by Claudia Dain
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-one
Twenty-two
Twenty-three
Twenty-four
Twenty-five
Twenty-six
Twenty-seven
Twenty-eight
Twenty-nine
Epilogue
Praise for Claudia Dain’s novels
“Claudia Dain’s emotionally charged writing and riveting characters will take your breath away.”
—New York Times bestselling author Sabrina Jeffries
“Claudia Dain writes with intelligence, sensuality, and heart, and the results are extraordinary!”
—New York Times bestselling author Connie Brockway
“Claudia Dain never fails to write a challenging and complex romance.” —A Romance Review
“Dain is a talented writer who knows her craft.” —Romantic Times
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This book is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
Copyright © 2007 by Claudia Welch
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
eISBN : 978-1-436-27106-6
I. Title.
PS3604.A348C68 2007
813’.6—dc22
2007016861
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Thanks to the Biaggi Bunch; without you,
it would have been a lot less fun.
One
London 1802
“I am not certain it has ever been said before, but I believe you play too hard, too long, and too often,” Caroline Trevelyan said to her mother, the Countess of Dalby.
It was an hour past dawn and not at all unusual for Sophia Dalby to return home from an evening’s entertainment at that time of morning, which certainly did not help the situation, the situation being that Caroline was in need of a proper husband. Her mother’s entertainment choices, and the hour in which she ended them, were not helping. Then again, it was perhaps wishful thinking that anything her mother did or did not do would help at this late stage of things.
“Darling, that sounds positively wicked and is, I am quite certain, completely untrue,” Sophia said, pressing the cold compress over her eyes as she reclined on her velvet-draped bed. “It certainly is unlikely that anyone could be said to play too hard, though I was hardly at play last night. I was working as ever on your behalf, Caro, so I would appreciate a bit more appreciation. It’s exhausting work, scouring London for a suitable husband. Man’s work, really. Your father died most inopportunely.”
“Mother, Father died seven years ago.”
“Death is always inopportune, is it not?” Sophia answered on a sigh. “He could have managed this husband hunt so much more efficiently than I.”
“Somehow, I doubt that,” Caro said wryly, lifting the cold cloth over her mother’s eyes to replace it with another, fresher compress. “Just where are you hunting? ”
“Oh, the usual places.”
“Usual to whom?” Caro said sarcastically.
“Darling, my head. I really am most exhausted.”
“You do know that I would prefer not to marry a man given to excessive gaming.”
“Even if he wins?” Sophia said, the barest smile revealed beneath the cloth.
Caroline took the compress away from her mother with a grunt of annoyance and said, “It is statistically impossible to always win.”
“I know nothing of statistics, darling, but fortune can swing most regularly in a predetermined direction. Some people, the fortunate few, are regularly favored by fortune. Why should they be the subject of scorn simply because of an accident of birth?”
“Nevertheless, I would not choose to live that sort of life,” Caro pronounced regally.
Sophia kept her eyes closed and took a deep breath; her dressing gown gaped open to reveal the curved shape of smooth white breasts. Impossible on a woman in her thirties, but that was Sophia Dalby, the epitome of impossibility. No wonder she favored a reliance on fortune; fortune had served her so very well.
“Let us review,” Sophia said, her arms folded in repose across her waist. “You will not marry a man past fifty. You will not marry a man you do not know. You will not marry a man toward whom you feel no ardent longings, which I completely agree with, by the way. I felt most ardently for your father.”
“Yes, thank you, Mother. That’s sufficient.”
“Speaking of sufficiency,” Sophia said, her eyes still closed against the morning light dappling the parquet floors of her bedroom, “though you have yet to mention it, I assume that you would prefer a man of sufficient wealth to sustain you. I can assure you that, while other qualities might distract or titillate, a healthy fortune is the most lasting of a man’s good qualities. In sufficient quantities, even a man of fifty who is a complete stranger can become sufficiently attractive to merit consideration.”
