Roxegate,
London, England
February 1837
HOLLY LOOKED OUT OVER a carpet of white. Her bedchamber at Roxegate faced the London street, but winter and snow had dealt an eerie calm to the usually busy thoroughfare. She’d not seen a carriage for a good ten minutes or so, and no one had passed by on foot for even longer, bundled in warm cloaks and furs. Even the plethora of cousins on her mother’s side who were similarly holed up in Torrence House had yet to brave the cold. Usually, they were running through the street, shrieking and throwing snowballs at each other, completely oblivious to the fact they were the children of a future Marquis and therefore Must Behave Properly, but then her family had always been odd.
“This is ridiculous,” she said.
“What’s ridiculous?” Charlotte asked. Her cousin-through-her-father lay on Holly’s bed, throwing a cricket ball in the air which made a thwack sound each time she caught it.
“This.” Gesturing at the window, she glared at the snow. “And Mama and Papa believing it a good idea to remain in London over the winter months.”
“Oh,” Charlotte replied, disinterest rampant in her tone. She threw the cricket ball again.
“Come away from the window,” her other cousin, Davina, ordered. “You are making me cold just standing there.”
Defiantly, Holly turned to lean her back against the window, crossing her arms. Cold immediately invaded, but she refused to shiver.
“All our parents have decided to stay in London for winter,” Davina continued. “And what’s worse, they have decided we should all stay at Roxegate. All. Of. Us.”
Davina had a point. Their family was large, with all their fathers having produced numerous children. She herself had three siblings, and her mother had the temerity to be with child once more. She was hoping for a brother this time, as she already had too many sisters to deal with.
She and her cousins had turned fifteen the previous spring, their birthdays within days of each other. While her mother didn’t particularly care, she knew her aunt had started to pester Davina about preparing for their inevitable debuts. Charlotte’s mother was too busy with her studies into the arcane and the spiritual to bother Charlotte about events that were years and years away, so Davina bore the brunt of dress fittings, lessons on deportment, and lectures on “Attracting Men” (always in quotation marks and capitalised), and then she reported back to Holly and Charlotte and cursed both of them when they laughed hysterically at her ire.
Movement in the street outside caught her eye. A carriage had arrived at the house opposite and a tall, lithe young man descended, hair of the purest gold peeking from the brim of his hat to curl over the collar of his great coat.
Her heart began to pound.
The young man walked up the stairs and the door swung open before he arrived. He said something to the butler, handing him his gloves and walking stick, then disappeared inside.
Pressing her arm into her stomach, she stared at the closed door. Her skin prickled and she felt slightly faint. Hugh Delancey had arrived home.
Most likely he’d arrived home after a night of debauchery. It was ten o’clock in the morning, and the only time she saw him before three in the afternoon was at the end of a debauch. She knew this because she’d been cataloguing his movements for years.
At twenty-six, Hugh was eleven years older than her and seemed to be enjoying his bachelorhood immensely. When gossip turned to him, she listened intently, desperate for even a scrap of information on him. She’d heard all about the wagers, the opera dancers, the wild parties. Her brother had quite explicitly told her she was to steer clear of men such as Hugh after she took her bow and entered her season. She had told him, in no uncertain terms, he had absolutely no jurisdiction in whom she chose to grace with her company and he was a dunderhead anyway.
The worst was the time she’d heard Hugh had been challenged to a duel. That had been horrible. She’d heard the rumour he was to meet Viscount Craigburn at dawn two days hence, and she wore her nails to the quick. Viscount Craigburn was a crack shot, and it wasn’t until she’d seen Hugh arriving back at his town house, none the worse for wear, that she’d been able to breathe again.
She placed her hand on the window. Well. It seemed this crush wasn’t going away. “I’m going to marry Hugh Delancey.”
Charlotte missed catching the cricket ball, landing with a heavy thud on the floor.
Davina blinked. “Beg yours?”
“Hugh Delancey. I shall marry him. Two years after my debut, I should think. I should like to enjoy myself first.”
“Hugh Delancey is too old,” Charlotte scoffed.
“Just because Nicholas is only two years older than us doesn’t mean everyone else is decrepit.”
Charlotte’s cheeks turned bright red. “You’re decrepit,” she mumbled.
She refused to dignify that with an answer.
“Putting age difference aside, there is the small fact he does not know you from Adam,” Davina said.
Holly shrugged. “We’ve met.”
“When?” she demanded.
“He lives across the street. Of course we’ve met.” She didn’t want to tell Davina every time she saw Hugh, an odd pulling sensation overcame her, as if he should always be by her side. Her heart sped, and her breath stopped, and she didn’t know what to do with her hands. It was a bit frightening, the violence of the feeling, but she knew what it meant. Her mother had told her how she felt about her father. All that remained was to convince Hugh to admit he felt the same.
She’d seen how he’d looked at her, and then seen his self-disgust before he looked away. She knew he believed her too young and for the moment she was, but she wouldn’t be young forever. There was a connection between them and, when she was old enough, they would be together.
Thus, when she turned eighteen, she made her bow. When she turned twenty, she cornered him and told him in no uncertain terms she meant to court him. He’d resisted, but she saw the longing in his eyes and so she’d ignored his half-hearted protests. After a week of determined courtship, he’d allowed her to see he felt the same love she had for him.
And so, when she was twenty-one, after a far too long engagement where she’d tempted him at every turn and he put up a valiant resistance only to fold like a cheap dress the night before their wedding, they married. And they lived happily ever after—except for when they fought, or when their children were annoying, or when she’d stupidly thought to have the servants clean out his pigsty of a study, or when he’d bought her a nosegay of petunias even though he should have known she reacted to them poorly, or when she was sick with their second child and he rubbed her swollen, aching feet, or when he caught a cold that became pneumonia and she was deathly afraid she would lose him, or when their son broke his arm falling from a tree, or when….