Chapter One
“Iknow I ought to feel bad, but I don’t. If I can’t get drunk the night before a wedding I do not want, when can I?” Emery smiled mischievously across at her best friend, Georgina, whose face had been slowly and steadily turning pink over the last half hour that the two of them had been drinking sherry.
Georgina surprised her by giggling. “I don’t remember sherry being this strong,” she said, setting down her glass on the nightstand next to her. “But perhaps they water down the portions they give to young ladies at dinner parties and balls.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Emery said drily, “although I also wouldn’t know for sure, having never been able to taste the delights of a London Season as you have.”
“The delights?” Georgina shook her head. “I would hardly call it a delight: passive aggressive insults and sabotage from all the other debutantes and their mamas, feeling constantly like a horse on parade at auction, and all the while having to smile andnod as gentlemen bore you to death talking about themselves. Believe me, Emery, you’re lucky you never had a London Season.”
Emery sighed. She had heard all this before from Georgina, who, like her, was two-and-twenty, and almost considered on the shelf. It wasn’t easy for a young lady to have to repeat several Seasons in London without receiving a proposal, and Emery knew her friend’s disillusionment with thetonwas well-earned.
Still, from her vantage point, Emery wished she could have had the kind of Season Georgina had now experienced three of. Emery had been engaged since she could walk and talk to a man who was like a brother to her, and therefore forbidden from attending a London Season because it had been deemed “a waste of money” for her parents to pay for new gowns. “Why should we pay for you to go frolicking about in ballrooms making a spectacle of yourself?” They had always asked, much to Emery’s disappointment.
“I don’t know,” she said, stretching out on her four-poster bed. “I should have liked to have experienced it. The romance of it! Getting dressed up, going to balls, having gentlemen ask me to dance… Never knowing if tonight is the night you meet the man who is going to fall madly in love with you and ask you to be his wife.”
“It’s not that wonderful, I assure you,” Georgina said, laughing and shaking her head. “Most gentlemen are very tedious, some even downright insulting! Believe me, you are much luckier to have someone like Henry, who is handsome, kind, and wealthy.And, best of all, who is already your friend! You know you get on, so you know your marriage won’t end up full of bitterness and dislike. There are far too many of those kinds of marriages amongst theton.”
“Yes, I am very lucky with Henry, I suppose.” Emery fidgeted in her nightshift. “He is everything a woman would want for her husband. If, of course, he didn’t feel more like my brother than my fiancé. Marrying Henry feels all wrong, almost incestuous!”
“You have said this before, but I don’t think it will always feel that way,” Georgina said, but she was looking at Emery with more sympathy now, a small, sad smile on her lips. “But I am sorry, Em. I can imagine that doesn’t make for the most romantic feelings on the night before your wedding.”
The two friends grew quiet for a moment.
The night before your wedding.The words felt harsh against Emery’s ears. She couldn’t quite believe it was all happening. For years, she had been waiting for this wedding, and now, at last, here it was. It had been planned for so long that she’d started to think that maybe it wouldn’t ever take place.
When Henry had been off on his Grand Tour of the continent, she’d even wondered if he might never come back. But he had, and now, they were about to be married, despite the fact they never thought of one another in a romantic way.
“Henry is kind,” Georgina repeated, smiling softly. “That is what really matters in the long run of a marriage, don’t you think?”
“I suppose so.” Emery swallowed, then reached for her glass of sherry and took a swig. “But I had so much hoped that I might have a love match, Georgie.”
“I know,” Georgina said sadly, handing her head. “But I fear we are both doomed to not have love matches.”
“You still could,” Emery pointed out.
“I suppose, but it is unlikely, for a spinster like me. I know you are unhappy about this marriage, Em, but imagine how you would feel if you were me: unmarried and not even engaged, at twenty-two! No man will even bother to court me now.”
Emery pictured it for a moment, but she didn’t see what her friend did. What she saw was freedom: the chance to find someone who actually cherished her, instead of being forced into a loveless, passionless marriage with an old friend.
“At least it isn’t his older brother you were engaged to since birth,” Georgina said, smiling suddenly. “Nowthatwould be a terrible fate.”
“He is handsome, at least,” Emery pointed out. “Henry still looks like a little boy.”
“Henry is young, but he will grow into his looks,” Georgina said, and there was a strange look in her eyes that Emery had never seen before. Her friend shook her head and giggled, the momentary defensiveness for their friend evaporating. “But theDuke of Dredford! That man has a heart of ice! Imagine being married to an icicle!”
Emery let out a snort of laughter, which she quickly stifled.
“You really shouldn’t be so loud,” Georgina teased. “You might wake your fiancé.”
Emery stifled her laughter. Georgina was right. Emery’s family’s country estate was temporarily hosting her fiancé and his family, as she and Henry would marry the next morning in the chapel on her family estate. It wasn’t usual for a bride to spend the night before her wedding in the same house as her fiancé, but since their families were old friends, and it was going to be a small, private affair, her parents the Earl and Countess of Hillsborough has invited the Duke of Dredford and his younger brother Lord Henry Grove, to stay with them, along with a few close friends--including Georgina.
“It’s strange to think of them all asleep just down the hallway,” Georgina said, looking sideways at the door of the room. “I’ve never spent the night in a house full of men that weren’t related to me.”
“Henry has spent many nights here over the years,” Emery said. “Back when Henry and I were children and could spend lots of time together without everyone acting as if we were going to do something scandalous together--which we still wouldn’t, considering we are more like brother and sister!--he and his sisters used to come here for visits with their mother, though I haven't seen them since he left for his Grand Tour.”
Emery stared at the walls of her room, how everything remained surprisingly unchanged since then.
“Mama always put him in the same guestroom.”
