Eliza Harkstead was, without a shadow of a doubt, the blandest person in the room.
In a sea of jewel-coloured silks and sumptuous warm velvets she was an insipid, uninspiring and monotonous festival of brown. From the unruly and nondescript dark curls pinned ruthlessly to the top of her head to the tips of her practical tan boots she was as drab as a dust sheet in a gloomy old attic. And, visually at least, as dull as dishwater that had been used to wash a sink full of chocolate pots.
Instantly forgettable and practically invisible.
So brown, in fact, that she blended perfectly with the panelling.
To test that theory, Eliza was sorely tempted to splay herself against the Duke of Manningtree’s ancient woodwork in the forlorn hope that she might miraculously disappear from his depressingly cheerful Yuletide festivities completely before they had really started.
Two hours in and already she knew it was doomed to be a depressingly long three days. At this punishingly slow rate it would feel more like three weeks by the time the wretched masquerade ball crawled around on the day before Christmas Eve.
Eliza loathed balls at the best of times—largely because she was always on such a tight budget that she felt miserably underdressed. But at a masquerade, where everyone went ridiculously over the top, even in her very best coral frock she was doomed to be uninspiringly underwhelming. Although at least it wasn’t brown.
She stared down at her mud-coloured skirt and sighed. Her own stupid fault, she supposed. When she had been told this was an informal ‘getting to know you’ afternoon tea, which would be followed by an invigorating tour of the grounds, she had believed it. But, while she was sensibly dressed for the anticipated walk, everyone else had obviously come here to shine.
Dukes did that to people.
All the gentlemen wanted to become his friend and all the ladies—all the many, many, many hordes of single ladies, gathered here in their droves—wanted to become his wife. Her silly cousin Honoria included.
And while they waited for the Duke to return from his ‘urgent business elsewhere’, those same ladies swarmed around his tall, dark and handsome brother. She had met the dashing and effervescent Lord Julius Symington before—not that he would remember her, of course. He was quite the catch in his own right, with his own estate and fortune bequeathed to him by his eminent father, so if the ladies failed to snare themselves the Duke on this visit at least they still had the spare.
The poor man would have to beat them off with a stick if they became any more boisterous. Already those eager girls were practically climbing over one another to inch a little closer to his person.
All rather pathetic, in Eliza’s humble opinion, but mind-numbingly predictable. For surely every single female of good breeding wanted a husband of even better breeding in order to feel complete. That she didn’t made her the exception, she knew.
‘Do you think he will be more handsome than his brother?’ Honoria was not only openly staring at the viscount, she was doing so longingly. Fluttering her eyelashes and simpering over her fan for all she was worth. ‘Because it is hard to imagine anyone being more handsome than Lord Julius.’
Her poor cousin had only been out a year, and at just eighteen, in Eliza’s unsought opinion, was much too young to be making doe eyes at a man a decade older. She was still a child—albeit one encased in a petite but fully developed woman’s body—and was still to develop an ounce of common sense.
‘Stop gaping, Honoria. It’s undignified.’
‘I want him to be aware of my partiality...just in case the Duke decides to cast his net elsewhere.’
‘Men don’t want to be handed a woman’s affection on a plate. They prefer the thrill of the chase. Look at Lord Julius’s face.’ Currently surrounded by seven equally simpering and fluttering young ladies, he appeared ready to bolt at any moment. ‘He is not enjoying any of this attention.’
‘Do you think I should go over there too?’
It was like talking to a brick wall.
‘Absolutely not! Stay here. Stop staring at him like a starving dog at a butcher’s window and try to be a bit mysterious.’ If she was any more obvious, poor Honoria might as well be carrying a placard. ‘Better still, turn your back to him and focus your attention on this magnificent art collection. It’s lauded as being one of the best in England.’
She steered her immature cousin in the direction of the fireplace, where a very stern-faced ancestor of the Duke posed resplendent in Tudor garb, captured for posterity in vibrant oils.
‘Look—that’s a Holbein.’
‘I always thought Holbein was a place in town. I am sure Mama has taken me shopping there a time or two.’
Eliza almost groaned aloud. ‘That is Holborn, dearest. This is a Holbein... E. I. N. He was a sixteenth-century painter who—’
‘Honoria!’ The dulcet tones of Aunt Penelope came out of nowhere. ‘What are you doing over here when Lord Julius is over there?’ She grabbed her daughter’s arm and pierced Eliza with irritated glare. ‘Shouldn’t you be attending to Lady Trumble?’
Eliza bit her lip at the insulting jibe. ‘Great-Aunt Violet is having a whale of a time with her friends.’
Aunt Penelope might want to deny that Eliza was actually part of the family as well as her great-aunt’s companion at all costs, but if it didn’t bother Great-Aunt Violet, and it certainly didn’t bother Eliza, she was not going to deny being a blood relation purely so the social climbing Penelope could save face.
‘As you can plainly see, she doesn’t currently require my assistance in any way.’
Not that she ever did in reality. Great-Aunt Violet was as sharp as a chisel and as wily as a fox. She needed a companion about as much as Honoria needed to simper over Lord Julius.
‘Then at least go and sit over there.’ Penelope gestured to the empty line of chairs at the very back of the room. ‘Out of the way. You are not an invited guest, Eliza.’
Something her aunt had been at great pains to remind her all the way here.
‘You are here in a servant’s capacity. And, as such, you really shouldn’t be socialising.’ She cast a critical eye over Eliza’s brown walking dress and rolled her eyes. ‘Especially not in a frock as dull and plain as that one.’
With her daughter clamped to her side, Aunt Penelope marched off in the direction of the Symington spare, sliced a path amongst her silly daughter’s rivals and practically thrust the child at him while they both simpered for all they were worth.
