Dedication
To my mother, Joy Hensley, who taught me to always appreciate a good book, a good horse, and a good husband, not necessarily in that order
Acknowledgments
As always, a big shout of thanks goes out to writing friends and partners in crime Alyssa Alexander, Romily Bernard, Tracy Brogan, Sally Kilpatrick, and Kimberly Kincaid. You ladies make it a pleasure to sometimes bang my head against this writing wall, mainly because you always provide willing company. A special shout-out is owed Noelle Pierce, who gives beta reads that rock, and to Nicki Salcedo, who is just plain awesomeness in a skirt. Special thanks to Georgia Romance Writers, an organization that helps authors realize their potential and that provides a continuous source of new and amazing friends.
The life of an author-with-a-day-job can be downright annoying at times. My family probably deserves better, but for now they seem to be sticking with me and I am grateful for their support and enthusiasm. To my amazing agent Kevon Lyon, my wonderful editor Tessa Woodward and her assistant Gabrielle Keck, and Avon publicity rock star Caroline Perny: I could never thank you enough, but I promise to keep trying. To the entire team at Avon and Harper Collins, from the art department, to marketing, to the wonderful staff who convince stores to stock me on their shelves: thank you so very much! You always pretend I know what I am doing.
Keep on pretending, and I’ll keep writing.
Contents
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Dear Diary
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Dearest Diary
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Dearest Diary
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Dear Diary
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Dear Dr. Merial
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Dear Diary
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Dear Diary
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Dear Diary
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
About the Author
Romances by Jennifer McQuiston
Copyright
About the Publisher
May 2, 1848
Dear Diary,
If a man’s worth is measured in pounds, a woman’s is measured in dance steps. And if those dance steps are with a future duke, surely they are worth all the more. Mr. Alban, the future Duke of Harrington, asked me to dance again last night, the third time since the start of the Season. My friends are abuzz with what he might ask next, and I confess, I hope it is something more significant than a dance. I know the Season has just begun, but surely a proposal cannot be far from his mind?
When I feel the sting of jealousy from the less fortunate girls lining the walls, I remind myself some casualties are inevitable if I am to dance all the way to a ducal mansion. Any girl who feels tempted to accept the first offer that comes their way would do well to comfort themselves on the arm of a mere marquess.
Miss Clare Westmore
The Future Duchess of Harrington
Chapter 1
Miss Clare Westmore wasn’t the only young woman to fall head-over-heels for Mr. Charles Alban, the newly named heir to the Duke of Harrington.
Though, she was probably the only one to fall quite so literally.
He appeared out of nowhere, broad-shouldered and perfect, trotting his horse down one of the winding paths near the Serpentine. His timing was dreadful. For one, it was three o’clock on a Friday afternoon, hardly a fashionable hour for anyone to be in Hyde Park. For another, she’d come down to the water with her siblings in tow, and the ducks and geese they’d come to feed were already rushing toward them like a great screeching mob.
Her sister, Lucy, poked an elbow into her ribs. “Isn’t that your duke?”
Clare’s heart galloped well into her throat as the sound of hoofbeats grew closer. What was Mr. Alban doing here? Riders tended to contain themselves to Rotten Row, not this inauspicious path near the water. If he saw her now it would be an unmitigated disaster. She was wearing last Season’s walking habit—fashionable enough for the ducks, but scarcely the modish image she wished to project to the man who could well be her future husband. Worst of all, she was with Lucy, who brushed her hair approximately once a week, and her brother Geoffrey, who ought to have been finishing his first year at Eton but was expelled just last week for something more than the usual youthful hijinks.
Clare froze in the center of the milling mass of birds, trying to decide if it would be wiser to lift her skirts and run or step behind the cover of a nearby rhododendron bush. One of the geese took advantage of her indecision and its beak jabbed at her calf through layers of silk and cotton. Before she knew what was happening—or even gather her wits into something resembling a plan—her thin-soled slipper twisted out from under her and she pitched over onto the ground with an unladylike oomph. She lay there, momentarily stunned.
Well then. The rhododendron it was.
She tucked her head and rolled into the shadow of the bush, ignoring low-hanging branches that reached out for her. The ducks, being intelligent fowl, followed along. They seized the crumpled bag of bread still clutched in her hand and began gulping down its contents. The geese—being, of course, quite the opposite of ducks—shrieked in protest and flapped their wings, stirring up eddies of down and dust.
Clare tucked deeper into the protection of the bush, straining to hear over the avian onslaught. Had she been seen? She didn’t think so. Then again, her instincts had also told her no one of importance would be on this path in Hyde Park at three o’clock on a Friday afternoon, and look how well those thoughts had served.
“Oh, what fun!” Lucy laughed, every bit as loud as the geese. “Are you playing the damsel in distress?”
“Perhaps she is studying the mating habits of water fowl,” quipped Geoffrey, whose mind always seemed to be on the mating habits of something these days. He tossed a forelock of blond hair out of his eyes as he offered her a hand, but Clare shook her head. She didn’t trust her brother a wit. At thirteen years old and five and a half feet, he was as tall as some grown men, but he retained an adolescent streak of mischief as wide as the Serpentine itself.
