Chapter One
Fridays were not Gwen’s favorite; they too often rained. But in April of 1890, they turned lucky for her. On the first Friday of the month, a note arrived from an anonymous admirer, delicately sprinkled with rose-scented tears. On the second Friday, she supervised the placement of the final pagoda in the garden at Heaton Dale. And on the third Friday, beneath an unseasonably bright sun, three hundred of London’s most fashionable citizens filed into church to witness her marriage to Viscount Pennington.
Gwen waited on her feet, in a little antechamber off the nave, a wholly unnecessary fire crackling in the hearth. The ceremony should have started half an hour ago, but (so Belinda had told her, in a brief visit to ensure that her veil still sat straight) the guests were too busy consorting to be seated. The brightest lights of society were convening, some for the first time since last season; according to one of the social columns this morning, “Only the angelic Miss Maudsley, whom everybody adores,” could gather a crowd of such numbers before Whitsuntide.
Gwen took a deep breath and cast her eyes to the window above her. It was not odd, really, that she wished she were in the pews, exchanging greetings. Or outside, even. In the park. The air in here felt stifling, far too warm.
The walls seemed to be closing in.
What am I doing?
She bit her lip. Her discomfort was only the fault of the fire, of course, and the boy who fed it too much wood. And perhaps a bit of it was owed to the memory of that other time, and that other fiancé. It had taken months of brilliant successes to persuade the papers to describe her as anything other than “the much-beleaguered Miss M——, so dreadfully disappointed by the treacherous Lord T——.”
Still, for all that she was now a shining success set to achieve her greatest triumph, this corset was strangling the life from her. And her gown, encrusted with innumerable pearls, weighed thirty pounds at the least. One might drown in such a gown! And these heeled shoes pinched her toes awfully.
She took a deep breath. This is the happiest day of my life.
Of course it was. Her feet throbbed, regardless. The stool to her right began to beckon like a siren. An evil siren. The bustle of her train would not survive a crushing.
Giggles exploded from across the room. Four bridesmaids in pink and ivory ribbons clustered by the door, their noses pressed to the crack. “Oh, Lord,” Katherine Percy squealed. “I died! She matched peacock feathers with plaid!”
“That’s appalling,” said Lady Anne. “One would cut her, but she’s evidently too blind to take note of it.”
Gwen cleared her throat. “Lady Embury has arrived?”
Four faces turned toward her, mouths agape. “You’re a marvel,” Katherine said. “How did you guess? Yes, it was she!”
Gwen pressed her palm to her stomach, which was jumping so violently that it seemed a wonder her hand could not detect the commotion. She had told the baroness not to add the feathers. An entire morning they had spent designing that hat! What was the point of soliciting counsel if one refused to heed it?
“Oh!” Lucy clutched Katherine’s shoulder. “Look now! Gwen, your groom is passing by!”
Lady Anne’s back went rigid as a poker. Gwen, meanwhile, felt a startling wave of relief. She realized that some secret part of her had been braced for another debacle like the one with Lord Trent.
Well, perhaps her nerves would settle now. This was the day she’d dreamed of for years. Surely she could manage to enjoy it!
Charlotte Everdell glanced toward her. “He’s so handsome, Gwen! Why, I think the viscount is the most attractive man in London!”
She managed a smile. Thomas was not so handsome. That word better fitted the angelic blondness of Mr. Cust, or, at the darker end of it, Alex Ramsey, whose blue eyes worked to such striking effect against his dark hair and angular cheekbones. But what of it? A wise woman did not place much import on looks. Mr. Cust, after all, was a mean-tempered scalawag, and Alex a notorious rogue; she rarely passed five minutes in his company before biting her tongue lest she reply to some rude quip in kind. Indeed, Alex proved the point: looks mattered little without a manner to match them.
Happily, Thomas’s manner was just like his face: pleasant through and through. He lacked a chin but made up for it with a fine beard, black as the hair on his head. His green eyes were kind and his thin lips, given to smiling. And he loved her! That was most important of all. He had told her so a hundred times. In an hour at most, she would once again have a family of her own—a real family, not just one made of friends and paid companions.
“He’s gone,” Katherine said. “Boohoo.”