by Jaima Fixsen
Contents
Also by Jaima Fixsen
Copyright
Dedication
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
Twenty-Four
Twenty-Five
Twenty-Six
Twenty-Seven
Twenty-Eight
Twenty-Nine
Thirty
Thirty-One
Thirty-Two
Thirty-Three
Thirty-Four
Thirty-Five
Thirty-Six
Thirty-Seven
Thirty-Eight
Thirty-Nine
Forty
Forty-One
Author's note
Also by Jaima Fixsen:
Fairchild
Sophy, Lord Fairchild’s unfortunate, illegitimate daughter, didn't expect to fall from her horse running away from her father's house. Nor did she expect the upstart neighbour who rescued her to be quite so good looking. When he mistakes her for her legitimate sister, she can't resist playing along…
Incognita
Jilted and faced with returning to the battlefields of Spain, Captain Alistair Beaumaris is quite sure his life can’t get any worse. Then he mistakes a perfectly respectable widow for a female of a much more interesting variety, and discovers he was wrong—on both counts.
Courting Scandal
Laura Edwards took the the stage to fund her brother’s medical career. Now he’s established, he wants her to turn respectable and persuades her to join him on a visit to the country. There, Laura finds herself playing propriety in plain sight of one of her biggest London admirers, Jasper Rushford, the care-for-nothing son of the local viscount. He just might have recognized her…
Find out more at jaimafixsen.com
Copyright © 2016 by Jaima Fixsen
Cover photo © Lee Avison | Trevillion Images
Cover design by Rachael Anderson
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever with the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.
ISBN 978-0-9918310-7-4
To the readers who’ve become friends and the friends who’ve become readers. Thank you for making what began as a solitary pastime worthwhile.
One
There are girls who believe, every morning, that this could be the day that changes their destiny. Mary Buchanan was one of them. She was mistaken, though, expecting it today. Destiny would not call her until Tuesday—and meanwhile, there was breakfast.
Breakfasts were a tedious affair at number fourteen, Wimpole Street. Dr. Sidney Buchanan, Mary’s father, had an iron constitution and a rusty digestion. He never complained—that would be feeble—but he became unpleasant, especially when his sister, Mrs. Susan Yates, who kept house for him, ordered fried eggs. Eggs in general didn’t suit him, but boiled were bearable, less insult to the workings of his innards. Fried, on the other hand…
Mary, arriving two minutes late at table (number fourteen was a punctual household), saw the eggs and wished for the umpteenth time Aunt Yates would learn to notice others. Any attempt to avert the crisis would have to come from her. “The kippers smell wonderful,” she said, hoping this might prevail on her father. Alas, he merely grunted and proceeded to apportion the available dishes in precise segments on his plate. Whatever else he might be, Dr. Buchanan was not a shirker. Worried, but still game, Mary leapt from her seat, beating him to the dish of eggs by inches.
“Mmm. Pardon me, Papa. I’m famished this morning.” She wasn’t, but ladled three onto her plate. Papa’s eyebrow lifted when she hesitated over the last. “You don’t really want this one. Do you?” she asked.
“Your father hasn’t any.” Aunt Yates frowned from her end of the table. “It’s incomprehensible to me that you should be so selfish.”
“Forgive me, Papa.” Mary surrendered the last egg to her father.
As Mary swallowed bites of egg with undiminished resolve, a cloud of distemper gathered around Papa. She knew, from a glance in his appointment diary, he had no house calls scheduled for today and no lectures at the hospital. If she ate quickly and excused herself, she could avoid him, but if she was unlucky she’d be called to copy out his letters. He was in just the mood to attack Dr. Howard, with whom he conducted a long-standing feud in a series of letters to the editors of The Lancet. He reached for the newspaper and Mary felt a surge of hope. There must be something in the pages of The Morning Chronicle to distract him. Her second egg was gone. She attacked the third.
“No bite should ever exceed the size of a half-penny,” Aunt Yates intoned from down the table.
Mary recalculated. Eight forkfuls to go.
“That tears it!” Mary’s father flung aside the newspaper. It landed in the butter dish. “It’s intolerable!” He rose from his chair.
“The egg?” Mary asked.
“Use your head, girl. Why should eggs matter? It’s these hooligans agitating for reform! After this disaster in France…” Ah. Politics. Lately the topic was exercising Papa more than usual. It was most unfair, because there was nothing she or her aunt could do about it.
Aunt Yates shook her head. “You’re quite right, Sidney. I don’t know what’s to be done.”
“I blame the French. Every time they save the government from hoodlums and revolutionaries, the fools hand it right back instead of putting these ideas down with a strong hand. After such a succession of disasters you’d think Englishmen would have more sense than to talk reform.”
Aunt Yates understood enough to add something to the last bit. “It would be a great mistake to tamper with anything.”
“Indeed. Yet now Lord Blandford says he’s in favour of reform.”
Mary studied her plate. Few things upset Papa as much as backsliding Tories.
Aunt Yates shuddered. “The stories one hears. Unionists, machine breakers, French provocateurs… I can’t feel safe even in my own home.”