He was as likely to toss her into Alban’s path as help her escape.
Lucy cocked her head. Wisps of tangled blond hair rimmed her face like dandelion fluff and made her appear far younger than her seventeen years, though her tall frame and evident curves left no doubt that she was old enough to show more care with her appearance. “Shall I call Mr. Alban over to request his assistance, then?” she asked, none too innocently.
“Shhhh,” Clare hissed. Because the only thing worse than meeting the future Duke of Harrington while dressed in last year’s walking habit was meeting him while wallowing in the dirt. Oh, but she should never have worn such inappropriate shoes to go walking in Hyde Park. Then again, such hindsight came close to philosophical brilliance when offered up from the unforgiving ground.
She held her breath until the sound of hoofbeats began to recede into the distance. Dimly, she realized something
hurt. In fact, something hurt dreadfully. But she couldn’t quite put her finger on the source when her mind was spinning in more pertinent directions.
“Why are you hiding from Mr. Alban?” Lucy asked pointedly.
“I am not hiding.” Clare struggled to a sitting position and blew a wayward brown curl from her eyes. “I am . . . er . . . feeding the ducks.”
Geoffrey laughed. “Unless I am mistaken, the ducks have just fed themselves, and that pair over there had a jolly good tup while the rest of them were tussling over the scraps. You should have invited your duke to join us.”
“He’s not yet a duke,” Clare corrected crossly. Much less her duke.
But oh, how she wanted him to be.
“Pity to let him go by without saying anything. You could have shown him your overhanded throw, the one you use for Cook’s oldest biscuits.” Geoffrey pantomimed a great arching throw out into the lake. “That would impress him, I’m sure.”
The horror of such a scene—and such a brother—made Clare’s heart thump in her chest. To be fair, feeding the ducks was something of a family tradition, a ritual born during a time when she hadn’t cared whether she was wearing least year’s frock. These days, with their house locked in a cold, stilted silence and their parents nearly estranged, they retreated here almost every day. And she could throw Cook’s biscuits farther than either Lucy or Geoffrey, who took after their father in both coloring and clumsiness. It was almost as if they had been cut from a different bolt of cloth, coarse wool to Clare’s smooth velvet.
But these were not facts one ought to share with a future duke—particularly when that future duke was the gentleman you hoped would offer a proposal tonight. No, better to wait and greet Mr. Alban properly this evening at Lady Austerley’s annual ball, when Lucy and Geoffrey were stashed safely at home and she would be dressed in tulle and diamonds.
“I don’t understand.” Lucy stretched out her hand, and this time Clare took it. “Why wouldn’t you wish to greet him? He came to call yesterday, after all, and I was given the impression you liked him very much.”
Clare pulled herself to standing and winced as a fresh bolt of pain snatched the breath from her lungs. “How do you know about that?” she panted. “I didn’t tell anyone.” In fact, she’d cajoled their butler, Wilson, to silence. It was imperative word of the visit be kept from their mother, who—if last Season’s experience with potential suitors was any indication—would have immediately launched a campaign to put Waterloo to shame.
“I know because I spied on you from the tree outside the picture window.” Lucy shrugged. “And didn’t you say that he asked you to dance last week?”
“Yes,” Clare agreed between gritted teeth. Mr. Alban had asked her to dance last week, a breathless waltz that sent the room spinning and held all eyes upon them. It was the third waltz they had shared since the start of the Season—though not all on the same night, more’s the pity. But the glory of that dance paled in comparison to the dread exacted by Lucy’s confession.
Had her sister really hung apelike from a limb and leered at the man through the window? Except . . . hadn’t Alban sat with his back to the window?
She breathed a sigh of relief. Yes, she was almost sure of it. He’d spent the entire quarter hour with his gaze firmly anchored on her face, their conversation easy. But despite the levity of their exchange, he’d seemed cautious, as though he were hovering on the edge of some question that never materialized but that she fervently wished he’d just hurry up and ask.
Given his unswerving focus, there was no way he would have seen her clumsy heathen of a sister swinging through the branches, though she shuddered to think that Lucy could have easily lost her balance and come crashing through the window in a shower of broken glass and curse words. But thankfully nothing of the sort had happened. No awkward siblings had intruded on the flushed pleasure of the moment. Her mother had remained oblivious, distracted by her increasing irritation with their father and her shopping on Bond Street.
And to Clare’s mind, Mr. Alban had all but declared his intentions out loud.
Tonight, she thought fiercely. Tonight would be the night when he asked for more than just a dance. And that was why it was very important for her to tread carefully, until he was so irrevocably smitten she could risk the introduction of her family.
“I do admire him,” she admitted, her mind returning reluctantly to the present. “I just do not want him to see me looking like . . .” Clare glanced down at her grass-stained skirts and picked at a twig that had become lodged in the fabric. “Well, like this.”
