mrs. Northrop neither nodded nor shook her head. She kept perfectly still, wa
tching. The smile in her eyes proved anything but comforting.
“Well then.” Odette assumed her most resolute tone and posture. “Do as you please. I, however, intend to choose my own future, and neither you, nor my parents, nor the spiteful tabbies of the ton will pry that privilege from me.”
She left the would-be matchmaker in the drawing room, not bothering with the pleasantries usually exchanged in a farewell. One step into the corridor, Mrs. Northrop’s voice caught up with her.
“I will see you this evening for the Farrs’ ball.” She was clearly not to be easily dissuaded.
Odette maintained her calm until she reached her bedchamber. Heart pounding, she locked the door. She dropped onto the chair at her dressing table, fighting down an overwhelming wave of worry.
She’d worked so hard this Season making absolutely certain all went according to plan. Everything depended upon it. Her future. Her happiness. Every hope and dream she had. Everything.
And this matchmaker was going to ruin it all.
Chapter Two
Jack Hewitt stood among his group of friends, pretending he wasn’t taking desperate note of every guest to arrive at the Farrs’ ball. He worked to hide his dread of seeing one particular guest and his eagerness to see another. Maintaining an aura of utter neutrality was crucial.
The Summerfields stepped inside the ballroom in that moment. Jack didn’t let his gaze more than flicker in the direction of the doorway. Mother, however, reached his side in the next moment, wide-eyed and anxious.
“Miss Summerfield is here,” she whispered earnestly. “Go ask her to stand up with you.”
“I can’t,” Jack said. “I’ve promised the next set to Miss Garrett and the one after that to Miss Carlton.”
Her jaw set. “You knew Miss Summerfield was coming this evening.”
He nodded noncommittally. “I assumed she would be. I’m certain I’ll find a set open later in the night that she also has open.”
“You must make an effort, Jack.”