She sighed, defeated.
For the first time in months she longed for her family. If they only could come home, so she could leave Chester Park. Leave Rake.
She desperately needed to escape and save her poor heart from being shredded by him. He was, after all, a well-known scoundrel and a devoted libertine. But more importantly, she knew he had never been able to resist a challenge, and stupidly she had presented him with one by calling him a coward.
He was the man of her dreams and the sole possessor of her heart. If he gently demanded her, how would she ever be able to resist him?
Chapter Two
Lady Francesca Darling slept soundly in her bed, even though it was five o’clock and too late for an afternoon nap. She didn’t stir when Penny pulled the heavy curtains from the large windows to let the warm August sun in.
For a moment Penny stood still, watching her friend. Francesca slept safely, without noticing she had an intruder in her bedroom.
Such trust amazed her.
But then, if you were surrounded by a large family who adored you beyond reason, there was not much to worry about, she thought with a tender smile.
She climbed into the bed and stretched out beside her friend, nudging her now and then to wake her up. But Francesca wasn’t so easy to wake up when she took a nap, and in the end Penny had no choice. She pinched Francesca. Hard.
With a loud groan, Francesca woke up and put a hand on the pinched part of her arm. She winced before opening her eyes to face her gruesome attacker.
“You!” she said with contempt. “I should have known it. No one but the evil and heartless Lady Penelope de Vere would wake up a sleeping beauty by almost wrenching her arm off.”
Penny laughed and ignored her friend’s obvious desire to falling asleep again. Instead she grabbed one of the pillows and hit Francesca in the face with it.
“Ouch,” her friend muttered from beneath the pillow before she stretched like a cat, yawning until her jaws creaked.
This wasn’t the first time Penny had the doubtful pleasure of waking her friend, as Francesca had a thing for sleeping. If she could find time to spend in her bed, she would use it.
“It’s a beautiful afternoon out there, and here you lie in your bed, wasting it completely.”
Francesca muttered something inaudible, apparently not as fascinated with the beauty of the day as her best friend was.
“What time is it?” she mumbled, before putting the pillow back over her head.
“Almost five,” Penny enlightened her cheerfully, happily ignoring the outraged gasp from her friend somewhere under the pillow.
“Five?”
“Yes, five.”
Francesca growled at Penny, who again ignored her friend’s irritation. She snatched the second pillow away too, and put it with the other in a neat pile at the floor. Then she covered them with the thick bedspread, stolen without mercy from her friend.
When Francesca’s maid Nell joined them a bit later, her mistress was already dressed and enduring Penny’s rather harsh tugs through her hair. “What are you doing, Miss Penelope?” Nell rescued the brush from Penny’s incapable hands. “You know you are to stay away from Miss Francesca’s hair!”
“I just wanted to help.”
Nell’s frown intensified. “I told you to let Miss Francesca’s hair be, didn’t I? Last time you handled that brush, you succeeded in tangling her hair so much it took me a whole afternoon to undo your handiwork.”
Francesca, now more awake, ignored her irritated maid and looked at her friend in the mirror with a concerned frown of her own. “Why are you waking me up this early, by the way? Has something happened?”
Penny shook her head, her lovely violet eyes filled with laughter. “Just because I dragged you out of bed before seven doesn’t mean something bad has happened. Maybe I just wanted your company.”
“Is this about Uncle Rake?” Francesca asked, giving a resigned sigh and rolling her eyes at her maid via the mirror.
“No.” Penny sat down on the bed and tried to look as though nothing could be farther from the truth. But her friend knew her too well.
“Of course it’s about Uncle Rake.” Francesca sighed again. Defeated. “It always is.”
“I have a suitor.” Penny felt a desperate need to change the subject. For the first time, she did not want to talk about Rake. And especially not about what he had said that morning.
She had spent the afternoon in her bedroom, pondering how to tell Francesca about the encounter. But in the end she had decided not to tell her at all. She wasn’t really sure what actually had happened between her and Rake.
All she knew was that he finally had seen her. The mere thought of how he had looked upon her made her blush again.
“Do you now?”
Francesca’s obvious disinterest was quite telling. Penny hid a smile. Her guess was that her friend was a bit tired of hearing about Rake.
“Yes, I do.”
“And how on earth did he propose this time?”
Penny didn’t care about her friend’s indifference. She was too used to it, after all, since she had been in love with Rake for so many years and had told Francesca all about it repeatedly.
“There was no proposal of marriage.”
Francesca mumbled something inaudible as she reached for a scone from the tray Nell had so kindly brought with her.
“Yesterday, with your grandparents’ blessing, I accepted Thomas Bedford’s wish to court me.”
“That’s nice.”
Penny shook her head, smiling. Francesca wasn’t listening to her at all, and for the tiniest moment Penny thought about not enlightening her friend.
But as Thomas now was quite a large part of her immediate future, she wanted Francesca to know more, preferably before dinner, when Penny would have to face Rake again.
“Thomas Bedford.”