“Mother,” Caro said, standing up and walking to the open window, which she closed with a snap, “love cannot be bought.”
“Caro,” Sophia said, opening her eyes to stare in amusement at her daughter, “don’t be absurd. Everything can be bought. It is merely a matter of price.”
“Then let me rephrase. I cannot be bought.”
Sophia only smiled and closed her eyes again.
“You don’t believe me,” Caro sa
id.
“I believe you are very young and very naïve,” Sophia said, “for which I am usually very thankful. Yet in this case”—Sophia shrugged—“let me do the bargaining, darling. I’m more attuned to it.”
“Bargaining? It shall require bargaining to snare a husband for me?” Caro said.
At that, Sophia opened her eyes and sat up, her back resting against the burled walnut headboard. “Snare? Such an unpleasant word. You are a perfectly lovely seventeen-year-old girl who has had the benefit of a careful education and a sheltered upbringing, which was not by accident, I assure you. You are possessed of physical beauty, good health, and a more than sufficient dowry; few other qualities are considered when making a successful matrimonial match.”
“And as to bargaining?”
“Caro, life is composed of one bargain after another. Trust me to arrange the best match possible.”
Caro smiled and nodded, willing the conversation to an end, forcing her mind to ignore what had not been said and what could never be said.
There was one other quality that any man of merit and position would want in a wife, and that quality was pedigree. A good, respectable, honorable family name, coupled with an unimpeachable family history was what was lacking. And it was lacking because of Sophia.
Sophia, the Countess of Dalby, had been the most infamous courtesan in London almost twenty years ago, until she had snared, by popular report, the devilishly wild Stuart Trevelyan, Earl of Dalby, and seduced him into marrying her. Caroline was the fruit of that scandalous union; John Markham, her older brother by one year, the first fruit.
Twenty years had not dimmed the rumors about Sophia, most probably because twenty years had not dimmed Sophia’s charms.
Twenty years, and Caro did not have a hope of making any kind of respectable marriage, no matter how perfect her deportment, her beauty, or her fortune.
It was most disheartening, especially since she could hardly confide the reason for her lack of hope to her mother.
“You do trust me, don’t you, Caro?” Sophia asked, holding out her slim, white hand for her daughter to grasp. “You do know that I will arrange an acceptable match for you?”
Caro held her mother’s hand lightly and smiled down at her. She did look exhausted.
“I know you will do whatever you must.”
“And that I will succeed,” Sophia added with a smile.
“And that you will succeed,” Caro said with an answering smile as she told the most gracious of lies to her mother. It was hardly likely that her mother would succeed in this most delicate of tasks.
Most disheartening.
Two
“SHE still believes she will manage it,” Caro said softly, gazing out the window.
The sun, such as it was, was full up and the pigeons cooing noisily. Caro found it a singularly depressing sound.
“She just might,” Anne said as she poured out the morning chocolate from her perch by the fireplace.
Caro turned and considered her friend, who, though widowed at the ridiculous age of eighteen, after having been married to her husband for only eight months, was still of a rosy frame of mind about the world in general and Sophia in particular.
“You don’t think so. Not truly,” Caro said.
Caroline Trevelyan was not of a rosy frame of mind about the world, her mother, or her situation. She chose to think of herself as a woman of a sensible aspect, not given to idle thoughts or romanticism. Her mother would have been forced to agree, if she could be forced to anything, which was doubtful.
“I do think so,” Anne said. “She is of a most determined nature, and she has the weight of experience on her side.”
“It is her weight of experience which is the problem.”
Anne smiled and handed Caro her cup. “And yet it did not stop her from making a good match. Your father was besotted.”
“It was an intemperate match,” Caro said.
“And your father was besotted,” Anne said with a grin.
“And my father was besotted,” Caro reluctantly agreed.
“The same could happen to you and for you. You are your mother’s daughter.”
