Chapter 1
Miss Rosalind Merriweather surveyed the lords and ladies gathered before her with trepidation. Of all the places she had never expected—or wanted—to be, a London drawing room had certainly topped the list.
Distaste roiled in her already unsettled stomach. London. The place of her sister’s ruin, the beginning of the end of her family.
She touched the locket at her throat, more out of habit than any real comfort, her fingers gliding over the worn filigreed gold and turquoise cabochons. A reminder of what happened the last time a Merriweather stepped foot inside the borders of this illustrious city. A somber lesson on the vagaries of men…and how easy it was for a young woman to lose everything on the whim of a moment.
Not that she was all that young. Or anyone worth noticing in the first place. Even so, she would be a fool to let down her guard. Especially as her charge, Miss Sarah Gladstow, was one of those young, impressionable things whowasfair game to rakes and libertines.
“Miss Merriweather, attend me,” a shrill voice called close by.
Rosalind heaved a sigh and hurried to Mrs. Gladstow, the girl’s mother. As her current employer, the woman was last in a long line of them and by far the worst. Truly, the collection of aging spinsters and elderly widows that had come before her, all fussy and difficult to a one, seemed the most generous and kind collection of patrons ever assembled compared to Mrs. Gladstow.
“Yes, ma’am?” Rosalind asked.
The older woman scowled. It was her perpetual expression, one that had left deep grooves around her thin lips and between her hard eyes. Yet the expression seemed even fiercer than usual.“Remember what I told you, girl,” she hissed. “You are to stay close to my daughter’s side, help her to engage in conversation with others, but under no circumstance are you to overshadow her. We are here to find Sarah a husband, not to stroke that ego of yours. Is that understood?”
“I hardly think I possess an ego, ma’am. I would think nine years as a companion would have effectively banished that particular sentiment, if I ever had one—”
Like lightning the woman’s hand shot out, her skeletal fingers digging like talons into Rosalind’s arm. Too stunned to react, Rosalind could do no more than stumble along as she was pulled to the side of the vast room.
“You have been with us how long, Miss Merriweather?” Mrs. Gladstow’s voice had gone silky as custard. And as hard to stomach as a spoiled one.
“Five months, ma’am.”
“And before that, where were you?”
Like the woman didn’t know. “With your Great-Aunt Lavinia, ma’am. For three years,” she added before the woman could ask that as well. And before that with Mrs. Kester, Aunt Lavinia’s closest friend. Preceded by her first post, with Mrs. Kester’s niece by marriage and Rosalind’s own distant cousin, Mrs. Harper. She had been passed around as a companion to those ladies like a plate of particularly unappetizing food at a party.
Only to wind up here, with a woman who had never wanted to take her on in the first place. It all seemed like some horrible comedic play. If it wasn’t her life, she might laugh.
Mrs. Gladstow pursed her lips as she considered her. “I don’t believe you’re stupid. You don’t look stupid. And yet, time and again, you run off at the mouth in the rudest manner possible. How, I wonder, did my great aunt stand it?”
“She was deaf.”
“Yes, she was,” Mrs. Gladstow mused. “And yet I did not question her when she asked me, practically on her death bed, to take you on after she passed. That was quite noble of me, I think.”
The woman looked at Rosalind in expectation, no doubt waiting for her to burst forth with undying gratitude. When none came she frowned mightily.
“I’ll have no more out of you, Miss Merriweather,” she hissed. “I have no qualms about throwing you out on your ear, deathbed promise to my aunt or no.”
It was not anything Rosalind had not heard before. Mrs. Gladstow wielded threats the way an artist might wield paints and brushes; she was a master. Yet that did not stop the twinge of fear that slithered up Rosalind’s spine. For she knew—as did Mrs. Gladstow, damn her—that Rosalind had no place to go if she lost this position. There was no post waiting in the wings this time. And Mrs. Gladstow would assure that there would be no reference to help Rosalind find that new post on her own.
The older woman’s eyes narrowed, no doubt seeing the fear that Rosalind strove to hide. She flapped her hands in the air as if shooing a fly. “I’ve no more time for you, girl. Do as you’re told.” With that she pasted a wide smile on her face—a frightening expression, truly—and glided away.
Rosalind took a steadying breath.And so it starts.The next few months in London would be like swimming in shark-infested waters, a fan and her wits as her only weapons. She gazed about the room, making a mental note of the men that appeared the most dangerous to a young woman of virtue. Her eyes lit on one blond Adonis in the corner. Ludicrously attractive, with a sparkling smile that would positively draw one in, he was the epitome of a London libertine. A heartbreaker of the first order. Here was the exact creature she should be wary of. The type of person her sister, romantic that she was, would have been defenseless against.
Guinevere’s face floated into her mind then, happy and vibrant. But it was too ephemeral. For, as it always did, that long-ago memory transformed into the sister Rosalind had gotten back after that fateful trip to the capital, when grief had sapped all the life from the beautiful girl she had been.
Yes, Rosalind thought as her eyes narrowed on the rake again, it was imperative she guard against men such as him. For she would be damned if she, or anyone in her care, would be duped as her sister had been.
• • •
Although, she learned some time later, smiling and nodding woodenly to some pompous lord as he prattled on about his incredibly large kennel of hounds, it was quite possible that a debonair rake was the least of her problems.
Miss Sarah Gladstow, for her part, stood like the famed biblical pillar of salt at Rosalind’s side, not even attempting to respond to the man, just as she’d done for the three who had come before him. Rosalind had come to learn something of the girl in the past five months, chiefly that she was painfully shy. Now she was being forced into conversation with strangers, surely her worst nightmare come true. Rosalind might have felt pity for her if she was not so annoyed that the brunt of the effort to keep Miss Gladstow appearing interesting fell to her shoulders.
“You were blessed with a litter of fifteen puppies?” she said to the man now—a Lord Something-or-other with wobbling jowls that Rosalind was hard-pressed not to stare at in fascination. He nodded, and they danced about as if possessing a mind of their own.