Mary resisted the obvious rejoinder: if her aunt ever felt well or safe she’d be deprived of her principal enjoyments. Her favourite hobby was suffering.
Papa wasn’t finished. “Seems it’s not enough that reformers have suborned those fool Whigs and been permitted to organize. They must pelt us with pamphlets and imploring journalism and—well, it was bad enough when the Chinese got a foothold in the neighbourhood. I told you it wouldn’t end there. Now we’ve got a radical. Right next door!” His hand crumpled round the newspaper.
“Someone’s taken the house, then?” Aunt Yates asked.
“Samuel Brown. Writes for the Times.” Dr. Buchanan sneered. He didn’t subscribe to liberal newspapers.
“Can’t you do something?” Aunt Yates asked. “Just think of the people he will invite there.”
Mary liked the intrigue of living next door to a possible Guy Fawkes, but she’d glanced out the window before coming downstairs. “No danger of company yet. They haven’t got the pianoforte inside.” Conspirators, even the most fearsome, probably needed a day or two to recuperate after moving houses.
“Don’t gawk out the windows. It isn’t becoming,” Aunt Yates said between sips of tea.
Mary ducked her head meekly.
“What does a single man want with a pianoforte?” Dr. Buchanan snor
ted. “I’d up and sell, if this weren’t—”
“I’m quite sure my nerves would shatter from the strain,” Aunt Yates put in.
Mary moved the last bite of egg around with her fork. An Oriental on one corner and a radical right next door. “Which neighbour would you say is worse? Mr. Brown or Mrs. Chin?”
Of course she got a scold for impertinence. It seemed only fitting that immediately after breakfast it began to rain.
Sunday and Monday stayed grey and wet, with Mary’s sufferings communicated only to her sketchbook diary. She drew a picture of her father tearing up his newspaper and then a kinder portrait of Mrs. Chin’s footman. His name was Benjamin Pickett and he was devastatingly handsome, even when hurrying up the steps of the house holding out his mistress’s umbrella. She copied out an angry rebuttal to the latest challenge from Doctor Howard, looking up the spellings of the Latin insults her father preferred. And then drew some more, since Aunt was still sleeping. If the weather kept up, she’d need to visit the stationer. Her large and artistic hand wasn’t economical with paper.
Tuesday dawned little better. The sky was lighter, but the drizzle went on. Dr. Buchanan spent the morning treating patients and grumbling behind his newspaper. Aunt Yates was getting fractious. Usually she amused herself writing melancholy poetry, but today her muse had deserted her. It was a trying circumstance because instead she decided to pass the morning conducting a household inventory. These were completed at random intervals at least quarterly to prevent the servants from cheating them. Mary bore it as best she could.
“We’re short a hand towel,” Aunt Yates said, frowning over the number Mary had counted in the linen cupboard.
“Not if you have one on your washstand.”
“I can’t recall,” Aunt Yates said. “Run and check.”
Mary did, hastening up the stairs for the seventh time, wondering how long they must keep it up before stopping for luncheon. It was exhausting, scurrying about the house, making note of every item, inspecting the carpets and wallpapers for injuries and documenting every one.
“This is new,” Aunt Yates said, indicating a minute tear in the dining room wallpaper. “Really, I’ve told you a hundred times to be careful.”
Mary, who knew the tear was a result of the housemaid mishandling the carpet sweeper, kept quiet. She liked Annie Fry and didn’t want her to quit.
By the time they were finished with the linens and three of the downstairs rooms (Papa was seeing patients so they had to leave his consulting rooms alone), Mary was biting her tongue, wondering if Turkish slaves were driven so mercilessly. When the post came, it was a welcome relief.
Unfortunately, it was short-lived. Aunt Yates immediately took up The Ladies Magazine and turned to the poetry section to see the work that had beaten out her submission. Mary watched her mouth tighten.
“Hideous,” Aunt Yates said, throwing aside the periodical. She coughed, and when she drew away her handkerchief her hand shook, signifying an approaching migraine.
“Perhaps you should lie down,” Mary suggested hopefully. “Should I get your drops?”
It took an hour to persuade her aunt to do what she’d wanted to do all along and go to bed with a dose of laudanum. Mary poured out a generous spoonful.
“I’ll never sleep,” Aunt Yates moaned. “Not with those furniture movers next door.”
“The wagons left over an hour ago.”
Aunt Yates only sniffed in reply. Mary took that as permission to creep away and close the door. Then, on light feet, she escaped to the kitchen where Cook eyed her with weary sympathy and handed her a biscuit.
“She’s a tartar, but never you mind,” Cook said as Mary slid onto the bench by the stove. Beside her, Annie toiled away blacking the doctor’s boots.
“Am I to have one?” Annie asked, looking at the pan of biscuits.
“Yes, when the boots are done,” Cook said. “Otherwise it’ll taste like blacking. Finish up, then you can have one before you go.” Tuesday was Annie’s afternoon off.
Annie scowled and attacked another shoe. “Anything missing?” she asked Mary acidly.
“You know there wasn’t,” Mary said. “And I let her think the nick in the dining room wallpaper was my fault.”
“Thank you, miss,” Annie said, mollified.
