The Merry Lives of Spinsters

by Rebecca Connolly

  The Spinster Chronicles

  Book One

  REBECCA CONNOLLY

  Also by

  Rebecca Connolly

  The Arrangements:

  An Arrangement of Sorts

  Married to the Marquess

  Secrets of a Spinster

  The Dangers of Doing Good

  The Burdens of a Bachelor

  A Bride Worth Taking

  A Wager Worth Making

  A Gerrard Family Christmas

  The London League:

  The Lady and the Gent

  Coming Soon

  The Spinster and I

  Text copyright © 2018 by Rebecca Connolly

  Cover art copyright © 2018 by Rebecca Connolly

  Cover art by Tugboat Design

  http://www.tugboatdesign.net

  All rights reserved. Published by Phase Publishing, LLC. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher.

  Phase Publishing, LLC first paperback edition

  May 2018

  ISBN 978-1-943048-54-0

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2018941170

  Cataloging-in-Publication Data on file.

  Acknowledgements

  For Alicia, my very own Georgie. I would totally have done this with you if we’d thought of it then! Thanks for being one of my people, love!

  And to my favorite TV show, Timeless, for highlighting powerful women and characters throughout history, and showing that smart women can do incredible things. Also for the laughter, and all the swooning. Especially the swooning. Perfectly willing to be cast as an extra or test read scripts or run lines or fetch people’s lunch or hold things… Call me.

  Want to hear about future releases and upcoming events for Rebecca Connolly?

  Sign up for the monthly Wit and Whimsy at:

  www.rebeccaconnolly.com

  Index

  Prologue

  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

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  Mayfair, 1815

  “Elizabeth Daniels was nearly compromised last night.”

  Georgiana Allen looked up from her cherry wood writing desk to gape at her currently breathless cousin with wide eyes. “She was? By whom, pray tell?”

  “Marcus Ramsgate.” Isabella shivered and looked a little pale, still panting from her hasty entrance. “They were found in the orangery at Fulston House. By the marquess.”

  Georgie winced and set her pen down. Lord Hartley was undeniably a kinder, more forgiving man than his father, the duke, but even he would not have looked kindly upon that. And Marcus Ramsgate? “That upstart with more charm than coin,” Aunt Charity had once called him, without any hint of the virtue for which she was named.

  She was not wrong.

  It wasn’t that Mr. Ramsgate wasn’t attractive or enticing or a decent enough candidate for matrimony, if one were to look at him objectively. He had all the makings of a gentleman. It was just that he chose not to employ any of them.

  Elizabeth Daniels should have known better. She had known better, as of their conversation last week. She wanted a calm and kind man, and a quiet, happy life for herself.

  Well, that was all rubbish now.

  “That’s the fourth girl this season,” Izzy whispered as if that were some great secret.

  Fifth, actually, but there was no sense in revealing what was not commonly known, particularly when Georgie only knew because Anna Maxwell had secretly confessed it to her at the wedding breakfast.

  And as Anna Maxwell was now Anna Lambert, Isabella’s sister-in-law, that confession would remain between the two of them.

  Georgie shook her head, setting her jaw. “We’ll not let another go. Not one more.”

  “We?” her cousin asked a bit timidly.

  She nodded once and forced a grim smile. “Get Emma and Charlotte. We have work to do.”

  Chapter One

  It is a rare woman that can find her own path in life without a man to instruct or direct her. Which seems odd, as most of the men of this world seem to need help with instruction and direction themselves…

  -The Spinster Chronicles, 10 May 1816

  “This meeting of the Spinsters, with a capital S, is now called to order.”

  Georgie looked at her friend with as much derision as one could lovingly express. “Really, Charlotte, must we resort to formality? We are not an official organization, nor is this a meeting.”

  Charlotte Wright, a rather attractive brunette with dark eyes and a fair complexion, and a determined spinster at the age of twenty-four, grinned without shame. “No? I think by now we are formed into enough of a body that we could become official.”

  “It does feel like something official,” Georgie’s cousin, Izzy, sadly an acknowledged spinster of twenty-six, replied with an impish grin. “Should we elect officers?”

  “No!” Georgie retorted firmly, rolling her eyes. “This is only an afternoon tea!”

  “We’re English,” Prudence Westfall, most assuredly a spinster at twenty-five, pointed out, flashing a rare grin. “Everything comes with a good tea.”

  “I don’t think this is very good,” Charlotte sniffed, sipping carefully. “Passable at best.”

  “Don’t let my mother hear you say that,” Izzy chortled, fingering one of her copper ringlets. “She thinks a mild tea soothes the digestion and is far better suited for young ladies.”