It was painful to watch.
Then, to make Eliza’s living hell complete, another group of young ladies, thus far excluded from the space to simper, set up shop before her and began an overly boisterous game of charades in the vain hope that they might draw the gentleman’s eye. Each considered and narcissistic mime was accompanied by much squealing and artful breathy laughter which grated on each and every one of Eliza’s sensible nerves.
It all begged the question—if they were this desperate to court Lord Julius, what nonsense would they resort to for his brother the illustrious Duke?
Longingly, she stared towards the open door to her left. With the Duke’s arrival depressingly imminent, would anyone notice if she slipped away?
A quick glance to the right confirmed that her indomitable Great-Aunt Violet was in her element and thoroughly enjoying holding court amongst the gaggle of older matrons ensconced in the corner. As she was the only person in the room likely to miss her, or even talk to her for that matter, and Aunt Penelope would be delighted to see the back of her, Eliza decided to seize the opportunity and escape, secure in the heady knowledge there would be a book in what was bound to be the well-stocked library with her name on it. Because there was always a book with her name on it, and she would much rather lose herself in its fascinating pages than sit here slowly dying inside from the interminable boredom of the most tiresome of all house parties.
A friendly footman pointed her in the correct direction, and after a full five minutes of walking the length of a gallery aptly named the Long Gallery, she finally found Jerusalem. The biggest, tallest, most book-stuffed library she had ever seen.
The dark oak shelves spanned between shiny marble floor to the towering domed ceiling, covering every inch of wall. Enormous arched windows flooded the space with light, while a fireplace which must be a good eight feet wide by eight feet tall crackled brightly with enough comforting warmth to effectively banish the brisk December chill outside, irrespective of the sheer size of the space.
Overwhelmed and overawed, she spun in a slow circle and inhaled the wonderful aroma of print-covered old pages. Perhaps this dreadful week wouldn’t be quite so bad after all now that she had found this oasis?
There really was nothing like the comforting smell of books. Books that would expand her mind or whisk her away to exciting places and great adventures she secretly yearned for but was too sensible to chase. There was enough here to keep her thirsty mind sated for twenty years or more, and in the absence of any chance of a decent conversation, which the outspoken and inquisitive aspects of her character adored above all else, it hinted at salvation.
Spoilt for choice, she ran her fingertips over a row of leather spines in the closest bookcase until she found an old friend—The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha was one of her father’s favourites, and he had read it to her and her mother, from cover to cover when they had been snowed in at an inn one Christmas. Seeing as she was stuck here now, albeit without all the snow and the lively company, it seemed a rather fitting choice.
With the book in her hand, she went in search of a chair to sit in, but bizarrely found none. What sort of person had such a magnificent library and didn’t put a single seat in it?
The sort that didn’t read, that was who.
What a criminal waste of all this knowledge and escapism.
Her already low estimation of the elusive but doubtless pompous and self-absorbed Duke of Manningtree went down several notches. Even his enormous windows failed to have windowsills big enough for her to rest her bottom on.
In desperation, she wandered to the furthest end of the library, only to discover it continued via a narrow book-lined passageway tucked into the corner and hidden from plain view. Intrigued and determined, she followed it, turned the corner of some more bookshelves—and stopped dead.
His head bent over a huge desk in this small anteroom, a tawny-haired man in spectacles was scratching copious notes into a huge ledger with economic haste. At her gasp, he looked up, clearly surprised by her intrusion, bright blue eyes blinking back at her through the lenses of his glasses.
So very handsome it quite took her breath away.
Like her, he was plainly dressed. He wore an austere dark coat over an equally plain dark waistcoat. The comforting uniform of those born to serve.
‘I am sorry to have bothered you, but I was looking for a chair...’
And the only visible seat seemed to be the cosy-looking leather chesterfield on the opposite side of this small and secret reading nook.
‘And finally I have found one. Do you mind if I sit here for a little bit and read?’
She waved Don Quixote for good measure. He didn’t smile. Which was a shame, because he had a very pleasant face. An excellent pair of shoulders too, if the fit of his unfussy black coat was any indication.
‘I promise I shan’t disturb your work.’
Apparently he needed to give her simple request some thought, which he did with an exceedingly put-upon expression, before he huffed out a sigh. ‘If you must.’
He might well be good-looking but his manners could do with some improvement she decided, and she seriously considered telling him so before stomping off to find somewhere else to while away the afternoon. But as this distant and silent library was the farthest she could get from the house party without leaving the house, and because she was much too stubborn to be bullied out of this magnificent library by a man with undoubtedly the same lowly rank as she, Eliza dug her heels in.
It was one thing being put in her place by Aunt Penelope—after years of consistent censure whenever they collided she expected nothing less from her—but it was quite another thing entirely from a complete stranger with an inflated sense of his own importance.
‘Oh, I must, sir. As I fear my very sanity depends upon it.’
She wouldn’t allow his lack of manners to spoil her blissful and very likely short-lived stretch of freedom. Her sensible papa would urge her to use diplomacy to get what she wanted, rather than the pithy observations which came to her naturally, so she forced herself to smile, acknowledging that she might be feeling tetchy more because of Aunt Penelope than because of this clerk.
‘You have my word I shall be as quiet as a mouse.’
Despite her obvious olive branch, he failed to smile in return. Instead, looking bemused and a tad irritated at her intrusion, he went back to scratching whatever it was he was scratching so intently with his quill while she settled into the sofa, opened her book and tried her damnedest to forget he was there.
Which, for some reason, and despite her stubbornness, proved to be completely impossible. Perhaps because she could sense he was staring at her and, for some inexplicable yet overwhelming reason, she really wanted to stare back.