Mary finished her biscuit and wiped away the crumbs. “Is Papa gone out?” she asked. Upstairs, tending to her aunt, she hadn’t been able to hear.
Annie nodded. “Cook and I were saying you could use a breath of air.”
“Isn’t it still raining?” Mary asked.
“Sun’s come out from the clouds and there’s a few things I need for tonight’s dinner.” Cook winked at her. “You could go for a stroll after the marketing.”
Mary accepted with gratitude and relief. Annie, finished with the boots and her biscuit, departed for her mother’s. Her haste blocked Mary’s view, but in the second before the door snapped shut, Mary thought she glimpsed a wide set of shoulders.
“Is that—?” She was across the kitchen and through the door, following after.
“Never you mind.” Cook pulled Mary back with a firm hand.
“That looked like Ben Pickett,” Mary insisted.
“I didn’t see anything,” Cook said. Mary sat down to finish the end of her biscuit. It tasted dry. Cook, watching from the corner of her eye as she stirred the sauce, unbent and offered Mary another.
“I’m not hungry,” Mary said. Father would be gone at least another two hours, judging from his appointment book. With Cook’s marketing as an excuse, she needn’t fear a lecture, even if Aunt Yates woke before her return, but the spoonful of laudanum ought to prevent that.
“It might be hard to find cauliflower today,” Mary said, surveying the list. “I may be quite a while.”
Cook winked. “Could be. I daresay you’ll find some, if you look hard enough. Mrs. Yates made a point of requesting it.” They shared a complicit smile and Mary set out, cloaked as a precaution against the untrustworthy sky, her basket in one hand and a knotted purse with her pin money in the other. At the stationer’s, she gazed lustfully at Moroccan leather diaries, Italian paper, and settled for new sticks of charcoal. These she went to test in the park, drawing a nearby oak and the fashionable lady lingering beneath. The lady didn’t stay long, but Mary finished from memory. It was no trouble at all, recalling the detail of that elegant gown, so much more pleasing to look on than her simple blue muslin and brown spencer.
Her thoughts wandered with her charcoal through a pattern of paisley, a fringe, the undulations of silken folds. It was nothing to her if Ben Pickett was handsome. He was a servant, so it meant nothing at all if he’d developed a preference for Annie’s ginger hair and freckles, instead of her own wheaten curls. But she’d been drawing Ben Pickett for over a year, and Annie had joined their household just six months ago.
Mary was seventeen years old, nearly eighteen, without a single flirtation, let alone a beau, and no expectation of ever acquiring one. Aunt Yates’s favourite companion was her own ill-health, and Papa…well, he had his patients and his friends, who he met at his club. Once or twice a year, when he invited them to dine, Mary had her dinner upstairs on a tray. There was church, of course, when Aunt Yates’s health permitted. Papa said the right things, but strenuously avoided religion. Mary was quite alone, a shadow who watched and sketched. One could hope, but eventually the truth must be faced. There was nothing to suggest that life would ever change for her.
A drop of water plopped onto her page, blurring the bark of the half-finished oak. Mary looked up, for the water hadn’t come from her face. It was raining fat, heavy splashes that changed from an intermittent spatter to relentless drumming in the time it took to gather her things. Mary dashed for the sheltering oak, already half-soaked. The ground hissed, indignant at such a pummelling.
Umbrellas were useless against this driving rain, even if she had one. Huddling under the leaves did no good either. Water dripped from the
lank tails of her hair and rolled from her eyebrows and the end of her nose. She was wet through already and might as well start for home. It wasn’t far, but it seemed so today, with the gutters running over and wet skirts slapping against her legs. Her fingers trembling with cold, Mary ran up the steps and pounded the knocker. No one came, so she huddled against the door frame and knocked again, listening for footsteps and the snick of the latch.
“I’ve come back!” She rapped once more, but to no avail, only catching the pitying gaze of a coachman driving past. Mary ducked her chin in embarrassment. There must be hordes of people looking at her: wives and servants safe behind their windows, the occupants of a second coach coming the other way, and two pedestrians like moving mushrooms, so deep were they in their umbrellas. Mary scurried down the steps and around to the kitchen door. Cook was probably singing as she worked next to the warm oven, but would hear her. Mary banged on the door and rattled the handle. “Mrs. Bradford! Mrs. Bradford!”
Her knuckles smarted. “Annie?” she called hopefully, knowing she wouldn’t have returned this early.
It was no good calling for Aunt Yates, who must still be asleep. If Papa had gone to his club instead of coming home, she might be here for hours. They couldn’t all be out. Annie might not have returned, but surely Cook was in. Mary bent over the window, shielding her eyes against the glass, but though she made out a glow in the stove, there was no sign of Cook’s homely bulk.
Pleading internally, Mary pounded again, glad the cold was numbing her bruised knuckles. Trying to warm herself by shifting from one foot to the other, she was startled by a voice at her shoulder.
“Pardon me. Can I help?”
Mary turned around. A man stood behind her, blocking the rain with his impressive height and vast umbrella. Stunned by the abrupt cessation of the pelting rain and his striking face, Mary mumbled, “I can’t get in. They’ve all gone out.”
His lips moved, but she couldn’t seem to hear.