  “Then she’d better find something else for us,” Grace Morledge, a charming beauty who was inexplicably a spinster at twenty-five, offered dryly. “We are only once-young ladies here, and a strong tea is preferred.”

  Georgie shook her head and sipped her perfectly acceptable tea without comment. There was no arguing with the group once they had decided to focus their attention on a topic, and if they wished to spend their time discussing the strength and quality of this particular tea, she would let them.

  After all, she had no news to share. Everything was as it should be. Ever since she had gathered the others to take up her cause three years ago to prevent ignorant young women from ruining their lives with forced marriages, and to encourage proper thought and independence, they’d been able to prevent some truly disastrous moments simply by being watchful and sharing their wisdom with those who did not know better. Their weekly newssheet was now extremely popular, and they regularly heard girls quoting sections at each other and eyeing potential suitors with more wariness than they had in years past.

  It had not worked out every time, of course, but they had discovered that there were a remarkable number of young women that knew absolutely nothing of the world or of men.

  Not that any of them knew much about men, except perhaps Charlotte, who was quite proud of the number of proposals she had refused. But, with their combined number of years in Society, at whatever level or experience, they had observed and learned quite a lot.

  In fact, if Georgie had ever truly wished to navigate the workings
of Society as most of the other women did, she was convinced she would have done a marvelous job of it.

  But that was neither here nor there.

  The Season was well under way, and there was a fresh crop of girls hoping for good matches, and oddly enough, all of them were behaving with far more maturity and respectability than the girls in the last three seasons combined. Nobody had been ruined so far this Season, or even come close to it, and she couldn’t even claim to have had a hand in that. There was every opportunity, but thus far, the unmarried members of Society had behaved themselves remarkably well. She was not naïve enough to believe that this would last, or that somehow her attempts to thwart forced marriage, particularly from ruination, had begun to change opinions on the idea.

  She rather thought it was only because everyone was feeling the same way she was.

  Bored.

  There was an absolute boredom about London this time, and she couldn’t attest to why. Everything was the same as it always had been. The same events were occurring, the same people were in attendance, and the same expectations surrounded her. She would not be courted, she would rarely dance, and she would end the Season with no husband.

  It was all the same.

  Aside from her increasing years, and the increasing popularity of their recent project, The Spinster Chronicles, absolutely everything about Georgiana Allen was exactly, unequivocally, and impeccably the same.

  No wonder she wasn’t married.

  She would bore herself to death if she wasn’t careful. She was more than halfway there already. Bored with herself, bored with their mostly unfounded reputation, bored with the effort she had put into this venture… Bored with it all. But she couldn’t say anything about that; not to anyone.

  “Georgie, why are you staring at the wallpaper?” Izzy asked suddenly, a smile in her voice. “It’s the same horrible mossy green it’s always been, and you heard Mama this morning.”

  Georgie looked at her cousin with a grin. “‘It is absolutely, perfectly fine, and exactly as I would wish it’,” they recited together, mimicking Izzy’s mother with near perfection.

  Charlotte coughed a laugh into her tea and set it aside, dabbing at her mouth with a table linen. “Did she really say that?”

  “She always says that,” Izzy told them with a heaving sigh.

  “About everything,” Georgie added, nodding for effect.

  “The tapestries,” Izzy offered.

  “The livery,” Georgie drawled.

  “The menus.”

  “Her gowns.”

  “Her daughters.”

  “Her sons.”

  “Ha!” Charlotte burst out laughing, surprising all the rest. It took her a moment to collect herself, as it usually did when she was truly amused, and she finally wiped at her eyes as she settled. “Your mother… thinks your brothers… are perfect?”

  Izzy shook her head in a pitying fashion. “No, she simply finds them all ‘exactly as she would wish,’ which means absolutely nothing anymore, and given my brothers are thirty, twenty-seven, and twelve, I find her indifference disconcerting.”

  “At least she finds no fault with you,” Prue suggested in her gentle, mild-mannered way. “That’s quite lovely, isn’t it?”

  Georgie smiled at that. Prue was the dearest and sweetest creature on the planet, but with all the timidity of twelve shy girls rolled into one. If she became even the slightest bit flustered, she grew tongue-tied, or stammered, or turned a remarkable shade of pink. She came from a family that cared little for her and seemed to only heighten her struggles rather than improve them.

  Domineering mothers have that effect on shy daughters.

  “I suppose it must be,” Izzy allowed with a slight smirk, “but where I am concerned, she may follow up her usual line with ‘Other people may say you lack,’ and then she follows it up with something very detailed and specific, always assuring me that I am ‘absolutely, perfectly fine’ in her eyes.” She lifted her eyes in a dramatic roll that brought laughter from all around. “She never did that with Catherine, and I have never heard her do so with my sisters-in-law.”