Yes and no, and that was the problem. She was Sophia’s daughter, the daughter of a former courtesan, and therefore her pedigree was a disaster. And yet, though she was Sophia’s daughter, she had none of her fire, certainly none of her mystique, and most definitely none of her experience. Fully intentional on her part, on both their parts to be honest, yet it left her in the strange situation of being chillingly proper and completely unacceptable in the same instant.
To say she was disheartened was to say it politely. She was, hopelessly and irretrievably, on the shelf. There was not an eligible man of her station and her situation who would even dare to speak with her beyond the most cursory exchange of pleasantries. An invitation to Almack’s was beyond hope.
It was not as if she were overdramatizing the situation. She had been considering her prospects since the age of fourteen, when she had realized that her dancing instructor had beautiful eyes and her riding instructor had quite a spectacular seat. Men, she had discovered, were fascinating. Unfortunately, it had become simultaneously obvious that men were not fascinated by her.
Of course, the daughter of an earl did not go about marrying dancing masters or riding instructors, and she had logically tested the waters in a more proper pond.
The pond was frigid. One might even say frozen.
Her mother, too well connected and too well married to ignore, was fully in Society, which meant that Caro was as equally in, but that did not mean that the proper sort of man, one who would chat her up at a sedate dinner, considered her the proper sort of wife.
She had received no offers. In point of fact, she had received not the barest glimmer of interest. Logically, there was but one conclusion to draw: she was ummarriageable.
Marriage, no matter how she longed for it, was out of reach.
“You may have hope,” she said to Anne. “I do not.”
“Learn to find hope or you will perish of despair, Caro. Find your hope where you may, but find it.”
Caro looked at Anne, at her ginger-haired beauty and her solemn gray green eyes, and said, “You know where I thought to find hope. You argued against it.”
“And I still do,” Anne said. “You should talk to Sophia about your . . . plans.”
“Plans,” Caro said with a crooked grin. “You mean to say folly, but you are too polite to be that openly brutal in your assessment.”
“Since you said it first,” Anne said with an answering grin, “then let us call it folly, for folly it most certainly is. Ask your mother and see if she does not call it the same or worse.”
“She won’t discuss such things with me,” Caro said. “For a past courtesan, she is most prudish.”
“She is trying to protect you.”
“From what? From the only avenue open to me? I am a woman. I want to live as a woman. I may be my mother’s daughter, after all. It is said that blood will tell,” Caro said softly, running a hand down her thigh. “Did you not just say it? I am my mother’s daughter, am I not?”
“Oh, Lord, what are you planning now?” Anne said.
Caro looked up and pierced Anne with her gaze. “I know that I have no future as a wife. But perhaps I can, like my mother before me, have a future as a courtesan. Certainly I should have some experience before I plunge into the courtesan’s life.”
“You don’t even understand what it is you’re saying, that’s the frightening part,” Anne said, standing up and beginning to pace the bedroom. “You have no idea what it is to be a courtesan.”
“Yes, yes, you’ve said that before. Well, if I don’t understand, there’s only one thing to do,” Caro said. “I must get myself some experience at these sorts of things, musn’t I? ”
“These sorts of things? I presume you mean men?”
“Of course. What else?” Caro said with as much sophistication as she could
manage; not much, she was afraid.
And she was afraid, that was the whole problem as well as the entire point. She was Sophia’s daughter and Sophia was infamous. Unfortunately for her, she was not at all infamous, not for any reason. She was not infamously beautiful nor infamously reckless nor infamously desireable. She was Sophia Dalby’s very invisible daughter; a well-brought-up daughter of a peer with nothing at all remarkable to distinguish her, unless it be her remarkable mother.
Being the unremarkable daughter of an infamously remarkable mother had effectively closed the door to respectable and profitable matrimony. Of course, she could marry unprofitably, to some minor baron or, worse, a man of industry, but she was enough her mother’s daughter to find an unprofitable marriage completely unacceptable. Better profit than respectability.
