Prologue
So many youngladies of thetonfind that their road to love is not the easy stroll they had imagined it would be. Perhaps there is resistance from one set of parents which must be overcome. Perhaps the lady goes for some weeks unsure of her dashing fellow’s feelings and intentions, until he finally declares himself. It might even be the case that there is some disagreement regarding the marriage contract that must be settled.
All nerve-inducing problems for the gentle young lady, to be sure.
The Bennington sisters took a somewhat different approach to love. Theirs was no hiccup or small delay or wistful week of wondering. The Bennington style of traveling to an altar was more akin to climbing a Swiss Alp by one’s fingertips, ignoring all signposts warning to turn round, teetering at the summit, flying blind down the other side on the wings of an avalanche, and somehow surviving the inevitable crash into a ravine.
These startling adventures were all led forward by Miss Eloise Mayton, the matron who had come to the aid of the earl and raised his daughters ever since their own mother had died in childbirth.
Miss Mayton was an original sort of person. She favored dressing in widow’s weeds, though she had never married. Her stories of past tragic romances were even worse (and probably less true) than the dreadful literature she favored. She insisted on being addressed as “Miss,” though her age gave her the right to “Mrs.” and one would have thought a lady dressed in widow’s weeds would prefer it.
The lady was so loosely related to the earl as to make it almost undiscoverable—everyone having settled on her being a very, exceedingly, astoundingly, incredibly distant cousin of some sort.
But then, as the earl found out when he’d spoken with some of his closer relations, it would require an interesting sort of person to agree to shepherd five young girls through their youths. The prevailing opinion on such things was that one youth was tolerable, two of them was barely tolerable, three was beginning to be a burden, four had definitively arrived at burden, and five set one looking for rooftops to fling oneself off of, thereby mercifully ending it all. So, eccentric Miss Mayton might be, but she had a certain grit about her for blithely taking on the task.
Prior to coming to the earl’s house all those years ago, Miss Mayton claimed to have suffered several tragedies of the romantic variety while living on the continent. Nobody quite understood what she’d been doing roaming round Sweden, France, and Italy in the first place, and even less why she’d ever traveled to Transylvania, but everybody could agree that her time there had gone abominably badly.
The young Bennington ladies were raised on Miss Mayton’s poignant tales of lost love and they were inspired to have such abject devotion for their own. An outsider might find themself faintly alarmed to hear the details of these tragedies. One after another of Miss Mayton’s would-be suitors had somehow come to an unfortunate and final end—mistaken hangings, untimely blows, foolhardy poisonings, an unnecessarily dramatic impalement, and even a regretful leap off a cliff.
The young Benningtons were able to overlook the more gruesome details of these various demises and only felt the romance of it—all of those fellows were overcome and finally defeated by an overwhelming passionate love. How they should like to inspire that sort of passion in some gentleman!
Though it must be said, they were determined to keep the overcome and passionate fellows alive so they might marry them.Threatsto do a violence to oneself would be entirely sufficient in proving one’s devotion.
Passion aside, the sisters had other standards they would insist on. Each knew just the type of gentleman she sought out and was determined to have him. Beatrice’s list of requirements turned out to be so long that the fates had finally just thrown up their hands and delivered Van Doren.
Rosalind had been insistent on courageousness, and if she had to arrange her own kidnapping so that the duke might prove his own courage, well, these things happen.
Viola had one thing on her mind—loyalty. If her lord had eventually noticed that loyalty had led him to standing on a green for three duels on the same morning…that really could not have been predicted.
Fortunately, it was Cordelia’s turn at a season and her necessary quality was far more straightforward. She simply wished for a man of action. She wished for her very own Corinthian.
He would do everything expertly, of course—hunt, box, sail, race, fence—all with the greatest of ease and aplomb. She would wave to him from a window as he rode off to do some sporting thing, then he would return home victorious. Of an evening, he would relax in a chair, bone tired, while she entertained him with her scene fromOthello, that poignant moment when all is lost for Desdemona.
He would be soothed by it, rediscover his energy, sweep her into his arms, and carry her up the stairs.
In fact, he was always carrying her about the house and she would begin to wonder that her own feet still worked, so little did he allow her to use them.
What a glorious life they would have—she, his own dramatic actress, and he, the sportsman extraordinaire.
She must only find him.
Chapter One
The Lamb at Hindon, 1805
Cordelia viewed themonths in Somerset between the London seasons lively indeed. They had all together had a jolly time in Scotland for Viola’s family elopement with Lord Baderston and then waved them off to their own estate in Sussex before returning home.
The Earl of Westmont’s house, which had in the past only been filled with the sounds of five young ladies, had changed its tone entirely.
It was true that Beatrice, Rosalind, and Viola had married and left the house, thereby removing their vocalizations from the sounds of the place. But it was also true that their trips to London invariably brought them into contact with some poor creature who needed a place to call home.
They had begun with four cats, then added the dog Bess and one of her offspring. Then, last year, they had taken in darling Chester—a scarlet macaw who had a lot to say for himself. Between cats hissing and dogs barking, Chester would shriek the word “murder” which, unfortunately, he thought meant “almonds.”
If someone were looking for peace and quiet in the countryside, they would be well advised to trot by Westmont House at a brisk pace.
Amidst all the barking and hissing and screeching, there were trips through the wood from Westmont House to Faversham Hall. There, they would find their eldest sister Beatrice ensconced in the nursery with her infant daughter Lily. Often, they would find Van Doren there too. The cranky viscount had already been defeated by Beatrice, and now he appeared to be clay in his daughter’s pudgy little hands too.
Rosalind and the Duke of Conbatten came for a fortnight’s visit and had thrown the house into a delightful topsy-turvy. The duke’s valet, Henri, had arrived a full five days ahead of time to ready things for Conbatten and his duchess, and it was well he did. It was no easy thing in a country house to assure that a duke had accommodations that included an attached room for the location of a tub that would be filled with water heated to precisely ninety-eight degrees. He liked to bathe with his wife, she only wearing jewels and a tiara, and he had very specific standards on how it was to be done.
