CHAPTERONE
Sevenoaks, Kent, England
“Iwill not go, Allan. Nothing you can say, nothing you can utter will induce me to go and stay in that woman’s house. I have no wish to go.”
“You have said that for the last half an hour.”
“And I will continue to say it,” Dorothy insisted.
“I will change your mind.”
“Yet, here we are, with my mind unchanged. So, we appear to be at a stalemate.” She folded her arms in a challenge. “What is your next move, Brother dear?”
They fell into an uneasy silence. Dorothy only ever called him “Brother dear” when they were arguing and used it in the most ironic tone she could possibly muster.
They sat in his study, staring at one another. Allan sat calmly where their poor father used to sit, having inherited the title of the Marquess of Padleigh one year ago. Dorothy sat in the spindly chair where their father’s business partners used to sit.
This room, decked in great landscape paintings of Sussex and Kent, had once been full of laughter and smiles, for their father had never done business with a man he could not laugh with. Yet, since his passing, it had become a room of sadness, and now of anger.
Dorothy and Allan had argued with one another many times over the last twelve months. Tonight was no different. His soft features looked unnatural in their anger, his smooth brow furrowing to a pointed line and his bright blue eyes somehow appearing dark in the faded candlelight, though Dorothy thought it rather more due to his anger than the light.
“Dorothy.” Allan sighed heavily. “You cannot hide from the ton forever.”
She said nothing and looked down at her lap. This was the source of most of their arguments these days.
Garbed in one of her most casual dresses, it still bore the marks on the petticoat from where she had walked around the estate early that morning, the dirt reaching the hem. She fiddled with her skirt, shuddering at the thought of having to swap the comfortable gown for one that was stiff and made of satin.
“It was our mother’s wish as well as our father’s that you would join Society someday.”
Dorothy jerked her head away. She looked from one painting to the next, each pastoral image recreated in beautiful brush strokes. There were happy faces, of shepherds and shepherdesses, country folk going about their business. Even one of John Constable’s great paintings of Flatford decked the walls, the happy faces shining out from the serenely green setting.
This is where I belong, in a world full of lightness and smiles. I do not belong in a ballroom.
Their mother had died just a few months before their father, from a sickness that the doctors could never quite give a name to. Dorothy had followed her mother’s wishes and made her debut that year but had found it even worse than she had expected.
“Mother recognized my complaints,” Dorothy said, struggling to shift her focus back to her brother. “The ton gossips, constantly. They care more for the way one looks, the way they dress, which modiste they go to, and what newspaper is tucked under their arm, rather than if they have actually read it or what’s going on up here.” She tapped her temple rather forcefully, even hurting her finger in the effort, though it made her point quite aptly.
“I know.” Allan held up his hands as if he was calming a wild bull on one of their tenant farms. “You will not hear me praising the ton as some fabulous thing, but it is anecessarything.”
Dorothy jerked her head away once more, not wanting to hear the word. She fixed her gaze on one of the candles upon his desk instead, gazing as the flame flickered back and forth, that yellow dancer leaping about thanks to the fast words that escaped Allan’s mouth, disturbing the air.
“How else are you supposed to marry someday, Dorothy? How else are you supposed to find a home of your own, a gentleman of your own, if you do not ever leave this building?”
“I did not know you were so tired of my company that you wished to kick me out of this house,” Dorothy said, her tone curt. “Have I angered you that much this last year?” When Allan winced, she shook her head. “On second thought, don’t answer that. I have grown as tired of arguing as you have.”
“You know you will always be welcome here.” Allan’s voice had deepened. She did believe his sincerity, and it made her spine soften, the chair creaking beneath her with the movement. “Yet, I have to do right by you, as my sister. I am your guardian now, and that means when we are invited to Society events, you must attend.”
“I am still in mourning!” she insisted, moving back to the edge of her chair.
“Our father passed over a year ago. Neither of us wears the mourning weeds anymore, so that will hardly help you now.”
She turned away, shaking her head once more as she shifted ninety degrees on her chair and directed her face toward one of the paintings, determined to gaze at that idealized view of the world for a little longer.
A year does not end the grief.
It baffled her, the concept that grief had a time by which it should end, but no. It didn’t work like that. The grief persisted, like a burning ember that never died out, not completely. It continued to smolder in the back of her gut, meaning she was never far away from tears when she thought of her mother and father.
“Spring is just beginning,” Allan continued in a calmer tone . “Lady Webster is a good hostess. She holds these hunting parties, this retreat for a few weeks each year. People would say it is an honor to be invited to stay at her house for a month.”