Penny’s announcement broke through Francesca’s scone-eating indifference. “Who?”
“The man I agreed could court me.”
“What?”
“I see I have your attention now.”
Penny grasped her skirt nervously, twisting the delicate fabric while ignoring Nell’s pointed looks.
“What are you talking about?” Francesca’s voice was high-pitched with surprise. “What have you done?”
“I have told a very decent man I will accept his courtship of me, and your grandparents have given us their approval.”
Francesca looked ready to burst with madness. Her eyes glanced around as if not knowing what to focus on and she stood up and sat down again repeatedly. Nell, more sensitive to situations than her harsh looks would indicate, silently left the room and closed the door behind her.
Several minutes went by before Francesca regained her wits enough to hold herself still. “What are you talking about? When did this happen? And Thomas Bedford? Boring Saint Thomas?”
Penny knew better than to try to answer Francesca before she had thought it all through. Her friend had never been a good listener until she had her own thoughts named and categorized correctly.
Francesca threw her hands out in despair. “How could you do this to me? How could you do this to yourself? Next year we are off to London for our debutante Season. We have looked forward to it for ages, and you plan to get married before that? How can you do this to us?”
“I’m not marrying him, and I still plan to go to London next year. I’ve only told him that he can officially court me. Your grandparents made it most clear to him that there would be no talk of engagement or marriage before I have done my first Season.”
Francesca’s eyes narrowed as she gave Penny a look that made it quite clear she did not believe a word of what her friend was telling her. “As if my grandparents would agree to this! They would never.”
“But they did.”
Francesca was looking a bit unsure. “B-but how long have they known about this? How long have you known about this?” She sat down beside Penny and
grabbed her hands. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Penny could sense the hurt behind the last question and wished she had a good answer. “It just happened. The day before yesterday, during the assembly down at The Devil’s Folly, we sat next to each other and started to talk. He’s such a nice man and so easy to chat with. He loves books too, and we had the most interesting discussion about the latest one he had read. You know how insecure I get around other people, and especially men. But with him…”
Penny stood up again and started to walk to and fro. “It was like talking to you. Although you with a brain.”
“But why didn’t I notice? And why didn’t you tell me?” Francesca ignored Penny’s gentle insult and instead looked like a sad, neglected little puppy.
“Well, you had so much fun with your beaux that night, and when we sat in the carriage on our way home you had so much to tell me about, that I rather forgot to mention him. And then yesterday he came to visit when you were out riding, to leave me a list of his favorite books, as he’d promised me the evening before.”
“But how could it ever move from a list to an almost-proposal?”
Penny laughed. “Your grandparents invited him to stay for tea, and after a while he just blurted out his question. The duke immediately said no, of course.”
“Of course he did.” Francesca rolled her eyes again, knowing all too well how protective her grandfather was.
“But the duchess thought it was a very good idea indeed. She said she could see that Mr. Bedford and I had much in common and would make a very good match. Then the three of them turned toward me, wanting to know if I accepted his courtship.”
“Lord, it sounds so dull.”
Francesca was obviously starting to accept what she was being told, despite her groaning and eye-rolling.
“My first thought was to decline, as my heart does belong to Rake. But then I started to think about what you have told me all along—he will never marry me. Why should I throw my chances away, just because I never will be able to have the man of my dreams? And as I met Mr. Bedford’s kind, intelligent eyes, I knew in my heart that I could be happy and satisfied with him. I could have a good life with him. It wasn’t as if I promised him anything by accepting, and I have every right to tell him no, in the end, if he ever does propose to me. But why shouldn’t I get to know him better?”
“What did he say when you agreed?”
“Not much. He thanked me graciously and asked if he could come and visit me tomorrow.”
“How passionate,” Francesca snorted, and Penny put her hand on her friend’s.
“I don’t want someone sweeping me off my feet passionately. Not any more. I want love. I want to be cherished and needed. And most of all I want to be wanted. Don’t you think I’m worth some happiness in my life?”
“Of course I do.” Francesca sighed. “But it feel so strange to hear this, when all you have been talking about until now has been Uncle Rake this and Uncle Rake that. You as well as I know that he equals passion.”
“But why spend the rest of my life yearning for passion, when I can bathe in a sea of love? I have thought about this a lot lately, and I want a home and children of my own. My heart cries with joy upon the thought of Rake being the husband and father, but I have finally come to the same conclusion you did a long time ago—my own happiness is more important than sharing my life with him.”
Francesca gave her an odd look. “I hate to admit this, but hearing you repeat my words so clearly makes me realize how wrong I’ve been. Now they don’t make much sense to me at all. You are seventeen years old, for goodness’ sake. You are on the verge of adulthood. Why throw away Uncle Rake before your time in the sun even begins?”
“Fanny, I’m not throwing Rake away.” Penny laughed, and Francesca too had to giggle over her own choice of words. They fell backwards upon the bed and all the tension disappeared as they laughed almost hysterically.
When they finally calmed down, they stayed on the bed, side by side, as they had done so many times before. A comfortable silence ruled as they lay there, content with each other’s company.
