She was beautiful, too. Heroines always were, and Abigail did her best not to be jealous.
She turned the page with a shaking hand.Surelyit would be revealed. She simplyhadto know what was behind the black veil. What could be so terrifying that it sent Emily into a dead faint? Perhaps…
Thudding footsteps were her only warning that somebody was coming. They sounded on the part of the hallway right outside the library door, where the carpet gave way to bare floorboards. Not enough warning, really.
Abigail gave a strangled gasp and scrambled to shove her book under the cushion of the window seat.
Not quickly enough.
The door flew open, and there stood Mrs. Harriet Atwood, silhouetted in the door frame in a manner worthy of Mrs. Radcliffe herself.
“Are you reading that trash again, Abigail?” Her mother boomed. She crossed the room in a few long strides, snatching the book out of Abigail’s slack grip.
“I told you she’d be in here, Mama,” came a smug female voice.
Scarlett, of course. She wouldn’t miss an opportunity to see her older sister in trouble.
Harriet squinted at the book, lip curling. “What absurdity. No wonder no gentleman will marry you, if you fill your head with such nonsense. Between this and that awful poetry book I caught you reading last week, I quite regret letting you learn to read at all. I ought to close up this whole library and burn all the books inside – starting with this one.”
Abigail gulped. “Please don’t, Mama. The book isn’t mine. It’s from the circulating library. I shall be fined if I don’t return it.”
Harriet tossed the book onto the window seat with utter disdain.
“Take it back directly, then.”
Abigail nodded, ducking her head. She picked up the book, carefully smoothing out the pages. A couple had been bent back, much to her chagrin.
Scarlett came scuttling into the library, looking ill at ease around the books.
The trouble was, in Abigail’s opinion, that the Atwaters were not a family ofbeauties.
Society could overlook any sin, so long as the sinner were good-looking. Harriet Atwater was tall and lanky, plain, but quite without a cheery personality to soften her looks. Her father, Patrick Atwater was good-natured to a fault, prepared to sacrifice everything for a quiet life, and resembled nothing so much as a little mouse with buck teeth.
Abigail had not inherited her father’s buck teeth. She had good skin and pretty hair of an indeterminate brown colour, but there her beauty ended. Her eyes were mud brown, her figure unremarkable, her features resolutely ordinary. The heroines in the novels she loved were always strikingly beautiful, and the hero noticed this immediately. No such ripples went around a room when Abigail entered it.
Her older sister Beatrix had similar features, but she was a little less timid than Abigail, and anyway had made an excellent match.
And then there was Scarlett, whom the gods had kissed.
Scarlett resembled a perfectly assembled porcelain doll. Her skin was creamy and fair, her hair a rich, glittering golden. She had a little heart-shaped face, sky-blue eyes, and a dainty pair of pink rosebud lips.
She was, in short, exquisite, and she was extremely well aware of that fact. At nineteen, her come-out had already been delayed by a year because Abigail was not married. Tempers were running short.
Harriet paced up and down in front of the window seat, gathering her thoughts. Abigail tucked the book out of sight behind a cushion, lest her mother get ideas, and folded her hands on her lap, waiting.
“This will be your third Season,” Harriet said at last. “Beatrix took only one Season to get married. We put off Scarlett’s coming out last year to spare her the embarrassment of going into company beside an unmarried older sister, but she is not getting any younger, and we will not wait any more. We can’t risk it, not on account of your folly.”
Abigail bit her lip. The timeline had been made very clear to her. She was to have her first Season at eighteen, while Scarlett was seventeen, and marry that Season. However, the Season had ended, and their nineteenth and eighteenth birthdays had respectively arrived with no marriage on the horizon. After a few weeks of fury and tantrums, Harriet had decided that Scarlett would not come out that year, and Abigail would take a second Season to secure a match.
But now Abigail was twenty, and her third Season was just beginning, and she was still unmarried.
It would be pointless, naturally, to tell her mother that she did not wish to be married, so Abigail kept silent.
That was something she was good at, at least.
“Will I not take part in this Season, then, Mama?” Abigail asked quietly.
Her mother scowled at her. “Do not be foolish. Ofcourse, you must participate in the Season. If we were to send you away to the countryside at this juncture, you might very well find yourself unwed for all eternity, and I shall not tolerate the burden of having you as a millstone around my neck for the remainder of my days. No, you must indeed attend the Season, and this time you shall secure a suitable match. Take care not to impede Scarlett in her endeavours, however. And do not anticipate any new gowns.