Lucy frowned. “I scarcely think his admiration should be swayed by a little dirt.”
“And you didn’t look like that before you dove behind that bush,” Geoffrey pointed out. “Stunning bit of acrobatics, though. You ought to apply to the circus, sis.”
“I didn’t dive behind the bush.” Clare battled an exasperated sigh. She couldn’t expect either of them to understand. Lucy still flitted through life not caring if her hair was falling down. Such obliviousness was sure to give her trouble when she came out next year. Clare herself couldn’t remember a time when she hadn’t been acutely aware of every hair in its place, every laugh carefully cultivated.
And Geoffrey was . . . well . . . Geoffrey.
Loud, male, and far too crude for polite company.
As a child, the pronounced differences between herself and her siblings had often made her wonder if perhaps she had been a foundling, discovered in a basket on the front steps of her parents’ Mayfair home. She loved her brother and sister, but who wouldn’t sometimes squirm in embarrassment over such a family?
And what young woman wouldn’t dream of a dashing duke, destined to take her away from it all and install her within the walls of his country estate?
Clare took a step, but as her toe connected with the ground, the pain in her right ankle punched through the annoyance of her brother’s banter. “Oh,” she breathed. And then, as she tried another step, “Ow! I . . . I must have twisted my ankle when I fell.”
“I still say you dove,” Geoffrey smirked.
Lucy looked down with a frown. “Why didn’t you say something?” she scolded. “Can you put any weight on it at all?”
“I didn’t realize at first.” Indeed, Clare’s mind had been too much on the threat of her looming social ruin to consider what damage had been done to her person. “And I am sure I can walk on it. Just give me a moment to catch my breath.”
She somehow made her way to a nearby bench, ducks and geese scattering like ninepins. By the time she sat down, she was gasping in pain and battling tears. As she slid her dainty silk slipper off, all three of them peered down at her stocking-encased foot with collective indrawn breaths. Geoffrey loosened an impressed whistle. “Good God, sis. That thing is swelling faster than a prick at a bawdy show.”
“Geoffrey!” Clare’s ears stung in embarrassment, though she had to imagine it was an apt description for the swollen contours of her foot. “This is not Eton, we are not your friends, and that will be quite enough.”
“Don’t you have Lady Austerley’s ball tonight?” Lucy asked, her blue eyes sympathetic. “I can’t imagine you can attend like this. In fact, I feel quite sure we ought to carry you home and call for the doctor, straight away.”
But Clare’s mind was already tilting in a far different direction. This evening’s ball hadn’t even crossed her mind when she had been thinking of the pain, but now she glared down at her disloyal ankle. No, no, no. This could not be happening. Not when she was convinced Mr. Alban would seek her out for more than just a single dance tonight.
It didn’t hurt so much when she was sitting.
Surely it would be better in an hour or so.
“Of course I can go.” She struggled to slip her shoe back on, determined to let neither doubts nor bodily deficiency dissuade her. “Just help me home, and don’t tell Mother,” she added, “and everything will be fine.”
Chapte
r 2
You belong in bed, not in a ballroom.”
Dr. Daniel Merial chased this medical opinion with his most impressive glower and prayed his patient would see reason. He’d been summoned to 36 Berkeley Square by a furtive note, delivered to the morgue at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital. He’d come immediately, no matter that he’d been forced to abandon a body lying half dissected on the theater table. The deceased was of unusual height and abnormal bone density, and a cataloging of the body’s physical findings would have lent itself well to a paper on the subject.
But it was an opportunity now lost.
The physician who’d taken over the case had seemed far more interested in helping the students position the corpse into grotesque, suggestive poses than locating a pencil to record his findings. It annoyed Daniel to turn a perfectly interesting cadaver over to a fool like that, but St. Bart’s was full of pompous young doctors whose positions had been secured by wealthy fathers willing to contribute to a new hospital wing, rather than any clear demonstration of intelligence. Unlike them, he needed to supplement his meager instructor’s salary by serving as a personal physician to the wealthy and cantankerous, at the beck and call of London’s elite.
Though this patient, in particular, was proving a very troublesome case.
Lady Austerley’s lips thinned—if indeed an aging dowager countess’s lip could thin any more than nature already commanded. “Cancelling my annual ball is not an option, Dr. Merial. It is seven o’clock already. Half of London will be summoning their coaches, and the other half will be lamenting their lack of an invitation.” She rubbed her gnarled hands together. “Now, surely you have some more of that marvelous medication. It helped so much the last time you gave it to me.”
Daniel sighed, suspecting this irksome venture could be explained by little more than an old lady’s lonely pride. It had not escaped his notice that he was one of Lady Austerley’s most frequent—indeed, one of her only—visitors. Her husband was long dead, and their forty year union had not been blessed with children. The cousin who had inherited her husband’s title never came to call. She’d outlived her friends, and now she seemed determined to outlive her heart.
Diary of an Accidental Wallflower Page 1