  “Well, Anna is perfect, isn’t she?” Charlotte offered with a shrug. “And Jane is above imperfections, so what is there to criticize? Except, perhaps, their choices of your brothers, but that is an issue of personal taste, so one cannot fault it.”

  Prue, never perfectly comfortable with Charlotte’s outspoken ways, looked torn between defending William and David Lambert and laughing along with her. Her brow furrowed slightly, and she opted to fidget with her faded blue muslin instead.

  “Aunt Faith has no compunction in advising me,” Georgie brought up, smiling for all, “but I am not a daughter, and so there is no need for me to be as she wishes it. She only asks me what my mother would think and leaves it at that.”

  Grace, who was the newest addition to their little group, smiled in bemusement. “And what would your mother think, Georgie?” she asked without any hesitation.

  Of all the girls present, she alone did not know the nature of Hope Allen, or she would not have asked such a question. The others grinned at each other and sat back in preparation for Georgie’s response.

  She mulled over her answer, preparing an adequate, if entertaining one.

  “My mother,” Georgie began, keeping her voice perfectly mellow, “is one of three sisters, ironically named Faith, Hope, and Charity, and in that order. And each of those sisters has an interesting take on each of those virtues. Aunt Faith, for all her lovely hospitality, only has faith in her own opinions and tastes. Aunt Charity, to no one’s surprise, has never managed charity. And my mother, Hope, does not know the meaning of the word, particularly where her daughter is concerned. Her sons, both still at Eton, are apparently going to rule the world if they manage to receive passing marks in any of their classes, where they are apparently not being properly instructed to their esteemed level. And it is a pity that their only sister, who is significantly older, has not managed to secure a husband for herself, despite having all the proper mentoring and training, and is destined to plague those sweet, innocent boys with her care for the rest of her miserable life.”

  “The word she used was hopeless,” Izzy pointed out, beside herself with laughter. “Not miserable. Hopeless.”

  That sent the others into complete stitches, and Georgie gave her cousin a polite nod of acknowledgment. “Quite right, Izzy. My mistake.”

  Grace looked shocked but laughed along with the rest. “Is she really so against you?”

  Georgie sighed with a hint of laughter. “Oh, she’s not against me at all, Grace. Just disappointed. I don’t know what she expected, I’m neither a great beauty nor particularly graceful, and I don’t need any fingers at all to count the number of potential suitors I’ve had.” She shrugged lightly, grinning at her newest friend. “She always wonders why I’m not more like Izzy.”

  Izzy howled at that and even Prue had to giggle, while Grace merely smiled her very pretty smile. “I think Izzy is delightful,” Grace told her.

  “So do I, to be sure.” Georgie grinned at her favorite cousin. “If I were more like Izzy, I might, perhaps, have gained a husband.”

  “Yes,” Izzy snorted with a flick of her hair, “because I’ve had so very many husbands.”

  Georgie shrugged again and sipped her tea. “Ah, well. Their loss.”

  “Hear, hear!” Charlotte crowed, helping herself to a crumpet.

  “Oh, Charlotte,” Prue sighed, shaking her head.

  Grace still looked disgruntled. “I don’t understand, I’m afraid. Are all your mothers this way? So meddling or disapproving or ridiculous?”

  “Yes,” Georgie and Izzy said together.

  “Mine’s given up on me entirely,” Charlotte admitted, saluting Grace with her cup of tea, which she still drank, despite her aversion to it.

  Prue’s head dropped, and she suddenly focused very intently on her needlework. “My mother may be the worst of the lot,” she murmured
. “If I can say such a thing.”

  “You can,” all the others assured her as one.

  Even Grace knew that, having witnessed what Marjorie Westfall was like for herself only last week.

  “I still can’t believe she criticized your gown in front of so many,” Grace said with a scowl. “I thought you looked lovely.”

  Prue lifted one shoulder, still not looking up. “Pink is not my color, I should have known better.”

  Georgie gaped and looked around the room, finding similar expressions on the others’ faces. “Prue,” she said, sitting forward. “You have the sort of coloring where you can wear almost anything and look perfectly fetching. There was no cause for her to make a scene like that.”

  Again, she gave a small shrug. “She likes to make a scene.”

  “Prue, your mother is a bully,” Charlotte snapped, her mouth tightening. “If I didn’t think you would die from embarrassment, I would tell her off with quite a bit of flair.”

  Prue’s pale eyes widened, and she clamped down on her lips.

  Charlotte made a noise of distress and flung a hand out. “You see? Even the thought of it makes her want to faint!”

  “I’m s-sorry,” Prue stammered weakly.