Chapter One
Sometimes revenge can be
too deliciously dangerous…
Hertfordshire
Miss Georgianna Eleanor Heyford gasped, the folded paper with its elegantly flowing script fluttering from her fingers to swish against the threadbare carpet in the drawing room of their home.
“What is it? Have youfinallyseen Uncle Timothy’s ghost?” her youngest sister Annabelle chirped, her cherub’s face creasing in a grin. “I told you I’ve heard him and Mama singing in the attic.”
“It’s not any ghost, Anna. I got the job,” Georgianna whispered, pressing the flat of her palm over her thumping heart. “I got the job!”
Her sisters were not startled that she’d screamed joyfully, nor did they celebrate this opportunity, which was a most wonderful dream for Georgianna. Young ladies from backgrounds such as hers were not meant for such a role. She laughed, unable to quite process the jumbled slew of emotions rioting inside her chest. It was surely too much when she had sat on her bed above stairs only an hour ago, her shoulders weighted with despair and melancholia, fearing that she had failed her family, who greatly depended on her abilities and wit.
Slightly dimming her enthusiasm, Georgianna said, “I have secured the job I’ve been hoping and praying for.”
It was Aunt Thomasina who straightened against the lumpy cushions of the sofa and replied, “It’s not right for a genteel miss like yourself to be working. It is just not right! I’ve told you girls to come and live with me in Kent and leave…” Her aunt looked about the house they had grown up in their entire lives with an acute expression of distaste. “Leavethis place. I cannot imagine why you girls insist on holding onto it! If the manor is sold, there should be enough money to settle dowries on you and Elizabeth so you girls might marry suitably.”
Though there was a painful wrench inside her chest, Georgianna smiled fondly at her aunt. “Thisis where our memories of Mama and Papa are, and we do not wish to leave here…leave them, Aunt. This is our home, Papa left it in my care, and we shall not give up on it.”
Aunt Thomasina’s mouth flattened. “Working is beyond the pale for a miss of your station!”
Her disapprobation expressed, Aunt Thomasina went back to readingFrankenstein. Georgianna swallowed a groan. Ever since her aunt became Baroness Crawley a couple years prior, everything her relatives did was beyond the pale. Georgianna’s father had been a proper country gentleman with a distant relationship to a baronet. He had taught all his children the value of working to fulfill the dreams in their hearts and not to be too elevated in their thoughts, which could lead to an excessive, silly nature.
Noting the pinched disapproval about her aunt’s mouth, she said, “It is not beyond me to work, Aunt, and once I secure this incredible offer, the monies paid over will see to the many repairs needed around the manor, our larder filled for the rest of the year, new clothes and boots for everyone, and more catering jobs secured from estimable lords and ladies. Imagine it, Aunt, that I might get so popular that I rival those French chefs who serve Buckingham or those elite lords and ladies living in Grosvenor Square!”
“You need to set aside this nonsense about working and procure yourself a husband to help you manage, Georgianna. That is what you girls need,husbands.”
She barely resisted rolling her eyes in an unladylike fashion, the one her aunt constantly rebuked her for. “I assure you, Aunt, the world is changing, only you seem quite determined to live within the confines of the past.”
Her aunt gasped, and Georgianna softened her tone. “I do notneeda husband to supervise my life or restrict me in any way. If I should fall in love with a man who would love me and support my dreams and passions, that is another matter entirely.”
Her aunt harrumphed, and another measure of Georgianna’s excitement dimmed as she noted her sisters’ reactions, each worried for their own reason. Hurrying over to the youngest, she stooped.
“This is a good thing, Anna,” she whispered, tweaking her cherub chin. “You know how much you enjoy my cooking, especially my spiced rum cake and quail roasted with honey?”
Her six-year-old sister’s lips trembled before she nodded. “Lizzie especially loves them,” she whispered.
“A very important gentleman, an earl, wants me to cook for a lavish party he is hosting aboard his yacht while it sails along the English Channel.” Lowering her tone to a dramatic whisper, she added, “This gentleman will compensate me so handsomely, we won’t have to eat Hetty as we feared.”
Her sister gasped, snapping her head around to peer at the hen who pecked at the earth outside by the water through. Anna looked back to Georgianna, her blue eyes sparkling with that militant determination known to the Heyford sisters.
“Then youmustgo, Georgie. We don’t want toeatHetty!”
“Or Midge,” eight-year-old Sarah said of their piglet with a giggle. “Though I feel she would be quite tasty.”
The girls laughed, and relieved that she had taken some of the worries from their hearts, Georgianna ruffled Anna’s tousled dark curls and glanced at the sister closest to her in age, her dearest friend and closest confidant, Elizabeth.
Her sister lifted her chin to imply they should speak in privacy. Georgianna rose and smoothed the wrinkles in her dark, serviceable gown. “I am going to check on the stew and the bread in the oven. Lizzie, why don’t you assist me?”
She walked away from the drawing room, knowing her sister would follow. They clambered down the stairs to the large stone kitchen where a savory stew bubbled, the air redolent with the dish.
“You cannot go, Georgie,” her sister said as they came off the last step. “It is not safe.”
Georgianna whirled around, fisted a hand at her hip, and pinned her sister with a glare. “Lizzie! You know this is the chance we so desperately need. We cannot—”
“Is ithim?”