Penny took a deep breath as she stared up at the painted stars in the ceiling. She had lived seventeen long quiet years, in which nothing special or out of the ordinary ever had happened. But now, during two short days, her whole future had changed.
She closed her eyes, and immediately the beloved image of Rake popped up in her mind’s eye.
But this time it was different.
This time it wasn’t her imagined version of him looking upon her with soft eyes, shining with love. No, this time it was the memory of his hot smoldering gaze from earlier in the day.
She couldn’t stop a shiver of delight—and, oddly enough, fright—from going through her body.
What would happen now?
What would Rake do?
He was as unpredictable as a thunderstorm. You could never tell what he would say or how he would react.
Would he let her be?
No, not the Rake she knew. The infamous libertine would never let this be. She had seen him lust for other women, and she had recognized the gleam in his eyes when he looked upon her.
He wanted her.
Another shiver ran through her body, and this time Francesca noticed and turned on her side to face Penny.
“What is it? You look terrified.”
Penny gave her frowning friend a wobbly smile that didn’t seem to calm her as it was meant to.
“It scares me, growing up and becoming an adult. My life has been so easy up until now, a cozy mixture of books, lazy days, and you. But now, from out of nowhere, I am supposed to make decisions that will not only affect the rest of my life but also the lives of everyone surrounding me. What if I make a bad choice? What if I will come to regret the path in life I take and end up like my mother—defeated, bitter, and unhappy?”
Francesca sat up in bed and gave her friend a hard stare. “You will never turn into your mother, and do you know why? Because I will never let you marry an indifferent man like your father, not without a fight. So maybe Boring Saint Thomas isn’t the most dashing of men, but you are right—he is perfect for you. Everything I find dull with him fits you, even though I hate to admit it. He is...” She hesitated slightly, searching for the right words. “He is somewhat handsome and does have the kindest heart of all the men in the county. Just like you, he likes to read and would probably not mind you walking around daydreaming, as you tend to do. As a matter of fact, he’ll probably walk beside you, with his head stuck in the clouds too.”
“Now you make me sound dull.” Penny giggled, but Francesca didn’t smile back. Instead, she sat up and forced Penny to do the same by grabbing her hands.
“Promise me you will never settle for someone, just to get married, without talking to me first.”
“Fanny…”
“Promise me!”
Francesca’s eyes filled with tears, and Penny felt a lump fill her throat as she nodded in response. “I promise I will never marry anyone without your consent,” she whispered hoarsely, and then she groaned as Francesca gave her a hug worthy of a bear.
“Well then, that’s settled.” Her friend beamed, all evidence of her tears dried away, and Penny smiled lovingly. Francesca was just as unpredictable as her uncle but the best friend one ever could have.
“Why don’t we go down to dinner so you can stare dreamingly at Uncle Rake now, as he has returned from London?”
“Fanny!”
“Oh, come on. Just because you almost have promised your hand to another man doesn’t mean you can’t still enjoy the gorgeousness of the man of your dreams.”
Penny sighed, shaking her head as she followed her outspoken friend out the door. Where would this evening end?
Chapter Three
Dinner at Chester Park was quite a loud affair even though most of the Darling family were still in London. Penny had known them her whole life, but it still amazed her how much noise they
could make.
Her own family endured their meals together in silence. The ladies tended to rush from the table with relief as soon as her father had read his paper and his daily letters.
But not this family.
No, they could sit for hours, eating and arguing about something which would engage every last family member.
Penny had more than once sat at the table listening to them discuss things like how to prune a rose, or which road was the bumpiest between London and Oxford. There was nothing that couldn’t end up as a discussion topic when it came to the Darlings, and they all thrived in the chaos they called dinner.
During the social Season, the list of attending family members was short, but tomorrow the others would return from London and every chair at the huge table would be filled. This evening only six chairs were occupied.
Hannibal Darling, the Duke of Berkeley, was a large man with bushy white hair and a booming voice. He loved his seven sons and their offspring more than anything and was constantly making sure they were aware of it—to their frustration, as he tended to be a bit too interfering. But as they all loved him most sincerely in return, none of them had the heart to tell him to stay out of their affairs.
Hannibal rarely left Chester Park, as he loathed the social life of the ton in London. Instead, he and his second wife, Anna, stayed behind and took care of the family’s country estate while the rest of the crowd socialized with their friends.
The duchess was more than twenty years younger than her husband and had met him when she and some friends were visiting the duke’s oldest son, George—Francesca’s father—one summer long ago. She was a happy, content woman who loved her husband and all their sons dearly. Lady Anna, as Penny affectionately called her, had never made any difference between Hannibal’s three sons from his first marriage and their own four. She was always there with a soft hug whenever it was needed.
Francesca’s good-hearted Uncle Charles was the parish vicar, an easygoing man with a heart as large as Berkshire. He had more than once saved the two adventurous young ladies from disasters and the disgrace of having to admit their folly to their parents.
Never Had a Dream Come True Page 2
