CHAPTER 1
HAMILTON HOUSE, ESSEX
“Mama, I simply cannot attend Viscount Stamford’s ball next week with my current wardrobe. It is simplyintolerable! No dress is not at least a month old, and nothing at all that I have not worn before.”
That was Emmeline Nightingale’s strident voice. It was inescapable, piercing the walls of Hamilton House. Charlotte Nightingale, Emmeline’s cousin, lowered the romantic novel that she had been reading before Emmeline’s disaster rocked the house.
“Of course, you shall, dear,” Judith, Emmeline’s mother and Charlotte’s aunt, said. “Henry, has a modiste been appointed to produce some new dresses for Emmeline and Alice?”
Charlotte closed her book, tossing back her dark curls. She kept her place with a finger and stood. The sitting room she had chosen for a quiet morning’s read was small, tucked away in what she had thought would be a quiet corner of the Nightingalehouse. But Emmeline and Judith’s voices had come from just down the hall.
“Not my province, as you know. I leave that to you, my sweetpea,” Henry Nightingale replied to his wife.
His voice came from just outside theoh-so-temporaryrefuge that Charlotte had found. The door opened, and Henry started upon seeing his niece in the room. He held a book, a clay pipe in his other hand, halfway to his mouth.
“Charlotte, good morning to you. I did not see you at breakfast,” he greeted.
Henry resembled Charlotte’s late father in appearance. Both had strong jawlines, a bold nose, and hazel eyes. Henry lacked his older brother’s stature but shared the same dark locks, a feature Charlotte had also inherited.
“Uncle Henry, I was at breakfast.Youwere not,” Charlotte said with a smile.
“Oh, was I not? That’s right, I got caught up in an experiment. I was thinking of yesterday.”
“Last week,” Charlotte corrected, “I didn’t join the family for breakfast as I was visiting with the Dowager Countess of Beswick.”
Henry was already selecting a book from the bookcase that occupied one wall of the sitting room.
“Oh, very good. Now that you mention it, yes, I remember,” he murmured absently. “Hmm, have you seen my pipe?”
Charlotte smiled sweetly, plucked the pipe from her uncle’s top pocket where he had placed it moments before, and presented it to him.
“Ah, you are so very helpful and practical, Charlotte. Not at all like my own brood of empty-headed females.”
“I think I will take some sun while it is warm,” Charlotte replied, heading for the door.
Henry was settling himself, tamping his pipe, when his wife appeared in the doorway. He winced as she began to screech.
“I do wish you would take our daughter’s futures more seriously, Henry. They stand little chance of a good match if forced to attend social functions in rags. Like beggars!”
Charlotte could not quite control the grin that broke out on her face at her aunt’s hyperbole. Aunt Judith was a tall, imposing woman with broader shoulders than her husband and a complexion that found glowering a natural and carried more than a hint of the Spanish. There was a legend that her family was descended from a sailor of the Armada, washed up on thecoast. Such legends were not spoken of in Judith Nightingale’s company.
She regarded her niece with narrowed eyes, pale blue and icy.
“Good morning,Charlotte. Was there something you wished to add?”
“Not at all, Aunt Judith. I was feeling sympathy for Emmeline and Alice’s deprivation,” Charlotte hastily put in.
Henry guffawed. Charlotte wished she had her words back. Uncle Henry was not a man to be politic in his reactions.
“I trust your wardrobe suits the coming engagement?” Aunt Judith asked.
“Well, I, too, have nothing that has not been worn many times before. And nothing newer than two seasons ago,” Charlotte began, wondering if she would be included in the trip to the modiste.
It would be nice, just once. When was the last time I had a new dress made for me? Or even attended a ball and felt that I was as pretty as the other ladies? Possibly my debut, and that was four years ago.
“Very good,” Aunt Judith snapped, turning back to her husband, “Henry, I will write to Mrs. Pumfrey of Castle Street in York and order half a dozen new dresses each.”
Charlotte slipped away, forgotten and chiding herself for the feeling of disappointment.
